News

Is the healthcare.gov web site working?

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No, still not working as of Sunday morning:

Transcript from that clip:

GEORGE HOWELL, HOST: We know the first thing you have to do when you go to this website you have to select your state. Is that working?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And what’s funny is I was talking with Matt, and, yeah, that seemed to work, right, when you logged on. But then came the road blocks. So tell me about what happened, because we’re getting another error message here, and it’s supposed to be running smoothly. We’re just not seeing that.

MATT SLOANE, CNN MEDICAL PRODUCER: Yeah, so, you know, we’ve been trying to get into the site since October 1 on and off again. I have to say it did work a lot more smoothly this morning. I got through. I picked my state. I put in all of my information and I got through the whole process in eight minutes. And then it said my status was in progress. So I went to refresh it and I got the error message.

There was some interesting discussion of how the web site was going on Fox News Sunday – specifically, this debate between Neera Tanden and James Capretta:

The key point here is that you need to understand that when the leftist says “better health plans”, they do not mean that you will keep your doctors. They are not saying you will keep your hospitals. They are not saying your deductible will be lower. They are not saying your co-payment will be lower. They are not saying that your premium will be lower. Better is not a quantifiable term, and that’s why she keeps saying “better” instead of talking about specific numbers. The specific numbers show that you are going to be paying a lot more for health care, assuming you are a middle-class working American. And that’s why the progressive debater says “better” instead of being specific about numbers. The numbers are not on her side, so she says “better”.

Now, if you ask her what better means, I would suspect that she means that everyone can now have free condoms or free sex changes or free IVF or free drug addiction therapy or free eco-therapy for depression about global warming or something that normal people don’t even want or need. That’s an example of what a progressive means by “better health care”.

News

New study: casual sex linked to poor mental health and suicidal thoughts

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Dina messaged me about this new study reported at Ohio State University, and published in the Journal of Sex Research.

Excerpt:

A new study suggests that poor mental health and casual sex feed off each other in teens and young adults, with each one contributing to the other over time.

Researchers found that teens who showed depressive symptoms were more likely than others to engage in casual sex as young adults.  In addition, those who engaged in casual sex were more likely to later seriously consider suicide.

“Several studies have found a link between poor mental health and casual sex, but the nature of that association has been unclear,” said Sara Sandberg-Thoma, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in human sciences at The Ohio State University.

“There’s always been a question about which one is the cause and which is the effect.  This study provides evidence that poor mental health can lead to casual sex, but also that casual sex leads to additional declines in mental health.”

Sandberg-Thoma conducted the study with Claire Kamp Dush, assistant professor of human sciences at Ohio State.  The research was published online recently in the Journal of Sex Research and will appear in a future print edition.

One surprising finding was that the link between casual sex and mental health was the same for both men and women.

“That was unexpected because there is still this sexual double standard in society that says it is OK for men to have casual sexual relationships, but it is not OK for women,” Kamp Dush said.

“But these results suggest that poor mental health and casual sex are linked, whether you’re a man or a woman.”

The study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.  Adolescents from 80 high schools and 52 middle schools were interviewed when they were in grades 7 through 12 and then again when they were aged 18 to 26.

In all, this study involved about 10,000 people who were surveyed about their romantic relationship experiences across time, as well as depressive symptoms and thoughts of suicide.

Overall, 29 percent of the respondents reported engaging in any casual sexual relationship.  These were defined as any relationship in which the participant reported he or she was “only having sex with partner” as opposed to dating.  This included 33 percent of men and 24 percent of women.

The results showed that participants who reported serious thoughts of suicide or more depressive symptoms as teens were significantly more likely to report having casual sexual relationships when they were young adults.

Casual sex, in turn, was linked to further declines in mental health.  Specifically, those who had casual sex in their late teens and early 20s were significantly more likely to have serious thoughts of suicide as young adults, results showed.  In fact, each additional casual sex relationship increased the odds of suicidal thoughts by 18 percent.

However, casual sex in late teens and early 20s was not associated with changes in depression as a young adult.

I don’t think that parents cannot rely on the schools and universities to tell their children the truth about research like this. You’re more likely to get stuff like “Sex Week” at our institutions of higher education.

Here is what happens at Yale University’s “Sex Week”:

Yale has a long history of hosting sex-themed events at the university that appear, on the whole, to be intended more to titillate students than to educate them. Sex Weekend is organized by students, but is overseen and approved by university administrators, who grant the use of classrooms and university facilities for the events.

Numerous U.S. universities have begun to host “Sex Weeks” in recent years, a trend that was pioneered by Yale. Past events at Yale have included appearances by porn stars, live nudity, sex-toy giveaways, and screenings of a hard-core porn films, including one that reportedly depicted “fantasy rape.”

And don’t forget the workshops taught not by researchers, but by sex shop owners:

The workshop was taught by Jill McDevitt, a 27-year-old “sexologist” who also owns a sex shop in West Chester, Pennsylvaina, which sells vibrators and various sex toys.

She has posted videos of her educational workshops online, including one in which she demonstrates oral sex on a carrot.

So the university administration at Yale is presenting sex to students one way, but not really appealing to their minds with research studies. I think that they want to push young people to engage in premarital sex, especially hook-up sex, without telling them a thing about the consequences of doing so. Doing immoral things definitely breaks down your ability to be moral, and to make moral judgments. And that’s what the left does in order to make sure that the next generation is not conservative. People who have been socialized to think that promiscuity is normal are going to have a much more difficult time transitioning into marriage and parenting. And people who are not married and not parenting typically vote for parties on the political left.If we want to do something to counter what kids are told on university campuses during “Sex Week”, it’s up to us to use evidence from studies like the one above to make a case to them before they get the propaganda.

News

Cancer victim who alerted media about dropped health plan draws IRS audit

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Mark Steyn at National Review reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A couple of weeks back, cancer patient Bill Elliot, in a defiant appearance on Fox News, discussed the cancelation of his insurance and what he intended to do about it. He’s now being audited.

Insurance agent C Steven Tucker, who quaintly insists that the whimsies of the hyper-regulatory bureaucracy do not trump your legal rights, saw the interview and reached out to Mr Elliot to help him. And he’s now being audited.

As the Instapundit likes to remind us, Barack Obama has “joked” publicly about siccing the IRS on his enemies. With all this coincidence about, we should be grateful the President is not (yet) doing prison-rape gags.

Meanwhile, IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, in his testimony to the House Oversight Committee over the agency’s systemic corruption, answers “I don’t recall” no fewer than 80 times. Try giving that answer to Wilkins’ colleagues and see where it gets you. Few persons are fond of their tax collectors, but, from my experience, America is the only developed nation in which the mass of the population is fearful of its revenue agency. This is unbecoming to a supposedly free people.

Elliot is being audited back to 2009. Tucker is being audited all the way back to 2003.

More from The Blaze.

Excerpt:

Appearing this week on “Rocky D” on Charleston, S.C.’s WQSC, Elliott said that after a media frenzy, his insurance company worked it out with him to allow him to keep his coverage — but there’s a new hitch.

“Monday I got a certified letter, I went down and got it and it’s from the IRS and they are auditing my books from 2009,” Elliott said.

He said he didn’t own a business at that time, and in fact was working for the government. He said he’s paid his taxes every year and is not any kind of a tax evader.

There was one more part of the notice — Elliott said that “due to federal budget cuts,” the meeting between him and the IRS won’t take place until April 2014.

“It doesn’t matter. It could’ve been today if they wanted it to,” he said.

The radio host said, “you stood up and spoke out about how Obamacare screwed over your insurance and probably would kill you and what’s the next thing that happened? You get audited by the IRS. That is not a coincidence.”

“No it’s not,” Elliott said.

And it might not just be Elliott: C. Steven Tucker, an insurance broker who contacted Elliott after his Fox News appearance, said that after he helped assist Elliott with his coverage, the IRS “are now coming after ME all the way back to 2003.”

Elliott told Kelly that he actually voted for Obama over Mitt Romney last year specifically because he liked what Obama had promised about being able to keep your doctors and your insurance plans.

People sometimes complain at me for using the word fascism, but I don’t know what else to call this. What do you call it when your government goes after you for speaking out against them? I call that fascism. It’s government stepping in to impose their views on individuals by force.

Look, if you want big government to make everyone “equal” by redistributing wealth and nationalizing private industry, then you’re a fascist. That’s where your view leads. Fascism is the normal endpoint of destroying the free enterprise system under the guise of pursuing “equality”. When government takes over industries from the private sector, you are going down the road to fascism. If you don’t like private property, you’re a fascist. If you don’t like the rule of law, you’re a fascist. If you don’t like free trade, you’re a fascist.