Do the Hokey Pokey

"Words no longer have meaning" says Justice Scalia and he should know, being a major contributor to the vocabulary of Right Wing babble.

Chief Justice Roberts' reasoning in yesterday's decision on the Affordible Care Act was "Argle-bargle." The decision against the Defense of Marriage Act was "Jiggery-pokery."  That's the power of words to hide the embarrassing truth and in Scalia's case, the truth is he's arguing the reverse of last years' Bargerly Argle.

"Three years ago, when the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality was challenged, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito read the law in such a way as to see all eligible consumers receiving subsidies, regardless of state or federal exchanges. In today’s dissent, these three had to read the law in the polar opposite way" writes Steve Benin. 

Contradictions like these say a lot. They say that the Court's most "conservative" spokesmen see the law in a rather situational way, That is to say it's right or wrong depending on who's doctrinal ox is being gored.  In this case maybe we can call it argumentum ad Obama, or "whatever he does is wrong."  If words have lost their meaning, which in a sense is true, perhaps it has much to do with the kind of rhetorical  wriggle-wragle or humpity-bumpidy defenders of  antiquated hoogely-boogely use to justify their dishonest HokeyPokey

All Opinions Are Not Equal

What's up with news stories with totally inaccurate attention grabbing headlines? 

For the past couple of days, headlines have proclaimed some variation of the following headline, Obamacare Will Cost 2.5M Workers by 2024. However, if you read the articles, it becomes clear that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did not conclude that the ACA was a causative factor in the decrease of workers. The CBO concluded the reduction in worker hours was almost entirely because of workers choosing to work less. According to the CBO report, “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor."

The problem is straightforward. A lot of people never read past a story's headline so their conclusions are based on a misleading headline. Some of those who read the article have poor reading comprehension skills and come away still believing that the ACA will cause 2.5 million people to lose their jobs. All of these misinformed people like to share their invalid information and the chain of people firmly believing information that is false grows by leaps and bounds. Couple that with the American belief in individualism and that all opinions are equally valid, and ill-informed opinion becomes fact for millions.

I think one of the dumbest statements that I see far too often is, "I'm entitled to my opinion." When people declare, "I'm entitled to my opinion," what they really mean is my opinion is of equal value to all other opinions.

There's no entitlement to be ignorant. If my opinion is that a giant turtle carries the world on his back around the sun, then my opinion has no value; it's worthless. Stating that I'm entitled to have it doesn't make it have merit. It's still worthless and of no value. 

All opinions are not equal. We do ourselves a disservice when we pretend that they are. All we need do is examine how many publicly funded schools in multiple states are allowed to teach creationism under state science education standards as an alternative to evolution. Additional states are poised to pass legislation this year to expand the science curriculum to include creationism.

Replacing intellectual analysis with personal opinion undermines our ability to make decisions based on facts and knowledge rather than belief. Ethics play second fiddle to a mish-mash of personal beliefs and emotions about groups of which we are not a member. A key tenet of our constitution's Bill of Rights is that the government shall not establish or govern religion, yet hot button issues such as abortion and gay marriage that divide us at present, center around the attempt of some Christians to impose their belief system on our system of secular law.

We have many issues confronting us that we must address as a nation and as a part of the world. Climate change is a reality, not an abstract theory. Access to clean water, clean energy, and clean air are essential to the survival of all of this planet's inhabitants. Working together is necessary, but to do so we have to develop diplomatic strategies and policies for resolving our differences and not fall back on wars and police actions as problem solvers. We need to work collectively on solutions to these issues, not cling to opinions shaped by misinformation and narrow belief systems that we have elevated to the level of absolute fact.

A Dinosaur's Thoughts on the ACA So Far

Now that the ACA or "Obamacare" has kicked in, this simple lizard has a few thoughts to put out on how it's going.  First, it occurs to me that while there have been plenty of complaints from humans of the right-wingety variety, few if any have latched onto something that really is quite radical about the otherwise middle-of-the-road initiative.  I'm referring to that little bid'niss of doing away with the "pre-existing conditions" screening procedure.  Know why that's che-sexy radical?  Well, THE BASIC PREMISE of insurance is that you must set up your client-parameters with certain exclusions in mind, ones that allow you to turn a profit by the actuarial tables.  I'll bet you're still trying to wrap your mind around the fact that a walnut-brained Jurassic dinosaur just used a fancy phrase like "actuarial tables" and actually seems to have understood what it meant, but let's get back to the subject at hand.  What I'm suggesting is that Obumuhcare messes with the very concept that makes insurance insurance.

Here's a f'rinstance: if a guy is standing on top of a tall building and threatening to jump, you don't sell him a million-dollar life-insurance policy that takes effect immediately and carries no exclusionary language against suicide.  But that's close to what Obamacare does, isn't it?  If I have three life-threatening diseases at the same time, I get to sign up for a policy and you can't exclude me on that basis.  You also don't get to charge me more, if I understand the law correctly.  (Except that the insurers can still charge more for older people.  Because not doing that would be no fun at all.)  What that requirement does is transform the for-profit insurer into an entity that in at least one regard has to behave rather like a gub'mint agency.  You get Medicare when you turn 65.  They don't turn you away because you're sick or old, not even with an unctuous smile.

Now, I'm not complaining about this new development – far from it.  If I've got it right, it's a good move on the Administration's part.  It's even admirably insidious of them, no?  People are so busy complaining about a few curve balls that they've missed the soshulist spitball fluttering right past them and into the catcher's mitt.  So there's that.  Big Insurers who used to make Cruella De Vil (you know, the novel and cartoon character who grinned maniacally whilst shooting dalmations from a helicopter – okay, I made that last part up) look like a major benefactor to the ASPCA must now behave like halfway decent corporate citizens. 

But then there's everything else.  I've read that a lot of very poor folk have been able to sign up for Medicaid, CHIP, etc. and that a lot of people have indeed been able to get policies with help from Uncle Sam.  That's great.  What's not so great is that in a fair number of cases, middle-classers are finding that those "affordable" new ACA-compliant policies are priced beyond financial reach, and no help is available.  Somehow, when the Democrats say "rich bastard," they always seem to mean, "Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and all those other caviar-eating mother-truckers who make more than $25,000 per annum."  Yup, O ye rich 'uns, your Prada-shod hoof shall slide in due time; your days of living it up with your ill-gotten venti-cinque mille k's are fast coming to the ignominious end they deserve.  Yes, that's right, you -- and ….  Well, you get the idea.

That’s a problem with the ACA, I think – it fails up to now to make provision for the fact that a lot of perfectly ordinary Americans are getting squeezed by the provisions of a law intended to help ordinary Americans.  Because of course how could people who preside over a capitalist economy possibly be expected to bethink themselves five minutes in advance and realize what's bound to happen when they tell insurers to start offering something like "access to necessary health care" instead of the snake-oil & small-print gobs of bunkum they've so often been guilty of offering in the past?  Think ahead?  "Who does that?" as the saying goes.  Who, indeed.  Why, if you thought they should have made allowance for this kind of behavior, you're just the sort of unreasonable individual who thinks that when you know your website is going to get 3.8 million hits per day, you ought to design it not to crash when more than five people log on at once.  And there's just no talking to an unreasonable lot like you.  I give up, I really do.

Put these two things together – one, that Obamacare radically and (I think) admirably transforms the health insurance market in terms of how it assesses eligibility for access to care, and two, a lot of people don't perceive "unaffordably higher premiums for somewhat better policies" to be particularly beneficial to them.  Then I think you can see what needs to happen.  No, not the "Repeal Maobamacare" mantra of the Right, but rather a determination to iron out whatever needs ironing out in the ACA and a recognition (forced on us partly by the ACA itself) that yes, health care is often pretty good in this country but it's also pretty expensive and almost nobody can really afford the true cost of it, so the market is a VERY imperfect vehicle for making things right.  All that means extending the premium subsidies to people who make more than the amounts that currently trigger subsidies.  (And yes, my $25,000 figure was only intended as satire, it isn't even close to the correct figure.)  Extending the subsidies or tax breaks would move the ACA much closer to being a law that recasts health-care access as a basic right, a necessity, rather than as a privilege or a hassle. 

As things stand, I think the ACA only goes about halfway in that direction, and that's why the public perception of it (aside from enough right-wing propaganda to choke up the infernal rivers Phlegethon and Cocytus together) isn't very positive right now.  It's the half-measure we were able to get given the political landscape during President Obama's first term, and therein lies the problem.  Apparently, so many of us here in the "US & A" despise government so much that even when we try to get it to do something good, we do things in a muddled, overly complex and yet half-bum way and we end up creating as many problems as we solve.  What I think needs to be done would cost us all somewhat more as taxpayers, but at least it would be fair and it would stop all the grumbling about the unintended consequences of a major and mostly beneficial law.

Turning a Glitch into a Gotcha

With the threat of debt default delayed until February, Tea Party Republicans remain determined to win in defeat what they lost by blackmail.  Unbowed and undeterred, the anti-abortion party wants to abort ObamaCare, exploit every glitch to turn public opinion against it, and sabotage reform at all cost. SNAFU! See, they told you so!

An error of attribution, real fault points in the direction of government contractors and the procurement process.  In this case, one culprit is Booz Allen, a legacy contractor with deep political pockets – the same corporation at the center of the Snowden mess.

An estimated dozen or more firms won ACA contracts - stalwarts such as Booz Allen, Rand, CGI, Deloitte, Xerox (a $72 million contract to build the Nevada exchange and $68 million for the Florida exchange), and Vagent (a vagrant subsidiary of General Dynamics).

On the lobbying and political contribution side of this mugging are QSS-United Health ($10 million in lobbying and direct political contributions), Vagent ($24 million), and Verizon Business Services ($$35 million), as examples.  Did I say lobbying and political contributions?  Oops, perhaps I should have used the words bribery and graft:

Some 17 ACA contract winners reported spending more than $128 million on lobbying in 2011 and 2012, while 29 had employees or political action committees or both that contributed $32 million to federal candidates and parties in the same period (source).

Every glitch feeds the narrative of an inept government, a favorite stalking point of the Tea Party Republicans.  Of course, mainstream media reports all controversies as high drama for entertainment but fails to investigate the creepier things lurking under rocks:

• Legacy contractors and their culture of overarching entitlement (meaning guaranteed profits with no obligation to be held accountable for the integrity and timeliness of their work),
• The incestuous relationship between the captains of capitalism and the politicians who sleep with them. 

In short, here is your free enterprise system at work - in secret and behind your back.

Remember Halliburton, the company that won billions of dollars in no-bid contracts and honored American taxpayers by moving corporate headquarters to a tax-free zone in Dubai? How quickly the public forgets the outrage expressed by Senator Patrick Leahy (D. Vermont): "This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years" source.

Those who blame glitches in implementation on President Obama or Kathleen Sebelius miss the point.  No amount of partisan pandering or intellectual dishonesty will get you to the root of the problem unless you are willing to dig deeper.

The High Cost of Health Care

By (O)CT(O)PUS

A man runs into a vet's office carrying his dog - shouting for help. The vet rushes the limp dog into the examination room and paces it on the table. After a few moments, the vet tells the man - with deep regrets - his dog has died. The man, clearly agitated and in denial, demands a second opinion.

The vet leaves the exam room and returns with a cat. The vet puts the cat on the table next to the dead dog. The cat sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and meows.

The vet says to the man, "Sorry, the cat thinks your dog is dead too." The man, still unwilling to accept the death of his beloved dog, refuses to accept the word of a cat.

So the vet brings in a black Labrador. The lab sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and barks. The vet looks to the man and says, "Sorry, the lab thinks your dog is dead too."

Finally, the man resigns himself to the inevitable and asks to settle the bill. The vet says, "$650 dollars, please."

"What, $650 dollars to tell me my dog is dead!"

"Well," the vet replies, "The first diagnosis cost $50. The $600 charge covers the cat scan and lab tests."

This story is even more ridiculous:  Top Republican Alleges Affordable Health Care Act is a Voter Registration Ploy.  Quick!  Grab the cat, bring the dog ...

Talking to the Man, Once Again

So, every so often, I like to reach out to my governmental representatives (OK, and sometimes I like to reach out to other people's representatives, but let's not worry about that now...).

So, today, I sent emails to my guys in the Senate and the House. (Both good, noble men fully worthy of my support. So far.) And, because I'm lazy, they were identical except for the greeting. (I've mentioned that I'm lazy, right? Because it's true.) And it went like this.

Dear Sen. Bingaman, (or "Rep. Heinrich," depending)

The Republicans are now trying to spread the lie that the penalty that's imposed under the Affordable Care Act for not having health insurance is a tax. You should probably get out in front of this, and for one good reason.

If it's a tax, they can repeal it through the reconciliation process.

Fortunately, this is easy to rebut. Justice Roberts didn't say that the penalty is a tax: what he said was, it was legal for Congress to levy a penalty in exactly the same way that it is legal for them to apply a tax.

And if you go to his opinion (all 150 pages or so), Roberts comes right out and said that it isn't a tax.

Page 11:

Before turning to the merits, we need to be sure we have the authority to do so. The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessmentor collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the per-son against whom such tax was assessed. 26 U. S. C. §7421(a). This statute protects the Government’s abilityto collect a consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation to enjoin or otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes.

Translation: "We can't rule on it if it's a tax. We're ruling on it. Think about it." Page 12:

According to amicus, by directing that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes,” §5000A(g)(1) made the Anti-Injunction Act applicable to this penalty.

The Government disagrees. It argues that §5000A(g)(1) does not direct courts to apply the Anti-Injunction Act,because §5000A(g) is a directive only to the Secretary of the Treasury to use the same "methodology and procedures" to collect the penalty that he uses to collect taxes. Brief for United States 32–33 (quoting Seven-Sky, 661 F. 3d, at 11).

We think the Government has the better reading.

Translation: "This guy says it's a tax; the government says it isn't. We agree with the government."

So, later on, (page 35) when he writes "The same analysis here suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty," he isn't saying it's a tax, just explaining what part of the Constitution applies (which is why he phrased it "may for constitutional purposes be considered").

You need to keep them from taking over the argument by rewording reality. Go out on the floor and explain, on the record, in simple words, that life doesn't work like that.

If you want to get the attention of the media, apologize that reading is so difficult for our Republican friends. Or explain that things like this are why the Texas GOP is trying to ban critical thinking.

Or maybe explain that, if they're so upset that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional after all, they should consider getting on anti-depressants. After all, admitting that you suffer from depression isn't going to count as a preexisting condition any more.

Just a quick note

Did you know that Dana Perino, the former waste-of-a-Presidency's spokesmodel, is now Dana Perino & Co? (Motto: "Working to make the world worse since 2007.") She apparently has made a business out of selling herself to whoever will pay her rates. (This does not make her a whore, by the way - for what she charges, she deserves to be called a "prostitute.")

And she even has a contact form, which I thought was convenient.

Ms Perino,

I happened to see your tweet about "Tomorrow on the menu after SCOTUS: just desserts." I thought I'd mention something.

My sister was downsized by her corporation last year, and was then diagnosed with breast cancer. Without the Affordable Care Act even fully in place yet, the changes already happening in the insurance industry ensured that she received treatment, and that she would not be penalized for her "pre-existing condition" for the rest of her life.

And her situation was only on the fringes of the healthcare law. There are thousands of people whose lives have been saved by the legislation that President Obama put in place.

Am I saying that it makes you a bad person for gloating prematurely over the possibility that the ACA will be struck down? No, I'm not.

I'm saying it makes you a bitch.

Have a good life. Try not to get cancer, you evil, self-centered herpes sore on the face of humanity.

Sometimes, it's kind of nice just to reach out to somebody and say "Hi," you know?

Enough is Enough

Years ago my mother was convinced that Medicare would turn the USA into a communist country. Now, at 91, she uses it gratefully. My recently deceased father-in-law was the same; swore Medicare would make us all communists, but then swore by it when it helped extend his life to 90.

I, on the other hand, spent one year with minimal health care. Fortunately, I was able to change jobs in 1984 to obtain adequate health insurance for my family. I had a disabled daughter and flimsy medical coverage that paid for little of her care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Luckily, I was able to find a job with a good private health care plan. Millions, however, are unable to obtain any health care and are sick or dying as a result. They would be well served to have a national health program as an option.

Where are the outcries about deaths caused by a society unwilling to see that everyone has health care? Where is the outrage about the needless suffering of so many fellow Americans?

Why aren’t the radicals out there screaming “murder” when a young uninsured woman dies of cancer? Or when a middle aged uninsured man dies of kidney disease? Where is the hype to stop “murdering” so many of our uninsured citizens? The private sector insurance business has failed these people miserably while some private insurance executives have rolled big time in the money we pay as premiums. It is time to try something different.

We spend more on health care now than any nation in the world, yet rank 37th out of 191 countries in health care according to the World Health Organization. Canadians outlive Americans by two years, despite all of the American criticisms about socialized medicine. True, we are better service providers and insurers for certain specialty diseases than any other country. But then, aren’t we smart enough to overhaul the system so it is accessible to all, yet retain our excellent specialty care? Aren’t we obligated to do just that if we are, as we claim, the most moral country on Earth?

The time is now to act outrageously indignant that any American anywhere would shout out against giving another American a fair chance at life saving health care. I am fed up with ignorant people rudely interrupting health care town hall meetings geared to helping tweak the President’s health care plan. Those of us in favor of the plan, including myself, are screaming back: “Haters, move out of the way. We want good health care now for all Americans. We will not be stopped by your ignorance.”