Month: May 2014

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RE: The Veterans Scandal: Socialized Medicine on Trial. Many have wondered about Barack…

From Glenn Reynolds we get this post by Roger Simon about the importance of the VA scandal to the healthcare debate and to a point I have made before. The Affordable Care Act is the best argument for smaller government since the founding of the republic. If our founding fathers could speak from the grave, I bet the first words out of their mouths would be I told you so!

ROGER SIMON: The Veterans Scandal: Socialized Medicine on Trial.

Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.

The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.

Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)

But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory.

Yep. The “best and brightest” are neither particularly good nor evidently bright. We have the worst political class in our nation’s history, which is the best argument for taking power away from them, not granting it to them.

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Will President Obama’s Legacy Be Worse Than President Carter?

It is probably a little premature to be discussing Obama’s legacy but I could not help noticing that his own party is starting to snipe at him. Democratic candidates are finding it very difficult to be loyal to the party and get elected in the Fall. They can see the writing on the wall. It is hard to talk about important political issues when they are spending most of their time trying to downplay the pratfalls of the Administration. The Administration has spent the last six years claiming that their policy failures were because they were stupid and not partisan. Now Democratic candidates have to go out and convince independents that Democrats are not as stupid as previously thought. Apologizing for policy failures is a ball and chain issue that keeps Democratic campaigns struggling with independent voters. Unfortunately Democratic candidates also have to explain why there are so few policy successes and it is not just the Republicans who are cynical. I think most people would not have any difficulty agreeing that killing Osama bin Laden was this Administration’s most important accomplishment over the last six years. The problem for the Democrats is that most people are hard pressed to identify the second or third most important accomplishment. I doubt anyone except the Democratic faithful or the chronically ill would try to say that the Affordable Care Act was a success. The health care lies by the President are still a bigger deal with most voters than the meager results. Arguably the biggest issue should have been the economy. Some years back the Clinton campaign probably won the 1992 presidential election by focusing the public on the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid“. Remarkably this Administration is still looking for a success in the economy that they can lay claim to. After six years most people still see an economy that looks like it is stuck in stall mode with a seriously ugly long term unemployment problem. Our foreign policy is a mess. What was our policy in Benghazi, Syria, and the Ukraine? No one seems to know. How is it that Sarah Palin seems to have a better grasp of Putin’s political objectives in the Ukraine than the State Department? This sure looks like a broad policy failure. You cannot get around the facts that the Administration has been short on accomplishments and long on scandals. Now the Administration is stumbling its way through the VA scandal in a way that is beginning to incense Democrats. After six years of one scandal after another even Democrats are beginning to wonder if this Administration will ever get its wheel out of the rut? The frustration level of the American people is rapidly approaching the level I last saw when President Carter was in office. For an administration unaccustomed to serious questions from their friends, this could get ugly.

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A Humorous Way To Tell The Difference Between False Positive and False Negative Errors

For the people who are statistically challenged this is humorous way to describe the differences between Type I(false positive) and Type II(false negative) errors. I saw this infographic originally on the Marginal Revolution blog. They think the original post was probably over at FlowingData website who gives credit to Jim Thornton’s twitter account. As a person who is seriously considering going without health insurance if the insurance rates go up too much, the question you have to ask yourself is whether you can do a better job minimizing the financial impact of false positive and false negative diagnosis errors than your insurance company. As an example there are a lot of false positives associated with prostate and breast cancer.

Type-I-and-II-errors1-400

"Type I" and "Type II" errors, names first given by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson to describe rejecting a null hypothesis when it’s true and accepting one when it’s not, are too vague for stat newcomers (and in general). This is better. [via]

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The Most Popular Republican Talking Point On Health Care Is Wrong

The Federalist had an article that caught my attention, The Most Popular Republican Talking Point On Health Care Is Wrong. In that article Mr. Clancy says, “Of all the various Republican health care reform ideas, the most popular by far is letting people buy health insurance across state lines.” If this is the best the Republicans can come up with I think we are pretty safe from health care reform in 2014 and at least for me, that is a good thing. Here is my comment and a graph from a previous post,

As a healthy person who buys his health insurance in Ohio I doubt that I could get a more affordable health insurance plan from another state. Every year eHealth puts out a report on health insurance prices in the 48 states they sell polices in and as long as you are not living in Massachusetts or New York the costs are pretty close. You have to admire the rich irony of this Republican talking point. The people who stand to benefit the most are from those blue states, Massachusetts and New York. I think it is pretty safe to say that selling health insurance across state lines is not going to save me money and if this is the best the Republicans can come up with then we are pretty safe from more misguided health care reforms in 2014.

The most interesting thing happening in November is that we will probably know the insurance rates for 2015 and how many healthy people are still paying into the system. Unlike auto insurance health insurance has a very large redistribution and political component to it. That is its fatal flaw. Since 1976 when I started working I have seen large group plans struggle to work around this flaw. Over the years the large group plans became increasingly more stupid about health care until we got to the present situation where we lead the world in health care spending per capita. When I look at a graph health care spending per capita by various countries, we are off the chart bad. What does the future hold for us in health care reform? Politics and government incompetence are the most important drivers. If the Administration continues to postpone the Affordable Care Act taxes and healthy people seep out of the exchanges, the exchange funding question will rear its ugly head. Although politically inconvenient I expect based on past history that the Administration will kick this can down the road and postpone most of the Affordable Care Act through 2017. This is the politically smart thing to do since the Republicans do not have much of an appetite for health care reform. For people seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act this the next best thing but it does lead to an interesting endgame scenario. My health insurance policy is grandfathered and it costs me less than exchange plans since it does not cover maternity care and other things I have no use for. Since my insurance company does not participate in the exchange, I expect my insurance company will continue to do what ever they can to offer me the best rates to keep me from buying a plan on the exchange. This is good for me since I need affordable health insurance but bad for the exchanges since they desperately need healthy people like me. In this scenario I am best served if the Republicans and Democrats do as little as possible. Eventually the exchanges will suffer a TennCare-like funding breakdown. This is not pretty but it is the most likely scenario.

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Trey Gowdy Asks The Media Some Questions About Benghazi

The Daily Caller showed a clip from January in which Trey Gowdy asks the questions that bother me with the Benghazi debacle. I like all of Trey’s questions and have one more. Was the Benghazi failure an indicator of a broader policy failure? I cannot help but wonder if our policy in Syria and Ukraine would be a bit more coherent to the rest of the world if the “Media” had started asking some serious questions about a broader policy failure. It took Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine before the Administration got a clue.

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An Independent Voter’s Hope For The Benghazi and IRS Investigations

When I look at the Benghazi and IRS investigations I am reminded of children who can no longer play well together without adult supervision. I have no sympathy for their plight. The Democratic party knew where the political boundaries were in government meddling and crossed over them. They killed four people in Benghazi because it was inconvenient for a presidential campaign and used the IRS to suppress political opposition. The Republicans are reminding them of these sins at every opportunity. Now the Democrats are complaining that they did nothing wrong and the voters and media should break up the fight. I am kind of old school on this matter and am willing to let them fight it out. They have way too much piss and vinegar in them to break them up now. It is sad but they have to hurt each other before they can get better. Eventually the vitriol will be replaced with reluctant respect and new boundaries will be drawn to avoid future confrontations. Promises will be made. It has been a long time since the Nixon resignation but it served its purpose. Hopefully these scandals will serve a similar purpose. If the Democratic party gets away with these actions with just a hand slap, they will have set a new standard for political meddling and suppressing political opposition for future administrations. This is not good for either party or a well functioning government during presidential campaigns.

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You Can’t Buy Insurance Until Next November

Healthcare-Lunchbox128.jpgLast month I wrote a post, Year-Round Sales Of Health Plans, that acknowledged a common fallacy I heard from folks looking at going without health insurance is that they could go get a health insurance plan anytime they needed one. John Goodman wrote a nice article on the subject, You Can’t Buy Insurance Until Next November, at The Independent Institute. Here was my comment,

Nevada mandates year-around sales of health plans, http://www.kaiserhealthnews.or…. It may sound counter-intuitive to Affordable Care Act supporters but insurance companies and exchanges should grab customers whenever they can if they want to reduce the number of uninsured. The biggest threat to the exchanges is that healthy customers might get comfortable going without health insurance. I asked my state representative to submit a bill mandating year-around sales of health plans and he said he would look at it.

I hate to give advice to Affordable Care Act supporters since I am pretty happy with all of the delays but my inner MBA says if you want the exchanges to work, you have to start running them like a business. I have seen Christmas stores that are open longer during the year than the exchanges.