The tricky thing about separating church and state is that the state is a kind of church.--Richman
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was supposed to solve many health insurance and health care problems, but it appears to have exacerbated them. One such problem is that those with pre-existing conditions are getting worse care. Patients with pre-existing conditions are generally more expensive to treat, but insurance companies cannot charge more for them, and so health plans are designed to dissuade these types of customers through restricted access to specialists and expensive drugs.
When we buy "insurance" for annual physical exams or to purchase our monthly statin prescription, each of which has a probability approaching 1.0, we are effectively pre-paying for a known expense; we aren't buying insurance. When we do that, we expose the system to multiple administrative steps as a third-party payer must negotiate with hospitals and drug companies, among others, and approve, pay, and monitor our expenditures. At each step, additional organizations are involved and regulatory costs are incurred, resulting in, perhaps, a doubling of costs for these predictable expenditures.
When patients select health care goods and services, but third parties pay for them, patients have a tendency to purchase too much health care.
Several people have a very different take on the Trump trade talk.
Recently proposed trade barriers do not seem aimed at protecting sectors with lots of vulnerable low skilled workers, but rather slowing the growth of Chinese technology: Another bill would specifically restrict Chinese investments in the ten sectors targeted by the Made in China 2025 plan. If America does impose tariffs, they would also mainly focus on these ten industries. Nearly all the proposed duties affect high-tech products such as avionics and medical devices. Low-tech goods that China sells by the shipload would be mostly untouched. He Weiwen, a former diplomat, says that America's goal is not to shrink its trade deficit but to impede China's progress.
Who are....the FALN?
Trump has pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, who had spent almost 22 years in jail. He is getting comments from both lunatic fringes--and many because it looks as if the whole thing was stimulated by Kim Kardashian.
Johnson alleges she never actually sold or dealt drugs, and that her role in the group was that of a "telephone mule" who passed messages along. Nevertheless, she was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine and money laundering, which led to a sentence of life plus 25 years in federal prison -- despite it being her first offense.
I have no love for these people but 25 years in jail for something like that seems like an awful lot.
Malkin on the Trump pardons: No one did more damage to the integrity of the federal pardon attorney's office than Holder, who pressured its staff to abandon its full-scale opposition to Clinton's clemency for 16 members of the deadly FALN Puerto Rican terrorist group and Los Macheteros. These Clinton/Holder beneficiaries were linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings and six murders.
Who are....the FALN?
Trump has pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, who had spent almost 22 years in jail. He is getting comments from both lunatic fringes--and many because it looks as if the whole thing was stimulated by Kim Kardashian.
Johnson alleges she never actually sold or dealt drugs, and that her role in the group was that of a "telephone mule" who passed messages along. Nevertheless, she was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine and money laundering, which led to a sentence of life plus 25 years in federal prison -- despite it being her first offense.
I have no love for these people but 25 years in jail for something like that seems like an awful lot.
Malkin on the Trump pardons: No one did more damage to the integrity of the federal pardon attorney's office than Holder, who pressured its staff to abandon its full-scale opposition to Clinton's clemency for 16 members of the deadly FALN Puerto Rican terrorist group and Los Macheteros. These Clinton/Holder beneficiaries were linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings and six murders.
There is a very disturbing article in SI on the Pirates' handling of Cole. They accuse the Pirates of mismanaging his pitching and his selections--emphasizing the knuckle-curve, a pitch I did not even know he had. They say the success of Charlie Morton in Houston is not a coincidence.
Kurzweil’s Google team is working on a project that you can try right now called Talk To Books. Ask a question; TTB takes half a second (literally) to read 120,000 books and suggest answers, displaying the books they came from. It’s clunky: many of the searches you try will produce super dumb results. And they chose to read only 120,000 books instead of a million, because, Kurzweil says, they knew people wouldn’t put up with waiting six seconds. But they’re just getting started.
The Americans have attacked Assad (with the Brits and the French) in an effort to make war more kind and gentle. The Russians--the Russians!!!--are indignant.
This Comey book and his publicity rounds are going to be really ugly. Integrity is like a bank account: You can withdraw only what you have put in. Trump has little to fall back on here and Comey himself is vulnerable. This could quickly look like a catfight in a bordello.
In a similar frame, it appears as if McCabe may have lied to the Feds. Don't try that at home. But the outcome is uncertain. Indeed, Scooter Libby was just pardoned, a man who was relentlessly pursued--and convicted--by a special prosecutor, well regarded for his "high integrity," when the special prosecutor knew, knew, he was innocent. In Washington the innocent seem to be hunted to ground, the guilty not so much.
The political fabric is fraying here. In public. These so-called leaders are playing with fire. Not everyone makes their decisions on Instagram. The social and political structure is a bargain among the people. Confidence--and stability, too--is earned.
#NoneOfTheAbove
In 1947, a giant explosion occurred during the loading of fertilizer onto the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City, Texas. Nearly 600 people were killed and thousands were injured when the ship was literally blown to bits.
In 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kendrick Lamar has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music, for his album Damn.
"We need scarcity. Surplus destroys religion and Art. It turns religion into philosophy. It turns Art into nothing." --Thomas Jefferson "Pete" Peterson.
More people view the GOP tax overhaul as a bad idea than a good one, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found, but Americans see Republicans as better equipped to handle taxes and other economic issues.
Dramatic growth in the economy in the recent years has pushed the Irish Republic into second place in the EU in terms of per capita income.
Golden oldie:
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steeleydock.blogspot.com
Hospital scrubs in public places. An associate editor of "The Atlantic" saw some people in scrubs having lunch in a restaurant and was, of course, horrified.
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Comey says Trump "morally unfit" to be president. This is just awful but, like the snake, fascinating. Morality. And the FBI opposes. Can you imagine how we would respond if this criticism came from the campus of Liberty University?
Was Kennedy "morally fit?" Or Johnson?
A study looking at college graduates entering new jobs found that less than a third were able to write adequately for their new position
In 2016, the most recent full year for which data are available, states were more than $1.4 trillion in the red. Pension debt has increased for 15 straight years, and shows no signs of abating. Reason blogger Eric Boehm notes "The really scary part is that pension debt keeps increasing despite the fact that taxpayers' contributions to state-level pension plans have doubled as a share of state revenue in the past decade." Worse still, as performance lags expectations, desperate pension fund managers have gone in for increasingly risky investments — meaning that workers' pensions might not be as safe as they think. Pension-fund debt surged $295 billion from 2015 to 2016, with states having just $2.6 trillion in assets to cover total promised pensions of more than $4 trillion. That's a huge gap, and for many states and localities it means virtual bankruptcy.
And the public may not be sympathetic.
According to the NYT, Joseph Robertson, the retired head of Oregon Health & Science University, takes home a pension of $76,111. That's every month. Then there's former University of Oregon head coach and athletic director Mike Bellotti, whose pension delivers $46,583.00 a month in benefits.
But it isn't just Oregon. The Times piece also highlights Scranton, Pa. There, 58% of police and firefighters are on disability pensions, retiring before the normal minimum age. The average age of retired police officers in Scranton, the Times reported, was 44.9 years old.
But it isn't just Oregon. The Times piece also highlights Scranton, Pa. There, 58% of police and firefighters are on disability pensions, retiring before the normal minimum age. The average age of retired police officers in Scranton, the Times reported, was 44.9 years old.
Denim jeans are on the decline because they do not have expanding waistlines.
6 of 12 couples in a recent weddings section in the NYT were introduced to each other on OKCupid.
The New Yorker did a story on, of all things, Chick-fil-A’s move to New York with the headline, “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City.”
This was their tweet to go along with the article: "Chick-fil-A’s arrival in New York City feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism."
The article is worth a read for its unabashed bigotry and simplemindedness. The New Yorker! Every once in a while these awful people reveal themselves.
On any given night, more than 450,000 people in the US are locked up simply because they can’t make bail.
In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu observed that “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who differ with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.”
So: Want Peace, Vote Free Trade?
Lawmakers worry a proliferation of data centers lured by Iceland’s Nordic climate and the geothermal steam is threatening the environment and tourism. The perils of success.
‘We’re making a form of mass entertainment and asking the question at the very same time: Why do we enjoy this sort of entertainment?’ --somebody on "Westworld"
AAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph:
Image: taxnotes.com
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