Due respect to Tim Russert, but when the news hit today that he had died from a heart attack at age 58, did the entire media machine really need to grind to a halt for six hours of uninterrupted coverage? Illustrative of how insular the media culture is.
Yes, he was a good journalist. Yes, he did important work. And yes, he died before his time. But how many more-deserving people passed on today without so much as a passing glance?
If health insurance premiums and national wages continue to grow at current rates, the average cost of a family health insurance premium will surpass the average annual household income by 2025, approximately the time when the Medicare trust fund is projected to be insolvent.
I don’t know what the answer is- nationalization, privatization, boutique medical treatment, some sort of hybrid, or something completely new, but this is a serious issue, and the numbers don’t just get scary in 17 years. It’s looking like sometime during the next presidential term most Americans are going to have to take a hard look at their medical insurance and just quit paying premiums, either that or start doing without absolute necessities (and I’m not talking iPhones and cable tv here).
Much of the waste and out of control costs go not to the doctors, but to the lawyers and insurance companies themselves. Whenever we go to the doctor, we just pay out of pocket and usually get a 20-30% instant rebate on the bill- which is the market’s way of saying that there is a huge amount of waste in the system.
I’m happy that we live in a prosperous country. I’m happy that life spans are so dramatically better than they were even three generations ago, and I’m not unwilling to see a company turn a profit (a company is just made up of people, after all). But the system is badly broken and right now it seems like they only thing that will catalyze a fix is a complete breakdown. Which looks like it will happen, at the latest, by the end of the next decade.
The list of reasons why everyone should start a business, and why the home is a great first frontier for many of those businesses, is long. Here are some examples:
1. Because of online and communications technology, you can start many businesses at little or no cost.
2. You can start a side business without foregoing your “secure” day job.
3. You can spend more of your time doing something you’re passionate about.
4. You can make a little extra money, and maybe eventually ramp up to replacing that day job.
5. The biggest companies now have many free or inexpensive solutions available for small business making it easier than ever to start and grow.
6. If you have a family, just imagine what a positive impact it could have on your children as they watch you toil, create, breakthrough, tough it out, and demonstrate how to take control of your life and live passionately rather than being a cog in the wheel.
7. Outsourcing enables you to streamline your activities (and the physical footprint) of your business so that you focus on doing the work you love and farm out the other stuff.
8. Home-based business is generally accepted - even preferred - as a mode of business in the marketplace these days (whereas before there were credibility issues).
9. Tax write-offs are often available.
10. You take control of your destiny rather than relying on someone else to make the right decisions for your future.
Interesting take on the tax code.
In place of the limitless variety that emerges when individuals plan their own lives in a free society, tax laws strive to impose a dreary sameness–as if every individual should get married, have children, buy a home and save for retirement on a government-approved schedule–and as if every company should look to bureaucrats for the one true path to selecting real estate, equipment, fuels, employees and financing. Such artificial homogeneity has no place in the tax policy of a government dedicated to protecting individual rights…
…Imagine reasserting ourselves as rational, sovereign individuals, whose rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness include the right to choose values without asking society’s permission–and without chasing our own money, like lab rats sniffing cheese, down the twisting corridors of a labyrinthine tax code.
more here.
The Catholic Church decides to put up a statue to Galileo in the Vatican. Yes, really.
Wow. Though I do question some of the statistics.
It’s really only news to a few of the readers here (you know who you are), but publishing that Cease and Desist letter might now be considered copyright infringement.
Yes, that’s right, and it’s an indication of just how bad the copyright situation has gotten.
Bill Clinton: “Screw it, I’m running for President.” Priceless:
While the announcement has come as a surprise to many, Beltway observers said it was not completely unexpected, citing footage from a recent Democratic debate that showed Clinton fidgeting in his seat, gripping the arms of his chair, and repeatedly glancing at all the television cameras while rapidly tapping his right foot. Analysts also noted one debate in which Clinton mouthed responses to all the moderator’s questions while making hand gestures to himself.
Read the debates of the First Congress of the United States. Compare them to the debates of the 110th Congress memorialized in the Congressional Record. The deterioration in learning is alarming, virtual disproof of Charles Darwin’s theory of progressive evolution.
more here
November 07, 2007
“I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from ‘Chosen’ Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope. The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ the people were saying. One man said, ‘Thank you for peace.’ Another man, a Muslim, said ‘All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.’ The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.”
Michael Yon
Michael Yon is an independent reporter in Iraq being supported totally by the online community. He is bringing stories and images that the mainstream media can’t or won’t communicate. He’s doing an amazing job of not only telling some real stories that wouldn’t otherwise get told, but of embarrassing a national media that is orders-of-magnitude better connected and funded but somehow can’t seem to find good news.
link and paragraph via instapundit.
So after getting our six-month health insurance BOGU rate increase, I wrote a letter to the insurance company just to let them know that their practices aren’t going unnoticed, and that there are real people at the other end of their decisions to raise rates by as much as 25% every six months.
I got a letter back from the VP of the company today. In it, he told me that my calculations were wrong (they’re not, I double checked. He was assuming an annual increase while I assumed the biannual increase that has been their practice the past two years). He also incorrectly noted that our insurance premiums are based on my age, and that the company had figured the premiums wrong. He said that they had an age that is one year younger for me than my actual age, so they were going to have to raise my rates again to compensate. The only problem with this was that the policy in question doesn’t cover me, it covers my wife who is…. wait for it… one year younger than me.
So here’s the Vice President of a major American health insurance company making a basic math mistake and failing to read the very plain details of a very clear policy. He then tries to answer a complaint about increasing premium prices by erroneously increasing the premium price.
How much does this guy get paid every year? I mean, not counting his really good company-sponsored health insurance.
His explanation for why rates are skyrocketing is that there are fewer people to pay the rates. Too many people have been dropping insurance coverage and relying on the fact that hospitals have to treat you if you’re injured. And these people have been dropping their coverage and throwing themselves on the mercy of the state why?
“because rates have become so high”.
Give this genius a promotion.
Look, I understand that we’re experiencing the steep part of a Malthusian cycle here. I know that insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, etc, all have to earn a buck to make a living. But the whole lot of them have become like rabid dogs picking over the last survivors of a once-strong herd (that’s us, the premium payers, to clarify the twisted metaphor). Once the few remaining individuals and companies decide to throw up their hands at the ridiculous health care costs, the system will well and truly break. I don’t know what the answer is, but surely getting people in positions of leadership at insurance companies who can see past next quarter’s income statement would be a good start.
This is nuts. Crazy. Loco.
…the UK-based Performing Rights Society — the Brit equivalent of ASCAP or BMI — wants to make listening to music loud enough for anyone else to hear an offense punishable by hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”
Columbia President Lee Bollinger to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Red light cameras may be coming to Austin. Glenn Reynolds wrote a good article for Popular Mechanics about why these devious municipal money machines don’t really solve the problem, and actually cause accidents to increase.
We just got our annual letter from the insurance company in the mail. The old “we’re sorry, but due to the increasing cost of medical procedures…” letter that tells us we need to start checking the couch for loose change. The year the damage wasn’t that excessive… only seventeen percent more than last year.
I did some quick figuring. If rates continue to increase by the lowest percentage that they’ve gone up the past four years, and there is no indication that they won’t, in fifteen years our policy premium will cost over thirty-one thousand dollars per year.
For one person.
And it’s the very best price we can get. Highest deductible. One person (we’re with different companies).
Thirty one grand per year.
How is this not broken?
(file this under politics for obvious reasons)
Circuit City customer gets arrested for not showing receipt.
I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to let loss prevention inspect my bag. I understand that my day would have gone a lot smoother if I had agreed to hand over my driver?��Ǩ�Ѣs license when asked by Officer Arroyo. However, I am not interested in living my life smoothly. I am interested in living my life on strong principles and standing up for my rights as a consumer, a U.S. citizen and a human being. Allowing stores to inspect our bags at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates an atmosphere of obedience which is a dangerous thing. Allowing police officers to see our papers at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates a fear-of-authority atmosphere which can be all too easily abused.
” An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her
house [emphasis added] following an early coalition forces raid in the
predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.”
see anything wrong with this picture? What disturbs me is that this photo and caption had to go through several layers of “fact checkers” at the AFP. And they have to gall to say that citizen journalists are untrustworthy.
At least we can recognize bullets that, you know, haven’t even been fired.
more here.
That is all.
Once again Lileks hits it on the nose:
You know what? I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt want to hear the screams from inside the bus. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt want to hear someone?��Ǩ�Ѣs kid shrieking in panic, begging her mom to come save her. Why would I?
This is the point in the story where we start to debate what?��Ǩ�Ѣs news, and what?��Ǩ�Ѣs just disaster-pr0n. I?��Ǩ�Ѣm not making the comparison here, because they?��Ǩ�Ѣre different events in every way. But nothing about 9/11 hit me as hard as the memorial wall on Grand Central Station, a collection of all the fliers and MISSING posters people had stuck up at the site after the Twin Towers were destroyed. They were mute, handmade pleas, and believe it or not, they didn?��Ǩ�Ѣt need a voice over that said ?��Ǩ?�for now the family sits and waits, wondering what the news will be?��Ǩ�� or whatever generic tag gets slapped at the end of the grieving-survivor boilerplate story.
I understand why they do those stories, but I have a hard time watchng them. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt want to wonder if the cameraman?��Ǩ�Ѣs wondering how close he should go on the face to get the tears, because on one hand this person is experiencing great private grief, but on the other hand the light is hitting that teardrop just perfectly. Mostly I want them to leave the people alone. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt need to be told what they?��Ǩ�Ѣre feeing. I can guess.
I’d have a hard time- a moral dilemma, really- working sound for a tv news camera crew. This is a big reason we gave up TV- all the gratuitous emotion-mongering that masquerades as “reporting”. So just don’t watch it you say? I think they get a bigger message when we don’t pay to subsidize it.
It’s a big mystery to me why people who don’t support the war aren’t up in arms about the fact that the “unbiased” media is only reporting one side of things. It’s very telling to me that war detractors have no answer to this argument (via Day by Day):
