Category: Interesting Tidbits

Let me go on the record as saying once and for all that the reason health care costs as much as it does in this country is the health insurance industry. Here’s how:

• Because most consumers neither directly pay for care, nor even directly pay the people who do pay for it, any possible market forces are undermined.
• Most patients have no control over who their insurance company is, and therefore cannot effectively demand lower premiums or better coverage.
• Most insurance companies force consumers to either select from a short list of approved doctors, clinics, and hospitals — or pay much higher out of pocket costs.
• Doctors who want to be paid must agree to contracts that will pay them less than fifty cents for every dollar billed (paid up to 90 days later), yet prevent them from giving cash discounts to people who are not paying via insurance reimbursement.
• The for profit insurance model guaranties a system where people are paid to not provide care; every dollar of “profit” can be considered “overcharged premiums” or “under-paid bills”.
• Even without a profit motive, almost none of the expenses of the insurance company provide any care whatsoever.
• Medical facilities must spend money on a “biller” — an employee or contractor who provides no care, but is necessary to fill out the complicated forms required for insurance reimbursement.
• Some insurance “cost control” measures actually cost more money in the long run: demanding a cheap test to prove that the “expensive” test your doctor thinks will actually have important results is needed; paying for an expensive hospital bed rather than a relatively inexpensive hospice bed; inadequate hospital stays that increase the likelihood of another hospitalization.

Now, I am not the only person who has noticed that health insurance bureaucrats now fill the bogeyman roll of “faceless government bureaucrats” conservatives use to scare us. Nor am I the only person to notice how quickly the health insurers backed off their handshake agreement with the President to control costs — oh, that might violate anti-trust laws!

We’ve got a broken system now. A system where even people who have insurance are bypassing care because of expense. A system where people are getting married for insurance reasons. And yet the insurance companies and the politicians they have bought keep telling us that no, we don’t want Medicare for All. They keep trying to scare us with horror stories about a small number of Canadians, and ignore the hundreds of people we know having horror stories here. Some people say we can’t afford reform, but the truth is we can’t afford not to reform.

Let’s keep the pressure on. 

Need talking points? Here’s 10 of them. 

In Closing: Ethanol; how are we supposed to prevent identity theft when the IRS is busy selling our tax info?; Plunge in GM stock value means Tesla Motors is now worth half as much as GM; more evidence that biometrics isn’t security, some medications will remove your fingerprints; Fun With Jesus; California, money, and the death penalty; “So very much like ‘judicial activism’ and its various cognates, when conservatives talk about judges ‘making policy’ or ‘legislating from the bench’ all they really mean is ‘judges ruling in ways we don’t like.'”; Presidential Trivia; and the MTV Movie Awards ought to be interesting, Andy Samberg is hosting.

 

You’ve all seen this little illustration. In the old days perhaps you had a copy sitting next to the fax machine. There’s a variation that’s “what the kids wanted,” “What the school district approved,” etc.. 

Unfortunately, this idea now applies to health insurance. 

What the majority of Americans want is Medicare for All. 

What for profit insurance companies and their well paid executives want is mandatory purchase of coverage by all Americans (if there has to be any change at all).

What many politicians and most business owners want to do is lower costs.

Some other politicians and some insurance companies want is continuation of the status quo.

What almost all politicians are is afraid to be on the “wrong” side.

What some lawmakers are now proposing is a government run health insurance company, with a requirement that everybody buy health insurance and some way to help “lower income” families afford coverage. To me this sounds like the worst of all worlds: mandatory coverage, plus tax credits that won’t help, plus a nice new bureaucracy whose rules will probably be every bit as byzantine as those from for-profit health insurance companies.

Here’s the thing. What most Americans want turns out to be the thing a bunch of economists say would be the best thing. It would certainly be an undeniable good thing for entrepreneurs, the unemployed, those at risk of losing their jobs, and all women. 

Why won’t our elected officials stand up to insurance special interests and actually talk about what their constituents want? Why are they more afraid of special interests than they are of us?

In Closing: Since it turns out that a little daydreaming and seeing things that are “cute” does good things for productivity, here’s news on a couple of Japan’s feline stationmasters (other than Tama-san of course); Cheerios is a drug?; financial literacy video games; medical tattoos; and at least ending use of the phrase “war on drugs.”

Update: Many thanks for the link from Crooks and Liars. This is now one of my most popular posts ever. Unfortunately, that means it has been the target of comment spam, and I have had to turn off comments.

Hard to believe it’s time for the month-end retrospective. So here’s March items you’ve been missing if you haven’t read ShortWoman for the last 5 years:

In 2004 I was talking about the Daddy Knows Best paternalism of the Bush era GOP.

In 2005 I had a lot to say about bankruptcy “reform”. These “reforms” put corporate interests above consumer protections, and probably contributed to our current credit and mortgage crisis. Interestingly enough, we have news that Congress is finally talking about reigning in some credit card abuses.

In 2006 I wrote about the First Amendment. One of these days I should really keep going through the Bill of Rights. I did make it all the way to the 4th (which, coincidentally, Bruce Schneier just wrote about).

In 2007, a lot of people enjoyed my post House of Cards. 

And in 2008, I celebrated International Women’s Day, sort of. 

In Closing: a great pre-review of the new Star Trek movie; 1895 Diary; poverty may effect kid’s brains (for counterpoint, I think Zig would disagree); ancient cliffside catacombs; a good first step in really fixing the banking crisis, reinstate Glass-Steagall, endorsed by those freakin liberals at Business Week; February in charts; surveillance towers planned for border towns like Detroit and Buffalo, but notably not for San Diego or El Paso; and the S&P 500 is livin it up while the businesses are goin down.

Happy April, everybody!

My state legislature is currently debating Real ID. Specifically, they are wondering if they should bother to comply:

 

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, said the bill would create an unfunded mandate that forces DMV to spend as much as $1.5 million of its own money to meet requirements of the federal law.

Finance Chairwoman Bernice Mathews, D-Reno, said that before she takes a vote on Senate Bill 52, she wants to check if the state can receive an exemption from complying with the law.

During a hearing, both liberal and conservative lobbyists condemned the proposal on the grounds it would violate citizens’ right to privacy.

Several complained Real ID licenses are the first step toward the insert of a radio frequency chip into licenses to allow government authorities to keep track of citizens’ whereabouts. The DMV denied that allegation.

The Real ID Act was passed by Congress in 2005 to prevent terrorists from acquiring legitimate identification cards. States now vary widely in the information they require people to provide before issuing them licenses. The act would standardize the information DMVs would collect.

“This is a silly law,” testified David Schuman, a lobbyist for the states’ rights activists group Nevada Committee for Full Statehood. “The government thinks they can create documents that al-Qaeda cannot duplicate. Osama bin Laden was a civil engineering graduate of London University. Al-Qaeda is not ignorant people.”

 

While counterfeiting is a legitimate argument against the effectiveness of Real ID, there are far more reasons to think it’s a bad idea. I won’t go into them all.

This system is based on the idea that Bad Guys all have fake identification, and indeed are almost always Not Americans. 

How would Real ID have stopped the Unabomber?

How would Real ID have stopped Tim McVeigh? 

How would Real ID have stopped William Krar? Sure, fake IDs were involved. The plot was uncovered because they were delivered to the wrong address. So he would have needed a better counterfeiter. Real ID might have made it harder to catch him.

How would Real ID have stopped either of these guys who tried to bomb banks? 

How would Real ID have stopped the Fort Dix 6, most of whom were citizens?

How would Real ID have stopped any of the various people who have attempted to or succeeded in bombing women’s clinics?

Nobody can answer these questions, because Real ID would have barely slowed these plots down. Proving identity is not the same thing as proving someone is Not A Bad Guy.

It’s enough to make you wonder what the Real Purpose of Real ID is. 

Follow Up: it turns out that the Department of Homeland Security is unsure how to implement Real ID. 

In Closing: follow up, what is wrong with kids these days that they think a woman ever deserves to be beaten so badly she can’t go out in public? At least she’s got a restraining order, even if she doesn’t think she wants it; Carrie on Productivity and Reality; on SBA lending; “[The AIG bonuses are] about 55 cents per citizen, whereas TARP is about $2,333.33 per citizen.”; something is not rotten in the state of Denmark, and that would be the mortgage industry; the real AIG scandal.

Rihanna, Rihanna, Rihanna.

What the heck are you thinking, girl? That man beat you up so bad you couldn’t show your face in public, and it wasn’t the first blow-up you two had together.

Does he have to break your head open before you realize you need to quit him?

Shouldn’t your people — family, friends, management — be telling you the same thing?

Look, if you don’t get him out of your life, he is going to ruin your life: he’s going to ruin your career if he hasn’t already, he’s going to break your body, he’s going to poison your mind. He may promise to be good, he may say everything is going to be alright baby, but he’s going to break those promises unless he commits to some serious counseling. And if he were going to do that, he would have long since done it, girl. If all these music industry “friends” really cared about you, they would be keeping you away from him instead of helping you get back together with him.

Look at what that man did to you!

You have an opportunity here. You can stand up and say “I am a beautiful, talented, intelligent woman and I don’t have to take this **** any more.” You can tell him where to stuff it, and you can be a role model for other women who aren’t as fortunate as you. Women who don’t have fancy clothes and record contracts and “people” but do have “A thug in my life”.

There is no excuse for domestic violence. There is no excuse for a man hitting you. There is no excuse for excusing him. And don’t let anybody blame you; the only thing you’ve done is failed to walk away.

When you are ready to stand up and be the strong, smart woman I know you must surely be, you call the crisis number on this page.

That goes for those of you who don’t happen to be Rihanna too.

 

Month End Review: 2004 on Tort Reform; 2005 on the intersection between taxes and health insurance; 2006 on how to shrink an economy; 2007 on the Iranian Revolution and how we still don’t get it in the West; and 2008 on locally grown food.

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I posted. I just haven’t been motivated by killer chimpanzees or the State of the Union or much of anything else that everybody else has been on about for the last week or so. Luckily, other people have written things worth linking.

Let’s start with proof that when you provide seed capital to moticated entrepreneurs, good things happen! Meet Rahinatu, a young lady who made an opportunity for herself with the help of a mere $110. If this sounds like a good thing to you, then I strongly encourage you to go on over to FreeMicroLoan, sign up for the RSS feed, and make some comments. 

So I have been hearing nonsense all morning about how “the markets” don’t like what the President said last night and they don’t like “uncertainty.” Well, the people don’t like uncertainty either! Part of the problem “the markets” are experiencing have to do with the fact that we are no longer pretending everything is wonderful. But, when you compare a bunch of stock market declines, you realize it really could be worse! And good news for getting done with this but bad news for corporations, shareholders are angry.

Megan’s Laws don’t work. They don’t work, they don’t prevent crime, they don’t help potential victims stay away from Bad Guys. Since nearly half of sex offenders are family members, it is clear why.

Go ahead and write a letter to the President. He actually reads some of those letters, and uses the feedback he gets from the public (that would be the people who helped him get elected, on whom he must depend to get re-elected in 2012) to inform public policy.

Harsh, Penguin! A few words for the Appleheads. 

Harsh but true, Cranky! A few choice words for the young ladies we used to call “bow-heads” when I was in college.

Matt Yglesias has brief but insightful comments on the people who have been called “irresponsible” borrowers. By way of bookends on that theme, Time’s list of 25 people most responsible for the housing crisis, with the ability to rank your favorite losers! Fittingly, when I last looked, Phil Gramm was in the lead. Oh! And it looks like a major group of appraisers are going to oppose the recently announced loan modification plans. Their reasoning? They’re getting cut out of the action.

I enjoyed this chart of travel efficiency, and I hope you will too. 

From the “the more things change” department, we have two corrupt judges who were sending kids to juvie detention facilities from which they were getting kickbacks. Often the charges were flimsy. Pork pretty much said what needed saying. Back in my day, it wasn’t juvie. After all, you need an actual judge to send you there. Nope, we had mental hospitals. Even without a crooked judge, you can make do with a crooked doctor, or even a concerned and/or hoodwinked and/or lazy parent, as long as there’s health insurance. And that, my dear readers, is why the seriously crazy lady down the street can’t get inpatient treatment. 

And finally, it’s been a while since I gave you some Japanfilter. This is a serious dose of what the…?: Amigurumi.

I am not going to waste your time with a review of 2008, nor with predictions for 2009.  There’s too much that can go wrong with predictions. 

Instead, I’ll waste your time with a Wired peice on how to “linkbait” your blog. 

Modern Life tells us “Linkbait is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page – whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace – that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.” The object is not merely getting the links, but getting traffic from people who click on those links.

But back to what Wired has to say:

Network with bigger bloggers—comment regularly. Email them your best stuff, then follow their tips. Link to them often, and they’ll likely start linking back. The day that Boing Boing links to you, you’re gold.

Network and comment. Be willing to take advice from people who are more successful than you Wow, as if none of us thought about that.

Request to get in the Blogroll on other people’s sites.  You never know who will get picked up by somebody big and lo, there you are in the linkfest. Join groups of similar bloggers. Take time to say “I agree with Joe in his post, XYZ,” or “I think Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about in his post ABC.”  Follow up each with at least a paragraph of “Because…” Consider being active in online communities, as long as your site is linked in your profile. I think I just doubled their content.

But BoingBoing?  People still read that? 

Let’s continue:

Scan the tabloid rack for headlines that make you want to shout, “Hey Martha, come see!” Try to create the same “must share this” effect in your own headlines.

For example, “Linkbait Your Blog”.  

Seriously, who doesn’t want more links?  But just like a really good newspaper headline, the title needs to tell you just enough to make you want to read more.  Such as Tuesday’s elderly woman fights off nude attacker story.  Frankly, some blogosphere versions of the story were better than the serious version. 

But back to the story:

You may not be able to break a juicy story (“britney shaves head—again!”) but you can pontificate on it (“inside britney’s shaved head”). Your post will show up in searches for the story, and you’ll hoover up the hits.

Why not just say “Write about whatever is on top over at Technorati“? 

I’d say to go on, but that’s it. 

Meanwhile, the folks who gave us our definition for “linkbait” tell us we can get linked by having “timely, current content,” defending a “controversial viewpoint,” writing “Interesting and well-written articles,” or tap into our “ongoing obsession with all that is funny, crazy, cool, or just plain odd.”  As it turns out, I have been doing this entirely organically for over 5 years now.

Seriously, if you want to learn more about how to really linkbait — rather than 3 half-baked ideas from somebody who is trying to sell you his book — here’s 21 ideas, thoughts for linkbait sucess, and the art of linkbaiting.  

And now, because I have written about the Wired article, this post will show up as linking to it. If enough people link to the article, it will climb the rankings on sites that follow such things. People who want to know what is being said about the article will end up here, and on other sites that discuss it. Not only will I have successfully linkbaited, there is the possibility that one of those new readers will become a regular reader. 

In closing: our new Commander in Chief will hold an honest-to-goodness military ball; once he’s actually on the job he wants to do something about the fact that “Nearly half the principals in primary and secondary schools said deteriorating conditions are interfering with learning“; for your next Fun With Creationists event here’s 12 Examples of Evolution that don’t involve flu shots; next time you play 6 Degrees, be sure to use the fact that Kevin Bacon lost money with Bernie Madoff; and last, a company that re-examined their monthly expenses to save almost $500 per month.  Now there’s news you can use.

Yes, it’s snowing in Vegas.  Actually, snowing for the second time this week. But this time they have actually cancelled school.  Yay, I guess. 

Elsewhere tomorrow, the Feds are meeting to talk about reining in some of the abuses controvertial practices that credit card companies have used to bilk it’s most strapped customers. These include but are surely not limited to “practices like raising the interest rates on pre-existing credit card balances unless a payment is over 30 days late, and applying payments in a way that maximizes interest penalties.”  It’s about freaking time.

In closing (yes, already): if we can’t agree that the death penalty is wrong, can we at least agree that it costs too much money?; Carrie brings us a dose of JapanFilter and the lack of safety net for workers who lose their jobs; some fscinating charts on what has happened to the American consumer; Maha on the middle class, wages, and the UAW; the head of the SEC admits they had warnings about what Madoff was up to and he has no good explanation for why they didn’t do anything about it; a Month Without Chryslers; and some renters who took matters into their own hands.

I’d like to start with the other half of a story you may have seen today, the story of a man named Martin Gill. He took in two little boys one December just to have “a decent Christmas”:

A decent Christmas didn’t seem too much to ask. He said yes.

So that night, two small boys, one 4 years old and one 4 months old, came to Martin Gill’s home. The 4-year-old had on a dirty adult T-shirt and sneakers so small he wore them like flip-flops. Both boys were sick. The older boy’s medicine was unopened and expired, the baby’s barely touched.

The 4-year-old did not speak, and seemed mostly unresponsive. The only thing he cared about was changing, feeding, and taking care of his baby brother. Gill… quickly realized that this 4-year-old was the baby’s primary caretaker.

After about a month, the older boy finally began to talk. It quickly became clear that he had never seen a book, couldn’t distinguish letters from numbers, couldn’t identify colors, couldn’t count, couldn’t hold a pencil. At dinner time, he’d ask for more food at the start of the meal, hide it, and then sneak it into his bedroom because he was afraid it would run out. Gill… slowly got him to stop doing that by keeping plenty of food in the house and showing him at the start of meals that there was lots of food.

The boys have now been with Martin Gill… for four years. The experts and the judge have a lot to say about just how good that is. The kids have structured lives; they’ve lived in one place all four years, they eat meals together and talk (no TV or phones answered during meals), they go to school. They have friends. They have a family…. They have a grandmother. Gill even bought a Ford minivan.

The remarkable part of this story is that a court in the state of Florida said that finally, Mr. Gill and the grown-up love of his life can finally adopt these boys.  You see, Mr. Gill and his partner are gay. 

If you are at a loss for something to be thankful for, try the fact that this family can now work to make itself official.

In closing:  things are tough all over (the world); a bill proposing single payer health care (true universal medicare for all, not mandatory health care) has been introduced; and Stupid CEO Tricks would be a whole lot funnier if we all hadn’t bought front row tickets.

Wisdom of the Week:  “You’re a smart lady” actually means “I am about to condescend to you, and say something completely unsupported, that I expect you to take on faith because I just told you how smart you are!”

A little bit of follow-up:  Ford may sell the private jets.  After all when you are grubbing for money, there are appearances to be maintained. Oh, and GM doesn’t see bankruptcy as an option.  

A Trio on Health Care and Health Insurance:  I am going to actively try to stop conflating the two, and I hope others will join me. Five Myths, Insurance companies are willing to cover everyone if and only if everyone is required to pay them regardless of what they choose to charge; and almost half of American doctors would get out of medicine if they could.  Yeowch. 

The economy:  on the backdrop of the FDIC taking over 3 more banks (yeah you have a great weekend there, America!), President Elect Obama discusses how we can put out-of-work Americans to work building infrastructure we need, such as fixing our highways and building renewable energy resources! 

The Past:  It’s the 45th anniversary of the death of JFK.  Oh, and the Vatican has chosen to forgive John Lennon for saying he was more popular than Jesus some 40 years ago.  Way to go, there Vatican, forgiving somebody who has been dead for close to 30 years for something he said while he was very probably stoned. You are totally showing how “with it” and “hip” you are.  How about getting off the high horse to feed some hungry and comfort the afflicted?  

Retrospectacular, or some of my favorite November posts of the last five years: To the President on Tax “Reform”; on Investing; on the crappy economy we were pretending was great 5 years ago; on Why politics will always stink; on framing; and it’s hard to believe Call of Duty 4 has been out 2 years.  Well, Call of Duty 5 (“World at War”) came out a couple weeks ago.  If you nice people don’t mind, I have a Japanese Castle to storm.