Why healthcare costs so much

Robin Harris of ZDNet:

Less than 3 weeks ago I wrote about a simple storage device that saved 1500+ lives and over $175,000,000 in just a couple of hundred hospitals out of 3700 nationwide.

Now the Feds have ordered the program halted. Read on to learn what you can do to help.

The technology: printed paper checklists of the proper steps for common intensive care unit (ICU) procedures like inserting catheters. Nationwide some 4% of ICU catheters get infected resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and billions in added expenses for heroic care efforts. The checklists reduced infection rates to 0%.

Bureaucracy inaction
In a mind-numbing display of bureaucratic reasoning, Kristina C. Borror, Ph.D., Director, Division of Compliance Oversight in the Office for Human Research Protections of the Department of Health & Human Services, ordered the life-saving practices halted.

Why, you ask? According to Ms. Borror and the OHRP asking doctors to perform procedures according to best practices

. . . represented non-exempt human subjects research that was conducted without appropriate IRB [institutional review board] review and approval . . .

Thanks, Mister Brodkorb!

Your hard work spreading disinfo and knocking doors for the Republican candidate in what should have been the safe-as-houses GOP stronghold of Lonsdale has contributed to Kevin Dahle’s resounding win of state Senate District 25, beating Republican Ray Cox in an election whose date was picked by our local GOP to coincide with the winter school vacations (and thus absent student voters) for the liberal bastions of Carleton and St. Olaf colleges.

Thanks in part to you, and to the work of your fellow travelers in the right-wing-leaning press that created false expectations of Democratic weakness in SD-25, the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party now has a veto-proof majority in the state Senate. Heckuva job, Broddie!

Friday Cat Blogging

Still Life With Toy Mice

Check This Out

Courtesy of the Group News Blog via Kos:

Total Voter Turnout (approximate)

356,000

Percentage of total vote

24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)

Our weakest finisher beats their best. (And Huckabee had an advantage in Iowa in that the GOP there is bursting with Fundies; that’s not the case in New Hampshire.) As for Mitt, Grandpa Fred, McCain and Rudy? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh, and watch RNC Chair Mel Duncan bend himself into knots rather than let the words “Mike Huckabee” pass his lips.  (Gee, and isn’t it odd that the RNC’s website isn’t mentioning the Iowa caucus results, whereas the DNC page has ‘em front and center?)