Looking For Health Care Anecdotes

[LUCKY GUESS: A day later the Spokesman-Review has a chat with the woman I identified.]

In the Republican response to Obama's SOTU Congresswoman McMorris-Rodgers told us this about Obamacare:

Not long ago I got a letter from Bette in Spokane, who hoped the President’s health care law would save her money – but found out instead that her premiums were going up nearly $700 a month.

So what lucky "Bette" is having her switchboard light up this morning? Well, last November Ms. McMorris-Rodgers gave us a bit while discussing the problems with the Affordable Care Act:

It’s about Bette Grenier, who can’t afford the increased payments and is currently uninsured because of Obamacare.

Hmm. Her Joe the Plumber moment is imminent! There is a Bette Grenier in Spokane who heads a roofing contractor firm with ten employees.  And if (IF!!!) this is her little-used Facebook page, she is no fan of Hillary, so maybe she is no fan of Barack.

In any case, a small business owner might well have been in the market for private insurance and may well be looking at higher premiums under Obamacare. There were apparently 290,000 cancellations in Washington State and the state did not pick up onObama 's suggestion that they extend non-compliant plans for another year.

Paul Krugman is deeply interested in this, presumably as long as we can show the Congresswoman to be lying or misinformed:

I’d be interested, by the way, to know the details about the constituent described in the official GOP response, who supposedly faced a $700 a month rise in premiums. What kind of plan did she have? Did that number include subsidies? The ACA is supposed to keep health costs to 8 percent of income, so the only way you could get numbers like that is if the individual (a) had a really bare-bones policy offering hardly any protection and (b) has an income well over $100,000.

As to "an income well over $100,000", I am surprised that such an authority would fail to grasp that for unmarried individuals the subsidies disappear at $46,000. That said, a Silver Plan in Washington for a single mom age 58 (per WhitePages.com) and no kids with no subsidy would be $6,226 per year, which at $519/month is less than the $700/month premium hike we are examining.

So let's give her a hubby and take the income up to $94,300, where subsidies end (still less than $100,000, BTW, but presumably Prof. Krugman has deeper thoughts distracting him).

Now two 58 year olds with two kids are asked to pay $15,556 for a Silver Plan with an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $12,700. Yikes!

And speaking from personal experience, my wife and kids had their non-compliant but quite comprehensive Connecticut plan cancelled for non-compliance (no mental health coverage, which drove us crazy...); a comparable replacement Gold Plan was $600/month more, without subsidies. So personally, I score this anecdote as a "definitely maybe".

It will be interesting to see where the facts lead us. Trust but verify.

SHOW ME THE CLIFFS: Not to get all gloomy and pedantic but the passage from Prof. Krugman excerpted above displays a shocking ignorance of the economics of the ACA subsidies.

As already noted above, subsidies depend on marital status and the number of kids. The claim that they only disappear if "the individual" has "has an income well over $100,000" is only true if "the individual" is also married and has three or more eligible kids.

Per this chart from ObamaCareFacts.com, a single person with no kids loses their eligibility for subsidies at $46,000. And that implies a dramatic subsidy cliff - as the site illustrates, a family of four that is a dollar below the eligibility line ($94,200) can gain $3,550 in subsidies. Earn another dollar, and all of those subsidies disappear. Oops! Not that anyone will finagle their taxes as a consequence. Hmm, Pikkety and Saez will report on declining middle-class reported income, Obama (and Krugman!) will rail about rising inequality - it's a win-win!

But Krugman has embedded a second major misunderstanding:

The ACA is supposed to keep health costs to 8 percent of income...

"Health costs"? Come again? The subsidies are meant to keep premiums at (or near) 8 percent of income. Wait'll he gets a lod of the deductibles and co-pays!

The ObamaCareFacts site refers people to the Kaiser-Permanente subsidy calculator, so here we go: a family of four (non-smokers, national average, mom and dad are forty) earning $55,125 (taken from ObamaCareFacts site as 250% of Federal Poverty Line although Kaiser disputes that):

The premium, pre-subsidy: $9,700. Subsidies of $5,569 per year bring the premium cost down to $4,130 per year. That is 7.5% of $55,125. So far, so good.

However! The fine print, which I recall was initially obfuscated by the ObamaCare website, includes this, on deductibles and co-pays:

Your out-of-pocket maximum for a Silver plan (not including the premium) can be no more than $10,400. Whether you reach this maximum level will depend on the amount of health care services you use. Currently, about one in four people use no health care services in any given year.

If the family does spend $10,400 and hit the out-of-pocket cap I am pretty sure that will represent more than 8% of total income. Hey, insurance is complicated to buy.

Interestingly, Prof. Krugman recently lectured Bret Stephens of the WSJ on an appropriate corrections policy. Let's reprise that here:

Instead, he points to an online post he put out admitting, with a minimum of grace, that using nominal incomes was wrong.

Sorry, but that’s not what I — or, if I may speak for my employer, The New York Times — calls a correction.

What, after all, is the purpose of a correction? If you’ve misinformed your readers, the first order of business is to stop misinforming them; the second, so far as possible, to let those who already got the misinformation know that they were misinformed. So you fix the error in the online version of the article, including an acknowledgement of the error; and you put another acknowledgement of the error in a prominent place, so that those who read it the first time are alerted. In the case of Times columnists, this means an embarrassing but necessary statement at the end of your next column.

I have confidence that Prof. Krugman, with grace and alacrity, will correct these gross misrepresentations about the economics of the ACA subsidies. The impression he is currently promoting is that the subsidy phase-outs only hit the well-off and that total health care costs for a subsidized family are well-contained. Wrong and wrong again.

FROM THE CHAT WITH BETTE: We learn this about her health insurance options:

But the “nearly $700 per month” increase in her premium that McMorris Rodgers cited in Tuesday night’s GOP response to the State of the Union address was based on the priciest option, a $1,200-a-month replacement plan that was pitched by Asuris Northwest to Grenier and her husband, Don.

The carrier also offered a less expensive, $1,052-per-month option in lieu of their soon-to-be-discontinued catastrophic coverage plan.

...

She said she contacted the congresswoman late last year to complain after getting a letter from Asuris Northwest advising that her $552-a-month policy no longer would be offered. She sent the congresswoman’s office a copy of the letter, which included the rate quotes for the suggested replacement policies.

Although the couple’s catastrophic plan had a $10,000 deductible, it included four doctor visits per year at no additional out-of-pocket cost, she said.

The replacement policies offer lower deductibles and broader coverage, she said, but they didn’t include the doctor visits at no extra charge.

No mention of kids, who might well be past the age of 26. As to the notion that her old plan was "catastrophic" with a $10,000 deductible, how would she characterize the Silver plan noted above with a maximum out-of-pocket of $10,400?

But down to cases! Per the Kaiser site, two adults with no subsidy in Washington are looking at a Silver plan costing $12,453 per year. The annual out-of-pocket cap (excluding the premium) is $12,700, so this does not strike me as a lot less catastrophic than their old plan (although we lack information about their old co-pay rate, but they do have the four "free" doctor visits.)

So the old plan was $552/mo; the new one is $1,038/mo. Quelle difference! That is $486/mo., and quite close to the "$1,052-per-month option" mentioned in the story. I have no doubt a Gold Plan costs more, but I doubt the deductibles are comparable.

Since Ms. Grenier did send her Congresslady a letter indicating the cost of her old plan as well as price offers for various replacement alternatives, I would say the heat, if any, is on Ms. McMorris-Rodgers. That said "nearly $500 per month" would have been as useful a sound-bite and essentially accurate.

And Prof. Krugman's objections included this:

We don’t know the particulars here, but many if not most stories of rate shock turn out to involve people who didn’t actually apply for a policy, and therefore never found out what it would really cost.

That seems to be answered. We eagerly await his corrections, clarifications and amplifications. I certainly hope that in the course of noting Ms. McMorris-Rodgers exaggerations he corrects his own over-enthusiams. (My breath is unheld).

 

Comments

[MarkO]

Facts? Facts?

[Ignatz]

Is Pauly Peanuts interested in determining whether Scarecrow Barry ever got that ACA brain from Dr Oz?

[GMax]

Lets hope lucky Bette has a Beretta and knows how to use it, in case the occupoopers show up on her doorstep.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

TomM-- my sympathies to the family Maguire for being screwed by ObummerCare.

I am quite surprised that Blue Hell Ct had noncompliant plans as far as ObummerCare is concerned. No wonder the BiGGov healthcare insurers jumped on board. ObummerCare is larded up with ridiculous --and revenue generating-- mandates.

[peter]

Krugman ought to know about the mental illness coverage

[Truthbetold]

Clarice

Tell us about Howard's handy work in Alaska.

Now K Street has its own senator: Lisa Murkowski (Alaska Mafia)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2629587/posts

[Captain Hate]

Did the Krugtard write that or did he farm it out to his dense wife?

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Krugman mental healthcare-- apparently it didn't take well. Here's a man whose middle name is 'Robin' and he married 2 different women named 'Robin'. What is mentally wrong with Krugman is no small thing.

[Danube on iPad]

TBT continues to refuse to disclose his close friendships.

[Captain Hate]

Dear God, NK; no wonder the Krugtard is so sympathetic to somebody who had a mother named Stanley.

[Jack is Back (On Ring 5 of Typhus Hell)]

OT:

In early January 2014, Bob Lonsberry, a Rochester talk radio personality on WHAM 1180 AM, said this in response to Obama's "income inequality speech":

Two Americas

The Democrats are right, there are two Americas.

The America that works, and the America that doesn't. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have nots, it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society, and others don't. That's the divide in America.

It's not about income inequality, it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. That's not invective, that's truth, and it's about time someone said it.

The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality." He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just.

That is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat. That is the philosophy that produced Detroit. It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.

It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal. The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victimhood and anger instead of ability and hope.

The president's premise - that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful - seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices.

Because, by and large, income variations in society is a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure. Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income.

You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college - and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education. You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course. Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an inequality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant.

He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine.

Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom. The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure.

The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy. Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even if the other guy made a lifetime's worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort.

The simple Law of the Harvest - as ye sow, so shall ye reap - is sometimes applied as, "The harder you work, the more you get." Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society.

Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity.

He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man's success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man's victimization.

What Obama offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That's what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow.

Two Americas, coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln's maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

[Truthbetold]

TBT continues to refuse to disclose his close friendships.

Posted by: Danube on iPad | January 29, 2014 at 12:16 PM

Clarice

Would you please explain to Danube what it means to disclose a conflict of interest.

[Captain Hate]

I hope things never get more absurd than this: http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/29/the-story-of-a-war-hero-wounded-on-his-10th-deployment-is-really-the-story-of-obama/

What an embarrassment.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Murray and 'embarassment'. he's a pathetic disgrace, and those are the most polite things I could possibly say.

[dublindave]

Cathy McMorris whateverherface was a complete disaster....I had to listen to her 100 saliva-gulps in surround sound stereo and her jindal-esque delivery was like nails on a chalk board.

I swear if Aliens ever take over our planet and want to put forth a friendly face it'll be like Cathy Mcwhateverface smiling through gritted teeth.

[Ignatz]

--I swear if Aliens ever take over our planet and want to put forth a friendly face it'll be like Cathy Mcwhateverface smiling through gritted teeth.--

Put on your glasses DaveyBoy, they're already here.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

A keeper, JiB (@12:21).
In the meantime, the jackass troll is obsessed with a JOMer's "close friendships."
SOB, big time.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Ignatz@12:48-- Alienist!!!!

[Ignatz]

--TBT continues to refuse to disclose his close friendships.-

I'm guessing that may not be applicable in tbt's case.

[Captain Hate]

In case this hasn't been reported:

By FOX NEWS - A number of motorists who had to abandon their vehicles in the snow on Highway 280 outside of Birmingham, Ala. were able to find shelter in the storm thanks to the kindness and generosity of Chick-fil-A restaurant employees and the restaurant's owner, Mark Meadows.

“We cooked several hundred sandwiches and stood out on both sides of 280 and handed out the sandwiches to anyone we could get to – as long as we had food to give out.”

The staffers braved the falling snow and ice and Chick-fil-A refused to take a single penny for their sandwiches.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

Try it's not relevant.

[maryrose]

Good to see you Frau!
Happy Birthday JMHanes!
DD just can't stand to listen to a classy person with real values and a love for her family. These aspects of life are totally foreign to him. I feel sorry for someone who will get the comeuppance of his life in a few short years. There is still time to become as Pinocchio was told "a real boy" but that takes self-analysis and courage. Both of which DD lacks,mores the pity.

[Janet - the districts lie fallow, while the Capitol gorges itself]

Great post, JiB. Thanks.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

CaptH-- any word about 'community organizers' in Birmingham getting out in the snow to help out? Any OFA people? any SEIU union types? Planned Parenthood?

[boricuafudd]

Captain this is a new vein, remember how before the "meme" was how everything was easy for Obama and how bored with everything he was. That worked out well, so now they are using a "meme" that more resonates about "overcoming".

The Admin knows it has lost, it now seeking sympathy for all their failures. I take it as an admission of their ineffectiveness.

However sickenly it is to use a real hero's suffering as a prop the message is clear. I failed, I tried but I could not overcome.

[maryrose]

CH:
What an inspiring tale of courage by those employees of Chick-Fil-A. these kinds of examples of real Americans put Obama and company to shame. Imagine comparing Obummer to a war hero. Sheer madness. He ,Obama is not worthy to be a patch on this guy's underwear.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

From VDH on the death of the humanities:

In the zero-sum game of the college curricula, what was crowded out over the last half-century was often the very sort of instruction that had once made employers take a risk in hiring a liberal arts major. Humanities students were more likely to craft good prose. They were trained to be inductive rather than deductive in their reasoning, possessed an appreciation of language and art, and knew the referents of the past well enough to put contemporary events into some sort of larger abstract context. In short, they were often considered ideal prospects as future captains of business, law, medicine, or engineering.

Not now. The world beyond the campus has learned that college students know how and why to take a political position but not how to defend it through logic and example. If employers are turned off by a lack of real knowledge, they are even more so when it is accompanied by zealousness. Ignorance and arrogance are a fatal combination.

There's a lot of ignorance and arrogance going around.

[cathyf]

I'm going to do something a little anti-social and continue the 3-threads-ago discussion here. But I will include an anecdote!

jimmyk wrote:

The only change we'd discussed was ending the tax break, which wouldn't necessarily make it "individual based." ... My guess is that without the subsidy people would shift more towards high-deductible coverage. Serious health problems would still be covered. So I don't see why there would be a major impact on medical advances.

MY guess is that without their HR departments supervising the insurers and making sure that they pay the promised benefits, people would shift towards basically worthless coverage where they would pay premiums and think that they are covered but wouldn't know if they didn't get sick. And they would buy high-deductible insurance and then if they couldn't afford to actually pay the deductibles, then they would not consume the health care and would suffer and perhaps die without it.

And for low-income people who used to be covered by "mini-med" plans, a high-deductible plan is exactly the inverse of what they need. A "mini-med" plan will pay for a few thousand dollars per year in health care expenses in a year. So if the McDonald's worker who has one of these plans breaks his ankle playing ball, then it would pay his ER bill and the bills for the follow-up care, but if the kid gets cancer then he will go bankrupt and go on medicaid.

My proposal is not to eliminate the tax subsidies, but to extend them. So self-employed people should be able to expense their premiums before income tax AND social security tax. I think that high-deductible plans are good because they give the patients skin in the game where they benefit financially by cost savings. So I think that you extend the tax exclusion to ALL out-of-pocket medical expenses. Anything that is reimbursable from a flexible spending account should be reimbursable with pre-tax dollars no matter whether or not there is a formal account set up.

Ok, here is my anecdote... Our family is covered under DrF's insurance, and we have $150/mo more taken out and put in a flexible spending account. I also work as a freelance programmer using a w-2 employer of record. Every month DrF's employer takes our part of the insurance premiums plus the $150 out of his paycheck and it reduces his salary. Ok, so I go fill a $500 prescription. The insurance covers 70% ($350), and I pay 30% ($150). The benefits manager cuts us a check from the flex account for the $150 and sends it to us, and sends $350 to the pharmacy. If we go to the dentist, or get glasses, we pay the bill then send the receipts to the benefits manager, who cuts us more checks from the flex account

Now 12months * $150/mo comes to $1800, so that runs out sometime during the year. Here's where the anecdote comes in. My w-2 employer of record for the consulting work that I do allows me to reimburse medical expenses with no need to estimate them in advance and use a flex account. After the $1800 runs out, I start taking the receipts that would have been reimbursable from the flex account if only there were money still left, and I enter them into my W2EoR's computer system. Every time a client pays a bill for me, the SECOND thing that the W2EoR does with the money is to put aside money for all of my expenses so far and only if there is any money left does that get paid to me as taxable income. (The first thing that the W2EoR does is subtract their 4% fee. :) )

This means that if I can generate enough consulting income, our family gets to pay ALL medical expenses pre-tax, but if we don't have the expenses, we get to take the money as taxable income. And our insurance company is still working as our agent, muscling the doctors and hospitals down whenever they try to rip us off.

Whenever a mathematician provides an anecdote, there are numbers included. So I'll give an example: I went to my endocrinologist in Oct, and the visit generated a bill for $1,522 for the office visit and lab work. My insurance company, using its pre-negotiated rates, disallowed $1,111.65 of the bill and paid 80% -- $328.28 -- while I wrote a check for $82.07 and sent it to the doctor. If the flex account hadn't been empty by Oct, the benefits manager would have cut us check for $82.07 (they did for the April appt). But (if I can ever get a client who owes me money to cough up) the next time my W2EoR pays me I will receive $82.07 of my pay as totally non-taxable income.

[Jack is Back (On Ring 5 of Typhus Hell)]

DuDa, BuBu, KaKa and the Pitzer Putz are "don'ts" according to my 12:21 pm post.

From now on, I will refer to all these socialist aka Dem/Prog posters as "don'ts". And the best of JOM as "doers". It is the do versus the don't in my opinion.

[peter]

I normally skip over long posts, but JIB's 12:21 is quite good.
As for the Republican response, that lady from Washington state was too gentle.

[Beasts of England]

Great post, JiB!

Those poor Alabamans had to eat Chick-fil-Hates? Maybe I should run down there with some Ben & Jerry's?

[Jack is Back (On Ring 5 of Typhus Hell)]

BTW, it takes a pretty sick litter of puppies to compare Barack Hussein Obama to a 10 deployment wounded Ranger like Casey Remsberg.

Liberalism truly is a mental defect.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

Happy birthday, JMH. I hope your joys are many.

[Beasts of England]

VDH spelled curriculums wrong, Frau! ;)

[Captain Hate]

The Admin knows it has lost, it now seeking sympathy for all their failures. I take it as an admission of their ineffectiveness.

Long vacations, parties, fundraisers and golf: The key to getting things done. Just like Cory Remsburg.

[Beasts of England]

TBT continues to refuse to disclose his close friendships with cats.

FIFY

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

lol
Give him a break. VDH's just a hick farmer from CA's Central Valley, Beasts.

[Porchlight]

OT,

Another reason to stay off Facebook: teary Pete Seeger posts.

[maryrose]

JIB:
Your post defining the doers and don'ts is spot on. It describes exactly what is currently happening in our country. We at JOM ,the doers are frustrated that the don'ts have no incentive to change and are being rewarded by Obama for being lazy and intransient. . It is like being on unemployment insurance for 2 years. You give up and grow to expect the handout as your right and your privledge. Same with healthcare. It is not a right. It is a expense you incur because you want to stay fiscally solvent and protect yourself.

[Ignatz]

--Try it's not relevant.--

Of course it is. You're a writer and you have readers. For all we know you're the geek "journalist" at the typewriter at ptp.
We have no way of knowing whether you know Pearle, Ernie, Edmonds or even have some weird grudge against clarice's husband (or dog for that matter) or are on the other side of some of his firm's lobbying efforts or even a lawsuit.

You can't honestly expect anyone to accept your anonymous assertions that it's irrelevant. If you refuse to reveal who you are and what your associations or interests are with anyone involved in any of this, no one is going to do anything other than correctly write you off as a crank and a bit of a creeper.

[maryrose]

I hhad a comforting thought today. Only 2 more Obummer SOTU's.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

Ah, since one visiting jackass is busy judging people by their voices, I give you Hillary!'s dulcet tones in her "I am sick and tired" speech.
Listen and choose.
Shrillery! or McWhatshername?
LUN

[Account Deleted]

Ignatz,

You're forgetting Nor Laup, Orn Aulp and assorted inhabitants of Qom. That's not to mention the host of beings responsible for all the whispers he's hearing when the tin foil chapeau slips.

[Beasts of England]

Birmingham and Tuscaloosa took the brunt of the storm. University of Alabama is closed again tomorrow - third consecutive day. Younger daughter said the roads are still terrible.

[matt]

Seeger was a communist who lived a very, very well heeled life. I wonder whose health insurance he had?

[Ignatz]

-- And they would buy high-deductible insurance and then if they couldn't afford to actually pay the deductibles, then they would not consume the health care and would suffer and perhaps die without it. --

I and several friends have high deductibles and we tend to make rational decisions not idiotic ones. I've witnessed many other people at various offices, especially this time of year, making rational decisions and negotiating payment options over their deductibles, as well.

In my experience high deductibles discourage medications and office visits for sniffles and elective inconveniences, not colonoscopies, mammograms, EKGs, chemo, etc.

[Truthbetold]

BOE

Before Clarice Feldman's recent admission on this comment board that Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith were friends of hers.

Did you know they were friends if hers?

[Jeff Dobbs]

Ig:
some weird grudge against clarice's husband (or dog for that matter)

You mean her cat, Gaia.

[Beasts of England]

I refuse to comment until I see the tasteful nudes...

[Stephanie smart enough to stay home when roads are icy]

Kroger and Home Depot stayed open all night taking in travelers.

My fave - Waffle House - well they never close and some of them are working with one cook and one waitress and the customers are pitching in cause they are packed and are doing the dishes and taking orders.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

You have no interest in Clarice Feldman's relationship with three key people at the top of the DOD,s spin up to war.

Really?

[Porchlight]

BOE, my friend in Birmingham says it's a terrible mess. I think schools are closed today and tomorrow...?

[Ignatz]

Does anyone here say stadia if they're discussing more than one stadium?
Alba?
Atria?
Crania?

Seems to me more Latin rooted "um" words commonly use conventional English plurals than Latin ones.

[Porchlight]

Stephanie, thanks for that. Love Waffle House, for so many reasons - this doesn't surprise me at all.

[boricuafudd]

TBT

Look Paul will never be President, it is not because of the Republicans or Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith get over it.

Conspiracy theories are fine as long as they have something that you could sink your teeth into. With Paul the only conspiracy was himself.

[James D.]

the don'ts have no incentive to change and are being rewarded by Obama for being lazy and intransient. . It is like being on unemployment insurance for 2 years. You give up and grow to expect the handout as your right and your privledge.

It's actually far worse than this. They are being taught, from grade school on, that the handouts are their right, that being lazy and indolent are not only rights, but are in fact the ideal way to live.

Those who go on to college get a further four (or five, or six...) year total immersion in that thinking.

And a vapid, hateful pop culture and utterly dishonest mass media reinforces the lessons, 24/7.

[boricuafudd]

Ig, I think that is one assumption that many on the Right have sincerely bought into, that people will make the wrong decision when it comes to Health care.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

Red alert! I expect the boring troll to take off its clothes for attention.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Accuweather has it's 2nd half of winter forecast out. Coldish/snowy for the Midwest/coldish rainy-snowy for the northeast, late spring for Southeast, warm for florida and texas to the wst-- more drought for Calif. Not to bad with tornadoes and severe weather.

[MarkO]

"Red alert! I expect the boring troll to take off its clothes for attention."

It's Jake. From State Farm.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Well she sounds horrid.

[Truthbetold]

bori

Your not even close.

[Beasts of England]

I do, Ig. Too many declensions as a yute. I say syllabi, too.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Shoot. It's "hideous".

[Ignatz]

--Ignatz

You have no interest in Clarice Feldman's relationship with three key people at the top of the DOD,s spin up to war.

Really?--

I knew about them. She disclosed them.
You refuse to disclose anything and expect us to assume you are acting in good faith based on nothing while expecting others to do what you refuse to.
Ask your friend Dana what the word for that is.

Perhaps you are one of Saddam's surviving flunkies, a Turkish disinformation agent or Sibel Edmond's lesbian lover, for all we know. Until you disclose who you are and your interests in any of this no one has any interest in anything you say, nor should they.

Won't you make a full disclosure?
It's at least as simple a question as the ones you ask.

[Account Deleted]

"Ignorance and arrogance are a fatal combination."

Frau,

That argument is very hard to sustain with BOzo stinking up the Oval Office. VDH was doing better while explaining the job market making spot on valuation of the victims of current indoctrination. The serf collar peck and droolers are worth almost every penny Starbuck's pays them.

I'd like to see VDH make a case for busted BAristas to turn their grievance indoctrination on the tenured thieves who stole their future. The thieves have certainly earned it.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

Where did Feldman disclose her relationship with Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith?

[cathyf]

If you believe in the Law of Supply and Demand (demand curves slope downwards...) then as the price of health care goes up relative to the prices of other things, then less health care gets consumed and more other things get consumed. If you take away the tax-code subsidy to health care, then people will consume less of it and more of other things.

The advance of technology in health care overall is totally dependent upon how much money gets spent overall.

[boricuafudd]

tbt

So how far am I?

I have heard enough of the Paultards and you are sounding just like them. Maybe you are stealing their material, regardless guilt by association. Perhaps?

[Beasts of England]

Yes, Porch, I've heard it's bad. The snow and ice usually go south of us and hit the Birmingham area. Temps won't be above freezing until tomorrow - and then only briefly.

[peter]

maryrose, it is entirely possible Obama may deliver three more SOTUs. Carter delivered a written one in 1981. He was the last President to deliver a SOTU in his outgoing year. and since Obama is his biggest fan, don't count him out in '17.

[Ignatz]

--Your not even close.-

Once is a typo.
Twice is.....?

[Ignatz]

--Ignatz

Where did Feldman disclose her relationship with Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith?--

You show me yours and I'll show you mine.

[Thomas Collins]

Is Appalled lurking? Any comments on myRA, Appalled, if you are lurking?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0129/Roth-IRA-the-model-for-Obama-s-contractor-retirement-plan

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

Yep, like I thought. Feldman did not disclose her friendship with Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith.

[Jeff Dobbs]

As long as tbt refuses to disclose his identity and associations, those choosing to listen to him or take him seriously would be sheeple.

[Ignatz]

--If you believe in the Law of Supply and Demand (demand curves slope downwards...) then as the price of health care goes up relative to the prices of other things, then less health care gets consumed and more other things get consumed. If you take away the tax-code subsidy to health care, then people will consume less of it and more of other things.

The advance of technology in health care overall is totally dependent upon how much money gets spent overall.--

That seems simplistic to me. The money spent on flu shots for healthy people and scrapes and bruises has little or no impact on research for advanced cancer and other drugs or multi million dollar scanners etc.
Is it not possible that less healthcare of the pedestrian, long established, relatively inconsequential variety will be consumed whereas the life saving, advanced expenditures will remain stable or perhaps even increase due to less utilization of doctor and hospital resources on routine elective stuff?

[bgates]

I don't see much difference between saying people are unable to figure out how to insure themselves without corporate HR departments guiding them and saying they're unable to choose a beverage without Mike Bloomberg. Nor much difference between advocating social engineering through the tax code for health insurance and advocating social engineering through the tax code for ten thousand other things.

[Truthbetold]

Is hit and run your given name?

[Ignatz]

Then how did you know she was friends with any of them?
Who are you friends with, if anyone?

[Jim Eagle]

Test

[derwill]

Dividing the country into the dos and the don'ts can work for the Left in the short term, but it always fails in the long term because of human nature. If you can't reap a reward for your hard work, or if the government swoops in and takes your reward and gives it to the don'ts, then after awhile the dos either immigrate to another country where they can reap their reward or they quit producing entirely and start sucking off the government teat like all the other don'ts. This causes a phenomena that is bewildering to Liberals known as "the ever-shrinking pie."

The problem with the ever-shrinking pie is not only that the poor get poorer, but the ruling elites, who gorge themselves off the cheese on the the top of the pie, come to the obvious conclusion that what they need is a bigger pie. But how do you get a bigger pie, once you've driven away or destroyed all the pie producers. Your only option then is to force the don'ts to start producing whether they want to or not. Then it's no more free pie for the don'ts, and hello slave labor camps.

[Jim Eagle]

Yale–Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale

0–7 is sub-clinical;
8–15 is mild;
16–23 is moderate;
24–31 is severe;
32–40 is extreme.

Your chance to score TBT. I will aggregate the scoring do an analysis and publish it in The Journal of Anti-Social Behavior.

[Jane-Rebel Alliance1]

Yeah Iggy, please do not disclose until TBT (who is being paid) discloses all. I'm pretty sure she's too stupid to find it on her own.

[peter]

Even CNBC says the MyRA is pretty much a nothing.

[bgates]

If you take away the tax-code subsidy to health care,

then people's spending on health care and other things will more closely reflect their preferences for health care and other things in light of their true costs undistorted by subsidy.

[peter]

I tried to read Jimmy Carter's 1981 SOTU. It is a snoozer, but it is interesting to get an historical perspective. I suspect Obama's 2017 will be much more bitter.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

Again, you place no importance in Feldman having close friends like Wolfowiz, Perle and Feith.

For you, it's all about who I am. Really?

[Ignatz]

"Is hit and run your given name?"

clarice feldman is her real name. What's yours?
Since you seem to be some type of journalist subject to all kinds of conflicts of interest and are making serious charges against a real person using her real name you have a duty some amateur anonymous commenter who is making no charges against anyone here doesn't.
Put up or shut up.
It's very simple.

[Porchlight]

Well said, derwill.

[Danube on iPad]

"If you take away the tax-code subsidy to health care, then people will consume less of it and more of other things."

Works for me.

Why would anybody buy a high-deductible policy with a deductible so high he couldn't pay it? He'd be beter off remaining uninsured.

[Ignatz]

--For you, it's all about who I am. Really?--

Absolutely. You're making serious charges which if false are rather defamatory.
In America we get to face our accusers. You're (sic) not unAmerican are you?

[Donald]

Anybody down here in the A get caught in the elents yesterday?

I did and how.

I did get to pee right in the middle of Howell Mill so that was cool.

[Donald]

Um, elements.

[Frau Schafskopf]

hit has ways of dealing with the sheeple.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

Then you agree that what Feldman has been accused of is serious.

The facts are the facts. Who I am is irrelevant. Clarice and Howard Feldman are Washington insiders, and insulting me will not change that.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Is hit and run your given name?

My real name is over at my blog. For some reason signing in to typepad means I can't make it my LUN any more. Back in 2008 I used to publish pretty regularly over at AT. Hey, just two days ago Ed Morrissey mentioned me by name at Hot Air.

FTSAH, I think I have probably divulged more peronsal information about himself than just about anyone else at JOM.

Now, you weren't trying to imply I had something to hide were you?

Because I'm not implying that about you. I'm outright stating it as an accusation.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Posted by: derwill | January 29, 2014 at 02:00 PM

You didn't miss all the talk about the state with the most JOMers per capita last night and this morning, did you?

I'm just saying....

[Porchlight]

I tried to read Jimmy Carter's 1981 SOTU. It is a snoozer, but it is interesting to get an historical perspective. I suspect Obama's 2017 will be much more bitter.

I wonder if he will do one. The current setup for outgoing Presidents is to forego the SOTU and let the incoming guy address a joint session of Congress. I think that's what was done in 2001 and 2009 but correct me if I'm wrong.

However I think Obama is not the type to let the opportunity for a bitter, "it's all your fault, you didn't deserve me" speech to go by unfulfilled.

[Beasts of England]

I'm guessing somewhere in the low-thirties, JiB. I'd say Captain Ahab was in the same ballpark.