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On this Date in Bush History 12/23: Your Tax Dollars Distorting Data
2003: President Bush's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today issues the "National Healthcare Disparities Report", requested by Congress to determine any role that race and income play in healthcare quality.
The report is based on a study chaired by Dr. Alan Nelson, a former president of the American Medical Association. The study's key findings: "Disparities in the health care delivered to racial and ethnic minorities are real and are associated with worse outcomes in many cases ... The real challenge lies not in debating whether disparities exist, because the evidence is overwhelming, but in developing and implementing strategies to reduce and eliminate them".
A draft of the HHS report included many of the facts from this study. That is when President Bush's political appointees got involved. The tone of the final HHS report was modified to minimize reports of healthcare discrepancies.
A Congressional investigation into administration manipulation reported: "In the June draft, the Department's scientists found 'significant inequality' ... called healthcare disparities 'national problems', emphasized that these disparities are 'pervasive in our health care system', and found that the disparities carry a significant 'personal and societal price'. The final version of the report amazingly contains none of these conclusions. Indeed, a one-sided presentation of facts paints a rosy picture. According to the Congressional investigation, "the executive summary highlights that 'American Indians/Alaska Natives have a lower death rate from all cancers'. The executive summary does not mention that overall life expectancies for American Indians and Alaska Natives are significantly shorter than for other Americans or that their infant mortality rates are substantially higher". The draft report included the word "disparity" over 30 times in the "key findings"; after Bush administration tinkering "disparity" appears only twice.
Do we really need to be spending tax dollars to hire people to distort the findings of researchers reporting data to Congress? Apparently, the Bush administration believes that we do.
Excerpted from the 2008 Bush Calendar whose title Bush politcal appointees have removed from this spot!
This Date in Bush History 12/24: Fighting Satan at the FDA!
On This Date, 12/24: Fighting Satan's Plans at the FDA
"tho' Ignorance may in some be the Mother of Devotion, yet true learning and exalted piety are by no means inconsistent. "Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1749
2002: On this Christmas Eve W. David Hager is one of eleven physicians appointed to the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health. Dr. Hager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, would seem well qualified but others are not so sure. Many are concerned that his conservative Christian views would influence his ability to give objective opinions on reproductive health and related drug issues. Dr. Hager wrote with "his [then] wife Linda, 'Stress and the Woman's Body', which puts 'an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life' and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome" (Time Magazine).
Dr. Hager is thought to have played a key role in the FDA's unusual decision to overrule its own committee's December 2003 recommendation that emergency contraception ('Plan B') be made available to the public over the counter (just like it is in Britain and Canada; the FDA committee called it "safer than aspirin"). At the Asbury College chapel in Wilmore, Kentucky Hager commented on the FDA's decision refusing to allow Plan B to be made available without a prescription: "I was asked to write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of the FDA. For only the second time in five decades, the FDA did not abide by its advisory committee opinion, and the measure was rejected ... I argued from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and he used it through this minority report to influence the decision. Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good."
Excerpted from the 2008 Bush Calendar that Satan himself could not compel me to name
Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate today. In deference to the holiday, I am not posting today's On This Date in Bush History.
Please remember those who are separated from family or friends on this date, esp. those who lost people on 9/11 or in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who are separated from us due to their service overseas. An absense is felt especially strongly today for many people.
I will be back tomorrow with a new entry. Those interested in today's entry can read it online but for those of you celebrating Christmas my suggestion is to just skip it today. There will be a new one tomorrow!
Both BlueButGlad and pghquest, I want to commend both of you on taking a discussion which was getting a bit ugly and turning it around to be civil again. Good example of how things don't HAVE to escalate if folks just put a little bit of effort into being mature and civil.
Both BlueButGlad and pghquest, I want to commend both of you on taking a discussion which was getting a bit ugly and turning it around to be civil again. Good example of how things don't HAVE to escalate if folks just put a little bit of effort into being mature and civil.
Bravo (so far anyway)!
And thank-you for the thank-you. Sometimes it's too easy to forget that everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if it is not the same as one's own.
"Would you live with ease, Do what you ought, and not what you please."Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1734
2003: President Bush announces the recess appointment of Clark Ervin to serve as Homeland Security Inspector General. Ervin would expose serious lapses at this critical agency (calling it "a huge, dysfunctional bureaucracy" in a USA Today story). He reported on millions of dollars in wasted spending. One of his reports, about a D.C. awards banquet that cost almost $500,000 (including $1,500 spent on cheese displays alone) received widespread publicity. Another Ervin report showed a surprising number of TSA executives getting cash bonuses ("about 76 percent of the senior [TSA] executives" he said in the USA Today story). Asked in that story to name what was wrong at Homeland Security Mr. Ervin said, "It's difficult to figure out where to start". When Ervin's appointment lapsed President Bush refused to reappoint him, despite Ervin wanting to stay on. Ervin found this strange, telling USA Today that his dismissal "will be an enduring mystery to me". Ervin had worked for then Governor Bush in Texas, and had worked for the first President Bush as well. Could it be that the president does not want an Inspector General who does his job a little too well? Better to paint a rosy picture for the public than to expose them to the truth.
2006: President Gerry Ford dies today. Shortly after, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward published excerpts from a Ford interview that Woodward had agreed to keep secret until Ford's death. The former president was critical of Bush's Iraq invasion, saying he "very strongly" disagreed with the Bush administration's reasoning for the war. Ford added that "Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake" when they "put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction". When no WMDs were found, President Bush would claim that the Iraq invasion served to free the Iraqi people. Ford said, "I can understand the theory of wanting to free people", but he added, "I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security".
Excerpted from the 2008 Bush Calendar whose title cannot be revealed until after my death
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Perhapse I might be qualified to run for VP.. haha
Bush History 12/23: Your Taxes to Distort Data
