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President Clinton in NY hospital

President Bill Clinton had some short intermittent chest pain. He was admitted to the hospital and underwent several stents.

From WaPo:

Former president Bill Clinton was hospitalized Thursday in New York, where doctors inserted two stents into a clogged coronary artery after he complained of chest pains. The one-hour procedure went smoothly, according to his cardiologist, and Clinton could be released as soon as Friday.

Clinton, 63, was recovering at New York Presbyterian Hospital’s campus at Columbia University, the same hospital where he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in 2004. The former president had recurring episodes of chest pain over the past several days, a Clinton aide said, and he could have suffered a heart attack if the condition had gone untreated.

Clinton’s cardiologist, Alan Schwartz, said the former president would recover fully and resume his “very active lifestyle.” Within two hours of the operation, Clinton was walking around his hospital room, and Schwartz said he could return Monday to his work leading the humanitarian response to the Haiti earthquake. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2010-02-12T01:23:29-04:00February 12th, 2010|Countdown, Healthcare|Comments Off

We need to keep up the pressure (update)

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I’ve been supporting a single-payer plan for the last several months. I am convinced that this healthcare debate has become overly complex and confusing. The complexity has been injected into healthcare reform in order to fake out, confuse and frustrate the American people. There’s no reason why we have to have healthcare exchanges. It is just like healthcare savings accounts. Having healthcare savings accounts is simply a way for you to pay more and to assume more risk. (If you want to save money, open a savings account or invest in mutual funds or stocks or dig a hole in your backyard and stuff the money in there.)

Think about this — single-payer would pay for your basic healthcare needs and would include dental and mental health. You can choose your own doctor and your own hospital. Everyone is covered. Such a system should cost somewhere around $2.5 trillion, which is $300 billion more than we spent in 2007.

How can we afford this? We figured out how to put a man on the moon and pay for it. We figured out how to start a war of convenience and not pay for it. There are a hundred different ways we can pay for this and not burden everyone. Reverse the Bush tax cuts. We can place a tax on sodas and fast foods since they contribute so heavily to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. By taking private insurance out of the equation we save hundreds of billions of dollars. Most estimates are somewhere around $150 billion. Then, because of decreased overhead, the system becomes more efficient. (I know that Republicans keep telling us that business is more efficient, but what business is efficient at is billing the government more money and milking us.)

No matter what version of healthcare reform you believe in, we need to continue to press our congressmen. Do you have your congressmen on speed dial? Call his/hers office as often as possible. Simply state your name, where you live and that you support healthcare reform — strong public option or single-payer. They have to hear from us all the time.

Update: I got an enormous amount of love from Jack and Jill Politics. I really appreciate it.

By ecthompsonmd|2009-10-15T05:57:57-04:00October 15th, 2009|Countdown, Healthcare|Comments Off

Grab bag — Thursday evening version

I’ve put a new comment system into place. Let me know if you like it. I think, I hope, I can change back if you don’t.
I’m gonna consider amount of comments and traffic today about Joe Wilson’s outburst. I guess a right wing blog linked to me because a lot of the comments are clearly off the wall. “Joe Wilson is a true patriot and should be lifted up on our shoulders.” “It’s about time the Republicans said something to this assmaggot Obama. It’s long overdue!!” There are more but they all are about the same. Only a few are thoughtful. There was one person who made a point that I thought was relatively insightful. He/she stated, “there is no method for clarifying whether or not a person qualifies for the plan. If it is not explicitly written into the bill that illegals are not eligible, they will slip into the system.” This is the most thoughtful response of the bunch. The commentor admits, though, that he has not read the bill by stating if it is not explicitly written into the bill. It is. Page 143 states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who were not lawfully present in the United States.” Read and then comment. You sound smarter that way.

Keith has more:

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New census data is out. Since I live here in North Carolina, I was interested in North Carolina numbers. One out of six North Carolina residents lack health insurance coverage. Over the past three years an average of our 1.5 million residents were without health care. The national average was 15.5%. North Carolina averaged almost 17% of its residents without health insurance.
Median income fell almost $2000 from 2007 to 2008. The median income for Americans in 2008 was $50,303. This is a 3.6% decline in median income which is the largest one-year decline on record (since 1967). I think this completely and totally closes the book on Bush’s tax cuts. Median income dropped throughout President Bush’s tenure.
After Joe Wilson’s outburst, Democratic challenger Rob Miller has raked in over $500,000 from over 14,000 individual donors. That’s what I’m talking about!
ACORN continues to have issues.
I haven’t talked about the resignation/firing of Van Jones. I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t know anything about the man. I would like to think I follow politics pretty closely and I don’t remember ever hearing this guy’s name. Yet when he resigned people like Glenn Beck rejoiced. Why? As I understand the controversy, Van Jones said something crazy eight years ago. I don’t see this as a victory for the right but a capitulation of the Obama White House. I guarantee George W. Bush would not have accepted the resignation under such circumstances — remember Rumsfeld.
Paula Abdul is out. Ellen DeGeneres is in. Ellen is funny and Paula really isn’t. That is your American Idol update.

By ecthompsonmd|2009-09-10T20:50:30-04:00September 10th, 2009|Bush Administration, Countdown, Economy, Healthcare, Obama administration, Party Politics, Television|Comments Off