Taxpayer-Funded Birth Control

Hey, all!

I'm Graham, and I'm a cat - hence the handle and the pic on my RFF comments. I'm new around here. Some of you know me; some of you don't. Whatever. Doesn't really matter, I guess.

For the record, I'm a data-driven centrist, so I've been called both a "raving socialist lunatic" and a "right-wing nutjob" numerous times by all sorts of different online crazies. I don't give the slightest crap how you classify me. I follow data. If you're on the wrong side of data, you're my opposition.

Anyway, I thought I'd start off blogging here with something light and uncontroversial by stating that if you really care about reducing taxpayer expense, you need to vote for whoever supports giving expensive birth control implants and devices to young, poor women... for free.

Now that I've got your attention, it's time for me to bait and switch to the topic of how nuclear power is the only economically viable solution to anthropogenic global warming.

Not! :D I'd never change the subject on you like that. I'm way too cute and cuddly to do something so dastardly. (^w^) That's going to be the next topic after this one, though. Seriously.

Ready?

Who am I kidding? I don't really care if you're ready. (-wo)

You've heard of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) implants like IUDs and/or progestin implants, right? If you haven't, you're probably either 1) a permanently institutionalized male, 2) someone who hasn't seen a daytime TV commercial since 1963, 3) currently married to whoever the next Warren Jeffs is, or 4) seven. By the way, if you're in categories 3) and 4) simultaneously, call the cops.

IUD tech has been available to the general public since the 50s, and Norplant (now defunct in the U.S.) was huge in the news when it hit, so you'd have to have been living under a particularly heavy boulder not to have heard of it. The safer version, Implanon, replaced it in the US market in 2006, and Nexplanon is its most recent incarnation as of 2011. If you haven't heard of those last two, that's okay. Most people haven't, which is actually a pretty sad commentary on our society considering the massive utility they offer the taxpayer.

The taxpayer? Yes. The taxpayer.

We all pay taxes. We don't all pay income taxes, and that's okay. Not all of us can afford to do so regardless of what any flat tax economic barbarian says. I'll probably write a blog telling Steve Forbes to go cram that concept up his elitist, scumbag, ideologue tailpipe someday, but not today. Today I'm keeping things polite.

But if you honestly think people only paying sales taxes (and, of course payroll taxes, but since that's for SS and Medicare, it doesn't really apply here) aren't also affected by societal discord and the expense such discord incurs, you've got another thing coming. Sales taxes change just like income taxes do. Localities up sales taxes when income taxes aren't bringing home enough bacon. It happens all the time, and everyone pays state sales tax unless they live in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, or Oregon. A few caveats: in Alaska, localities are allowed to levy sales taxes (most do) while in Delaware, they charge businesses a "gross receipts tax" which they steadfastly insist is usually not passed on to consumers (riiiight). So that leaves Oregon, Montana, and New Hampshire. Of course, those states make up for it in income tax by foisting the progressive scales onto lower and lower rungs on the economic ladder, so it's not all marshmallows and rainbows there either.

What started it all was a recommendation from the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines from 2005 that the UK took three years to follow up on. Colorado somehow mysteriously picked it up shortly thereafter in 2009.

According to eyewitnesses, a young Colorado government analyst named Jesse Pinkman was all like, "Word up, Governor Ritter! You gotta see this bangin' analysis I just cranked out! (*jitter, snuffle*)"

And the governor replied, "I got a tick. Sup, balla?"

So the analyst continued, "We can save some mad stacks with this new bootie implant like they're doin' in Brit-town, yo!"

Then the governor retorted, "Damn, sucka! Les get that shit on the congressional docket! Maybe I can get me one o' them Army assault Humvees with that green! You know how many bitches we could scam in that ride? Mad bitches, bro!!! Maaaad bitches!!!"

And they did.

By 2013, the teen pregnancy rate dropped 40% (yes, that's a "four" followed by a "zero"), and for every dollar it cost to put one of these implants in an at-risk female, it saved the state two, and it cost $23 million to do so, meaning it saved the state $46 million in social program expenditure. That's a net savings of $23 million over four years for those of you who aren't good at cutting dollar amounts in half:

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/news-release-colorado-teen-birthrate-plummets

In 2012, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine finally got on board and realized why. It turns out that LARC contraception is 20 times more effective (yes, that's a "two" followed by a "zero") than the pill, the patch, and the ring:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1110855

The magic is in the math that finally displayed what obstetricians have known intuitively since the 50s: that when you put in an implant, you have the reversibility of a non-sterilizing device combined with failure rate near that of tubal ligation.

That's the power of using a medical tool that's an order of magnitude more effective than other standard methods. Math can save mad money.

Feel free to give me all the crap you want about paying for "loose" women's "irresponsibility." Go ahead. I frickin' dare you. Just know that I'm well aware that you're already paying loads for that real issue (even though your perceived source of that real issue is obviously a figment of your ridiculous uber-neocon imagination - hence the quotes), and that you're paying millions more than you would have to otherwise if you weren't so ludicrously penny wise, pound foolish, and puritanical about the matter, you ignorant throwback.

Yes, government can be the answer to some social stuff. The issue isn't "big government"; it's wrong government, and you're promoting the second if you disagree with me on this one. Birth control pills are cheap, implants are expensive, and you get what you pay for. Jerk.

Love and kitty kisses,
GrahamTheCat

♥ (^w^) ♥

Ebola Dogs

     I was reading last week about the Spanish nurse, Theresa Romero Ramos, who contracted Ebola and how her beloved dog, Excalibur, was summarily executed by the Spanish authorities while she was in the hospital and her husband was in quarantine.

     Yeah, I know, it's just a dog, but think of the human aspect. Her husband, Javier, is facing losing his wife and has already lost his dog. His family could cease to exist due to a rash decision by Spanish authorities. There are no documented cases of Ebola spreading from dogs  to people. One study published in 2005 suggests dogs can get the disease without showing symptoms. That study looked at dogs in Africa who were tested for Ebola antibodies. The dogs were presumably exposed by eating animals and possibly corpses that were infected, which is not likely to happen with a household pet, but that's all it took for the Spanish authorities to obtain a swift court order to put down Excalibur who was surrounded by strangers and undoubtedly petrified at the end of its life.

     So when I first saw the picture of the Dallas nurse Nina Pham and her dog, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Bentley, the first thing I thought of was Excalibur. Luckily, more rational Dallas officials, namely Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, have decided to take a different approach. I applaud the Dallas officials, especially Judge Jenkins who said, "When I met with her parents, they said, 'This dog is important to her, Judge. Don't let anything happen to the dog.' "If that dog has to be the boy in the plastic bubble, we're going to take good care of that dog."

     I think since they can test for antibodies (there is no Ebola test yet for dogs) and dogs with the antibodies don't show symptoms, that should be studied not feared. There is much to learn about the infection between species and the fact that dogs so far have been asymptomatic. A veterinary study could be of great value.