The Commentariat -- Nov. 23, 2013
The President's Weekly Address:
Lena Sun & Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "... several states running their own online exchanges are reporting a rapid increase in the number of people signing up for coverage, a trend officials say is encouraging for President Obama's health-care law. By mid-November, the 14 state-based marketplaces reported data showing enrollment has nearly doubled from last month, jumping to about 150,000 from 79,000, according to state and federal statistics. The nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which has been tracking the data, called the most recent numbers 'a November enrollment surge.'" ...
... Robert Pear & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration said Friday that it would give people eight more days, until Dec. 23, to sign up for health insurance coverage that takes effect on Jan. 1 under the new health care law." ...
... Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama's healthcare law ... now depends more than ever on insurance companies, doctor groups and hospitals -- major forces in the industry that are committed to the law's success despite persistent tensions with the White House.... Since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance plans and physician practices and develop better ways to monitor quality and control costs.... Healthcare industry officials generally view several GOP proposals, such as limiting coverage for the poor and scuttling new insurance marketplaces created by the law, as more damaging than helpful to the nation's healthcare system." (Emphasis added.) ...
... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with John Cassidy, Rick Herzberg & Ryan Lizza discuss the state of ObamaCare:
... The Making of a Clusterfuck. Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "Interviews with current and former Obama administration officials and specialists involved in the project, as well as a review of hundreds of pages of government and contractor documents, offer new details into how tensions between the government and its contractors, questionable decisions and weak leadership within the Medicare agency turned the rollout of the president's signature program into a major humiliation. The online exchange was crippled, people involved with building it said in recent interviews, because of a huge gap between the administration's grand hopes and the practicalities of building a website that could function on opening day. Vital components were never secured, including sufficient access to a data center to prevent the website from crashing. A backup system that could go live if it did crash was not created, a weakness the administration has never disclosed. And the architecture of the system that interacts with the data center where information is stored is so poorly configured that it must be redesigned, a process that experts said typically takes months. An initial assessment identified more than 600 hardware and software defects -- 'the longest list anybody had ever seen,' one person involved with the project said." ...
... CruzCare, the Ted Cruz Healthcare Reform Plan:
... Viva Vermont! Salvatore Aversa of Occupy Democrats: "The ACA provided states with federal funds to institute a Medicaid expansion.... Vermont decided to take it a step further by setting up their very own single payer system.... The program will be fully operational by 2017, and will be funded through Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes. In exchange, there will be no more premiums, deductibles, copay's, hospital bills or anything else aimed at making insurance companies a profit. Further, all hospitals and healthcare providers will now be nonprofit." Thanks to contributor Julie L. for the link. ...
... CW: Also, thanks to all the contributors who helped me understand the way hospitals and insurance carriers, including Medicare, "calculate" the costs of the medical care.
Bullies, Left and Right, Are Kicking Sand in the Face of the Turtle:
... Matthew Boyle of Breitbart: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a conference call organized by Karl Rove's Crossroads organization for large donors and their advisers on Oct. 30 that the Tea Party movement, in his view, is a 'nothing but a bunch of bullies' that he plans to 'punch ... in the nose.'" ...
I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate. Now we've got a big bully. Harry Reid says he's just going to break the rules and make new rules. It's never been done this way before. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.)
We thought he said if you like the Senate rules, you can keep them. But instead ... they just broke the Senate rules in order to exercise the power grab. -- Mitch McConnell
James Risen of the New York Times & Laura Poitras: "Officials at the National Security Agency ... pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top secret strategy document. In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.'s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency's eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to 'aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.' Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance.... The strategy document [was] provided by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden...."
For the editors at the Wall Street Journal, the Founders wrote the Constitution to cater to Republicans. Hamilton Nolan of Gawker checks the record.
Gubernatorial Race
What I don't understand is how Gov. [Rick] Scott [RTP-Fla.] said for about 30 seconds that he was for more health care for the poor, for about the 1 million people that aren't getting it right now. And then, the Medicaid expansion, he didn't lift a finger to get it done. And as a result of that, those million Floridians that can't afford coverage, they're getting sicker or they're going to die. It is unconscionable to me how you can turn your back on people like that. -- Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist ...
... George Bennett of the Palm Beach (Florida) Post:Charlie "Crist, the former Republican governor who's now seeking his old job as a Democrat, will attend a Palm Beach fundraiser hosted by actor George Hamilton [Friday] night. He met with reporters [Friday] afternoon at the train station near downtown [West Palm Beach], using the venue to criticize Republican Gov. Rick Scott for refusing federal money for high-speed rail in 2011. Crist, who called Scott 'a tea party governor,' also slammed the incumbent for failing to push for an expansion of Medicaid in the state this year after declaring his support for it."
The Assassination of President Kennedy
The Dallas Morning News covers the city's events memorializing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.
The New York Times reprises its coverage of the assassination.
John Cassidy of the New Yorker can't quite let go of conspiracy theories. CW: Like any good journalist, Cassidy is not content with the who, what, when & where. He also wants to know the why. And we don't know know why Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy or why Jack Ruby killed Oswald.
Local News
The Texas Board of Bible Studies. Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "The Texas Board of Education on Friday delayed final approval of a widely used biology textbook because of concerns raised by one reviewer that it presents evolution as fact rather than theory. The monthslong textbook review process in Texas has been controversial because a number of people selected this year to evaluate publishers' submissions do not accept evolution or climate change as scientific truth. On Friday, the state board, which includes several members who hold creationist views, voted to recommend 14 textbooks in biology and environmental science. But its approval of 'Biology,' a highly regarded textbook by Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, and Joseph S. Levine, a science journalist, and published by Pearson Education, was contingent upon an expert panel determining whether any corrections are warranted. Until the panel rules on the alleged errors, Pearson will not be able to market its book as approved by the board to school districts in Texas."
News Lede
New York Times: "As Secretary of State John Kerry and top diplomats from five other world powers swept into Geneva this weekend for the second time in two weeks, they struggled to complete a groundbreaking agreement with Iran that would temporarily freeze Tehran's nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more comprehensive accord."
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Reader Comments (19)
Okey Dokey--I am mean and judgmental. However, I cannot find compassion in my heart for David Brooks' divorce pain--empathy, most certainly! Brookstone antagonized me (us) for years with his junior high psychologizing, when his emotional intelligence is clearly in the single digits--speaking about the dilemma of relationships and life success, and how to solve them. And expert in the "human dilemma." I said "ICK" then, and I say it again. He was/is definitely swimming in water way over his head--but will not drown because he has the $$ and connections to save his ass. And still, he celebrates his support of the Iraq War and bringing democracy to the Middle East. Mr. Humility? I don't think so.
Here is a brief piece from an interview with Alec Baldwin (no Mr. Nice Guy, for sure) on his former New York Radio Talk Show (October 12,2012):
..."David Brooks: Yeah, so I go to colleges and I tell kids if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you'll be happy. So every course you take in college should be about who to marry. So like you should take literature courses, theater courses, science courses. Think hard about this one. They look at me like I'm crazy. But that is absolutely true. So if you want to know what correlates to happiness, money correlates a little but when you hit a certain point, it stops. Age correlates to happiness so people in their 20s are happy and then they go through a shallow, U-shaped curve and the nadir of happiness for the average person is age 47. And that's called having teenage children.
Alec Baldwin: You are spot on, you are spot on.
David Brooks: And then the peak happiness is the first 10 years after retirement. But the people who are happy, marriage is equal to double your income; having a good marriage produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income.
Just guessing that Brookstone will write more insipid books and double his income. And that he will learn nothing from this sad experience, because he will nevah go into family therapy with his wife--and kids. I would love to be wrong about his guy, but I think I "get" him! Shallow is as shallow does
@Kate: Spot on. The WaPo story calls Broksie "respected." Maybe by people who haven't caught on to him, but not here at RC. How he, MoDo and Friedman keep their jobs is beyond human ken. Driftglass is right. It won't be long before we're treated to Brooks-style pontificating. (Not me, I gave up reading him long ago.)
His cheerleading for the criminal invasion of Iraq was beyond the pale. I'm sorry for him and Sarah, but that's it. Other than that, he has a lot to answer for..
Brooks looked green in the gills last night on the PBS Newshour and went on about the Democrats making a big mistake re: the filibuster––heck, he sees both Dems and Repubs co-mingling in the dining room and doesn't understand why the rash decision. The rest of his blather was incomprehensible since it was basically incorrect. Perhaps the ordeal of going through a divorce has done him in. It will change him––how remains to be seen.
Mike Luckovich has a wonderful cartoon over at Truthdig: The big Republican Elephant is in tears saying "The big meanie broke the bat that I bludgeoned him with," the donkey is by his side breaking a bat that reads "filibuster". Perfect.
John Cassidy needs to put his doubts to rest. After all these years the extensive information we have gathered has not unearthed any conspiracy theory. Oswald was a fanatic, a disturbed little man who wanted desperately to be important; Ruby was a wild, pill popping immoral owner of a strip joint whose temper was known around those circles. It's hard to accept that these two guys could change our world, but if we look at the background of all the shooters that killed Lennon, MLKing, Bobby, et al. they all present as "off their chomp" as Monty Python used to say.
The conspiracy theory issue is a violation of Schwalb's second law.
"A conspiracy can only be maintained if it involves no more than three people, assuming that no one is offered a book deal".
Speaking of conspiracy theories, yesterday, Charles Pierce linked to/mentioned a (1973) movie available over on YouTube: "Executive Action"—starring Burt Lancaster, scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo. Sometimes 'fiction' more closely resembles fact. In a way, the film seems a precursor to Oliver Stone's "JFK." When I have time, I'll try to finish viewing the rest of it.
This morning I checked out CW's mention of the "Politico magazine report "Bobby Baker's salacious secret history of Capitol Hill."— read the online Politico article and have downloaded the 231-page PDF transcript to read. So far I have learned that early on, Sen Joe McCarthy was a 'fun guy" and that a NH Senator (also a Governor) by the name of Styles Bridges died leaving his widow to ask LBJ "what she should do with the $2,000,000 in cash?" Baker said, "DON'T put it in a bank." Though, the story and actual amount of money have changed over the years, none-the-less the transcript is stunning in its revelations on how easily & frequently large amounts (usually cash) get passed around on Capitol Hill.
Makes one speculate that whoever first said that "prostitution is the world's oldest profession "wasn't talking about sex!
RE: the facts of our health care system payments: Medicare's $550 billion annual budget is spent on patient's last six months of life. We have discussed this situation before and I think it was Ken and I who advocated for a cut-off period for these kinds of payments.More doctors need to encourage end of life patients to forgo expensive treatments, enlist hospice care, and die at home or at a hospice care center. There will be a great hue and cry from many, but if we are to save this system for the future we need to do the sensible and in my estimation, the humane thing to do. So when we hear "don't cut Medicare" I think we need to reevaluate that message.
@P.D.Pepe: Medicare already does this. For instance, I had to pay a portion of my husband's hospital bill, some doctor & lab bills & his EMS bills -- but none of his rehab care, home health care or hospice care. This schedule of payments obviously encourages patients to use the lower-cost services in lieu of higher-cost ones.
In addition, my husband was a (poor) candidate for surgery; he wanted it, but the surgeons said he wouldn't likely survive it -- whether this was precisely true or whether he would have survived for months in which he required hospitalization, I don't know. But the hospital, doctors & other medical personnel could have collected a good deal more if they had treated my husband aggressively. They didn't. Moreover, hospital personnel encouraged my husband to sign a DNR & they worked with me to get him into a hospice.
After hearing horror stories for years of how the medical profession prolonged life unnecessarily, after there was no chance the patient would ever enjoy a semi-normal quality-of-life, and against the patient's wishes & those of his family, I was very impressed with the way the staff handled my husband's end-of-life needs. Of course this is Southwest Florida; maybe in areas where there are fewer elderly patients per capita, medical personnel aren't as good at this.
Marie
@Marie: Glad to hear of your experience. I need to correct my calculations: Medicare spends 17% of their annual budget on patient's last six months of life––not, obviously their whole annual budget. It sounds as though your husband not only had excellent care, but had doctors and a hospital that had high ethical standards. Let's hope this kind of care becomes the norm.
On JFK conspiracy theories. In order to survive without going stark-staring nuts, we need some sort of "rules to live by," some way to navigate our way thru life. One of those handy "rules" is that there is an explanation for everything -- that we live in a rational world. Indeed, this is true of most of the natural world -- I know why the rain falls & why my stray cat brings me dead rodents. But with increased complexity, comes more chance for failure -- more chance for irrationality. In all of nature, humans are the most imperfect of beings -- the most likely to act in ways that seem, well, irrational.
The old saw that truth is stranger than fiction is accurate. Chekhov famously wrote, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." Real life is not so neat. There are probably plenty of homes that sport rifles above the mantle & everybody survives. By contrast, there are homes with no firearms in sight, but people get hurt or killed by family members. We don't behave like characters in plays. We don't follow the narratives that others have laid out for us. And yet. And yet. Most of us think we know why we're doing something that may seem nutzo to observers. If someone hasn't said to you, "I can't believe you did/said that!" you're probably too predictable.
So, yeah, Lee Oswald & Jack Ruby had motives for what they did. They thought they were acting "rationally." They may have had "helpers," though I would be surprised if the helpers of either were organized into some ring of conspirators bent on assassinating the President &/or covering up evidence of a conspiracy to kill him. I also am fairly unimpressed with the theory that the hatefulness of Dallas's elite led to the assassination -- that it set a "mood" that invited the assassination. After all, Oswald & Ruby hardly moved in the elite circles from which that loathing of Kennedy emanated.
But if -- like John Cassidy -- you're looking for a "rational" explanation for Kennedy's assassination, I would place it not with Dallas culture or with Oswald but with Kennedy himself. His decision to place himself -- and his wife -- out in the open, despite warnings that Dallas was a dangerous city, was perfectly consistent with his family's history of recklessness. In a country where presidential assassination attempts were not uncommon, Kennedy was careless. I met Kennedy shortly before his election. No one made any attempt to stop me from walking right up to him -- in fact, I think he walked right up to me. No one checked to see who I was or if I was armed or otherwise ill-intentioned. Whatever "protection" Kennedy had, it was completely inadequate. Given the nature of people everywhere, he was bound to come upon someone who would take advantage of his recklessness, if not in Dallas, then in Miami. Somewhere.
As for John Kerry, I suspect he knows more than we do. I believe I've heard that some of the Kennedys didn't buy the Warren Commission report. Kerry was a long-time colleague of Teddy Kennedy's, so it would hardly be surprising if Teddy told Kerry about some "loose ends" that aren't public knowledge. Maybe some of those "loose ends" will be revealed in 2017, when the CIA declassifies more of its reports.
There is an explanation for everything. We just don't always know what it is. In the Kennedy assassination, we in the public still don't have all the pieces. The key piece may never be revealed; we may never have an "aha!" moment. One of the other "rules of life" is that we have to acknowledge our own limitations & those placed on us by others.
Marie
PDPepe: Don't remember having advocated clamping down on the cost of end-of-life medical care, tho' I agree it's a critical issue. Who knows what I might have said yesterday? Certainly not I.
But this morning's edition of me thinks that in the present political climate, it's hard to ally oneself with any but the "don't cut Medicare" crowd. You're suggesting a rational discussion of the way we finance our personal end times, but I don't think you're going to get help from the Right; you'll just get more screaming about Death Panels, no nuance, nothing intelligent. To today's Right, everything is about politics and power, not real issues. They're too confusing.
Case in point: tried to listen to Mitch Mac's response to the end-the-filibuster vote but didn't get very far. Just another diatribe about the failure of Obama Care...Nothing as far as I listened about the way the Senate dysfunctions and why...
The big end-of-life financial crunch, as I might have written before, maybe here--but as I said who knows?--is as likely Medicaid as Medicare related.
Medicaid pays for over half--I think over sixty percent--of the oldsters warehoused in facilities across the country at the tune of 3-7thousand/month each. I've done the math and it adds up to billions. When we run an economy that leaves most working families with no more than 45 thousand in retirement assets when they can no longer work, the immense burden on Medicaid is a given, now and in the foreseeable future. That's something else we don't talk about.
What it comes down to for most of us--those are the numbers--regardless of political persuasion, is that our rallying cry should probably be "Keep you hands off my Medicaid!"
Medicare, maybe not so much.
@Ken Winkes. You aren't quite right on your Medicaid claim, but you're damned close. According to this site, Medicaid pays only 40 percent of long-term care. Howevah, Medicare pays another 22 percent, so there's your 60 percent. Individuals pay 22 percent, & private insurance 9 percent. "Other," which includes private charities & state programs makes up the final 6 percent.
Marie
Hi, Marie.
I know this is wrought with misinformation, but I challenge you to not laugh and, if you suspend judgment, this is really funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USG_gjaEYak&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUSG_gjaEYak&app=desktop
WTF??? Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USG_gjaEYak&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUSG_gjaEYak&app=desktop
Grrr... the website insists on changing the URL to inoperability. If anyone's interested, it seems to inject a space after "...watch?" and lop off a "=desktop" from the end thereby rendering it unusable.
Oh Brother! Don’t bother (I’m sorry I did) to read George Will's essay in idiocy that appeared in WaPo yesterday. Consider my doing it a service to CW readers. You needn't aggravate yourselves. But, if you insist here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-obamas-presidency-unravels-through-chaos-and-crisis/2013/11/22/57132e74-52de-11e3-a7f0-b790929232e1_story.html?hpid=z2
Yeah, I'm sure it’s tough to come up with clever, interesting commentaries once/twice a week. Finding that new twist. Something that hasn’t been said before in quite the same way. But it’s the 52-variations-on-a-tired-theme, which has become evermore irritating to many of us.
Funnily, I remember a wry, younger Sunday morning George Will from decades ago who had a deft, amusing way of looking at things. Then, there was also a young, former speechwriter who was quick-witted, funny. Name? Pat Buchanan. Really! He could be hilarious and wasn’t such a partisan crank. Today, these guys have turned into the worst of grumpy-old-get-off-my-lawn-kid curmudgeons.
Oh, and speaking of that younger George Will, maybe it’s time the WaPo updates the 1956 class picture used next to his byline.
Re: The truth; Mob family and and Kennedy family had business understandings from the old days. Mob said we will deliver Chicago, give us back Cuba. Kennedy welched out on his end of the deal when Bay o' pigs went south. Mob doesn't forget favors not returned; done in Dallas. You heard it first here.
I dug a bit into the Vermont single payer program. I wanted to know if that puts all health insurance companies out of business and was concerned that some of the reporting sounded less than "emphatic" that it was solid. Sorry to learn it is not quite a done deal. They still are figuring out the funding - lots to be coming from Medicare and Medicaid - and have to meet certain federal criteria. Here is my source...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_health_care_reform
Marie, regarding how Medicare limits end-of-life care... The trouble is the family (or patient) has no idea what will be their share of the financial costs nor in any shape to consider the cost of care. Those damn bills do not show up for months and it takes another six months to "decode" them. Far to late to help make decisions. Of course, this just underscores the need for end-of-life planning, but it will be years before we can get past the "death panels" meme.
Kate, hate Brooks and never read him but at the risk of being exposed as a shallow jerk, I didn't think Brooks' advice to the kids was all so terrible. The courses mentioned are worthwhile and a crappy marriage does make life miserable. I dismiss the stuff about the age related stages but generally speaking I would be pleased if my grandchildren put their computers on pause and considered that advice. What am I missing?
freethink, the second link worked for me. Hysterical! I think it is a preview of Thanksgiving dinner with my right-wing brother.