It’s Obamacare deadline day—sort of

The New Neo Posted on by

And here are statistics about it—sort of.

You can find the articles nearly everywhere in the MSM on the success of the six million signups. Or enrollments. Or somethings. How many have paid or will pay, how many are well or ill or young or old, how many are largely subsidized, how many are only there because they lost their previous insurance through Obamacare, and how many are actually necessary for the success of the program? Only the Shadow knows, or at least the government’s not saying if indeed it does know, and what it says today may be quite different from what it says tomorrow.

In some ways it doesn’t matter. Obamacare is so central to Democrats’ plans that they will do whatever they can to continue it, and say whatever they need to say to make it sound successful. It’s no great trick to promise vast numbers of people free stuff (or nearly-free stuff) if you’re the federal government and you can print more money or take it from other people. And if your partners the insurance companies are hurting, you can cover for them for a while, too. You can do all of it for a while.

And it always has been clear that there will be many success stories to trumpet. I don’t think that even Obamacare’s harshest critics ever contended that it will be bad for everyone. But it has already been, and will continue to be, bad for many many people. It was completely unnecessary, too, in order to redress problems such as pre-existing conditions or portability, but it’s pretty clear that was not really the goal.

The PR campaign on both sides will almost undoubtedly feature a bunch of people citing dueling anecdotal evidence, most of which will be meaningless because a couple of stories one way or the other are meaningless. It will also almost undoubtedly be the case that all the success stories will involve subsidies of one kind or another, and the pro-Obamacare forces will act as though the money transfer involved is on the order of manna falling from heaven.

Plus, enrollment numbers are one thing. The actual insurance that people will receive is another, as well as how it all will affect the much larger employment-based health insurance market. My guess is that most people on the exchanges have no idea what they signed up for, and won’t know till they have to use the health care system. What doctors and hospitals will be covered? Do they understand how high their deductibles might be? For those newly on Medicaid (who would not be among the six million), will they be able to get care at all outside of the emergency rooms?

Socialism sounds good…

The New Neo Posted on by

…until you experience enough of it, that is:

France’s governing Socialists have suffered big losses in municipal elections, with the opposition UMP claiming victory and the far right celebrating further gains.

These are local contests, but they indicate a dissatisfaction with the Socialists. The way voters have been going in recent years (including in this country), there’s a strong tendency for fickleness, though, and a “what have you done for me lately?” mentality that causes rather large and temporary pendulum swings. Only time will tell whether this is a more lasting change.

And, just as in the US, the very biggest cities tend to remain most strongly leftist:

The centre-right UMP was said to have captured a number of key cities, including Toulouse, Quimper, Limoges, Saint-Etienne, Reims, Roubaix and Tourcoing.

The Socialists retained control of Paris, with their candidate Anne Hidalgo due to become the capital’s first female mayor.

Remember, too, that left and right in Europe are not the same as in the US. For starters, the colors are reversed, with red for the left (as they used to be in the US). But more importantly, the entire apparatus is shifted to the left in general.

[Hat tip: Ace of Spades.]

Dust in the wind

The New Neo Posted on by

At least we in the US don’t have to deal with this:

When soggy, green Northern Ireland gets coated by red, Saharan dust, the locals get slightly perturbed.

The dust is being pumped northward into the United Kingdom as winds aloft flow from the south to southeast instead of the normal west-to-east direction, says weather.com senior meteorologist Jon Erdman. An expansive blocking area of high pressure is stretching from eastern Europe to southern Greenland, and that’s working in tandem with a strong southward dip in the jet stream centered just west of the Iberian Peninsula.

As a result, northern Europe has turned hazy with Saharan dust filling the air in some areas, according to a BBC report.

And of course, that made me think of this:

I tend to think of northern Europe and the Sahara as very, very far apart. But Europe is smaller than one might think, and the Sahara bigger. Actually, the Sahara and Europe are roughly equal in size. And winds can take stuff like sanddust really really far.

Speaking of climate change, the Sahara is a fairly recent phenomenon, a desert formed in an area that was once a larger desert but then became wetter before it became drier again:

A timeline of Sahara occupation:

22,000 to 10,500 years ago: The Sahara was devoid of any human occupation outside the Nile Valley and extended 250 miles further south than it does today.

10,500 to 9,000 years ago: Monsoon rains begin sweeping into the Sahara, transforming the region into a habitable area swiftly settled by Nile Valley dwellers.

9,000 to 7,300 years ago: Continued rains, vegetation growth, and animal migrations lead to well established human settlements, including the introduction of domesticated livestock such as sheep and goats.

7,300 to 5,500 years ago: Retreating monsoonal rains initiate desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara after 5,500 coincides with population return to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society.

Although mankind has had some influence on the desert, it seems minimal compared to the ebb and flow of rain there, which appears to be connected to completely non-human factors, some of them unknown. Humans have been the beneficiaries or victims of the changes, but not usually the instigators of them.

Here is some speculation about what drove those changes:

About 12,000 years ago, slight changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun brought the northern hemisphere into the limelight. Summers became warmer as more solar radiation hit the lands north of the Equator. Solar ”˜insolation’ levels were up to 8 percent higher than today.

With insolation driving monsoonal climates like a huge heat engine, rainfall increased. One climate model estimated that the 8 percent increase in radiation in North Africa resulted in a 40 percent increase in precipitation….

We know what caused the greening of the Sahara: a complex interaction between solar insolation, vegetation cover, and ocean temperatures.

What is even more interesting for today’s civilizations is the speed at which these changes occurred.

Peter deMenocal, an expert at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, argues that it started and ended very abruptly””within a few decades to centuries””triggered largely by summer insolation crossing the threshold of 470 Watts per meter squared, 4.2 percent higher than today.

He speculates that there could be an insolation tipping point “whereby subtropical African climate flips abruptly between humid and arid”.

However, other evidence suggests a more gradual transition. Layers of sediment drilled from the bottom of Lake Yoa in northeastern Chad hint that the environment changed in phases from trees and bushes to shrubs and grasses and finally to nothing but sand.

It’s hard to imagine the Sahara as anything but sand. But could global warming prompt another greening of the desert? Not likely. Solar insolation is still too low, the monsoon is shifting southwards, and vegetation cover is decreasing.

So: the change was enormous, probably relatively sudden, and had much much more to do with changes in the earth’s orbit than anything else. And it drives home how little we know about the complex interplay of factors that cause climate change, which has been occurring as long as the earth has been here.

Art, royal children, and time

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote a post featuring this charming photo of the young and growing royal family:

family

What do I like about the photo? It’s not really the subject matter; I’m not so much into the royals, although I think this particular crew seems unusually likeable as well as photogenic. For me, it’s more about the picture: I like the framing in the window.

But the thing that I find most engaging about it is the interplay between the baby and the dog, in contrast with the usual formality of an official royal portrait. What is the dog thinking? Is it loyally and steadfastly standing guard? Is it ignoring the baby and looking past him to something interesting in the distance, a squirrel perhaps?

The baby’s fascination, though, is clearly with the dog itself.

And the whole thing reminded me of another, somewhat darker portrait, one by Goya. Goya was a court painter known for being remarkably unflattering to his royal sitters, but this portrait of the very young Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zué±iga is different, and far gentler:

goya

Like many children of the time (late eighteenth century) the boy did not live to adulthood; he died around the age of eight. The portrait foreshadows this in the lower left of the picture, where the animals are carrying on their own drama:

The sitter is the son of the Count and Countess of Altamira. Outfitted in a splendid red costume, he is shown playing with a pet magpie (which holds the painter’s calling card in its beak), a cage full of finches, and three wide-eyed cats. In Christian art birds frequently symbolize the soul, and in Baroque art caged birds are symbolic of innocence. Goya may have intended this portrait as an illustration of the frail boundaries that separate the child’s world from the forces of evil or as a commentary on the fleeting nature of innocence and youth.

There’s also this:

…[Y]ou sense “Goya’s awareness of how contingent life is,” to quote the critic Robert Hughes.

That awareness is certainly heightened by…our knowledge of Goya’s own losses. (At least seven of his offspring died in infancy.) Although the dark mood of later Goya is much in evidence here, the painting has talismanic properties, as if the image of Manuel could somehow warn or protect other children.

Children and animals are cute, but they are much more than cute. They are extraordinarily precious and also vulnerable, and artists (be they painters or photographers) know that, as do parents.

The fastest generation

The New Neo Posted on by

I was on an airplane recently that was completely full—as almost all airplanes I ride seem to be these days.

I was seated on the aisle next to two female college students who were clearly friends of each other. Maybe half the time they spent doing their homework. The one directly next to me, whose work I could see, first did some sort of trig-ish assignment, and then turned to peruse a textbook with a chapter that summarized the work of Freud by applying his theories to Kurt Cobain’s suicide—demonstrating the futility of attempts at cultural relevance on the part of textbook writers, because the event occurred in 1994, probably before those girls were even born.

But what I noticed most wasn’t their homework. The rest of the time they were doing two things: talking, and scrolling through their photos on their cell phones. I was deeply impressed by the speed with which they could do both.

Their speech rate was phenomenal. I’m no slouch myself in the talking department, and I have friends with high speech rates, but I’ve never heard anything remotely like these girls. And their fingers flew across their cellphones in similar fashion. They were the hummingbirds of talk and of phone photo galleries—and, I’d imagine, of texting.

I have a feeling they are hardly alone. The newer generations have developed skills we can only dream about.

Which gave me the idea that perhaps on YouTube there are proud videos by young people showing how fast they can text. Instead, I found something even more organized: speed texting competitions. And apparently this has been going on for quite a few years.

Here’s a video about one of the biggest contests, which is held in NY and has a prize of $50,000:

These kids are focused and serious. You can mock or revile what it is they happen to be serious and focused about (which, by the way, includes not just straight speed texting, but blindfold texting and behind-the-back texting), but at least it’s better than a lot of other things they could be doing with their time.

I don’t text, by the way. By the time I’m finished blogging for the day, a keyboard is the last thing I want to deal with.

More Obamacare woes

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read this to hear about one woman’s struggles with getting health insurance post-Obamacare, in a state (New York) that has the Medicaid expansion. An excerpt:

In fact, I started this process in October. And only today did I receive an email that my eligibility had been determined and I should log on to the site and choose a plan.

A detailed timeline of the actions I’ve taken proactively and reactively over the past 5 months would be mind-numbingly boring to recount, much less to read…

I have now spoken to three representatives today.

No one can actually explain the relationship between Medicaid and these various plans. (One is “primary” and one is “secondary,” although the representatives have differed on which is which, and do not seem to know what those characterizations mean in practical terms anyway.) The site does not have any explanatory content on the subject. The plans (when the page does load, perhaps once every half hour) are indistingishable to me.

One representative listed the insurance provider names (Health Plus, Emblem, bla, bla) and said “just pick one and I’ll put it in for you.” But how am I supposed to distinguish between them, I asked?

She told me I should write them down and Google them.

One representative has told me I must choose a plan by Monday or it will not take effect until the next eligibility round in November.

The next representative tells me vehemently that this is not true…

You have to read the whole thing to get the full flavor, but that will do for an introduction.

These stories do not seem to be limited to the usual slowness and frustrations of dealing with most government bureaucracies. They seem to involve huge chasms in the law itself, combined with lack of communication, combined with true confusion on the part of officials and their representatives in understanding the law. If they don’t understand it (does anyone?) how could they ever communicate clearly on the subject to the consumer?

My own experience trying to get information about Obamacare for a relative in California has been similar, and Medicaid isn’t even involved. Every time I call, it’s a crapshoot in terms of the answers I will get to the very same question I keep asking over and over: are the networks the same if you buy the same policy from the same company on-exchange vs. off? I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I’ve been working on that (and some other questions) since December of 2013 and have probably put in close to 100 hours on the subject, and still don’t really know the truth. My current working theory, based on pooling all the answers I’ve gotten from Covered California plus the insurance companies themselves, is that the companies’ networks for the “same” policies on and off exchanges are the same de jure but not de facto.

Obamacare quote of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

From Ed Rogers:

After all the insurance cancellations, the administration’s insistence that 6 million people now have insurance because of Obamacare is a lot like firing 20 people, hiring 18 of them back and claiming that you have created 18 new jobs.

Indeed.

Another important test pending:

The real test will be if Obamacare can deliver insurance with a health-care plan that people actually like by November.

Narrow networks and high deductibles, anyone?

That’s one of many, many “real tests” yet to come. Others include what will happen to premiums in 2015—figures that will become public before the 2014 election.

“Some” contraception

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece by Margaret Carlson is disingenuous and/or purposely misleading in so many ways it’s hard to choose one to highlight, but I’ll deal with one of the simplest: it discusses the Hobby Lobby case without once mentioning that the forms of contraception the plaintiffs are objecting to being forced to help provide funds for could at least arguably be called abortificants, and that this is in fact the basis of their argument. They have no problem with other forms of contraception coverage required by the law.

You can take either side of the Hobby Lobby case and still write a piece that states the facts correctly without omitting one of the most important ones. In her article, Carlson refers to “contraception” and “some contraception,” and the casual reader would be led to believe that Hobby Lobby is objecting to contraception itself.

But two of the types of contraception Hobby Lobby objects to are the morning-after pill (“Plan B”) and the IUD. The left would argue that the preponderance of evidence at this point is that neither are actually abortificants, and there is certainly evidence to that effect. But the truth is that we really don’t yet know their mechanism in all cases, and that Hobby Lobby’s contention that they are abortificants is not the least bit frivolous:

The exact mechanism by which Plan B prevents pregnancies has been in question for decades and is not likely to be cleared up soon, says Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“How you ask the question determines what kind of answer you get,” she said. “What you don’t have is a lot of funding for research that says, ‘Does this drug affect the embryo?’ “

There is a similar case that can be made to consider the IUD a form of abortificant (at least in some unknown number of cases), if a person believes that personhood begins the moment an egg and sperm unite [emphasis mine]:

IUDs primarily work by preventing fertilization. The progestogen released from the hormonal IUDs prevents ovulation from occurring so an egg is never released. The hormone also thickens the cervical mucus so that sperm cannot reach the fallopian tubes. The copper IUDs contain no hormones, but the copper ions in the cervical mucus are toxic to sperm. They also cause the uterus and fallopian tubes to produce a fluid that contains white blood cells, copper ions, enzymes, and prostaglandins, a combination that is also toxic to sperm. The very high effectiveness of copper-releasing IUDs as emergency contraceptives implies they may also act by preventing implantation of the blastocyst.

It’s that “blastocyst” (i.e. newly fertilized egg), and its failure to implant in some cases as a result of an IUD, that is the issue (see also this). That’s the basis of Hobby Lobby’s objection, and to call it a refusal to provide contraception is an attempt to portray Hobby Lobby as more extreme than they are.

Gas prices: getting a foot in the door?

The New Neo Posted on by

Looking at the high gas prices at the pumps the other day, I had the usual and obvious thought, “When Bush was president the press blamed it all on him, and now that Obama’s president you hear the sound of MSM crickets chirping.”

Then it occurred to me that one simple way into a discussion with a liberal about how incredibly biased the media is would be to point that fact out. I’m not so sure even most liberals could deny it. They might pooh-pooh its significance, but they might have trouble saying it hasn’t happened, or explaining it as anything other than bias.

And then you could point out that if the media would do that, how could you trust them to tell the truth about other things? What else are they distorting or omitting through bias?

It might be worth a try, anyway.

With leftists, don’t even try.

Cillizza: “Obama got elected on competence. Now people are starting to wonder.”

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Cillizza writes that now people are starting to wonder about Obama’s competence. You may shake your head in wonder at the word “now” and the word “starting”—how could people not have noticed long ago?

But even more curious is the “got elected on competence” bit. Really? Really? And yet, absurd as it may seem, Cillizza’s actually got a germ of an idea there. He writes:

A new CNN/ORC national poll reveals the problem. Asked whether Obama can “manage the government effectively,” nearly six in 10 (57 percent) say that statement didn’t apply to the president. Compare that to where Obama stood just before he was inaugurated, when 76 percent of respondents in a December 2008 CNN/ORC poll said he was an effective manager, and you see just how far he has fallen…

Here’s why that number…should scare President Obama and the Democratic Party. It goes directly to the heart of why he was elected — as an anti-George W. Bush, a person who, above all else, was competent at handling the basic affairs of government.

The poll numbers from 2008 referenced in the first paragraph bear out Cillizza’s contention in the second: that Obama was originally elected as someone “competent at handling the basic affairs of government.” That’s not the only reason he was elected, of course (and it couldn’t have been the reason he was re-elected). But clearly, it was part of the reason in 2008. The million-dollar question is why anyone would believe such a thing even back then of a man who (like him or not, agree with his politics or not) clearly had no track record of handling the basic affairs of government—or managing much of anything else—at all.

What the public perceived about Obama was not a track record, but a powerful impression of competence, apparently powerful enough to be instrumental in getting him elected. Obama was able to project an air of competence, and take advantage of the fact that a great many people seem unable to tell the difference between an act and the real thing.

A projection of competence without a track record requires the ability to resemble an actor in a TV show or movie who plays the role of president. Barack Obama was apparently very good at it. His voice was right. His height was right. His coolness and calm were right. He’d been to the right schools. His color, although unprecedented, seemed “right” also in the sense that its time had come and Americans were ready—nay, eager—for it.

I’ve seen many TV shows and movies where actors play presidents, and I’ve always been struck by how miscast they all seem. Comparing the actor-presidents I’ve seen to the actual presidents during my lifetime, the actors, almost to a person, seem too slick, too smooth, too generic (although Peter Sellers in the comic “Dr. Strangelove” seemed too bland). Real presidents have been, for the most part, far more idiosyncratic, with more complex energy and personality. But on the surface, Obama resembled the actors more than the presidents, and it impressed an electorate that favors role play over reality.

For all those who doubted my Sebelius/O’Toole…

The New Neo Posted on by

…separated at birth, there’s this, sent in by a helpful reader. On the upper right is an earlier photo of O’Toole, photoshopped to have brown eyes instead of blue, and on the lower right is the same photo, with Sebelius’s eyeglasses superimposed plus a little teeny tiny bit of the tops of her eyes to give his a slightly more hooded look (which he got naturally anyway as he aged).

I rest my case:

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