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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Lighten up, Francis.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

The math demands it!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Not all heroes wear capes.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The revolution will be supervised.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

We still have time to mess this up!

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

The willow is too close to the house.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn – Nancy Pelosi

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Votar en las Próximas Elecciones

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  September 24, 201310:49 am| 33 Comments

This post is in: The Brown Enemy Within

This ain’t good:

But that fact is that no matter how righteous immigrant advocates view their cause, and as much as Latinos claim to desire immigration reform, the paltry voter participation rate of Latinos continues to be unimpressive to either party.

Pew Research Center reported that while African Americans and whites had reached parity in their voter participation rates at 64% and 61%, respectively, Latino voter participation lags far behind at 48%.

More concerning, the number of eligible Latino voters who are not voting has far outpaced the number of Latinos choosing to vote on Election Day. The chart from Pew illustrates that even though Latino voters grew by 1.4 million between 2008 and 2012, Latinos who were eligible to vote but chose not to grew by 2.3 million over the same period.

In total, 12.1 million eligible Latinos did not vote in 2012.

I’m pretty sure that Republicans have lost Latinos for at least one generation, even if their next Presidential candidate is named “Cruz” or “Rubio”,  but it don’t mean a thing if Latinos don’t go out and vote.

(via Steven L. Taylor)

Votar en las Próximas EleccionesPost + Comments (33)

We are all Villagers now

by DougJ|  September 24, 20139:37 am| 60 Comments

This post is in: Both Sides Do It!, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment

I do agree that a shutdown will hurt Republicans, but not as much as many think, because, of course, BOTH SIDES will have done it.

Seems to me most new polling shows majorities oppose shutdown, but also wud split blame rather equally, if one were to occur.

— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) September 24, 2013

As I’ve said before, “both sides do it” is the American equivalent of the song of General Kim Jong-il.

No, it won’t be calamity for Republicans if shutdown happens, though at a certain point, the fact they’re losing to Terry McAuliffe by five points is a calamity.

Update. I like Enten and am not blaming him, I think he’s right that’s what the polls say.

We are all Villagers nowPost + Comments (60)

I Woke Up Alarmed

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  September 24, 20139:31 am| 44 Comments

This post is in: Republican Stupidity

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that Ted Cruz is a real jerk, and laughing. Still, let’s not pretend that he’s some kind of anomaly. It’s not like McCain, Graham, Grassley or some of the other long-serving members of the cooling saucer are universally beloved sweethearts who were shocked and hurt by Ted’s refusal to accept their heartfelt welcomes and displays of collegial bonhomie.

They hate Cruz not because he’s an asshole, but because he’s not their kind of asshole. He doesn’t want to kiss the right old butts to so he can move to the front of the line at a press gaggle. He doesn’t want to sprinkle the Senate rules with holy water and hold them up for their daily veneration. He’s in it for a fuck and run, because Ted is, at least in his own mind, on the Obama plan: a couple of years in the Senate and then the White House. McCain fucking hates Cruz because Cruz doesn’t think the road the Presidency is lined with 3,500 appearances on Meet the Press, 7,500 cloture votes, and being the ranking member on the Armed Services committee for three decades.

I Woke Up AlarmedPost + Comments (44)

Does that network make my wallet look skinny…

by David Anderson|  September 24, 20137:09 am| 54 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, hoocoodanode

One of the pleasant surprises of the Obamacare exchange roll-out has been reported premiums are coming in significantly below CBO projections.  That means two things.  The first is that more people will be able to afford coverage as the sticker price is lower, and the subsidy should drop out of pocket coverage costs even more.  The second is that the subsidy cost is lower which means the total cost of the program should be lower than anticipated. 

Hoocoodanode that markets actually work reasonably well when information asymetries are smoothed out, search costs are lowered, and there is a common framework of understanding? 

Shocking.  We’ll go below the fold to look at a major driver of lower than expected premiums. 

show full post on front page

Premium projections are coming in low for two reasons.  The first is that a significant number of new entries and pre-exisiting players are able to price some of their product provider networks at either Medicaid plus a kicker or Medicare plus a kicker instead of standard commercial rates.  Medicaid rates are effectively marginal cost rates while Medicare rates are effectively average cost rates for physical health.  Commercial rates are whatever the market bears. 

This is the immediate and proximate cause.

The root cause is that quite a few insurers are offering “narrow” networks.  Narrow networks offer only a percentage of the total providers an insurer has contracted with to members in a particular plan.  California has seen some high cost and high prestige providers excluded from all Exchange products becuase the Exchange products are trying to compete on cost.

some premier provider networks also are absent from the exchange — although that decision may have been out of their hands.

Cedars-Sinai wasn’t included in any exchange plans, and UCLA Medical Center’s network also was mostly excluded, Terhune also reports.

The rationale for leaving the providers off many payers’ lists: They cost too much. Cedars-Sinai is among the most expensive hospitals in the nation, based on the list price of its procedures, and UCLA Medical Center’s charges also rank above average.

Going narrow or going skinny (I’ve heard both terms) is a signficant cost saver as the New York Times reported yesterday:

In New Hampshire, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a unit of WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest insurers, has touched off a furor by excluding 10 of the state’s 26 hospitals from the health plans that it will sell through the insurance exchange.

Christopher R. Dugan, a spokesman for Anthem, said that premiums for this “select provider network” were about 25 percent lower than they would have been for a product using a broad network of doctors and hospitals.

Narrow networks for Exchanges are a significant cultural shift for insurance carriers that had previusly been focused on the commercial employer group market.  There, the network imperative has been to build as broad of a network as possible.  The logic behind this drive is that cost is a component of the buy/no buy decision for an employer group.  A bid has to be within the ballpark of the other bids to be considered.  However cost is not the only driver of the buy/no buy decision.  A group whose CEO has a particular cardiologist and chiropracter that she likes to go to is far more likely to go for a plan that  includes those two providers than a plan that is 1.7% cheaper but does not include those providers.  A group whose employees are concentrated within 10 minutes of a community hospital is far more likely to choose a plan that gives in-network access to that hospital rather than a slightly cheaper plan that does not contract with that hospital.  This drive for expansive networks is expensive as commercial carriers don’t want to say no to a provider.  They can pass on the costs of any high cost provider that was key in winning a major contract across several thousand groups. 

This does not work on the Exchange.  The primary modeling assumption has been the Exchanges are offering basically identical products within a metal band and consumers are highly price sensitive because they don’t have a ton of money to begin with, those consumers will be looking for cost as a primary buy/no buy decision point.  Networks will be adequate or better, but they will be narrower to drive down costs. 

Does that network make my wallet look skinny…Post + Comments (54)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: the Right Enemies

by Anne Laurie|  September 24, 20134:27 am| 53 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Daydream Believers

makers vs monoply takers luckovich

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

.
So, President Obama and the Clintons have now endorsed Bill de Blasio for New York’s next mayor. I’ll admit I was wary of what the media called de Blasio’s “progressive charm”, because every anecdote gave me a strong whiff of John Vliet Lindsay, whose mayoralty was a key factor in my fleeing the city before I was old enough to vote. But (as with DougJ) the NYTimes‘ slimy “De Blasio, filthy hippie or plutocrat-threatening commie?” did a lot to convince me that at least the man has the right enemies. And not just me; here’s Alex Pareene in Salon:

… [T]he Times seems determined to make working for a Catholic social justice organization sound much more radical than it really was, or is. So unnamed “critics” make a few appearances, to suggest that de Blasio and his friends were Marxists — “its harshest critics accused it of hewing to a Marxist agenda” — or naive hippies: “Critics, however, said they were gullible and had romanticized their mission — more interested in undermining the efforts of the Reagan administration than helping the poor.” Which critics? Who knows! How accurate were these criticisms? You decide!…

The reason articles about politicians as young people are fascinating and necessary is because sometimes it is worth asking what led a person to go into politics in the first place. That can often tell you a lot about what sort of elected official they will be. Some people run for office because they’re really, really good at running businesses. Some because they’re really, really good at raising money. Some care a lot about one particular issue, and some people go into politics because politics is the family business. And some go into politics because they were activists who decided to spend their lives and careers fighting for justice.

For some reason, the “my dad was a senator” ones and the “I was really good at making money” ones are treated a bit more respectfully in the press than the activists, though the activists are the ones who already demonstrated a commitment to helping others. An activist background doesn’t mean a politician is gong to turn out to be a great elected official (see: Christine Quinn) but it’s generally a sign of good intentions. This New York voter likes Bill de Blasio a bit more today.

That being said… for the 99% of us who are not New Yorkers, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: the Right EnemiesPost + Comments (53)

Update on Mother Russia’s (You Have No) Human Rights Front (NSFW)

by Anne Laurie|  September 24, 20131:49 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Gay Rights are Human Rights, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

As Dubya’s approval ratings demonstrated, nothing consolidates the political status of an underperforming Leader like having all the media outfits shriek “OMG look, over there — THE ENEMY!!” Even, or especially, when the propaganda can be aimed at The Enemy Within. Guess Putin’s feeling a little underappreciated recently…

Dan Savage embeds a “new Russian anti-gay propaganda video”, Gays and Lesbians Adopt Children in Order to Rape Them:

… Anti-gay propaganda attacking gay parents lays the groundwork for passage a yet another anti-gay law in Russia, one that would rip children from the homes of their gay or lesbian parents and place them in notoriously awful Russian orphanages. (“Of course [a lesbian parent] should definitely be deprived of her rights to the child,” Alexei Zhuravlev, deputy of the Russian Duma, said in an interview. “Homosexuals must not raise children. They corrupt them. They do them much more harm than if the child were in an orphanage. I am deeply convinced of this.”)…

Kat Stoeffel, in NYMag:

Incarcerated Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova kicked off a hunger strike today, protesting the slaverylike conditions and human-rights violations at Penal Colony No. 14 in Mordovia, where she has been held for a year. In an open letter published in the Guardian today, Tolokonnikova writes that her brigade in the sewing shop (which manufactures police uniforms) works sixteen to seventeen hours a day (the legal limit is eight), seven days a week, to meet production quotas, which were increased by 50 percent two weeks ago, despite defective machinery….

“I will [strike] until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle ejected from the realm of justice for the purpose of stoking the production of the sewing industry; until they start treating us like humans,” she wrote.

Update on Mother Russia’s (You Have No) Human Rights Front (NSFW)Post + Comments (25)

Fall Open Thread

by John Cole|  September 23, 20139:38 pm| 106 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Temps dropped into the fifties today again, and I was actually a little pissy earlier because it was kind of chilly, and then it hit me- “OH MY GOD IT’S BATHROBE AND PAJAMA BOTTOMS AND SLIPPERS AND MULLED CIDER AND CROCK POT WEATHER!”

So now I am rocking a bathrobe and slippers and a couple OF pets on my lap and all is good.

*** Update ***

Play the Powerball, Pirates fans. The Buccos are in the playoffs.

Fall Open ThreadPost + Comments (106)

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