Can't Get Coverage

Some background: when I left the dayjob last year (o happy day!), I decided to stay on their small-group health coverage through COBRA. But COBRA has an 18-month limit, and I hit the end of that period on September 30th. So in mid-September I started looking for new coverage, knowing full well that as an individual, not a member of any kind of organization, I wouldn't be able to get the same level of excellent coverage.

Some further background: a couple years ago I was having trouble with my right shoulder. Turned out to be a little tendonitis and a wee bone spur. Couldn't raise my arm above my shoulder without a lot of, you know, screaming. So I went to my doctor, who sent me to a specialist, who sent me for an MRI. The MRI revealed that I didn't need surgery, and that the problem would most likely find a way to resolve itself. (Sloooowly.) The specialist gave me some specialized exercises, I did them, and the problem did in fact resolve itself. (Sloooooooooooooowly.) It's quite gone now, and I can raise my arm above my shoulder, all the way to the ceiling, easily. Yay, me.

I first applied for a health-care plan tailored to young people. They saw the MRI, laughed in my face, and turned me down. So I started over again, and ended up applying for a plan linked to an HSA, thus allowing me to actually own a substantial portion of my own health-care money rather than simply send it to the Aetnas of the world and maybe never see it again. The application was just about the meanest, nastiest application I've ever completed, and it took a good ninety minutes to complete it and get it submitted.

There was, obviously, a great deal more detail requested. And when I filled out the section about that MRI, since I don't have the actual medical records, only the claim forms, I tried very hard to remember what specifically happened then, and when the application essentially defaulted to a choice of "Rheumatoid Arthritis," I figured that was probably pretty close to what had happened, and selected that.

Ninety minutes to complete the form. Ninety seconds to get turned down again.

Bear in mind, there's a section in the application where you can write an explanation of whatever you wish, so I described exactly what happened with the MRI, how it successfully ruled out a costly operation, and how I am now entirely trouble-free. But of course the computer making the decisions doesn't bother with that, it was "Rheumatoid Arthritis" and that was it, end of story.

I had to visit the specialist's office, get copies of the medical records, and send them in with a letter requesting a review. That was ten days ago, and still no word on a decision. In the meantime, I haven't had health-care coverage all month, and am rightfully worried about what would happen if something should happen to me. Because you know--if something should happen while they're still reviewing my file, it's an ironclad guarantee that they'll find some other reason to turn me down.

All this while I am, in fact, completely healthy. Nothing wrong with me. Look at that shoulder, what a terrific shoulder.

This has, of course, given me some perspective on the health-care debate going on between the candidates. There are two proposals, and boiled down (thanks to an analysis by some guys at Bank of America), they are:

McCAIN: Eliminate deductibility of employer-sponsored insurance and replace with refundable credit of $2500 for individuals and $5000 for families.
OBAMA: Universal health care with affordable health coverage and benefits similar to those available to Members of Congress ... Creation of National Health Insurance Exchange for people without access to employer insurance or public programs...

Okay. So McCain would provide me with a $2,500 tax credit to spend on health care however I wish. (The plan I applied for would cost around $4,000, including money put into the HSA.) But here's what caught my attention: if I were still employed at the law firm, the incentive for that law firm to provide health insurance, namely the tax deduction, would disappear. That means it's pretty much a sure thing that the firm would discontinue the program, and everyone would have to obtain coverage as individuals rather than members of a group.

Having gone through exactly that process, I can tell you: plenty of people would be declined, particularly people with any kind of preexisting condition, and everyone would end up spending more, more, more on their coverage, no matter how big the tax allowance provided for by Mr. McCain.

The real winners? The insurance companies. If they get to charge everyone individual rates for the same (or worse) coverage those folks were getting as employees at group rates, the insurers will rake in the cash.

Ask me if I'm surprised.

About That Bailout...

I try very hard to be a fair-minded person, and I won’t just sign on to (or reject) a particular idea simply because that idea was generated by, for instance, one political party or another. So when, yesterday, I watched in fascination as a near-to-completion deal on the Wall Street bailout got scuttled by House Republicans eager to float a plan of their own, I didn’t get too worked up about it. After all, I don’t like the idea of $700 billion being just handed over, any more than anyone else does. It’s a rotten solution to a rotten problem that only has rotten solutions. So if the House Republicans had a better idea, then hell yes, let’s slow down that train and give their idea a fair hearing.

Trouble is, details are very sketchy and all I ever learned about their plan is that it involves, essentially, insuring the Wall Street financial firms against their losses from at-risk mortgages, rather than the government simply buying those mortgages from them in toto. It sounds like it would be a variant on the FDIC structure, which has worked spectacularly well since the Depression.

Case in point: the failure of Washington Mutual, the nation’s sixth largest bank, today--before the FDIC, the rumors of WaMu’s impending demise would have, without question, led to a run on that bank by thousands of its depositors. But with the FDIC, people felt secure that their money wouldn’t vanish, so they kept their cool and although the bank has failed, the awful consequences of a bank run were avoided. A very good thing.

On the surface, then, this idea of a new insurance program sounds pretty good. With government-backed insurance standing behind all those mortgages, Wall Street firms would feel they are on firmer ground, and could begin extending credit again, which is of course the engine that fuels the rest of the economy. It sounds fantastic, actually—the government doesn’t just hand over money willy-nilly, money is only spent when an individual account fails, thus spreading out over years, probably, any government responsibility for these bad mortgages.

But think about it a little harder, and suddenly it becomes clear that this is in fact a terrible deal, and here’s why: it rewards Wall Street for its bad behavior, fails to curb the shenanigans that got us into this mess in the first place, and in the end still costs the government unknown billions of dollars with no chance of recouping any of that money.

See, the FDIC isn’t actually a good example because it isn’t an analogous situation. The FDIC insures depositors, not the banks themselves, and as I understand it, House Republicans would like to insure the Wall Street firms against their losses, not the individual families whose mortgages are at risk. Thus, Wall Street is rewarded for doing awful things to our economy, and with no penalty, there’s no reason for them to stop doing those awful things to our economy. Sure, the government wouldn’t be handing out a $700 million blank check, which sounds great to irate taxpayers, but the thing that people are really angry about--the manipulation of the system on Wall Street and the idea of rewards to the very people doing the manipulating—would be ignored.

And since the government would be insuring rather than buying those mortgages, there would be no ownership of anything. Wall Street gets to keep the profits from those mortgages that are successfully paid off, while government incurs the expenses of the mortgages that fail. And with no way to tell how much money would have to be spent to insure all those mortgages, in the end it could be $70 billion or $700 billion or even more, with no eventual upside to taxpayers at all.

Plus, and worst of all: one of the attractions of the idea of the government acquiring those at-risk mortgages is that the government can afford to be more patient with mortgage-holders. In other words, they won’t be in the same kind of quarter-to-quarter rush to show profits, and can work with mortgage-holders to try and ensure that they don’t get kicked out of their homes. Keeping thousands of people from being shoved to the curb, and allowing them to perhaps pay their mortgages a little more slowly, for a little less money per month, means fewer defaults, therefore much less loss for the system to absorb--not to mention fewer homeless people who used to be productive homeowners.

Spectacular profits for the Wall Street robber barons. Uncountable billions of dollars in added debt for the federal government. No help whatsoever to struggling homeowners, and a giant sucking black hole in our economy that never gets fixed. The very definition of a bad deal and, once again, we see that politicians claiming to represent the desires of their angry constituents are in fact working very hard to make sure that those constituents get royally screwed.

Purge the Surge

In an interview Sunday night on 60 Minutes, our president worked hard to justify the "surge" in troop levels that will send another 21,500 soldiers into harm's way in Iraq. It was part of a PR blitz following his speech last Wednesday, in which he announced his decision. And maybe I was still in an indulgent holiday mood, because I really tried to give this latest plan a fair shake, to look at it from every angle and try to decide whether or not it represents any kind of possibility for success. I even had myself half-convinced. But now, no. Not anymore. I kept working it all over, and finally decided that it was just the latest in a long series of bad ideas.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem like an awful idea. At its heart it seemed to admit that things had been done wrong in Iraq and that, even more unusually, we were prepared to learn from our mistakes. The president said as much in his speech: "Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." If you accept this premise, then Mr. Bush's plan does indeed seem to address these deficiencies: more troops, in order to hold areas that have been cleared of insurgents; and political restrictions removed so that troops can enter areas that had previously been declared out of bounds and clear out any insurgents who might be hiding there.

But there are major problems with all of this, and straight off the bat there is this: a third major factor in why the U.S. has heretofore failed in its nation-building effort in Iraq, namely, American incompetence and cronyism. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran has detailed in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, Americans recruited for administrative/oversight jobs in Baghdad, the very people responsible for the reubilding efforts that were crucial for restoring a sense of normalcy to the country, were hired not because they had expertise in these tasks (in some cases no expertise in anything) but because they were Bush loyalists. Because they gave the right answer when asked who they had voted for in 2000 (an actual question to some job applicants).

As for the additional troops, there is a major, and obvious, objection that the President did not address: adding 21,500 troops brings us back up to a number we've already had in the country before. If it wasn't enough then, why would it be enough now? Because of the "restrictions" that will now supposedly be removed? Well then that brings up my third principal objection: does anyone believe that the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq will really allow U.S. troops to enter Shiite areas hunting for death squads? Will any squadron ever be allowed to pursue and capture Moqtada al-Sadr? Of course not; we all know that there will be cosmetic "restrictions" wiped clean, but nothing substantive will change. Meaning that these fresh troops simply restore us to levels we've already seen, with no effect; and the meaningful restrictions in place before will remain in place. Net effect: zero. But with a yet-unknown toll in American lives.

So, then, what is Bush's real purpose? It can only be this: A) force Democrats, now in control of Congress, to take a stand against the surge so that they can be painted as soft on terrorism in the next general election; and B) delay the inevitable failure of the Iraq mission till Bush is out of office, so that said failure can be blamed on the next guy. That is why 21,500 more American lives are being put at risk.

Then there's this howler: on 60 Minutes, President Bush said this, which deserves to be quoted in full:

We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.
PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .
BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work necessary to get this democratic experience to survive. That's what they want.

That made me start hollering at the TV set. We bomb their country, ruin their society, kill tens of thousands (current estimates are of 34,000 Iraqi dead last year alone), and they're supposed to be grateful? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

No, he's not kidding. This, this is how he thinks. President Bush really truly believes that by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he has liberated the Iraqi people and set them on the road to freedom and democracy--American-style freedom and democracy, which is the only kind that counts. It demonstrates a complete failure to understand a different culture, not to mention a truly breathtaking arrogance and paternalism that is, unfortunately, typical of imperialists throughout history. ("Take up the White Man's burden, / And reap his old reward-- / The blame of those ye better / The hate of those ye guard--" Kipling, "The White Man's Burden.")

Next time: a plan for victory that has nothing to do with a troop surge.

Muslimania!

Even before he takes office, I'm starting to really like newly-elected Congressman Keith Ellison. As has been extensively reported, Mr. Ellison will become next month the nation's first Muslim member of Congress, and this alone has been enough to draw to the surface some of the worst of our ordinarily-repressed prejudices. Supposedly-upstanding media commentators, the self-appointed guardians of our nation's soul, have managed to flatfoot themselves over and over again concerning Mr. Ellison.

Take, for example, the already-infamous interview that CNN's Glenn Beck conducted with Mr. Ellison on November 14th. In it, there was this delightful attempt to not sound prejudiced despite the fact that the question was inextricably bound up in, and inspired by, Mr. Beck's prejudices:

BECK: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.
With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Let's see now, where to begin? Shall we start with the whole "Some of my best friends are Muslims!" preamble? No, that one's self-evident. Certainly Mr. Beck has a point in asserting that Islam has been hijacked by extremists, although I think it's truer that we in America don't pay attention to the millions of good practicing Muslims except when a few of them do something extreme; and then we make that awful leap we have made so many times, in assuming that all Muslims must think like the extremists.

(Note that I have been careful not to assume that Mr. Beck represents the thinking of all Republicans or conservatives. He's out on the fringe, even if he is a member of "mainstream media" stalwart CNN--and the whole point of this blog entry is to demonstrate how the mere fact of Mr. Ellison's election has been drawing these bald-faced bigotries out into the open for once.)

Then there is Mr. Beck's conflation of Democrats with "cut-and-run" appeasers who must therefore be secretly in league with the terrorists, a spectacular three-way failure of logic because none of those things follows from any of the others. Democrats are not ipso facto appeasers; appeasers are not ipso facto in league with terrorists; people in league with terrorists are not ipso facto Democrats; and so on. But unless you are willing to automatically assume that all three elements of that so-called syllogism are in fact congruent, then Mr. Beck's next question--nay, his next demand--"Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies" becomes impossible.

Any by the way, Mr. Ellison's response to this bit of blatant bigotry was remarkable for its grace, as he seemed to immediately forgive the undertones of the question and, in fact, willingly dignified it with a dignified answer:

ELLISON: Well, let me tell you, the people of the Fifth Congressional District know that I have a deep love and affection for my country. There's no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don't need to -- need to prove my patriotic stripes.

To which Mr. Beck, backpedaling like crazy, responded "I understand that. And I'm not asking you to," then moved on to talk about Somalians in Mr. Ellison's district. But of course he was asking exactly that, and bravo to Mr. Ellison for how well he handled this embarrassing interview.

Two weeks later, along came Dennis Prager in his column on Townhall.com, in which he harrumphed about the fact that Mr. Ellison plans to use a copy of the Koran when he is sworn in next month. This is a little better argued from a logical point of view, but it still amounts to one giant whopper. Where does Mr. Prager go horribly wrong? Right here: "America is interested in only one book, the Bible."

Well no, not really. Even Mr. Prager, later on in his column, notes that the collective Bible includes both the Talmudic Old Testament and a New Testament that is not a part of the Jewish religion, and no one denies that Jews have been a major part of American life for centuries. So Jews are not "interested" in "the Bible" per se, only a portion of it. There are perhaps three million Muslims living in the U.S., and of course they respect the Bible but it is the Koran they are most "interested" in. And let us not forget the Native Americans we displaced, who have never had any interest in the Holy Book we so often used as justification for stealing their land.

From this assertion, everything else follows. "If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress." But in fact, setting aside the Congress for a moment, two Presidents did not swear on a Bible: Theodore Roosevelt didn't use a book at all, and John Quincy Adams was sworn in using a lawbook as his preferred text. Furthermore, another incoming member of the next Congress, Hawaiian representative Mazie Hirono, plans to use no religious text at all next month. The Constitution--which is the only text that matters, the one whose primacy all elected officials are required to affirm--specifically requires that "no religious test" be used to determine whether a citizen can serve as an elected official.

(Again, not all conservatives think alike--elsewhere on Townhall.com, Michael Medved quite properly argued against Mr. Prager's conclusions, and Tucker Carlson has done so as well.)

Mr. Prager then argues as follows:

...imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the Nazis' bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison's right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?

An interesting question, but more than a little specious. For one thing, anyone so devoted to their racism that they would insist on using "Mein Kampf" as their swearing-in text probably has enough of a history as that kind of a racist that they are extremely unlikely to actually get elected. In other words, even a mildly-informed electorate would prevent such a swearing-in by never electing the guy in the first place. But if such a person should be elected, then sure, let him use whatever book he wants. But because "Mein Kampf" is genuinely and legitimately offensive to millions of Americans--let alone other members of Congress--such a person would be instantly marginalized in Congress and, almost certainly, thrown out of office two years later. That's the logical fallacy, you see: "Mein Kampf" is inherently offensive; the Koran is not. Mr. Prager doesn't seem to understand this either--or perhaps, despite his many protestations to the contrary, he really does equate the Koran with "Mein Kampf."

And that would just be sad. Enough with him. But bravo to Mr. Ellison, a genuinely progressive voice in the Congress. Recently a news crew followed him around Washington during his orientation, and he seemed like a completely decent guy, a little disoriented as he tried to figure his way around the halls of power. I like him already, and I look forward to his contributions to the national discourse.