the uninsured annually had 5.5 office visits, used 1.8 prescription drugs and visited an emergency room once. Almost half (46 percent) said that they “had a usual place of care,” and 61 percent said that they had “received all needed care” in the past year. About three-quarters (78 percent) who received care judged it “of high quality.” Health spending for them averaged $3,257…
when people were covered by Medicaid, many of these figures rose. The annual number of office visits went to 8.2; the number of drugs, to 2.5; the share of patients with a usual place of care, to 70 percent; the proportion receiving all needed care, to 72 percent. Preventive care also increased. The share of patients receiving screening for cholesterol moved from 27 percent for the uninsured to 42 percent; the share of women older than 50 having mammograms jumped from 29 percent to 59 percent; the share of men older than 50 getting PSA tests for prostate cancer doubled, from 21 percent to 41 percent. Spending rose to $4,429.
Unfortunately, the added care and cost didn’t much improve physical health. The study screened for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and the risk of heart attack or stroke. No major differences were detected between the uninsured and Medicaid recipients.
So: 2700 very expensive pages not only creates chaos and unemployment, but is pretty much a total waste of time.
And there’s this from the WaPo: “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations.” Knowing what we know now about the administration, what happens to those who say no to her?
There’s a fellow named Ben Rhodes (b. 1977) who has been getting some attention of late. He was just past 30 when he wrote the inane Cairo speech of 2009. Politico had a rather breathless piece on the writing of the speech at that time. He is or was the only speechwriter on foreign affairs for the White House, and so Ed Lasky zeroes in on him when it comes to the bad fiction delivered on Benghazi. We’ll see how that develops.
One shocking thing we learned in reading the Politico piece is that Rhodes is or was the senior speechwriter. The other speechwriter, Jon Favreau, is four years younger and started writing for the Chicago team when he was 24 or so. So when the administration gets its history wrong on everything from D-Day to the Berlin Airlift, there’s a reason. The facts are coming from young ignoramuses who don’t know much American history.
The American people ought to be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be fooled by two dolts in dunce caps. Far worse than that, however, is that the media celebrate their work by deifying the fellow who delivers the rubbish they peddle. Imagine: a country of 300 million taken in by two young fools and a guy with a mellifluous voice.
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said. The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive…The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs
WSJ: “restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty.”
Clarice Feldman: “where once legislative initiatives originated in the office of the Chief Executive, in recent decades, they are increasingly being written on the Hill (by those inexperienced twenty-something staffers).”
Of course it’s a scandal that Congress is trying to exempt itself from this healthcare mess, but we have a solution that will make things better. Get all the young staffers who write these awful laws to work fewer than 30 hours a week. No healthcare coverage for the youngsters, which will encourage them to find actual gainful employment, and fewer hours for those that remain to do mischief on the government payroll.
Levi currently spends about $140,000 a year on insurance premiums to cover 25 managerial staff at his business, Consolidated Management, which runs cafeterias at schools, offices and jails. Under the new law, he will have to offer insurance to all of his 102 full-time employees starting in January. Assuming all of them take the coverage, Mr. Levi says the cost of premiums could exceed $500,000. “I’ve never made a profit in any year of the company that has surpassed that amount,” says Mr. Levi, 62 years old. “I don’t make enough money.” He says it makes more sense to drop insurance entirely and pay a penalty of about $144,000…
Epstein, owner of Firstaff Nursing Services Inc. in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., has similar plans. He intends to stop offering health insurance benefits at his home health-care company. Mr. Epstein, 52, employs about 250 workers and currently provides health insurance to his 20 office personnel. If he were to start covering the 100 or so nurses and nursing assistants that work full time, his annual health-insurance costs would jump to roughly $600,000 from the current $100,000, he says. Even if he takes the penalty option, he estimates he would have to pay about $240,000—a cost he doesn’t think his business could absorb. To compensate, he plans to cut the number of hours his nurses and nursing assistants work so they will be considered part-time under the law. He says he will hire more part-timers to ensure patients receive the same level of care. “We’re going to do everything we can in order to stay in business,” he says.
So more and more people are going to have the Page 21 problem. Total disaster.
In 1990, there were 2,245 murders…the annual number of murders has fallen more than 80%, to 419 in 2012…Mr. Kelly says that stop-and-frisk is a critical — and constitutional — part of this success…53% of stops involve African-Americans, though blacks commit more than 70% of crimes. Hispanics on the other hand make up 32% of stops but commit 26% of crimes…96% of shooting victims and 90% of murder victims in New York City are black or Hispanic.
Nonetheless, “The liberal candidates — there is no other kind in these parts — are whacking with particular gusto at a police tactic.” Displacement again. Can’t expect these politicians to deal with the real problem, an illegitimacy rate of well over 70% in these neighborhoods.
Half of Detroit is illiterate. 80% of NYC public school graduates admitted to CCNY can’t read or write well enough to do the work. What are the chances they can comprehend this chart? When things get out of control, as they will in a few more years on this path, around half the country will be completely surprised. HT: BI
Julia is everywhere, as is her critique of heteronormative white male privilege. She’s on the West Coast. She’s at Dartmouth. She’s in Wisconsin. Everyone’s gone mad. There’s no hope.
Related: counselors are on stand-by to assist grammar school students suffering from PTSD (that’s Pop Tart Stress Disorder). No nation can survive this level of stupidity and loss of common sense.
Since at least 1950, all but two of the public shootings in America with more than three deaths have taken place where guns were banned. Take the Aurora shooting last summer. Within 20 minutes of the murderer’s apartment there were seven movie theaters premiering the Batman movie. The shooter didn’t go to the one that was closest to his apartment. And he didn’t choose the one with the largest audience. Instead, he went to the only one where guns were banned.
It doesn’t matter that armed civilians stop these things well before the police can. Everywhere in the USA should be a gun free zone, and we should quintuple the number of all laws and regulations on the books to make the country perfect. Oh wait, we already have!
The Energy Department gave $150 million in economic Recovery Act funds to a battery company, LG Chem Michigan, which has yet to manufacture cells used in any vehicles sold to the public and whose workers passed time watching movies, playing board, card and video games, or volunteering for animal shelters and community groups…only three of five planned production lines were complete, that less than half of the expected 440 jobs had been created and that battery production had not yet begun. General Motors, which was expected to buy batteries from the plant in Holland, Mich., is still buying the electric-car batteries from LG Chem in South Korea. LG Chem Michigan has reimbursed the Energy Department for $842,189 in costs the inspector general found to be “unreasonable and unallowable” for time employees spent working for Habitat for Humanity, animal shelters and outdoor nature centers…The 650,000-square-foot plant — which is also eligible for more than $175 million in tax relief from the state and local governments through 2025 — was supposed to produce lithium-ion batteries to support the manufacture of 60,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2013. The July 15, 2010, groundbreaking was attended by President Obama and then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), who said Michigan would become the “North American battery capital”…He said in 2010 that the LG Chem Michigan venture was “leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America” and that by 2012, batteries for the Chevrolet Volt and the electric Ford Focus could be “stamped ‘Made in America.’ ” He said the plant was a “symbol” of where Holland, Michigan and America were going. Sales of electric vehicles have lagged behind expectations, especially those of Obama, who aimed at having 1 million electric vehicles on the road by the middle of the decade. The Chevy Volt is the best-selling electric vehicle; GM said it sold 30,090 Volts worldwide last year. For those cars, GM has been buying LG Chem lithium-ion batteries made in South Korea. As a result, LG Chem has put its Michigan workers on rotating furloughs.
Gotta give the guy credit: “He said the plant was a ‘symbol’ of where Holland, Michigan and America were going.” Well, at least he was right about that. HT: WRM
a popular game in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York was to name a famous person — Mother Teresa, or John Lennon -‐ and decide how they could be prosecuted: “It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you’d see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like “false statements” (a felony, up to five years), “obstructing the mails” (five years), or “false pretenses on the high seas” (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The, result, however, was inevitable: ‘prison time’.”
With so many more federal laws and regulations than were present in Jackson’s day, the task for prosecutors of first choosing the man – or woman – and then pinning the crime on him or her has become much easier. This problem has been discussed at length in Gene Healy’s Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, and Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day. The upshot of both is that the proliferation of federal criminal statutes and regulations has reached the point that virtually every citizen, knowingly or not (usually not) is potentially at risk for prosecution. That is undoubtedly true, and the consequences are drastic and troubling.
The result of overcriminalization is that prosecutors no longer need to wait for obvious signs of a crime. Instead of finding Professor Plum dead in the conservatory and launching an investigation, authorities can instead start an investigation of Colonel Mustard as soon as someone has suggested he is a shady character. And since, as Wu’s game illustrates, everyone is a criminal if prosecutors look hard enough, they’re guaranteed to find something eventually.
You remember of course the insane case of Gibson Guitars. If you’re of a certain age, you remember a time in America when it wasn’t illegal to rescue a deer, remodel your home, open a lemonade stand or throw a frisbee. That time sadly is no more. How about this: for every new law a legislature wants to pass, it has to get rid of ten existing laws.
American manufacturing is more dependent on metals and minerals access than ever before. Yet there is no country on the planet where it takes longer to get a permit for domestic mining. Among other consequences of this red tape, there are now 19 strategic metals and minerals for which the U.S. is currently 100% import-dependent — and for 11 of them a single country, China, is among the top three providers…The U.S. has domestic resources for 18 of those 19 metals and minerals we now exclusively import from abroad. But a maze of government regulations has made mining them here too difficult. That’s the consistent finding of the annual Behre Dolbear Country Rankings for Mining Investment, known in the mining world as the “Where-Not-to-Mine Report.” The U.S. is currently tied for last place (with Papua New Guinea) in the time it takes to permit a new mine — seven to 10 years on average.
The unemployment rate in ND, where all that fracking is taking place, is 3%, versus 7.9% in the US overall. Imagine what could happen to the US economy if we just stopped shooting ourselves in the foot.
An Indiana police officer and his wife who nursed an injured baby deer back to health plan to fight state charges stemming from their rescue efforts. Jeff Counceller, a police officer in the eastern Indiana city of Connersville, found the deer in 2010 curled up on a front porch with maggot-infested puncture wounds. He and his wife, Jennifer, kept the deer in an enclosure on their 17-acre farm and named her Dani, The Indianapolis Star reports. Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources told the Councellers to return the ailing deer to the wild, but they took it home and nursed it back to health. The couple were charged earlier this month with illegal possession of a white-tailed deer, a misdemeanor that carries up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. Jeff Counceller said returning it to the wild at the time “would have been a death sentence.” The family told the Star they intended to return the deer to the wild once it was strong enough to survive on its own. The Councellers tried to find a home for the deer at animal rescue operations, petting zoos and deer farms, but no one would take her. They say they didn’t know it was illegal to keep the deer. The deer vanished last summer on the day when the DNR planned to euthanize the animal after the couple’s request for a rescue permit was denied.
Good thing they didn’t try to remodel the deer’s pen. Good thing they didn’t try to fund their rescue through a lemonade stand, or try to teach the deer to throw a frisbee.
Apes and pigs again. Where have we seen this before? And Mac Owens and Captain Katie Petronio weign in on the latest offense to common sense from the faculty lounge. The Tatler explains that the faculty lounge looked a lot more like Google than GM when it came to running an election company. Take a look. Very impressive. Imagine if they applied that same discipline and savvy to supporting the expansion of the private economy. Fat chance.
Finally, Egan-Jones, which downgraded US debt three times, has been “barred from grading government debt and asset-backed securities for 18 months” by the SEC. We’re all trapped momentarily inside a video game whose narrative is shaped by government and the media. It won’t last forever, and this hectoring of S&P and Egan-Jones is going to look very bad in retrospect.
Two months ago Illinois’ Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin made the utterly misleading assertion that “Social Security does not add one penny to our debt — not a penny.” In fact, Social Security, which is a pay-as-you-go program financed primarily by payroll taxes, began taking in less money than it was spending for the first time in 2010. Its cash flow deficit has been growing ever since, and it accelerated since the enactment of the payroll tax holiday two years ago.
Only by counting the yearly interest on the $2.7 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury IOU’s that already sit in the program’s trust fund (paid for, ironically enough, with more IOU’s) — a fund that has been raided over the years to pay for other government spending, can one possibly claim that Social Security “is not in crisis.”
The following day, the president’s aides echoed Durbin’s fiction about Social Security. “We should address the drivers of the deficit,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during his daily press briefing, “and Social Security currently is not a driver of the deficit.”
This is pretty funny considering that even the NYT has noticed recently that Social Security is in worse shape than you thought. It should be shocking that politicians defend a practice that would send them to the hoosegow if they were directors of a private company, but it’s not, is it? Say, why don’t they just give some of those magic coins to the Social Security “trust fund.” Then everything will be swell.
In England a 61 year old man was convicted of the crime of having a Swiss Army knife in his glove compartment. However, you can buy the same knife online at the UK Boy Scouts website. (Some US scouts buying the knife would have committed a crime in the UK by doing so because they were too young.) There are a number of videos made by Englishmen attempting to make sense of the situation, but frankly we were more confused by the explanations. Apparently you can have a knife for camping but not an “assault knife” if we understand correctly, even if they are the very same knife. Coming soon to a country near you. Merry Christmas! HT: PL
The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.
It doesn’t matter. In our unmoored country, facts are worth less than the opinions of our betters. HT: PL (Did we say unmoored?)
A rare crime occurs, one that violates half a dozen existing laws. Solution: more new laws! Absurd. How about new, stricter man-control laws since men commit 89.5% of murders (page 4)? HT: PL
VDH provides some historical context to our cultural rot. The generation coming of age looks to its elders in the media and the academy and assumes that central planning, atheism, diversity and catastrophic AGW are what the wise know to be true. It’s hard to see a way back from this.
