EconomyBeat.org

What’s in it for you?

Jon Brooks — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:39:28 +0000

From the Kaiser Family Foundation site, the Health Reform Subsidy Calculator, which figures out health insurance premiums and government subsidies toward paying them for purchasers of individual insurance under the House, Senate, and Obama compromise plans. Not applicable to those who already receive coverage through an employer.

More health care bill commentary

Jon Brooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:23:17 +0000

Who’d have thought CSPAN was going to be the most dramatic thing on TV this weekend?

Some assorted commentary on the impending health care bill vote in the House, which is slated for Sunday and which will in part resolve the long-running issue one way or the other.

Managed Care Matters: Unsustainable, irrational, unaffordable health reform

The Republican Congress passed and then-President Bush signed into law Medicare Part D which added about $8 trillion to our national debt. Now the Democrats want to one-up the GOP by passing what would be a massive entitlement expansion, with no meaningful cost containment. They want us to believe we can expand coverage now and fix the cost issue later.

No, we can’t, and no, we won’t. It is far more difficult to get people to give things up they already have than to convince them they can’t afford those things in the first place.

The health care reform debate has provided all the evidence we need to see how hard it is to get physicians, or insurance companies, or unions, or voters, or employers, or state regulators, or pharma, or device companies to agree to give back business/rights/revenue/coverage they have today.

Bob Laszewski said it well in his post today – “adding 30 million more people to an unsustainable system expecting it will create an even bigger crisis and thereby force real reform is tantamount to reboarding the Titanic in the hopes it will sink faster. It is also hard to see how doing such a thing is the politically courageous thing to do.

Just where is the moral imperative in ramming a trillion dollar entitlement expansion through knowing full well it will make our long-term deficit nightmare even worse–for those now uninsured and for everyone else?

The Democratic health care bill makes little if any systemic changes to the health care system–certainly not at the level we need.”

Neither party is acting in the best interest of the nation, or of their own constituents for that matter. And anyone who believes we can pass it now and fix it later is living in a fantasy world.

Insureblog: Obamacare in a Nutshell

Let me get this straight……we’re trying to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president that also hasn’t read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

Insureblog: The Future is Now

As my better half is fond of telling me, “there are no coincidences.” Her point is that everything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, happens for a reason, a purpose.

I just experienced a “no coincidence” moment.

As is my wont, I had clicked over to read the latest at PowerLine, perhaps the most thoughtfully written political blog extant. A contributor had this to say:

“[T]he care-seeking population is about to become the Baby Boomers — i.e., the most indulged, demanding and complaining generation in a hundred years, or maybe ever. The Dems are (apparently) fixing to take over medicine at exactly the time The Giant Complaining Horde shows up at the door … people with money will still come out ahead … knowing I had a potential problem, I paid $4,000 out of my own pocket for an exotic annual physical exam beyond what insurance would reimburse.”

This is a critical point because, as my better half has also observed, “this [ObamaCare] isn’t about health care at all, it’s about control.” That is, even if it passes, it won’t address the underlying problems of health care and, indeed, will most likely exacerbate them by formalizing a two- (or even three-) tiered health care system. Currently, insurers can merely deny payment for a particular med or procedure; under a gummint-run system, the bureaucracy can actually withhold treatment. And then what?

Well, then one goes outside the system to one of the practices that has chosen not to participate…

Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review:Passing the Democratic Health Care Bill is Not the “Right Thing To Do”

Any big health care bill will be full of compromises—political or otherwise. But this bill doesn’t even come close to deserving to be called “health care reform.” As the Democrats make their final push to pass their health care bill many of them, and most notably the President, are arguing that it should be passed because it is the “right thing to do whatever the polls say.”

Their argument is powerful: We will never get the perfect bill. If this fails who knows how long it will be before we have another big proposal up for a vote. There are millions of uninsured unable to get coverage because of preexisting conditions or the inability to pay the big premiums and this bill would help them.

But as an unavoidable moral imperative, enacting this bill would fall way short:

• It is unsustainable. Promises are being made that cannot be kept. As the President has said many times, we need fundamental health care system reform or the promises we have already made—the Medicare and Medicaid entitlements, for example—will bankrupt us. What few cost containment elements the Democrats seriously considered are now either gone from their final bill or hopelessly watered down—most notably the “Cadillac” tax on high cost benefits and the Medicare cost containment commission.

• It is paying off the people already profiting the most from the status quo. Many of the big special interests, that will have to change their ways if we are really going to improve the system, are simply being paid off for their support. The drug deal, the hospital deal, promises not to cut or change the way physicians are paid, all add up to more guaranteeing the status quo rather than doing anything that will bring about the systemic change everyone knows is needed.

• Nothing in these bills will fundamentally change our current fiscal course. As the CBO, and every other expert has said, if this bill becomes law we will continue on the same cost trajectory we are already on. Yes, the CBO says the Democratic plan will reduce costs during the next ten years by about $100 billion—but that only means they would be $100 billion less than the $35 trillion they would have been anyway! That is merely a rounding error on the track we are already on.

• There is nothing here that will stop unaffordable health insurance rate increases. Lately supporters have said this bill is the solution to the recent big individual health insurance rate increases we have been reading about in the press. But there is little in this bill that will mitigate or control any such increases because so little would be done to impact underlying health care costs.
We often hear the argument, “Let’s get this entitlement expansion bill passed and it will force us to deal with costs later.” If we don’t now have the political courage to face daunting health care costs in the face of exploding deficits how will we have that courage later?

I will suggest that adding 30 million more people to an unsustainable system expecting it will create an even bigger crisis and thereby force real reform is tantamount to reboarding the Titanic in the hopes it will sink faster. It is also hard to see how doing such a thing is the politically courageous thing to do.

Just where is the moral imperative in ramming a trillion dollar entitlement expansion through knowing full well it will make our long-term deficit nightmare even worse—for those now uninsured and for everyone else?…

Proponents of the Democratic health care bill make the claim that it will make health insurance affordable, improve our deficit outlook, and make our health insurance system sustainable. None of those claims are even close to being true and everyone who knows anything about this debate knows that.

Robert Reich: Health Care 2010 and 1994, and the Political Lessons of History

Health care reform is necessary, and House Democrats should vote for it because it’s best for the nation.

They should also remember the political lessons of history…As the White House and the House Democratic leadership try to line up 216 votes to pass health care reform — and as Republicans, aided by the National Association of Manufacturers and abetted by fierce partisans like Newt Gingrich, try to kill it – I can’t help thinking back to 1994 when the lineup was much the same.

I was serving in the Clinton administration at the time. In the first months of 1993 it looked as if Clinton’s health care proposal would sail through Congress. But the process dragged on and by 1994 it bogged down. We knew health care was imperiled but none of us knew that failure to pass health care would doom much of the rest of Clinton’s agenda and wrest control of Congress out of the hands of the Democrats. In retrospect, it’s clear Republicans did know.

On February 5, 1994, the National Association of Manufacturers passed a resolution declaring its opposition to the Clinton plan. Not long after that, Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who was managing the health care bill for the House, approached the senior House Republican on the bill to seek a compromise. According to Dingell, the response was: “There’s no way you’re going to get a single vote on this [Republican] side of the aisle. You will not only not get a vote here, but we’ve been instructed that if we participate in that undertaking at all, those of us who do will lose our seniority and will not be ranking minority members within the Republican Party.”

In early March, 1994, Senate Republicans invited Newt Gingrich, then House minority leader, to caucus with them about health care. Gingrich warned against compromise, a view echoed by Senator Phil Gramm. A few months later, at a Republican meeting in Boston, Bob Dole, then Senate minority leader, promised to “filibuster and kill” any health care bill with an employer mandate.

By then Gingrich had united House Republicans against passage of health reform and told the New York Times he wanted “to use the issue as a springboard to win Republican control of the House.” Gingrich predicted Republicans would pick up thirty-four House seats in the November elections and half a dozen disaffected Democrats would switch parties to give Republicans control.

By August, it was over. It didn’t matter that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the Senate by 56 to 44 and in the House by 257 to 176. Health care was a lost cause. Republican Senator Bob Packwood boasted to his colleagues “We’ve killed health care reform.”

In early September, William Kristol of the Project for the Republican Future spelled out the next stage of the Republican battle plan: “I think we can continue to wrap the Clinton plan around the necks of Democratic candidates.” And that’s exactly what they did. On November 8 voters repudiated President Clinton. They brought Republicans to power at every level of government. Democrats went from a controlling majority of 257 seats in the House of Representatives to a minority of 204, and lost the Senate.

I remember how shocked we were the morning after the votes were counted. I asked one of Clinton’s political advisors what had happened. “It was health care,” he said, simply. (That advisor, by the way, is now in the Obama White House.)

Today’s Republican battle plan is exactly the same as it was sixteen years ago. In fact, it’s been the same since President Obama assumed office. They never were serious about compromise. They were serious only about regaining power. From the start, Republicans have remembered the lesson of 1994. Now, as they prepare to vote, House Dems should remember the lesson as well.

Keith Hennessey: The inside game

In the past I have at least been able to fool myself into thinking there was a rational basis for my projections. Now I’m just guessing. I will stick with two in three (chances of the bill passing) for the moment, but I am now just picking numbers out of thin air based on some slightly informed guessing…

That’s because this is now entirely an inside game into which I have extremely limited visibility. If the Speaker can get 216 votes for two bills, then it’s over. But only a handful of people really know how far she is from that goal.

Since I cannot offer you genuine insight, I hope some broad observations will suffice, informed largely by my experience working for the best vote-counter in Senate history, Trent Lott. Senator Lott once said to me, “Keith, I know you were a math major. I’m going to teach you how to count.”

I hope you will accept these dozen observations in lieu of a real prediction.

1. The President and Democratic Congressional leaders have created an external appearance of momentum. That is necessary but not sufficient for legislative success.

2. Public expressions of confidence mean little. Democratic Leaders have to predict success whether they believe it or not, because those predictions affect momentum.

3. For some Members the substance matters. (I know, that sounds terrible.) We have not yet seen the text of Bill #2 or CBO scoring of it. Additional risk will be introduced as soon as those become public, probably within the next 36 hours. How many times so far have we seen CBO scoring trip up the majority?

4. There is a huge difference between needing 1-4 votes and needing 8-10 vote. I don’t know which she is really facing.

5. Effective vote counters pick up the easy votes first, so by this time each additional vote is nearly intractable.

6. Sometimes you bring a bill to the floor a few votes shy, thinking you can close those last few votes only when the vote is occurring. That’s a huge gamble. You do it only when you have no better option.

7. Senate Democrats are an underappreciated wildcard, as is the Byrd rule. Will Senate Democrats blindly accept the substance of Bill #2, or will they try to amend it before passing it? Can Senate Republicans use the Byrd rule to force a change and therefore another House vote? Because of these wildcard factors, House Democrats should be asking their leaders if they might have to vote again on Bill #2 after the Senate considers and possibly changes it, and maybe after the Easter Recess.

8. I wish I knew how well the House and Senate Democrats are coordinating. I imagine the trust and execution gaps on Bill #2 are among the largest hurdles the Speaker faces. If they are poorly coordinated, then I would expect some bumps once the legislative text is revealed.

9. The Saturday vote target is irrelevant. They will slip it as needed.

10. If the House passes Bill #2, assume 3 days minimum for Senate consideration. The motion to proceed is non-debatable, so that takes only 20 minutes for a vote. Twenty hours of debate typically takes two full days, plus one more for the vote-a-rama. House passage this Saturday would allow plenty of time for Senate consideration of Bill #2 and for completion of both bills if the Senate does not amend Bill #2. If the Senate does amend Bill #2, then the time for a second House vote on Bill #2 could bump up against the recess deadline. Of course, in this scenario Bill #1 is already on the President’s desk.

11. At least as of 2008, the phones still worked on Air Force One. I believe they have working phones in Indonesia and Australia as well. The President’s trip delay is much more about the optics of him being here (or more accurately, the downside optics if he were not here) than about his practical ability to influence votes.

12. So much for transparency. Bill #2 is being drafted in the Speaker’s office. So much for regular order in the legislative process, or open debate, or amendments… As recently as two weeks ago the President was admitting that they “could have done better” on transparency. We will never know the extent of side deals being cut to lock down votes, since many of them will be delivered outside this legislation.
Your guess is as good as mine.

EconomistMom.com: It’s a Good Plan. In 10 Years, Maybe

The good ideas are all still there in some size or shape, but it’s fascinating how some of the most promising features in the health reform bill have been diluted and/or postponed so much that they barely show up in the official ten-year window of the official CBO cost estimate.

Take the excise tax on high-end employer-provided health insurance plans… In order to get the labor unions on board, the tax now doesn’t take effect until 2018. Partly to make up for that newly lost time with the excise tax, and partly to cover the additional cost of now-higher subsidies offered through the new insurance exchanges, the excise tax was modified with less generous indexing starting in 2020–indexing the threshold to general inflation rather than inflation plus one percentage point…

The revenue estimate shows that the excise tax now only raises $32.0 billion in the ten-year budget window, because it barely gets started within the ten-year window. In contrast, $210 billion–more than half of the total $409 billion in revenue raised–comes from the increased Medicare tax on high-income households, which would start in 2013.

However fair one thinks it is to increase taxes on the rich, this Medicare tax is not a tax on health spending (it’s another income-based tax), and so it’s not a tax that can keep up with rising health costs as a reliable offset for expanded health coverage.

Ironically, the (fiscally-wise) excise tax now scores as providing less than half the amount of deficit reduction within the ten-year budget window as the (somewhat-budget-gimmicky) Community Living Assistance Services Support (CLASS) program, which is shown as raising $70.2 billion, even though we know that over the longer-run CLASS is a new entitlement which is expected to be a net drain on the federal budget…

So in the overall assessment the health reform/reconciliation bill isn’t full of gimmickry (it’s only tinged with it), does still contain some good health policy in it, was scored fairly and as accurately as possible by CBO. And it does officially show a net $138 billion in deficit reduction in the ten-year budget window. If all goes as planned (as written in this bill), in ten years there will be a decently-large excise tax on employer-provided health insurance in place, and the IPAB (commission) will be recommending wise ways to reduce Medicare and overall health costs. In ten years we will have learned something from the demonstration projects about how to save money, and we’ll implement those ideas more broadly throughout our entire health care system. And thus we will start “bending the health cost curve.”

That is, unless we don’t. Unless we get to 2018 when the excise tax is supposed to kick in and say “wait, we don’t want to pay that tax.” And unless we get to 2020 and say, “no, hospitals aren’t going to accept those recommended payment reductions.”…

So it might be a good plan if you look at where the bill says we should be in 2020, if we actually follow through when we get there.

And by the way, even if we follow through, we still won’t have solved the problem of unsustainable health costs and federal entitlement benefits and not enough ways to pay for them….

Health care vote: One Rep’s decision

Jon Brooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:20:18 +0000

“I decided long ago that this is one of the few issues I will decide without regard for political impact – it is too important. I will cast my vote on the basis of what I think is in the best interest of our country, state and district; if there is a political price to pay for that vote, so be it.“

From the blog Running a Hospital, a post about Boston Democratic Congressman Michael Capuano’s letter to constituents about the upcoming health care vote. Capuano is still in the “undecided” column. The special election that sent Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in predominantly Democratic Massachussetts has sent the state’s political establishment into a semi-frenzy.

Who is a wise man? He who learns from everyone.

In these days of cynicism about our elected representatives, I more often find reason to believe the opposite about them. One example is Congressman Michael Capuano, a Democrat representing a portion of the Boston metropolitan area. I have known Mike since his days as Mayor of Somerville, and his commitment to doing the public good has been admirable and consistent.

So, Mike now faces a tough vote on the national health care bill. I was not surprised to see an email from him to a broad group of constituents seeking their input on the matter. He asked specific and detailed questions about various provisions in the bill, and yesterday reported back to all of us.

Here are some excerpts from his note, leaving out several sections about the details of the bill. Although he gave me permission to include the whole, I wanted to focus here on his major themes.

I am so impressed with how Michael is handling this issue. Whichever way he votes, I know he will have the country’s and the state’s interests at heart.

Dear Friends,

Health Care reform is as important an issue as I have dealt with in my life and it is of great interest to many people.

In my last communication I shared a detailed letter expressing some concerns and seeking input. Since that time, I have received many calls, emails and letters. Most calls merely express support or opposition to the proposal. Others have more detailed points to make. I value this input and I thank you. I am still weighing my vote.

I decided long ago that this is one of the few issues I will decide without regard for political impact – it is too important. I will cast my vote on the basis of what I think is in the best interest of our country, state and district; if there is a political price to pay for that vote, so be it.

So, as of this writing, here is the status of the issues I raised:

1. Pundit views to the contrary – I have NOT decided how to vote. I want to vote YES, but I am still not certain that this SPECIFIC bill deserves my support.

2. One reason for this hesitancy is that we still do NOT have a final draft of the reconciliation bill. No one can or should make a final decision before they read, consider and discuss the final product. We are so far beyond generalities and rhetoric that decisions made before the actual language of the bill is available are irresponsible…

8. Process – Some opponents of the underlying proposal are focusing on the process for passage. While I don’t like the convoluted process we will be following, it will not deter me from a thorough analysis of the proposal. I would ask if anyone remembers the process that was used for Medicare, Civil Rights or any other important legislation. Furthermore, I can assure you that convoluted processes have been used many times by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, process is only a means to an end – the real issue is the product. If the product is good, I will vote yes – if it is bad, I will vote no. Following the process may be an interesting sidelight, but the important factors are decided in the substance of the bill.

Like others, I wait anxiously for the text of the reconciliation bill. When it is public, I will ask again for comment from informed observers.

I realize that many people are tired of this debate – so am I. But it is important and complicated. It took years to enact Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – and I argue that it was worth the time and trouble.

I realize that some just want us to vote yes or no based on a few talking points. I will not succumb to that suggestion. Health care is a serious and complicated matter. I do not believe that the vast majority of people really want me to vote on the basis of rhetoric.

I also realize that some see this as a political tug-of-war between the right and the left or between Democrats and Republicans. I do not see it that way at all. I see it as the implementation of basic values:

First – Do you believe that every American should have health care coverage? I do.

Second – If you do not, the answer is easy, vote no. But then you should also think we should repeal Medicare and Medicaid.

Third – If you agree with me that the goal is to expand coverage, the next questions are whether THIS actual proposal gets us closer to that goal, does it do it in a fiscally responsible manner, and does it harm the programs we already have in place? The answers are never as clean and neat as the first two questions and this is what I am trying to decide now.

For those who have contacted me, I appreciate your input. For those who wish to do so, we are happy to hear from you.

Congressman Mike Capuano
8th District, Massachusetts

“Obamacare” odds

Jon Brooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:05:51 +0000

On Intrade, a futures exchange in which people can place bets on whether specific events will occur or not, the wager titled “Will ‘Obamacare’ health care reform become law in the United States before midnight ET 30 Jun 2010″ is now priced at about 78.

That means the market for this bet has judged the likelihood of passage to be 78%.

Homer Economicus

Jon Brooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:33:13 +0000

From The Journal of Private Enterprise, an extract from the paper “Homer Economicus: Using The Simpsons to Teach Economics.”

Bureaucrats and bureaucracy

As Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel and Macpherson (2003, 135) state, “Economic analysis suggests a strong tendency for bureaucrats and public-sector employees to favor expanding their budgets beyond what would be considered economically efficient.” The Simpsons episode titled “Trash of the Titans,” provides a great example of this tendency. After getting into an argument with the garbage men and refusing to apologize, Homer decides to run for Sanitation Commissioner. Running on the slogan “Can’t someone else do it?” Homer wins and institutes a sanitation program that does just about everything for the residents of Springfield, from collecting diapers inside the house to cleaning their ties. This excessive spending leads to the following exchange between Homer and Mayor Quimby.

Quimby: Simpson, you idiot! You spent your entire year’s budget in a month! Your department’s broke!

Homer: [panics) Uh...oh no! Wait! I think I've got the perfect solution.

Quimby: You'd better! 'Cause those garbage men won't work for free!

Homer: D' oh!

Later, Homer and Marge are going over the sanitation department's expenses to figure out how he could have spent so much in such a short
period of time.

Homer: Oh... [the previous commissioner] was right! I’m crashing and burning! Crashing and burning!

Marge: How could you spend 4.6 million dollars in a month?

Homer: They let me sign checks with a stamp, Marge! A stamp!

Although a bit over the top in that few (if any) bureaucrats are as stupid as Homer is portrayed to be, this episode of The Simpsons does provide a humorous beginning to a discussion of the incentives facing bureaucrats and bureaucracies.

Friday photo gallery

Jon Brooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:08:52 +0000

Click on an image to see it full size.

>

More photos here

Health care: The end game’s end game

Jon Brooks — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:45:02 +0000

When I was a kid, I once stumbled upon the movie The Ten Commandments on TV. Exposed mostly to cartoons and sit-coms, I sat there in bleary-eyed awe as the 3 hr 40 minute film just kept on going and going and going. Characters disappeared, story arcs rose and resolved, and the thing still wouldn’t end. By the time Moses parted the Red Sea, I half-believed that this was the only movie ever made that went on forever; that I could go to bed, flip on the TV the next morning, and there would be Yul Brynner, eating an Egyptian breakfast while fulminating about that damn Moses.

That’s a little how I feel about the drive for a health care bill. Rationally, I know it is going to climax one way or the other, but there’s also a part of me that thinks it’s never going to end.

Not quite a year ago, on another project, I remember writing that we were approaching the legislative “end game.” Hah! Not quite. First, we had to suffer through thousands of headlines involving Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe, Nancy Pelosi, the public option, death panels, tea parties, town hall tirades, Bart Stupak, the abortion issue, Ben Nelson, the Nebraska giveaway, the Medicare compromise, Joe Lieberman and the death of the Medicare compromise, Scott Brown and the Massachussetts Democratic smackdown, the reconciliation controversy, and dozens of Barack Obama campaign-style events, as he desperately tried to lead his followers to the promised land of enacting a bill that many observers think will make or break his presidency.

But now, it appears that we are genuinely approaching a finale that will resolve the issue one way or the other. AP wrote on Thursday:

House Democrats are pushing to the brink of passage a landmark, $940 billion health care overhaul bill that would simultaneously deliver on President Barack Obama’s promise to expand coverage while slashing the deficit, a strategy aimed at winning over the party’s fiscal conservatives…

The Democrats’ drive took on a growing sense of inevitability, picking up endorsements Wednesday from a longtime liberal holdout and from a retired Roman Catholic bishop and nuns who broke with church leaders over the bill’s abortion provisions. Leaders appeared increasingly confident of getting the 216 votes they need to pass the bill.

Well, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past year when it comes to this topic, the word “inevitability” has without fail proven to be the wrong description. Meaning: “It aint’ over till it’s over.”

Here’s some commentary from Washington Post and New York Times readers on the impending vote:

User responses on Ezra Klein’s blog on the Washington Post:

Hurray! We are so close to passing something no one understands, that’ll cost billions and won’t do anything to fix health care! Hurray!!!! But we were promised Unicorns. And Skittles. Lots of ‘em.

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Forget about all the massive improvements that this legislation will bring to healthcare for Americans. Just think of it as the biggest deficit reduction bill in history. This is even bigger than Clinton overcoming the objections of every Republican in Congress to set this country’s fiscal policy back on a responsible track in 1993 following 12 years of profligate Reagan-Bush spending. And the ONLY new taxes it includes are for union fat cats whose insurance policies cost nearly $30k per year.

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If this bill does pass, it will be an aberration — a rare exception to the continuing trend of Democratic gutlessness. (And I say this as a Dem who WISHES we had a few more spines on the Hill.)

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When you look at the primary items in this bill, it’s a no-brainer to vote ‘yes’. Having said that, the amount of lobbying money by insurance companies and laughable reporting by media led to this fiasco. Some are rightfully afraid to speak or take a step. The courageous will do the right thing and pass this legislation. I’ve worked with many in Congress, the Senate and the current Administration over the years. My guess is there is a 95% probability it will pass.

Probably 2% of Americans can correctly identify what is in the bill. I don’t fault the other 98%. The BS and politics affixed to healthcare reform is mind-boggling. I’m a pragmatist and realist. This bill is not perfect, but the economy cannot sustain our current healthcare system. Faux News keeps repeating that it’s 1/6 of the U.S. Economy. True, but the Federal Government is 90% of their business. We already have socialized medicine in this country. We are just paying way too much for it.

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From the New York Times Health Care Conversations site:

Ms.Pelosi , what part of “Political Suicide” don’t YOU Understand. This FORCED implementation of Health Care Reform is a direct plan established by Lenin Stalin, Hitler and the remainder of the COMMUNISTIC MANIFESTO. Your policies are those of James Jones in Ghana. Drink The KoolAid , My Children…this tabloid won’t post this note as they are “part” of this grand fraud, against the Real Citizens of The United States Of FREE America …

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I hope the criminals in Washingto realize that by bending all of the rules that our Constitution established they will be held accountable in the next election. Anyone who votes for ‘deeming’ and ‘reconciliation’ measures should be run out of Washington and made to work for a living. Health care is a mess, but living in a country with a Government you can’t trust to represent the People is worse. God help us.

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This could all be accomplished a lot easier and a lot cheaper by simply expanding existing programs to include all the uninsured and illegal aliens who are supposedly, but not, costing us so much. Expand Medicare to include retired people over age 55, put Medicaid in conjunction with Unemployment Insurance…Oh! Wait! We can’t do the simple fixes, because, the MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT won’t let us! American doctors like being the most highly paid professionals in the world! Why else would so many of them come here for training and then NOT RETURN to their country of origin? All these proposals have been floated before and defeated… in Congress… because the AMA pays for their election campaigns…

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I commend the President for trying to correct a perceived inequity in our society, but his solution only hurts the majority. It hurts those Americans who work hard, pay taxes and are struggling to support their families…

President Obama’s support of this legislation shows that he does not care who he hurts. There is actually a word that describes this betrayal of the American people. It is specifically identified in the US Constitution as grounds for impreachment.

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As Ralph Nader outlined today, it’s the same old same old. There’s nothing new here.
• legislation doesn’t kick in until 2014
• students can stay on their parents’ insurance policy until they’re twenty-six
• 180,000 Americans will die between now and 2014 before any coverage expands
• shovels hundreds and billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the worst corporations who’ve created this problem
• doesn’t require many contractual accountabilities and other accountabilities for people who are denied healthcare in this continuing pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world
• a bonanza for drug companies
• doesn’t require government to negotiate volume discounts
• allows new biologic drugs under patent to fight off generic competition
• doesn’t allow reimportation from countries like Canada to keep prices down
• no public choice or public option to keep prices down
• allows giant insurance companies to concentrate more power in violation of antitrust laws
• doesn’t safeguard the states from the litigation that’s facing Pennsylvania and California, that are now trying single payer

It’s time to vote out anyone who supports this failure of a bill. Once again, the real losers are the American public, whose “representatives” have given up on them in favor of the million-dollar-toting lobbyists who swarm the Capitol buying votes and capping any real reform and legislation.

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I am a conservative who believes it is obscene that a country as rich as ours does not have universal health care. I believe in being fiscally responsible, but I also believe we all have a greater responsibility to provide at least basic health care plan for every citizen…This plan is at least an attempt to provide health care to every citizen, and my hope is that over time we will fix the problems with the current plan.

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If this passes:

1) I get to cancel my insurance.
2) I will negotiate higher pay in lieu of health insurance with my company.
3) I won’t ever be denied for a pre-existing condition.
4) I will save thousands of dollars every year because the penalty is less than my family’s insurance premiums or out of pocket costs for shots and check-ups.
5) If I need insurance, I will go get it. (see #3)

Thank you Dems and liberals.

Sub-prime the Musical

Jon Brooks — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:32:14 +0000

Tip o’ the hat to Laura at EconomyStory for sending us Sub-prime the Musical. The site consists of a series of podcasts by a college student named Madison Koshy, who created them from research she did on the causes of the credit crisis. Naturally, she then wrote song parodies to illustrate the concepts she had learned. From the About page:

I was extremely upset about the state of the economy, but I found it very difficult to understand what was happening. So this summer, I pursued an independent project where I read and researched about what was going on, and then I attempted to re-explain it through podcasts as a means of better understanding the information. Wanting to make my blog a little more interesting, I incorporated song parodies that tied into the material.

Here is Act I, Scene I, called “How it All Began.”

And here is a song parody, based on “The Brady Bunch” theme, called accompanying song, called “The Credit Crunch.”

You can also follow “Sub-prime the Musical” on Twitter.

Recruiter attitude

Jon Brooks — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:35:02 +0000

“I think recruiters are mostly people who couldn’t get real jobs doing valuable stuff like marketing, financing, and waxing stripper poles.”

From the blog Acute Unemployment Syndrome, a post called Recruiters gone wild. The writer is an unemployed MBA.

For those of you keeping score at home, I have now been on 10 job interviews in the last 9 months. 10 at bats, and 10 strike outs. What’s bothering me, though, is what I’ve observed on my last 3 interviews, all of which have occurred in the last month.

Recruiters seem to be playing some kind of weird head game where they don’t ask any questions and force me, the interviewee, to ask all the questions. So the interview goes something like this:

Recruiter: (Leans back in his chair, takes a sip of coffee, and picks up a short stack of papers from the table) Ok, let me take a look at your resume. (He scans the piece of paper and hums the “Pina Colada” song. He puts the papers on the table after a moment and again leans back in his chair, smugly.) So, do you have any questions for me?

Me: (Our hero looks slightly startled. She looks down at her her pink boucle jacket with the black trim, hoping to find the answer somewhere in the fabric.) Oh, ok. (She hastily looks down at the list of 4 questions she prepared for the END of the interview.) Well, what are the challenges facing your company today, and how would I, as a product manager, work to confront those challenges?

Recruiter: Blah blah, canned corporate crap, blah, yada yada. What else?

Me: Uhhh, can you tell me more about the new XYZ product line? I saw that you mentioned it on Twitter. (Crosses fingers that her intrepid investigatory skills will be rewarded.)

Recruiter: (Does not appear impressed that our hero obviously spent 3 hours this morning preparing for this 15 minute chat). It’s a new product we’re working on for our younger customers. We think it’s going to be huge. What else?

This bullcrap will go on for the next 10 minutes – I ask questions about the position, he gives me curt answers, and I get increasingly uncomfortable while he gets increasingly hostile. One interviewer actually told me at the beginning of an interview, in a confrontational tone of voice, that I obviously wasn’t qualified for the job, and that it was a waste of time to speak to me. Uh, ok, so why did you bring me in???? I don’t recall holding a gun to anyone’s head just to get an interview (though maybe that’s something to keep in mind for the future).

Why are recruiters playing head games with me? I feel like everyone’s in on some kind of joke, and I’m the only one who doesn’t get the punchline. Empirical evidence and common sense say that the best way to interview a candidate is to ask what they would do in a given scenario. Or to find out what they have done in the past, given a set of circumstances. How can you find out what kind of worker I am if you never ask me to define what kind of worker I am? And what is the purpose of bringing in a candidate, only to be hostile and unpleasant to them? What will you learn from that?

I think recruiters are mostly people who couldn’t get real jobs doing valuable stuff like marketing, financing, and waxing stripper poles. So they’re destined to make a lot of poor choices. And given the current glut of job candidates, recruiters are drunk with power and are abusing their positions. Well I have only one thing to say to that: Do you think they would give me a job if I promised to wash their car for a year?

The DUI problem

Jon Brooks — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:46:49 +0000

Another session with the Evil HR Lady finds her engaged in some straight talk with a job seeker in sales who is well-connected but has two DUIs on his record.

Will my high level connections overcome a DUI?

I have a friend pretty high up at a major company (in sales) who had recently talked to me about submitting my resume for employment. I had to gently remind this very good friend of mine that I have 2 DUIs, but both are over 5 years old. I have since cleaned up my act and hardly ever drink at all. I certainly don’t drink and drive! She then took that information and asked her co-workers whether or not I’d have a shot at the position. They for obvious reasons told her that with so many viable candidates with clean records, why would they choose me?

But there’s a twist…One of my other good friend’s fathers happens to be a Senior VP with this very company. He was an ex cabinet member and has worked as a Senior VP for this company for around 6-7 years now. Needless to say, he has influence.

In your opinion, would this Senior VP be able to bypass “the rules” written or unwritten, with a letter of recommendation? Or am I still dead in the water? I doubt you can answer this question with certainty, so again, I am just looking for your opinion. I am qualified for this job otherwise and know I would be risk worth taking. My friend obviously feels the same or she would have never mentioned it in the first place. I am worried that my past in this regard has caught up to me and might prevent me from getting a job I really want.

RESPONSE FROM EVIL HR LADY

Everyone has undoubtedly heard the phrase, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” There are certainly many cases where this is true, but usually you have to both know the right people and the right things.

So, in short, yes, a Sr. VP could pull strings and get you preferential treatment, and probably guarantee you a job. But, I can’t see why he would want to.

You see, while VPs can pull strings, they can’t pull them in a cost free way. If he does this, someone will owe him (or he’ll use up his credit on someone else owing him). Usually, getting a qualified person a job would be low cost expenditure for your average Sr. VP. But, you have a big black mark next to you that increases the cost to him tremendously.

The problem with sales is that you are expected to drive around all day. Your car becomes your office, which means the company is liable for your actions while you are in the car. Unless it would be illegal to consider a 5 year old DUI, I would fight tooth and nail to keep you from getting a job which puts the company at so much risk.

I know you say you don’t drink and drive any more, but there is no way for the company to know that. For all they know you just haven’t gotten caught. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

If you were the VPs daughter, then maybe he’d try. But, for a daughter’s friend, I doubt he would want to use up his capital and put his career on the line for you. Let’s say you get hired and you get into a car accident. Even if it is 100% not your fault, it’s going to come back and look bad on him.

Now, I don’t know what the laws are in your state regarding how convictions can be considered. If they would require the conviction to be ignored, then go out and get the job on your own. Without the big black mark on your record Mr. VP could probably (and more willingly) put a good word for you.

But, if they can consider it, I would think a company (and any VP who suggested it) foolish to put someone with two DUIs in a company car. So, yeah, I think this is where your past catches up with you.

RESPONSE FROM A READER

Yes,the DUI/DWI will adversely affect your hiring prospects. Remember, HR stands for “human RESOURCES” not “HUMAN Relations”. You are nothing but an expendable fixed-cost asset to them.

However, my one-and-only lifetime legal mistake nearly 7 years ago did not hamper me from going into a lower wage non-driving arena to survive. It won’t matter what level of advanced education, references, or sterling work history you have: a felon will get more “forgiveness” (oops–the F word in our nation…) than a misdemeanor DUI, unless you are a “celebrity”. Here is the rub: it’s your life, not the Darwinian Capitalist System’s. Do what you must to survive, STOP ALCOHOL USE COMPLETELY, live a straight-edge lifestyle (sXe on the web) and never give up. HR will always want to find a fault in you…they are like accountants searching for the missing penny, Theory X managers all-the-way.

As time goes by, your new sXe, clean health & fitness lifestyle will eventually put you back into the professional driver’s seat without the need for any crutches like alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.

Believe me, I may be bitter (obviously…), but I have been completely clean sXe for 7 years: something most HR reps can’t match. You can do it and turn out better than those who get bailed out from their “unforgivable” mistakes.