Ezra Klein you F'ing slut.

As I think I may have alluded to in the past, I do not normally watch television. I don't particularly care to get my information from video sources--it's too hard to "interrogate the text" to use a post-modern phrase, it's too difficult to go back over and re-read, to leave the page open while I go look at something else.

And when it comes to entertainment a book does far better, and is there when I want it, and I don't have to dick with a bunch of technology. Well, until I bought the kindle, which frankly is one of the least troublesome bits of tech I've worked with this side of a multi-blade screwdriver.

Anyway. Video.

I was trying to eat my "Caesar Salad" in the chow hall here at Victory a bit a go, and they have these big ass monitors with TV on them. For some reason they have about 1/3 of them tuned to CNN about half the time (the other half is Fox News).

There was a discussion about Health Care Reform (of course) and they cue'd in Ezra Klein (you can google this twit, I ain't linking it in) Ezra Klein is a left-progressive "Economist" who makes a living spewing propaganda.

He's also full of shit.

Apparently one of the ways that Dear Leader thinks he's going to pay for his health care reform is by charging an excise tax on so-called "Gold Plated" (aka "high cost") insurance plans.

Now, this in and of itself is a dumb move.

One of CNN Bobbleheads asks Klein if this will reduce the number of people who take out these plans.

Klein says (paraphrasing because I've got a chain link brain):

This will be a good thing because it will reduce the cost of the system.

Uh.

Mr. Klein you Ignorant Slut;

You're an economist. Or at least you're a writer who claims to know something about economics.

Presumably you've studied both Macro and Micro economics, and at least a BIT of the inbetween stuff.

What you are apparently incapable of understanding is the concept of PROFIT MARGIN.

That is the (positive) delta between what it costs a company to create, produce, ship, sell, deliver, whatever a product and what that product brings in.

Now, like a lot of pomo types (and like me on a bad day) you may have done some "research" at some point that basically amounted to reading a corporate financial report or three, and some webpages. You often find comments in this like "The profit margin across our lines was %" or you see news articles that say "Apple makes a n% profit margin while Microsoft makes n+5%..." or whatever.

These are a lie. Or at least a blurring of hte truth. Microsoft doesn't function on a profit margin. Nor does Apple, or any other company with multiple lines.

This is why Ford and GM were able to make cheap fuel efficient cars (which they had to because of CAFE standards) and sell them at a loss while making (literally) TONS of those EVIL POLLUTING SUVS that everybody ELSE wanted. Because they had a higher margin on those SUVs than on the tin cans that everyone else drove.

In other words Ford subsidized (because of CAFE) the econo-boxes with the PROFIT MARGIN on the SUVs.

This is as basic as a very very basic thing. Even my art degree having slacker self can understand that.

To make it easier on you, you've probably heard the term "loss leader", right? It's what Grocery Stores and 7-11 use to get you in the door. Yeah, that's the OPPOSITE of profit margin. They take a small loss on a few products so they can sell you other stuff at normal "markup". Part of that markup is PROFIT MARGIN.

Now, let's talk a bit about profit margins Mr. Klein.

In general your most expensive products have your highest profit margins. This is for a couple of reasons:

• Premium products are usually less cost sensitive, so you can slide an extra percent or two in there without looking uncompetitive.
  
• Even if you can't get the extra percent in there, a 10% off a 100 dollar product is 10, and 10% off a 300 product is 30, and if you have to spend almost the same amount of effort to get a 300 sold as a 100 product, you're 20 ahead.
  

Now, for this and for other reasons your CHEAPER products generally have lower profit margins (because they are MORE price sensitive). What a company then does is try to find a cheap way of selling these products.

This generally doesn't work in the health insurance game because of regulations, contracts and traditional industry practices (aka "brokers").

So here's what's going to happen if you plan on financing ANY part of your idiotic proposal with an excise tax on these expensive plans:

1. The Unions, whose members are the greatest consumers of these plans will kill this bill. Which will be the first time on this turn of the wheel that I will be on the side of Big Labor. Stranger things have happen, somewhere. But the guy was probably on acid.
2. Since the Unions killed it, there is no 2.
   

If that fails this will be the chain of events:

1. Millions of Union Members will find their health care plans revamped to come in JUST UNDER whatever price or feature point you lay out.
2. The Insurers will, to keep the Union business and stay competitive will give up a little profit margin on THESE plans because they need to hit a price point. Which they will get other users of the "gold-plated" to switch to.
   
3. That means the government won't get the money it claims to expect (since these claims never match reality I don't think they really do expect to get that money, it's just a lie to get it past the voters and MAYBE the CBO if you're REALLY lucky.). #2 means that the insurance companies will be making less money. Which you're probably fine with except:
4. If the insurance company is a not-for-profit it's using those expensive policies to finance the cheaper policies, which it now has to raise the price on. Meaning no net change in the COST OF THE SYSTEM. Which leads to
5. More people not being able to afford commercial insurance, leaving them either without it, or on the "public plan".
6. If they are a for profit, they HAVE to keep making a profit, so they'll probably raise the cost of their lower cost plans ANYWAY with the same results.
   

This will start what some would call "a vicious circle", and what I like to call "swirling round the porcelain pot". Because as more people fall off onto the public plan you're going to have to scramble for money to pay for it. Which means more taxes, more restructuring, more people on the public plan etc., until you reach the state that England is in.

One where MOST of the people get really, really crappy care and a (relatively) few people who either have their insurance paid for by the government (who will write themselves out of the excise tax) or are just rich, will be able to afford care with private doctors and clinics, or leave the country for health care (aka "medical tourism").

Oh, and let's look at secondary effects. Reportedly most of these "gold plated" plans are in Union states like Michigan, and EXPENSIVE states like NY (especially NYC) and California. You know, two places that have been hemorrhaging middle class citizens for the last 5 years? California's legal population is actually dropping. When you increase the costs of employer provided health care, what do you think those employers are going to do? Migrate jobs elsewhere if they can, or effectively reduce employees salaries by not giving raises. Which again means less money for the feds. Which means when inflation kicks in in about 18 months, we're screwed.

This Mr. Klein is where your plans are destined to take us. Because despite your rhetoric, despite your propaganda, health care in THIS country is better than any in the world. It costs very, very little to get your basic care. We spend more because we have more, and we really DO get more out of our system because we engage in all manner of really stupid lifestyles, from the prepared foods and sodas in front of the TV meals to wii's as a form of exercise to higher levels of smoking (until recently). We do more damage to ourselves because we've expected the health care system to keep up with it.

My daughter was able to see a specialist--a fairly rare specialist--within HOURS of her primary care physician noticing a possible problem.

Hours, Mr. Klein.

I was a "good boy" Mr. Klein. I did what the system told me I needed to do--I joined the Marines to earn money for college, then I went to College and got a degree. Then I learned a useful skill that people would pay good money for. I could have slacked off. I could have been even worse a father to my first kid--by not working like hell to get her on my health insurance as soon as I realized it was possible. I could have worked the shadow economy to avoid any "real" earnings and not sent her mom a dime in child support. After all, I was a punk, and I knew people who lived like that.

But I did this to pay for my needs and my families needs. And for the last 28 years you and fucking thieves like you have been taking money--which means a small part of my life--out of every finanical transaction I make to pay for useful shit like roads and the DoD and useless shit like ACORN and the NEA and Social Security (which is now going to be net-deficit sometime in the NEXT TWO YEARS).

You're sort of right Mr. Klein, it WILL reduce the cost of the overall system in 10-20 years, when it finally collapses. When there is no longer enough money in the system to support all but hte most basic research (you'll need the basic research to keep the plebes in line with "study shows extract from juju berries might increase bone density in left handed lemurs" so you at least make it LOOK like you're going to increase their chocolate ration sometime) you'll stop getting new drugs, new diagnostic tools and new procedures.

Maybe, maybe China or India will pick up the slack.

But either way I hope that when you produce "offspring who will spend half their time adoring me and the other half realizing every ambition I failed to make good on" that you never have to go through what I did with my second child--an emergency c-section (well, my wife went through that, but I had to watch) and then 7 days in the ICU.

But I hope that if you do, it's not under the health care system you advocate.

Because your child will die. Well, you're won't because you'll still be politically well connected, and call in favors, right? But someone's will, just like that poor woman in Britain who was punished for having sex by carrying a child for only 5 months and 21 days, 5 days shy of "the legal limit". http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211950/Premature-baby-left-die-doctors-mother-gives-birth-just-days-22-week-care-limit.html

Wasn't even a live birth on their statistics.

I couldn't finish reading that article Mr. Klein, because some day I may be in England and I wouldn't want my vacation ruined by a desire to hunt down the doctors and give them the same treatment they gave that poor luckless baby.

We would treat that baby here Mr. Klein, we'd spend a million dollars to keep that baby alive.

Because we're better than them. We're Americans.

You're not.

Why I'm a Rationalist.

Because currently, it makes sense to me.

Agnosticism has been described here and elsewhere as "fence-sitting," and as charges go, it's difficult to refute. Human beings are social creatures, and part of a society is identifying oneself with a group; refusal to identify with one quantifiable group is seen in turns as lazy or stubborn or as part of some contrived iconoclasm.

Doubtless this is true for some agnostics. In a world where "atheist" is getting to be commonplace, agnostic sets you apart. You're different. Neither Bible-thumper nor a mascara-wearing Hot Topic tragedy, you're your own creature entirely! And you don't even have to think about it to join the club, all you have to say is you don't know and shrug it off. No difficult questions, no entrance exam, no obligation beyond the statement of your own indifference.

Except there is.

Is a person Christian just because they claim to believe in Jesus, whether they walk the Carpenter's footsteps? How do they know? Are they atheists if they say they believe in nothing but the tangible, though they've never found themselves in fear for their lives and suddenly comforted by the power of a prayer? Does belief - even a belief in nothing - mean anything deeper than a social label, if it's never challenged?

And so we come to the Metalkort, arena of ideals.

There is a tangible universe around us. We have senses (designed/evolved) to accept input from this world, and a brain (designed/evolved) to interpret that input. That this universe exists and that we exist within it is taken for granted, drug-fueled speculation regarding consensus hallucinations notwithstanding.

Within this tangible universe, there exist a great many schools of thought regarding its origins. Some insist to a greater or lesser degree that with enough effort, everything can be broken down into human-scale understanding, quantified mathematically, and rendered explicable. Many (if not most) of the other schools attribute our existence to the will of a being largely or completely beyond our comprehension, whose motives are open to broad speculation and whose methods are, in essence, forever denied to us by the insurmountable difference in the nature of our being. There's god, and there's man.

Here's the rub: I would like to embrace the wholly-scientific view of the universe. Yes, it lacks comfort in the promise of a personal eternity, but on the other hand I like the idea that mankind might eventually understand everything. I look back at what we've achieved technically in my own flyspeck lifespan, and project that forward across geologic time, and on the whole I'm very rah-rah about our species. We can do anything...assuming that "anything" is within our grasp, which presupposes a rational, human-scalable, understandable universe.

I would like to, but I can't entirely, because I've caught myself more than once hoping there's a God. I caught myself praying when I was riding out a tornado under a cabin in the middle of the woods. I wished there was a hell awaiting the 9/11 hijackers. I've shed tears at the searing blast of the crescendo of Handel's Messiah. None of these thoughts or actions can be comfortably stuffed into a rational cubbyhole, because despite all logic there's a part of me that fervently wants to accept there's something else.

So here I remain, on the fence. Torn between a desire for a scientifically-explicable universe and a fantastic unknowable; two belief systems which seem irreconcilable, each with its own compelling draw.

Thoughts?