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Thank you, Michele Bachmann. I appreciate the opportunity to finally be able to express my thoughts on this week's Supreme Court arguments and the question of liberty.

Rep. Bachmann thinks every uninsured person in this country simply gambled with their health. They "rolled the dice" and took their chances that they wouldn't get sick. Insurers had nothing to do with it, of course. They were never tossed off the rolls of a health insurer's plan, they were never denied care, they never reached their lifetime cap, and they never lost their job and their insurance right along with it.

These things never happened. No, instead what happened is that they simply shrugged and figured they could screw their kids and themselves out of access to a doctor, preventive care, and treatment for conditions they could live with, even when they were sure there might be something wrong.

Take for example, this story related by Dr. Jen Gunter:

The patient in the emergency department smelled of advanced cancer. It is the smell of rotting flesh, but even more pungent. You only ever have to smell it once.

She had been bleeding irregularly, but chalked it up to “the change.” Peri-menopausal hormonal mayhem is the most common cause of irregular vaginal bleeding, but unfortunately not the only cause.

She hadn’t gone to the doctor because she had no health insurance. The only kind of work she could get in a struggling rural community was without benefits. Her coat and shoes beside the gurney were worn and her purse from another decade. She could never afford to buy it on her own. She didn’t qualify for Medicaid, the local doctor only took insurance, and there was no Planned Parenthood or County Clinic nearby.

Go read the whole thing. Because this is what Bachmann is talking about. This woman had no money, no means and no access to health care. And when she finally did get herself to a university hospital via ambulance to the emergency room, the only life-saving treatment available was not available to her because she could not pay for it.

Yep, there's some liberty for you. Liberty to rot away until the last ambulance takes you to the last emergency room for that last emergency that finally kills you after the cancer has eaten away the living parts.

Liberty. This is Michele Bachmann's liberty. Right here. Letting a woman die of a disease that could be treated and cured, if only. If only it could be paid for. And that university hospital did not choose to offer such treatments, nor was it obligated to offer them to those who could not pay. The only treatment they had to give was a blood transfusion and one single dose of radiation to stop the bleeding for at least a few days.

Then they had to send her on her way. Liberty. Liberty to die alone, penniless, untreated, and in pain. Liberty, people! This is Michele Bachmann's liberty, the liberty to not choose.

Liberty, my butt. It's slavery, and that's the essence of what these arguments boil down to. Take three minutes and listen to Solicitor General Verrilli explain this to the court:

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In a somewhat predictable but still annoying move, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss Attorney General Ken Cucinelli's lawsuit seeking to challenge the constitutional grounds for the Affordable Care Act. The key language in the 32-page ruling (PDF) is this:

While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate -- and tax -- a citizen's decision not to participate in interstate commerce. Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any circuit court of appeals has squarely addresses this issue. No reported case from any federal appellate court has extended the Commerce Clause or Tax Clause to include the regulation of a person's decision not to purchase a product, notwithstanding its effect on interstate commerce. Given the presence of some authority arguably supporting the theory underlying each side's position, this Court cannot conclude at this stage that the complaint fails to state a cause of action."

Or, stated more simply, the judge has decided to allow Virginia to challenge the Affordable Care Act in its entirety based on a challenge to the individual mandate. The court (and Ken Cucinelli) should be careful what they wish for. If the court's logic is deemed sound and this case were to be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, a foundation will have been laid for Congress to pass Medicare For All under precedents established when Medicare was passed and challenged 45 years ago.

Just so we're clear on agendas, know that these court challenges have nothing to do with the individual mandate and everything to do with insurers' objections to the Affordable Care Act ending insurers' right to exclude for pre-existing conditions. That has been, and will continue to be, the core of corporate objections to the Affordable Care Act.

The judge's ruling was purely procedural; that is, he did not consider the merits of Virginia's argument, only whether the case should be allowed to proceed. The White House fired back a response and a shot across the bow:

After all, over 70 years of settled law is on the side of the Affordable Care Act. In order to make health care affordable and available for all, the Act regulates how to pay for medical services – services that account for more than 17.5% of the national economy. This law came into being precisely because of the interconnectedness of our health care costs. People who make an economic decision to forego health insurance do not opt out of the health care market, but instead shift their costs to others when they become ill or are involved in an accident and cannot pay.

We do not leave people to die at the emergency room door – whether they have insurance or not. Those costs – $43 billion in 2008 alone – are borne by doctors, hospitals, insured individuals, taxpayers and small businesses, in Virginia and throughout the nation. According to a recent study, this cost-shift added on average $1,100 to family premiums in 2009 and roughly $410 to an individual premium.

Bottom line: This ruling doesn't really mean much, but conservatives will use it as a crowing point during the summer recess to stoke up the teabag machine and grind out nightly Fox News blurbs.

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(h/t CSPANjunkie)

Donna Edwards tells her story of being a young mother without health insurance and how she is paying America back with her vote for health care reform.

Edwards: I collapsed and was taken to an emergency room. Without health care I was treated as one of those uncompensated and now it's time for me to pay the American people back with a vote for comprehensive health care reform. This bill will take the burden off of providers and Americans for paying the costs of uncompensated care and safeguards for the health of all Americans.

She's been a solid progressive voice in Congress. We need more like her. I watched the endless insanity of the Republicans in the House on full display all day and night Saturday. It made me sick, watching them line up like replicants, making sure they used the same talking points over and over again. When they talk about "freedom," all they do is smear what that word means to the world. C&L Annette emailed me and said we should start calling them the Republick Party. I like that.

You won't read much about their behavior during a crucial time in our history because the media shields the nuts who are loose in the halls of Congress.

Howie Klein writes:

I love Donna Edwards. Her short speech about why she was voting for health care reform made me cry last night-- and not fake Glenn Beck tears. Like Donna, there was a time in my life when I couldn't afford health insurance-- or health care-- either. Americans deserve better than predatory insurance companies thriving on misery. This is why America needs more members of Congress like Donna Edwards and less like Paul Ryan, Suzanne Kosmas and John Barrow

We're not even in flu season yet, and already hospitals are overloaded. I have to wonder how many cities are ready for this:

BALTIMORE — To Mitchell Goldstein, the flood of sick children seemed endless. Day after day, nearly three times as many kids as usual streamed into the rainbow-colored pediatric emergency room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, sniffling and feverish, worried parents hovering.

The press of children with swine flu was so relentless that doctors opened an annex in a hospital dining room to handle the overflow. "Our worst day" was Sunday, Oct. 11, says Goldstein, one of the ER doctors. "We had 15 to 20 patients an hour. It was 24/7. There wasn't a lull."

Last week, the epidemic of ailing children let up somewhat. But doctors here are expecting a new run of flu patients — the children's parents. "What we see first in (children) we see two to three weeks later in adults," says Trish Perl, the hospital's director of infection control.

The scenes at Johns Hopkins are being repeated at hospitals in Denver and Duluth, Seattle and San Diego, as waves of flu patients arrive at their doors, doubling their emergency room volume. Just as significant is the effect on intensive care units: A relatively small number of flu patients are requiring intensive care, but some are so ill they will need round-the-clock care for weeks.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere expect the number of patients needing hospitalization and intensive care to rise. Such an influx of intensive care patients eventually could force some hospitals to cancel services such as elective surgery, they say.

"Why did President Obama declare a national emergency? Because what's going on at Hopkins is happening across the country," Perl says. "An infection that generally doesn't appear to be severe is pushing hospitals to their limit."

The White House declaration, announced Saturday, was designed to give hospitals the flexibility to move patients to satellite facilities if they are overwhelmed in dealing with an outbreak that is now widespread in 46 states and afflicting millions of people, says Reid Cherlin, an administration spokesman.

"H1N1 is moving rapidly, as expected," Cherlin says. "By the time regions or health care systems recognize they are becoming overburdened, they need to implement disaster plans quickly."

[...] To many analysts, swine flu appears to be two overlapping epidemics: one a cascade of mild to moderate cases that is stressing hospital emergency rooms, and the second a narrow stream of unusually young patients who need intensive care.

[...] Connie Price, chief of infectious diseases at Denver Health, the city's public hospital, says, "I've been living this" since Aug. 28, when the hospital's lab reported 12 positive tests for swine flu.

"Since then we've been inundated," she says. "In a typical flu season, we may hospitalize 15 patients. With H1N1, we've hospitalized 10 times that many. We're not even in flu season yet."

As someone who spent two hours on the phone talking to six different insurance reps Monday, trying to find out why my insurer was trying to stick me with a $12,000 emergency room bill, I can only repeat what has become my personal mantra: The only people who are really satisfied with their health coverage are those who have never had to use it.

The industry that helped scuttle health reform 15 years ago with its "Harry and Louise" ads is back, voicing support for a central element of the Obama administration's plans: making sure everyone is covered.

That does not mean the industry is backing the administration. Indeed, the leader of the insurance lobby has sent lawmakers a message: Be careful what you change, because "77 percent of Americans are satisfied with their existing health insurance coverage."

Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), invoked the statistic to argue against the creation of a government-run insurance option. But the polls are not that simple, and her assertion reveals how the industry's effort to defend its turf has led it to cherry-pick the facts.

The poll Ignagni was citing actually undercuts her position: By 72 to 20 percent, Americans favor the creation of a public plan, the June survey by the New York Times and CBS News found. People also said that they thought government would do a better job than private insurers of holding down health-care costs and providing coverage.

In addition, data from a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last year, compiled at the request of The Washington Post, suggest that the people who like their health plans the most are the people who use them the least.

Those who described their health as "excellent" -- people who presumably had relatively little experience pursuing medical care or submitting claims -- were almost twice as likely as those in good, fair or poor health to rate their private health insurance as excellent.

The level of satisfaction expressed with private insurance was essentially the same as that with Medicare, the government program for the elderly and disabled.

The industry's stance against a public health plan revives shades of 1994, when it was instrumental in blocking President Bill Clinton's health-care proposals.

"A government-run plan would turn back the clock on efforts to improve the quality and safety of patient care," AHIP has argued. Such a plan "will ultimately limit choices and access," the big insurer WellPoint contends.

But systemic problems have persisted for 15 years, and it is not clear how much private insurers have done, or can do, to solve them.

"Insurers promise choice, they promise innovation, they promise a lot of things, but I think they've delivered very little," said Alan Sager, professor of health policy and management at Boston University. "I think net they give us very bad value for the 10 to 20 percent share of the health dollar they skim off the top."

Instead of choice, they offer "the illusion of choice," he said.

Let's follow one minor injury (mine) through the American health care system, shall we? It started in September 2007, when I fell out of a tow truck.

I fell out of a tow truck after a long, hard week at work because while I was

driving home from New Jersey across the Betsy Ross bridge, a tire blew out. My auto club sent out a crew but they couldn't change the tire - it needed a special tool, one I didn't have. (Used car.) So I trudge back to the police station at the foot of the bridge, where someone was nice enough to let me use their phone. (Dead cell battery! Oh lucky day!) But then the red-faced shift commander came in and started screaming at me: "GET. THAT. CAR. OFF. MY. BRIDGE!!" He also yelled at me for "tying up our line" and insisted I fork up $300 to get my car towed off the bridge.

I'd just started the job after several months of unemployment and was broke. I told him; he didn't care. I finally made another call and got my auto club to authorize a purchase order to get me towed.

It was a Very Big Truck, a shiny black tractor-trailer with a flatbed. We unloaded the car at my mechanic's, and the driver dropped me off in front of my house. Did I mention the truck was black, and that it was late at night and dark outside? Because here's where I tried to step out of the truck onto one of the decks (black, with no reflective safety strip) and dropped three feet to the sidewalk, onto my ankle.

Much crying and a trip to the emergency room later, I discovered another little oddity of the American Way of Insurance: Since the accident involved a vehicle, all treatment had to go through my no-fault car insurance until it was tapped out. The local hospital did an x-ray and told me it was a minor sprain.

After three months of physical therapy, it wasn't getting better. The physical therapist told me she thought maybe I'd chipped a bone and it was tearing at the ligament. "You should get an MRI," she said.

This, as they say, is where the fun begins.

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Don't look now, but right-wing columnist Cal Thomas appears to have gotten one right, proving once again that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Thomas, an evangelical Christian who helped create the Moral Majority, urged the public to stop evaluating presidential candidates on the basis of faith.

“This election,” he said, “should be more about competence and less about ideology, or even faith. It shouldn’t matter where — or if — a candidate goes to church, but whether he (or she) can run the country well, according to the principles in which the voter believes. And, if those principles include a person of faith, so much the better. God can be the ultimate check and balance on earthly power.

“If a car hits me,” he concluded, “I care more about whether the ambulance driver knows the way to the nearest hospital and the skills of the emergency room doctor than where they stand with God. That’s the attitude we should have toward those who desire to be president of the United States in a fallen world.”

As my friend Joe Conn put it, "Given the source, that’s not a bad sermon. I won’t start setting my watch by Thomas’ warped clock, but today he’s pretty much on time."

(Photo via Dominic.)

The Sunday Talking Head line-up is ready for the reading. Rep. Charlie Rangle officially has the most annoying green room of the day, having to share it with Howdy Doody Adam Putnam and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. That's enough to give anyone indigestion. Some discussionon SCHIP, but not too many Bushies willing to go on television and defend Ebenezer's veto and "emergency room health care" plan.

What's catching your eye in the news and on the blogs this morning?