Tag: news

Friday night’s theme episode of Fox Business Network’s The
Independents (9 pm ET, 6 pm PT, repeats at midnight) is an
attempt to sketch out what American health care will look like in
2014 and beyond. Kicking off the show is a fascinating interview
with Dr. Ron Paul, who describes why he got into medicine (hint: to
avoid killing people!), how government intervention has altered the
health-care market, what parts of your body you should be able to
sell, and whether he’d do it all again. You won’t want to miss
it.

Speaking of Ron Paul, here he is on Tuesday’s
Independents, talking NSA and Edward Snowden:

Also on the program will be a couple of doctors familiar to
Reason readers. First is Jeffrey A. Singer, the good
doctor for
liberty, talking about themes he explored in a classic 2013
magazine piece, “How
Government Killed the Medical Profession: As health care gets
more bureaucratic, will doctors go Galt?” Then Keith Smith, subject
of Reason.tv’s 2012 feature “Oklahoma
Doctors vs. Obamacare,” will explain how his insurance-free,
transparently priced clinic works in Obamacare America.

Tonight’s Party Panel wears lab coats: Dermatologist
Elizabeth Rosenthal and Cardiologist Steven
Reisman talk about their similar experiences with—but different
conclusions about—the Affordable Care Act. Another Mr. MD,
Cedars-Sinai liver/pancreas specialist
Nick Nissen, explains how the molecular revolution and advances
in surgical techniques are ushering forth a more promising future
in treating the worst cancers.

Finally, there will be some personal segments about how the
co-hosts’ various brushes with the health care industry have
informed their weird opinions about it. A certain French lady is
implicated.

Speaking of inappropriate personal comments, here is the “Two
Minutes Hate” segment from Wednesday’s show: 

Yes, that will be a regular feature, so keep ‘em coming, both in
the comments thread and on Twitter @IndependentsFBN.

A
Kansas court ruled on Wednesday that a sperm donor must pay child
support for his offspring, because he and the mother did not
conduct their transaction through a state-approved channel.

In 2009, Jennifer Schreiner and her then-partner, Angela Bauer,
wanted to have child but didn’t want to deal with the prohibitive costs
of having a doctor manage the artificial insemination. They posted
an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a man to donate his
sperm. William Marotta rose to the occasion.

Marotta had no intention of fathering the child. He signed
a contract with the couple to relieve himself of any parental
responsibilities. He handed over a plastic cup of sperm, and
Schriener and Bauer handled the insemination process from
there.

Schriener gave birth to a girl, and eventually applied for her
daughter to receive health insurance from the state. In an exchange
that Bauer
described as “threatening,” state officials demanded to know
the identity of the donor before allowing the child to receive any
benefits. The state
wouldn’t accept child support from Bauer, since she is not a
legal guardian.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCP) contacted
Marotta, insisting that he be legally declared the girl’s father,
so he could pay back $6,000 in child support and then make all
future payments. The DCP and Marotta went to court in
2012.

Solidarity
from Shriener and Bauer and proof of their contract with
Marotta wasn’t enough for the Shawnee County District Court.
Judge Mary Mattiva ruled that the donor would have to bear the
financial burden of his biological daughter, because he gave his
sperm directly to the couple instead of a properly licensed doctor.
She explains:

In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to conform to the
statutory requirements of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting
a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination
process, and the parties’ self-designation of (Marotta) as a sperm
donor is insufficient to relieve (Marotta) of parental rights and
responsibilities.

“The Marotta decision ‘appears’ to be a case of first impression
in Kansas, the judge said. That means a specific issue in the
ruling hasn’t been dealt with before in that court, and there isn’t
binding authority on the matter,” explains the
Capital-Journal.

Marotta’s lawyer was critical of not only the outcome, but of
the DCP’s behavior. “The cost to the state to bring this case far
outweighs any benefit the state would get,” he told CNN.

Marotta announced
today that he plans to appeal the decision.

Smile, Super Bowl
fans! The New York City Police Department has you under even closer
and creepier surveillance than usual. The New York Civil Liberties
Union reported finding over 2,000 surveillance cameras on
the streets of Manhattan alone, before the stepped up
security for the big football game. Now the NYPD is deploying an
additional 200 or so “temporary” surveillance cameras in midtown in
anticipation of the festivities.

Reports the AP’s
Tom Hays:

The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200
temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot
trouble along “Super Bowl Boulevard,” a 13-block street fair on
Broadway that’s expected to draw large crowds during the windup to
the game. Banners promoting the fair compete on the same lampposts
with decidedly less festive signs reading, “NYPD Security Camera in
Area.”

Counting and mapping the cameras that were already in place is a
project of the
NYCLU. The organization’s activists tallied 2,397 cameras
watching public places, just in Manhattan. Outer-borough counts are
yet to come. But the vast majority of those 2,000+ cameras are
privately owned. Only an estimated 300
were installed and maintained by government agencies. So the 200
new additions represent a major upping of the ante, even if they
remain temporary.

Private cameras are usually used to protect property and deter
or record crime against specific people and businesses. But public
cameras can be networked together and monitored by people who have
the coercive power of the state at their command.

“Government has the power to investigate, prosecute, and
potentially jail people and that’s a very different thing from
doing what officers did in Boston which is responding to a known
crime by reviewing existing footage,” Peter Bibring of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Southern California
told Reason TV last May.

So, the installation of 200 new police-controlled cameras may
not be such a positive thing.

See Reason TV’s post-Boston bombing take on the new enthusiasm
for surveillance cameras.