Weighing the Good and the Bad in the Spending-Caps Deal

Republicans dislike “increased domestic spending” in general, but once you see the specifics, you understand why Republican leaders signed off on it: $80 billion in disaster relief funding, $6 billion toward opioid and mental health treatment, $4 billion to the Veterans Administration to rebuild and improve veterans hospitals and clinics, $2 billion toward research at the National Institutes of Health.

.. It was always a stretch to claim that Republicans had “basically repealed Obamacare” just by repealing the individual mandate. But getting rid of the individual mandate and the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board? Now we’re getting somewhere. The IPAB was created under Obamacare and given the duty to slow the growth of Medicare spending, but no board members were ever nominated. But as written under the law, IPAB would have enjoyed a lot of power over what Medicare was willing to pay for and how much, with little opportunity for Congress to overrule their decisions. This deal gets rid of IPAB for good.

.. An abusive person will often become a lot calmer when confronted with an authority figure they cannot abuse, such as a cop at the door. Abusive people can usually recognize the difference between the consequences of hitting a partner or spouse in public — where someone may see and confront them or call the cops — and doing so in private, and thus they keep those impulses in check in public. This is, in fact, one of the traits that can emotionally and psychologically trap the victim; the victim finds herself baffled and wondering, “he’s so nice and normal sometimes, so what am I doing that’s setting him off?”

.. Abusive people are generally pretty good at measuring what they can get away with in a given circumstance. They want to indulge their impulses right up to the point where it generates a permanent consequence. For example, if the abuser picks up a knife and begins chasing his partner around the house pledging to stab the partner, the partner is almost always going to flee and end the relationship, and/or file a restraining order.

.. restraining orders usually only work on the kind of people who don’t require restraining orders.) A man who is violently angry on the first date is not going to get a second date.

.. The creepy guy who hangs around a playground and stares at the children is going to get reported and caught pretty quickly. The creepy guy who works his way into a position of trusted authority, and who manages to seem kind, caring, and all of those other good traits around other adults, can pursue prey at will for a long time, because accusations of abuse will seem so unthinkable to other adults.

.. Many people have a hard time rectifying the two, and we should have a bit of sympathy for the friends and co-workers experiencing that cognitive dissonance upon learning of a person’s private sins.

Dispute Over British Baby’s Fate Draws In Pope and U.S. President

Charlie Gard, who turns 11 months old on Tuesday, was born with an extremely rare genetic disease. He is blind and deaf, and he cannot breathe or move on his own. He suffers from persistent epileptic seizures.

.. The London hospital that is treating Charlie has asked permission to remove him from life support. His parents want to take him to the United States, where they believe an experimental treatment has a chance — however remote — of prolonging his life, even though the disease has no cure.

.. Judges in the case have acknowledged that the case highlights differences in law and medicine — and an American willingness to try anything, however unlikely the possibility of success — but have held that prolonging the infant’s life would be inhumane and unreasonable. The case echoes the one of Terri Schiavo

.. If we can help little , as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so.

.. Charlie was born on Aug. 4 with encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He is thought to be one of only 16 children globally with the condition, the result of a genetic mutation.

.. They have raised more than 1.3 million pounds, or about $1.7 million, to help finance experimental treatment in the United States.

.. The High Court ruled that Charlie would face significant harm if his suffering were to be prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement. Moreover, it said the experimental treatment, known as nucleoside therapy, would not be effective.

..  In light of what the president of the United States proposes to do to his fellow citizens, both very young and very old, by taking away their health insurance coverage and dramatically reducing the coverage of Medicaid, his tweet of concern and “offer” can only be seen as a self-serving and hollow stunt.
.. Now, if President Trump and the Republican Party would act as concerned about those here needing health care, I would really be impressed.
.. Experimental treatment is research that may help this child or others.
.. If Mr. Trump is looking for a way to help cases such as that of Charlie Gard, he can begin by reversing his plans to cut $5.8 billion from the budget of the National Institutes of Health. Experimental treatments and the promise they hold come into being in the United States with broad support from NIH funding. To the extent that such support is diminished, as per the president’s plan, the promise of life saving advances in American health care is denied
.. Trump is offering support for a child, with no hope living. Yet where is the support for the millions of currently healthy children and their families in the US who will face, illness and death because of TrumpCare.
.. He is trying to make political points by injecting himself into a singular case of a very cute white baby. I give him no kudos because I am pretty sure he would not be doing the same for a cute black baby, and I know, because he has made it clear how little he cares, that he wouldn’t do the same for a cute baby (black, brown or white) born in this country.

Trump wants to add wall spending to stopgap budget bill, potentially forcing shutdown showdown

Mick Mulvaney, calls for $33 billion in new defense and border spending — and $18 billion in cuts to other priorities, such as medical research and jobs programs.

.. But it appeared that few on the Hill shared the White House’s appetite to flirt with a government shutdown over the border wall, which Democrats have pledged to oppose and which even some conservative Republicans object to on fiscal grounds.

.. cuts intended to offset the defense spending, including more than $7 billion from labor, health and education programs. Many of the cuts would be aimed at key priorities for Democrats, such as money for global reproductive health education, but they also take aim at more broadly popular agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

.. Democrats also scoffed at the idea that the White House would ask Congress to cut widely supported domestic programs to pay for the wall despite Trump’s campaign pledge to make Mexico pay.

“Cutting cancer research, slashing affordable housing and programs to protect the environment, and making middle-class taxpayers pay for a wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for?”

.. It is common for White House budget officials to send Congress a list of proposed cuts to offset new spending priorities. But rarely do the cuts target popular programs such as medical research at the National Institutes of Health in exchange.