Jeffrey Miron on healthcare reform

Public option: Treatment worse than the disease - CNN.com

The other possible objection to the cash transfer approach holds that, if left unregulated, private health insurers would deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Thus, some people might get no health insurance at all.

This outcome is unlikely, however, assuming health insurance is unregulated. In that case, insurers would set higher premiums for the unhealthy, but they would cover anyone willing to pay a sufficiently high price. Thus, the question is whether society should compensate those who face higher prices because of their health status?

The answer is no. Advocates for such compensation would suggest that it is basic fairness for society to insure people against the bad luck of being born with lousy genes. Many differences in health status, however, arise from behavior: heart disease from overeating, lung cancer from smoking, and cirrhosis from drinking, to name a few. If society compensates everyone for differences in their health status, it is often rewarding unhealthy behavior, perhaps even encouraging it.

Words fail me.

Joe Lieberman is one of my senators

From Hadassah Lieberman's Wikipedia bio

Hadassah has also worked for the lobbying company, APCO Associates, that had many pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations among its clients, as well as four major drug companies such as Pfizer. In March 2005, Hadassah was hired by Hill & Knowlton as "senior counselor" in the firm's "health care and pharmaceuticals practice." Hadassah's close relationship with pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations while her husband introduced legislation benefiting these exact companies has raised questions about improprieties and conflict of interest.

Amount of money donated to Joe Lieberman by Pfizer, Purdue Pharma and Aetna roughly $300,000

From the Hartford Courant today

"I feel relevant,'' Lieberman said in a conference call with a handful of Connecticut reporters this afternoon.

He is also a disingenuous, attention whoring douchebag.

Not that I have an opinion on it of course.

I must be feeling a little better if Holy Joe is starting to piss me off again.

On Me - Part 1 of ?

Probably sharing too much with this but ...

As y'all might know, I have a nasty little illness called Bipolar Affective Disorder. I am not bipolar, I have a disease, there is a big difference. It does not define me and I had it long before it became a trendy way to excuse assholic behaviour.

And this is the place where you can feel free to stop reading if you don't want to hear the details of my life...

anyway...

In the last few weeks it appears that I have been going through a bit of a manic/hypomanic phase and then about 10-11 days ago the bottom started to fall out. I managed to keep it together for a couple more days but that was all I could do. The problem with being manic is that you don't think you are sick. You think that you are doing great as a matter of fact, that is the particularly nasty thing about it.

As my mood started to fall I first thought I was just coming down with the flu, it is that season after all. So I continued to work through it. A week ago that strategy failed completely and I have been basically lying on the couch since then. My blackberry has been off 99% of the time, I have not been writing anything or been actively online (and y'all know that isn't like me) except for two brief stints last weekend, saturday night when i was briefly cheered by my usual sunday night activity of posting youtube stuff on Facebook. The other brief period was when I spent about an hour or so reading through some of the blog/news feeds that I get and queuing up a bunch of stuff to post every half hour to hour or so over the next day and a bit. Both of those activities were attempts to make me feel better. Unfortunately it didn't really work and by Sunday I felt worse.

I have been to see my psychiatrist (let's not talk about high deductible, network based health insurance plans) a couple times in the last week and I will be seeing him again on Thursday. We know what caused it (no, I am not going to share that part), we know how to fix it and it appears to be starting to turn around.

I am pretty sure that I will be back at work on friday, if I still have a job to go back to (I can't yet bring myself to read the emails from my boss). I feel like I have let a lot of people down over the last month or so both personally and professionally and I have a lot of work to do to gain back their faith in me. Hopefully I will be able to do that.

On a positive note, I was just talking to the first ex-Mrs Wolfe. She is still just about my best friend (yeah, imagine that). We were talking about how writing always seems to make me feel better and keeps me leveled out so I am going to start doing it more. So beware, there will likely be lots more bloggy goodness coming out starting in a week or two. Probably won't all be about politics like it usually has been and there might be some more stuff like this that makes people uncomfortable to read (sure as hell is uncomfortable to write) so the facebook feed from my blog (which this is if you are reading it on FB) might be getting turned off, I haven't decided yet. I am letting this one go to FB because I know that there are folks out there that do care (including my family .. yes I know that I suck at keeping in touch) and I don't want them worried about me.

People have often asked me if I worry about being this public with my illness and I always have the same reply. No, I don't. If my being open it helps one single person go get the help they need or makes them feel less ashamed about being sick or makes one of their family members give them a hug and tell them that they understand how hard it is for them because they know of this guy named Rob Wolfe that they saw on Facebook, or on Blogspot or on IRC (back in the day) then it is worth whatever small price I pay in lost privacy. I don't mind being pointed at as an example of how it is possible to live with a significant mental illness and be a more or less functional, taxpaying member of society even if from time to time there are bumps in the road.

Feedback is welcome, in public or private (whichever you prefer), although I likely won't be actively back online very much until the weekend and the blackberry/phone is still mostly turned off for another day or so (until after my next dr's visit) but my email address isn't a big secret and I will be checking it off and on.

Anyone that read all the way through, I don't know whether to say thanks or I'm sorry for wasting your time. I do know that I feel a little better for having written this down and quite frankly that is all that matters to me at the moment.

Where the Wild Things Are

Hullabaloo

That Jonze and Eggars were able to wring this much compelling narrative and fleshed out back stories from what was essentially a child’s picture book with minimal text and virtually no exposition, and execute it all with such inventive visual flair (lovely work from DP Lance Acord), is quite an amazing accomplishment. In a way, Jonze was the perfect director for this project. His two previous feature films (both collaborations with the iconoclastic Charlie Kaufman, known for writing densely complex, virtually un-filmable screenplays) were expert cinematic invocations of journeys into “inner space”. In Being John Malkovich, the protagonist literally finds a portal into another person’s psyche; Adaptation dived headlong into the consciousness of a blocked writer. With his new film, Jonze seems to have drilled a portal both into the mind of Maurice Sendak, and straight into the collective memory of childhood lost. And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going out to the back yard to play for a while. And may your wild rumpus never end.

Haven't seen this yet. Sounds like it might be worth a peek though.

On Small Dogs

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs

While I can tolerate normal-sized dogs, and even more "utility dogs" that actually help in various areas of human occupation such as agriculture and hunting, in general it must be said that I hate small dogs.

Almost as a rule, they are noisy, dirty, ill-tempered and perhaps worst of all, megalomaniacal. With an aggressive attitude far in excess of their physical attributes, small dogs basically represent the worst thing about the modern city center anywhere in the world.

Yes, I have 3 cats and the first ex-Mrs Wolfe has a dachshund but that has nothing to do with this story ... really!

via Naked Capitalism

Who knew that I was a multi-vehicle family

Pet dogs as bad for planet as driving 4x4s, book claims - Telegraph

It claims that the carbon footprint left by domesticated animals is out of proportion to the size of their paws.

A medium-sized dog has the same impact as a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year, while a cat is equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf.

Maybe my FB friend Alice was right about eating the kitties...


via Naked Capitalism

Nope, nothing to see here

Eschaton

A more pointed Material Loss Review was issued about another Georgia bank --Haven Trust of Duluth GA --back in August. That one cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund $207 million. Among the interesting items in the FDIC OIG's Material Loss Review for $576 million Haven are dubious multi-million dollar loans to the school age children of one of the bank's owners.

What? A bank owner looting the bank? Who could ever have known that would happen.

via Angry Bear