Monthly Archives: February 2013

Clue: We All Get Old Someday

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Ben Smith warns that President Obama is about to “screw his base.”

The passionate supporters are the youth, who voted for him by a margin of 60% to 36%, according to exit poll samples of people 29 and under. His enemies are the elderly: Mitt Romney won 56% of the votes from people 65 and over. And while one of ObamaCare’s earliest provisions was a boon to the young, allowing them to stay on their parents’ insurance through the age of 26, what follows may come as an unpleasant surprise to many of the president’s supporters. The provisions required to make any sort of health insurance plan work — not just ObamaCare, but really any plan of its sort — require healthy young people to pay more in health insurance than they consume in services, while the elderly (saved by Sarah “Death Panels” Palin from any serious attempt to ration expensive and often futile end-of-life care) consume far more than they pay in. There is always a push and pull, however, and this year will be spent laying plans to shift the burden further toward the young.

Before I go on to the main point, I want to say that I find the use of the word “enemies” a bit jarring. I don’t think a rational politician thinks of voters who vote against him as his “enemies,” but rather as a pool of people he wasn’t able to reach. Ben Smith also seems to be implying that the President should heap bennies on the young for voting for him and kick the old to the curb, rather than just do the right thing for everybody.

A larger point is that conservatives persist in supporting the idea of paying for health care through the private insurance industry, yet they also persist in being ignorant of how insurance risk pools work. If everybody only paid in what they received back in services, it wouldn’t be insurance any more, would it?

The main point is that we all get to take our turns being young people, then middle aged people, and then old people. Unless we die young, of course. Assuming an average life span, today’s hunky young dude is tomorrow’s shriveled old geezer. As individuals, we move around in the risk pool — sometimes we’re in the shallow end, sometimes we’re in the deep end — which is why risk pooling is preferred to just making people pay for stuff. In the course of a lifetime, we all take turns being givers and recipients. This is how insurance works.

Rick Ungar at Forbes explains the situation:

According to AHIP, the average premium paid by a 24 year old in the individual marketplace is $1200 a year. Using AHIP’s numbers, the price of making the cost of heath insurance more equitable for a 60 year old will potentially cost that 24 year old, on average, an extra $45 a month.

While I don’t mean to minimize this increase, as I recognize that every dollar counts when one is young and getting started, it is important to keep the actual price tag in perspective and weigh the equities when considering that those at the older age range have been overcharged for many years.

The reality is that the young have been paying unreasonably low premium rates for for a very long time–it being in the health insurance company’s profit interest to bring in as many young and healthy people as possible in the door by charging artificially low rates. The problem is that they make up for it by charging artificially high rates to the older people the insurance company would rather not have in the first place. What the ACA seeks to do is correct this situation so that 60 year olds are not precluded from gaining health insurance coverage by being priced out of the market.

I did some checking and found out that in some states, insurance companies are allowed to charge their older policy holders ten times more than the younger policyholders. When Obamacare fully kicks in next year, insurance companies will be allowed to charge their oldest policy holders no more than three times more than they charge the youngest ones.

Naturally, the Right frames the change as screwing the young. What’s sad is that so many older people have been bamboozled into thinking that the Right is on their side, when it plainly isn’t.

Next year, insurance companies must also stop charging women higher premiums than men just because they are women, as they do now. By the Right’s logic, Obamacare is unfair to men.

And, of course, it occasionally happens that a young person gets cancer or gets hit by a bus. By the Right’s logic, older people facing multiple health problems must kick in higher premiums to pay for that person’s care, but not the other way around.

It’s also the case than when an uninsured 50-year-old runs up a staggering medical bill before he dies, his 20-something children will be stuck with the bill. Paying $45 a month more to help Pops keep his insurance policy is a bargain in comparison.

If we want to help young people, how about doing something toward lowering the cost of higher education and student loan debt? And if you want to make health care as equitably low-cost as possible, how about single payer?

Update: Zandar comments,

Holy crap, Ben Smith has discovered ACTUARIAL SCIENCE. Healthy people paying for premiums and not consuming health care pays for sick people who are consuming health care. ALERT THE INTERNETS.

Update: Sarah Kliff explains why young people probably won’t be hurt by a spike in insurance premium cost.

Karl and the Baggers

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The Karl Rove vs. Teabagger fracas is a ton of fun to watch. But, as Charles Blow writes, “The skirmish speaks to a broader problem: a party that has lost its way and can’t rally around a unified, coherent vision of what it wants to be when it grows up.”

Josh Marshall published a letter from a one-time GOP staffer that is very much worth reading. The letter writer points out that for all the drama and angst and name calling going on, the GOP establishment and the baggers really aren’t that far apart on issues. What’s really eating them is something else.

Neither side in this putative civil war has been willing to reckon honestly with the consequences of the Bush administration for the country (substantively) or the Republican Party (politically). Both do their best to present their views to the public as if the last Republican President had never existed. This has left both groups of activists somewhat unmoored; in politics, you talk ideology and principles when you can’t brag about accomplishments, because voters are a lot better at relating the latter to their own lives.

Since neither the Tea Party types or the big donors and the campaign operatives working for them are thinking of repudiating a Republican administration that lost two wars and wrecked the economy, they are left to air their differences on issues no one besides campaign junkies cares about. The self-styled conservatives complain that Rove and his people say mean things about them; the moneybags wing is dedicated to recruiting candidates who will avoid gaffes. Big deal.

They are not only not repudiating Dubya for the bad consequences; they are not even willing to admit there were bad consequences. And, Steve M says, why would they? Their “ideas” are still considered the mainstream.

Yes, the tax cuts are unsustainable, but they’re now sacrosanct — Republicans wanted to make them all permanent, while Democrats have insisted on locking them in for everyone but the rich. Government-sanctioned torture, once unthinkable, is now celebrated in movies and on TV, and much of what’s worst about America’s post-9/11 foreign policy — Gitmo, rendition, indefinite detention — is still in place. In fact, Republicans are talking about Chuck Hagel as if the neocons were right about Al Qaeda and Iraq, and are right about Iran right now — and they’re getting away with it, because not enough Americans have learned to feel disgust for them.

(Regarding the Hagel hearings, I doubt most Americans were paying that much attention. Probably many of wouldn’t know whether “Chuck Hagel” was a former senator or Roy Rogers’ sidekick. But a majority have figured out Iraq was a mistake.)

So stock up on popcorn, folks. This show ain’t gonna be over anytime soon.

Ladies, the NRA Is Not Your Friend

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I found this on Facebook this morning. I commented on the size of the magazine, that nobody has that many crazy ex-husbands. The people (all men, it appears) liking the image didn’t get the joke.

Conservatives are stomping around calling the Violence Against Women Act a waste of money, and then in the next breath they argue that women have to be armed with AR-15s because they never know when four or five hardened criminals are going to break into her house and attack her simultaneously. Seriously —

Women’s Forum’s Gayle Trotter said in her prepared testimony. An assault weapons ban, she said, would “harm women the most” because “guns are the great equalizer in a confrontation.” And that doesn’t just mean handguns. That means military-style rifles. When questioned, Trotter specifically singled out the AR-15 as an important weapon for women, essentially because it looks cool. Women like the AR-15 because “they’re light, they’re easy to hold, and most importantly, their appearance,” Trotter said. The rifle is intimidating, she said, and then appeared to riff on a hypothetical home invasion in which one would be necessary. “Three, four, five violent intruders in her home — with her children screaming in the background — the peace of mind that comes with a scary looking gun…gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals.” Trotter said. “I speak on behalf of millions of american women who urge you to defend our Second Amendment right to choose to defend ourselves.”

I infer from this that conservatives really hate it when multiple strangers break into women’s homes to assault them, but if your husband or boyfriend, current or ex, roughs you up from time to time, that’s his right. It’s probably your fault, anyway.

And note that the above-mentioned Ms. Trotter is opposed to allowing women to serve in combat.

Anyway — the scenario in which multiple criminal strangers burst into a woman’s home must be rare, as I could find no examples of such a thing happening. Women are far more likely to be attacked by men they know. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Satistics, in 2007 only 10 percent of female homicide victims in the U.S. were killed by strangers. Historically, women have had most to fear from current and former husbands or lovers. However, in recent years rates of “intimate” violence have gone down quite a bit, possibly because of the Violence Against Women Act that righties think is a waste of time.

See also —

Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Wiebe reported on a case-controlled study in which household were matched on a number of demographic factors, and then incidences of gun violence were compared. They found that people who keep a gun in their home are almost twice as likely to die in a gun-related homicide, and that the risk was especially greater for women: women living in a home where there is a gun are almost three times more likely to die in a gun-related homicide than men similarly situated. The risk of killing oneself using a gun was almost 17 times greater for persons who live in a home where there is a gun, compared to those in homes without guns. (Wiebe D. Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2003; 41:771-82).

How often does a woman successfully defend herself with a gun? We get a hint here —

In 2009, justifiable homicides involving women killing men with a firearm occurred in: Louisiana (1); Michigan (2); Mississippi (1); Oklahoma (2); Oregon (2); South Carolina (1); Tennessee (1); Texas (2); and, Virginia (1). Of these, handguns were used in: Louisiana (1); Michigan (2); Mississippi (1); Oklahoma (1); Oregon (2); South Carolina (1); Texas (1); and, Virginia (1).

I don’t have data for the number of women murdered by men in the U.S. in 2009, justified or otherwise, but I’m betting it’s a lot more than 23. Note that women get killed in gun-friendly Louisiana at higher rates than anywhere else in the U.S.

Now, I don’t blame a woman who has a crazy, angry ex out there somewhere for keeping a gun in her home. I might do the same thing, as well as installing alarms and adopting a very large dog. But what the data tell us clearly is that encouraging women to be armed is no replacement for the Violence Against Women Act, which really does seem to have made a difference.

First Amendment Primer (for Righties)

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Righties do love their First Amendment rights, but they don’t understand them very well. For example, on the Right it is commonly believed the right to freedom of speech includes a right to not be disagreed with. (This is something I’ve written about before, so for examples, see “This Is Rich,” and “America Has Lost Its Mind.”)

But no, dear ones, it does not. The free speech part of the First Amendment protects you from government interference of your speech. For example, if you own a newspaper, and a government agent drops by every day to decide what stories and editorials you can or cannot print, that would be infringing on your rights. However, if the mayor of your town publicly complains about your news coverage, but doesn’t try to stop you from covering news as you see fit, that is not an infringement on your rights.

By the same token, government cannot tell you what to say. If a government agent came to you with propaganda and demanded you print it in your newspaper, you would be within your rights to say no, I won’t. But this is another point often lost on righties. For example, for years conservatives in several states have been passing laws that determine what a physician must say to a woman seeking an abortion, even if the physician thinks the speech is garbage and doesn’t want to say it. This, my lovelies, is an obvious infringement on the physicians’ right to free speech, but so far several red states have gotten away with it.

U.S. case law has long recognized that “speech” is sometimes non-verbal, so that opinions expressed in gestures or art, for example, enjoy the same protection as editorials and speeches. For this reason, courts have long recognized that burning a U.S. flag in protest of some federal government policy, as offensive as that might be, is protected speech. Even so, conservatives have wanted to make flag burning illegal or unconstitutional for years. By the same token, you can count on conservatives to be first in line to stop the display of art they don’t like. Conservatives have issues with academic freedom, also, and want to control what is said in classrooms. (Note to rightie readers: forcing children to recite prayers in a public school classroom is an infringement of their right to their own free exercise of religion, never mind an infringement of the establishment clause.)

Freedom of speech is not absolute. You cannot drive around in your neighborhood at 2 a.m. blasting your political opinions through a megaphone, for example. There are limitations on the display of pornography. Graffiti and naughty words may get you fined. But on the whole, speech is pretty much a free-for-all here in the U.S., as it should be. Expect to take what you dish out.

I bring this up because of a couple of recent episodes involving free speech rights.

Paul Guaschino was driving with an “impeach Obama” bumper sticker on his car, when another driver flipped him the bird. We assume that the other driver was objecting to the bumper sticker, which is not necessarily true, but that’s how Guaschino took it. Guaschino followed the other driver to a traffic light, and while both vehicles were stopped, Guaschino got out of his car and began to pound the other vehicle with a baseball bat. The other motorist, recognizing unhinged craziness when he saw it, fled. Police apprehended Guaschino and filed criminal charges against him.

As Digby said,

But you have to love the irony of somebody exercising his freedom of speech, as he has every right to do, but gets enraged and violent when someone exercises theirs in response. I suppose it’s just intense frustration that, after all they’ve been told, the majority of the country doesn’t agree with them and actually thinks they’re jerks.

But of course, the usual righties are cheering for Guaschino, whereas if a leftie so much as looks at a conservative cross-eyed, all lefties are goons and thugs.

But this brings me back to my original point, which is that conservatives believe freedom of speech includes protection from being disagreed with (sorry about the dangling participle). I ran into this post the other day (featuring a shout out to our own c u n d gulag!) written by a rightie blogger who believes criticism of Faux Snooze amounts to an infringement of Faux’s right to free speech, i.e., pretending to be a news organization while really being a mouthpiece for whatever agenda Rupert Murdoch is pushing this week. And the blogger thinks it is just OUTRAGEOUS that people — including President Obama — trample on Faux’s First Amendment rights by saying such things as I just said, because it’s the truth. But as gulag pointed out in the comments,

that he continues to allow FUX Noise the use of the PUBLIC AIRWAVES, to spread their stupid, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and/or homophobic, propaganda!

Just like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, did in their Totalitarian states!

Snark. It’s a beautiful thing. And protected by the First Amendment!

Your Title Here

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Sometimes something just clicks:

He bought his first gun a week before the debut of TheTruthAboutGuns.com. He took a firearms class. He filled out the paperwork and went through the background check to get a permit to carry a gun. He now owns 18 guns.

“Once you put a gun on, you gain situational awareness,” he says. After he bought his first gun, he says, “I felt grown up. It was like a coming-of-age thing. I felt like an adult.”

In the 1940s and 1950s Joseph Campbell was writing stuff about myths and rituals and arguing that modern society suffered by the lack of them. He pointed out that a nearly universal feature of tribal societies was the rite of passage. For boys, this ritual often involved all the men of a tribe or village physically kidnapping a boy away from his mother and taking him off to some “men’s ground,” and the boy would be put through some kind of ritual that would be frightening or even painful. The ritualism often included obvious phallic symbols, such as snakes. But from that point forward, his status as a man was secure.

The corresponding rites of passage for girls are marriage and childbirth, which is pretty much still the case. But in modern western culture males seem to drift along as boy-men for a prolonged time. Campbell wrote in Hero With a Thousand Faces,

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood.”

So, hypothetically, there are a lot of men drifting through their lives never completely certain of their status as men. Add to that the feedback loop of popular entertainment, which (seems to me) often portrays males as perpetual juveniles. What you’ve got now is a big chunk of U.S. society sucked into an infantile caricature of manhood, and using guns as their phallic symbols to act it out. And men who display their firearms at seemingly inappropriate times, like these two, are really, unconsciously, showing off their mighty weenies.

Discuss. I’ll be back later.

Remembering Yoshihiro Hattori

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Earlier this week, an Atlanta homeowner shot and killed a young man who had pulled into his driveway by mistake. Something very similar happened in Baton Rouge more than 20 years ago. Some of you may remember this.

Yoshihiro Hattori was a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student who came to live with a Baton Rouge family in 1992. He and a young man from his host family were going to a Halloween party and mistook another house for the party house.

The boys went to the door and rang the doorbell, and when they got no response they turned to walk back to their car. But then the homeowner, Rodney Peairs, stormed out of his house with a .44-magnum revolver and yelled, “freeze!” Yoshihiro, probably not recognizing he was in danger, turned toward Pearis and said, “We’re here for the party.” Pearis fired his gun into Yoshihiro’s chest and ran back into his house.

Webb Haymaker, the boy with Yoshihiro, ran to a neighbor house and asked for help. The Pearis family did nothing, but remained in their house. An ambulance came, but Yoshihiro died before reaching the hospital.

At first, the Baton Rouge police declined to press charges against Pearis. Possibly only because of widespread outrage in Japan and pressure from higher officials was Pearis finally charged with manslaughter. At the trial, the defense portrayed Yoshihiro Hattori as scary and Rodney Peairs as just a regular guy defending his family. The defense pointed out that Yoshihiro was a 130-pound boy (dressed as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever) who had just rung the doorbell — not exactly the usual behavior of a home invader. But naturally, Peairs was acquitted.

Now, as I remember it, the story got a lot of attention, and a lot of people thought it was outrageous, although many others defended Pearis and thought he was justified to shoot Yoshihiro. But there also was a widespread resignation about the acquittal — that’s just the way things are in America, especially in the South. It stinks, but nothing can be done.

This week’s shooting in Atlanta isn’t getting nearly as much attention, but the shooter was charged with murder pretty quickly. So far I haven’t heard anyone say the shooter, Phillip Walker Sailors, was justified in shooting a young man for the crime of pulling into his driveway. Perhaps someone has, and I’ve missed it. It will be interesting to see how and whether justice is served. I would also like to gauge if public reaction to this week’s shooting is different in any way from the reaction to the shooting in 1992. Have we progressed at all?

Related — here’s a gun control ad made to air during the Super Bowl.