California Insider

I don't put too much stock in the influence potential First Ladies can have on the election result, but the latest LA Times poll merits at least a "wow." Nationally, voters surveyed by The Times favored Laura Bush over Teresa Heinz Kerry by 56-26 when asked who better represented their idea of what a First Lady should be. Bush's favorable/unfavorable was 72-14. Heinz Kerry: 35-28. Ouch.

Schwarzenegger announced a bunch of mid-level agency appointees today. The two most interesting (to my mind) were

Dana Appling as director of the Consumer Advocacy Division of the Public Utilities Commission. Appling is the former general counsel to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and most recently served as chief counsel for WebGen Systems, Inc., an energy conservation and demand-side management start-up company.

and

Matthew Bender as assistant public affairs officer for the Department of General Services. Bender has been a reporter for The Sun newspaper in San Bernardino.

The others can be found here.

On Sunday I wrote about Emory University (and Kerry advisor) Ken Thorpe's study of health care costs, which suggests that much of the recent increase is due to demographics, increasing prevalence of disease (or at least treatment) and technology. The paper was published here, in Health Affairs. Another Health Affairs paper, here, published last year compares costs in the US to other developed nations. Conclusion: we pay a lot more, and we don't get more doctor visits or hospital stays, but we pay our providers more and use more technologies and advanced medical procedures.