Tag: Premium

Lisa Miller checks in on Newtown. A glimpse of the inevitable infighting that follows such tragedies:

As grief settled on the town, so did money.

Cash poured in from everywhere, arriving in envelopes addressed to no one. To Newtown. The town of Newtown. The families of Newtown. There were stories of cheerleaders, having sponsored fund-­raisers, walking around with $30,000 in their pockets. A guidance counselor at Newtown High School reportedly opened the mail to find $1,000 in cash. Around the country, people sold ribbons, bracelets, cupcakes, and sent in the proceeds, five and ten dollars at a time. The Davenport West honor society in Iowa sent in a check for $226.69, and the parents of a 3-year-old named Lillian sent $290.94, donations from her birthday party. According to the Connecticut attorney general, about $22 million has flooded the town since December 14, finding its way into about 70 different charities set up in the wake of the massacre. Very quickly, the matter of disbursing these funds became something else, a proxy fight over how to evaluate grief. …

The biggest fund by far was the one set up by 9 p.m. the day of the attack, under the auspices of the United Way of Western Connecticut. By April, it held $11 million, and local psychiatrist Chuck Herrick was named president of the board of the fund, a position that has made him one of the most unpopular men in town. It was Herrick, along with a handful of others, who had to help calculate the disbursements to the parents of murdered children, and who had to defend those calculations when the bereaved accused the United Way of being unfair, insensitive, condescending, elitist, paternalistic and, in a mantra recited by the grieving, of “raising money on the backs of our dead.”

As Nicholas Mason tells it, authors were publishing rave reviews of their own works nearly three centuries before Amazon and Goodreads:

The first widespread reports of puffery came in 1730s England, where a number of journalists and wits remarked on the recent shift from straightforward, unembellished announcements of goods for sale to elaborate schemes to trick consumers into buying shoddy merchandise. Two trades in particular were seen as the foremost practitioners of puffery: quack medicines and books. In fact, the first known commercial usage of the term “puff” (the May 27, 1732 issue of London’s Weekly Register) pinned the practice squarely on booksellers: “Puff is become a cant Word to signify the Applause that Writers or Booksellers give to what they write or publish, in Order to increase its Reputation and Sale.”

In fact, the book review from the beginning was “a compromised form”:

Nearly every British writer of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries either participated in or benefitted from ginned-up book reviews.

Mary Wollstonecraft reviewed her own translation of a French book in the Analytical Review. … In an 1817 issue of the Quarterly Review, Walter Scott anonymously reviewed his own Tales of My Landlord, slyly noting “none have been more ready than ourselves to offer our applause.” Other famous Romantic-era puffers included William Hazlitt, who lauded his own Characters of Shakespear’s Plays in the Edinburgh Review; Percy Shelley, who wrote a glowing (but ultimately unpublished) review of his wife’s Frankenstein for the Examiner; and Mary Shelley, who attempted to revive the reputation of her father, William Godwin, by puffing his novel Cloudesley in Blackwood’s Magazine.

Mason adds that “in many respects, the age of Fielding and Richardson is a remarkable analog to our own”:

Just as we grapple with the information overload resulting from the explosion of new media, these writers and their contemporaries were frequently bewildered by the new mores, codes, and ethics of the first great age of print. And just as many now are quick to blame the Internet for the rise of “astroturfing,” several eighteenth-century commentators saw puffery as the direct outgrowth of print culture.

Chait asks why the media is so focused on rate-shock victims:

Why has their plight attained such singular prominence? Several factors have come together. The news media has a natural attraction to bad news over good. “Millions Set to Gain Low-Cost Insurance” is a less attractive story than “Florida Woman Facing Higher Costs.” Obama overstated the case when he repeatedly assured Americans that nobody would lose their current health-care plan. There’s also an economic bias at work. Victims of rate shock are middle-class, and their travails, in general, tend to attract far more lavish coverage than the problems of the poor. (Did you know that on November 1, millions of Americans suffered painful cuts to nutritional assistance? Not a single Sunday-morning talk-show mentioned it.)

Frum counters:

Readers continue one of our most popular threads of late:

While I agree that rape prevention is never the responsibility of those who might have been victimized, the same is true of those who might be victims of false accusations. And that is the all-important flip side of this question. It is difficult to subject the claims of rape and sexual harassment victims to close scrutiny, because if they have indeed been victimized, it only adds to their trauma. At the same time, plenty of people are falsely accused of rape, sexual harassment, etc, and their lives have been ruined thereby. This goes especially for people in positions of responsibility over young people, like public school teachers. An accusation of rape can end a carefully cultivated career for years, sometimes forever.

While we are teaching people, especially young men, not to rape, and to act as allies when women are threatened with rape (a role I’ve played, BTW, preventing what certainly would have been a rape if I hadn’t acted), we should also teach young people how lives are ruined by careless and misleading accusations.

Sometimes we encourage young people to be open about how a situation makes them “uncomfortable,” when they are too young to judge the possible effects of an accusation. And sometimes the accuser is encouraged by well-meaning adults who are far too credulous and give adolescents too much credit for knowing things they don’t, in fact, know. A few leading questions, an easily-led adolescent with a grievance, and you’re in court, and your family has lost its sole support.

Another:

A reader stated about rape: “Typically, it’s an assertion of power on the part of the male, not a desire to get off sexually without seeking the consent of the other.” I know that you cannot extract power from sex at all (male potency or power may be men’s most erotic trait), but I cannot conceive of how lust can be taken out of the motivation behind most rapes. Statements about how “rape is about power, not sex” seem to want to keep sex as this all benevolent, all natural, all safe part of life … and not concede that sex is an animal instinct that can drive us towards extreme selfishness and harm unless we exert control over it.

Another adds:

One of your readers repeats the durable old feminist chestnut that “male-on-female rape is rarely about sex.” Sometimes this thesis is trotted out to explain male-on-male rape and child molestation as well.  But this notion – originated by activist Susan Brownmiller in the 1970s and never supported by any actual science – was essentially a political assertion arising from the zeitgeist of a bygone era.  And the notion was criticized early (by D. Symons in The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1979)) and late (by R. Thornhill and C. Palmer in A Natural History of Rape (2000)).

Sharon Rawlette observes that “the real trouble lies in that a writer doesn’t know how she does what she does”:

There is no recipe. No blueprint. No line of stepping stones that will lead one to the creation of a brilliant piece of literature without moments of wandering in the dark. We writers strive to bring into being something bold, original, and heart-stoppingly magnificent. But, as clichéd as it may sound, that stuff only arrives by way of inspiration. Don’t get me wrong. We writers have to work hard. We have to show up. We have to put pen to paper or fingertip to key. We have to cry and sweat and bleed. But there’s no direct link between our suffering and the end result. Our tears, our sweat, our blood get poured out, and then, magically, from somewhere off in left field, the miracle appears. And the end result seems so disconnected from our effort that we wonder why it couldn’t have just shown up earlier, before we had that little visit to hell.

But of course, the work was necessary. The work did get us the result. It just happened somewhere in the depths of the unconscious. We couldn’t see the gears turning, the neurons firing, the gods descending and re-ascending from our little brains. And so, when it’s time to face the next blank page, we still have no clue how we do what we do. And we’re not at all sure that it will ever happen again.

Vladimir Nabokov sounded a similar note during a 1964 interview with Playboy:

What inspires you to record and collect such disconnected impressions and quotations?

All I know is that at a very early stage of the novel’s development I get this urge to collect bits of straw and fluff, and to eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it. When I remember afterwards the force that made me jot down the correct names of things, or the inches and tints of things, even before I actually needed the information, I am inclined to assume that what I call, for want of a better term, inspiration, had been already at work, mutely pointing at this or that, having me accumulate the known materials for an unknown structure. After the first shock of recognition—a sudden sense of “this is what I’m going to write”—the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper; and to be aware of the stage it has reached at any given moment, I do not have to be conscious of every exact phrase.

I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, if I stopped the machine and opened its inner compartment; but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.

Sullum analyzes Colorado’s new marijuana taxes, which passed by an overwhelming margin last night:

[M]arijuana will be one of the most heavily taxed consumer products in Colorado, taxed at a much higher rate than alcohol even without taking local levies into account. That situation is hard to reconcile with Amendment 64′s aim of taxing marijuana “in a manner similar to alcohol,” and it surely makes no sense in light of the two products’ relative hazards, which were a major theme of the legalization campaign. If legislators take full advantage of their new tax authority, marijuana in Denver, the center of the retail cannabis industry, will be hit by a 15 percent excise tax plus sales taxes totaling 38 percent (including standard and special state and local taxes). With taxes that high, the state-licensed outlets may have trouble competing with the black market and with homegrown marijuana. (Colorodans are allowed to grow up to six plants at home and share the produce, one ounce at a time, “without remuneration.”) Legislators may find that if they set taxes too high, the result will be less revenue rather than more.

Pete Guither sees an upside to the taxes:

While those taxes are significant (and significantly higher than alcohol taxes), and I’m concerned that the state do what it can do encourage legal channels at the beginning rather than discouraging them, still I think that smart producers will still be able to achieve a price point that will satisfy purchasers who would like to buy legally. And the taxes will help the political future of legalization.

Finally, Nicole Flatow notes the marijuana news from yesterday’s election:

By a landslide, Portland became the first east coast city to legalize marijuana Tuesday, in a measure that removes all penalties for small-quantity, adult marijuana possession, but does not decriminalize production or sale of pot. And three Michigan cities passed measures to remove criminal punishment for marijuana possession, bringing the number of Michigan localities that have decriminalized marijuana to 14. In some of these localities, marijuana possession is still a civil infraction that typically carries a ticket and/or fine. But Lansing’s initiative, like Portland’s, removed all civil and criminal penalties.

Earlier Dish on marijuana taxes here.

(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

Ramesh Ponnuru likes how Christie has finessed his social conservatism:

Socially conservative positions on hot-button issues don’t seem to be a deal-breaker even for the much more liberal voters of New Jersey. Christie has vetoed legislation to grant state recognition to same-sex marriage — a judge later ordered it, though Christie briefly appealed — and vetoed bills to fund Planned Parenthood five times.

He does not, however, seem obsessed by social issues: Democrats haven’t gotten much mileage out of ads saying that his priorities are different from those of voters, as they have against Cuccinelli. Christie has also avoided taking unpopular socially conservative stands on issues that aren’t live debates, and taken the occasional opportunity to soften his profile.

Samuel Goldman calls Christie’s strategy “Machiavellian” because Machiavelli thought that “the important thing is to seem to possess the moral virtues, rather than actually to practice them.” He argues that “Chris Christie is a good example of this dynamic” because “Christie knew quite well that his challenge to the gay marriage bill was purely symbolic, since the liberal state supreme court was certain to reinstate the law”:

Christie’s Machiavellian approach isn’t popular with dedicated social conservatives. The National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council have both condemned Christie’s handling of gay marriage. But symbolic conservatism is popular with more moderate voters, who want to express disapproval from gay marriage and abortion, but are uncomfortable with policies that seem intrusive or intolerant.

The lesson of today’s election, then, will not be that social conservatives can compete in moderate and liberal areas if they offer more explicit and articulate defenses of their views. It’s that they can get away with expressing social conservative beliefs so long as they do nothing to suggest that those beliefs are likely to end up enshrined in law.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely reports that “the trans-rights movement has speedily moved to a brand-new battleground: public schools”:

Kids are coming out as trans earlier than ever: A survey of the San Francisco school district found that 1.6 percent of high school students and, incredibly, one percent of middle-school students identified as transgender. Children are packing the few U.S. clinics like [the Center for Transyouth Health and Development], which are at the forefront of a new therapeutic approach, in which children may live as their preferred gender, complete with appropriate clothing, pronouns and often a new name. This so-called affirmative model has found an increasingly warm reception among the worried parents of trans children. And so while most doctors still consider this “social transition” for kids under the age of 10 to be controversial, already these intrepid young pioneers have begun venturing out into the world – including, in rare cases, female-to-male trans kids who undergo “top surgery” as early as age 13. …

Although 623 American colleges and universities have already adopted nondiscrimination policies to cover gender expression, high schools and middle schools are being forced to grapple with the question of how to deal with trans students in their locker rooms, athletic fields and bathrooms. It’s a haphazard fight raging at district, county and state levels; thus far, 2013 has been what appears to be a watershed year.

This past winter, educators in Massachusetts, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, issued guidelines to accommodate trans students, allowing them to use bathrooms and play on sports teams corresponding to the gender with which they identify. But in August, California trumped them all by becoming the first state to pass legislation spelling out that transgender students can choose which bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams they wish, based on their gender identity.

Parker Marie Molloy has more on the Golden State:

[A] firestorm of dissent is building around one section of the bill, stating that transgender students will have the opportunity to play on sports teams and use sex-segregated facilities that correspond with their gender identity, even if this doesn’t match their birth certificate. Opponents of the law, citing privacy concerns, have begun the process of collecting signatures to repeal the law through public referendum. Should these organizations collect the necessary 505,000 signatures required by November 6th, the law’s fate will be voted on by the general public in the 2014 midterm elections.

Previous Dish here on the debate over when a child can be considered transgender.

(Photo by Chas Danner)

A reader reminds me of another good reason to move back to DC:

I have to give high marks to the District of Columbia for their ACA website. It took me two minutes to create an account, and a couple more minutes to get to the list of available plans. For me, there are 31 options, 30 of which have lower monthly premiums than my current plan, which I’ll admit is expensive ($613 a month just for me).

Another:

I am a physician living in Washington, DC.  (We’re excited to have you back!)  I am working 3/4 time by choice, so I am not eligible for group coverage from my employer (a hospital). I am single, 46 years old, and fairly healthy, and I’ve been buying health insurance on the open market.  I have a fairly high deductible policy that covers routine preventive care and dental care and is HSA eligible.  I am not eligible for subsidies under the ACA.  As a physician, I am thrilled with the ACA for my patients. I have plenty who will now be able to obtain insurance, allowing them to see me when needed and allowing me to be paid.

Yesterday I received a letter from my insurance company stating that, due to the ACA, my current policy will be canceled as of 12/31/13.

I have a choice of renewing my plan at “next year’s rate” (which was not specified in the letter) or buying insurance on the exchange from them or another company.  The letter was very clear and did not try to sell me on one of their plans, or tell me I’d “default” to one of their plans if I didn’t do anything.

Bracing myself for a price hike, I called the company today.  To my pleasant surprise, they are renewing my current insurance for a year at an increase of exactly $3.00 per month.  At the end of next year I’ll have to buy insurance on the exchange, but I’m optimistic by that time the DC exchange will have sorted itself out and I will have reasonable options.

So count me among those with a “shrug” for the change to Obamacare.  My impression is that it’s helping a lot of people, hurting a few, and not having a huge effect on the vast majority of the rest of us.

Another:

I had been talking with my neighbor on and off the last several weeks about healthcare. He is somebody who I had anticipated ACA would help a lot because he is a self-employed graphic designer who currently does purchase insurance on the individual market. He was excited about ACA, but when we first talked at the end of October, he had not successfully gotten onto healthcare.gov.

He sent me an update e-mail this afternoon, indicating he had gotten onto the site and saved six possible plans to go over in more detail. There are actually enough options that it does take some thinking about one’s personal situation to know which plan might be best given the different premium versus deductible and other out of pocket expenses. But his final paragraph is important to the whole discussion about cost:

All in all the process went fine but I don’t think I’m going to save any money overall. But this is a big step for self employed people. The fact that I don’t have to worry about pre-existing conditions and being turned down for insurance is a huge change from what it was. Can’t wait to hear how many people have signed up. They should know something next week.

I’m sure encouraged that he was able to get onto the website!

Trende does some rough calculations:

The bottom line is this: If the national exchanges were functioning as well as the best-functioning state exchange — and encountering the same demand — we’d probably be on the low end of the administration’s acceptable enrollment range. If the middle state were representative of the country as a whole, we’d be below it, but not by an overwhelming amount. That’s not much, but it’s probably the best news supporters of the law have received in a while.

But Bob Laszewski passes along some bad news:

Health plans, with the kind of market share that would have to sign-up 100,000 to 200,000 people for the administration to hit its goal of 7 million people, are generally reporting they have enrolled only about 100 – 200 people over the first 35 days via Healthcare.gov.

He also reports that, among insurers “the confidence that this can all get fixed by December 1 is not high.” Allahpundit wonders what happens if healthcare.gov isn’t fixed by the end of this month, the Obama administration’s self-imposed deadline:

What does [Obama] do on December 1st if we’re still stuck in 404 hell? Allow insurers to bring back plans that have been canceled under the new ObamaCare regs? Extend the enrollment deadline next year from March 31st to some later date, which raises the risk of adverse selection problems for insurers? Delay the entire law until HHS gets its act together? Nothing but bad options here as far as the eye can see.