I love that — I love to think about that. I find equally exciting the thought that science will come to an end and will be fully understood, on the one hand. On the other hand, there will always be another hill to climb once you’ve gotten over this one.
I think scientists are divided by those who think that it will come to an end and will be solved, and those who think that it will never come to an end — that there will always be new distance with questions opened up. I think that both of those possibilities are entrancing.
The Mississippi River watershed is the fourth-largest in the world, according to the group. It is made up of five river basins that flow across 31 states. It falls short in its goal of serving as the nation's most valuable water passage, according to the report, which notes that the watershed transports $54 billion of agricultural products annually.
The report found that:
But more women also started choosing bilateral mastectomy, which usually involves removing a healthy breast as well as a breast with DCIS. Those numbers rose from zero in 1991 to 8.5 percent in 2010. They tended to be younger women.
The results were published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
"When we treat these precancers women do very, very well; they have a 99 percent chance of not getting breast cancer," says Shelley Hwang, senior author of the study and chief of breast surgery at the Duke Cancer Institute.
"I did not go to medical school to learn how to save people money," he said. "So when the first question always is whether we should save money on health care or not, that is largely irrelevant to the bigger question of whether this would make people healthier or not. ... My answer is probably not."
OK, so would it make people healthier?
The unsatisfying answer is that it's impossible to know. But here's what we do know: One thing is that the plan would remove Obamacare's mandate that people get coverage. Removing that, as well as requirements that businesses provide coverage, could easily leave many fewer people insured.
But does less coverage mean worse health? There's some evidence of this, but it's not entirely clear-cut. Did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce write at least one of the questions that CNN’s correspondents asked the Democratic candidates for president at Tuesday night’s debate?
The Chamber (America’s most powerful business lobby group) and its Republican allies in Congress routinely use the accusation “job killer” the way Senator Joe McCarthy used the word “Communist” — to stigmatize any policy they disagree with. Their goal is to stop any legislation that would require businesses to be more socially responsible to protect families, workers, consumers, and the environment. Time and time again, their dire warnings — about environmental laws, increasing taxes on the super-rich, occupational safety regulations, the minimum wage, and many others — have been proven wrong. They consistently cry wolf. But the Chamber and other corporate lobby groups keep repeating the “job killer” rhetoric so often that some people believe it — even people who should know better, like the highly-paid CNN journalists on tonight’s Las Vegas stage.
Consider this question from CNN’s Dana Bash to Hillary Clinton:
But a recent, well-known study of Medicaid in Oregon was more mixed — going on Medicaid was associated with lower rates of depression and better self-reported health (as well as increased financial stability) but no statistical difference in blood pressure or cholesterol. People sought out more diabetes treatment, but improvements in their health also weren't significant.
Meanwhile, higher-deductible plans seem to reduce health care usage, as a recent study found. That might be good, in the sense that it might reduce unnecessary doctor visits, but it might reduce necessary ones as well.
That's a lot of information, so here's the upshot: Reasonable people could disagree on this. Leavitt, for his part, stressed that the link between insurance and outcomes is murky. Fendrick, meanwhile, thinks health outcomes would likely be worse under Bush's plan.
But here's one more important point: This question wouldn't even affect many Americans whose employers would simply continue providing coverage. Rather, Bush's plan would disproportionately affect lower-income people, according to several nonpartisan experts who spoke to NPR.
Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street policy proposals are all good, solid reforms and will improve the performance of the financial sector. These proposals have been carefully crafted to outlaw and punish bad behavior, correct some flaws in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and repair damage done by reform opponents. While Clinton’s proposals mark an improvement over the current system, however, we are left to ponder what might have been. The proposals stop short of measures that would change the system and alter the trajectory of capital and investment for the benefit of the average household.
At the outset, we must praise Secretary Clinton for proposing an increase to the funding of the Securities and Exchange Commission and, particularly, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In Dodd-Frank, the CFTC was tasked with regulating the devilishly complex and risky $60 trillion per year swaps markets, and was never given anywhere close to the funding needed to carry out this task. We do not know what level Clinton envisions, but have our fingers crossed that super-regulator Gary Gensler, her campaign’s chief financial officer and a key adviser on Wall Street issues, has made sure she knows what is required.
Additionally, Secretary Clinton advocates a fee on big banks measured by risk. This is best thought of as a supplement to capital rules, also based on risk. The greater protection of this dis-incentive is commendable. Giant Wall Street banks continue to threaten the wellbeing of millions of Americans, but what to do?
Bernie Sanders says break them up and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated investment from commercial banking.