matthearn.com

As a wise man once said, “I ain’t got the words.”

(roflrazzi.com)

In case I’d forgotten to show you before this, it is vitally important that you start reading Basic Instructions. Example:

Even as we speak, a supremely competent fellow named Joe is installing Verizon FiOS in our new house. (Well, new to us. The house was built before my great-great-grandparents were born.) My excitement is ExxxxTRREEEEEEM. I’ve wanted to try FiOS for a while, since a package including basic TV, internet, and phone is the same price as my comcast package. So I’m basically going to save the equivalent of a phone bill every month, which is not insignificant. I’ll also not have to deal with Comcast, who do not offer ESPN Classic as part of their digital package, an oversight for which I’ve been waiting years to punish them.

Moving continues apace; we’ve been hauling boxes and bags of anything that fits into our cars, and I donated my motorcycle to a buddy who hauled a bunch of furniture up for us. Hopefully we’ll actually be able to start actually sleeping here in a few weeks, after we rent a massive truck to haul our beds and other furniture.

Like I said: excitement. EXXXXxxxXtreeee3AM excitement.

I could watch this over and over. And, in fact, I shall probably do just that.

Here’s a nifty graph about support for gay marriage:

I’d love to see a few graphs like this over time to see how feelings have changed. Still, Ryan Sager points out:

Just how big is the gay marriage age gap? Between the under-30 crowd and the over-65 crowd: 35 percentage points.

Or, try this on for size, at the state level: If people over 65 in each state made the laws, 0 states would have gay marriage; if people under 30 made the laws, 38 states would have gay marriage.

In a few years, this battle is won.

Good ol’ Barney Frank:

My question is, why aren’t more politicians reacting this way? They keep trying to have civil conversations with people who are clearly there to disrupt debate, and they try to actually engage them. I used to think that the PR hit they’d take from having these people thrown out would be bad, but let’s face it the only people who would care are on Fox News, and they’re not going to support a “leftist” agenda anyway. In fact, a savvy politician like Barney Frank might make their heads explode.

I work for an insurance company, so perhaps my perspective is colored a bit by that, but here’s my question: why are private enterprises allowed to offer insurance? Shouldn’t this be a government function alone?

Stay with me. The problem with the current healthcare insurance situation translates to all types of insurance, if you think about it. Insurance companies make money in two ways:

1. By taking your premiums and investing them, such that even if they have to pay out more than you’ve paid in, they made a profit on the investment. (This is how most life insurance policies work.)


2. By simply taking in more than they pay out, which is a big problem.

It’s a big problem because, as anyone can see, it behooves the insurance company to deny all the claims it can. This results in companies putting all kinds of fine print in the contracts, so they can weasel out of paying you. The more egregious companies deny even legitimate claims, forcing you to fight them to receive your benefits, knowing that many customers won’t bother to question it.

In the case of a healthcare insurance organization, it achieves its greatest profit by letting people get sick and die without treatment. If you get sick, and are denied a claim, you could try and switch to a different insurance company; vote with your feet, as the saying goes. Except now that you’re already sick, the new insurance company says you have a pre-existing condition and denies you insurance, or worse yet accepts your premiums and denies your claim.

I’ll say it again: insurance companies achieve their greatest profits by letting people die.

In the case of a public plan, though, that wouldn’t be a problem. The government doesn’t care about turning a profit. Politicians will complain if the plan loses too much money, but in the end if a program is popular no politician will vote to remove it. (See also: Medicare, which is the sort of “socialized medicine” that right-wing politicians hate, but which they’ll never get rid of because seniors like to vote.) So there’s no incentive to deny your claim because you already had cancer when you signed up, or because you accidentally mispelt your PCP’s name on the paperwork. They may haggle with providers over rates, and you may have a deductible, but they’ll approve almost anything.

Oddly enough, I think it’s even more egregious that no one offers anything like this in the area of auto insurance. I can’t think of a state that doesn’t require you to have auto insurance in order to drive, but do any offer a public insurance option? (I honestly don’t know, and am too lazy to look it up. (I am not a very good journalist.) Delaware does not, to the best of my knowledge. Seems like the kind of thing California or Massachusetts would do, though.)

I guess putting all insurance in government hands would put insurance companies out of business, but, frankly, screw ’em.

Oh, Dilbert. You will always have my heart.

Eek. I find this letter from the director of the Congressional Budget Office to be disappointing:

Although different types of preventive care have different effects on spending, the evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.

Read at least the first few pages for more detail. I’m frustrated because one my big arguing points on the subject of universal healthcare is that it would save money, long-term; it may not. Does that mean it’s not worth insuring the millions of un- and under-insured Americans? I don’t know.

Some good news, however, on the media front:

What just happened in three short days?

With one statement about the “public option” from Obama, the entire health care reform discussion shifted totally away from the right wing crazies and Palin’s “death panels” In just three days with one statement about the “public option”, liberal Democrats who stood on the sidelines and barely jumped in to the death panel discussions, have finely stirred off their duffs to get into the fray and argument.

In just three days, the media has shifted its coverage away from the crazies and the lies and finally, some meaningful media attention to the real issues on the health care reform effort. In just three days, the whole debate on health care reform has turned around and hopefully, now the debate and discussions can be about the real issues and real health care reform can happen. Meanwhile, the ultra conservative right wing has been stymied. Obama is brilliant!

Huh.

So I’m lifting in the gym earlier, doing my leg press so that I don’t look like this poor fellow, and another fellow comes in. He’s wearing regular street clothes, so I’m thinking he’s one of the “light workout” types, comes in for a few reps on the nautilus at low resistance, and then leaves. But no.

He strips his polo off, revealing the beater underneath, and drapes the polo on one of the weight benches, adjusting it to angle. Fine so far. He then leaves it like that and lays down on ANOTHER bench to do some pretty serious benchpressing. Huh? Was he just…reserving the first bench for something? After the bench pressing, he takes the shirt off the first bench and drapes it over the bench press bar, and then gets a paper towel and puts it on the first bench. He also retrieves two 35-pound dumbbells and sits them next to the bench. Having reserved his various pieces of exercise equipment for his personal use, he goes over to the nautilus and starts using one of those machines as well. What the hell?

What kind of self-centered prick do you have to be to reserve equipment you aren’t using, so that it’s free when you’re ready for it? If I’d known we could do that, I would have just pissed on everything to mark it ahead of time. What a dick.

Man, I’m in a mood today. I should stop doing steroids, probably.