Why Health Insurance Is Not Like Buying A TV

And why a public option is therefore compatible with free markets:

Something like televisions exist in a free market because consumers, if they don't like any of the new TVs on the market, can simply keep their old one. If they really don't like the market, they can even forgo owning one altogether; it will make you unpopular on game day, but it won't risk your life. Insurance is different. Anyone with a sense of basic self-preservation has no choice but to buy health insurance every single month. You cannot opt out, there are few options to choose from, and it's difficult to know how to price your future risk of injury. So health insurance companies have distorted incentives to innovate or provide a more cost-effective product.

A public option would, crazy as it might sound, make health

insurance a free market.

If there exists a government-run plan, which by all accounts would be basic and geared towards affordability, consumers will have the ability to opt out of the private insurance market. Private providers would finally have real incentives to provide a better product and innovate by building an insurance plan stronger than public insurance. Fears that a public option might decree certain treatments "not cost-effective," which are not as outlandish as some liberals think, should delight free-market conservatives because it would be an opportunity for private insurers to step in. Worried you might develop a condition requiring $60,000 medication that no public option would ever include? Buy a blinged-out private plan that, for an increased premium, will.

Makes sense to me. Or the private sector can also compete for the best discount insurance plan – kinda like Sprint airways for your body.

When Insurers Attack

Nate Silver looks at their motivation:

Weighted for market capitalization, these insurance stocks have lost 11 percent of their value since Labor Day, wiping out about $10 billion in value. And that's understating the case since the major indices have gained 5-8 percent over the same period — the insurance industry stocks are underperforming the market by just shy of 20 percent.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Geez, you’re a princess. Gay people account for what? 9% of the population? That much?

Heterosexual sex is the ability to replicate consciousness. All wonders of the universe are created by the union of sperm and egg. The sperm and the egg have created everything.

I don’t feel that homosexuality is a choice. Why would anyone choose it? I feel that homosexuality is unfortunate, that you drew the short straw. Your love can never reproduce a universe. It can only ever be a ghostly comparison of heterosexual love. Be a conservative, recognize your limitations. Accept your cross, and bear it with dignity.

Obama is up to his eyeballs in serious problems that affect much much much more than a measly 9% of the American population. You’re such a baby. I want you to explain in detail how Obama is going to change DADT and not cause significant problems in a doubly engaged military that he and the rest of the world are depending on. You think that this change will be a smooth transition. Guess again.

Are you prepared to accept responsibility for the chaos this might cause – and all ripples that radiate outward into other areas of the world. Your impatience and blindness on this whole matter is embarrassing.

Go suck a dick, and suck it up, sweetheart.

Iranian Bloggers Souring On Obama?

Tehran Bureau relays some reaction to the Nobel announcement:

Most Iranians appeared to favor improved relations with the world prior to June's tainted election. But judging from an exhaustive reading of the Iranian blogosphere in reaction to President Obama's win, the mood has shifted. After facing off with Iran's hardline government in mass protests, and witnessing scores of their compatriots killed or arrested, tortured and raped in detention, refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Iran's current government was the minimum support many Iranians looked to from other countries. Out of 155 comments posted on Mir Hossein Mousavi's official Facebook page in response to the subject of Obama's Nobel, the majority of views were negative, given Obama's stance on events in Iran and his engagement policy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Interestingly, Iranian officials did not voice serious reactions to the news, contrary to custom. Only foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki noted that the honor may have come "too early" for Obama. In other words, if Obama continues along the line he is currently treading with the Ahmadinejad administration, Iran's government is likely to champion him as meriting the prize.

Readers know the DIsh's heart is with the Iranian opposition. But Obama is president, and that means grappling with the reality of power – and its always alloyed moral nature. The burden is on him – morally, psychologically and culturally – to absorb these cross currents and be a statesman. I don't envy him; but I do think he's up to it, in the complicated and morally unsatisfying world we actually live in.

The Value Of Dissent

Ambers:

One wonders how President Bush would have governed if the right had been critical of Bush from the start — if uniformity and hierarchy hadn't characterized the Republican Party from 2001 to 2004.

Me too. And some of us were critical. But that made us "leftists". Nate Silver, as always, has some shrewd and fair things to say on the "take off your pajamas" controversy.

The Right Splits On The Gays

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There was a split response from the right to this weekend's events. One segment sympathized with upset gay activists or, at least, happily piled on the president. The other side, the Maggie Gallagher contingent, are unrepentant in seeing gay couples as the enemy. Glenn Reynolds:

My advice to the Gay Left is the same as my advice to the Tea Party

Right — if you don’t like what “your” politicians are doing, quit donating to ‘em and run somebody against them in the primary. They’ll notice. And the Gay Left and Tea Party Right might even want to talk to each other; they may find they’ve got more in common than they realize…

Except this isn't the "gay left". It's the gay right, left, and center as well. Have you noticed any gay Republicans opposing the repeal of DADT? Any gay people at all supporting the government's discrimination against its own citizens? But for too many boomers, if it's gay, it's left. For the next generation, that association doesn't hold any more. Maggie Gallagher:

Pity President Obama. He's done more, more quickly, for gay people than any president in history but it's clearly not enough. The leadership, the old heads, are trying to restrain and redirect their people. But gay Americans have imbibed the heady rhetoric of equality — not just any equality, they are the civil-rights movement of this century… The leveling wave of equality demands more, more, more, from government.

We want nothing from the government but to stop discriminating against us. We want to be left alone, as straight people are, allowed to serve our country without worrying, allowed to have legal security in our families as every straight person takes for granted. Why is that so hard to understand? Robert Stacy McCain:

If gay people vote Republican, they might not get the bullet-point agenda items demanded by HRC, but they will at least not have to accept the kind of two-faced, backhanded insults they get from Democrats who claim to be their "friends."

No, we'll get federal amendments to make us second class for ever, and state amendments designed to strip us of dignity and security. And vicious homophobic rhetoric to boot. Ed Morissey:

One can always tell an organization that fails to comprehend the nature and the reach of the blogosphere when “pajamas” gets used as a snide insult. Say, wasn’t this the same candidate who relied heavily on online activism and regularly hailed it as a sign of increased participation in politics? I guess Obama doesn’t value that participation any longer, at least not when being held accountable for his lack of action. 

David Bass:

So, in many ways, the homosexual rights coalition is becoming the evangelical Christian community of the left — a reliable voting pool that the Democrats can take for granted. Could it backfire? Maybe, but I doubt it. Similar to evangelicals, homosexual activists have no other viable third party option. They're stuck. So they make a lot of noise and hope the establishment listens.

Albert Mohler:

In the span of a single sentence, President Obama put his administration publicly on the line to press, not only for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, but for the recognition that same-sex relationships are "just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman." It is virtually impossible to imagine a promise more breathtaking in its revolutionary character than this — to normalize same-sex relationships to the extent that they are recognized as being as admirable as heterosexual marriage.

Saying it's breath-taking and revolutionary doesn't make it so. I see no revolution in the states that have already legalized marriage equality – just lower divorce rates than the Bible Belt, and happy, responsible gay couples and families. Quite why conservatives want to keep gay people marginalized, robbed of civic responsibility and cast out of the family remains a function of two things: fear and ignorance. One person at a time, we are doing what we can to defuse both. Obama, for all his ruthless caution, at least understands that. And I truly believe he does.