JFLNYC wrote:A corporation is now a "person" for religious beliefs, too? If they want to enjoy the limited liability bestowed upon them by the state, then they should have to play by the state's rules, including health insurance. Want to assert your individual religious beliefs? Give up the corporate shield.

TenuredVulture wrote:

pacino wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:I'd say 10 cents a gallon tax would change my behavior, except that happened when gas when from 1.50 to 1.60 a gallon. Try to limit myself to a tank every two months, and even then I feel like it's a wasteful extravagance.

a tank every two months, aren't you special

I live in a small town. Nothing is more than a couple of miles away. Except liquor, and then I use Mrs. Vulture's car. Mostly, I take my bike for my 2 mile commute.

Werthless wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

Werthless wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:think he is hoping that is the case

Yup. 50 hours, yeh, that's how long it will take.

If it's bad when people don't sign up, then I just have to wonder why the republicans are so gleeful at the low signup numbers. It's almost like they want it to fail. They just can't have it look like government can help solve society's problems. The moment it looks that way, their whole ideology falls apart.

You=bad at reading comprehension.

You= good at missing the point.

I got that we were supposed to "imagine" it. I just don't think you picked a ridiculously high number by accident.

You misinterpreted everything. I picked 50 hours intentionally because it is easy to imagine how behavior can be affected at such levels. It's hard to talk about how behavior is affected unless we pick a number that will impact a large amount. It's like if I say "increasing the price of gas by $0.10/gal tax will decrease consumption," it might be tempting to say "no way, if you have to drive, you'll drive." But when you think about how you would be affected by a $10/gallon tax, you can easily visualize how behavior would be affected. Well, the $0.10/tax may affect people, but in very small magnitudes. Maybe 1 out of 50 people change their behavior (ie. combine errand trips to limit distance) with $0.10/gal tax, but it still has an economic effect.

But getting back to health insurance, anything that is not "seamless" will lose people on the margins. If it takes 8 hours, then you're going to get people to say "I'll deal with this later." Maybe they do, maybe they don't. If it takes 2 hours, then someone learns that their cost would go up 50%, they might say "I'll deal with that later." Again, maybe they do, maybe they don't. As you increase the cost, in time investment, you're going to get more people dropping out along the way. It's easy to imagine at 50 hours, but harder to imagine at 2 hours. My uncle is lazy, and because he doesn't have dependent, I could totally see him not getting around to signing up if it's a big hassle. I'm not calling it rational or irrational, but it's just the way it is.

Your second comment is a misinterpretation, but I'm not sure you care. So I'll let that rest.

Werthless wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:As for the Supremes taking up the birth control mandate: If they strike it down, does that mean people can sue if they don't like where their tax money goes? Serious question. Isn't this a bit of a Pandora's Box? If so, I'm cutting off the defense department on the grounds that killing people goes against my Christian upbringing and beliefs.

No. Not a lawyer, but if memory of my wife's law school classes serves me right, I believe that hippies brought a suit in this vein to defund their contributions to the Vietnam War. Obviously lost.

I havent read the birth control case, but I am fairly sure they are making a different argument than "we don't like where our tax money is going."

drsmooth wrote:Private health insurer Humana ...

Chronicle of Higher Ed wrote:The American Police State

...Goffman's book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (University of Chicago Press), is an up-close account of [the US] prison boom told largely through the story of a group of young friends in Philadelphia's 6th Street neighborhood....

after braving violence and intimidation to get this story, Goffman now faces a different challenge. How can she keep the focus on black poverty, and not her own biography?...Instead of mass incarceration, they ask questions about what she dismisses as "the story of a blond young woman living in the 'hood." ...

...Goffman's bid to remain irrelevant is hampered by another personal detail. Her father, the late Erving Goffman, was one of the defining sociologists of the 20th century.

drsmooth wrote:A politics thing sort of, has a Philadelphia connection & central figure with an interesting lineage:

Chronicle of Higher Ed wrote:The American Police State

...Goffman's book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (University of Chicago Press), is an up-close account of [the US] prison boom told largely through the story of a group of young friends in Philadelphia's 6th Street neighborhood....

after braving violence and intimidation to get this story, Goffman now faces a different challenge. How can she keep the focus on black poverty, and not her own biography?...Instead of mass incarceration, they ask questions about what she dismisses as "the story of a blond young woman living in the 'hood." ...

...Goffman's bid to remain irrelevant is hampered by another personal detail. Her father, the late Erving Goffman, was one of the defining sociologists of the 20th century.

Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism.

Youseff wrote:idiots that run the GOP twitter thought this would be a nice tweet

Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism.

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/407161769069924352

Youseff wrote:idiots that run the GOP twitter thought this would be a nice tweet

Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism.

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/407161769069924352

In private insurance, the average spending growth rate per person has slowed a lot over the last few years. In Medicare, there was no spending growth between 2010 and 2013 and, in Medicaid, per person costs actually decreased some.

All told, health care costs have been growing more slowly over the last three years than any other time period since 1965. More recently, yearly health cost growth slowed from an average rate of 3.9 percent between 2000 and 2007 to 1.3 percent between 2011 and 2013

Most health care economists now agree, at least to some extent, with this more structural view. Even those who argue that the current slowdown is unlikely to last, such as Harvard's Amitabh Chandra and Dartmouth's Jonathan Skinner, still expect slower health care cost growth in the next decade compared with the previous one.

And in some cases, that translates into better health care, too. This chart from the council's report shows a significant drop in preventable readmissions to hospitals (when treatment goes wrong the first time and the patient must return to the hospital). That happened right around the time Medicare began penalizing such return trips to the hospitals.

pacino wrote:

Most health care economists now agree, at least to some extent, with this more structural view. Even those who argue that the current slowdown is unlikely to last, such as Harvard's Amitabh Chandra and Dartmouth's Jonathan Skinner, still expect slower health care cost growth in the next decade compared with the previous one.

And in some cases, that translates into better health care, too. This chart from the council's report shows a significant drop in preventable readmissions to hospitals (when treatment goes wrong the first time and the patient must return to the hospital). That happened right around the time Medicare began penalizing such return trips to the hospitals.

Werthless wrote:It's probably the better health care that is leading to fewer readmissions and lower costs.

Monkeyboy wrote:So then what would be considered evidence that the law is having a positive effect on costs and/or medical outcomes?

The enrollment records for a significant portion of the Americans who have chosen health plans through the online federal insurance marketplace contain errors — generated by the computer system — that mean they might not get the coverage they’re expecting next month.

The errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1, according to two government and health-care industry officials. The White House disputed the figure but declined to provide its own.

The mistakes include failure to notify insurers about new customers, duplicate enrollments or cancellation notices for the same person, incorrect information about family members, and mistakes involving federal subsidies. The errors have been accumulating since HealthCare.gov opened two months ago, even as the Obama administration has been working to make it easier for consumers to sign up for coverage, the government and industry officials said.

drsmooth wrote:I'm not clear how obsessing on this whole health enrollment administrivia thing is something other than a surefire political loser