A Thaw In Obamacare Schadenfreude?

It's 38 degrees F here, and what's left of our snow from two days ago is melting fast.  I just hope it does away today and leaves the streets dry so that we're not left with black ice when the big chill gets here.  But the big chill that is Obamacare continues to cool the country.

Glen Kessler, the Washington Post "Fact Checker Spinner" gives the Obama administration two friendly Pinocchios for their walk back of the notion that their original target for sign-ups was 7 million people by March: (currently insurance signups are around 2 million, with substantially more having actually lost their insurance).

Source

The White House this week crowed about the fact that, as of the end of the year, 2.1 million Americans have signed up for insurance either through the federal health-care exchange or state-run exchanges. The message was that the Affordable Care Act Web site, which had a troubled launch, was turning a corner.

At the same time, the administration has backed away from the idea that it suggested it had a “target” of 7 million enrollees when the enrollment period for 2014 ends in March. As Schiliro put it, “that was never our target number.”

And what did Sebelius say before that?

Here’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speaking to reporters last June: “We’re hopeful that 7 million is a realistic target.”

And here she is on Sept. 30, in an interview with NBC News: “I think success looks like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of March 2014.”

Seems pretty clear cut.  About his rating scale:

Two Pinocchios: Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.

No omission here.  Sebelius plainly said 7 million was a target in the period before the roll out, and the White House plainly said 7 million was not the target after the roll out had bombed, no playing with words or legalistic language involved.  I give Glen Kessler four Pinocchios for this attempt to gray-wash the whoppers in the Administration's claim that 7 million was never the target.

Perhaps he forgot one of his own categories, the upside down Pinocchio for: "A statement that represents a clear but unacknowledged “flip-flop” from a previously-held position."

Maryland's Mayor Governor  O'Malley is pushing special legislation to encourage more sign ups:

Maryland lawmakers are expected to pass legislation as soon as next week to assist the hundreds of people — or, possibly, thousands — who tried to sign up for health insurance through the state’s new exchange program, encountered problems and were left uncovered when the new year began.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D) said Friday that they plan to introduce emergency legislation that would expand enrollment in the Maryland Health Insurance Plan, a separate state-run program that normally covers high-risk individuals. Those enrolled would have to pay a premium, which is determined by income but is often slightly higher than market rates, and would probably be allowed to stay on the plan for only a few months.
. . .
At the same time, the governor said enrollment in Medicaid has exceeded expectations. The state has already signed up 130,000 new Medicaid-eligible enrollees, including more than 41,000 who signed up through the Web site. The original estimate was 110,000 for the first month.

But the disclosure that just 18,000 had signed up for private plans drew criticism from Republicans and one prominent state Democrat, who has called for Maryland to abandon its troubled Web site in favor of the federal HealthCare.gov site.

The Washington Post helpfully notes the hundreds of thousands of people who tried to apply for Obamacare through the various websites have been unable: HealthCare.gov defects leave many Americans eligible for Medicaid, CHIP without coverage

More than 100,000 Americans who applied for insurance through HealthCare.gov and were told they are eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remain unenrolled because of lingering software defects in the federal online marketplace, according to federal and state health officials.

To try to provide coverage to these people before they seek medical care, the Obama administration has launched a barrage of phone calls in recent days in 21 states, advising those who applied that the quickest route into the programs is to start over at their state’s Medicaid agency.

But even with 100,000 shut out by the website issue (assuming it's true, and it's probably much worse, the gap between the 2 million signed up now (many of whom haven't yet paid) and the 7 million hoped for by March is giant.  But then, it hasn't been adjusted for the millions that the Administration has exempted by fiat:

The Perverse Exemption:  Political palliatives won't cure ObamaCare's ills.

...The Washington Post's Ezra Klein--who for the past few months has oscillated wildly between cheerleading for ObamaCare and honest criticism of its implementation--responded to the announcement with some of the latter. "The administration agreed with a group of senators. . . who argued that having your insurance plan canceled counted as 'an unexpected natural or human-caused event,' " Klein noted, adding pointedly: "For these people, in other words, Obamacare itself is the hardship." He added:

This puts the administration on some very difficult-to-defend ground. Normally, the individual mandate applies to anyone who can purchase qualifying insurance for less than 8 percent of their income. Either that threshold is right or it's wrong. But it's hard to argue that it's right for the currently uninsured but wrong for people whose plans were canceled. . . .
Republicans will immediately begin calling for the uninsured to get this same exemption. What will the Obama administration say in response? Why are people who plans [sic] were canceled more deserving of help than people who couldn't afford a plan in the first place?

That's an excellent point, but it falls short of capturing the perversity of the Sebelius decree. To understand why, begin with the observation that the distinction between being and not being able to "afford a plan" is a fuzzy one. Some lack insurance because they are so poor that they could not possibly pay the premiums, but it makes more sense to consider the decision to carry insurance or not as the product of each person's subjective evaluation of costs, benefits and risks. A person who forgoes insurance does so because, in his circumstances, he does not think it worth the money...

The Little Sisters of the Poor, the group of nuns that the Administration is going to the wall court to force to pay for contraception for it's workers, has been offered a way out by Scott Ott of Scrappleface:

“The nuns have sought refuge in a higher power,” according to an unnamed lawyer working on the case. “By incorporating as the International Sisterhood of Mercy Workers (Local 316), they hope to join the dozens of other organized labor groups that the Obama administration has shielded from the devastating impact of ObamaCare.”

But, let's focus on the future:

TARP Was Bad, but the Looming Obamacare Bailout for Corrupt Insurance Companies Could Be Worse

At this point, you may be wondering why there’s bailout language buried in the Obamacare legislation.

The simple answer is that politicians always love to accumulate power, and the insurance industry probably lobbied very hard to get this back-door access to our money.

But maybe the White House knew that Obamacare would be unstable and they needed a bailout option to keep the system from totally unraveling. Particularly when it seems that the Obama Administration is arbitrarily changing the system every other day.

First, it postponed the employer mandate. Then it exempted from the individual mandate people whose policies were canceled (by Obamacare). And for those who did join the exchanges, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeliusis “strongly encouraging” insurers — during the “transition” — to cover doctors and drugs not included in their clients’ plans. The insurers were stunned. Told to give free coverage. Deprived of their best customers. Forced to offer stripped-down “catastrophic” plans to people age 30 and over (contrary to the law). These dictates, complained an insurance industry spokesman, could“destabilize” the insurance market.

So what does all this mean? It’s not good news for Big Insurance.

Shrinking revenues and rising costs could bring on the “death spiral” — an unbalanced patient pool forcing huge premium increases (to restore revenue) that would further unbalance the patient pool as the young and healthy drop out. End result? Insolvency — before which the insurance companies will pull out of Obamacare. Solution? A huge government bailout. It’s Obamacare’s escape hatch. And — surprise, surprise — it’s already baked into the law.

 Like Krauthammer said; kill the insurance company bail out, kill Obamacare.

Turn About is Fair Play

I'd Try One of These

US to Bail Out Walarmist Ship

US Coast Guard Ice breaker asked to assist Antarctic rescue vessels trapped in summer ice

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) has requested the US Coast Guard’s Polar Star icebreaker to assist the vessels MV Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long which are beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay.

The US Coast Guard has accepted this request and will make Polar Star available to assist.

The Polar Star has been en route to Antarctica since 3 December, 2013 – weeks prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay. The intended mission of the Polar Star is to clear a navigable shipping channel in McMurdo Sound to the National Science Foundation’s Scientific Research Station. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel and other goods to the station. The Polar Star will go on to undertake its mission once the search and rescue incident is resolved.

Add to the cost of this utterly frivolous  expedition the cost of the Polar Star going off to rescue them, taking time away from its primary mission, to supply the American research in the Antarctic, and save some Aussie asses mission.

By the way, the Polar Star is a most impressive ship:

At 122 metres, the Polar Star is one of the largest ships in the US Coast Guard fleet. It has a range of 16,000 nautical miles at 18 knots. The Polar Star has a crew of 140 people. The Polar Star is able to continuously break ice up to 1.8 metres (6ft) while travelling at three (3) knots and can break ice over six (21ft) metres thick.

I hear they're coming to take the trash!

A Chilly Beach Walk 1/4/14

After lunch I deemed it warm (31 F) enough to go down to the beach.  The snow is mostly gone from anywhere the sun reaches, but there is still lots of evidence of the cold.  There's the band of frozen Bay water behind a ridge of sand.

 The north jetty was covered with it.

 And this partially buried branch.

 Water oozing out of the cliff, frozen into a sheet, and spilling onto the beach.

A very slow day for fossils.  Seven teeth for having walked 3 miles.

Back where the sun doesn't reach (or more likely, reaches only in the early morning when it's still frigid, the beach and cliffs are still covered in snow.

If you look closely, you can see where this ship passing by is stretched vertically and reflected in the mirage.

The sunlight was just right to show the iridescence on this male Buffleheads head.  No eagles in sight.

Cheerleading for Obamacare Schadenfreude on a Chilly Day

It was only 17 F by the time we finally got around to looking at the thermometer.  However, a giant blob vortex of cold air is on its way down from the North Pole (thanks, Santa!), so this is likely to be just a pause in the cooling pattern for the next few days.

The polar vortex is an area of cold low pressure that typically circulates around the Arctic during the winter, spreading tentacles of cold southward into Europe, Asia, and North America at times. Except this time, it’s not a small section of the vortex, but what one forecaster, Ryan Maue of WeatherBELL Analytics, called “more like the whole enchilada” [that's visiting the eastern U.S.]

Let's start off with some pure unadulterated schadenfreude: An Oregon Obamacare cheerleader finds

out it's going to cost her more than she's willing to pay:

One Oregon mother says that she is unable to afford health insurance for her and her 18-month-old son because it’s too expensive.

The woman — who wishes to remain anonymous — tells KOIN-TV that she originally championed President Barack Obama’s signature health care law because she thought it would help people in her situation.

“I’ve been a cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act since I heard about it and I assumed that it was designed for people in my situation,” she told KOIN. “I was planning on using the Affordable Care Act and I had done the online calculator in advance to make sure I was going to be able to afford it.”

...

“It wasn’t until I started the process and got an agent that I started hearing from them I wasn’t going to qualify for subsidies because I qualify on my husband’s insurance,” she told KOIN.

There's always divorce.  The administration doesn't really want to encourage marriage; it makes women dependent on the men, not the government. 

You know, she might want to go on her husband's insurance to avoid the delays in care due to government red tape: Doctor’s Office Spends 2 Hours On Hold With Health Insurer For Patient’s Surgery Authorization

“I’m not a happy camper,” said Nate Zajcew, the patient’s husband. The couple signed up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield bronze plan through the federal HealthCare.gov site on Dec. 16. “I understand it’s just a matter of paperwork and yesterday was a holiday. I can be an SOB, too, at times, but since they’re going on with the procedure, it’s OK.”

Venetos, a Chicago digestive system specialist, described “tremendous uncertainty and anxiety” among patients calling his office recently. Some thought they’d signed up for coverage but hadn’t received insurance cards yet. Others had insurance policies that were canceled and weren’t sure if their coverage had been reinstated after Gov. Pat Quinn decided to allow one-year extensions of canceled plans.

Obamacare confusion reigns as frustrated patients walk out of hospitals without treatment

Hospital staff in Northern Virginia are turning away sick people on a frigid Thursday morning because they can't determine whether their Obamacare insurance plans are in effect.

Patients in a close-in DC suburb who think they've signed up for new insurance plans are struggling to show their December enrollments are in force, and health care administrators aren't taking their word for it.

In place of quick service and painless billing, these Virginians are now facing the threat of sticker-shock that comes with bills they can't afford.

'They had no idea if my insurance was active or not!' a coughing Maria Galvez told MailOnline outside the Inova Healthplex facility in the town of Springfield.

She was leaving the building without getting a needed chest x-ray.

Definitely a Washington DC issue

Myths of the 'Free Rider' Health Care Problem

Both the policy justification, and part of the Constitutional justification, for including the individual mandate in Obamacare is that the individual mandate will eliminate “free-riding,” in which the uninsured take advantage of free emergency-room care at taxpayer expense...

The contention that the individual mandate is necessary, because it solves the “free-rider” problem, is worthy of further examination: because it suffers from numerous conceptual and factual flaws.

1. In the first place, “free-riding” is an artifact of clumsy government policy

People talk about “free-riding,” or uncompensated care, as if it were a law of physics, like gravity: a fundamental problem that has no other solution than forcing everyone to buy health insurance. But it’s not. In fact, “free-riding” is a direct result of a clumsy, unfunded mandate passed by Congress in 1986, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA...

The cool thing about being a democratic legislator is that you get to create problems by regulating the free market, blame them on the "free market", and use that as an excuse for more meddling.  Oh, there are 5 more points.

Megan McArdle takes another look at the Oregon Medicaid study and finds Another Problem Obamacare Won't Solve: Health Costs 

The headlines eventually faded, but work on the Oregon data set has not. In the fall, the study’s researchers came out with another interesting result: ... And today they’re releasing another paper, this time on the effect that becoming eligible for Medicaid had on ER usage. “It’s especially important to have that kind of gold standard,” in cases like this, says Amy Finkelstein, an MIT professor on the research team. “Where it’s not just a question of what the magnitude of the effect is, but a priori we don’t know what the sign of the effect could be.” Which is to say: Does giving people Medicaid drive ER usage up, or down?

Two because OSU is one of my alma maters.

The answer, it turns out, is “up.” People who got access to Medicaid used doctors more than people who didn’t. But they also used the ER more. And contrary to the theory that Medicaid might divert people from ERs to primary care physicians, the big increases actually came from the somewhat-less urgent problems that we were hoping to divert from ERs...

...if you’re in a car wreck or your arm has been cut off, you go to the ER whether or not you have insurance. But if it’s a bad case of strep, you might decide to tough it out. What is surprising ... or at least interesting ... is that the visits increased.

As health-care researcher Jonathan Gruber told the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff, this helps put to rest one of the fonder hopes of health-care expansion, that it would save money through preventative care and diverting people away from expensive emergency room visits.

And Catholics are asking why does the Administration grant Obamacare exemptions to everybody but religous groups? The Administration’s Ideological Obsession

Consider the absurdity of the government’s position. As pointed out by Archbishop Kurtz, the president of the U.S. Bishops, under the Administration’s current policies, large businesses will be able to completely eliminate any health insurance for their employees, with no fine at all, but religious organizations that refuse to cooperate with moral evil will be subject to crippling fines of $100 per day per employee. The government won’t even grant temporary respite while legal challenges are working their way through the courts. They can’t even bring themselves to give a break to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who spend their entire lives caring for needy elderly people.

Why is this? It’s not that hard to understand. The current Administration is entirely beholden to an ideology of sexual liberationism that considers contraception, sterilization and abortion to be “sacred ground”. They consider this ideology to be so central to life that they will brook no opposition, and will do whatever it takes to bring to heel anyone who opposes them.

That is an ideological obsession. It is dangerous to the souls of those who suffer from it, and it is dangerous to any society in which they wield power.

Easy peasy, Krauthammer is a Harvard man

Now, this one will be a challenge... Charles Krauthammer says that the GOP can put the final nail in Obamacare by repealing the insurance company bailout that's built into the law, in the almost certain event that Obamacare fails to sign up enough "young invincibles" to pay the bills.

First order of business for the returning Congress: The No Bailout for Insurance Companies Act of 2014. Make it one line long: “Sections 1341 and 1342 of the Affordable Care Act are hereby repealed.”

End of bill. End of bailout. End of story.

Why do we need it? On Dec. 18, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers was asked what was the administration’s Plan B if, because of adverse selection (enrolling too few young and healthies), the insurance companies face financial difficulty.

Jason Furman wouldn’t bite. “There’s a Plan A,” he replied. Enroll the young.

But of course there’s a Plan B. It’s a government bailout...

...Which is why the GOP needs to act. Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg machine with hundreds of moving parts. Without viable insurance companies doing the work, it falls apart. No bailout, no Obamacare.

Such a bill would be overwhelmingly popular because Americans hate fat-cat bailouts of any kind. Why should their tax dollars be spent not only saving giant insurers but also rescuing this unworkable, unbalanced, unstable, unpopular money-pit of a health-care scheme?

The GOP House should pass it and send it to Harry Reid’s Democratic Senate. Democrats know it could be fatal for Obamacare. The only alternative would be single-payer. And try selling that to the country after the spectacularly incompetent launch of — and subsequent widespread disaffection with — mere semi-nationalization.

Do you really think vulnerable Democrats up for reelection will vote for a bailout? And who better to slay Obamacare than a Democratic Senate — liberalism repudiating its most important creation of the last 50 years.

Want to be even bolder? Attach the anti-bailout bill to the debt ceiling. That and nothing else. Dare the president to stand up and say: “I’m willing to let the country default in order to preserve a massive bailout for insurance companies.”

 It's worth a shot.

Featured in this weeks "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" at Pirate's Cove.

Rule 5 Saturday - Natalie Dormer, A Real Bodice Ripper

We were watching "Elementary" Thursday evening as I pondered what to do about Rule 5 Saturday, when Natalie Dormer came on a the latest reincarnation of the great Sherlock Holmes nemesis, Professor Moriarty.  Aha!

A bit of research quickly showed that she had previously starred in "Game of Thrones", as Margaery Tyrell, and in "The Tudors" as the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, neither of which I have seen yet, due to our cheap cable plan, although I've read the stories in history (The Tudors) and imaginary history (Game of Thrones).  Maybe this will encourage me to get Game of Thrones on DVD after all.

An English actress, she was a history buff who fell into acting as plan B, or maybe even C.

During her school years, Dormer trained in dance at the Allenova School of Dancing. She describes herself as the "academic hopeful" of the family, and was offered a place to study history at Cambridge, but in her A-level History exam, she did not achieve the A grade she needed to attend. She decided she would audition for drama schools, and decided to train at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Good for us, probably better for her.

Both "Game" and "Tudors" might be characterized as  "bodice rippers":

An historical romance where the heroine has lots of non-consensual sex, which becomes consensual. The book needs to have a gaudy cover with a woman with an extraordinarily long neck, heaving bosoms, and flowing hair, and a brooding man.

And indeed a fair amount of her film career seems to consist of getting her bodice ripped (NSFW links).

She has a quirky smile which may have formed the model for McKayla Maroney's famous Olympic "I'm not impressed" look.

The Washington D.C. Slaughter Has Begun

Sharpshooters to Renew Deer Cull in Heart of Washington D.C. 

Sharpshooters will renew culling the white-tailed deer population, growing fast in the heart of the U.S. capital, as early as Thursday night, the National Park Service said.

The nighttime hunts by Department of Agriculture shooters in Washington's Rock Creek Park will continue until March 31, or until 106 deer have been killed, said Nick Bartolomeo, the park's chief of resources management.
...
The three-year program is aimed at reducing the deer population to 15 to 20 per square mile (six to eight per square km) from 77 per square mile (31 per square km), Bartolomeo said during a conference call with reporters.

Import cougars and wolves!  Oh, and come get a couple out of our back yard while you're at it.

It's Hard to Convince North Koreans That Things Could Be Worse

But this might get their attention:

A Lesson in Efficient Dictatorship

Under totalitarian rule, no one can ever presume himself to be safe from the power of the regime, because the Supreme Leader’s power is so great that it can only be protected by ruthless men who, as they rise higher in the leadership cadre, inevitably begin to think of the possibility of seizing the top position for themselves. Occasionally, the Supreme Leader must make examples of such rivals:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful uncle was stripped naked, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs, according to a newspaper with close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party.  Jang Song Thaek, who had been considered Kim’s second-in-command, was executed last month after being found guilty of “attempting to overthrow the state,” North Korea’s state-run news agency reported. . . .
Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po reported that Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by 120 hunting hounds which had been starved for five days. . . .

This is exactly how disloyalty would be punished after the totalitarian McCainist junta seizes absolute power. Once we had fed the faculty of Harvard University to a pack of ravenous dogs, perhaps the staff of the New York Times would get the message.

My enemies should be thankful that I favor limited government.

I'm still wondering whether I'm supposed to be upset at Kim for killing his fellow communists, or for starving a pack of dogs.

Snow Day Obamacare Schadenfreude

The Affordable Care Act faces multiple challenges in 2014

... The law’s biggest test will arise late in 2014: the second-year price of insurance on the exchanges.

The ultimate enrollment numbers this year will directly impact the price of insurance on the exchanges next year. If millions of people with a diverse range of health needs sign up, creating a broad pool for the insurance companies, prices could stay stable...If the pool of people who bought insurance plans is too small or too sick, insurance companies could respond in two ways. They could hike the prices of the plans next year in order to compensate, or they could determine that they cannot make a profit through the exchanges and simply pull out, reducing the number of companies competing for business on the exchanges.

The administration is also facing legal challenges to the law, at least one of which could fatally cripple the law should it succeed...The federal government is running exchanges in 36 states. If the lawsuit succeeds, millions of people would not receive financial help to buy insurance. The subsidies provide a strong inducement for people to buy on the exchanges, so if the subsidies are ruled illegal, many people might not be able to afford insurance any more. This would cause the number of people buying insurance through the exchanges to drop and institute a “death spiral” from which the program might not recover.

But, but, bend the cost curve, cheaper insurance, right?  Not so fast...

Survey of Businesses in New York Show Not a Single One Now Has Lower ObamaCare Costs

Another Obama victory, as ABC News might say. Funny, but nobody is celebrating.

New York’s small-business owners, seniors and doctors are among the big losers as President Obama’s prescription for health-insurance reform takes effect.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that represents nearly 11,000 entrepreneurs across the state, says it has yet to find a single member whose health-care costs are going down under the ObamaCare program, whose plans took effect New Year’s Day.

Meanwhile, an “overwhelming majority” of businesses canvassed by the group has reported increases in their insurance premiums, said Mike Durant, the NFIB’s New York director.

At least in New York you can be reasonably sure the majority of them voted for it.

One of the arguments you often hear liberals make regarding Obamacare is that by insuring more of the poor, less people will crowd the Emergency Centers with their sniffles and bruises.  Turns out, it doesn't work that way either, at least in Oregon:

A new study of Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon makes a strong version of this case. The study, published today in the journal Science, finds that adult Medicaid beneficiaries rely on emergency rooms about 40 percent more than similar uninsured adults.

"When you cover the uninsured, emergency room use goes up by a large magnitude," said Amy Finkelstein, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as a lead investigator on the study, in an MIT press statement accompanying the study.

There were no exceptions to the trend. "In no case were we able to find any subpopulations, or type of conditions, for which Medicaid caused a significant decrease in emergency department use," said Finkelstein.

Maybe that's because many fewer doctors accept Medicaid, so they cannot find regular doctors to go to, and because once you give people an entitlement they feel entitled to it.

It turns out Obamacare lacks another feature that most health insurance  features, the ability to add a baby to the policy, if one happens to come inconveniently in the middle of the year (babies are so thoughtless):

There's another quirk in the Obama administration's new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.

With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on.

Right now the HealthCare.gov website can't handle such updates.

It's a reminder that the new coverage for many uninsured Americans comes with a third party in the mix: the feds. And the system's wiring for some vital federal functions isn't yet fully connected.

It's not just having a new baby that could create bureaucratic hassles, but other life changes affecting a consumer's taxpayer-subsidized premiums. The list includes marriage and divorce, a death in the family, a new job or a change in income, even moving to a different community.

But it did cover HIV as a pre-existing condition from the very first day, which gives you some idead where the priorities of its authors lay.

And from the Other McCain, new ads targeting Senate Democrats over their Obamacare votes:
New Ads Target Senators: ‘It’s Time to Be Honest: ObamaCare Doesn’t Work’

Three vulnerable incumbent Democrat senators are the targets of a new advertising campaign by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) that takes aim at the unpopular ObamaCare program. “It’s the ‘Lie of the Year,’ and Senator Shaheen kept telling it,” says the AFP ad targeting New Hampshire Sen. Jane Shaheen. “The truth is, thousands have already had their insurance canceled. Families are paying more for expensive health plans and facing hour-long drives just to see a doctor. . . . Tell Senator Shaheen: It’s time to be honest. ObamaCare doesn’t work.”

Similar ads are airing against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Sen. Kay Hagen (D-North Carolina) in a three-week campaign.

They voted for it, make 'em eat it.

Snow Day!

Last night, as I recorded at the time, the massive snow storm that is currently hammering the Northeast brushed by us, depositing about 2 inches of fluffy white stuff.  About the right amount to look good, and not cause too much trouble.

The roads are already plowed. The temperature is only about 18 F out, but with the snow stripped to where you can see the asphalt underneath, it won't be long before the sun clears the rest off the roads.  I may have to do the driveway, though.  It's blowing 30 knots out there, so I'll wait and see.







However, the butterfly bush won't attract many customers today.

Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves, Oh My

Niffelheim Dwarves

Slate has an important discussion relating to the stars of Peter Jackson's newest movie, and the old series of books by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Just how like humans are the various humanoid creatures of the Lord of the Rings? What's with the interbreeding between elves and humans (Arwen and Aragorn)?  How does that work?

Are Hobbits Human? Textual and genetic analysis of our closest real and magical relatives.

Are hobbits human and just really short? Or are they some entirely other species, like a gold-hoarding dragon? In high-school biology class they teach you to define species in terms of interbreeding. A horse is something that can make nonsterile babies with other horses; it may mate with a donkey, but since their offspring are sterile mules, horses and donkeys count as separate species.

Well, that's not always strictly true, lots of "species" can interbreed, but they usually don't.  Most of the large dogs on the planet can interbreed and produce fruitful offspring, they just don't very often.  Wolves, dogs and coyotes interbreed and produce fruitful offspring, but wolves kill coyotes on sight most often, correctly perceiving them as competitors. But once in a while they do breed in the wild, and produced the Red Wolf, as well as the new coyotes appearing on the East Coast.  Much of what keeps closely related but nominally separate species apart are behavioral differences.  And don't even ask about orchids or bacterial taxonomy.

By that standard, the most relevant J.R.R. Tolkien passage comes from Appendix A of the Return of the King:

There were three unions of the Eldar and the Edain: Lúthien and Beren; Idril and Tuor; Arwen and Aragorn. By the last the long-sundered branches of the Half-elven were reunited and their line was restored.

All most all artists agree that elves vaguely "different" than ordinary humans, with pointy ear (why?), and which have life spans long enough to be effectively immortal.  They also must have low reproduction rates, or the world would be up to it's neck in them.

It helps to recall here that Eldar is another word for elf and Edain is another word for human. Tolkien is saying here that there were two human-elf pairings in the backstory to the Lord of the Rings. One between Lúthien and Beren and another between Idril and Tuor. Both Arwen and Aragorn are descendants of one of these pairings. So when they get together in the course of the series, they reunite the half-elven lines.

It's also pretty  clear that JRR's universe was created out of a pastiche of legends and myths from Celtic and Germanic sources, among them the Nibelungenlied, an important source for "The Ring of the Nibelung."  His "elves" are clearly close kin of the Norse Dark Elves (Alfar) and the Celtic Sidhe, and kin to the fairies in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Given that these pairings are clearly possible and fruitful, one might wonder why they seem to be so exceptionally rare. Chalk it up to magic, if you like, or perhaps it’s a question of prejudice.

None of these primal sources seem to indicate that the elvish lines cross with humans, although the British Isle family seems prone to stealing human children to raise.  JRR clearly came up with the evidence for this particular miscegenation in his research.  Clearly, the fairly low birth rate among elves has a lot to do with it.  Even if they were screwing the humans left and right, their birth rate is so low that issue rarely comes from it.  Sort of natural birth control.  Elves are clearly K strategists, with few offspring and lots of parental input (Legolas was still living at home after more than 600 years according to the new movie), while humans bang out a pack, and let them sink or swim on their own in 18 years or so, typical r strategists.

If, as the article seems to suggest, humans and elves are genetically related, but differ enough to be considered either different species, or subspecies within a larger, more variable human species, then it is likely that some mechanism like a preference for their own species would evolve to keep the subspecies diverging.  It's not prejudice, it's a common form of sexual selection that helps drive speciation.

What about other species? Aragorn says he fought half-orcs under the control of Saruman at Helm’s Deep. Fans discussing the possibility of hobbit or dwarf hybrids on Tolkien forums don’t come up with any textual references to specific instances, but they do offer some strong evidence that they are possible. The prologue to the Fellowship of the Ring states that “it is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves or even than Dwarves.” If human-elf hybrids are possible, and dwarves and hobbits are taxonomically more closely related to humans than elves are, then it seems plausible that human-hobbit, human-dwarf, and hobbit-dwarf hybrids would also be possible. By that standard, perhaps, hobbits are humans—just short ones.

I believe that JRR, who was a philologist, and not a biologist, was clearly in error in identifying dwarves as close kin.  According to his own works, dwarves were created out of loneliness by one of the original archangels (he called them something else, but they were archangels).  God (Illuvatar in the Silmarillion) created both elves and men, in his own image (sound familiar?) and put them on the earth at different times.  Illuvatar did not destroy the dwarves, but made them wait until after the elves were in place  to come out of a magical slumber.  I would argue that, therefore, the dwarves have a separate origin, and likely not much genetically in common with the humans or elves other than bipedality and a love for weapons, and it is very unlikely that, even if the parts fit, that a union between dwarves and humans or elves would be anymore than a bit of fun.


As for the relations between humans, elves and orcs, orcs are "broken" elves according to Tolkien, so clearly all have a similar origin, which suggests that while interbreeding may not be common, it can occur, and sometimes the results are fruitful as well.

On the other hand, perhaps the existence of occasional half-elvish children is a magical phenomenon, and despite the even closer human-hobbit genetic relationship, no interbreeding is possible under natural conditions.

Hobbits?  Clearly just small people not far along the road to speciation from the main human line.  As they say, "What goes on in Bree, stays in Bree."  From the descriptions, I would guess a little human genetic material snuck back into the Took line somehow.

What could be more fruitful than speculating on the sex lives of imaginary humanoids? A real sex life?

Wombat-Socho has the grand Rule 5 post: Rule 5 Sunday: New Year’s Extended Hangover Relief Edition up at the other McCain.

World's Largest Fireworks

Let it Snow!

Looks like a couple of inches here.



Hey, George isn't her fault. Wombat-Socho has the grand Rule 5 post: Rule 5 Sunday: New Year’s Extended Hangover Relief Edition up at the other McCain.

Walarmists Saved From Icy Doom

Ship Of Fools Rescued At Last

Rescuers in Antarctica have safely transferred all 52 passengers stranded on the ice-bound research vessel Akademik Shokalskiy. The Shokalskiy has been trapped since Christmas Eve. Its 22 crew are expected to remain on board to wait until the vessel becomes free. The ice-bound research vessel has been trapped since Christmas Eve. One of the aims is to track how quickly the Antarctic’s sea ice is disappearing. –BBC News, 2 January 2014

Reporting on the environmental movement has always required a certain sense of humor. In an earlier age, explorers who so badly underestimated the expanse of polar ice would surely have perished. But the 74 passengers and crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy are thriving. In this season of new beginnings we have here a chance to appreciate the amazing technologies created by free people. For they allow us to laugh at the folly of our fellow humans, rather than having to mourn their passing. –Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 2 January 2014

You know, helicopters aren't the most fuel efficient mode of transportation, so I'm sure the rescue, which is not really a "rescue" if they were safe on the Akademik Shokalskiy, burned a lot of diesel fuel to position the ship, and a lot of aviation gas to make multiple runs in the harsh environment to carry off the non-essential.  If they left the crew aboard, it's clearly safe to stay, albeit boring, and irritating to the scientists, tourists and media who chose to be evacuated rather than stay aboard the ice bound vessel and continue to observe, close up, how the ice is lasting longer in this Antarctic Spring.



If it had come to cannibalism, there's some chunky ones there.

The Science is Settled: IPCC Lowers Warming Predictions (Again)

IPCC silently slashes its global warming predictions in the AR5 final draft

Unnoticed, the IPCC has slashed its global-warming predictions, implicitly rejecting the models on which it once so heavily and imprudently relied. In the second draft of the Fifth Assessment Report it had broadly agreed with the models that the world will warm by 0.4 to 1.0 Cº from 2016-2035 against 1986-2005. But in the final draft it quietly cut the 30-year projection to 0.3-0.7 Cº, saying the warming is more likely to be at the lower end of the range [equivalent to about 0.4 Cº over 30 years]. If that rate continued till 2100, global warming this century could be as little as 1.3 Cº.

Official projections of global warming have plummeted since Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies told the U.S. Congress in June 1988 the world would warm by 1 Cº every 20 years till 2050 (Fig. 1), implying 6 Cº to 2100...

ObamaCare Schadenfreude Roundup

Head 'em up, Move 'em out! Drudge style...

It’s official: Obamacare debuts with more canceled plans than enrollments

Higher premiums could really kneecap the economic recovery

Doctors, hospitals expect confusion as Obamacare starts

Obamacare delays create New Year's confusion

Obamacare Contractor Blamed for Slow Medicare Payments to Hospitals

Insurance Customers Still Having Problems With MNsure

Signs That Obamacare Is Not Dead Yet?

The Translation is Better Than the Original

Wombat-Socho has the grand Rule 5 post: Rule 5 Sunday: New Year’s Extended Hangover Relief Edition up at the other McCain.

Must Have Camera Accessory

Maybe just a little impractical for the beach.

The First Day at the Beach for 2014

Jan. 1, 2014 was cool and breezy here in Southern MD, 36 F and a 15 knot SE wind.  Not bad if you bundled up enough, and we did.  We only walked to the cottages; the stream was still too swollen to cross easily.

The Buffleheads were there of course.  I didn't see any eagles.

The first shark's tooth of 2014.  Not a particularly great one, just a jar filler.  We wound up with three each, enough to keep the average in the long run, but not a great day.  None will make the top shelf yet.

A pair of mallards in the quiet water behind the jetty.

2014 - The Start of a Whole New Year of Obamacare Schadenfreude

The first day of 2014, the year that most of the "harder" parts of Obamacare are supposed to take place in, the individual and employer mandates.  We know the employer mandates were delayed a year (which puts them conveniently past the 2014 midterm election), and the rollout of the individual has gone so swimmingly that although it has not yet been formally rolled back, it's unlikely that anyone will be forced to pay a penalty tax for not having the insurance they were mandated to buy, and were unable to, thanks to the botched website and lack of planning by HHS.  However, lesser known aspects of the law come into force today.
 

With new year, Medicaid takes on a broader health-care role

Medicaid embarks on a massive transformation Wednesday — from a safety-net program for the most vulnerable to a broad-based one that finds itself at the front lines of the continuing political and ideological battle over the Affordable Care Act.
...
Twenty-five states and the District expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In many of those places, the program will be open for the first time to anyone whose income is below 138 percent of the poverty level — individuals making less than $15,856 a year or a family of four earning under $32,499 in 2013 dollars. That includes childless adults, who were excluded in most states despite a widely held misperception that all poor people automatically qualified for Medicaid.
...
The newly eligible in these states come from many strata of society: homeless people, former inmates, low-paid workers, recent college graduates, retirees not yet old enough for Medicare and people like Kush, who are between jobs.
...
Even in states that aren’t expanding Medicaid, there are some significant changes, including new Medicaid eligibility standards. For people who are not in long-term care, the program will no longer take into consideration how much participants have in assets, such as savings or retirement accounts.

Megan McCardle thinks that the exceptions and  exemptions that Obama has granted in the laws will ultimately kill it. Change Is Obamacare's Only Certainty 

...Sometime after March 31 -- probably not very far after -- I would expect the administration to announce that after careful thought, it has decided not to enforce the individual mandate for 2014. As we’ve already seen, the individual mandate is very politically vulnerable. And I suspect we’re not done with the emergency fixes.
...
If the administration had been resolute in the face of early complaints, and had stuck to the rules it wrote before October, then it would be in a stronger position to deny the next round of complainers. But it hasn’t. And each round of special exceptions makes denying the next one harder: “The president was willing to help them, but not us! What’s wrong with us? Doesn’t the president care about people like me?” ...So I find it hard to believe that the mandate, or the clawback of overpayments, or any other rule that might upset people, will be enforced for 2014. And of course, that makes it more likely that none of them will be enforced, ever.
...
But could Medicare subsidies be cut, or block-granted, giving states incentives to pare back enrollment? Of course. Could the mandate be effectively dismantled? Absolutely. Could the employer mandate be “delayed” indefinitely? Sure. In 2018, when the temporary “risk corridor” adjustments have gone away, and subsidies are capped, could adverse selection start driving people (and insurers) out of the market? Undoubtedly. And at that point, might guaranteed issue and community rating become vulnerable? That’s basically what happened in Washington state.

At that point, something called Obamacare would still exist, but it wouldn’t be anything like the comprehensive universal coverage its designers imagined. It would basically be a Medicaid expansion in some blue states, plus trivial tweaks to some insurance regulations.

If 2013 Was Hard on Obamacare, Just Wait for 2014

The drafters of Obamacare recognized that many elements of the law would be unpopular, while other provisions -- allowing people up to the age of 25 to remain on their parents’ plans, ending co-payments for preventive care or closing the “doughnut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage -- would be immensely popular with the voting public. These provisions all took effect shortly after the law was signed in 2010.
...
Now that 2013 is drawing to a close, we see why Obamacare’s drafters did what they did. Obama’s approval ratings are at or near all-time lows, but that matters little to a White House that already won four more years...

First, some of Obamacare’s least popular provisions go into effect in 2014. This includes a new $60 billion tax on health insurers, which will be levied relative to premiums collected and directly passed on to consumers. And, of course, Obamacare’s requirement that individuals secure health insurance coverage (or pay a tax penalty) kicks in during the coming year as well.

Or not, see above.

Second, millions of Americans who buy their coverage on the individual market or get it through small employers will be shocked by just how much their premiums go up in 2014. The young and healthy will be especially susceptible to this rate shock, and this in turn will further drive them away from purchasing coverage in future years. . .

Third, not only will millions of Americans on the individual and small group markets who like their plans be unable to keep them in 2014, but many will experience what it’s like to be unable to continue seeing the doctors they know and trust. . .

Finally, Obamacare’s Medicare cuts will continue to hurt senior citizens. For the 14 million people enrolled in the Medicare Advantage program, the ACA’s $200 billion in cuts over the next 10 years will accelerate in 2014 and have tangible impacts on beneficiaries...Although the ACA is not solely responsible for the headwinds the Medicare Advantage program faces, it will (and should) shoulder most of the blame.

NBC’s Chief Medical Editor Forced Her Kids to Sign Up for Obamacare as Their ‘Patriotic Duty’



And of course, she wants a single payer system where she and others get to decide what is "fair" compensation for doctors. These are the people who control the message, if we let them.

Tom Coburn calls a spade a God damn shovel: The Year Washington Fled Reality

The past year may go down not only as the least productive ever in Washington but as one of the worst for the republic.
. . .
On health care, President Obama oversaw a disastrous and, sadly, dishonest launch of his signature achievement. The president gave an exception to employers, but not to individuals, without any legal basis, and made other adjustments according to his whim. Even more troubling was his message over the past three years that if you like your plan, you can keep it, and that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. We now know that the administration was aware that these claims were false, yet Mr. Obama continued to make them, repeatedly.

In 2014, millions of Americans will likely discover that the president's claim that the average family will save $2,500 on health insurance was equally disconnected from reality. . .

Judge Sotomayor - Nuns granted stay on birth control requirement:

The Supreme Court has thrown a hitch into President Barack Obama’s new health care law by blocking a requirement that some religion-affiliated organizations provide health insurance that includes birth control.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor decided late Tuesday night to block implementation of the contraceptive coverage requirement, only hours before portions of the law would have gone into effect on New Year’s Day.

Sotomayor acted on a request from an organization of Catholic nuns in Denver, the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged. Its request for an emergency stay had been denied earlier in the day by a federal appeals court.

The Opening of the Year Jar

Jan. 1. Time to change the jar of shark's teeth (and other similar fossils) and start a new one, and see how well we fared.  You might want to start the video before reading.

According to the records we kept monthly, written on the jar, and not perfectly counted because of the "top shelf" teeth may not always have been included, 1690 teeth 1 lb, 10.25 oz or 745 g. The photo shows the jar, and the teeth that finished the year on the top shelf.  Still missing, that hand sized Megalodon that is the ultimate find.

Monthly breakdown: Jan. 65, Feb., 65, Mar. 91, April 70, May 175, June 166, July 304, Aug. 66, Sept. 129, Oct. 124, Nov. 212, and Dec. 223.  Variations reflect retirement status, health, weather, travel and beach conditions.

...And Grab A Beverage of Your Choice

Wombat-Socho has the grand Rule 5 post: Rule 5 Sunday: New Year’s Extended Hangover Relief Edition up at the other McCain.

Time for the Fireworks!

And I've used this one before:

Happy New Years!