brainiac conspiracy

Thursday Night Music Blogging

Because we work hard for our money, except when we don't.

---Baron V

Today in Freedom

We salute the people who keep us safe to secure the blessings of liberty:

Federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security call it the “candy bowl,” a pot of overtime money they have long dipped into to pad their pay even if they haven’t earned it, whistleblowers say.

This practice, which can add up to 25 percent to a paycheck, has become so routine over the last generation that it’s often held out as a perk when government managers try to recruit new employees, according to these accounts [...]

“These are not border patrol guys chasing bad guys who can’t stop what they are doing and fill out paperwork for overtime. We are not questioning that,” Lerner said. “These are employees sitting at their desks, collecting overtime because it’s become a culturally acceptable practice.”

---Baron V

Of Course It's Not All Bad

The Goldberg Act does have some redeeming qualities, particularly if you are at the lower end of the income spectrum, and (ahem) if you're a major institutional shareholder in health-care stocks! But even if most people come out ahead because of it, there are also going to be people who are going to get screwed by it, and besides being profoundly unfair to the losers, it's just providing additional fodder for the people who want to sabotage the law. So yeah, the crazy people are going to demagogue the issue to death. That's how they roll. What Team Democrat needs to do going forward is stop handing them more ammunition. How to fix? Win back the House, abolish the filibuster, and then pass this: Health-care costs come down for nearly everyone, deficits shrink, problem solved. But if the White House and its supporters don't like hearing these "Obamacare horror stories," it's too damn bad because they're the ones who created the problem. They own all of it, not just the good parts.

---Baron V

This Wouldn't Be a Problem

If we'd written a serious health-care law:

Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.

The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.

Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.

And that's not because their exchanges don't offer options. Both Ohio and California have a dozen insurance companies on their exchanges, yet two of the states' premier hospitals---Cleveland Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center---have only one company in their respective networks [...]

"In many cases, consumers are shopping blind when it comes to what doctors and hospitals are included in their Obamacare exchange plans," said Josh Archambault, senior fellow with the think tank Foundation for Government Accountability. "These patients will be in for a rude awakening once they need care, and get stuck with a big bill for going out-of-network without realizing it."

All of this represents a larger problem with the Affordable Care Act, said Archambault, who has extensively studied the law.

"It reflects deeper issues in implementation," he said. "Some hospitals and doctors don't even know if they are in the network."

Our private insurance/health care system is fundamentally broken. The Goldberg Act simply props it up. Kind of like the way we propped up our broken banking system, and look how well that worked out.

---Baron V

Why We Have Elections

People have disagreements---many times, quite understandable ones---over policy. We argue and debate which policies will best solve whatever social problem the nation is facing, or which policies will improve the quality of people's lives. People then get to vote their choice of policies in the form of a particular candidate for office. The candidate/party who gets the most votes can be said to have earned the right to implement his or her policies, and, as a rule, it's incumbent upon the losing candidate/party to offer some concessions or compromises in order to avoid being shut out of the policy discussion; their constituents, after all, deserve to be heard if not acceded to. That's the ways politics has always run in this country---at least, until very recently, when the winner offered concession after concession on all manner of policy to the losers, even when the losers were in no position to exact any favors. The result, as we now know, was disastrous for both the winner and his party, and four years later, here we are. I guess the point I am trying to make is, you try to reinvent the wheel, expect a bumpy ride.

---Baron V

Winners and Losers III

At the risk of flogging the dead horse, it bears repeating that whatever its benefits for however many people, there is, at heart, a moral/ethical failing in the Goldberg Act, and it's this: health care is a necessity of life. It's not another commodity like a car or a TV, and if we are ever to create a more humane and decent society, we need to stop applying the same market-based methods to it. You need to go to a hospital, you go to a hospital. Your "ability to pay" should not be an issue. To those who say, "But we don't have the money," the answer is, yes we do. We simply have to shake the money out.

---Baron V

Winners and Losers II

We already know who loses under the Goldberg Act---and who wins!

Insurer Cigna Corp on Thursday reported a third-quarter profit that beat analysts' expectations as revenue increased and it managed medical costs in its commercial business.

Net income rose to $553 million, or $1.95 per share, from $466 million, or $1.61 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding investment gains, the company reported a profit of $1.89 per share. On that basis, analysts on average had expected $1.63, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Cigna, which provides U.S. and overseas health insurance as well as disability and life insurance, said it expected full-year earnings of $6.70 to $6.90 per share. Analysts were expecting $6.65, according to Thomson Reuters.

Seven bucks a share. You created that revenue stream in the form of monthly insurance premiums, but instead of providing you with affordable health care, a big cut of the money went to a bunch of rent-seekers instead. Can't afford your new silver plan? Oh well!

People should not be allowed to extract profits from the misery and sickness of others. It's the evil that underlies our for-profit health-care system, and whatever its stated intentions, the Goldberg Act codifies the evil as the law of the land by forcing you to buy into it. It's sad, really, since we have a kindler, gentler health-care system that's already in place---if only we would use it.

---Baron V

Winners and Losers

This pretty much sums up the problem:

The concern about the 2014 timetable highlights a fundamental political reality of Obamacare: The success or failure of the program depends largely on the kindness of strangers---the insurance companies---and whatever happens in the marketplace, for good or ill, will be ascribed to President Obama and the Democrats, since Republicans refused to vote for the law or cooperate in efforts to make it work.

We already know that the marketplace is rigged to pick winners and losers in such a way that guarantees the profitability of middlemen, i.e., insurance companies, and their biggest institutional shareholders in the form of dividends: In other words, billions of dollars extracted from policyholders in exchange for zero health care. Sure, some people will benefit from the new regime, but many people---millions of them, in fact!---will be harmed by it, and that's why nobody on Team Democrat should be defending this stupid law. No matter what the President's intentions were, the minute he invited the same "stakeholders" who created our wasteful, too-expensive health-care system to the bargaining table, he all but guaranteed that our wasteful, too-expensive health-care system would remain, like, wasteful and too expensive. The only thing that has changed is who's shouldering the costs. You really want to make health care more affordable? Eliminate the middlemen.

---Baron V

Another Reason For That Truth & Reconciliation Commission

It's not that we're interested in calling out names and settling old scores---okay, maybe a little bit---and it's not only because we'd like to know, definitively, who knew what in the days before and immediately after the Twin Towers fell. And it's not only because we need to examine the eavesdropping and the torture and the depleted uranium and all the sundry humans-rights abuses that went on in our name. These things are all important, sure, but also of interest is the reality that a lot of our money that was earmarked for the Global War on Terror just seemed as if by magic to evaporate into the ether, and it would be nice to know exactly where it went:

[A]ccording to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, none of the three structures that were supposed to make up the clinic were built properly.

For example, the restroom was supposed to be composed of two rooms each with two stalls---one room for men, one for women. Instead, the firm built it as one room with four stalls.

The contract also called for the installation of three hot water heaters, but SIGAR found just one during its February inspection. There is no well house for the water pump, as was required, and the layout of the main clinic is not the same as was planned.

An Army official told SIGAR that it appeared "the third water heater was either installed and stolen, or never fully installed."

---Baron V

Good Thing We Are Cutting Food Stamps This Week

Because there's nowhere we can find the extra money:

According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records---ranging from “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video [...]

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

---Baron V

Light Blogging Day

Because it's flu season, and you know what that means . . . Later.

---Baron V

Tuesday Night Music Blogging

Because you can't make chili sauce without catching a little heat.

---Baron V

Circling the Wagons

Okay, it's understandable to a degree that when the temporal leader of "our side" comes under attack from the opposition, the instinctive reaction for many of us is to rally 'round the figurehead, the better to protect him from the death-of-a-thousand-cuts that can weaken his ability to govern. But what's annoying about the members of Team Democrat boasting the many benefits of the Goldberg Act---and to be fair, there are some---what they're overlooking is the simple fact that it's simply a bad law. The reasons for this are numerous, and some have been discussed here before, but among them is the fact that the law facilitates massive transfer payments from taxpayers to private health-insurance companies. Who benefits? Well, poor people and minimum-wage workers, surely, who will get affordable care if their employers choose to drop their coverage, and people with preexisting conditions, assuming they can afford the monthly premiums. But the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the executive management teams and corporate board members of the insurers, as well as their largest institutional shareholders. This is not going to help our growing income inequality problem, and if anything, will only make it worse as middle-income earners who don't qualify for subsidies find their purchasing power diminished by higher premiums and deductibles. We should remember, the entire law was predicated on Republican policy proposals, and for that reason, no Democrat with any common sense or principles should be mindlessly cheering it. Instead, we should be plotting how we can retake the House of Representatives so as to enact real health-care reform, not more corporate welfare.

---Baron V

Overton Windows

It's always worth using whatever media is at our disposal to drag seemingly crazy ideas into the mainstream, but in our ossified political culture, when it comes to liberal policy proposals, the windows are generally closed. That's unfortunate, because whether we expand Social Security outlays by a factor of three, raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, or start minting some coins and enact a guaranteed annual income of $30,000 a year, our policymakers have got to do something to stave off the looming poverty crisis that's going to unfold if they stay on the current path and do nothing. Millions of us lost trillions of dollars in the Great Recession, and many of us---particularly the not-quite-olds over age 50---are never going to be able to earn enough back to escape a future of destitution.

---Baron V

Moral of The Story

When you attempt to make deals with Republicans, innocent people get hurt:

“We were all told that these cuts for November 1 would not happen,” said Purvis. When “they decided they were going to take from some of the increases to food stamps” to fund First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program, she told Salon, “We were told, you know, by the president . . . these cuts will not happen, we won’t get rid of the program. Well guess what? November 1 is around the corner, and no one has restored that money.”

Those $250 billion in tax cuts we offered to the crazy persons in exchange for their support of the Recovery Act---which never happened---sure was worth the effort, now, wasn't it. I know it's beating the same old drum, but we really did have the opportunity to greatly expand the social-safety net in 2009-10. For whatever reason, we failed utterly. So bring on the food riots!

---Baron V

They Never Learn

One of these things:

In the midst of the controversy over U.S. surveillance this summer, top intelligence officials held a briefing for President Obama at the White House---one that would provide him with a broad inventory of programs being carried out by the National Security Agency.

Some of those programs, including the collection of e-mails and other communications from overseas, had already been disclosed because of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Obama was also informed of at least one program whose scope surprised him: “head of state collection.”

Is not like the other:

The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping.

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

Okay, there's an easy way to sort this out. If the spooks are lamely covering their asses, the President needs to start firing some people. If, on the other hand, the President is patently full of shit---keeping in mind that we could keep our present health insurance unless, you know, we couldn't---he needs to suck it up and offer up some apologies. But either way, considering how many of these bad policies are legacies of the previous administration, the President is going to rue the day---if he hasn't already---that he refused to call for that Truth & Reconciliation Commission. "Looking forward, never back" was never a proper antidote to the previous administration's abuses of power, and it's equally not a justification for ignoring how much damage they've done---and continue to do---to America's reputation. It's unfortunate that so many of these snafus have blown up on the President's watch, but by embracing the policies of war criminals who were wrong about everything, he's invited the misery upon himself.

---Baron V

Monday Night Music Blogging

Because white people are insane, but the extraterrestrial brothers are wise.

---Baron V

Why They Needed to Get it Right

Specifically, Team Democrat really needed to make sure the Affordable Care Act would actually make health care more genuinely affordable to the vast majority of Americans---not only for the morally deficient welfare moochers---because if it didn't work as promised,

We will own this problem forever.

Of course, a simple fix would be for the government to subsidize virtually everyone's health-care coverage. Too bad nobody at the White House thought to push for that when they were writing the law.

---Baron V

If You Like Your Present Health Insurance, You Can Keep It

But your present insurer doesn't have to keep you!

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.

And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.

"The deductible is less," he said, "But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable."

"I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick," Schwab added. "Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable."

Heather Goldwater, 38, of South Carolina, is raising a new baby while running her own PR firm. She said she received a letter last July from Cigna, her insurance company, that said the company would no longer offer her individual plan, and promised to send a letter by October offering a comparable option. So far, she hasn't received anything.

"I'm completely overwhelmed with a six-month-old and a business,” said Goldwater. “The last thing I can do is spend hours poring over a website that isn't working, trying to wrap my head around this entire health care overhaul."

I'm a bit surprised that I haven't been sent any cancellation letter from my insurer yet, but I've only been enrolled with Anthem BC for a few months, and my deductible is fairly high, so maybe they'll keep me on the same plan for awhile. It's still a lot stingier and a lot less expensive than my old employer-based plan, though! But either way, people shouldn't be forced to shop for health insurance the way they shop for a car or a TV. You don't need a car or a TV to survive, but eventually everyone needs doctors and medicines to survive, and that's that the fatal flaw of the Goldberg Act: it relies on market forces to create fair pricing mechanisms between providers and consumers when the market is tilted in favor of the former, and the latter have no practical bargaining power. There has always been, and continues to be, a better, cheaper way.

---Baron V

The Art of The Possible

Yes, that's the definition of politics as practiced by the pragmatic centrists on Team Democrat, and that's why, they remind us, the Affordable Care Act was the best they could do for health-care reform at the time since they only had 59 votes, not 60, so Medicare For All wasn't feasible. That's certainly possible, but it can never be known for certain because Team Democrat never tried making the argument for Medicare For All and because they never considered making changes to the filibuster rules. You can't make a hole-in-one if you don't swing the golf club---and yes, once you do swing, there's the chance that your ball will end up in the lake instead of on the putting green, and you have to tee up another ball and take another whack at it, but if you don't at least try, don't blame others for your failure. Nobody ever hit a million-dollar jackpot playing nickel slots, y'know.

---Baron V