In case you need a soothing nine-minute break from politics and economics …
144 Beautiful Faces – Long Version via YouTube. Turn on your sound; it enhances the mood.
This video brings a much-needed smile to my face. I hope it affects you the same way.
-RichardH
Follow this link to the story about two schools in China whose internet addresses were involved in the attacks.
According to the Times, the victim companies’ servers were exploited by a flaw in Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)’s Internet Explorer browser.
It is reports like these that keep me from using Internet Explorer.
The above link points to a more detailed story on The New York Times web site.
Paul Krugman in his 19 February 2010 New York Times column, California Death Spiral, uses insurer Wellpoint’s arguments for dramatically increasing California health insurance premiums in order to analyze some health insurance myths.
[H]ere’s the thing: suppose that we posit, provisionally, that the insurers aren’t the main villains in this story. Even so, California’s death spiral makes nonsense of all the main arguments against comprehensive health reform.For example, some claim that health costs would fall dramatically if only insurance companies were allowed to sell policies across state lines. But California is already a huge market, with much more insurance competition than in other states; unfortunately, insurers compete mainly by trying to excel in the art of denying coverage to those who need it most. And competition hasn’t averted a death spiral. So why would creating a national market make things better?
More broadly, conservatives would have you believe that health insurance suffers from too much government interference. In fact, the real point of the push to allow interstate sales is that it would set off a race to the bottom, effectively eliminating state regulation. But California’s individual insurance market is already notable for its lack of regulation, certainly as compared with states like New York — yet the market is collapsing anyway.
Finally, there have been calls for minimalist health reform that would ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions and stop there. It’s a popular idea, but as every health economist knows, it’s also nonsense. For a ban on medical discrimination would lead to higher premiums for the healthy, and would, therefore, cause more and bigger death spirals.
So California’s woes show that conservative prescriptions for health reform just won’t work.
What would work? By all means, let’s ban discrimination on the basis of medical history — but we also have to keep healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that people purchase insurance. This, in turn, requires substantial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can afford coverage.
And if you put all of that together, you end up with something very much like the health reform bills that have already passed both the House and the Senate.
What about claims that these bills would force Americans into the clutches of greedy insurance companies? Well, the main answer is stronger regulation; but it would also be a very good idea, politically as well as substantively, for the Senate to use reconciliation to put the public option back into its bill.
-RichardH
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Dear MoveOn member,
Next week could be our last big chance to push for real health care reform—and we need a massive show of support to make a major impression on lawmakers in Washington.
Here’s what’s happening: Thursday, President Obama is holding a bipartisan health care summit with Congress. With all of Washington and the news media focused on health care leading up to the summit, it’s a crucial opportunity to make clear that Americans want Congress to get health care done now.
So we’re organizing our biggest, movement-wide day of action for health care reform yet: a Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform on February 24th.
Together with progressive allies, we’re aiming to send a million messages to Congress demanding they stand up and finish health care reform. It’s going to be huge, historic, and fun.
Can you sign up today to join the Virtual March? It’s simple to sign up—and when you do, we’ll automatically send a fax in your name to Sens. Kerry and Brown. Click the link below—it’ll sign you up and send a fax in your name to your senators.
http://pol.moveon.org/virtualmarch10/
This is it. If you’ve never taken action on health care, now’s the time to jump in. And if you’ve taken action every time, we need you now more than ever. To do this right, we need as many people as possible.
The March is shaping up to be huge. With allies from labor, progressive blogs, Health Care for America Now, and others, we’ll have the phones, fax machines, email inboxes, and Facebook walls of Congress flooded with messages of support for real reform.
And at the same time, hundreds of folks will also be marching through Washington, D.C. to Capitol Hill in honor of Melanie Shouse, a MoveOn Council leader in St. Louis who recently passed away from breast cancer—while still fighting her insurance company for coverage, and organizing tirelessly to pass real health care reform.1 Together, we’ll send an unmistakable message to Congress.
Can you sign up today? Click here to join the Virtual March, and we’ll automatically send a fax to Sens. Kerry and Brown:
http://pol.moveon.org/virtualmarch10/
Thanks for all you do.
–Kat, Michael, Ilyse, Lenore, and the rest of the team
P.S. Can you also forward this email to five friends today? The more people involved in the Virtual March, the stronger the message to Washington that it’s time to finish health care reform—and finish it right.
Sources:
1. “March to the Finish Line for Melanie,” Health Care for America Now
Want to support our work?
We’re entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way.
Chip in here.
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. This email was sent to Steven Greenberg on February 19, 2010..
