Connecticut became the first state to expand its Medicaid program to cover low-income single adults as permitted under the Affordable Care Act. You may recall that Minnesota’s political leaders debated implementing a similar expansion, but ultimately left the decision up to the governor, who just announced that Minnesota will not expand Medicaid while he remains in office. The next governor will have to decide the matter. It’s frustrating to see other states pioneering this expansion while Minnesota, usually a leader in making health care access, sits on the sidelines because of petty politics. Hopefully, our inaction will only last until January (assuming the DFL can get through the upcoming primary without eating itself alive).

The Times ran a thoughtful article about the challenges schools face in educating kids with multiple and severe disabilities. Many of these have significant cognitive challenges that make simple communication a daunting challenge. I went to school with many kids like the ones described in the article and they were typically the most segregated and isolated, remaining almost completely invisible to the rest of the students. I have no doubt that they needed to be in a special ed classroom for most of the day, but they probably could have benefited from having some contact with their able-bodied peers down the hall. The kids described in the article seem to be equally isolated, having little interaction with anyone besides the teachers and aides. I understand that educating these kids–to the extent made possible by their disabilities–is the top priority and that many of them have can’t form traditional social connections. But more than most, students with severe disabilities need some contact with the rest of the world, just as the world needs to be reminded of their presence.

As far as summer movies go, 2010 has been something of a disappointment. I haven’t visited the local cineplex nearly as much as in summers past simply because the releases haven’t been very compelling. If the studios want me to part with $10, they’re going to have to do better than remakes of The A-Team and video game adaptations. Fortunately, films like Splice demonstrate that Hollywood can still produce original, entertaining fare. Splice tells the story of two genetic scientists (Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody) who have already had some success splicing together animal genes to create crude new life forms. When their corporate sponsor directs them to stop splicing and focus on harvesting useful chemical components from their existing creations, the couple resents the interference and they decided to create a human splice in cellular form just to show that it can be done. The experiment goes further than intended and the couple soon find themselves caring for a rapidly maturing creature that initially resembles a deformed rodent with a wicked-looking stinger on its tail, but soon begins to resemble something much more human.

Of course, things go quickly downhill for the scientists and the film’s denouement is probably one of the more disturbing of the year. Sarah Polley is great as a not-entirely-stable scientist whose instincts waver between warmly maternal and chillingly clinical. And Brody should get the MTV Movie Award for the Best Freaky Sex Scene of the Year (Hetero). The film is effective both as science fiction and horror; it’s a shame it didn’t do better at the box office. Perhaps it will be one of those movies that develops a cult following on DVD and late-night cable.

A rural Minnesota hospital sent home a boy with a severe disability even though he exhibited signs of serious malnutrition and bedsores, prompting an investigation by the state Health Department. It’s entirely possible that there’s more to this story than the Strib is reporting, but if it’s even partially true, it’s a troubling sign that medical professionals are still failing to adequately treat people with disabilities. Most physicians and nurses receive little or no training in assessing and treating people with disabilities. And like most everyone else, they have biases about quality of life and disability. Perhaps that’s what happened here; the treating nurse or physician simply assumed that it’s normal for a boy with a severe disability to be malnourished and plagued with bedsores. After all, disability is supposed to be one big ball of suffering.

Obama’s Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill may or may not move a comprehensive energy bill forward, but its tone reminded me of the big speeches he gave during the weeks preceding passage of the health care bill. He framed our dependence on fossil fuels as another Big Problem that we’ve avoided confronting for far too long. He also appealed to the American can-do spirit and challenged Congress to pass something, but avoided specifying the contours of the legislation.

I don’t think presidential speeches play more than a marginal role in passing major legislation. Voter pressure and political self-interest are far more important motivating factors. But Obama’s “big push” speeches are useful for crystallizing the issue and focusing the media’s attention, albeit briefly, on policy solutions. The odds of a climate and energy bill passing remain abysmally low and the President could have done much more to use this crisis as an opportunity for action, so it seems premature to expect the political narrative to change. But the health care debate also demonstrated the folly of trying to predict what Congress will do.