Health Care – The Wrongologist

Implications Of Brian Thompson’s Assassination

The Daily Escape:

Bear Trap Gap, NC – November 2024 photo by Mandy Gallimore

“If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”– Il Gattopardo

If you’re on social media, a concerning number of people seem to openly support gunning down a “corporate rich guy” in broad daylight. Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in what appears to be a targeted killing. And the comments about it on the internet underscore there is kind of a depravity circulating in too many Americans.

This, after two attempts to assassinate Trump during the campaign. Which stirred up similar, although more muted reaction on social media.

The killer left anti-insurance messages on the shell casings of the bullets that killed Thompson, using the words: “deny,” “defend” and “depose”. Those words are references to the ways insurance companies avoid paying for care.

An excellent summary by Bob Lefsetz:

“And we thought the revolution would arrive as a result of the red/blue divide. When in truth, it’s all about income inequality. Please don’t criticize me for having sympathy for those screwed by the insurance companies. If I were in charge, there’d be no guns at all, or a law akin to that in Australia. But one would posit that the shooter is pissed because the insurance company didn’t pay.

But that’s what insurance companies do, not pay. That’s their business model. Even assuming you can see the doctor of your choice, which is rare.”

Yes, not pay whenever possible is what insurance companies do.

To be clear, this is why advanced societies have tended to create broad publicly funded social safety net programs. It’s not because their bleeding heart politicians love giving away money. It’s because making sure people have humane standards of living keeps them from becoming desperate and doing stuff like this. During the Great Depression, capitalists agreed—grudgingly—to the New Deal because they were afraid otherwise the country would “go Communist”.

We have no clarity on the actual motive behind the killing, but all signs point to it being linked to dissatisfaction with our health insurance system. And we need to remember that Brian Thompson was a human being with a family. So calling his death justified is despicable.

It’s the health insurance payment system and healthcare pricing for goods and services that is despicable.

From STAT:

“The public’s dissatisfaction has never been higher. Recent polling data show the health care system is as unpopular now as it was before the Affordable Care Act went into effect 15 years ago — a time when insurers could decline to cover people if they had any number of pre-existing health conditions and nearly 49 million people lacked insurance. A survey from Gallup released Friday reveals that “Americans’ positive rating of the quality of health care in the U.S. is now at its lowest point” since 2001.”

“Roughly 25 million Americans remain uninsured. Tens of millions of others have health insurance but can’t afford their deductibles, coinsurance, or copays due to the high prices of tests, surgeries, and prescription drugs….These barriers aren’t just a nuisance — they can have real effects on patients’ health.”

The KFF foundation reports that 100 million Americans have medical debt, and its highly doubtful that they can afford to pay it down. Even people with platinum forms of coverage face long waits coordinating the complex and uncoordinated delivery of their health care, as Wrongo knows firsthand.

After getting care, patients are inundated with medical bills they don’t understand — perplexed why their insurer isn’t advocating on their behalf, and fearful that hospitals and other providers will send them to collections or sue them.

It’s all part of a health care system that is projected to spend $5 trillion this year, eating further into workers’ wages. Those who feel most aggrieved often are the sickest. Most people are generally satisfied with their health insurance. However, people who have more health conditions and therefore need to get care more frequently don’t like their coverage nearly as much as healthier people, according to polling from KFF.

So, the more they know you, the more they dislike you. People are feeling a sense of helplessness in trying to address this mammoth commercial insurance industry that’s putting restraints on people’s ability to get care. When you feel that sense of helplessness is when you end up having situations like this. People don’t really know what else to do.

The murder of the CEO and the public’s reaction reveals that:

Americans are blindingly angry, and not just with the healthcare system.
Due process is no longer trusted. Have enough money and you’re likely to buy your way out of a bad situation. The FTC says Twitter must comply with the consent decree and Elon Musk just doesn’t do it. The government is no match for the rich. Money can insulate you from so much.
Vigilante justice has become a solution in some places because of the lack of due process.

We’re entering a period that is very similar to the Gilded Age of the 1880s and the 1930s.

Our social contract is in free fall. And the Trump administration’s proposed cabinet officers will make it worse.

What will happen in a country with 400 million guns and 320 million people? Things may go downhill quickly. Never forget, most change is fomented by individuals. A fruit vendor in Tunisia ignited the Arab Spring.

Is this the start of change in America? One person gunning down an insurance company executive?

Wrongo doesn’t condone the shooting. At this point we have no motive. But what we do know makes you think about our broken health care system and the overcompensation of the people who run it. They’re getting rich on our illnesses. They take our money and then, don’t pay.

Ain’t that America.

Political Advertising: How Effective Is It?

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo’s calendar says there’s just 29 days to go until Election Day. The campaigns are in high gear, but what are they saying? And is what they’re saying getting through to both their base voters as well as to those who are “persuadable” enough for them to get out to the polls and vote? Time is running out.

Timing is a point raised in this NBC story, which describes that, after having taken the last 76 days to introduce the Vice President to voters, the campaign now plans to ratchet up negative advertising about how unfit Trump is to be President (emphasis by Wrongo).

“Leaning more heavily into negative campaigning is a strategic shift for Harris. While she has routinely been critical of Trump since becoming a candidate in July….Harris campaign officials said they intend to continue laying out her policy positions, background and plans…But emphasizing what Harris campaign officials view as Trump’s major vulnerabilities is seen as possibly one of the only ways to finally win over some voters who haven’t made up their mind in a static race that Democrats want to push in their direction.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs suggests that Harris’ attacks on Trump’s brand of hyper-masculinity appear to be working. As the Daily Beast summarized the findings, respondents:

“…chose Harris 59% over Trump’s 57% when it came to which candidate they felt was tough enough to be president…and favored Harris 55 to 46 % on “which candidate would change the country for the better,” and by 54 to 43% on who “was more likely to fight for them.”

Harris also is micro targeting the message of Trump’s weakness. From the WaPo:

“For the millions of football fans who tuned in from home for Saturday night’s much anticipated matchup between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama, she also ran a new ad nationally on ABC that hammers home her point.”

The ad says:

“’Winners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it’s anytime, anyplace. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home,’ the narrator says at the start of the spot, over images of a football game and washed-out footage of Trump missing a golf putt. The 30-second ad ends with footage of Harris challenging him to another debate, with the words “When we fight, we win” hanging on a sign in the background.”

The money quote:

“Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,…

Harris also posted the ad on Trump’s Truth Social media platform.

Marcy Wheeler quotes CNN’s David Wright who tracks political spending by the candidates about where the money is headed in this final month as the ad wars intensify:

“You can see how each side is placing bets on their best path to 270 electoral votes. In the first week of October, the Harris campaign is spending the most in the critical trio of “Blue Wall” states – they’ve got more than $5 million booked in Pennsylvania, about $4 million booked in Michigan, plus about $2.7 million booked in Wisconsin. And that makes sense – if Harris wins all three of those states, plus Nebraska’s up-for-grabs electoral vote in the swingy second congressional district (where the campaign also has more than $300,000 in ad time this week), she’s the next president.”

Turning to Trump:

“…he’ s looking to the Sun Belt. This week, Trump’s campaign is spending the most on ads in Pennsylvania, $3.8 million – it’s really the linchpin to both sides’ strategies. But in addition to that, the campaign is also spending $3.4 million in North Carolina and nearly $3 million in Georgia, its other top targets, and if he wins those two states plus Pennsylvania, he’s heading back to the White House.”

The Electoral College will come down to which of the two campaigns potential voters consider more trustable, probably mostly on their personal economic situation and where that’s heading with each potential president. From the WaPo:

“Americans are finally starting to feel better about the economy, invigorating Vice President Kamala Harris’s pitch for the presidency as she narrows her Republican opponent’s longtime lead on an issue that is foremost on voters’ minds.”

“Although voters still favor former president Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy…”

But Trump’s only answers for the economy are lower taxes on the rich and more tariffs. Yet, like everything else, Trump has no idea what tariffs actually do.

However, a new survey by Data For Progress’s top line finds Harris leading Trump by 3 points among likely voters nationwide. Nearly half of voters (49%), including a plurality of Independents (46%), choose Harris, while 46% choose Trump.

On the all-important economy, Harris has a trust advantage on most of the economic measures tested, including: supporting small businesses (+10 points), taxes on middle class Americans (+9), increasing wages (+5), lowering housing costs (+5), handling labor union policy (5%), improving our infrastructure (+3), lowering grocery costs (+2), creating jobs (+1), and protecting domestic manufacturing jobs (+1).

That says her campaign messaging is getting through.

Also the survey finds Trump with just a +1-point trust advantage over Harris on “reducing inflation,” an issue that voters have consistently ranked as their most important when deciding whom to vote for. Here’s their chart:

They also surveyed candidate favorability, which now tilts towards Harris. Harris’ rating is +2, while Trump’s is -12:

Is this poll on the money? Difficult to tell. A shorter election season makes it harder for campaigns to assess where to place their bets. And which of their cohorts in the electorate demand the most attention. We’ve focused on Gen Z and younger voters as being primarily swayed by economics. Messaging to women is another important element. Harris can run ads attacking Trump’s hyper-masculinity, (which will help with women).

From The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“And Harris needs to focus there. In the Obama years the gap between young men and women identifying as liberals was just five percentage points, during the Trump-Biden years this has tripled to 15 points, according to Gallup. This change has been caused almost entirely by young women moving to the left, rather than young men tacking to the right. The fact that this generation’s formative years were during the #MeToo movement, the Trump years and the decision to overturn Roe v Wade helps explain it.”

In 2020 a majority of white women voted for Trump. He will be in the minority in 2024. Leading among women is a real advantage. Since the 1980s a greater share of women than men has turned out to vote. In 2020 women made up 54% of the electorate. A final indicator that Democrats might be winning this battle of the sexes: in battleground states, according to Target Smart, a data firm, between July and September, twice as many young Democratic women registered to vote than young Republican men.

Trump’s bet is that Harris is the one with the turnout problem. They think their base is more committed to their candidate than is Harris’s. But Marcy Wheeler points to Harris’s investment in the Dem ground game:

“The Harris campaign claimed in late September to have 330 offices and more than 2,400 staff. They completed 25,000 weekend volunteer shifts on the final weekend of last month, contacting over 1 million voters over three days and completed the 100,000th event of the campaign.”

BTW: Ms. Oh So Right got a postcard from Harris to vote early this week.

Harris Needs To Speak To Gen Z’s Reality

The Daily Escape:

Before tackling the major subject for today, Wrongo wants to briefly cover something you probably missed. There was an abortion ruling in Georgia that overturned the state’s anti-abortion law. The judge plowed new ground with his reasoning: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“While the State’s interest in protecting ‘unborn’ life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the State — and not solely by the woman compelled by the Act to do the State’s work — the balance of rights favors the woman….Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have….It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could — or should — force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another….When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then — and only then — should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.”

The ruling is unlikely to be the final word on abortion access in Georgia, since the case will ultimately be decided by the Georgia Supreme Court.

The judge has a solid argument: Why does society have an interest in a viable fetus when we know society won’t lift a finger to financially and medically support the newborn? Why allow the government to intervene at a time when the costs involved for the mother to continue with the pregnancy increase substantially?

Let’s move to a powerful idea that emerged in the VP debate. Wrongo thinks the key to winning the election will be how Harris reaches out to Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012). PBS Newshour interviewed Kyla Scanlon, who reminds us that Gen Z now has more people in the workforce than the Boomer generation, but they aren’t faring as well. Scanlon says that Gen Z has had a tough go of it, being essentially born into the tech bubble, growing up during the Great Recession and then graduating or being in college during the pandemic.

From Scanlon: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…I think for a lot of Gen Z’ers, rent is definitely not as affordable as it used to be. Real wages have increased, so [have] wages adjusted for inflation, but rent has increased much more. And that’s sort of the foundation of how everyone experiences the economy. It’s where you live and how you have to pay for where you live….people look at the price of rent, they look at the price of gas, they look at the price of food, they just look at the inflation that we have experienced over the past few years, and it’s sometimes just not enough to even make those real wage gains worth it.”

“It’s also the cost of childcare, eldercare, these things that are economically quite painful, but don’t necessarily show up in traditional economic measurements like GDP….They’re things that are… hidden costs that people experience.”

Scanlon also talked about the negative bias in the media that’s driving how people feel about their economic circumstances. Media sentiment on the economy has trended either skeptical or negative for a very long time, so people are reading negative headlines despite the economists and pundits saying the economy is OK. This is a big disconnect for the younger generations who get most of their news from social media.

In the debate, Vance said a few things that certainly resonate with Gen Z and others. He noted three things in particular:

People are struggling to pay the bills. Times are tough.
The American Dream is fading, and feels unattainable.
We should stop shipping jobs offshore.

It’s hard to disagree with any of that, and Harris shouldn’t cede any of this ground to Trump. How hard is it to build this into your stump speech? She could easily acknowledge that we’re in the midst of a global cost of living crisis. The biggest one in half a century.

But it was left to Vance and Scanlon to say the things that most Americans feel.

Gen Z and their younger cohorts mistakenly think that the economy is a zero sum game, meaning that if China is doing well or immigrants are coming here and finding work, that regular Americans must be doing worse, even though the economic statistics say otherwise.

Harris needs to deliver an economic message that’s grounded in the reality that Gen Z and others are experiencing. It can be as simple as acknowledging what Vance or Scanlon called out as problems for many younger Americans.

All she needs to do is “Just Say It”.

Many of Wrongo’s 12 grandchildren (17-32 years-old) largely feel that the American Dream is beyond their reach. They’re certain Social Security won’t be there for them. Most think that they’ll never own a home.

Why can’t Harris speak to this? Harris and the Dems talk vaguely about “the opportunity economy” but a more emotional and empathetic call out is required. People with economic problems need to trust the head of the ticket, and that trust starts with acknowledging their reality: That things aren’t as good for the younger generations as the economic statistics say they are.

The Dems have an actual track record: Investing in infrastructure and encouraging domestic production of strategic goods. Investment in manufacturing is at an all time high. We’re starting to produce advanced chips in Arizona. Unions are stronger than in recent years.

Harris needs to show empathy for those in Gen Z (and younger) who are not fully participating in the opportunity economy.

It will help her win in November.

The Pro-Abortion Political Movement

The Daily Escape:

Artichoke blossom, Imperial County, CA – June 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon

The repealing of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision has helped create a dynamic new political movement: A revolt of millions of Americans (predominantly women) who think government has no business inserting itself into a woman’s personal decisions. This is going to be an important factor in the 2024 elections as it was in 2022.

The Economist says that only:

“….ten thousand women eligible to vote in this November’s elections were born before women won the right to vote. In the century since then, American women have steadily accumulated rights. In the 1960s the contraceptive pill let women choose how many children they had. In the 1970s no-fault divorce laws and Roe v Wade gave women more choices that had been denied to their mothers. This progress seemed irreversible, and was often taken for granted.”

Then it was time for the Trump-appointed Conservative Supreme Court majority to do what it had been hired to do: Overturn a woman’s right to an abortion. More from The Economist:

“A third of American women aged 15-49 now live in states where abortion is either illegal or impossibly restricted.”

These people are leading the biggest voter rebellion since the Tea Party movement in 2009.

Surprisingly, the number of abortions in the US has risen slightly since the Court’s decision, mostly due to the availability of the drug Mifepristone, which can be prescribed by mail. Medication abortions now account for about 63 percent of pregnancy terminations nationwide. The legality of Mifepristone is also currently under review by the same six Conservative justices. That decision could come down as early as today, and certainly by early July.

What a country! Americans have grown used to the idea that every spring, we wait for 9 unelected government officials with lifetime jobs to tell us what kind of country we’re going to live in. Elections should serve this purpose, and we the people should be doing the telling.

But that revolution remains in our future. What is part of our present is an attempt by House Democrats to force a vote on codifying the right to birth control access nationwide. From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo):

“The [Democrat’s] maneuver, through a procedural move known as a discharge petition, is all but certain to fail for lack of Republican support, but that is by design. It is part of a broad election-year push by Democrats to highlight Republicans’ record of opposing abortion rights and other reproductive health choices that voters fear will be stripped away following the fall of Roe v. Wade.”

The Senate Democrats also plan to force a vote on an identical contraceptive access bill, which once again, Republicans are expected to block. This coordinated push shows that Democrats regard access to abortion and contraception options as a key issue that will show a contrast with Republicans this fall.

We’ve seen that the Dobbs decision caused an immediate political reaction. Six states have held referendums on abortion, and in all six, the abortion rights side prevailed. A potential problem for anti-abortion Republicans is that referendums to legalize abortion could be on the ballot in up to 16 more states.

Abortion rights campaigners already have enough signatures to get on the ballot in a few states, including Florida. That state is crucial because it was the abortion destination for many women in the South until May 1st, when it outlawed most abortions after six weeks. If the Florida initiative passes, abortion will be legalized up to the point of viability, roughly 24 weeks. Democrats vainly hope the issue has put Florida in play in the presidential election, although it must pass by 60% to become law. It can easily impact the elections in Arizona and other states. More:

“In only two of the six states that have held referendums, California and Vermont, did the abortion-rights side get such a large share. When Michigan held its referendum in 2022, 57% voted in favor of protecting abortion even though 63% broadly supported the procedure, a rate similar to Floridians.”

That means we’re in the middle of a vast political battle that parallels the presidential battle. Outside groups are pouring tens of millions of dollars into competitive House districts to amplify the message. The main super PAC supporting House Democrats last month announced a new $100 million fund focusing on abortion rights in swing districts.

And the group Americans for Contraception plans to spend more than $7 million on television and digital ads, targeting Republicans in the Senate who vote against the bill and House members who do not sign the petition.

A few voters could be pulled away from the Republicans. More from The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo):

“The midterm elections in 2022 hinted at that….Although only 14% of registered Republican voters were upset about the Dobbs ruling, a quarter of that group voted for a Democrat in their House district…. Republicans and independents who saw abortion as an important issue were more likely to vote for Democrats in 2022 than two years earlier.”

That equals 3.5% of Republicans, and may be among the reasons a predicted “red wave” lifting Republican candidates failed to appear in 2022.

Republicans are in a bind on reproductive rights. They can’t reconcile their Party’s hard-line policies on women’s health and they’re out of step with the vast majority of the country. Despite that, they continue to try to tuck anti-abortion policies into pending legislation.

However the 2024 elections pan out, the anti-Dobbs movement represents something different in US politics. Unlike the Republicans, it isn’t a group of keyboard warriors vying for attention or grift online. Instead it’s people giving up their weekends and evenings to try to persuade their neighbors about an idea they hold deeply.

And it isn’t simply a political cause about a single issue. It’s many issues: The right to live, the right to privacy for medical procedures, the right to not be forced by the state to undergo unnecessary physical or mental injury.

Like most successful revolutions, it’s participatory and local. It is how democracy in America was designed to work. Help it succeed in November!

Crime: Perception vs. Reality

The Daily Escape:

Saguaros and poppies, Catalina SP, Tucson, AZ – March 2024 photo by Paul J Van Helden

From Jeff Asher, a crime analyst based in New Orleans:

“Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.”

We all knew that crime rates skyrocketed between the mid-1960s and the late 1980s. Then they went into a slow 35-year decline. Now, homicide, violent crime, and property crime rates have returned to what they were prior to the latest 20-year increase. This means that if you’re under 55, crime rates have been falling for most of your adult life.

But America perceives that crime rates are high. A Gallup poll released last November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in America than the year before. And 63% felt there was either a “very” or “extremely” serious crime problem — the highest in the poll’s history going back to 2000.

Wrongo doesn’t truly believe the polls since Pew revealed that 12% of people under 30 and 24% of Hispanic people who opt into online polls claim they have a license to operate a nuclear submarine, but here’s a chart:

(This is based on Gallup’s annual Crime survey, conducted Oct. 2023)

The question is, why the disconnect? NPR quoted Jeff Asher:

“There’s never been a news story that said, ‘There were no robberies yesterday, nobody really shoplifted at Walgreens….Especially with murder, there’s no doubt that it is falling at [a] really fast pace right now.’”

One theory you might have is that since the Covid pandemic caused social disorder, dysfunction in our government, and all sorts of problems, including that spike in crime, you might expect crime to remain high even after the country went back to work and school.

Another theory is that when people say “crime“, they don’t exclusively mean “people breaking the law“. Instead maybe they mean “behavior which upsets me“. For example, when the Philadelphia DA tries to focus on eliminating bail for simple drug arrests, while opposing police corruption, he’s said to be soft on crime. Then Republicans (and Trump) tried to impeach him, saying that they’re being “tough on crime” and crime remains a politicized news story.

Another theory is that the narrative around homeless people drives perception of crime. The idea that “homeless people have been violent“, or simply that “homeless people live near me and I don’t want any shelters built nearby,” strengthens the perception that crime is everywhere. For people who feel that way, the statement “Crime is a big problem” is equivalent to the statement “I always see homeless people when I go into town”.

This may explain why crime rates “near me” are perceived to be substantially lower than how national crime is perceived. Few of the homeless are encamped in their suburbs.

If you look back on the 1980s, there were a large number of visible homeless people in Washington DC, and Reagan dismissed them as “homeless by choice“. Today, there are plenty of homeless people on the streets in every city. It’s important to remember that when St. Reagan was governor of California, he released mental patients onto the streets.

This was part of “deinstitutionalization”: The emptying of state psychiatric hospitals that began in the 1950s. As hospitals were shut down, patients were discharged with no place to get psychiatric care. They ended up on the streets, some eventually committing crimes that got them arrested.

In 1963, JFK signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act. (It turned out to be the last bill Kennedy would sign.) The law was designed to replace “custodial mental institutions” with community mental health centers, thus allowing patients to live—and get psychiatric care—in their communities.

However, a sufficient number of community mental health centers were never built.

In 1965, Medicaid accelerated the shift from inpatient to outpatient care: One key part of the Medicaid legislation stipulated that the federal government would not pay for inpatient care in psychiatric hospitals. This further pushed states to move patients out of their state facilities.

That’s when homeless people began to be visible to most of us.

Later, in the 1970s, Nixon declared a war on drugs, setting the stage for tough-on-crime policies. Laws, like mandatory minimum sentences for possession and other drug-related crimes, disproportionately affected people of color and pushed incarceration rates to record levels. Between 1972 and 2009, America’s prison population grew by 700%.

The homeless get blamed for the bad behavior of a small minority of their group. But since an awful lot of the dysfunctional are homeless because their families or friends couldn’t cope with their behavior, it’s logical that the general public would also find their behavior a problem.

And it’s more than just the homeless. In Wrongo’s small Connecticut town, long-time residents resent people who have moved in recently. They are appalled by the occasional drug arrest or stolen car that was left unlocked in a driveway.

This scales up to people in our town bellowing about CHICAGO!!!! Or LA or Portland, OR. They see the far enemy as young Black/Hispanic men in certain zip codes destroying each other. And just possibly turning their attention to our tight, white community here in the Litchfield Hills.

It’s a good thing that overall crime and especially violent crime rates are much lower than they were 30 years ago. But we’re still faced with the overriding perception that people see their families at greater risk now.

This has spilled over into how parents treat their children. NO parent today would allow their kids to get on a bike and roam miles from home. Everything is monitored. If you ask why, the near-universal response is: “It just isn’t safe out there. Not like it used to be.”

Used to be? Most kids were tooling around on their bikes Goonies-style during the 1980s, when crime nationwide was at its peak.

People just seem hell bent on seeing the world as a massively scary place, one filled with predators.

There are major political implications, when data aren’t facts, when truths are lies.

Florida Lets Measles Run Free

The Daily Escape:

Highland Lighthouse, North Truro, Cape Cod, MA – February 2024 photo by Barbra A. Bentley

Let’s take a break this Saturday from a) Russia’s infiltration of the Republican Party and b) the growing realization that unless House Speaker Mike Johnson Johnsonless whips his members into shape before March 1^st, we’ll have a government shutdown. Instead let’s focus today on Measles.

You are a witness the continued collapse in US public health standards since Florida’s Surgeon General has said its ok for unvaccinated kids to attend public school even though there are measles outbreaks. From KFF News:

“With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.”

“The Department of Health ‘is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance,’ wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo’s in the letterhead.”

With his brief memo, Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. This is where you wind up after decades of indoctrination of libertarianism and neoliberalism, where “freedom” becomes anarchy, a rejection of the ability of the state to impose restrictions, even in the name of public safety.

Everyone in America knows that measles is highly contagious, that it kills, and can do lasting damage. More from KFF:

“Most people who aren’t protected by a vaccine will get measles if they’re exposed to the virus. This vulnerable group includes children whose parents don’t get them vaccinated, infants too young for the vaccine, those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons…”

The CDC advises that unvaccinated students stay home from school for three weeks after exposure. About 1 in 5 people with measles end up hospitalized, 1 in 10 develop ear infections that can lead to permanent hearing loss, and about 1 in 1,000 die from respiratory and neurological complications. They reported that in 2023, childhood immunization rates had hit a 10-year low.

Worse, only about a quarter of Florida’s counties had reached the 95% threshold at which communities are considered protected against measles outbreaks, according to data posted by the Florida Department of Health in 2022.

Rebekah Jones, a data scientist who was removed from her post at Florida’s health department in 2020, over a rift regarding Coronavirus data, said:

“I think this is the predictable outcome of turning fringe, anti-vaccine rhetoric into a defining trait of the Florida government,”

A strategy of letting measles spread (which can wipe out your body’s immunity memory) while Covid is still pin-balling its way around the country? Sounds legit.

The way that things are going with public health in the US, it’s only a matter of time until the health departments of other western countries start issuing travel health notices for their citizens wanting to visit the US, advising them of the diseases that are being left to run free, particularly in Florida.

From The Nation:

“In 2022, Georgetown University political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote a piece on how to undermine the administrative state….No country becomes a world power without a capable public service.”

Perhaps the corollary, as stated by The Nation’s Gregg Gonsalves is this:

“No country becomes healthy without a capable public health system.”

That describes America today. More from The Nation:

“We did terribly on Covid…part of the reason was that our fundamentals were weak, but our politics are also set up to undermine public health….This has implications well beyond…the pandemic. It’s about how we expect to survive and thrive in America….This is a disaster in slow motion, and we’re watching it unfold as bystanders.”

There you have it: another thing to lose sleep over, and the election is still 7+ months away. Will there be enough infant deaths to generate sufficient outrage to roll this decision back?

Highly doubtful.

Wrongo is leaving you with that thought and is segueing into our Saturday Soother, where we take a break from doom scrolling and spend a few stolen moments alone with our thoughts. Here on the Fields of Wrong, there is still snow on the ground. So while we hope that spring is just around the corner, there’s little evidence to support it.

To help you relax, grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, played here by the Vienna Philharmonic, and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. This performance was a part of the annual free Vienna Summer Night Concert in 2019.

This is the fourth time Wrongo has featured this composition, although you are seeing this particular version for the first time.

Barber finished the Adagio in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it!

It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here, it is conducted by Gustavo Dudamel in 2019, like Toscanini did, without a score:

Wake Up To Monday’s Hot Links

The Daily Escape:

Cypress trees, Lake Verritt, LA – November 2023 photo by Rick Berk Photography. Note the egret in the background.

For today’s Wake Up Call, we return to a staple of yesteryear, some hot links that caught Wrongo’s eye over the past few days.

Wrongo isn’t happy with how the Ukraine War has slipped from the consciousness of America’s media and thereby, from our view. Saturday’s WSJ offered an intriguing idea with its column, “Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?” (free link). The article makes two excellent points. First, how these two wars have divided the world. Here’s a view of the division:

From the WSJ: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Outrage and political mobilization have become subordinated to geopolitical allegiances—a selective empathy that often treats ordinary Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis as pawns in a larger ideological battle within Western societies and between the West and rivals such as China and Russia.”

Second, the article concludes by saying that the main difference between the two wars is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with all its complexities, lacks the moral clarity of the Ukrainian resistance to Russia. They quote British lawmaker Alex Sobel:

“There is no moral justification for the Russian invasion. Zero. It’s just about Russian imperialism….But in Israel and Palestine, it’s about the fact that there are two peoples on a very small amount of land, and political and military elites on both sides are unwilling to settle for what’s on offer.”

Yes, America may have the moral high ground in both cases, and views can differ on how both wars are being waged. But as the article says in its second paragraph:

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was unprovoked, while Israel sent troops into Gaza because of a mass slaughter of Israeli civilians…”.

Make of the article what you will, but it’s important to think through why you (like Biden) think both wars are morally equivalent.

Link #2 is apropos of the COP28 conference now underway in Dubai. Grist Magazine has an article: “Where could millions of EV batteries retire? Solar farms.” As solar energy expands, it’s becoming more common to use batteries to store the power as it’s generated and transmit it through the grid later. One new idea is to source that battery back up at least in part from used electric vehicle batteries:

“Electric vehicle batteries are typically replaced when they reach 70 to 80% of their capacity, largely because the range they provide at that point begins to dwindle. Almost all of the critical materials inside them, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are reusable. A growing domestic recycling industry, supported by billions of dollars in loans from the Energy Department and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, is being built to prepare for what will one day be tens of millions of retired EV battery packs.”

“Before they are disassembled…studies show that around three quarters of decommissioned packs are suitable for a second life as stationary storage.”

Apparently there are already at least 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV battery packs sitting around in the US that could be deployed, and that the volume of them being removed from cars is doubling every two years.

Link #3 also shows the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. Wolf Richter writes that:

“In October, $18.5 billion were plowed into construction of manufacturing plants in the US ($246 billion annualized), up by 73% from a year ago, by 136% from two years ago, and by 166% from October 2019.”

“The US is the second largest manufacturing country by output, behind China and has a greater share of global production than the next three countries combined, Germany, Japan, and India.”

All of this construction spending will take time to turn into production. When these new plants are up and running and producing at scale, manufacturing’s share of US GDP will rise. And much of the new construction is happening in fly-over America, which can use the help.

Finding factory workers in sufficient numbers to support the new capacity will be a key. America has energy in abundance and has robotic manufacturing. So pulling production from overseas with fewer workers needed will be a giant plus for the US.

Link #4 is a downer. Civic Science says in this week’s 3 things to know column, that “Nearly 3 in 10 Americans say they have had to forgo seeing a doctor in the past year due to costs.” Here’s their chart”:

Civic Science says that 12% of US adults have had to miss or make a late payment on medical bills in the last 90 days, a two percentage point increase over September 2022.

A far larger percentage of Americans – 27% of the general population and about 30% of respondents under 55 years old or with an annual household income under $100,000 – report they could not go to a doctor in the past 12 months because they could not afford the cost. Gen Z adults and households making between $25K-$50K are more likely to have held off seeing a doctor due to cost (34% and 31% respectively).

We all know that medical costs have continued to rise and that medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US. If Congress was really interested in helping provide for the general welfare, they would deal with this out of control problem.

Time to wake up America! There’s plenty going on that isn’t getting visibility in the mainstream media or on social media. You have to cast your net widely to be on top of the good and bad happening in the US.

To help you wake up, we turn to Shane MacGowan, frontman for the Irish group the Pogues who died last week. He left behind a body of work that merged traditional Irish music and punk rock. He wrote many songs that could easily be mistaken for traditional Irish tunes including this one, which was also used as the music for wakes by the Baltimore Police Department in the great, great HBO series, “The Wire“. Here’s “The Body Of An American” from their 1986 album, “Poguetry in Motion”:

RIP Shane.

How Can America Handle The Costs Of Elder Care?

The Daily Escape:

The start of US Highway 6, outside of Bishop, CA – September 2023 photo by Steve Wolfe

(There will be no Saturday Soother this week. Wrongo is on the road.)

Millions of older Americans from the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers are facing a dilemma as they “age in place.” They must figure out how to pay for increasingly complex medical care. The NYT quotes Richard W. Johnson, director of the program on retirement policy at the Urban Institute:

“People are exposed to the possibility of depleting almost all their wealth….”

The prospect of dying broke is an imminent threat for the Boomers. About 10,000 of them turn 65 every day between now and 2030. They’re expecting to live into their 80s and 90s at the same time as the price tag for long-term care (LTC) is exploding. Currently LTC expense is outpacing inflation and approaching a half-trillion dollars a year, according to federal researchers.

By 2050, the population of Americans 65 and older is projected to increase by more than 50% to 86 million. The number of people 85 or older will nearly triple to 19 million. The Times has a chart of how many of those who need long-term care will die broke:

Some older Americans have prepared for this possible future by purchasing LTC insurance back when it was still affordable. Since then they’ve paid the monthly premiums, even as those premiums continued to rise. But this isn’t the norm. Many adults have no plan at all or assume that Medicare, which kicks in at age 65, will cover their health costs. But Medicare doesn’t cover the kind of long-term daily care, whether in the home or in a full-time nursing facility, that millions of elderly Americans require.

For that, you either pay out-of-pocket or you spend down your assets until you have less than $2,000 in assets in order to qualify for Medicaid. Remember that Medicaid provides health care, including home health care, to more than 80 million low-income Americans.

And even if you qualify, the waiting list for home care assistance for those on Medicaid tops 800,000 people and has an average wait time of more than three years.

Here is a snapshot of how long-term care is paid for in the US:

Governments provide 71.4% of the total. The largest non-government source is people who pay out-of-pocket, and private insurance is becoming increasingly expensive. More from the NYT:

“The boomer generation is jogging and cycling into retirement, equipped with hip and knee replacements that have slowed their aging. And they are loath to enter the institutional setting of a nursing home. But they face major expenses for the in-between years: falling along a spectrum between good health and needing round-the-clock care in a nursing home.”

That has led them to enter assisted-living centers run by for-profit companies and private equity funds. The NYT says that about 850,000 people aged 65 or older now live in these facilities and when in them, they are largely ineligible for federal funds. Some facilities provide only basics like help getting dressed and taking medication while others offer luxury amenities like day trips, gourmet meals, and spas.

In either case, the bills can be staggering. More:

“Half of the nation’s assisted-living facilities cost at least $54,000 a year, according to Genworth, a long-term care insurer. That rises substantially in many metropolitan areas with lofty real estate prices. Specialized settings, like locked memory care units for those with dementia, can cost twice as much.”

Home care is costly, too. According to Genworth, agencies charge about $27 an hour for a home health aide. Hiring someone who spends six or seven hours a day cleaning and helping an older person get out of bed or take medications can add up to $60,000 a year.

It’s worse for people with dementia because they need more services. The number who are developing dementia has soared, as have their needs. Five million to seven million Americans over age 65 have dementia, and that’s expected to grow to nearly 12 million by 2040.

The financial threat posed by dementia also weighs heavily on adult children who in many cases become guardians of aged parents. The Times included this chart:

The reality is that families go broke either caring for, or finding care for their loved ones. The alternative: Women in the family give up their lives and jobs to care for their family members instead, which worsens the gender wage gap.

The NYT article makes it clear that older Americans receive far less government support than their peers in other countries. The “why” question is easily answered: It’s a combination of the concerted effort for any public support to be demonized as “welfare”. It’s also partly the result of our failed experiment with long term care insurance. The politicians’ idea was that “the market” would take care of it, so government help for retirees could be limited to Medicaid-paid nursing homes.

But, the LTC insurance industry has largely imploded. Insurers had little experience with the product and grossly overestimated the lapse rates. If a policyholder stops paying, the insurer gets to keep the money and use it to provide services to everyone remaining in the pool. The surprise was that very few people stopped paying. A second miscalculation was that people who held these policies were living longer than forecasted. Longer life equaled higher and larger payouts (insurers also benefit when customers die before they’ve used up all the policy benefits).

A final factor is the rising levels of dementia described above.

And since demand for support outside of family members exceeds the supply of beds, nursing homes and assisted living facilities that aren’t terrible want residents to join during the independent living phase (which requires very little care, so those fees subsidize intensive nursing home care). Many of these facilities require a $400,000-$500,000 buy-in, which may not be refundable at death, even if the resident is current on their monthly fees.

There’s got to be a better way. Medicaid can’t be the only option to pay for LTC. Congress needs to establish a better system for middle-class Americans to finance LTC.

How we handle the growing costs of long-term care is just another reminder that we get LITTLE for our tax dollars beyond a giant military. Americans are responsible for their own medical care, childcare, college tuition, retirement and nursing home care. Some or all of which are provided in other rich countries.

This is a loudly ticking time bomb, and the demographics of the problem won’t change for decades. And yet, the Republicans seem bent on making it worse. They’re actively trying to bring about their dream of privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Wake up America! We have real problems to solve.

Biden’s Plan To Cut Drug Prices

The Daily Escape:

Mars on left, Earth on right – image by alofeed

The Biden administration released its list of 10 prescription medicines that will be subject to the first-ever price negotiations by Medicare. This is a big deal because Medicare covers 66 million older Americans, people who routinely take very expensive drugs.

Until recently it was illegal for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies. But the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed last August, gives Medicare that power. It also forces companies to pay a rebate to Medicare if their drug prices rise faster than inflation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that price-capping measures will reduce Medicare expenses (and the federal deficit) by $96 billion by 2031.

The list includes drugs for diabetes, arthritis, and Crohn’s disease, and could sharply lower medical costs for patients. Reuters says that the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) spent $50.5 billion between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2023 on these 10 drugs. That was about 20% of the total cost of drugs in the Medicare prescription drug program known as Part D.

The WaPo had an opinion piece by David Goldhill, CEO of SesameCare.com, a digital marketplace for discounted health services: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“The pharmaceutical industry earns almost 50% of its worldwide revenue here [the US], as do medical information-technology firms. [Medical] Device makers earn 40% of their money in the US. And this understates things, because US revenue is generated from higher prices, so margins are greater. If the US accounts for half of a company’s revenue, it probably contributes at least 75% of its profits.”

This has always been the business plan for Big Pharma: Make your money in the US and take whatever scraps of profit you can get in other markets.

That market subsidy is paid by American taxpayers generally (through the funding of Medicare) and by US pill-takers specifically when they pay higher co-pay prices for the drugs that help with their chronic conditions. The Economist points out that prescription medicines in America cost two to three times more on average than in other wealthy countries:

The blue dots are the price paid in the US for brand name drugs. The grey dots are prices paid in the various countries for all US drugs sold in those countries. The comparison of brand name to generics shows how much greater the cost is to an American. It also follows that US patients’ out-of-pocket expenses, (the slice of drug costs not covered by insurance), are among the highest in the world.

It’s understandable why Biden’s move to start negotiations on some of the most expensive drugs has been fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. Essentially, high US drugs costs underwrite what amounts to a subsidy for buyers of the same drug sold when it’s outside the US.

Many of the Big Pharma have jumped on the legal bandwagon, challenging price-setting provisions in the IRA. More from the Economist:

“Since the law’s passage over 50 companies have blamed the IRA in earnings calls for clouding their prospects.”

A quick primer on drugs. Most medicines are either small-molecule drugs or large-molecule drugs. The former are the kind of pills that line our medicine cabinets. Large-molecule drugs, (also called biologics), are more complex and must be injected. The IRA grants biologics 13 years of pricing freedom after a drug is approved, while small-molecule drugs get only nine years post-approval before they must face Medicare’s bean counters. The industry estimates that small-molecule brands could lose between 25% and 40% in overall revenue due to the earlier cap on prices.

PhRMA, the pharma Industry’s lobbyist argues (and Republicans back them) that high US prices reflect the high cost of drug development. The pharmaceutical manufacturers are, of course, suing to stop the price negotiations. They say that allowing the government to negotiate lower bulk prices for drugs will stifle innovation, and will cut funds for research.

One thing that Big Pharma wants to avoid showing us is that they rely on smaller, more agile biotech firms for ideas. Between 2015 and 2021, 65% of the 138 new drugs launched by Big Pharma originated mostly from smaller firms. So, while innovation isn’t totally gone from the big firms, what they’re mostly doing is marketing the intellectual property of small pharmaceutical firms.

It didn’t take long for Republicans to jump on the decision to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. From Politico:

“Piggybacking on the pharmaceutical industry’s strategy, Republicans are working to persuade Americans that the Biden plan will stifle innovation and lead to price controls.”

Politico quotes Joel White, a Republican health care strategist:

“The price control is a huge departure from where we have been as a country….It gets politicians and bureaucrats right into your medicine cabinet.”

Politico says that the GOP effort to reframe the drug price debate may hurt them, since they plan largely to run on inflation, while the Biden plan will lower drug prices. Also they quote a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) that shows 58% of independent voters trust Democrats to lower drug costs compared with 39% of Republicans.

Our politicians and pundits have bleated at us for years about being an “exceptional nation” – but what we really are is exceptionally gullible. As long as the large healthcare and pharmaceutical companies insist on standing between American consumers and their health needs, maximizing their profit will always come first.

We also continue to elect leaders who lobby for keeping corporations unleashed so that they can make as much profit as possible, while saying that the “market” will decide where the public good is prioritized. This keeps us hopelessly mired in a grossly expensive, and often ineffective healthcare system.

We continue to let ourselves be convinced by corporations and our politicians that reforming healthcare is impossible. That the solutions and methodologies used by other developed nations are substandard, and/or somehow immoral.

The Hill reported that the 14 leading US drug companies paid out more in stock buybacks and dividends from 2016 to 2020 than they spent on research and development. Those firms spent $577 billion from 2016 to 2020 on stock buybacks and dividends, $56 billion more than the $521 billion they spent on R&D. So, it’s oblivious how Big Pharma could easily fund their R&D with lower drugs prices.

It is also useful to remember that America has more healthcare billionaires AND healthcare bankruptcies than any other country. Those two things are inextricably linked.

As long as the pharmaceutical companies can maximize profits by buying politicians rather than by charging higher prices in other countries – the American people are the ones who will continue to get screwed.

Rural Hospitals Are No Longer Providing Maternity Care

The Daily Escape:

Perseid meteor shower, from Mt. Evans, CO – August 13, 2023 photo by Paul Blais Photography

Welcome to our Saturday Soother, but first, Wrongo intends to spin you up before eventually letting you slow down.

There’s a crisis in rural healthcare in America. Rural hospitals are closing at a rapid rate. Our county (Litchfield) in Connecticut has one of three remaining hospitals that are designated as rural in the state (Sharon Hospital).

A problem for rural hospitals is that many are closing down their labor and delivery services in order to try and remain economically viable. WSHU, a CT-based NPR affiliate, has covered the impact of these closures to Connecticut. They quote Peiyin Hung, a researcher on maternal and rural health at the University of South Carolina:

“My team has been tracking nationwide, hospital-based obstetric unit closures since 2008 up to 2022,…. Almost 300 hospitals closed their OB units.”

WSHU points out that more than 60% of those closures were in rural areas. Why are so many hospital groups moving away from delivering babies in rural locations?

WSHU quotes Dr. Robert Roose, chief medical officer at Johnson Memorial, a hospital in rural Stafford Springs, CT that closed its obstetric unit. He said that it’s a safety issue. Hospitals with fewer than 200 deliveries a year, like Johnson Memorial, are considered low-volume birthing centers:

“There is a clear and critically important correlation between volume and quality of services provided when it pertains to labor and delivery and maternity care…”.

Three years ago, Hartford HealthCare’s Windham Hospital in Willimantic, CT stopped delivering babies, citing the same concern.

Also, malpractice insurance rates go up for low birth-volume hospitals because insurers feel the risk is higher if doctors aren’t getting sufficient practice with birthing. Hung says another problem is the level of reimbursement:

“Medicaid…pays half as much on average [as] private insurance pays for labor and delivery across the country”.

That’s important because about four in 10 of all Connecticut deliveries are covered by Medicaid. Simply put, delivering babies doesn’t pencil out for many rural hospitals.

There are other factors: Rural America’s demographics skew older. Young families in general prefer living in the suburbs or exurban areas. Couple that with America’s lower birth rate and rural hospitals really can’t maintain the birthing volume they need to remain economically viable.

The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, (CHQPR) a Pittsburg-based health policy group published “A Crisis in Rural Maternity Care in the United States” which shows the problem:

“Fewer than half (45%) of the rural hospitals in the US currently offer labor and delivery services, and in 9 states, less than one-third do. Over the past decade, more than 200 rural hospitals across the country have stopped delivering babies”.

“Hundreds of additional communities are at risk of losing maternity care because of the financial challenges rural hospitals are facing….More than 1/3 of the rural hospitals that still have labor & delivery services have been losing money on patient services, so their ability to continue delivering maternity care is at risk.”

CHQPR reports that more than half of small rural maternity care hospitals lost money in 2021-22.

They suggest that a primary reason rural hospitals are losing money is that private insurance plans pay them less than what it costs to deliver many of the services they offer patients, not only maternity care. They point out that while rural hospitals are losing money on uninsured patients and Medicaid patients, the losses from private payers have the biggest impact on their overall profit margins.

CHQPR suggests that a potential solution is to require that health insurance payments actually cover the cost of rural maternity care. With more than 40% of births (on average) in rural communities paid for by private health plans, having the private insurers pay more would help keep rural maternity care viable:

“Payment amounts must be higher in communities that have difficulty attracting staff, and payments must also be higher in communities with smaller numbers of births to ensure that revenues cover the fixed costs.”

This means that the fee-for-service model isn’t working in low-volume hospitals. Rural hospitals are only paid when they actually provide a service, but a small hospital has proportionally higher overheads than larger hospitals, since they must be staffed and ready to deliver a baby at all times, even if there are no deliveries at all. Read CHQPR’s report “A Better Way to Pay Rural Hospitals”.

Back to Connecticut, Sharon Hospital has proposed closing its labor and delivery unit. There will be a public hearing to consider the closure later this year. But Sharon is about an hour from its affiliated hospital (Danbury Hospital) that has a fully-staffed labor and delivery facility. Sharon may actually be closer to two other unaffiliated hospitals in New York state than it is to its own parent facility.

It’s now time for our Saturday Soother. Litchfield County is having beautiful weather this weekend. We’re taking advantage of it by going to a live Baroque music concert, and possibly heading off to the annual fair in a local town.

To help you relax and zone out from all of the Trump indictment analysis, grab a chair outside in the shade and watch and listen to “Gortoz a Ran” (I’m Waiting) sung by Denez Prigent and Lisa Gerrard. The language in the song is Breton, spoken in Brittany, France. It is closely related to Cornish and Welsh, and all three are Celtic tongues. When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain in the fifth century (400-500 AD), many of the Britons in Cornwall, Devon, and the West Country fled across the English Channel to France. Because of the influx of Britons, the region became known as Brittany.

Most of the images in the video are of Scotland, England, Wales, and Brittany. Lisa Gerrard isn’t singing in any language; she’s just vocalizing. The Uilleann pipes, an Irish instrument, are heard at 3:50:

Lyrics: English Translation

I was waiting, waiting for a long time
In the dark shadow of grey towers
In the dark shadow of grey towers

In the dark shadow of rain towers
You will see me waiting forever
You will see me waiting forever

One day it will come back
Over the lands, over the seas

The blue wind will return
And take back with it my wounded heart

I will be pulled away by its breath
Far away in the stream, wherever it wishes

Wherever it wishes, far away from this world
Between the sea and the stars

The song describes waiting, possibly forever: Aren’t we all waiting? What are we waiting for? For whom are we waiting? Happy Saturday!

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Health Care

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