The ruling on Obamacare

I personally think the USSC's ruling on the Affordable Care Act was wrong. But it stands. A lot of things I think are wrong stand. I'm used to that.

To understand my position, you have to remember I was born before Medicare came into existence, back when health insurance coverage was rare, back when doctors still made housecalls. When Medicare was being proposed, the AMA was opposed to it. Many of the same arguments that have been brought up for ACA were used against Medicare; it was "socialized medicine", it would cost way more than projected, and so on. It passed anyway.  It is partially "socialized medicine" and its costs are way more than were projected.

ACA is not socialized medicine, it is not even socialized insurance coverage. What it is is an unknown. We do not know yet what it will cost. Based on Medicare, it will cost way more than anyone can predict. It will not directly impact me as I am covered and have been for many years. I am safe from having a penalty/tax imposed on me for lack of coverage.

What it proposes will happen probably won't happen. It will not bring health insurance rates down. It will not bring health care costs down. Simply mandating people buy health insurance will not have any impact on insurance costs because there is no incentive built in to do that. Insurance companies have been mandated to provide more coverage under the law and there is nothing in the law, so far as I can learn, that prevents them from passing on the costs for that coverage onto policy holders.


The Court addresses this:

The reforms also threaten to impose massive new costs on insurers, who are required to accept unhealthy individuals but prohibited from charging them rates necessary to pay for their coverage. This will lead insurers to significantly increase premiums on everyone. See Brief for America’s Health Insurance Plans et al. as Amici Curiae in No. 11– 393 etc. 8–9.
The individual mandate was Congress’s solution to these problems. By requiring that individuals purchase health insurance, the mandate prevents cost-shifting by those who would otherwise go without it. In addition, the mandate forces into the insurance risk pool more healthy individuals, whose premiums on average will be higher than their health care expenses. This allows insurers to subsidize the costs of covering the unhealthy individuals the reforms require them to accept. The Government claims that Congress has power under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses to enact this solution.

The theory is that forcing those healthy people who opt out of coverage to get coverage will increase the pool and, thereby, bring down the premiums is weak. What is likely to happen is what Medicare created: a larger number of people using health care because it is now covered. If you have health insurance, you will use it.

That may be a good thing. But Medicare didn't reduce cost of that health care. It increased pressure on health care providers to provide service for more people. It has filled waiting rooms. It has meant longer waits to see a doctor and shorter times with the doctor. If you like crowded waiting rooms and long wait times then you should be happy about this ruling.

What other effects it will have on health care are entirely unknown. We are entering the foggy realm of unintended consequences.


What I do know is that the chances of having this law repealed have been reduced to near zero. Even if it is repealed, it will be replaced by something so similar as to be indistinguishable. Or maybe by something worse.

Of course, I am a cynic... optimists may have a different opinion.

Another thing which bothers me in the ruling is that the "penalty" is now a "tax." I do not understand this because how do you tax a non-product, a non-transaction. Essentially, Roberts (and, thus, the majority) said Congress can tax something which does not exist (the policy) or did not happen (the purchase of that policy).

That scares me... what can Congress not tax then?

Bits and pieces

Not having a lot to do and being mildly curious, I went looking for weird stuff on the internet. "News of the Weird" is a good place to start although you can often find some strange things in the everyday mundane news you find on the usual news feeds.

Consider that nude guy who was shot and killed by police in Miami while trying to chew the face off another man. A lot of speculation about what possible "designer" drug he might have been on. Turns out... there was only pot (marijuana) in his system. Or maybe the labs don't have a way to test for what he was really on.

In the "Oddest reasons to support a candidate" department we have this. The poll was conducted by the National Geographic Channel. Wasn't National Geographic a respectable magazine from a respectable group (National Geographic Society) once? I mean, other than being a favorite of boys in the early stages of puberty back before men's magazines went mainstream...

For political weirdness, we have Charlie Rangel in the fight of his political life. Though, yesterday, all I saw was that he defeated his opponents in the primary. Today, at least according to the Politico, it's not so clear. Seems Charlie's lead may not be holding up. Or it may be. The vote is split and Charlie may win with a plurality. It doesn't matter about the general election, a Republican doesn't have that proverbial snowball's chance of beating a Democrat in that district.

Charlie Rangel has been holding that seat for 42 years now. Before him, it was held by Adam Clayton Powell, jr. whom he defeated in 1970. I think Charlie is firmly against term limits.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
["Taxman" by the Beatles]

Poll Tax in Houston. Nothing more needs to be said.


Barney Google, with the goo-goo-goo-ga-ly eyes.
Barney Google bet his horse would win the prize.
When the horses ran that day, Spark Plug ran the other way.
Barney Google, with the goo-goo-goo-ga-ly eyes.

Google's "internet glasses"

Ok, I'm outta here.

I am no longer the man I never was

There are a bunch of ads of late for testosterone replacement/enhancement products... such as Ageless Male. You've seen them on TV or heard them on the radio. I doubt the products work but I cannot prove that, or disprove it either. Nobody important (like maybe the FDA) seems to care enough about these products to investigate them.

I don't either. As my post title implies, the image of the man I used to be is heavily tainted by the man I have become. Or, as I like to say on the golf course, "I was never the player I used to be." Nobody seems to get the joke, though. Maybe it's my delivery. I was never a comic though I often got a lot of laughs.

I am pretty sure I know why there are a lot of these products. The aging of the Baby Boomer generation. We are not aging well, as a group. And we don't like that. We want to be our 20-something selves; not the flabby, sagging, unattractive (except perhaps when clothed), guys we seem to have become. I suspect, as my title implies, that we were never those guys. Oh, some of us were... some of us were in great shape and were active and full of energy. But not the vast majority of us.

We were fat or skinny, with/without scraggly beards, and lazy.... pretty much younger versions of what we are today. Some of us were even going gray in our 30's, some were going bald, some had paunches (a euphemism for "beer bellies"), some had flabby thighs or skinny legs (me). 

But now we want to be what we never were. And, true to P.T. Barnum, there is an army of those willing to take advantage of us.

It must be true, everyone I know believes it

From time to time, I read myths. That is, I read (and hear) comments from people that contain myths but present them as facts.

For example:

More people have been killed because of religious beliefs (their own or someone else's) than for any other reason.

This is a widely held belief. It's also blatantly false. And easily refuted. The last world war is estimated to have caused the deaths of some 50 million to over 70 million. The estimate of civilian deaths alone range from 40 million to 52 million. In case you don't know, World War II was not a religious war in any way, shape, or form. Some argue that Hitler's persecution of Jews make it one, if only tangentially, but I would argue that he saw Jews as a "race" with a religion and did not persecute them for their religion. You could be a Jew who converted to Christianity and still be subject to persecution. See the Nuremberg Laws.

Some might argue that, at its heart, the racial aspect was a cover for religious intolerance. Which, of course, doesn't explain the persecution of Eastern Europeans, the disabled and mentally retarded, or black people.

In any event, it was Hitler's racial theories which drove the persecutions. And he set out to conquer the world not to convert people to some brand of religion but because he believed that Germans were the "Master Race" and destined to rule all other people.

Now, I know people don't consider Wikipedia as a reliable source but they do have a list of wars and their death totals, along with notation of type of war.

As my regular readers know, I am atheist. But that doesn't mean that I am anti religion. And it doesn't mean I will accept myths because of their anti-religious basis.

Peering deeply into my crystal ball...

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
[Donald Rumsfeld]

Life is full of unknowns... and knowns. But mostly unknowns. It's, I think, why we (collectively, not personally, speaking) want to believe fortune tellers... or fortune cookies... or in omens. We are, after all, at the mercy of future events, are we not?

We all know the old saying about "eat healthy, avoid conflict and stress, exercise regularly... and you could step in front of a fast moving bus tomorrow."  All it really means is you never know what the future might bring and it isn't likely to be good.

My father, a fine but depressing guy, griped to me on a regular basis in the last couple of years of his life that "if I only knew it would be like this..." He was referring to his decision to have a pacemaker installed a few  years before. He was implying that he wouldn't have done it if he had known what the next few years would be like.

Maybe that's why we don't. How would you like to know the day, time, and circumstances of your pending death? I'd prefer it to be a surprise, thank you, and a pleasant one at that.

The paternal line of my family is one of strokes in our mid-sixties. My grandfather died at 65, his father died at, or about, that age. It is the legend of my father's family. My father lived to be 84. His baby brother lasted about that long and told me once, right after my father passed away, that both he and my father beat the "curse."

But that "curse" really wasn't. Each generation picks up new genes, new genetic makeup, from the mother's side and that throws a monkey wrench into the machinery. So do medical advances. The paternal curse was the result of spiking blood pressure in the family line at, or about, 50 years of age. My father had it but it was detected and treated and the curse was cheated.

My brother-in-law was told he had 3-6 months to live not long ago. It was a good thing he got a second opinion before he gave away everything he owned. It turned out his cancer was treatable and his life expectancy was greatly increased. He ought to have gone back and slapped the "stupid" out of his first doctor.

We just don't know what is in store for us, do we? But we certainly would like to... until we do. But I'd still like to know what stocks will triple in the next year.