You are currently browsing the Harder World weblog archives for December, 2009.
29. December 2009 by admin.
Last Friday, a young man from Nigeria attempted to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam shortly before it was due to arrive in Detroit. The effort failed because the explosive didn’t go off as intended: it just lit on fire, and the man was tackled at that point by another passenger.
It wasn’t as if this guy was a total surprise: he was on a terrorist watch list, and his father, a wealthy banker in Nigeria, contacted the American embassy to warn us about him. But somehow we didn’t recognize the problem in time, didn’t yank his visa, and didn’t stop him from boarding the flight.
The bomb itself was 50 grams of explosive powder packed into a condom and sewn into his underwear (this last resulting in a slew of really silly headlines: ‘Fruit of the Loon;’ ‘Pants on Fire’). There was nothing to show on a metal detector, and one would have to do a very thorough pat-down to find the package (insert appropriate off-color remark here).
The response from our leadership has been singularly inept: Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, first asserted that ‘the system worked’ until confronted by overwhelming evidence that it hadn’t. And Our Fearless Leader took a few minutes out of his Hawaii vacation on Monday to tell us what we already knew, because, after all, the President should say something about such an event.
There is talk about using full-body scanners to detect packages that one might carry on one’s person. They’re effective, but they enable the viewer to look at the scanned person… naked. I guess that’s OK, just as long as I can’t hear them snicker.
I’ll take someone in a remote location looking at me naked and snickering over some of the rules that came out after the incident. For the last hour of a flight, passengers are to sit in their seats and do nothing. No laptops, or blankets, or pillows, or even a paperback novel. And no hints as to where the plane might be: the video with the map is out, as well as announcements from the pilot. (Meanwhile, the terrorist can still look out the window!)
I understand that some of these rules may have been rescinded, so perhaps things are a little saner now. And I’ll admit that I don’t know what the proper response to this event should be. But adding yet another layer of aviation-security theater does not reassure me.
At least I don’t have any business trips for the next few months….
Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Terrorism, Barack Obama | No Comments »
25. December 2009 by admin.
Just for the record, we had a good Christmas. I didn’t start my shopping until the day before yesterday, but somehow it all came together, and my wife presented her Christmas program, as in past years, and it all came out well.
Yesterday morning, I watched the party-line vote on the health-care bill. The last time I stopped what I was doing to watch the wheels of government grinding was when President Clinton was impeached and tried before the Senate. I returned to my work that day feeling that justice had been done: that whatever peccadilloes our President had been involved in, they represented nothing even close to grounds for removal from office.
This time I was observing a travesty. Health-care reform is bad for the country. For myself as an individual and as a business owner, I see nothing but higher costs, worse health care, and fewer options.
The only good thing is that the vote is not the end of the road. While we were led to believe that Obama would be signing the health-care bill into law while enjoying his Christmas turkey, that isn’t happening. The House and Senate versions must still be reconciled, which won’t happen until February or so.
Perhaps this mess will be derailed, after all….
Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government | No Comments »
22. December 2009 by admin.
The health care reform bill passed the Senate on Monday morning, and is close to becoming law. The Democrats, by their numbers, have simply silenced any effective debate on the measure.
The poorer among us will be covered by an expansion of Medicaid. Funding for Medicaid is provided jointly by the Federal government and the states. As a result, most states will be mandated to support the cost of a broader Medicaid program. However, Senator Nelson of Nebraska got, as part of the price for his support of the measure, that the Feds would pay Nebraska’s increased Medicaid costs so the state wouldn’t have to. Meanwhile, with New York State going broke even without new Medicaid mandates, our esteemed senators, loyal Democrats that they are, didn’t get us one thin dime. (Senator Nelson also insisted that the Federal government not pay for abortions through insurance subsidies, but that’s within the realm of reasonable politics.)
The rest of us will have to purchase insurance for ourselves or get it through our employment. Those who don’t will have to pay a penalty tax. Given that insurers won’t be able to decline coverage for pre-existing conditions, or adjust rates to the age of the insured to properly reflect the actual risk, insurance will become very expensive. New York has similar rules as part of state law, so insurance is already expensive here, but premiums are expected to rise still further.
As a result, insurance will be so expensive that most ordinary people won’t be able to afford it without help. So the Federal government will subsidize part or all of the cost.
Meanwhile, the government will also define what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ health insurance policy. As a result, when the cost of medical care goes up (as it certainly will, because there are no direct measures to contain costs), Federal regulators will respond by identifying ‘appropriate’ treatments that will be covered by ‘acceptable’ insurance policies. And expensive treatments will be limited or made unavailable as a result. The government may also institute a rule, similar to current Medicare, that a doctor who takes insurance money may not contract independently with patients for treatments that insurance won’t cover.
Yes, insurance companies will remain, and they will ‘compete’ for your business. But with the benefits to be provided set by government, and the actuarial performance set by government, they won’t be able to compete on the actual attributes of their insurance.
So what we end up with is government control of the health care system, just like socialized medicine. But instead of the government paying directly for health care, the control is accomplished through regulation of insurance, which everyone is required to buy.
And there’s nothing I can do about it. I could write my Senators and Congressman, but they’re true loyal Democrats, totally in favor of the plan. They didn’t even try to wheedle some extra benefits for their home state like Senator Nelson.
I should save my breath to cool my porridge.
Posted in Health Care, Dysfunctional Government, Barack Obama | No Comments »
21. December 2009 by admin.
Two news items this weekend:
We should know better than that.
Posted in Things Falling Apart | No Comments »
20. December 2009 by admin.
When I was a kid, I didn’t really believe in Santa Claus. I did write letters to him, and somehow most 0f what I asked for actually showed up on Christmas morning. I figured that, most probably, my parents bought the presents, but still thought the Santa Claus story was charming. I enjoyed the Tim Allen picture, The Santa Clause, when it came out a few years ago, as an interesting vision of the story.
Let’s consider, for a moment, what Santa Claus has to do:
When I was a kid, accomplishing all of these tasks seemed beyond what the people or organizations around me could do, but I imagined that it might be possible for someone to do it. And since the presents did arrive on Christmas morning, and my parents swore up and down that the presents really came from Santa, I contemplated Christmas with a sense of wonder. Maybe that Santa stuff was true, after all.
But now, not only does Santa Claus have a Web site, but he also has an iPhone application that supposedly determines, in real time, whether one is naughty or nice. The wonder is gone: Santa lives on the Internet, where it is obviously possible to keep track of everyone. And if we track a parcel from California on its way to New York, tracking Santa on his Christmas Eve travels should be trivial.
When I was a kid, what was charming about Santa Claus was that the details of the process were left to our fertile childhood imaginations. But now the process of Santa is now available for all to see, and it has become about as charming as, well, FedEx.
And as a result, it has become that much easier to realize that it isn’t real, after all.
Posted in Christmas | No Comments »
13. December 2009 by admin.
When I wrote my last entry, about three months ago, I had written some brief observations about the proposed ‘health care reform’ legislation, and said that I would write more about it shortly.
Three months later, the legislation has passed the House and is now under debate in the Senate. The Republicans hate it, but since the Democrats have 60 of the 100 seats, how the Republicans feel about it doesn’t matter.
Basically, the scheme is that all Americans will be required to carry health insurance that meets certain standards, either on their own account or through their employment. If they don’t have a satisfactory plan, they will have to pay a penalty to the Feds.
In addition, health insurers will not be able to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. That sounds really nice, but we already have a rule like that in New York, and one of the main effects of it is to make health insurance preposterously expensive, as it encourages normally healthy people to wait until something goes wrong before buying insurance. I once priced health insurance on an individual direct-pay account for my family: it cost over $2500/month. I was able to make a better deal than that, but it’s still very expensive. Most assessments of the new legislation concur that it will raise health insurance costs for most Americans.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to do anything to actually contain health care costs, other than to cut Medicare reimbursements, something that has been on the books for several years, but is always overridden by Congress so that it has no practical effect. And the heavy lifting of actually providing coverage for people who legitimately couldn’t afford it is accomplished by expanding Medicare and Medicaid.
I would have understood, and even supported, a measure that would bring a Canadian-style system to this country, complete with measures to contain costs, as long as such a system did not preclude one from purchasing health care with one’s own funds or private insurance.
But we can’t do that, because we want to have our cake and eat it too.
* * *
Friday night, I watched the movie Kate and Leopold with my wife on the tube. (Silly question: when I ultimately get a flat-panel TV to replace the big heavy Sony in our bedroom, will I still call it ‘the tube’?) In the movie, Leopold, the Duke of Albany, is transported from 1876 to 21st-Century New York City to great comic effect.
What’s so funny about a guy from 1876? He speaks contemporary English; his dress is overly formal by our standards, but not too outlandish. But what makes Leopold funny is that he has what seems to us as an exaggerated sense of integrity and honor.
He speaks the truth when we in the 21st Century would issue jaded cynicism. He is asked to promote a product, and when he discovers the claims made about it are false, he flatly refuses. Most people today would either go forward with the promotion (one has to earn a living, after all), or make an exaggerated show of refusing (you see, people, I have integrity!).
Perhaps integrity and honor have beome anachronisms….
Posted in Health Care, Navel-gazing | No Comments »