American Politics 18

[TerraPrime]

I can't believe I'm defending the insurance industry here, but I don't think it makes sense to couple the ban on health discrimination by insurers with a weak-ass mandate. People will do exactly what Shryke said. They'll only buy insurance after they get sick. That could cause an insurance market to have real trouble.

Good point.

I think the insurance companies should hire more people to convince the Congress. You know, like lobbyists.

[Shryke]

Yes. And this is why I think that the PWC study that the insurance industry funded could actually be largely accurate. If the mandates aren't strong enough, insurance companies will not get as many new customers as projected otherwise, and the customers that they do get will tend to be sicker people who need insurance more without more of the healthier types. Insurance needs the healthier types. That is the entire point of insurance. Risk needs to be spread around. If the beneficiaries of an insurance company are less healthy, that industry will have to charge more. This is part of the benefit of the other systems around the industrialized world. Whether you go single-payer like Canada or Britain or whether you go private but with strong mandates and other key regulations, everyone needs to be in the system.

I can't believe I'm defending the insurance industry here, but I don't think it makes sense to couple the ban on health discrimination by insurers with a weak-ass mandate. People will do exactly what Shryke said. They'll only buy insurance after they get sick. That could cause an insurance market to have real trouble.

Bah, they'll get a mandate of some sort and then insurance companies might have to sweeten the pot a bit to attract customers. The horror!

[El-ahrairah]

The sites #1 Photo Tag? VELOCIRAPTOR!

I'm disappointed - where be the GOP dinos? Mayhaps if Sarah Palin upgrades from moose to raptor-hunting she can snag some new votes.

...the Creationism bullshit that is 90% of the reason for Homeschooling in the first place.

Oh dear me not again.

http://www.christianbook.com/drive-history...amp;view=covers

...drive thru history! All right we have officially hit idiocracy!

??? But I assure you, when I educate my own children to subvert secular democracy (if it's still legal then) it will not be with this.

[Shryke]

Insurance Companies: Quality People!

In the state of New York, insurers are legally prohibited from discriminating against individuals who submit large claims. So when Guardian, a major insurance company, was faced with the high-cost claims of 37 year-old muscular dystrophy patient Ian Pearl, it decided to cancel its entire line of coverage in the state of New York rather than pay for Pearl's claims. In an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times, it was revealed that one executive at the company refers to patients like Pearl as "dogs" that the company can simply "get rid of"

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/15/insura...-patients-dogs/

I think we can all agree the system is working fine.

[TerraPrime]

Insurance Companies: Quality People!

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/15/insura...-patients-dogs/

I think we can all agree the system is working fine.

Why are you so concerned? Free market forces will soon bring to bear competing insurance companies who will offer a plan that covers exactly that.

Be patient (muwahahahah).

[Shryke]

The health discrimination thing is huge and must be changed...what sucks is that if the big bill fails, it means that provisions fails too and this indefensible practice continues.

Don't get me wrong, this rescission stuff is awful. For those it happens to, it's the worst thing ever. But it doesn't happen to a ton of people.

It DID happen to a ton of people. The entire state of New York to be precise.

And you've got it wrong. See, it's the Insurance companies inability to not cover people that actually need health care that caused this whole problem. If the bill passes, you may see more of this. Once the companies have to actually pay out to the people they insure, many will no longer bother.

Public Option looks more and more necessary to me.

And regardless, the fact that a company decides to stop insuring anyone in an entire fucking STATE just to not have to pay one man's medical bills is flabbergasting.

[DanteGabriel]

Insurance Companies: Quality People!

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/15/insura...-patients-dogs/

I think we can all agree the system is working fine.

Circulate the "dogs" memo to all those morons bleating about "Obamacare death panels".

[Shryke]

It seems to me that the point that you are making is that what i described w/ insurance pools is already happening. Meaning that the insurance corps. can't afford to do what they're doing with the unhealthy. Is that right?

If so, isn't that an argument that we have to have a system that forces everyone in?

Not "can't", more "don't want to".

It's also a pretty clear demonstration that the Insurance Industry is interested only in profit, even if it comes at the expense of the service they supposedly provide.

[TrueMetis]

I'm talking about issues like the leaking tanks at Hanford as well as more general problems there. These stem in large part from faultily designed tanks (single shell rather than double shell) and an impression that this was not a long term storage facility in any case. However, it has become one in practice, something for which the equipment is not suited.

I'm talking about similar issues with nuclear waste in Britain, where they have ongoing problems to do with material at places like Drigg and Hunterston. Those both involve losing records of what exactly was dumped where, and in the former case has led to the authorities asking people whether they can assist by remembering where they may have buried low level nuclear waste back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Seriously? Seriously?

There are also stories like this one from a plant in Vermont about reactor rods going missing. They always assume that they've just been lost rather than stolen, but even so.

I can certainly find a lot more stories (and I should note that these are not all equally new, obviously), but I hope it's clear that I'm not being overly alarmist here.

As for fines, I remember hearing on Le Show (from Harry Shearer) about an ongoing issue at a nuclear power plant where they had failed safety inspections regarding the handling of their radioactive materials and would soon be receiving a written warning if they did not improve. That's some tough love from the NRC right there.

They have methods for burning Nulcear waste to half its decay time and ways of re-enriching it so it can be used more than once. They could also use Thorium which is more abundant and less dangerous. The real reason Nuclear reactors aren't used is because people are afraid. Sounds cliche but a Nuclear reactor is probably the greatest source of power we have right now. If more Nuclear reactors were being built there would be a lot more research being done and it's entirely possible that we would already have a way to make the waste perfectly safe.

[Tempra]

Social engineering time!

Get in shape or pay a price.

That's a message more Americans could hear if the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance and Health committees become law.

By more than doubling the maximum rewards and penalties that companies can apply to employees who flunk medical evaluations, the bills could put workers under intense financial pressure to lose weight, stop smoking or even lower their cholesterol.

Maybe someone can clue in the senate that smokers and the overweight are disproportionately poor. Way to screw over minorities!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33336289/ns/po...ashington_post/

[Shryke]

OK, but this is why I think the PWC study could be right. The insurance companies will not change their practices and will charge more in the future market as I've said. Nothing in the bill stops them from doing this so they will.

There's no real bill to speak of, so there's no much to be said on what cost control measures are in place right now. (Although we can pretty much say for certain that the "No discrimination" section is in)

But this is just more reason for a Public Option. Competition will lead to lower prices, neh? And if they don't, they'll either go out of business or pull out of the US because they are failures at their industry.

What's the problem?

Insurance companies technically do provide a service to most of their customers. They are just magically allowed to stop providing that service in awesome special cases without refunding the money that they took.

No, they "provide a service" until they actually have to PROVIDE that service, then they kick that person/that person's entire state off the rolls to avoid actual doing what their fucking company is supposedly in business doing.

[lokisnow]

Louisiana Judge refuses to marry an interracial couple because he doesn't believe in it and because children of interracial marraiges are never accepted by society.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_...erracial_rebuff

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

my mind boggles. Our current president was elected by sixty percent of the population, I think he's pretty well accepted by both white and black society.

the only question I really have is, "he's a republican, right?" and maybe, "can he be disbarred, and can the eventual court case from this be used to guarantee equal marraige opportunities for same sex couples?"

[Lord O' Bones]

Perhaps I wasn't overly impressed by that article because it was telling me things I already knew.

Then surely you must know that I rarely encounter people with your knowledge.

I guess my concerns are largely technical ones, as well as political ones. Do I really think that a private industry of nuclear power generation can be trusted to deal with waste disposal in an appropriate manner? I don't really believe so. I think this kind of stuff should definitely fall under the purview of government agencies. Even more than it does at the moment, in fact, when amounts of waste go missing every now and then. So I'd like some kind of extra special IG watching any such agency all the time to make sure that all of this stuff is being dealt with properly.

I remain unconvinced of the seriousness of these concerns in 2009, but at least they are reasonable ones. Thank you for responding.

And yes, we should also be buying up all the old stockpiles from Russia of high grade fissile material. If we were really serious about preventing nuclear material from getting into the hands of terrorists, that would be our top priority. But that's a different matter entirely.

I don't know about entirely, but OK. I'll accept that is a seperate yet great bonus, that were we to say double our nuclear plants we would also decrease the availability of weapons grade material proportionally.

They have methods for burning Nulcear waste to half its decay time and ways of re-enriching it so it can be used more than once. They could also use Thorium which is more abundant and less dangerous. The real reason Nuclear reactors aren't used is because people are afraid. Sounds cliche but a Nuclear reactor is probably the greatest source of power we have right now. If more Nuclear reactors were being built there would be a lot more research being done and it's entirely possible that we would already have a way to make the waste perfectly safe.

Well, there is hope for the future yet!

And Elro, back to the windmills you mentioned earlier: I don't know that we should significantly rely on a source of energy that we can't control like wind. Assuming you agree with climate change, we potentially have even less control than we think. Also, we've had those stupid things in California for 30 years or so. Disaster so far last I checked.

But I'm not at all nuclear only. I think where appropriate wind, water, geothermal, and especially solar, should be harnessed as much as possible as supplemental souces of energy. There are also many ways we can be more effecient about consumption as well (something as little as painting your roof white in the desert, or painting your roof black in the frozen north.) But I want the grid's basic needs to be met by nuclear power, and let's get the hell off of fossil fuels entirely.

[mcbigski]

I think the headline "Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve" sums up the joys of European systems we're for some reason so quick to emulate on healthcare.

[DanteGabriel]

I think the headline "Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve" sums up the joys of European systems we're for some reason so quick to emulate on healthcare.

Because nothing like that would ever happen here in the US, with profit-driven fatcats behind every health care decision! Sorry, your single point of data fails in comparison to Shryke's story about a company that suspended operations in an entire state to avoid insuring one man.

Keep trying, though, you intrepid defender of health insurance companies.

[Lord O' Bones]

I think the headline "Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve" sums up the joys of European systems we're for some reason so quick to emulate on healthcare.

Does it though? Does it really? Does that one story make up for the hundreds of thousands of people that are sicker than they should be in ours, the greatest country, because they don't get basic care initially?

I expect more out of my Rypp Gorgeous.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Yes, they get along fine, after significant adaptation by one party or another.

I fully expect that some states will do some boneheaded moves. Kansas, for instance, has a dislikable tendency to want to integrate creationism into their biology curriculum. I really don't expect that students educated in a system where evolution is side-lined will be as competitive for some of the colleges as others would be.

Also, my argument is not that they can't function. Rather, I'm arguing that it's more difficult for children educated in curricula that are of lower standards to compete effectively against children who are educated in curricula that set higher standards. I'm also arguing that this differential in education standard will create barriers against social mobility and fluidity. It won't stop it, no. But there'll be an impeding effect. Don't believe me? Consider the career paths of somepne who graduates from Yale's School of Business, versus someone who graduates from Univ. Wisconsin Eau Claire's School of Business. Assuming they have the same GPA (3.2, say) and comparable extracurricular activities, which student do you think will have a higher chance of landing an internship? Why?

Problem is, when setting a national standard, it has to be low, or the 50% of below-average kids will not be able to attain it. So, instead of having a system where everyone is more competetive, you are holding everyone up to the standard of the lowest common denominator in society. Instead of making everyone Yale grads, you turn most into community college drones.

I know you detest everything "public" or "federal," so I'm sure the following will fall on death ears (or blind eyes, as it is), but part of the benefit of public education is the equalization of the playing field. It gives children born of poor households who suffer economic disadvantages a better chance at advancing their own stations through education. If we do not have some sort of national standard that sets the minimal level of education that students can receive, we will exacerbate the disadvantages. We will never achieve true parity, and I'm not sure that's desirable anyway, but we can reduce the disparity and promote social mobility when we make an effort to see that people start at a relatively similar level. Yes, I know, I'm sure you're not a fan of using policies to affect social structures, either. I'm sure you're wondering why someone should be able to forcibly take from your bank account money that you earned to make sure that some kid from a poor neighbordhood in a poor state might have a better chance at life. I can see the ensuing argument clear as day.

Finally, I presume that you are in favor of further fracturing the standard so that each township can set their own standards?

And strangely, many countries do have national standards.

Having a national standard (e.g "all 4th graders should be able to achieve this level of reading comprehension") is not the same as eliminating educational decisions (e.g. "we will teach reading comprehension using grade-integrated classrooms featuring immersive reading modules"). That's a red herring if I ever saw one.

Equalizing the playing field by making everyone uniformly dumber seems to be a really BAD idea to me. That is merely the utilitarian argument.

As far as "further fracturing", I'm sure you know (or at least guess) I oppose involuntary public schooling altogether.

No, only 4 states mandated testing for homeschoolers. And the way those kids are tested a very different from the way public school children are. There are no standards for homeschool children and no way to determine what, if anything, those kids are being taught.

This place Christian Book is a perfectly acceptable place for the homeschooling family to buy their text books.

And no homeschoolers have to submit to federal testing. Strangely, homeschoolers are usually the winners of such things as the national spelling and geography bees.

[Horza]

I'm sure the following will fall on death ears

Tormund Death-Ears has a nice ring to it.

[MinDonner]

I think the headline "Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve" sums up the joys of European systems we're for some reason so quick to emulate on healthcare.

What? If anything, this is an illustration of why we should give public healthcare more funding, not why we should get rid of it. The main complaints against the NHS are a direct result of privatising and cost-cutting, it has nothing to do with the fact it's publically run.

[Hereward]

What? If anything, this is an illustration of why we should give public healthcare more funding, not why we should get rid of it. The main complaints against the NHS are a direct result of privatising and cost-cutting, it has nothing to do with the fact it's publically run.

It's also from a Rupert Murdoch newspaper, with obvious Transantlantic potential. Now, far be it for me to suggest that Murdoch would aim to dig up and amplify mistakes in a system he wants to abolish for the benefit of those he supports on the other side of the pond...