Someone from the party of the left who thinks the right has declared a War on Women thinks the right is paranoid.
Archive for March, 2012
Ruth Marcus has the most perfect column up today concerning Obamacare.
Every line makes clear, crystal clear, the differences in paradigms that are effecting this country right now to such a degree that most of us cannot fully stomach why the other side thinks the way they do.
The title of her column is “116 billion reasons to be for the individual mandate”. 16 billion is the amount of money that the uninsured did not pay in 2008 for their healthcare. Somebody paid though….who? Most of the time those of us with insurance pay by having rates higher than we would have if everyone paid their part.
Ruth thinks that we Americans don’t understand that the mandate will be a benefit to us. By requiring everyone to carry insurance then we, the responsible, will see a break in our own insurance costs.
“People don’t understand how the mandate works at all and they don’t understand why it’s there,” Kaiser’s polling director, Mollyann Brodie, told me.
Brodie suspects that it’s too late to change minds. “This law as a whole has really become a symbolic issue to people and they really aren’t open to information,” she said.
Maybe, but the administration must keep trying — not only to sell the law’s goodies but to explain how the mandate makes them possible. Otherwise, they could end up winning the minds of the justices, yet losing the hearts of the people whose votes they need to keep the law in place.
We are too ill informed to see that if we want to force insurance companies to insure everyone no matter how sick, and if we want hospitals to treat everyone no matter whether or not they can pay, then we have to have the mandate.
I have wondered that myself….if 72% of the population don’t like the mandate, how many of those people realize why it’s there?
The problem the 72% have is constitutional. The problem is the paradigm. What government has the right to tell me what I have to buy?!!
Not only are they mandating insurance, they are mandating what kind of insurance and what items (needed or unneeded, morally approved or not) of coverage I have to buy. What crazy autocratic system do we live under who can do that?
Ruth starts to see the picture, but finds it impossible to jump the chasm between paradigms:
In the Kaiser poll, 30 percent of those who opposed the mandate cited government overreach as the biggest reason. Not surprisingly, twice as many Republicans (40 percent) cited that reason as did Democrats (18 percent).
But opposition to the mandate also stems from the public’s failure to understand — or, alternatively, the administration’s failure to communicate — basic facts.
In other words if only we the ill-informed could see her side, then we wouldn’t mind at all that our Federal Government now has the power to make us buy something we may not want.
There is not a tidbit of communication out there that will make me swing to her side and agree that 16 billion is enough “commerce” to give the Federal Government this type of authority.
I cannot jump the chasm to a line of thinking that says I MUST buy X.
Apparently there isn’t a tidbit of information out there that will make her grasp why this Obamacare is so very distasteful to people who value freedom. In other words Americans.
UPDATE: Douglas Holtz-Eatin and Vernon L. Smith in the WSJ discuss some of the financial aspects of the mandate concluding:
The individual mandate and Medicaid expansions appear to many to be unconstitutional. They are certainly bad economic policy. When they go, the entire law must fall. The administration built an intricate, balanced policy on a flawed economic foundation. It is up to the Supreme Court to pull it down.
This time the EPA [ht Maggie’s Farm]
“You fund research with grants to people who also serve on your review committees. Is this a conflict of interest? Almost every single member of your Clean Air Science Advisory Committee has been directly or indirectly funded for research. This hand-and-glove policymaking by those appointed to also do your research and being funded by you at the same time is not appropriate. They are often asked to review other research they themselves were a party to on the original research team.How could one possibly expect them to be objective in any way?”
Are “children” who need the government to force health insurance companies to cover through their parents to the age of 26 old enough to decide they should be sterilized without their parent’s permission?
“I wanted grandchildren and now I find I’ve paid for your hysterectomy!!!”
Fast and Furious Underpants
Published March 20, 2012 Fast and Furious , Uncategorized Leave a Comment1) Sell guns to bad guys so you can catch a bad guy, listen while he says he’ll cooperate, then let him go
2)
3) Reduce the number of guns in the US of A
Reporting from Washington— Seven months after federal agents began the ill-fated Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation, they stumbled upon their main suspect in a remote Arizona outpost on the Mexican border, driving an old BMW with 74 rounds of ammunition and nine cellphones hidden inside.
Detained for questioning that day in May 2010, Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta described to agents from theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosiveshis close association with a top Mexican drug cartel member, according to documents obtained this weekend by the Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.
The top Fast and Furious investigator, Special Agent Hope MacAllister, scribbled her phone number on a $10 bill after he pledged to cooperate and keep in touch with investigators.
Really?
Others are sharing this Friday afternoon document dump….
I want to take note of something within this that Ms Fluke and Ms Pelosi might find interesting.
Earlier I documented some prices of birth control and wondered which version was to be covered without “cost sharing” and without raising premiums.
In the dump we get the answer [bold is mine]:
The Departments’ interim final regulations implementing section 2713 of the PHS Act provide that “[n]othing prevents a plan or issuer from using reasonable medical management techniques to determine the frequency, method, treatment, or setting for an item or service … to the extent not specified in the recommendation or guideline.”7 The preamble to the interim final regulations further provides:
“The use of reasonable medical management techniques allows plans and issuers to adapt these recommendations and guidelines to coverage of specific items and services where cost sharing must be waived. Thus, under these interim final regulations, a plan or issuer may rely on established techniques and the relevant evidence base to determine the frequency, method, treatment, or setting for which a recommended preventive service will be available without cost sharing requirements to the extent not specified in a recommendation or guideline.” (75 FR 41728-29).8
This policy applies to contraceptive coverage. The Departments plan to issue further guidance on section 2713 of the PHS Act more generally.
I have my doubts that $1000/year is “reasonable” as a “medical management technique” for contraceptive coverage when there are so many different and cheaper alternatives.
UPDATE: I am pretty certain this doesn’t need to be spelled out to my readers (thank you readers!) but in case there is a passer by who might need the analysis, what this also does besides upsetting the Flukes of this world is reduce innovation.
a) birth control is to be provided by your mandatory insurance for free
b) the insurance company can determine the most cost effective form of birth control that it is willing to provide for free
c) 99% of women using birth control choose free over a copay version
d) R&D quits bothering coming out with newer and improved and safer methods of birth control because they are going to be more expensive on first pass and hence will not be used.
Research and Development is already a big gamble. Many companies find it easier to just ‘improve what’s out there (me too drugs)’ (link is to a NYbooks article I didn’t read all the way through concerning the “costs” of R&D and what big Pharma says vs does) and most people believe we’re losing our edge as is. This new law will definitely help us continue on that path to lesser innovation.
Don’t Tell Hockey Fans there will be no National Anthem!
Published March 16, 2012 Election , Faith , Fun Leave a CommentMorgan over at House had this video and Tim, a commenter had this to say:
Those people, kids it looked like, embody the spirit of what we need to doing in this country right now. Be vigilant and stop accepting the crap sandwich being force feed to us. We don’t need no stinking music, sing loudly. Others will join in.
“…and the home… of the…brave.”
Which brings me to this George Weigel piece about the Catholic bishops’ statement and how they “drew their line in the sand” yesterday in a very big way.
…“United for Religious Freedom” usefully clarifies just what the argument is not:
This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive. . . . This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the bishops’ somehow ‘banning contraception,’ when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is, instead, about the federal government forcing the Church . . . to act against Church teachings. This is not a matter of opposition to universal health care, which has been a concern of the Bishops’ Conference since 1919, virtually at its founding. This is not a fight we want or asked for, but one forced upon us by government on its own timing. Finally, this is not a Republican or Democratic, a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American issue.
Carry on…..sing loudly….we’ve got your back.
In numerous articles on the HBO cancellation of their series ‘Luck’ after a third horse needed to be euthanized, (the series was about the seedy side of horse racing), we get these quotes:
“While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won’t in the future,” HBO said in its statement. “Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision.”
and after 2 horses died during production and PETA was gaining interest:
HBO had responded to PETA’s claims, saying, “Recent assertions of lax attitudes or negligence could not be further from the truth.” The network noted in a statement, issued after the third death, that its safety protocols for the “Luck” horses had gone “above and beyond typical film and TV industry standards and practices.”
So how did horse #3 end up dead?
The horse was euthanized after rearing, falling backward and hitting its head on the ground while being led back to its stall at Santa Anita Racetrack. The horse had just been examined to make sure it was fit to appear in a scene for the second season of the drama series, which starred Dustin Hoffman as a crime kingpin trying to take control of a racetrack.
I will grant you that this isn’t what I would call a good “report” on the story, but if a trained horse is apt to rear high enough to fall backward while being led along familiar grounds by a familiar person then no, you do not have the highest standards of safety concerning either them or your human handlers.
Yes horses will spook. BUT TRAINED horses – and why would TV show horses not be well trained if you are exceeding standards of safety – do not rear so high they fall over from whatever scares them on their way through familiar ground.
The comments are amazing where people really think that horses are this flighty or stupid.
That horse was not trained to be on TV.
“Luck” deserved to be shut down.
In a column about the upcoming primary in Illinois, David Balz shows his Democrat credentials:
ithinkthereforeierr.wordpress.com 