McClatchy DC has the story ‘Junk insurance’ comes back to haunt its policyholders.

“These junk policies have been crafted pretty carefully,” he said. “When I talked to people and they shared their contracts with me, the language can be very confusing, even for somebody like me.”

The complaints are a familiar refrain for HealthMarkets, which is owned by three prominent Wall Street private equity firms: Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, The Blackstone Group and Credit-Suisse-DLJ Merchant Banking Partners.

Consumer lawsuits and state insurance regulators across the country have targeted the company for years over its market conduct and sales and marketing practices.
.
.
.
Last year, state insurance regulators slapped the company with a $325,000 penalty for not meeting five of 95 performance measures that were part of the $20 million 2008 settlement agreement. The unmet measures dealt with training and oversight of agents.

Were you as surprised as I was to find out that Wall Street private equity firms: Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, The Blackstone Group and Credit-Suisse-DLJ Merchant Banking Partners are involved in this story?  (That was sarcasm, in case you didn’t recognize it.)

It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the people who claim that they have cheaper, catastrophic only health insurance policies, actually have policies like the ones described in this article.  They believe the fallacy that they don’t need no stinkin government help to make these complex decisions on buying health insurance.  After all, they have had a wonderful experience with their insurance companies and have saved a lot of unnecessary expense. (As long as they don’t get sick.)  If you have health insurance that is only good if you don’t get sick, you aren’t saving money; you are wasting money.  Why pay a cent for an insurance policy that is actually worthless?  If you are going to spend any money at all on insurance, at least buy a policy that insures you for something.

McClatchy DC has the story Syrian rebel group rejects talks with U.S..

Last week, Islamic Front units stormed the remaining military council bases, seizing equipment donated by the U.S. and forcing its leadership to flee to Turkey. Kerry had suggested that the equipment could be returned in exchange for direct talks with the U.S., an overture that Ford said was rebuked.

I am not sure that I was aware, before this article, of who exactly seized the U.S. equipment nor what that equipment was.

Two comments on the story were very critical of the Obama administration’s handling of events in Syria.

I withhold judgment on whether or not the criticism is completely warranted, until I hear a reasonable alternative to what the Obama administration did or didn’t do.  Don’t read my remarks as an endorsement of Obama.  I, for one, do not know that the right reaction on our part  to the rebellion would have been.

I have been a firm supporter of the idea that we did not need to go to war with Syria over the chemical weapons incident.  Beyond that, I have no idea as to what we should do in Syria.

The Real News Network has started a series of interviews with Ralph Nader with the video McCarthyism Made Us Veer Away From a Systemic Doctrine for Change – Ralph Nader on RAI (1/3) .

NADER: Well, it’s really amazing that one senator, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who defeated La Follette in Wisconsin on the grounds that he wasn’t liberal enough, rather, that La Follette was not liberal enough. Joe McCarthy, it was like a reign of terror. He’s scared people. He intimidated people. He ruined people’s careers through his highly publicized congressional hearings, his wild accusations anonymously against people in the federal government.

But, you know, it spilled over. I mean, there were students at university, college, they didn’t want to show up at what they thought were activist symposiums. They didn’t want to do any marching. They just–they figured, you know, they’d be stigmatized as soft on communism or, you know, reds.

And the overall impact was–on the progressives and liberals was it made them veer away from any kind of systemic public philosophy to change things for the better. So they just became very empirical. They’ll try to get a labor union organized or try to get better working conditions or something like that because they didn’t want to be accused of isms, you know, like socialism or communism. And the other side was, of course, they were all about capitalism.

So just amazing effect, Joe McCarthy and his acolytes, not just on civil liberties, but on the whole mindset of people.

JAY: And how did it affect your mindset?

NADER: Well, it affected it in the sense that you didn’t come forth with any doctrine of social change, because if you had any kind of coherent doctrine or platform, they would label it as a ism. You know, it would be socialism or any kind–syndicalism. You know? So we became very empirical. You know, we went after the auto companies’ unsafe cars. No ism there. People are being killed every day, injured because of unsafe cars, lack of seatbelts and padded dash panels.

And that has affected the left all the way to the present day, whereas the right wing, they’ve got this capitalism–although, you know, it’s–corporate capitalism is the antithesis of capitalism. I mean, owners of corporations, they have no control, the shareholders have no control over General Electric or IBM or General Motors.

So it really had an amazing impact. As a result, there were no big thinkers on the left the way the right wing had Friedrich Hayek, even though they distorted what a lot of–Ludwig von Mises and so forth.

And I thought that the lack of big thinkers on the left was a recent phenomenon.  Maybe it is just that after the left stopped thinking big, it took the Republicans a lot of time to catch up and surpass the left in big ideas.

I am beginning to appreciate Ralph Nader more and more.  I just didn’t believe him in what he said about Al Gore in 2000, but I am finally coming around to seeing what I didn’t see then.  After reading Chris Hedges’ complaint that Nader is being shut out by the press these days, I am glad to see The Real News Network have him on.

My apologies to ChuckS for my defense of Al Gore when Chuck tried to explain Ralph Nader’s value to me.

See the other parts of this interview at my blog posts –

Are Nader-Like Reforms Still Possible? – Ralph Nader on Reality Asserts Itself (2/3).

and

On Florida in 2000 and What to Do Next – Ralph Nader on Reality Asserts Itself (3/3)

Tanya and Joe Lucas held a house party to introduce gubernatorial candidate Juliette Kayyem to Sturbridge voters.  The turnout was very good.  It would be great if other candidates would follow her example in coming to talk to the people of Sturbridge.

The above picture is from her campaign web site. It is not a picture of her in Sturbridge. There was significant snow on the ground today.  The venue being close to Wells State Park presented some challenges to many of the attendees including local ones who had no idea that the road to the park is not plowed in winter.  We didn’t have to go to the park, but the park road does give access to several residential streets in Sturbridge, at least when the roads are clear.  Today we had to backtrack to another access to these streets.

Hearing her in person make the case, it really dawned on me how applicable her experience is to being a governor.

An appointee to both Governor Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama’s Administrations, she has made government work for citizens when it matters the most. As a homeland security expert, Juliette knows what it means to bring together every facet of society and work towards common solutions with a clear path forward. Her career is proof that progressive politics and safety and security policy strengthen one another.

Her description of how she has worked with Governors and Mayors in times of crisis and stress as a key figure in homeland security was what made me realize what executive talent she has.  She also had a convincing explanation of how she would be able to deal with a Massachusetts legislature that is famous for jealously guarding its own centers of power in the state.

I liked her explanation of the importance of pushing Massachusetts forward on the the road already begun by Governor Patrick to become and remain competitive in the economy.  She understands the investments we need to make to compete nationally and globally.  As I said above, she has a good plan for working cooperatively with the state legislature to accomplish what needs to be done in a way that is fair to the voters of the state in all parts of the state.

To call her energetic just doesn’t begin to do justice to how she is going to campaign, and if elected, govern.

Here is an article recommended by RichardH.  The Fiscal Times story Of Course the Safety Net Redistributes Income…That’s Why It Works is by Mark Thoma.

This is what insurance does. It pools risk and distributes the losses across the participants in the program. Fire insurance, for example, pools the contributions of participants, and when somebody experiences a loss from fire the money is redistributed from those who did not have a fire to those who did. Everyone understands that the fees they pay provide this protection, and they don’t object when the pooled contributions are redistributed to cover losses.

It would be hard to believe that anyone who has insurance of any kind wouldn’t know what the above excerpt states.  Of course there is much more in the article itself.

The problem seems to be that so many people act like they don’t know the above when it comes to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax.  The money that gets deducted from your paycheck under the acronym FICA is what pays for your Social Security and Medicare INSURANCE.

If your fire insurance company came to you and said we are going to have to reduce your entitlement to a payoff if your house burned down because we have given too much of your insurance payments to the stock holders, would you just simply agree because you are worried about the financial stability of the insurance company?

So when the Congress comes to you and says we have to cut benefits you are entitled to from your insurance policy because we gave too much money to the stock holders of the Congress, why do you all nod your head in agreement?  It is the only fiscally sound thing to do, you repeat.  Do you ever say, your stock holders are making plenty of money so give me what I paid for and you contracted with me to pay me?

By the way, the stock holders of Congress are not we the people as you may so naively believe.  The stock holders are the corporations who spend billions of dollars lobbying Congress to give them benefits that are far larger than the money spent to lobby Congress.  That’s why is so important to realize that Corporations are people too.  Have some sympathy for them, please.

CBS News had the story FDA gets tough on antibacterial soaps.  For a long time we have been fans of liquid soap, but have been worried that all of them seem to be antibacterial.  We had worried that the use of these soaps would promote the growth of resistant bacteria.  There was no mention of this in the CBS report.  In comments from a soap industry representative the CBS interviewer never raised the issue and the spokesman never addressed it.

I began to wonder if I had been confusing antibacterial with antibiotic.  I found an article that settled it for me.

Wired has the article FDA Scrutinizes Antibacterial Products for Hormonal Disruption, Bacterial Resistance.  In the discussion, the aricle quoted the FDA report.

    Since publication of the 1994 TFM, there is new information raising concerns about the impact of widespread antiseptic use on the development of antimicrobial resistance. Bacteria use some of the same resistance mechanisms against both antiseptics and antibiotics. Thus, the use of antiseptic active ingredients with resistance mechanisms in common with antibiotics may have the potential to select for bacterial strains that are also resistant to clinically important antibiotics, adding to the problem of antibiotic resistance. Laboratory studies of some of the antiseptic active ingredients evaluated in this proposed rule demonstrate the development of reduced susceptibility to antiseptic active ingredients and some antibiotics after growth in nonlethal amounts of the antiseptic (i.e., low-to-moderate concentrations of antiseptic). These studies provide ample evidence of bacterial resistance mechanisms that could select for antiseptic or antibiotic resistance in the natural setting.

The impact on bacterial resistance in the natural setting (rather than in the laboratory) has not been extensively evaluated. The existing data are very limited in scope. (pp. 37-38)

So who at CBS was assigned to their coverage of the story?  They have a medical doctor on staff to cover health issues.  Perhaps Scott Pelley isn’t aware enough about the ramifications of this issue to even know which reporter to assign it to.  Apparently the reporter didn’t know either.

I left the comment at CBS News:

What about the promotion of antibacterial resistant bacteria?  How could you leave out that concern from your report?  How could you let the industry spokesman off without his addressing this issue?  Without addressing this issue, the FDA concern almost seems minor.

Maybe there is an object lesson for advertisers here.  The same CBS show did attack vitamins with a story that says that they are mostly useless.  Perhaps the vitamin manufacturers have been cutting back on their advertising spending on CBS, and this is a shot across their bow as to what can happen to them compared to the people who do spend a lot on advertising.

I happened to take a look at the geographic distribution of viewership of this blog over the last 30 days.  I found it rather amazing.

Who knew I had an international audience?

C-Span recorded the November 18, 2013 discussion by Noam Chomsky on his book On Anarchism.

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talked about his book, On Anarchism, in which he examines the political ideology of anarchism, from its history and early proponents to the author’s thoughts on its current usage and practicality. Noam Chomsky spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I cannot embed the video here, so you’ll have to use the link above.  There are many startling and useful revelations in the video.

In answer to a question at the end of the video, Chomsky explains why preserving slavery was an important factor for the American Revolution.  Not that this is the most startling nor most useful part of the discussion, but I did find it interesting.  The preceding link is to the clip of only a couple of minutes of the talk.

Thanks to MardyS for pointing me to this discussion.

This is not an endorsement.  It is just an attempt to give some coverage to a candidate who may not have received the coverage she deserves.

Her web site Juliette Kayyem – Democrat for Governor gives some background on who she is and what her qualifications are.

An appointee to both Governor Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama’s Administrations, she has made government work for citizens when it matters the most. As a homeland security expert, Juliette knows what it means to bring together every facet of society and work towards common solutions with a clear path forward. Her career is proof that progressive politics and safety and security policy strengthen one another.

I am looking forward to meeting her in Sturbridge on Wednesday.