Unreliable Narration
Amy Sullivan asserts that the Stupak-Pitts amendment was the result of "political malpractice:"Despite the fact that anyone who has followed U.S. politics over the last thirty years could have told you that abortion would be a controversial aspect of health reform, no one tried to preemptively address the concerns of pro-life Democrats by sitting down with them early in the process. The White House didn't reach out to some of the more good-faith players on the pro-life side until early September. And Pelosi didn't sit down with Stupak until September 29. This despite

Adventures in ill-advised medical contrarianism
Over at Science-Based Medicine, Mark Crislip offers a long, detailed and highly-informed critique of this cover story in The Atlantic that speculates (sloppily) about the efficacy and safety of the vaccine for H1N1/09. Unlike Crislip, I'm not an infectious disease doctor and I don't intent to play one in the blogosphere, but this is an issue that gets me torqued for all sorts of reasons, so I'll offer a few thoughts of my own. The problems in the article are numerous, but its central flaws stem directly from the authors' aggressively cont

Mad Men
The classic Sopranos pattern: big events in the penultimate episode, final episode sets up the next season. But the finale was richly entertaining in itself...

What percentage of abortion costs are reimbursed by insurance companies?
It turns out this is a difficult question to answer. Two recent studies came to quite different conclusions in regard to the related issue of how many employer-based private insurance plans offer coverage for abortion. The first study concluded that 87% of "typical" employer-based insurance plans cover abortion. The second concluded that 46% of covered workers had abortion coverage. Obviously part of the explanation for the difference may be that the two questions aren't identical. The first study tried to determine what was offered by typical plans, a

Responding to Stupak-Pitts
Via ema in comments, some crucial info about Stupak's handiwork:The Stupak-Pitts amendment forbids any plan offering abortion coverage in the new system from accepting even one subsidized customer. Since more than 80 percent of the participants in the exchange will be subsidized, it seems certain that all health plans will seek and accept these individuals. In other words, the Stupak-Pitts amendment forces plans in the e