A personal note: I sometimes have found insurance companies annoying, but in general they’ve done right by me. I don’t understand the generalized hatred of them. They’re a business, responding to business pressures and the need to make a profit at the same time they provide a service.
Here’s Emanuel’s Brave New World of the transformed and/or eliminated insurance company:
Some people may be concerned about the prospect of having to choose among large integrated delivery systems with selective physician and hospital networks. The worried well might wonder what happens if they contract a serious illness, such as cancer or some rare disease, will they be restricted only to the physicians in the delivery system? We should note that many people pick Kaiser or Group Health and get all of their care from those integrated systems, and they don’t seem to worry that they are not getting the highest-quality care. The real issue is not whether there is a selective network of physicians and hospitals; the real issue is whether the network is of high quality. Having the assurance of a high-quality network is the key. These integrated-delivery systems will begin competing with their objectively validated, high-quality networks.
More importantly, health systems have learned from the managed-care backlash; just saying “no” really aggravates people, especially well-off, powerful people. Although it may be cheaper in the short run, it can be expensive, especially in terms of reputation, in the longer term. There are better ways to approach this.
I suspect these integrated delivery systems of the future will adopt two strategies. For rare but serious conditions they will identify recognized centers of excellence””the absolute best places in the country”” and contract special arrangements for the referral and treatment of their patients. These centers of excellence may have slightly higher sticker prices, but forging these special arrangements will be worth it for integrated delivery systems because then they will be able to boast negotiated rates, better outcomes, and fewer complications. Second, richer and, thus, more expensive benefit packages, such as platinum plans in the exchanges, would cover second opinions. In addition, there will be a market for supplemental insurance that covers second opinions for serious conditions. The well-heeled and worried will be a prime target for such plans.
Kiss your choice goodbye—unless you’re rich. And remind me again why this is better—much much better—than just tweaking the health insurance system we had in place by making insurance portable and having a national high-risk pool?
The timing could not have been any more deliberate ”” an assault on the prime minister’s policies delivered precisely as Netanyahu was flying in to meet with him, and on the first day, too, of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual tour de force conference across town.
At the very least, that might be considered bad manners, poor diplomatic protocol, a resounding preemptive slap in the face: I’ve just told the world you’re leading your country to wrack and ruin, Mr. Prime Minister. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?
More substantively, the president’s comments reinforce years of grievance that have accumulated in Netanyahu’s circles and some distance beyond, to the effect that the president ignores the inconsistencies, duplicities and worse of the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas, while placing exaggerated blame for the failure of peace efforts at the door of the Israeli government.
Completely predictable. I wish we’d some day get to see that tape the LA Timesis guarding in its vaults, but whenever we do it will be way too late. At any rate, what matters more than the past is what Obama has been doing lately, and what he’s planning in the future.
Also please see this piece by Elliot Abrams entitled, “If he believes it, it must be so: Obama’s scary interview.”
What a sad and terrifying story of another political changer: Dmitri Volkogonov. Ultimately it’s also a story of great courage and integrity, although that courage and integrity came late in the game:
Volkogonov entered the military at the age of seventeen in 1945, which was common for many orphans. He studied at the Lenin Military Academy in Moscow in 1961; transferring to the Soviet Army’s propaganda department in 1970. There he wrote propaganda pamphlets and manuals on psychological warfare and gained a reputation as a hardliner…
But even as he was indoctrinating troops in Communist orthodoxy, General Volkogonov was struggling with private doubts based on the horrors he discovered hidden in the archives”. Volkogonov also had the opportunity to view the conditions of various client states during the Cold War. While these countries received military aid, Volkogonov later recalled, “…they all became poorer; their economies were collapsing everywhere. And I came to the conclusion that the Marxist model was a real historic blind alley, and that we, too, were caught in a historic trap.”
For a while Volkogonov did nothing—rather, he continued on his path as a dedicated Communist, while entertaining profound private doubts that grew and grew and finally erupted in a book:
Only with the most impeccable communist credentials did Volkogonov access the most secret Soviet archives. While reading in the archives during the Brezhnev years, Volkogonov “found documents that astounded him ”” papers that revealed top Communists as cruel, dishonest and inept”. Thus, while Volkogonov was actively writing and editing Soviet propaganda materials for troops, “Volkogonov was engaged in a lengthy, tortured but very private process of re-evaluating Soviet history.”
Volkogonov began writing the biography of Stalin in 1978. He completed it by 1983, but it was banned by the Central Committee. It was published under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The publication of the book on Stalin within Russia made Volkogonov “a pariah among his fellow senior officers”…
“Volkogonov admitted publicly that, like many senior Soviet officials, he had lived two mental lives, rising higher and higher in his career while burrowing deeper in the archives, as if symbolically undermining the system that had nurtured him.”
Later, Volkogonov wrote biographies of Lenin and Trotsky that exposed their own cooperation in terror and repression, and in devising policies that facilitated even greater terror and repression under Stalin. It was all a seamless whole:
Volkogonov always used to say “that in his own mind, Lenin was the last bastion to fall.” He said that the turning point was when he discovered one of Lenin’s orders calling for the public hanging of Kulak peasants in 1918:
“Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers…Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucking kulaks.”
Perhaps the most poignant statement Volkogonov ever made—and probably the one that prompted me to write this post—was this [emphasis mine]:
…[I]t was only late in my life, after long and tortuous inner struggle, that I was able to free myself of the chimera of Bolshevik Ideology. I felt enormous relief, and at the same time a sense of deep regret that I had wasted so many years in Utopian captivity. Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life was to break with the faith I had held for so long…Disillusionment first came to me as an idea, rather like the melancholy of a spiritual hangover. Then, it came as intellectual confusion. Finally, as the determination to confront the truth and understand it.
Late in life Volkogonov drew strength from the fact that he had been baptized as a Christian. He later said:
…that when he would enter the Russian Parliament (where he had held a seat as a liberal since the Gorbachev era), he would be met by Communist legislators who would “line up at the door and shout insults.” Of this Volkogonov commented at the time, “I take these shouts as sounds of historical praise.”
Volkogonov died of cancer in 1995. Despite his illness, in his final years he had picked up the pace of his writing.
You might say of Volkogonov that he lost the requisite Soviet ability to say that 2+2=5. He finally had to shout out that 2+2=4!
[NOTE: One of the most interesting things about this story is how it indicates that many Soviet higher-ups understood their own hypocrisy and cooperation in a system they knew to be corrupt and even evil. Volkogonov was unusual in that he finally was determined to expose it, even at some personal cost. The time was right, or he would never have gotten as far as he did with it; Stalin would have murdered him and all his family in a heartbeat.
Another thing that strikes me is that the incriminating letters and material about Lenin and Trotsky were kept in the archives and never destroyed. Was it because the Soviets knew that only the most hard-line Communists would be looking at them, and that they’d be able to handle the revelations without experiencing remorse? Or were the archive-keepers just lazy and unaware of what was in the papers? Or was it because they didn’t even realize such material would compromise Lenin’s saintly image, because (for example) the only good kulak is a dead kulak?]
Seeing into the future is easy sometimes when you take a look and pay attention:
So Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. I’m surprised that anyone is surprised. I’m hardly an expert on Ukrainian history or politics, but I’ve been there, and I’ve been to the Crimea, and this was just obvious. It was obvious to me even before Viktor Yanukovych became president…
When the Soviet Union cracked up and Ukraine declared independence, Russia initially refused to cede Sevastopol and Crimea at all and only later relented when it signed the Peace and Friendship treaty with Kiev…Ukraine barely holds onto the Crimea oblast as it is [written in 2009], and on even numbered days I can’t help but wonder how long even that is going to last.
Another correct forecaster—none other than Sarah Palin:
Though she was mocked for it, Palin actually speculated in 2008 that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be encouraged to invade Ukraine after President Barack Obama’s weak response to the nation invading Georgia.
“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next,” Palin told Foreign Policy in 2008…
Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ”˜an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ”˜high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine.
Back in 2008, here’sForeign Policy‘s Blake Hounshell pooh-poohing Palin’s statement. You should see Hounsell’s Twitter page right about now. He was hardly alone, though; she was universally not only disagreed with by the MSM and Democrats, she was condescendingly mocked for that and almost everything else she said and did.
And of course, we have Mitt Romney’s statement on Russia, and Obama’s snarky juvenile response during the presidential debates:
Here was Romney’s response to Obama, just to refresh your memory:
What about the experts? They got it wrong, wrong, wrong too. But how many will ever utter a word of apology to either Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney?
I will take a wild stab at it: none. If you find any, please let me know.
Today we have a curious editorial in the WaPo. Actually, “curious” doesn’t even begin to cover it; read it. To whet your appetite, let me say that the title is “President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.”
And even that editorial doesn’t really come down all that hard on Obama. Of course, the WaPo won’t come down all that hard on Obama. To do so, its editors would have to come down hard on themselves. They’d have to abandon their own fantasy world, where they were correct to have supported Obama all along, and where those on the right are just aggressive warmongers (stupid, as well) and peace and love can win out over nastiness, if you just close your eyes and wish real hard.
That brings us, of course, to the next question: is this really what the WaPo editors believe? In other words, how hard left are they? Are they merely very very very useful idiots for the left, or are they more manipulative and devious true believers? My provisional answer: they’re probably a mixed bag rather than a unitary bunch.
[NOTE: In the comments, “sergey” indicates that it’s not just Obama and the WaPo editors who are in the grip of fantasy:
This morning Moskow stock exchange collapsed, and this downfall still under way. Annual GDP gowth rate this year is 0.71% officially, and capital flight from the country in January and half of February comprises 3/4 of the amount expected for the whole year. There was a panic at currency exchange offices yesterday, in one day ruble lost 1/7 of its value. Inflation is galloping, and all this happened mostly even before Ukrainian crisis erupted. If real invasion would take place, economy will fold in two monthes. But Putin lives in reality of his own, and it has little in common with the reality in which almost everybody else lives. A paranoid delusion also known as Caeserian insanity.
I have no way of knowing whether sergey is correct. But he’s certainly closer to events than I.]
I don’t care who wins. The only nominated flick I’ve seen this year is “Gravity,” and I thought it fair-to-middling.
And did I mention that I don’t care? I’m watching for one reason only, the reason I always watch: to see the clothes. Specifically, the women’s clothes, although Kevin Spacey looked particularly fine in his dark blue tux.
If anyone else is watching, I have thoughtfully provided this thread for you to discuss all the pressing issues associated with the Oscars. Including why you care or don’t care or semi-care.
UPDATE: Kim Novak is scaring me. Really scaring me. She’s unrecognizable from cosmetic surgery and Botox. She’s announcing the award for animated shorts, but her own lack of animation is profound. Granted, she’s 81, and as someone wrote on Twitter, “I can see why she’s have a hard time letting go of [her original] face.” But surely there’s some way she might have aged more gracefully.
Yesterday there was a horrific terrorist attack at a train station in China, in which knife-wielding separatists killed at least 29 people and wounded over a hundred others before four of the murderers were shot and killed by police.
Points to ponder:
—This was in China, where gun control is so strict that private citizens are not allowed to own them except for extremely restricted purposes. At least the police were allowed to have guns and managed to trump the knives. But wouldn’t concealed carry—or at least the idea of concealed carry—have given the terrorists pause? They knew that they could rely on the fact that none of the innocent people they attacked would be carrying firearms.
—The terrorists (ten?) were apparently Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnic group in western China.
It proves what really already needed no further proving: that a violent group determined to wreak havoc on a disarmed populace can do it without guns. And if the official reports are correct about the identity of the perpetrators, it lends further credence to the observation that, although most Muslims are not terrorists, almost all terrorists are Muslims.
I’ve been reading another book about Robert Frost, and I keep coming across fascinating tidbits.
For example, the following is taken from a letter Frost wrote to the Amherst student newspaper in 1935, and it gives some perspective:
…you will often hear it said that the age of the world we live in is particularly bad. I am impatient of such talk. We have no way of knowing that this age is one of the worst in the world’s history. [Matthew] Arnold claimed the honor for the age before this. Wordsworth claimed it for the last but one…I say they claimed the honor for their ages. They claimed it rather for themselves. It is immodest of a man to think of himself as going down before the worst forces ever mobilized by God…Whatever progress may be taken to mean, it can’t mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul—or if you dislike hearing your soul mentioned in open meeting, say your decency, your integrity.
That’s what I mean about the complexity of Frost’s thought.
Frost, as I’ve written before, was a student of many disciplines in addition to literature and poetry: ancient history, botany, science, and philosophy, to name just a few. Early in his life he had read the works of William James and they remained of importance in his own thinking. The Frost book that gives the above quote from Frost also presents this one by James, from an essay entitled “Is Life Worth Living?” in a book called The Will to Believe:
If you surrender to the nightmare view and crown the evil edifice by your own suicide, you have indeed made a picture totally black. Pessimism, completed by your act, is true beyond a doubt, as far as your world goes…But suppose, on the other hand, that instead of giving way to the nightmare view you cling to it that this world is not the ultimatum…Suppose, however thickly evils crowd upon you, that your unconquerable subjectivity proves to be their match, and that you find a more wonderful joy than any passive pleasure can bring in trusting ever in the larger whole. Have you not now made life worth living on these terms? What sort of a thing would life really be with your qualities ready for a tussle with it, if it only brought fair weather and gave these higher faculties of yours no scope?
Frost wrestled with depression for much of his very long life, and his life contained enough objective sorrow to have felled any man. But he resisted mightily, and I think on balance he won his war against it.
Societies make decisions, and those decisions can have unforeseen consequences. If “income inequality” is so bad, whether or not the lowest income people are actually starving and destitute, then you get countries such as Denmark—if you’re lucky and haven’t yet run out of other people’s money:
Robert Nielsen, 45, made headlines last September when he was interviewed on television, admitting that he had basically been on welfare since 2001.
Mr. Nielsen said he was able-bodied but had no intention of taking a demeaning job, like working at a fast-food restaurant. He made do quite well on welfare, he said. He even owns his own co-op apartment.
Unlike Carina, who will no longer give interviews, Mr. Nielsen, called “Lazy Robert” by the news media, seems to be enjoying the attention. He says that he is greeted warmly on the street all the time. “Luckily, I am born and live in Denmark, where the government is willing to support my life,” he said.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that this can go on indefinitely, and the till never runs out (that’s not likely, but let’s stipulate it anyway). Would that be desirable? Isn’t this sort of like what economists would call a moral hazard?
Ah, but it’s social and economic justice, isn’t it?
“We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” Obama said in a hastily arranged public statement from the White House briefing room.
“Just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic games, it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world. And indeed, the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine,” the president warned.
Costs…costs…what could they be?
Here are some possibilities:
It was unclear what sort of action Obama might take or what limited approach would deter the Russians.
The United States is consulting with its European allies on next steps, a senior administration official told Yahoo News. One option: Boycott the Group of Eight summit due to be held in June in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Another option: Reject Russian efforts to promote trade with the United States. Putin sent a team of officials to Washington this week for just that purpose.
And Russia will face other possible costs, such as a worsening of its already shaky international reputation, and a drop in the value of its currency, the ruble, making imports more expensive and reducing the relative value of its exports.
It’s not as though previous presidents would have gone to war over Putin’s actions. But Obama’s warnings on this—or anything except his phone and his pen—have an especially hollow ring.
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, which happened when I was young. It came about in part because Khrushchev was emboldened by what he perceived as JFK’s youth and naivete; in other words, Kennedy’s weakness. Khrushchev had taken Kennedy’s measure at a previous summit, and found him wanting in cojones:
By all accounts, including Kennedy’s own, the meetings were a disaster. Khrushchev berated, belittled, and bullied Kennedy on subjects ranging from Communist ideology to the balance of power between the Soviet and Western blocs, to Laos, to “wars of national liberation,” to nuclear testing. He threw down the gauntlet on Berlin in particular, all but threatening war.
“I never met a man like this,” Kennedy subsequently commented to Time’s Hugh Sidey. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in ten minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say ‘So what?'” In The Fifty-Year Wound, Cold War historian Derek Leebaert drily observes of Khrushchev in Vienna, “Having worked for Stalin had its uses.”…
Immediately following the final session on June 4 Kennedy sat for a previously scheduled interview with New York Times columnist James Reston at the American embassy. Kennedy was reeling from his meetings with Khrushchev, famously describing the meetings as the “roughest thing in my life.” Reston reported that Kennedy said just enough for Reston to conclude that Khrushchev “had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs” and that he had “decided that he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.” Kennedy said to Reston that Khrushchev had “just beat [the] hell out of me” and that he had presented Kennedy with a terrible problem: “If he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts, until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him. So we have to act.”
Kennedy may have been young and inexperienced enough to have given the wily old Soviet leader an impression of weakness, but Kennedy was not so young and inexperienced that he didn’t understand how dangerous that was. He went about trying to correct the impression as best he could. One of the ways he did this (especially interesting in light of Obama’s recent request for large military cuts) was to seek “congressional approval for an additional $3.25 billion in defense spending, the doubling and tripling of draft calls, calling up reserves, raising the Army’s total authorized strength, increasing active duty numbers in the Navy and Air Force, reconditioning planes and ships in mothballs, and a civil defense program to minimize the number of Americans that would be killed in a nuclear attack.”
As might be expected, Khrushchev decided to call the young leader’s bluff, and erected the Berlin Wall and then resumed atmospheric nuclear tests. The Cuban Missile Crisis followed, and there it was Khrushchev who ended up backing down. Some people are also of the opinion that Kennedy’s intervention in Vietnam was part of a pattern designed to prove to the Soviets that he was willing to fight.
The whole thing began with a perception of Kennedy’s weakness at the summit. But early on, Obama had not appeared to have learned anything from that piece of history:
In Portland on May 18 [2008], Obama cited John F. Kennedy’s 1961 summit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna among the series of negotiations that led to America’s triumph over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The Vienna summit, however, disproves Obama’s assertion regarding the unvarying value of meetings between enemy heads of state about as decisively as any historical episode can refute a thesis. In addition to poor judgment, Obama has demonstrated that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The situation now is different than in the Cold War, but not all that different. And telegraphing weakness and naivete is never a good idea—especially when dealing with the Russians, but anywhere on the geopolitical stage.
Speaking of not knowing what he’s talking about:
Here was Romney’s original statement, prior to the debate:
And here’s Romney’s response to Obama during the debate:
And then there’s a little thing called the Budapest Memorandum. The Daily Mailcalls it a “forgotten treaty,” and my guess is that it will remain forgotten. It has become more and more clear that our agreements have become worthless and meaningless under this president. And by the way, that memorandum was signed by Bill Clinton, back in the days.
The Budapest Memorandum was “part of the denuclearization of former Soviet republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.” We promised to defend Ukraine if it were invaded by Russia, and Ukraine promised not to pursue nuclear arms. But the current action is not an invasion; it’s an uncontested arrival.
[NOTE: A question here is the old “fool or knave” one. Is Obama cooperating with Russia and just pretending not to, or is he just weak and clueless and would rather stop them? I go for curtain #1.]
I happened to catch this segment last night. It shows how far liberals and the left are willing to go these days in admitting their devotion to the idea that people who decide not to work should be supported by others who do work. I guess that’s what the word “entitlement” has come to mean:
[ADDENDUM: (I added this in a comment to this post, but I’m going to highlight it here, too.)
This clip from the Hannity show is also strange (although hardly unusual) in that the premises of the discussion are never made clear (nor did Biden make them clear).
Are we talking only about single mothers? If a single mother can afford to quit her job to raise her children just because of Obamacare, where does her money come from? Is she independently wealthy, and if so, why did health insurance premiums hold her back before and keep her in her job? Or is the discussion only limited to single mothers with pre-existing conditions, a small group? And how are they to eat and clothe and house themselves and their children if they now quit their jobs? Is health insurance their only expense? Plus, even prior to Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions could get health insurance on the individual market (not tied to employment) in most states, often subsidized or at least with premiums capped by law, and in some states at the same rates as other people without pre-existing conditions (“guaranteed issue” states, for example).
Plus, if the idea was to subsidize mothers (or fathers) to stay home with young children, why clothe that idea in the guise of Obamacare? Why not pass a bill to subsidize mothers or fathers to stay home with young children? Because, of course, it wouldn’t have been passed and could not be sustained financially. So is it “fair” to allow some to stay home at the expense of those who must work? What are the criteria to decide who the lucky ones will be?]
The constant comparisons of Arizona’s now-defunct effort (SB 1062) to protect the religious rights of vendors to refuse to be part of gay marriage ceremonies to southern Jim Crow laws requiring de jure discrimination against blacks represent a tower of ignorance and exploitation.
Ignorance of history is always a good bet these days, and can be exploited by unscrupulous propagandists (is that an oxymoron?). Their goal is to equate the struggle for gay rights to the older struggle for equal rights for African-American people. Whether or not that parallel is correct, there is absolutely no parallel between the Arizona law and Jim Crow laws of the antebellum South.
The ridiculous invocations of Jim Crow are utterly ahistorical, by the way. Jim Crow was state-enforced, and businesses that wanted to serve blacks could be prosecuted. Let the market work and the same social forces that have made homosexuality mainstream will make refusing service to gays a horrible business decision ”” particularly in the wedding industry!
Throwing words like “Jim Crow” around with no knowledge of their meaning except that they mean BAD!!! would never be effective if people were not historically illiterate as well as lacking in the ability to think logically. But that’s what it’s come to, and that’s no accident either.
The use of the Jim Crow analogy has become so widespread that I was shocked to see it misused by conservative writer Ben Domenech in an article he wrote for The Federalist. Although it appears he’s mocking the exaggerations by the law’s critics, his article reads as though he also might not understand why the term is completely inappropriate in the first place:
Let’s get a few things straight. Jim Crow for gays was not prevented by Jan Brewer’s veto of their religious liberty bill last night. Indeed, most Arizona businesses ”“ like most businesses across the country ”“ are free under the law to discriminate according to sexual orientation or anything of the kind. …
The reality is that discrimination on the basis of sex in public accommodation and in numerous other ways is for the most part totally legal at the state level. Yes, this crazy Jim Crow reality that has been fearmongered to death is already the law in most states. Most people think it’s illegal, but it isn’t ”“ last night I heard a sports radio host describing America as a place where “no one has any right to deny anyone any service any time for any reason”, which is pretty much the opposite of freedom of association. But while it is legal, it rarely comes up ”“ because it is so infrequently an issue!
To clarify: “Jim Crow for gays” was never an issue in the Arizona law one way or the other, and not just because people are free to associate or disassociate with gay people even without it. “Jim Crow for gays” would be a law that ended freedom of association rather than protecting it, a law that mandated separation, a law that prevented heterosexuals from serving gay people (at weddings or otherwise) rather than protecting their right to decide not to if it violated their religious beliefs. The fact that many states allow certain kinds of “discrimination on the basis of sex” (or rather, on the basis of sexual orientation, which is what I believe Domenech actually means) is not a “crazy Jim Crow reality,” either, whether you agree with those laws or not. Prescribing disassociation would be.
Jim Crow laws did not protect freedom of association, nor did miscegenation laws in the states where they were passed. Au contraire.
