Health – Page 8 – Slugger O'Toole

Healthcare: “We followed the most radical voices and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat”

Mick Fealty on March 24, 2010, 3:34 pm | Readers 3

David Frum, George W Bush’s speech writer may have a point when he says of the Obamacare legislation: “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum wrote on his blog, adding: “Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother?” Mick …

Healthcare bill teeters towards enactment…

Mick Fealty on March 21, 2010, 2:25 pm | Readers 0

We were fortunate that our time in Washington at the same time the government was trying to get its healthcare bill through Congress. I say ‘government’ when in actual fact the government (ie the executive office functions overseen by the White House) when – unlike the strong arm approach of LBJ (or even the Bush administration) – the President had little or nothing to do with the drafting of this bill. Rather his contribution seems to have been cast more …

Obama’s healthcare deal to pass with a squeak….

Mick Fealty on March 17, 2010, 4:50 pm | Readers 1

One thing is obvious this St Patrick’s Day: very few people in Washington are thinking about Ireland, north or south. Obama’s healthcare bill is the only thing people are talking about. The general perception (ie from both left and right is that Obama has been strangely passive. Past Presidents have be active in writing law and then offering it to Congress to rip up, or disagree with. In this case, President Obama has delegated much of the initial drafting to …

“this failure to communicate the seriousness of the situation…”

Pete Baker on March 15, 2010, 9:56 pm | Readers 8

At the time of the recall of Irish pork over a dioxin contamination Sinn Féin’s Pat Doherty sought to blame the UK’s Food Standards Agency for the delay in a Ministerial response in Northern Ireland. And, as RTÉ reported in January, the Irish government’s Inter-Agency Review Group [pdf file] concluded that “Communications between agencies, industry and consumers were both timely and informative.” But the NI Assembly’s Agriculture Committee has just published their own Dioxin Inquiry report. And they have concluded …

“Nothing shows more clearly the scientific illiteracy that prevails in the House of Commons”

Pete Baker on March 13, 2010, 4:52 am | Readers 12

As David Colquhoun’s Improbable Science blog notes, 55 MPs [and counting – Ed] have signed Early Day Motion 908, expressing “concern at the conclusions of the Science and Technology Committee’s Report, Evidence Check on Homeopathy” – previously mentioned here. Among the signatories of the EDM are the DUP MPs, Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds, Gregory Campbell, William McCrea, Ian Paisley Snr, and David Simpson… and the UUP’s the independently minded Lady Hermon. [What?! No Peter Hain? – Ed] Not yet… As …

“The Friendly Sons can go outside if they want to smoke”

Pete Baker on March 10, 2010, 6:08 pm | Readers 1

The Irish Times notes a selective approach to anti-smoking legislation by the Friendly Sons of St Patrick on Washington DC City Council. Washington DC city councillor Jack Evans, a member of the all-male Society of the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, pushed emergency legislation through the council last week to exempt the Sons’ annual dinner from the smoking ban which the council passed in 2006. Pete Baker

Iris Robinson’s anti-gay adviser was, um, quite possibly homosexual…

Belfast Gonzo on March 2, 2010, 1:59 pm | Readers 91

IT has been already been noted that a former adviser to rhetorical gay-basher Iris Robinson has been reported to the General Medical Council for his unconventional practices. But – if we utilise the same logic former DUP adviser Dr Paul Miller applies to gay men to himself – we might wonder why a man who inadvertently appears to out himself as a repressed homosexual is trying to ‘turn’ them straight. Consider this: in the course of trying to ‘convert’ a …

“the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments”

Pete Baker on February 23, 2010, 6:29 pm | Readers 20

I’m still not aware of any response from the NI Health Minister to the report on Peter Hain’s alternative remedy clinical trial scam self-assessing pilot scheme administered by Get Well UK – that report sits frozen in time on the departmental website. Still no sign of embarrassment from the BBC about the propaganda they broadcast on behalf of that scheme either. But the Commons Science and Technology Committee has just published a report which “concludes that the NHS should cease …

Balancing the [Executive’s] Books

Pete Baker on January 12, 2010, 7:24 pm | Readers 1

The BBC reports that NI Finance Minister, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson, has outlined “how £367m is going to be cut from the NI budget next year.” Mr Wilson said water charges would continue to be deferred in 2010-11, at a cost of £213m to the executive. The Department of Health faces cuts of £113.5m and the Department of Regional Development faces cuts of £80.3m. As long as there is jam for tea… This Politics Show report is from May 2009. …

“the court concludes that it should order the withdrawal of the Guidance”

Pete Baker on November 30, 2009, 11:28 pm | Readers 2

The Northern Ireland Health Department’s guidance to health professionals on termination of pregnancy, the law and clinical practice in Northern Ireland [pdf file], only emerged after a tortuous process. Firstly the Department, after a lengthy court battle, had to be instructed by a High Court ruling to produce the guidance. Then, after taking three years to produce, the NI Assembly rejected the guidelines leaving the Department to redraft them. New draft guidelines emerged for consultation in July 2008 and were …

Suffering in silence…

Belfast Gonzo on November 27, 2009, 9:27 am | Readers 8

BY now most of us will be familiar with the tragic tale of Bill Barbour and his wife, Alzheimers victim Ann. It appears Mr Barbour, who was Ann’s primary carer, suffocated his long-suffering wife before drowning himself. In this heartbreaking interview, the couple’s son tries to explain the family’s predicament and asks if “society should look at ways of relaxing controls on people choosing the time of the endings of their lives”. If that was attended to, perhaps in the …

On the desertion of Irish politics by Irish politicians…

Mick Fealty on October 4, 2009, 7:27 pm | Readers 1

Stephen Collins returned yesterday to more pressing domestic problems in Irish politics, and found both the government and opposition wanting both in terms of the seriousness with which they take the issues it is facing and their willingness to weigh in and face the anger and frustration of ordinary people currently under the financial cosh. And he doesn’t spare the opposition… The failure of our major parties to mount a full-blooded referendum campaign is a symptom of an ailing political …

Lisbon Essay (31): Checks, balances and a stronger social dimension

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 9:24 pm | Readers 12

And in the last of our Lisbon essays, Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore rather trenchantly asserts that Lisbon is not about transfering power from Dublin to Brussels. It is he believes, in contrast to Jimmy Kelly in LE26, enhances a social Europe by setting the Charter up as a watchdog on all EU institutions when it comes to the framing and passing of law. And in contrast with Joe Higgins’ concerns in LE4 he believes it would provide a bulwark …

Reg Empey: Brown’s legacy was in Health and Education, not at the Treasury

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 7:30 pm | Readers 5

One renegade snippet from Stormont live in which Sir Reg suggests that Brown’s contribution to the economy was less ‘robust’ than his work in the Health Service and the capital investment in the rebuilding of schools… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

TPA get stung again over inaccurate figures….

Mick Fealty on September 25, 2009, 8:35 pm | Readers 3

Lest Matt or any of the guys over at the Taxpayer’s Alliance think I have some kind of agenda, let me re-assure them I don’t. The topline of their previous ‘research’ that the Government was paying lobbyists to lobby government is, if true, important work. Particularly in Northern Ireland where the public sector employment steals much of the oxygen from the private sector. That’s why it’s important that if you are going to have a punt at bursting that particular …

McNarry tells Wilson you cannot fill a £400 million black hole with savings you’re not making..

Mick Fealty on September 25, 2009, 5:14 pm | Readers 5

I argued that the crisis in Unionism is essentially a competitive one, and today David McNarry demonstrates presses on the heels of Sammy Wilson over the problems of, to borrow the words of Mr Munchau a ‘pre-crisis’ budget in a post crisis world… Months of denial under the stewardship of Nigel Dodds has left Sammy Wilson with a huge mountain to climb, or perhaps more appropriately a huge fiscal hole to fill… But with what? The Health budget? Social development? …

European First for Northern Ireland..

Pete Baker on September 18, 2009, 3:57 pm | Readers 0

From pig to human to pig. Not a problem as long as the mortality rate, or the Case Fatality Ratio, stays low.. which it seems to be doing. Pete Baker

“there’s no slack in the system”

Pete Baker on September 15, 2009, 2:33 am | Readers 13

Northern Ireland’s singular, in the UK, response to the swine flu [H1N1] pandemic has evolved over time. The NI Health Minister, speaking on Stormont Live today, warned of potential “extreme consequences” based on his prediction that the current strategy will cost the NI Department of Health £75 million. And “there’s no slack in the system”. Pete Baker

Mirror reports of the Parsley ‘defection’…

Mick Fealty on September 11, 2009, 2:01 pm | Readers 5

Ian Parsley, one of those being touted as an Up and Coming politician in the current nominations (which are still open by the way) for the Slugger Awards, is reported today as joining the Ulster Unionists, something the man himself appears to be denying on his blog this morning… It’s thought the speculation was stirred when it was revealed that the think tank he’s joining an outreach of Ian Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, which is opening in Belfast …

Nell McCafferty talks back…

Mick Fealty on September 8, 2009, 12:10 am | Readers 5

Nice moment on Politics.ie when Nell McCafferty bursts in on a virtual conversation about her real world dealings with a surgeon at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital and his secretary which bursts a few (virtual) bubbles… Real world meets virtual… H/T our own Dan Sullivan… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. …