Even though the Americans with Disabilities Act has been law for almost two decades, businesses and institutions still remain oblivious to its requirement regarding reasonable accommodations. The Star Tribune reports on a local hospital that recently paid damages for failing to provide interpreters to deaf patients. As a result, one patient didn’t comprehend that her cancer was terminal until she was close to death.

Even though hospitals work with people with disabilities every day, they are agonizingly slow when it comes to complying with the ADA and similar laws. Whether it’s because of institutional inertia, arrogance, or indifference, it’s inexcusable. In this particular case, no amount of note-writing or informal interpretation by friends and family can substitute for a trained interpreter who is familiar with medical jargon. The hospital simply should have known better.

From The Onion:

Thanks to Charles for the link.

The next iteration of the X Prize will offer $10 million to the team that successfully develops a brain-computer interface. Previously, the X Prize awarded $10 million to Virgin Galactic for successfully developing a viable commercial passenger spacecraft, so this new competition bears watching. The article doesn’t go into a lot of detail on what will constitute the winning entry, but it does contain this curious quote:

The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) X PRIZE will reward nothing less than a team that provides vision to the blind, new bodies to disabled people, and perhaps even a geographical “sixth sense” akin to a GPS iPhone app in the brain.

I’m not sure how a BCI will give me a new body, but that’s not what what I’m interested in. I just want the means to take over the world with my army of giant thought-controlled robots. I promise that the winning X Prize team will be appointed to appropriate scientific roles (yet to be determined) within my royal court. Also, I will make myself available to all teams for field testing.

Terri Carlson, a divorced woman in her forties with a rare genetic condition, is searching for a husband. More specifically, she’s seeking a husband who can provide her with health care coverage because she cannot obtain coverage due to her preexisting condition. To that end, she has set up a website to promote herself and solicit offers from potential suitors. In a YouTube video featured in a CBS News interview, she said, “The lower the co-pay, the sexier you are to me!”

I don’t post this because I’m interested in throwing my hat in the ring (although she seems like a lovely woman and, hey, she could do worse), but to point out that this is probably an exaggerated example of a real trend. Plenty of couples probably factor in health care coverage considerations when deciding whether and even whom to marry. And it’s a concern that probably never enters the head of a woman living in Canada or the U.K. or any other country with national health care.

To be fair, Ms. Carlson could look for a different job that offers health care, but the combination of a bad economy and her health issues may make that a difficult proposition. Meanwhile, the Democrats are still wringing their hands over whether to pass a health care bill. If they fail, perhaps Ms. Carlson can guilt a Democratic congressman or senator into marrying her. I hear those federal benefits are pretty good.

I spent my Saturday morning watching a replay of yesterday’s question-and-answer session between Obama and House Republicans. It’s rare in American politics to see this kind of unmediated policy debate between a president and the opposition. And that’s unfortunate; I think a lot of voters are hungry for honest debate free of media spin and hyperbole.

My more partisan take on the Q&A is that it plays so well to Obama’s strengths while exposing Republican “ideas” as vacuous and simplistic. The president had the assured demeanor of someone eager to debate because his ideas are qualitatively better than those of the opposition. I got a lot of satisfaction from watching him dismantle Republican nonsense that the health care bill is the instrument of radical Trotskyites plotting a proletariat revolution. If Obama is to have any hope of moving his agenda forward, he’ll need to do a lot more forceful advocacy like this. Americans generally still like Obama, much more so than anyone in Congress. He needs to parlay that likeability into trust and these open debates are a good start.