Eli,
With friends like this, Obama doesn't need enemies.
Bill
Friday, June 15, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Cuomo is a Genius: Restricts Gas Drilling to Areas Where there is Gas
Eli,
I have little respect for Andrew Cuomo, but this is pure genius. His plan is to allow gas drilling with hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale areas close to Pennsylvania and restrict it from areas that are close to the water supplies of New York City and Syracuse.
Now where do gas companies want to use hydraulic fracturing? You get one guess: In the Marcellus Shale areas close to Pennsylvania. Cuomo is allowing oil and gas companies to drill for gas in areas where they think they will be successful.
Genius.
Bill
I have little respect for Andrew Cuomo, but this is pure genius. His plan is to allow gas drilling with hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale areas close to Pennsylvania and restrict it from areas that are close to the water supplies of New York City and Syracuse.
Now where do gas companies want to use hydraulic fracturing? You get one guess: In the Marcellus Shale areas close to Pennsylvania. Cuomo is allowing oil and gas companies to drill for gas in areas where they think they will be successful.
Genius.
Bill
Insurance is a terrible way to pay for medical care
Eli,
Why do we use insurance to pay for normal medical care? It's such a bad deal for consumers. The answer is, of course, the historical anomaly of companies using health care as a benefit to avoid wage controls during WWII and the subsequent determination that these insurance premiums should be tax deductible. Subsidies mixed with inertia create terrible results.
I bring this up since my company is switching medical insurance carriers. I have a choice of two policies. One costs $1,000 per month, the other $1,300 per month. My firm contributes a like amount. In total, we are paying an insurance company somewhere between $24,000 and $31,200 per year for medical care. Both are littered with benefits I have no need of and do their best to shield me from knowing or paying for most normal medical services. On the surface, it seems like a good thing, but it's not. For consumers, or at least this consumer, it's an awful waste.
In a normal year, my medical consumption is about $10,000 per year. That's full freight. No discounts, no negotiated rates. List price. So why am I and my company paying $25,000 per year? Well, of course, to avoid large expenses. And that happens, in my family about every five years. I had an appendectomy. Three kids. Some unusual issues for us last year. Every five years or so something big and expensive happens.
But insurance is still a bad deal. Let's say every year I put $25,000 into an account. For fun, let's call it a health saving account. Half would come from me, half from my employer. Out of that fund I would pay for my health care. After five years I would have $75,000 in the account. $25,000 per year x five years, less $10,000 per year for normal medical expenses. Now my emergency arises, and the $75,000 is available to pay for that emergency. Plus, since the normal medical care is something where I see the price, I'm much more likely to shop around. The $10,000 per year of medical care could go down. The typical argument is people can't shop around for doctors. That's hogwash. Normal medical care is something that can absolutely be shopped for. Conversely, it could go up. Maybe I'd like at $10,000 and determine my family's health is worth much more than that.
Alternatively, I could contribute less to my HSA and buy a catastrophic insurance policy. Buy insurance only for those large unexpected items that would be financially unbearable. Similar to flood or fire insurance we have on our houses.
Over the past five years, even give my recent unusually high medical expenses, medical insurance has been a sink hole for me. Just an awful waste of money.
It is inexplicable to me the denial of many, on the right and the left, of more market oriented solutions to financing health care. They are right in front of our face. My idea is nothing new. But we continue to go round and round on trying to determine how to make the health insurance market a better way to pay for health care. The answer may be health insurance is a terrible way to pay for health care.
Bill
Why do we use insurance to pay for normal medical care? It's such a bad deal for consumers. The answer is, of course, the historical anomaly of companies using health care as a benefit to avoid wage controls during WWII and the subsequent determination that these insurance premiums should be tax deductible. Subsidies mixed with inertia create terrible results.
I bring this up since my company is switching medical insurance carriers. I have a choice of two policies. One costs $1,000 per month, the other $1,300 per month. My firm contributes a like amount. In total, we are paying an insurance company somewhere between $24,000 and $31,200 per year for medical care. Both are littered with benefits I have no need of and do their best to shield me from knowing or paying for most normal medical services. On the surface, it seems like a good thing, but it's not. For consumers, or at least this consumer, it's an awful waste.
In a normal year, my medical consumption is about $10,000 per year. That's full freight. No discounts, no negotiated rates. List price. So why am I and my company paying $25,000 per year? Well, of course, to avoid large expenses. And that happens, in my family about every five years. I had an appendectomy. Three kids. Some unusual issues for us last year. Every five years or so something big and expensive happens.
But insurance is still a bad deal. Let's say every year I put $25,000 into an account. For fun, let's call it a health saving account. Half would come from me, half from my employer. Out of that fund I would pay for my health care. After five years I would have $75,000 in the account. $25,000 per year x five years, less $10,000 per year for normal medical expenses. Now my emergency arises, and the $75,000 is available to pay for that emergency. Plus, since the normal medical care is something where I see the price, I'm much more likely to shop around. The $10,000 per year of medical care could go down. The typical argument is people can't shop around for doctors. That's hogwash. Normal medical care is something that can absolutely be shopped for. Conversely, it could go up. Maybe I'd like at $10,000 and determine my family's health is worth much more than that.
Alternatively, I could contribute less to my HSA and buy a catastrophic insurance policy. Buy insurance only for those large unexpected items that would be financially unbearable. Similar to flood or fire insurance we have on our houses.
Over the past five years, even give my recent unusually high medical expenses, medical insurance has been a sink hole for me. Just an awful waste of money.
It is inexplicable to me the denial of many, on the right and the left, of more market oriented solutions to financing health care. They are right in front of our face. My idea is nothing new. But we continue to go round and round on trying to determine how to make the health insurance market a better way to pay for health care. The answer may be health insurance is a terrible way to pay for health care.
Bill
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
We Get the Government We Deserve
Bill
In your recent posts I detect a note of dismay if not despair about the direction of the campaign thus far, and I share it. In the last 2 years we have experienced the spectacle of 4 reasonable efforts at fashioning a bipartisan solution to our fiscal crisis (Gang of 6, Simpson Bowles, Grand bargain, Gang of 6 again) and each has tipped across the stage of national consciousness like a kabuki dancer acting out an ancient ritual- with lots of pleasing aesthetics but everyone already knows how the story ends. Each effort has failed not only because of a failure of leadership (although the principles have hardly distinguished themselves), but because the constituencies they represent don't want to accept a solution that changes their current economic level of comfort (low taxes for conservatives, generous outlays for liberals and conservatives). Both sides think cutting is fine as long as it comes out of the other guy's hide. Both sides are criminally delusional about just how much sacrifice and from how many actors that sacrifice will be required in order to fix the problem. Republicans fulminate that all we need to do is cut off the poor, and Democrats whine that all we need to do is tax the super rich and there will plenty of money for all. As you have pointed out, both sides are full of baloney. Partisans on both sides cling to the psychotic delusion that supreme victory in our 50-50 nation is just around the corner. We live in a country where President Kennedy's famous injunction is stood on its head.The only politicians who tell the truth anymore are those no longer in office and apparently no longer interested in seeking it. Better take my temperature, that's Jeb Bush I'm praising.
So my answer to Grandma is look to yourself honey. Look at all the country has provided for your generation at a cost 16 trillion bucks. Look at what you are prepared to give up, what problems you are prepared to solve before before you ask someone else to solve them for you. And ask the candidates to do the same.
Your cranky fellow blogger
Eli
In your recent posts I detect a note of dismay if not despair about the direction of the campaign thus far, and I share it. In the last 2 years we have experienced the spectacle of 4 reasonable efforts at fashioning a bipartisan solution to our fiscal crisis (Gang of 6, Simpson Bowles, Grand bargain, Gang of 6 again) and each has tipped across the stage of national consciousness like a kabuki dancer acting out an ancient ritual- with lots of pleasing aesthetics but everyone already knows how the story ends. Each effort has failed not only because of a failure of leadership (although the principles have hardly distinguished themselves), but because the constituencies they represent don't want to accept a solution that changes their current economic level of comfort (low taxes for conservatives, generous outlays for liberals and conservatives). Both sides think cutting is fine as long as it comes out of the other guy's hide. Both sides are criminally delusional about just how much sacrifice and from how many actors that sacrifice will be required in order to fix the problem. Republicans fulminate that all we need to do is cut off the poor, and Democrats whine that all we need to do is tax the super rich and there will plenty of money for all. As you have pointed out, both sides are full of baloney. Partisans on both sides cling to the psychotic delusion that supreme victory in our 50-50 nation is just around the corner. We live in a country where President Kennedy's famous injunction is stood on its head.The only politicians who tell the truth anymore are those no longer in office and apparently no longer interested in seeking it. Better take my temperature, that's Jeb Bush I'm praising.
So my answer to Grandma is look to yourself honey. Look at all the country has provided for your generation at a cost 16 trillion bucks. Look at what you are prepared to give up, what problems you are prepared to solve before before you ask someone else to solve them for you. And ask the candidates to do the same.
Your cranky fellow blogger
Eli
Obama the Republican?
Eli,
About 20-21 minutes into the broadcast of ABC's, "This Week", Van Jones, the Obama surrogate says, "Now his to-do list is literally the Republican Party's to-do list. He's saying let's give tax cuts to small businesses, they won't do that. He's saying let's give homeowners the tools to cut red tape and get re-financing on their homes, on their own expense. The Republicans won't do that. They won't pass their own agenda because it's Barak Obama."
This is their campaign? Obama is a better Republican than the Republicans?
When the surrogates are pressed on Solyndra, they'll respond it was a George Bush program. When pressed on foreign affairs they say'll they've been tougher on terror than Bush. They say they are fiscally responsible while the Republican's ran up the deficit. Obama's "to-do list is literally the Republican Party's to-do list."
Really? Vote for Obama because he's a better George Bush than George Bush?
Bill.
About 20-21 minutes into the broadcast of ABC's, "This Week", Van Jones, the Obama surrogate says, "Now his to-do list is literally the Republican Party's to-do list. He's saying let's give tax cuts to small businesses, they won't do that. He's saying let's give homeowners the tools to cut red tape and get re-financing on their homes, on their own expense. The Republicans won't do that. They won't pass their own agenda because it's Barak Obama."
This is their campaign? Obama is a better Republican than the Republicans?
When the surrogates are pressed on Solyndra, they'll respond it was a George Bush program. When pressed on foreign affairs they say'll they've been tougher on terror than Bush. They say they are fiscally responsible while the Republican's ran up the deficit. Obama's "to-do list is literally the Republican Party's to-do list."
Really? Vote for Obama because he's a better George Bush than George Bush?
Bill.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
"What About My Grandchildren?"
Eli,
About halfway through the article a woman remarks about the auto bail-out, good for the auto workers she says, "but where does that leave my grandchildren?"
For all Obama's talk of a level playing field and everyone playing by the rules, there sure seems to be a lot of preferences and favors to select groups. I don't think Romney is much better. Somewhat, not much.
I think these special favors hurt growth so hurt our kids. I think these special favors raise prices so hurt the poor. I think these special favors are paid for with borrowed money, so hurt our grand kids. It's not just autos, it's banks, and farmers, and unions and clean energy and on and on. Lots of protected interests on both sides of the aisle.
Obama can lose because people know we are leaving our grandchildren a terrible legacy. Romney may not win because he isn't offering a viable alternative.
The Obama pitch is, vote for me, I'm smart and I'll fix everything. Romney's pitch, sadly, is the same. I'll vote for the guy who says government is the organization breaking things, not fixing them.
Bill.
Dems to Obama: Voters don't believe economy talk
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/dems-obama-voters-dont-believe-economy-talk/593901
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Nature of Affliction and the Role of Fortune
Bill,
One of my colleagues, a gifted academic physician in her late 40s. has just been diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disease. In a great deal of pain, she is doing her job as best she can, relying on the rest of us to help out for as long as we can, hoping that this cursed affliction that is assaulting her body and spirit will somehow abate, but knowing full well that the natural history of her disease is more likely filled with debilitation and suffering, as her own T cells march relentlessly into her joints and elsewhere, exploding their cytokines like cluster bombs, destroying every healthy tissue n their path.
This is her second chronic autoimmune disease. The first, which commenced in her 20s, ending her promising career as a surgeon and required that she retrain in a less demanding field of medicine. In the meantime she has been fully engaged caring for mother who will die of a brain tumor within the next year.
The older I get, the more I'm struck by how much success in life, and satisfaction it hopefully brings, depends upon forces beyond our control. The difficulties in my own life, most of which have been of my own making, seem modest compared to the good fortune visited upon me by forces that feel beyond my control. I was lucky to be born a Jew in America, lucky to have the enduring affection and unyielding loyalty of a mate I do not deserve, lucky to have produced two glittering children, one of whom at least has forgiven me my inadequacies as a father, lucky have all of the material comforts and economic security a reasonable person could want, lucky to have been in the right place and time to help write a landmark paper at a very young age that improved medical practice, lucky to have stumbled into sharing this space with you. I've never been seriously ill or disabled, never lost a job, never buried a spouse, never felt the weight of discrimination, never worried about how the bills would get paid or what the future would hold.
And though I have mostly worked hard and overcome an obstacle here and there, I remain extremely skeptical that I somehow deserve my good fortune. Such a notion seems fatuous (to borrow your phrase) at the very least and sinister at the very worst. For one cannot argue that the more fortunate among us somehow deserve their good fortune without also embracing its counterpart, that the unlucky and afflicted somehow somehow deserve their misery along with the indolent, the bigoted,, the inept and the criminal.
Eli
One of my colleagues, a gifted academic physician in her late 40s. has just been diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disease. In a great deal of pain, she is doing her job as best she can, relying on the rest of us to help out for as long as we can, hoping that this cursed affliction that is assaulting her body and spirit will somehow abate, but knowing full well that the natural history of her disease is more likely filled with debilitation and suffering, as her own T cells march relentlessly into her joints and elsewhere, exploding their cytokines like cluster bombs, destroying every healthy tissue n their path.
This is her second chronic autoimmune disease. The first, which commenced in her 20s, ending her promising career as a surgeon and required that she retrain in a less demanding field of medicine. In the meantime she has been fully engaged caring for mother who will die of a brain tumor within the next year.
The older I get, the more I'm struck by how much success in life, and satisfaction it hopefully brings, depends upon forces beyond our control. The difficulties in my own life, most of which have been of my own making, seem modest compared to the good fortune visited upon me by forces that feel beyond my control. I was lucky to be born a Jew in America, lucky to have the enduring affection and unyielding loyalty of a mate I do not deserve, lucky to have produced two glittering children, one of whom at least has forgiven me my inadequacies as a father, lucky have all of the material comforts and economic security a reasonable person could want, lucky to have been in the right place and time to help write a landmark paper at a very young age that improved medical practice, lucky to have stumbled into sharing this space with you. I've never been seriously ill or disabled, never lost a job, never buried a spouse, never felt the weight of discrimination, never worried about how the bills would get paid or what the future would hold.
And though I have mostly worked hard and overcome an obstacle here and there, I remain extremely skeptical that I somehow deserve my good fortune. Such a notion seems fatuous (to borrow your phrase) at the very least and sinister at the very worst. For one cannot argue that the more fortunate among us somehow deserve their good fortune without also embracing its counterpart, that the unlucky and afflicted somehow somehow deserve their misery along with the indolent, the bigoted,, the inept and the criminal.
Eli
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