Kennedy and Colson

Hanna Rosin has a blog post bemoaning references to Mary Jo Kopechne and Kennedy because Kennedy suffered some consequences and did good deeds later which distinguishes him from many others. She compares him to former Nixon aide Chuck Colson who founded Prison Fellowship. The big difference is that Chuck Colson didn't have the Kennedy name to trade on and actually did have to go to prison. Kennedy didn't really suffer any consequences. She argues that he partially repented by not running for president but this is incorrect; he did in fact run for president in 1980, running against Carter for the democratic nomination and losing. I have heard others suggest the fact that he wasn't ever president was consequence enough, implicit therein that the presidency was his birthright as a Kennedy. Kennedy certainly deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments, which were considerable, but also his flaws which in the case of Mary Jo Kopechne, were tragic.

An Ugly, No Good, Very Bad Chart

If you look at the image to the left you can see that the finances for social security have gone to crap as a result of the recession. In the current year it appears that social security will break even, i.e. there will be enough money coming in to pay out benefits, but not a penny more. Further, it looks like the point at which Social Security will take in less money than it pays out will move forward from late next decade to the middle of the decade (or about 6 years out). Given that the trust fund does not have actual assets or fungible debt it will be interesting to see how the politics of Social Security evolve. For one, I expect a lot of people to stop talking about how the trust fund will maintain Social Security's solvency till 2042.

Delectable Edwards Trash

There may be a sex tape.

Great Health Care Article

This is one of the better ones I have read recently. The author does a great job of cataloguing some of the absurdities of the health care industry. His prescriptions are quite radical and I can never imagine them being passed which is unfortunate. It is deeply unsettling to me that the basis of reform is essentially not to disrupt the current system but rather to build on it. If everyone is in agreement that a policy sucks why should the emphasis of reform be to further establish said system. The alternative that has been discussed, and has been the source of much left wing frustration, has been the public option or in extremis a medicare for all approach. But yet again, this too is merely an expansion of the status quo. Medicare is a huge and unsustainable portion of the health care industry, why does it constitute an adequate model for reform? At what point in the health care debate do we move from heated discussions of the virtues of Policy A (Employer Based Insurance)and Policy B (Public Option/Medicare for all)--which both suck and where the sole distinction is whether your overinsurance is provided by tax dollars or foregone wages--and move to a discussion of Policy C (something that doesn't suck)?

More Health Care

Apparently the Senate Finance Committee big proposed revenue source is a 35% levy on insurance companies premiums for plans above $21k. This is daft on so many levels. One, this utterly ignores tax incidence. As Diane Lim Rogers notes, you can't tax things, you can only tax people. Conceivably insurers will stop selling "cadillac" plans but more likely insurance companies will simply pass on the cost of taxes on to the consumer. Outside of providing a paltry revenue source this doesn't do much.

The problem with this proposal is not that individuals will ultimately be taxed but rather in its opacity it is unlikely to get people to make more cost concious decisions vis-a-vis their health insurance. If you were to eliminate the employer exclusion or cap it then at least a portion of the employer contribution would be taxed as income. One, the employee would have visibility as to the amount they are foregoing in wages as a result of health care. Two, the employee would then have an incentive to obtain less generous coverage. Going back to the Rand Study we know that increased cost sharing has a neglible impact on health outcomes while drastically reducing health expenditures. The important exceptions to this finding were those who were lower income and had chronic diseases such as hypertension. These finding should be the basis for health care reform. But instead there is an obsession with first dollar coverage and a public plan whose purpose is ill defined.

The Best Health Care Post Ever

Check out Chris Hayes blog post "Your Questions About Health Care Reform Answered". This is my favorite part:

"3) I heard the proposals currently under consideration provide seniors with option of free counseling sessions under Medicare, where they can discuss a living will and end-of-life care.

That's a huge misconception. The bills require all senior citizens (who are non union members) be euthanized on their 70th birthday. Under section 278(c)ii all last rites will be performed by Jeremiah Wright using a Q'uran."

Murdoch Saves Newspapers?

Murdoch is planning on charging for all the web based content of his newspapers. The real issue is whether other newspapers will follow suit. If they restrict their content as opposed to giving it away for free then ostensibly their advertising would be worth something again.

More Health Care

Political Calculations has a handy dandy chart adjusting OECD life expectancies for non-medical fatalities (automobile accidents, homicides) and interestingly the U.S. jumps from 14th place to 1st place in terms of life expectancy at birth. I imagine the margin would increase if the data were further adjusted to normalize the data for premature births (in europe premies that die within a certain time period are counted as stillbirths and aren't figured in the life expectancy statistics). This doesn't mean that the US healthcare system isn't craptastic. However, it does seem to indicate that public health measures, transportation policy, and crime prevention will ultimately have a much greater impact on life expectancy than health care.

Legalized Pot

A perfect storm is brewing. California is in dire straits fiscally and is on the precipice of default. Pot would raise major revenues, and if California legalizes pot the rest of the country will eventually.

More Stupid Administrative Efficiency Arguments

"The administrative costs of the main Social Security program are 0.6 percent of expenditures. The disability insurance program clocks in a bit higher: 2.3 percent. It's all pretty lean."

I am not a senior and thus my only exposure to social security is the FICA tax pulled from my paycheck. But typically you hear that the Social Security Administration does a good job at what they do, cutting checks to people. However, in obliquely making this point Mr. Klein unwittingly points to a flaw in the measurement of administrative efficiency. The Social Security Administration cuts checks for both Social Security (Old Age Insurance) and Disability Insurance. Thus they have the same fixed costs. Then what accounts for the difference in the administrative efficiency? There are more people claiming social security than disability insurance. It's quite simple. Imagine that the typical cost of writing checks to a claimant works out to an annualized expense of $500 per claimant. The $500 is your administrative cost. Now you divide the administrative costs by the benefit check cut. The marginal cost of adding a zero to the that benefit check is essentially zero. So if the benefit were $1 million annually the percentage dedicated towards administrative costs would be 0.0005%. If the annual benefit were $1,000 the administrative costs constitute 5%. Efficiency in this manner is effectively being equated to the generosity of the benefits disbursed. This is measurement error.

The Health Care Bill

The health care bill that the House has put forward is a disappointment. In the immediate future it will expand coverage but will do nothing to contain costs. The employer based system is kept intact and to some degree reinforced (by maintaining the employer tax exclusion and not allowing those with employer sponsored health care to purchase a different plan through a national exchange). The one aspect that I find promising is that the MedPac appears to be getting beefed up. But the health care bill is built on the status quo as opposed to an attempt to move towards a more rational and efficient system.

More Government Motors Brilliance

Lawmakers are now trying to reinstate dealers that were closed as part of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcy proceedings.

Wal Mart Health Care

It would be interesting if Wal Mart were to extend health care to all of its employees. It could basically drop a minute clinic in the store alongside the pharmacy and basically function as a self contained HMO.

Employer Mandate=Assanine

Johnathon Cohn breathlessly reports that Wal Mart has broken with its business brethren by endorsing the inclusion of an Employer Mandate. I understand why Cohn finds this to be good news, it portends easier passage of Health Care reform. I, however, think an Employer Mandate is idiotic. It just further cements the status quo. We need to move away from an employer based system. The downfalls associated with an employer based health care system are many but here goes a list:

1. Reduces labor market flexibility by inducing job lock and creating greater impediments to starting a business

2. Assuming the tax exclusion remains in place, which is sort of the whole point if you were to have an employer mandate, the employer mandate is regressive as the tax exclusion primarily benefits higher income folks.

3. Making the same assumption as in point two, the tax exclusion incentivizes medical expenditures without regard to outcome thus exacerbating medical cost growth...

4. Which will cause stagnant wages or declining for the majority of workers as we saw in this last decade.

5. Employer incentives aren't very well aligned with those of the employee, this is devastating with regards to the management of chronic diseases.

Hooray for Employer Based Health Care!

That Wal Mart has endorsed the employer mandate is a bit surprising but not shocking. Google "bootleggers and baptists" to see why their endorsement shouldn't be so shocking.

I have found the whole health care debate to be underwhelming. There has been much handwringing about the inclusion of a public plan and potential cost savings to be reaped from said public plan's purported administrative cost savings (one time savings at that). So much of the debate has really centered around how to expand on the status quo instead of transitioning to a sustainable system.

Hear Rick Kogan, the voice of Chicago

• Rick Kogan reads the closing lines of Nelson Algren's book 'America Eats'
• Rick Kogan narrates Chicago's hilarious Schadenfreud episodes 59 and 60
• Rick Kogan on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty Eight, "1955 Chicago" (Feb. 2, 2005)
• Rick Kogan interviews Danny Goldring on WGN Radio
• Rick Kogan interviewed on Outside the Loop Radio, episodes 3 & 4
• Rick Kogan interviewed by Steve Cochrane about broadcaster Paul Harvey
• Rick Kogan interviewed by Studs Terkel, parts 1 & 2

The Climate Bill Sucks

The Climate bill is a massive corporate give-away. This is corporate welfare in an unprecedented scope. This is why carbon taxes are superior and should have been the vehicle for climate change legislation from the outset.

The End of an Era

I said it before, and it bears saying again: Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. His passing marks the end of an era, but his music will persist in the lives of the living.

Wackjob

So I was looking on drudge and I saw a curious headline: Congresswoman Refuses To Complete 2010 Census.... Immediately I thought there could only be two people in congress that crazy and stupid to do something like this: Michelle Bachman and Maxine Waters. Then I saw another headline immediately below it: Fears ACORN collecting data.... Then I knew it must be Michelle Bachman. And sure enough, I was right. What a wackjob. She is a joke.

The Day the TV Died

For me that day is today. I will admit that I'm one of those millions not fully prepared for the switch to digital television. I have a digital-to-analog converter box, but it doesn't work with my antenna.

Now that my TV has died, I no longer have a refuge from reality. It's just me face-to-face with reality. Which isn't a new experience, as I didn't have a television for about the first six months after my move to Chicago.

I'd like to think that this is a moment when more people will wonder what it would be like not simply to live without TV, but to live in a society without television. To quote Don DeLillo from White Noise, "Television is the death throes of human consciousness."

Sotamayor

Many of the right have made fools of themselves trying to diminish the accomplisments of Judge, soon to be Justice, Sotamayor.  Folks like Fred Barnes, William Bennett, Michael Goldfarb, and countless others have alleged that here success is entirely contingent on preferential treatment.  However, her resume renders this line of attack absurd on its face.  She graduated head of her class in Princeton, was law review at Yale Law School and has served on both circuit and appellate courts. This is the normal trajectory for a Supreme Court justice, namely, an abnormal or exceptional career, the mark of the elite.  It has long been the claim of those of us on the right that a judge should be voted up or down on their qualifications.  Provided there is no ethical snafu or apparent cronyism (a la Harriet Miers), Sotomayor is evidently qualified and should be confirmed by wide margins.