Tag: Premium

Despite the recent announcement of low premiums for Californians under Obamacare, Sarah Kliff isn’t celebrating yet:

California’s health-care marketplace isn’t like those being set up elsewhere in the country. When California created the country’s first-ever health insurance exchange, way back in November 2010, it made a very significant policy decision. The state decided that it would act as an “active purchaser” that would select a small number of health plans allowed to sell on the California exchange. Health plans would have to do more than meet a set of requirements in the Affordable Care Act. They would need to be selected by the California exchange’s board to compete in the marketplace. …

In an active purchaser exchange, health plans know that they’re competing against others for the chance to access millions of customers with tax subsidies. That could easily effect the bids that they submit, the ones they hope will get them into the new marketplace. That’s the dynamic in California, but not in most other states. That makes it a bit difficult to generalize what the state’s insurance rates say about what will happen elsewhere, where this downward pressure doesn’t exist.

Lanhee Chen, Romney’s former policy director, argues that the California’s rates aren’t as favorable as they first appear:

The only way Covered California’s experts arrive at their conclusion [that individual health insurance premiums in 2014 may be less than they are today] is to compare apples to oranges — that is, comparing next year’s individual premiums to this year’s small employer premiums.

They’re making this particular comparison, they explain, because they believe that the marketplace for individually purchased insurance will look like the marketplace for small employer-purchased insurance next year. For example, the state already requires insurers to issue policies to all comers in the small employer market. Premiums are therefore higher today for small employers than for individuals purchasing coverage on their own.

What this means, however, is that Covered California is creating for itself a very favorable and already higher baseline from which to compare next year’s individual health insurance premiums. That’s how they’re able to create the appearance that Obamacare’s reforms will lower individual premiums.

Meanwhile, Yglesias thinks Obamacare’s Cadillac tax on high-cost healthcare plans is beginning to pay off:

Conservative ACA critics in their scorched earth campaign against Obamacare have been insisting that this, like every promising cost-control measure in the law, is doomed to failure and/or will never be implemented. The story today about actual employer and insurer response to the Cadillac tax indicates that, no, it is beginning to have an impact. Note that this is not the first piece of good news about health care spending aggregates, and that by and large we should expect the press’ understandable and inevitable negativity bias to underestimate Obamacare.

Cohn argues that this is a tax conservatives should support. Previous Dish on California’s low ACA premiums here and here.

Lydia Davis, famed for writing stories as short as a few words, has won this year’s Man Booker International Prize. Adam Sherwin offers some examples of Davis’ works:

Index Entry

Christian, I’m not a

Getting to Know Your Body

If your eyeballs move, this means that you’re thinking, or about to start thinking.

If you don’t want to be thinking at this particular moment, try to keep your eyeballs still.

The Outing

An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.

All taken from The Collected Stores of Lydia Davis, published by Penguin Books.

Judge Christopher Ricks wonders how to categorize her work:

“Should we simply concur with the official title and dub them stories? Or perhaps miniatures? Anecdotes? Essays? Jokes? Parables? Fables? Texts? Aphorisms, or even apophthegms? Prayers, or perhaps wisdom literature? Or might we settle for observations?”

… Davis herself has said that she is happy to stick with “story” as a categorisation for her work. “When I first began writing seriously, I wrote short stories, and that was where I thought I was headed. Then the stories evolved and changed, but it would have become a bother to say every time, ‘I guess what I have just written is a prose poem, or a meditation’, and I would have felt very constrained by trying to label each individual work, so it was simply easier to call everything stories,” she told the Observer in 2010.

And “even if the thing is only a line or two, there is always a little fragment of narrative in there, or the reader can turn away and imagine a larger narrative,” she said.

A recent profile provides further insight into her logic:

When she was asked her why she writes “short fiction” she invoked the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan and his homage to Zukofsky, the point being that the title of his poem is three words and the poem itself is only one word, “the.”

Did you know that the 1963 song “Louie Louie,” famous for its garbled lyrics, inspired a two-year FBI investigation?

Part of the FBI’s job is to fight obscenity, and in the FBI’s files on the case, they explain that someone from Sarasota High School complained that the lyrics to the song were obscene. “The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter,’” the complaint read. “We all know there is obscene materials available for those who seek it,” it went on, “but when they start sneaking in this material in the guise of the latest teen age rock & roll hit record these morons have gone too far.”

The alleged obscene lyrics and the actual lyrics are here. How the FBI handled the case:

[R]ather than attempting to figure out where the different, dirty versions of the lyrics came from, the FBI spent two years analyzing the song. They even played it at different speeds to see if they were missing some hidden obscene message. And in all that time, the bureau never once contacted Jack Ely, the man who sang the words of the song in the first place. At the end of the two years, the FBI didn’t even exonerate “Louie Louie,” they simply said that “the lyrics of the song on this record was not definitely determined by this Laboratory examination, it was not possible to determine whether this recording is obscene.”

In a 1968 interview, Jack Kerouac advocated a spontaneous, confessional writing ethos that has little time for fussy editing or punctuation:

By not revising what you’ve already written you simply give the reader the actual workings of your mind during the writing itself: you confess your thoughts about events in your own unchangeable way . . .

Well, look, did you ever hear a guy telling a long wild tale to a bunch of men in a bar and all are listening and smiling, did you ever hear that guy stop to revise himself, go back to a previous sentence to improve it, to defray its rhythmic thought impact. . . . If he pauses to blow his nose, isn’t he planning his next sentence? And when he lets that next sentence loose, isn’t it once and for all the way he wanted to say it? Doesn’t he depart from the thought of that sentence and, as Shakespeare says, “forever holds his tongue” on the subject, since he’s passed over it like a part of a river that flows over a rock once and for all and never returns and can never flow any other way in time?

Incidentally, as for my bug against periods, that was for the prose in October in the Railroad Earth, very experimental, intended to clack along all the way like a steam engine pulling a one-hundred-car freight with a talky caboose at the end, that was my way at the time and it still can be done if the thinking during the swift writing is confessional and pure and all excited with the life of it. And be sure of this, I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

Previous Dish on Kerouac here, here and here.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Jamie Malanowski called for [NYT] the government to rename Army bases named for generals who served the Confederacy:

Changing the names of these bases would not mean that we can’t still respect the service of those Confederate leaders; nor would it mean that we are imposing our notions of morality on people of a long-distant era. What it would mean is that we’re upholding our own convictions. It’s time to rename these bases. Surely we can find, in the 150 years since the Civil War, 10 soldiers whose exemplary service not only upheld our most important values, but was actually performed in the defense of the United States.

Erik Loomis focuses on the soldiers asked to serve at these forts:

[Malanowski asks] a fair question. And it is indeed an insult to ask African-American soldiers to serve at a fort named after P.G.T. Beauregard or John Gordon, who followed his war career by becoming the head of the KKK in Georgia.

Josh Marshall doesn’t mince words:

There’s a major difference between respecting and honoring sacrifice – which exists separately from the political movement you’re fighting on behalf of – and honoring people in this way. Today most of us probably see the problem as the fact that these guys fought to protect slavery. And whatever revisionist nonsense you hear out there that is unquestionably true. But that’s only one part of the equation. At least as big in my mind is that these men were traitors – rebels against the democratic ideal and the federal union around which any American patriotism has to be based. Taken together these two things are a really, really big deal. One can only begin to imagine what Union soldiers who died on the battlefield would make of all this. … Perhaps we’ve come far enough – regardless of the equities at stake 100 or 75 years ago – that we can revisit this question.

Dr. Charles Cogan counters:

These are memorials to the great and not-so-great Confederate generals: Fort Lee (understandable) but also Fort Bragg. I do not object to such a practice, as it is a recognition that both sides suffered during the war –just as Memorial Day honors the dead of both Union and Confederate soldiers. (Though at the beginning, Memorial Day was solely a Northern commemoration.)

This joint mourning has been central in achieving a reconciliation between North and South that has been truly remarkable – to the extent that talk of re-secession is never taken seriously. Indeed the South has become the most “patriotic” and military-oriented section of the country – partly due to its long and pre-bellum tradition of military honor. But while we can hardly object to the South’s honoring of its Pantheon of Civil War generals and of the thousands who died in the service of the Confederacy, we should not lose sight of the underlying imperatives of the Civil War: the preservation of the Union, and the abolition of slavery.

Slog’s David Goldstein explores the justification for honoring Confederates:

Over the years, I’ve had the chance to talk to a few proud Southerners about what it is exactly that they are so proud of, and while they may not use these exact words, invariably they say it was the nobility of the struggle that they honor. But whether or not they acknowledge it, the cause the South struggled for was preserving (and expanding) the institution of slavery. I don’t mean to go all Godwin and everything, but I’m sure many Nazi soldiers fought courageously too, yet you don’t see Germany building monuments to its World War II heroes.

TPM reader and Southerner CH worries about the potential backlash:

Before President Obama was elected, I would have agreed that maybe it is time to rename some military bases (and colleges) and maybe even consider doing something about the carving on Stone Mountain. And I would have agreed with you that after 1865 it was never again seriously considered that history might repeat itself. But as things now stand, I’m not sure that those same considerations which led to the mollification decisions back then, have become irrelevant; I’m not sure that the rationale for those decisions has outlived its usefulness.

Most rural Southern white men already feel that “their” country has been “taken” from them by a black Muslim. They watch Fox exclusively and without ceasing so they are constantly on edge and genuinely and earnestly believe that President Obama’s sole mission is to destroy America. I don’t know if we are sitting on a powder keg again or not. On a rational and academic level, I think that notion is absolutely ridiculous. But on a gut and emotional level, I worry. Sometimes I think all they need is a final straw to rally around. So maybe we could wait until a new president is in office again before we risk giving them a rallying point. Maybe the temperature down here will drop some by then.

(Photo: Detail of the southeast corner of the frieze on the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemtery in Arlington, Virginia, in the United States. The goddess of war, Minerva (l), looks at the fallen “The South” while “spirits of war” trumpet for assistance. To the right, a sapper (with bag) and a soldier answer the call. An African American soldier answers the call to defend slavery with his white master. From Wikimedia Commons)

Dish alum Zack Beauchamp reports on the Richwine affair. He digs up some new details but also downplays the importance of genetics. Zack’s research does suggest to me that Richwine’s thesis was “good enough” empirically, but way too broad in its inferences. But then Zack writes something like this:

Alleging that, as a group, an enormous percentage of Americans are and always will be dumber than their fellow citizens isn’t just normal academic inquiry.

That’s not what even the most genetically-inclined scholars believe. There are huge overlaps of IQ among self-reported racial groupings – with all of them having much more in common than apart. And Charles Murray has never doubted that environment matters – especially in the first few years. But when you’re dealing with scores that get you into Ivy League colleges, for example, those minor differences between groups as a whole will lead to obvious racial disparities. There will be far more Asians and Jews than are represented in the population at large. Soon, liberals may have to confront this not as a black or white problem, but as a question of whether it is just to deny places to Asians and Jews just because of their ethnic background. I think liberals dismiss this data at their peril.

Freddie sighs:

Beauchamp goes hard on the notion that environment trumps everything when it comes to IQ. Indeed, he goes so hard on that attitude that most readers will likely think that there is nothing to the notion of a genetic basis for IQ. That’s simply not in keeping with the large majority of the data.

For example, that adopted children have IQs that correlate far more highly with their biological parents than their adoptive parents has been replicated repeatedly. (See, for example, Plomin et al. from 1997, for just one.) James Flynn, who I will remind you is deeply committed to social justice and is also the preeminent researcher in IQ, wrote in 2007, “The most radical form of environmental intervention is adoption into a privileged home. Adoptive parents often wonder why the adopted child loses ground on their natural children. If their own children inherit elite genes and the adopted child has average genes, then as parents slowly lose the ability to impose an equally enriched environment on both, the individual differences in genes begin to dominate.” That Flynn piece, I think, is really excellent as a discussion of how to think through and understand the interactions between genetics and environment in IQ. It is not defeatist, and could never be called racist. But it is far more sober and clear about the relationship between genetics and IQ than Beauchamp’s piece.

Why Freddie keeps fighting this fight:

We don’t have to misrepresent the importance of genetic parentage to IQ to recognize the importance of environment. Beauchamp makes some very good points about what it means to be Hispanic and about what a race is. I myself have written four times in the last week or two about why we shouldn’t listen to Jason Richwine. By misrepresenting the actual extant evidence, well-meaning people play into the hands of those who work tirelessly to establish the idea of a conspiracy to hide the truth.

Removed from the emotional grindhouse of race, why does all of this matter? It matters because our educational debates are dominated by a piety that almost everyone argues but almost no one believes: that all people are of equal ability. If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider No Child Left Behind, which insists: 100% must achieve the standard, 100% compliance. Here in the real world, 100% of people will never reach the standard in anything at all. Yet this notion that our problems can all not only be improved upon but literally erased permeates education at all levels. It is the most glaring orthodoxy in our educational debates: you must never suggest that anyone will ever fail.

Freddie, who self-identifies as a socialist, goes on to write, “I don’t mind pointing out that human beings are substantially unequal in their abilities because I don’t think that this should condemn anyone to a life of poverty.” Me too. I oppose any public policy based on racial profiling, including affirmative action. I believe in a firm safety net. I just believe in dealing with reality and making the best of it. If that means more aggressive early intervention in child-rearing, then we need to put that on the table, especially if affirmative actions falls.

A cultural primer on the country:

After looking at the statistics, Frum concludes that no one should be surprised by the recent unrest:

In less than a single decade, the foreign-born share of the Swedish population has risen from under 10% to over 15%. Unemployment among immigrants exceeds 16%; among native Swedes, it is only 6%. [And d]espite a heavily redistributionist tax system and a generous welfare state, the wealth gap between natives and immigrants is wide and apparently widening.

On the corresponding rise in crime:

Swedish authorities are notoriously tight-lipped about the connection between immigration and crime. Sweden does not report data on crimes by foreign-born people, only by foreign passport holders – meaning that an immigrant who has been naturalized will be counted as a Swede for statistical purposes. Even on that restrictive basis, it’s apparent there is a real problem. In 2010, almost 30% of the people in Swedish prisons held foreign passports. A broader study of crime statistics from 1997-2001 – that is, well before the recent immigration surge – found that immigrants and children of immigrants together committed more than 40% of all Swedish crime. In particular, immigrants and children of immigrants were five times more likely than native Swedes to be investigated for sex crimes, a rising Swedish concern.

Todd VanDerWerff reviews the new season:

How much you like the fourth season of Arrested Development will depend on just how quickly you can accept that it’s a show that looks a lot like Arrested Development and shares most important elements in common with that show but is also another series entirely, something more like Mitch Hurwitz and the cast of that earlier show got together to make a bunch of loosely intersecting short films about the characters from the earlier project, each with its own tone and point-of-view. It’s an occasionally hilarious, sometimes boring, always bloated boondoggle of a project, and it’s the sort of thing that’s at once staggering in its ambition and hard to approach with anything like real affection. It is, in places, masterful. It is also, in other places, at once weirdly pleased with itself and too ready to hold the audience’s hand where that hand needn’t be held. It’s also very oddly directed and edited, though some of that just might stem from the project’s inability to get the whole cast in one place at one time, due to the actors’ other commitments.

I must confess to only getting around to the first three episodes. David Cross remains priceless. But I found the dialogue often subsumed by the music or mumbled; and the genius of some moments – like Buster inhaling his mother’s cigarette smoke to blow it out of the window – got bogged down in the tedious confusion of others. But if watching the first round of AD compulsively taught me anything, it’s that

the show is terrible until you watch it all. Any critique of the show based on an incomplete viewing is one you should ignore at all costs.

So I’ll withhold judgment until we’re satiated and can get all the jokes. Jace Lacob, meanwhile, pans the season:

Whereas the first three seasons were subtle, there is a decided lack of finesse here. Season 4 feels like an anvil being dropped on the heads of the viewers, one with a note attached that reads, “LOVE ME. PLEASE LOVE ME. LOVE ME,” all in caps. The humor feels broader and more overtly self-conscious. It trades far too easily on callbacks to the early seasons, a sort of unpleasant fan service that is depressing to watch.

Brian Merchant is on the same page:

[T]he new season of Arrested Development is not all that good. It’s just not. It’s still reasonably funny, and more interesting than most things on TV, but the frantic, diabolically plotted comedy of the 00s is MIA. Instead of ensemble madness we get plodding single character-led episodes, some of which—especially the Lindsay episodes—are downright tedious. And no one ever expected to associate Arrested Development with tedium—over-stimulation, maybe, schizophrenia, sure—but not boredom. I was actually bored watching some of these episodes.