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Something I had not previously considered: Does killing terrorist leaders actually do us any good? I think we would instinctively say “yes,” but Robert Wright points out that there is a fairly inexhaustible source of terrorist leadership, something that we only increase by killing civilians in our quest to kill terrorists.

It becomes clearer and clearer to me that military action doesn’t do nearly as much good as we’d like to think. Catching and punishing criminals should always be a function of police, not soldiers.

Patrick Appel, posting on Andrew Sullivan’s site, has a pertinent reader comment on the current healthcare situation, which helps explain why I think a public option is not an unreasonable intrusion on the marketplace.

The problem with predicting medical expenses is that, even though you can find the codes (they’re called CPT codes and you can find them here) you would have to get the price from the doctors’ billing coders, which they would probably be loathe to give out- how can we expect the market to work when the consumers don’t get to know the price BEFORE consuming? …If you have the time to sit down and do the research, it would be nearly impossible for the average person to make an accurate decision about the most cost effective doctor to have. Imagine trying to make that decision in a panic.

(Italics mine.)

Andrew posts an email from a reader:

I was struck by two different views of America yesterday. On the one hand the Town Hall protesters who seemed elderly,white,scared and come across as unwilling to listen, and on the other hand the two freed journalists who seemed young,with ethnically diverse families and friends, and came across as generous and open minded.

The first group has become emblematic of the Republican party. The second group were surrounded by Democrats. Is there any doubt which party is winning the battle for the future?

I ain’t sayin’. I’m just sayin’.

In case you don’t watch Keith Olbermann (for which I can’t really blame you, he’s a blowhard, although that doesn’t mean he’s wrong), you may have missed his show the other night, in which he tore into elected officials on both sides of the aisle for opposing healthcare and receiving massive political contributions from insurance companies. It’s pretty brutal; read the whole thing here. A few excerpts:

In March of 1911, after a wave of minor factory fires in New York City, the City’s Fire Commissioner issued emergency rules about fire prevention, protection, escape, sprinklers. The City’s Manufacturers Association, in turn, called an emergency meeting to attack the Fire Commissioner and his ‘interference with commerce.’

The new rules were delayed. Just days later, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The door to the fire escape had been bolted shut to keep the employees from leaving prematurely. One hundred and fifty of those employees died, many by jumping from the seventh floor windows to avoid the flames.

Fire fighters setting up their ladders literally had to dodge the falling, often burning, bodies of women.

This was the spirit of the American corporation then. It is the spirit of the American corporation now. It is what the corporation will do, when it is left alone, for a week.

Jeepers. Don’t hold back, Keith.

Because the insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO’s, another part. Nursing homes, they have a share. You name a Republican, any Republican, and he is literally brought to you by campaign donations from the health sector.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota? You gave the Republican rebuttal to the President’s weekly address day before yesterday. You said the Democrats’ plan was for “government run health care that would disrupt our current system, and force millions of Americans who currently enjoy their employer-based coverage into a new health care plan run by government bureaucrats.”

That’s a bald-faced lie, Senator. And you’re a bald-faced liar, whose bald face happens to be covered by your own health care plan run by government bureaucrats…

Senator Thune has thus far received from the Health Sector, campaign contributions – and all these numbers tonight are from “The Center For Responsive Politics” — campaign contributions amounting to one 1,206,176 dollars. So much for Senator Thune.

So much indeed.

…[T]he evil truth is, the Insurance industry, along with Hospitals, HMO’s, Pharma, nursing homes — it owns Democrats, too… Hundreds of Democrats have taken campaign money from the Health Sector without handing over their souls as receipts. But conveniently, the ones who are owned have made themselves easy to spot in a crowd.

They’ve called themselves “Blue Dogs,” and they are out there, hand- in-hand with the Republicans, who they are happy to condemn day and night on everything else, throatily singing “Kumbaya” with the men and women who were bought and sold to defend this con game of an American health care system against the slightest encroachment.

Hey, Ross Perot is still around! Missed that guy, and his special brand of crazy.

AAAAAAAAAAA! Are you kidding me?

“Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner,” McCaughey said to Thompson.

“The bill expressly says if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period, you have to go through that session again — all to do what is in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and cut your life short.”

Is there no shame in the modern conservative movement?

More on yesterday’s police topic here: Disorderly conduct: conversation about Gates arrest precedes arrest.

I’m sure everybody’s already heard everything they need to know about Henry Louis Gates and his run in with “the law” last week. I think most folks agree that Gates was in the wrong for basically being a dick to a guy trying to do his job, and that Officer Crowley should not have arrested him. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised about the arrest, either.

In my limited experience with police officers, I find that they’re humans. They’re good most of the time, and occasionally they are bad. But here’s the thing: they have extraordinary power over citizens, both legally and extralegally. (I don’t mean “illegal;” what I mean is that the aura of power gives them the ability to make people do things, whether they have a legal basis for asking or not. If a cop on the street tells me “Sir, please move out of the way,” I move out of the way without asking her what right she has to ask that. Most people do, I think.) When that power is abused, it needs to be punished.

I also think, and have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back this up, that whatever police say about serving the community and making the world a better place, a big part of the job that they like is the authority. They like bossing people around. When those people resist, even if they have a legal right to do so, cops feel insulted and scared. They also have no problem escalating a situation unnecessarily, which is why some states have had to enact rules preventing police officers from getting involved in lengthy car chases. It also helps explain situations like this.

I don’t think Officer Crowley is racist. In fact, I suspect Professor Gates was the reason race played any role in his arrest. If you have to break into your own home, you have to expect somebody might call the cops. In fact, you want them to call the cops. (I’ve had to break into my house a number of times after forgetting or losing my keys, and not once have the police showed up to see what’s going on. It’s not a very safe feeling.) When the cops show up, you break out the ID, answer a few questions, and wish the officers a nice day. You don’t accuse the police of being racist, and you certainly don’t get into a screaming match with them. Don’t ever give a police officer an excuse to arrest you, because that’s exactly what will happen.

I was once on my way to church, came to a red light, and was turning right. The road I was turning onto had 2 lanes of traffic. No one was in the right lane, so I pulled out into it, but I hadn’t notice that cars were parked in it a little ways down the block. So I put my turn signal on to change lanes to the left. A fellow in a dark car wasn’t in the mood to let me in, but I’m stubborn (and a little aggressive behind the wheel), so I muscled my way in. Then he flipped on his lights.

Being a good citizen, I pulled over. The officer parked and got out, and I realized he was in civilian clothes, probably on the way home from work. He walked up next to the window, which I rolled down, and said, in effect, “Sir, you can’t just pull out into traffic like that.”

I stuttered something about how I was turning into the empty right lane, didn’t notice the parked cars, was trying to make a legal lane change. He cut me off and said, “You can turn right on red, but you still have to wait for traffic to clear.”

I started to say “The traffic was clear in the lane I was turning into,” but realized I was disobeying one of my Prime Rules of Life: never, ever argue with a police officer. So I said, “Yes, officer.”

“You don’t get there any faster if you get into an accident, sir.”

“Yes, officer.”

“Be safe, and have a nice day.”

“Thank you, officer.”

That was the end of that. The officer got to throw his weight around a little bit, I got to make it to choir rehearsal without him calling for uniformed backup to detain and ticket me (or worse). It was win-win. You know what didn’t matter worth a lick? The fact that I’m white and he was black. Our races had absolutely no bearing on the dynamic whatsoever.

I’m not saying to acquiesce to everything cops ask. If they want to search your person, car, or home, say no. Just do it nicely.

Another late start today, sorry about that. Let’s go to Andrew for an interesting statement:

Large numbers believe healthcare reform will hurt them personally, but support it for the good of the nation. Obama has tried to argue that it will help most people personally. It’s the worst sales job he’s ever done – because, I suspect, we all know it isn’t true.

The entire point of healthcare reform is that it would help most people personally. Otherwise, why bother? And more to the point, why do 72% of Americans want it done?

My view is that healthcare reform, ideally single-payer, but even in the form of a public plan to compete with existing private ones, would be beneficial to every American. A public option is going to be cheaper because it doesn’t need to spend money on marketing; this in turn can help drive down the rates offered by the private firms. Anyone who can’t get coverage through a private firm can get it through the public option. People too poor to pay for insurance get a subsidy. Everyone will see their premiums drop because of fair competition, and over the long term costs will drop even more because folks will stop going to the emergency room (the most expensive healthcare option) for head colds and arthritis.

The private firms can’t compete, you say? Cry me a river. They’ve been profiting for decades while refusing coverage to sick folks. Screw ’em.

Then we just have to do something about malpractice insurance, which has become expensive enough to drive doctors out of practice altogether.

As much as my old Libertarian soul hates the idea of embiggening the Gubmint, I find that the idea of letting the U.S. Federal Government take over Americans’ healthcare is vastly superior to a system in which the private health companies go out of their way to deny people benefits.

The This American Life crew…has a segment in this weekend’s episode on rescission of health insurance policies – insurers’ established practice of looking for ways to invalidate policies once it turns out that the insured actually needs significant medical care… The story describes a couple of particularly egregious cases, such as a woman who was denied breast cancer surgery because she had been treated for acne in the past, and a person whose policy was rescinded because his insurance agent had incorrectly entered his weight on the application form.

If the healthcare insurance providers are willing to operate under regulations that require them to pay benefits to their customers, then great. If they insist they can’t make any profit that way, then basically they’re saying “we make our profits by letting people die.” To which I respond: eff ’em. I’d much rather deal with a government bureaucracy than a private bureaucracy that stands to benefit by my death.

Andrew has more:

Everyone gets treatment in emergencies and the uninsured get treatment the rest of us pay for in higher premiums. So the basic point remains: does this form of socialized medicine make more sense than socialized medicine which brings everyone into the system, and tries to find ways to lower costs?