Friday, March 14, 2014

Kanock, Kanock


Baseball Headline(s) of the Day
16 days until Opening Day. In the meantime you can choose from these shockers:
Rays tab ace Price to start opener vs. Jays
Red Sox's Peavy debuts after fishing injury
Garza unconcerned by 19.06 ERA

The Search for Intelligent Life Continues... FOUND SOME!
Speaking before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, Dr. Danielle Martin, vice president at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, masterfully showed how to smack down a disingenuous politician’s misleading and misinformed questions with courtesy, intelligence and, well, facts.
In this instance, the role of disingenuous and ill-informed politician was played by North Carolina’s GOP Sen. Richard Burr, who decided to use his question time to imply that the Canadian healthcare system was bad because it led to Canadian doctors moving to America and rich people going to the U.S. to get complicated and expensive surgery. These were both good points — except for the fact that they were, as Martin made clear, completely wrong.
“Dr. Martin, in your testimony, you note that Canadian doctors exiting the public system for the private sector has had the effect of increasing waiting lists for patients seeking public health care,” Burr began. “Why are doctors exiting the public system in Canada?”
“Thank you for your question, Senator,” Martin responded. “If I didn’t express myself in a way that made myself understood, I apologize. There are no doctors exiting the public system in Canada; and in fact we see a net influx of physicians from the United States into the Canadian system over the last number of years.”
Burr had no response to Martin’s corrections, however, and swiftly moved on to his next question. This, too, was premised on a well-worn anti-Obamacare GOP talking point, which also happened to be pretty wrong.
“What do you say to an elected official who goes to Florida and not the Canadian system to have a heart valve replaced?” Burr asked.
“It’s actually interesting,” Martin responded, “because, in fact, the people who are the pioneers of that particular surgery … and have the best health outcomes in the world for that surgery, are in Toronto, at the Peter Munk Cardiac Center, just down the street from where I work. “So what I say is that sometimes people have a perception — and I believe that actually this is fueled in part by media discourse — that going to where you pay more for something, that that necessarily makes it better, but it’s not actually borne out by the evidence on outcomes from that cardiac surgery or any other,” she added.


Thought You Should Know… for no particular reason
Greg Kreman, the founder of Match.com, was dumped by his girlfriend for another man she met on Match.com. 

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