RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, was a U.S. senator from 2005-15. He is a Manhattan Institute fellow.

Here’s a simple idea to help lower health-care costs: publish prices. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers in Colorado is pushing a bill to do precisely that. The Comprehensive Health Care Billing Transparency Act would allow Coloradans to see the true price of any health service they use—exams, procedures, prescriptions—before they undertake treatment.

If passed, the legislation would mandate that hospitals and other facilities disclose the base fees they charge for specific services “before applying any discounts, rebates, or other charge adjustment mechanisms.” Every bill sent to a patient would need to include an itemized list, which would allow patients to see if a service had been marked up. By making such information available upfront, the legislation would reintroduce competition to Colorado’s opaque health-care markets.

The bill is the brainchild of Denver businessman David Silverstein, who made news last year when he suggested that consumers stop paying their medical bills until providers show how they arrived at the prices being charged. Mr. Silverstein is the founder of BrokenHealthcare.org, a nonprofit that hopes other states will follow Colorado’s lead in legislating greater health-care transparency.

As profound a change as the Colorado bill represents, all it really would do is let consumers deal with health care the way they do any other product or service. Think about it: When you want to buy a car, you shop around, comparing the quality and price of competing models and the offerings at different dealerships. The same is true for practically everything else Americans buy: refrigerators, houses, office supplies, washing machines, computers, and on and on.

“President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.” — 18 Members of the US Congress to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, May 2, 2018.

US President Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a group of 18 members of Congress. In a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dated May 2, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) and 17 other House lawmakers — including Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) — wrote that Trump has worked “tirelessly to apply maximum pressure to North Korea to end its illicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region.”

The letter further stated that the Trump administration

“successfully united the international community, including China, to impose one of the most successful international sanctions regimes in history. The sanctions have decimated the North Korean economy and have been largely credited for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table. Although North Korea has evaded demands from the international community to cease its aggression for decades, President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.”

Although the letter constituted a formal nomination, it was not the first suggestion that Trump might, or should, win a Nobel Peace Prize. On May 1 — mere days after an historic summit between Moon and North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un, during which the two leaders vowed to work toward “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula — Moon was quoted by a Blue House official as saying, “President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace.”

As she walked the red carpet of the White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 30, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked by a Pajamas Media reporter whether Trump would be eligible for a Nobel Peace Prize in the event that North Korea actually agrees to denuclearize, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied:

“We’re a long way from that, but let’s see. There’s always an opportunity for a president of the United States to qualify. Let’s see how it goes.”

Pelosi and other Trump detractors are in an uncomfortable position where the Nobel Peace Prize is concerned. Former US President Barack Obama was awarded the prize in 2009, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

A friend- a retired professor in Virginia has developed a real cure for the insomnia that plagues so many adults and seniors. It is in the process of being copyrighted and prepared for market, but he has given me leave to share this with Ruthfully e-pals.

He has put together all John Kasich’s speeches in one disc. Those who have tried it claim they slept like babies….rsk

“…suddenly sunshine and perfect blue…” After a cold and wet April, some sunshine appeared in the past week, at least here in the northeast. As well, the month provided signs of optimism – perhaps only visible to those of a cheerful disposition. And, this despite on-going concerns: the Islamization of European nations like Belgium and France; the threat to liberty that comes from an expanding, unaccountable European government in Brussel; the risk of protectionism; the confluence of expanding government debt and rising interest rates; and the threat to democracy from those who persist in using all means possible – including nasty innuendos and circumventing civil liberties – to end, or at least stymie, the Trump Presidency.

Kim Jung-un, in preparation for a June summit with President Trump (and I suspect under orders from Beijing), agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site of the last half dozen tests under Mount Mantap – a location many scientists suspect is in danger of collapse. Mr. Kim crossed the border into South Korea – the first North Korean leader to do so since 1953 – to meet with President Moon Jae-in. Also, leaders of the world’s largest countries met: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping. After 59 years of rule, the last Castro left office, though it is uncertain that Miguel Diaz-Canel will serve the people any better. Jobless claims fell during the month. Unemployment is at 4.1% and work-force participation is rising. After years of stagnation, there was a modest increase in hourly earnings of 0.3%. Even the stock market, following two months of declines, rose modestly. Following publication of Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now, op-eds appeared by Jonah Goldberg in National Reviewand Daniel Finkelstein of The London Timesnoting what every student of history should know: The world has never been richer, healthier, more democratic or fairer – a consequence of the Enlightenment: western values, self-determination, democracy, rule of law, market-driven economies, humanism, reason and science. Something to keep in mind, when we find ourselves in a funk.

The ever brilliant and thoughtful writer Edward Rothstein has a column, below on a new exhibit at the United States Holocaust Museum- “Americans and the Holocaust” which rightfully accuses American media and policies.

“What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.”

What about Great Britain’s outrageous role in enabling Hitler’s killing machine? Britain’s notorious White Paper of 1939 which cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust was a death sentence for millions of European Jews trapped in Europe.

After World War 11, British perfidy persisted and the 1939 White Paper remained the basis of British policy. Its cruel provisions kept wretched survivors of the Holocaust trapped and homeless in displaced persons’ camps in hostile European nations or behind barbed wire in detention camps in Cyprus. They fired on half of the “freedom ships” taking survivors to Palestine.

The British Navy was ordered to attack in case of any resistance. They used tear gas, clubs and firearms against refugees who occasionally fought back with sticks and eating cutlery.

When these ships reached the Palestine coast they were apprehended, boarded, and often rammed by the Royal Navy. Passengers were herded and transported to squalid prison camps on Cyprus formerly used to house German prisoners of war!

There is monumental blame to go around, but Britain gets a pass. rsk

Americans and the Holocaust

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Through 2021

What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?

These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.

We see the newsmagazines of the 1930s that reacted to Hitler’s rise; newsreels giving voice to native-grown American fascist wannabes; polls that revealed a resistance to getting involved in the growing conflicts; and excerpts of movies like “Casablanca” and “The Great Dictator” that began to confront the storm. The narrative carries considerable weight, partly because of the effort expended in understanding American action and inaction. It would have carried still more had other impulses not interfered.In treating the history chronologically the exhibition draws our attention to the sentiments of the period. There is, for example, the strong pull of isolationism in the 1930s (a force that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to placate) as well as fear of economic collapse and wariness of foreign refugees. These attitudes, we also see, were not the result of ignorance. A crowdsourced sampling of American regional newspapers from the 1930s is offered on a touch-screen map, showing that Nazi mistreatment of Jews was widely reported. Touch-screen access to later reporting gives cogent evidence of how much was known about Nazi atrocities.

The refugee issue gets particular attention in a gallery dominated by graphics that suggest an ever increasing need was met by ever increasing resistance. The Immigration Act of 1924 permitted a maximum of 25,957 visas from Germany annually. But in 1933, only 1,241 were issued and there was a three-year waiting list. In 1939, when Nazi territories included Austria (with a 27,370 quota) and others (2,874), the limits were met but left a 11-year waiting list. In 1939, bills that proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee children never made it through Congress. After late 1941, there was no escape: Germany banned Jewish emigration from its territories.More affecting still are stories accessed through a touch-screen table. In 1939, Flora Hochsinger, living in Nazi-occupied Vienna, wrote to a woman referred to her: Harriet Postman in Waltham, Mass. Hochsinger said she had a Ph.D., worked for 32 years as a mathematics teacher, studied psychology with Alfred Adler, ran a children’s home in Vienna, knew needle-work and belt-making, and sought work. Ms. Postman contacted the White House, the State Department, celebrities, the agency B’nai B’rith and friends, but never found a sponsor. Hochsinger was deported from Vienna in 1942 and executed by a Nazi killing squad.To where do these accounts lead? In the final galleries, we see the duplicity of at least one official at the State Department— Breckinridge Long —intent on keeping out Jewish refugees. We learn about the too-little-known War Refugee Board established by Roosevelt early in 1944 to help address a problem belatedly acknowledged; among its modest achievements was a camp of 982 refugees from 18 countries established in Oswego, N.Y. And why wasn’t say, Auschwitz bombed? An animated map shows the slow Allied progress compared with the killing centers’ speedy work: By D-Day more than 5 million Jews had already been murdered. But even in late 1944, something might have still been done. Two letters in the exhibition capture the vexed nature of the issue: Dohn Pehle, director of the war Refugee Board, urges that bombing take place; Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy responds that the priority must be “the earliest possible victory over Germany.” CONTINUE AT SITE

By strange serendipity, Bill Cosby was convicted of three counts of sexual assault on the day Juanita Broaddrick marked the 40th anniversary of her rape by Bill Clinton. Mr Cosby is eighty years old and likely to die in prison; Mr Clinton is still, in every sense, at large.

Mrs Broaddrick has provided a timeline of the events of April 26th 1978. Clinton’s defenders have responded as one has come to expect. Last year, after the sudden, dizzying implosion of Harvey Weinstein, Democrats were briefly distancing themselves from the pathologies of their hero:

Steyn noted how a recent mainstream media headline read “I Believe Juanita,” referring to Juanita Broaddrick, a former nursing home administrator who says then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton (D) raped her.

He said he wrote the same post in February 1999…

That’s true. I did. From The National Post of Canada over 19 years ago:

He raped her. Old news. Get over it.

He raped her. Or rather (for we must observe the niceties) she alleges he raped her. That’s what Juanita Broaddrick told The Wall Street Journal last Friday. That’s what The Washington Post reported Saturday —on page one. That’s what The New York Times somewhat tardily got around to letting its readers in on yesterday — although the fastidious Times boys forebore to let the word “rape” sully their account, preferring the term “assault” and noting only that “he forced her down to the bed and had intercourse with her,” which would be rape if Mike ‘Tyson did it but with Bill Clinton qualifies merely as a marginally non-consensual relationship.

READ THE REFERENCED ARTICLE BY LOUIE GOHMERT : “ROBERT MUELLER: UNMASKED”
“Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence. He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the prosecution of anyone.”
https://www.scribd.com/document/377409983/Gohmert-Mueller-UNMASKED#from_embed

Several weeks ago, FBI agents raided the office of President Donald Trump’s fixer, the New York lawyer Michael Cohen, which set Australian correspondents in the US to doing what they do best: re-writing Washington Post and New York Times reports and transmitting those borrowed insights and lifted quotes to the folks back home. The popular image of your typical foreign correspondent is of an intrepid pursuer of truth, but the fact of the matter is that this applies only if a stroll to the nearest newsstand is regarded as a perilous exercise. Toss in the rather blinkered perspective of reporters operating in newsrooms where everyone shares the same politics and perspectives and, well, you get coverage like that provided by the ABC’s Anne Barker on April 11.

The Cohen raid, she wrote, demonstrates special counsel Robert Mueller (above right) “is prepared to act on information that may be well beyond the brief he was hired for”. As Mueller was engaged to explore Moscow’s alleged patronage of Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, no evidence of which has been found, his interest in the current president’s 12-year-distant roll in the hay with a porn star makes her point rather neatly. Ms Barker appears not to regard Mueller’s new interest in sniffing soiled sheets as anything remarkable, let alone untoward.

What Ms Barker and others might have reported but haven’t is Mueller’s own history, which is checkered to say the least.

When leading the hunt for whoever mailed anthrax-filled letters in the days immediately after 9/11, he focused obsessively on the wrong man. This produced a $5 million settlement when it became apparent that it would take more than a concerted campaign of leaks, smears and whispered fabrications to brand virologist Steven Hatfill as the guilty party and make the label stick.

I pride myself on keeping meticulous financial records. But since my wife died on Jan. 1, I discovered I had made some real rookie mistakes that led to hours of extra work and substantial fees. The transfer of assets between spouses can be fairly simple—if you learn from my mistakes.

Dr. Lisa Jane Krenzel and I shared everything throughout our marriage. Like many couples, we split responsibilities. I paid the bills and made investments. She took care of our health insurance, plus the house. We maintained individual checking and savings accounts, as well as separate retirement accounts from various jobs throughout our careers. What went wrong?

• Issue One: When we opened those checking and savings accounts, we never named beneficiaries. I had assumed, incorrectly, that our accounts would simply transfer to the other in case of death. The banker who opened the accounts never suggested otherwise. With a named beneficiary, her accounts would have simply been folded into mine. Instead, I had to hire a lawyer—at $465 an hour—to petition the court to name me as the executor of her estate. I needed this power to transfer her accounts. Filing costs in New York City for the necessary document was $1,286. The running bill for the lawyer stands at $7,402.00, and I expect it to rise.

I also needed the documents for the companies that managed her retirement accounts and a mutual fund, because, as at the bank, we never named a beneficiary. By the way, this paperwork also required signature guarantees or a notary seal, which can take up an afternoon.

• Issue Two: The highly charged question of funeral and burial. Last summer, when I was told Lisa would not survive this illness, I tried to raise the issue of burial with her. She refused to have the conversation, but I quietly went ahead and purchased a plot of graves in the cemetery in Wisconsin where my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are buried. This was something I actually did right.