Greek government gives in on no-referendum pressure

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."

Thanks, Aristotle, you can resume your seat now.

Class warfare, part 3 zillion

Yet another state has proposed raising taxes on low-income residents to pay for new corporate tax breaks. Leading lawmakers in Missouri want to eliminate a property tax credit for low- and moderate-income seniors and people with disabilities in order to help finance new tax credits for businesses.
Sadly, swaps like this are increasingly common; both Michigan and Wisconsin have cut low-income programs this year to pay for business tax breaks.

Because clearly low-income old people and disabled people dont need all that money

Really not funny

One of the things that makes me most nervous about this country is the truly catastrophic consequences of serious illness here - getting cancer, or anything that requires serious expensive treatment, is often a quick route to bankruptcy, and frequently a guarantee of an unnecessary death once your resources do run out.

The idea of relying on private enterprise to 'insure' your health care always struck me as pretty dubious, and after encountering it at close range, and hearing a few of the many many many horror stories about how this has resulted in its victims being purged from the books once they start costing money, rather than just coughing up their cash, this has just been reinforced for me, over and over and over.

I mean, the NHS in England was pretty shoddy and embarassing at times, by NZ public health standards, but that was more or less in keeping with the English attitude to service, labour, and ... well everything to be honest. At least it was cheap, tho - something like 5% of GDP, compared to the 14% of GDP that the American system swallows (although to be fair I think that should be noted as 10% of GDP spent of health care and another 4% spent on health care insurance companies).

However, the occasional callousness and dirtyness of the NHS is as nothing compared to the utter barbarity of things like this:

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.
None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders -- more than any other health insurance company in the United States.
The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.
They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.
That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.
But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

Free markets are, by definition, more efficient than government programs which leads to better outcomes for everybody, across the board as incentives always line up in a seamless conjunction:

The cancellation of her health insurance in June 2008 forced Robin Beaton to delay cancer surgery by five months. In that time, the tumor in her breast grew from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters.
Two months before Beaton's policy was dropped, Patricia Relling also was diagnosed with breast cancer. Anthem Blue Cross of Kentucky, a WellPoint subsidiary, paid the bills for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
But the following January, after Relling suffered a life-threatening staph infection requiring two emergency surgeries in three days, Anthem balked and refused to pay more. They soon canceled her insurance entirely.
Unable to afford additional necessary surgeries for nearly 16 months, Relling ended up severely disabled and largely confined to her home. As a result of her crushing medical bills, the once well-to-do businesswoman is now dependent on food stamps.

I suppose one could blame these women for not realizing that all they needed to do was bring a few chickens to their respective oncologists/surgeons in order to get the care they needed, but that wouldn't be nice.

Snark aside, kudos to Murray Waas for covering these stories (see, also, Waas' coverage of a similar scandal involving Assurant and its systematic rescission of HIV-positive customers).

The reference to bringing chickens needs a little explaining - one of the Republican candidates for the US Senate seat in Nevada has publicly recommended reverting to barter (specifically, bringing a chicken in payment) with doctors in order to reduce medical costs. Seriously. When twice offered an opportunity to modify or retract this, she has reiterated and reinforced it. And yes, this happened in 2010, not 1810 (even the Victorians would be ashamed of such naked nuttiness).

Let's see, it cost about $1k for my cardio scan last year: frozen chickens sell for about $5 each, so that would be about 200 chickens - I hope they have some fairly substantial freezers at the hospital. Or I suppose I could bring live ones, which would be less valuable (all that effort slaughtering and plucking), so say 240-300 live chooks? Well I suppose they could use the carparks to pen them up, after all noone will be able to afford an automobile with this system.

Big Things

While

well that was all I got to write before the inundation of work: I hope there was no deathless wisdom about to be recorded, because it's pretty much gone.

Oh, yes, the economy: we can certainly see plenty of signs of pain all around here - and Little Rock supposedly is suffering much less than the big cities are, as it didn't get the same growth as they, in the last 20 years. Big things, like stores closing or shortening hours, huge discounts on offer (especially on cars, but lots of other big tickets too), and small things - our local favorite cafes are noticeably emptier, and are overstaffed.

Because the staff are paid so pitifully & have to rely on tips, several of our favourites are quitting their jobs, & looking for something else - Carol, one of the supervisors, has had her weekend takehome pay shrink by 50% due to the decrease in tips (both fewer customers, and they're tipping smaller, apparently).

Oh, yeah, poor pay? The minimum wage here is something like $5.70 per hour, except if you work as a waiter/waitress, in which case it is $2.17 (plus tips are untaxed). This is enshrined in the minimum-wage laws, and strikes me as utterly ridiculous (plus makes me wonder, how did the restaurant-owners get at the legislators that effectively?) ... and then some places (at least some of the chain restaurants) are so venal that they insist the tips get pooled, and divided with the local managers as well. Feh.

Mind you, it hasn't really touched us yet: well, the company did announce in January that noone would get annual increases in salary this year, but comparatively speaking, that's nothing: and with the company doing essentially all its' business with the Pentagon, big utilities (Power companies), and big hospitals, there isn't a lot of serious threats to employment at the moment, or really, likely to be for a fair while: even in a bad recession, everyone needs power, everyone needs medical, and of course the Pentagon never actually shrinks, despite political claims.

So while I would probably have difficulty changing jobs at the moment, it seems fairly secure for me to stick here, more or less indefinitely. In fact, as I am working remotely to the site where the computers I work on are situated (i.e. Albuquerque in this case), I may be able to move to a different SAIC office & carry on the same job - assuming they have a spare desk for me to park myself on. I haven't discussed this with my supervisor yet, but it might be quite a nice way for us to move to a different part of the country, without having to be concerned about finding a new job (assuming she goes for this: there may be contractual reasons I'm unaware of, to keep me in Little Rock.

More on that later, when I've had a chance to sound her out: but the prospect of moving to Virginia (near DC), or Oregon (amongst other places they have bases), is quite tempting.

Otherwise, we have a long weekend coming up (Memorial Day on Monday), not sure what we'll do with it but the weather is good, we may go exploring (well, driving around in our car) up in the Ozarks, north of us.... or not. Doubtful if I'll get to post over the weekend, but should be back to it next Tuesday.