Good Enough for Hanks

If he good enough for Hanks, he's good enough for me!

....And it really is insane out there. The other party is no better, but they're trying.

Dickens Redux

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona was reported to have argued on the Senate floor on Monday of this week that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working." Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended. "I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here," said Kyl.


I am reminded of Ebenezer Scrooge's colloquy with the two gentlemen who barge into his counting house raising funds for the poor: 

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,'' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.''

"Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?''

"They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not.''

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir.''

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it.''

Obama Snubbed?

A scurrilous video is making the rounds of the Tea Party folks and other Obama-haters, purporting to show our President being snubbed by a group of Russian dignitaries. Here it is:

Here's the real thing:

It never cease to amaze how the hardened attitudes of a large segment of our electorate can distort their perceptions, and permit them to draw the conclusions that their ideology demands. It would be far better if we all could agree to seek the Truth!

And so it goes....

I suppose I shouldn't be startled by the fact that it has been months since my last post and the Republic still endures. Guess I'm just no that important.

I recently was prodded into reflection by David Brooks' recent column on the subject of his education at the feet of Bruce Springsteen. It occurred to me that the great musico-cultural influences in my early life, in Brooksian terms, were such figures as Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Woody and Arlo Guthrie and Odetta. Now, I am far from a flag-burning radical or a Communist sympathizer, and I don't have much truck with the labor union movement. In fact, I was just telling a friend this morning that I was one of those old-fashioned Republicans who voted for Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, Tom Kean, Christie Whitman, et al. The fact is, far from having an interest in the success of modern day litmus-tested, "Family-member," Republican stalwarts such as Ensign, Pence, or Imhof, I am repulsed by their dogmatic, exclusionary, demagogic politics. True, "old-fashioned" Republicans like Chris Daggett are reduced to running as Independents, and I am compelled to vote for them. Perhaps this idiocy is limited to New Jersey, but it is in danger of metastasizing.

I am reduced to stringing adjectives like a looney!

It's fun to rant every once in a while!

South Carolinian Civility

Joe Wilson's outburst the other night recalled another instance of Congressional incivility, when Preston Brooks, Representative of South Carolina, confronted Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on May 22, 1856, during the "Bleeding Kansas" crisis, and beat him nearly to death. Have health care and immigration reforms assumed the passionate intensity of the slavery debates? In both events, it was South Carolina, which boasts of a culture of gentility and chivalrous virtues.

Ooops! Cynthia Tucker beat me to it!

Bringing Sanity to the Health Care Wars

In my youth, my uncle Elliott, an insurance man, drummed into me that insurance was designed to protect against catastrophe, against those losses that our household asset base could not absorb without risking insolvency. (I recognize that businesses may use insurance for somewhat different purposes from time time. I'm focusing on non-business households.) I was always puzzled at the way the insurance industry had taken over healthcare, starting with servicing the billing and payment process. The whole system seemed to promote the attitude that we were entitled to have our healthcare bills paid by a third party, that there was something wrong with us if we had to pay medical bills out of our own pocket.

Consequently, I was recently struck by a recent column by David Brooks, Let’s Get Fundamental, and, as is frequently my wont, I decided to read a couple of the essays to which Brooks had referred. I have been getting progressively more frustrated by the so-called "health-care debate," which has been giving off huge amounts of heat but very little light. Brooks has been a steady voice in favor of reform of the system, and has focused on the perversity of the incentives in America's delivery of health care, which have driven the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

One of the essays Brooks commended appeared in September's The Atlantic and was authored by David Goldhill. In How American Health Care Killed My Father, Goldhill summarizes the situation in this way:

"A wasteful insurance system; distorted incentives; a bias toward treatment; moral hazard; hidden costs and a lack of transparency; curbed competition; service to the wrong customer. These are the problems at the foundation of our health-care system, resulting in a slow rot and requiring more and more money just to keep the system from collapsing."

Of course, his prescription is not limited to increased access to the exisitng system. In his view, with which I agree, we need to wrest the system away from the insurance middleman, and retake responsibility for our health.

A report by the Brookings Institution, Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth, also cited by Brooks, reaches conclusions similar to Goldhill about how to move forward:

This strategy consists of four interrelated pillars. First, as a foundation for improving value, all stakeholders in the system need better information and tools to be more effective. Second, provider payments should be redirected toward rewarding improvements in quality and reductions in cost growth, providing support for health care delivery reforms that save money while emphasizing disease prevention and better coordination of care. Third, health insurance markets should be reformed and government subsidies restructured to create competition and improve incentives around value improvement rather than risk selection. This step requires near-universal participation in insurance markets to succeed. Finally, individual patients should be given greater support for improving their health and lowering overall health care costs, including incentives for achieving measurable health goals.

It will be interesting to see what the President's prescription is. Has he allowed the dysfunctional legislative train to get too far down the track? There's no question in my mind that he and his people understand the perverse incentives emmbedded in the current system. Does he have the courage to put on the brakes and stake out a new direction? We'll see.

SPDRs and Jack Russells

I have no idea what Jack Russells have to do with SPDRs, but it's a great commercial!