Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Trump in a sentence:

"Trump may not have a coherent ideology, but this is because he’s a simpleton, and his instinctive need for dominance is routinely manipulated toward the end of maximal partisan confrontation."

Chait

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Yes, agreed. Although it also looks like swing districts follow the top of the ticket, as some voters get excited, some stay home, and some change their vote. You don't see many congressional districts making what look like independent choices.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

A pair of random thoughts on last week:

Shouldn't there be a Saturday Night Comic Emergency Commission that could compel a live show in times of epic comic potential as was spewing from The White House? A repeat of a Kaine-Pence debate, after The Mooch? Really?

Shouldn't Nation Public Radio shed its reputation as a com-symp radical anarchist tool of the left by sponsoring a poetry reading, on a regular basis, to America's youngsters? And couldn't that show be "The Mooch Talks To Yutes"? I envision a dramatic reading of "Bannon Autoeroticon," Rymes With Reince," and the instant classic "CockBlock".

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You really need a live show, since it's hard to write a script all week that will still be relevant on Saturday night.

Apropos of which, who will be the next WH communications director?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Mooch, we hardly knew ye.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

False.

eta: Caption, please.

There was a photo here, and it was too large.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Non margin-destroying photo link: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...0mooch_1_0.jpg

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." -- Confucius, as well as many, many people on twitter right now


Law-Alt version: "Hey, Reincy, nice office you got there." "Hey, Mooch, is there a MAC clause in that Skysail deal?"

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You are my favorite.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

My sister's closest friend is a history professor at an Ivy who specializes in insurance. She had this really interesting observation a few days ago:

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

People like insurance because they are risk-averse. Private insurance is about spreading risk, and you can opt out. Ex ante, there isn't redistribution involved, because the bargain is offered to the market in a neutral way. People fear government insurance programs because they justifiably worry that the government will set terms that benefit some more than others, and that they won't have the ability to opt out.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Anything else start up in 1914 and though the 30s that was going to make everything great, but then it didn't?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And not for nothing but as a tribute can't we leave the image way too large?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And here's an article that supports your position that North Korea is acting rationally. I'm not sure the ultimate goal it seems to think is the one North Korea is seeking to accomplish is a rational one or not, but it's an interesting read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/w...=74468950&te=1

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You wouldn't like TM when he's angry.

Huh. Thx. I hadn't seen that.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I would read her book.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Fine, but cN we stop calling publicly funded healthcare "insurance?" Covering pre-existing conditions does not insure against risk acciddnt. "Insuring" against known losses is illegal and a moral hazard. Call it what it is.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Huh?

I have a condition. There is cancer in my body. But I have no idea whether those cancer cells will form a tumor and require treatment. It may happen, it may not. My risk is certainly higher than someone who hasn't gone through chemo, but it's still just that, a risk.

You might argue that your annual check-up isn't insurance, but rather coverage of an anticipated annual cost, but I don't get trying to argue that coverage of my pre-existing condition isn't insurance.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'll take it a step closer to Less (I assume). I've had blood tests that show elevated levels of some stuff consistent with some bad things. But further testing showed no sign of any bad things. I have no symptoms, apart from the above, no diagnosis, but I do have a "condition" and have little doubt that if insurance companies could deny me coverage on the theory that some future treatment is tied to this "condition," they would.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Which is both understandable and sort of silly. Exactly none of us can tell whether we're being ripped off by our insurance company. Even if you tried to read all the relevant disclosure, it's close to impossible to evaluate with a normal person's expertise.

So we rely on government regulators, whose work we also don't understand.

At least with public systems, you can vote the bums out.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

None of our health insurance is insurance.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There's an insurance component - against the smaller probabilities of big problems - but most of what your doing is pre-paying and cost sharing.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm having difficulty separating fiction from reality these days; if you don't suffer from this I suggest that you may not be paying close enough attention to reality.

Has Kelly been named Hand of the Mad King?

Was it Daenerys or Ivanka that said "Don't judge me by my father's actions."?

Was it Vladimir who starts wars to stir nationalist fervor, in order to divert attention from domestic failures? Or, as we will hear on the talkingheads tonight, is it Mad King Donald? See below:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-ko...option-n788396

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Not following your distinction about cost sharing or how you get to "most" (which is more nuanced than your previous categorical statement). I guess my view is that most of the reason that people want what we call health insurance is because of the insurance component -- people are afraid of the ruinous and otherwise prohibitive costs of treating big problems.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It think there is actually pretty good evidence that you're wrong. Perhaps you saw a post not that long ago from Tyler Cowen on how much people value their Medicaid coverage. The answer was not very much and certainly less than it costs. Which isn't surprising because people are terrible at evaluating risks and probability (like, it's an inherent weakness in human cognition). It's very hard to tell if you're going to get cancer or have a heart attack, much less have any sense of what it will cost you.

Meanwhile, it's pretty obvious that if you're planning to have a baby, what you're looking for from your insurance is to get everyone else who's in the same risk pool to chip in for the cost. No one ever puts it that way, but that is indeed what happens.

As to all the rest, the preventative, diagnostic and mundane, none of that is "risk" you're seeking to lay off. You're signing up for insurance for that stuff primarily to take advantage of group purchasing power and enhance the predictability of what you will need to pay.

And what other insurance do you buy that you're virtually certain to make regular, sustained claims against and where making claims that exceed your premiums isn't at all unusual?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Even health insurance as it is now is not actual "insurance." It's a TPA for your health care.

Dinesh D'Souza etherized
 

AON, this is fun.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Actually, it's pretty factual. There are more Ds in the country than Rs.

And the measuring stick for stupid fancied today is "votes against policies that would entitle him to more." The Rs who want more entitlements and then vote against people who'd give them those things are indeed stupid. And numerous. But the Rs who vote against their own benefits because they believe the entitlement state is too large, or put fiscal concerns above their own interest, are not stupid.

I'm also not so sure a person who votes based on who will give him more in govt benefits is smart. He's certainly rational, at least in the short term. But such Pavlovian voting ("I vote for he who butters my bread") is often more craven and short-sighted than intelligent.

I struggle to differentiate between he who votes only to avoid taxes and he who votes only to get more from the govt. Both are simply voting short term personal interests. The logic employed is essentially the same.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I did see that post, which was by Alex, not Tyler. I have a couple of issues with it, which may or may not have been anticipated by the underlying article. One, the implications of the Oregon study have been addressed quite a bit elsewhere but do not seem to slow anyone down from claiming that it shows that Medicaid does not improve physical health, silly as that sounds. Two, people who get Medicaid definitionally do not have as much money as other people. Asking them how much they would pay for Medicaid, given that they don't have funds, almost certainly tells you more that it sucks to be poor than about the value of health insurance more generally.

I think you can set child birth aside because it is planned. From my experience, admittedly more with people with higher incomes than Medicaid recipients, the scary thing about healthcare costs is the prospect of getting cleaned out or not being able to pay at all for care. While people may be poor at accurately estimating the likelihood of low-probability events, they are also are scared by them, often more than they rationally should be, and they are averse to many kinds of risks.

I understand that. I just think that while use of those benefits is greatest by incidence, it is the part of healthcare coverage that most people value less because paying out of pocket for these things is just not that scary. (From a systemic perspective, you get better outcomes if you incent people to take get some sorts of this care, so it also reduces long-run costs quite apart from group purchasing power.

In part, this is just another way of saying that the distribution of healthcare expenses is more evenly distributed than the distribution of other things against which you can insure, like car accidents.

But of course you are right that there is an element of cost-sharing and -management in what we call health insurance. I didn't say it wasn't there. I just said that's not what's most important to people about it (and thus that you are wrong in saying it's not insurance). But when Sebby is done stp-ing, he can tell me why I'm wrong.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

At parties, I bet you tell people that there are more stupid women and men, and then when you elicit the requisite offense, you get to say, actually it's pretty factual - there are more women than men. Ha!

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Your analysis is limited by your stunted worldview.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Whatever the pros or cons of your position, it is pretty clear the Republicans put more of their morons in elected positions, and elect more of them to higher positions.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If equal percentages of men and women are stupid, which is a pretty fair assumption, this wouldn't be a statement without some heft.

I mean, if one must go back of the envelope, as is unfortunately required in these things.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This is mathematically accurate from my assessment of the House and Senate.

It appears (back of envelope again) stupidity and achievement in non-coastal GOP politics run almost 1:1.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If you're voting based on What You Get, rich or poor, D or R, you're employing the same logic. You can argue that when you need something, that sort of voting is excusable. I'd agree. If you're fucked and you need the govt, you're excused in a manner the greedheaded affluent tax voter is not.

But both of these animals are acting in purely rational manners, and thinking almost exclusively about themselves.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Morons? Republican politicians care about cutting taxes for the wealthy and getting elected. They do those things well. They just don't need to drill down on your priorities.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Sorry, will get off your corner now.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If you just assume that people are acting rationally in a self-interested way, then whatever they do must be the product of purely rational self-interest. That will get you through Econ 101, but it doesn't add much to any conversation.