They Lost Me With 'Hello'

Glenn links to Stacy Mccain, who is fired up about this new Harvard/Berkekey study on income inequality and intergenerational economic mobility. I will revert to Mr. McCain momentarily but first let me deplore the lead sentence to the NBER working paper:

The United States is often hailed as the "land of opportunity," a society in which a child's chances of success depend little on her family background.

Says who? This is certainly a convenient definition for a team of economists who are embarking on a measurement of outcomes and hoping to pass it off as a measure of opportunity, but who really believes that parents have no influence on the success of their kids? Just by way of example, one might suspect that financial success is influenced by some combination of intelligence, good looks, height, good health, and high energy. All of these factors are subject to genetic inheritance, so one would not be surprised to see the child of successful parents having a bit of a head start. Other traits, such as self-discipline (aka impulse control) or a love of learning can be taught, but are more likely to be exemplified by parents who already possess those traits.

So, to pick an example almost at random, one might expect Sasha and Malia Obama to become successful women based on the genetic gifts and cultural values passed on by their parents. Who among us will attribute any of their future success merely to their parent's high income?

Gary Becker has lots on this; a snippet:

The relation between intergeneration mobility and meritocracy becomes still more complex after we recognize that earnings in a meritocracy would depend not only on cognitive abilities, such as IQ. For it depends also on investments in education and other human capital, on getting to work on time, on being able to take criticism, and on many other psychological characteristics. Families that are more educated and have high earnings tend to invest a lot in their children’s human capital, and in various non-cognitive traits. In a merit-based economy where earnings depend on the totality of abilities and skills, children of high earning parents would also tend to be high earners because their parents would pass on both cognitive skills and investments in various forms of human capital.

Even after including parental investments in education, non-cognitive traits, and other human capital of children, an economy where success and failure are determined by merit would still have low intergeneration mobility. To be sure, investments in education and many other types of human capital are not only determined by parents, but also by government policies and by philanthropists. To the extent that governments and philanthropists invest more in the human capital of children with less successful parents (as appears to be the case for governments in Scandinavian countries), a merit-based economy could have relatively high intergenerational mobility since children from poorer and less educated families might have high levels of human capital investments.

Nevertheless, a big jump is still required to make inferences from the intergeneration mobility in a country to the role of merit in determining success and failure in that country. In particular, although the United States has considerably lower intergeneration mobility than many Western European countries, this does not imply that merit is a less important determinant of success in the American economy than in these other economies.

And all of that said, I further dispute that "the American dream" was ever a claim that one parent's were irrelevant. This is James Truslow Adams, no relation to the Oresidential family:

Adams coined the term "American Dream" in his 1931 book The Epic of America. His American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

By way of contrast with a Europe of landed nobles and hereditary guildsmen, America was notably lacking in barriers to self-improvement and advancement.

Now to pick up on Stacy McCain's point - he is deeply dubious of a study that tells us that West Virginia is more of a land of opportunity than, say, Silicon Valley or New York City. Good point!

By way of illustration, here are San Jose, NYC and a few beacons of opportunity from West Virginia:

San Jose

California

12.9%

New York

New York

10.5%

Spencer

West Virginia

14.7%

Buckhannon

West Virginia

12.6%

Welch

West Virginia

16.0%

These results reflect the probability that a child who was "raised" in the locale above in the lowest economic quintile (really, living there at about age 15 regardless of prior or subsequent movement) will eventually rise to the top quintile *of their age cohort* by about age 30. Parts of West Virginia have it all over the Big Apple or the biggest city in Silicvon Valley, which activates Mr. McCain's BS detector:

Stipulating that the data in the study is complete and accurate, and that everything in the analysis is legit — well, why is there a bright spot on the resulting map in the vicinity of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but no corresponding bright spot near Athens, Georgia? Why does rural Arkansas look like a beacon of upward mobility, while the bustling economies of Atlanta and Charlotte produce no such effect?

Most of all, why does the map referenced by O’Brien show that impoverished Appalachia offers more opportunity for advancement than any of the more prosperous surrounding flatlands?

To use a social science term: Your data is obviously fucked up.

Well, that's as maybe. Eric Mertz commented over there with a follow-up on his blog, noting that the decision to fix children to one locale based on where they were at approximately age 15 is fraught with implications.

I will say this: the authors attempt to check the validity of that assumption and conclude that all is well. I am a non-buyer and suspect that a deeper dive into the data would unearth trouble in paradise. But first, their comments in anticipation of this objection:

We permanently assign each child to a single CZ based on the ZIP code from which his or her parent led their tax return in the first year the child was claimed as a dependent. We interpret this CZ as the area where a child grew up. Because our data begin in 1996, location is measured in 1996 for 95.9% of children in our core sample. For children in our core sample of 1980-82 birth cohorts, we therefore typically measure location when children were approximately 15 years old.

For the children in the more recent birth cohorts in our extended sample, location is measured at earlier ages. Using these more recent cohorts, we nd that 83.5% of children live in the same CZ at age 16 as they did at age 5. Furthermore, we verify that the spatial patterns for the outcomes we can measure at earlier ages (college attendance and teenage birth) are quite similar if we define CZs based on location at age 5 instead of age 16.

So that is reassuring. This, however, is far less so:

Importantly, the CZ where a child grew up does not necessarily correspond to the CZ she lives in as an adult when we measure her income (at age 30) in 2011-12. In our core sample, 38% of children live in a different CZ in 2012 relative to where they grew up.

That is a lot of movement, so they offer a bit of a breakdown:

44.6% of children who grow up in rural areas live in urban areas at age 30. Among those who rose from the bottom quintile of the national income distribution to the top quintile, the corresponding statistic is 55.2%.

So the poor move even more than the average. This final test reassures them but not me:

In row 8 [of Table V, p. 68], we assess the extent to which the variation in intergenerational mobility comes from children who succeed and move out of the CZ as adults vs. children who stay within the CZ. To do so, we restrict the sample to the 62% of children who live in the same CZ in 2012 as where they grew up. Despite the fact that this sample is endogenously selected on an ex-post outcome, the mobility estimates remain very highly correlated with those in the full sample. Apparently, areas such as Salt Lake City that generate high levels of upward income mobility do so not just by sending successful children to other CZs as adults but also by helping children move up in the income distribution within the area.

"Apparently"?!? As best I can follow, they looked at the aggregated data for Commuting Zones ("CZ") both large and small and and concluded that dropping the kids who eventually moved didn't change the results much. But that means that CZs with a large population, such as New York, will drive the population-weighted result and swamp whatever story the data might be trying to tell about Spencer, West Virginia.

So when they write that "apparently" Salt Lake City is seeing a combination of kids succeeding in the area and kids succeeding after moving away, my not-so-unreasonable question is, what did the data actually show for Salt Lake City specifically, as opposed to the aggregate? In the data tables all I can find is that without weighting for population the result for "8. Children who stay within CZ" has a correlation of 0.87 with the baseline estimate. However, when they re-weight by estimated population, the correlation rises to 0.95. That makes me think that rural areas are showing a much weaker correlation than urban areas. That overlaps with their comment that rural areas show a lot more movement, but the overall impoact is not to reassure.

And I am not at all sure what to make of this. Are we to conclude that Welch, WV is a great place to be born because it is easier to leave and prosper elsewhere? Or that being poor in Atlanta is dreadful but not so dreadful that people actually leave? Baffling.

GO AHEAD - MAKE MY DAY. Ask about Denmark.

Comments

[Truthbetold]

Richard Perle trivia.

Hollinger’s Legal Bills for Directors (& Perle’s Eye-Popping One)

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/05/11/hollingers-legal-bills-for-directors/

[centralcal]

No comment, just posting for fun (and to see if it causes any spitting and sputtering):

PublicPolicyPolling ‏@ppppolls

Sarah Palin has a higher favorability rating with GOP primary voters on our new national poll than Bush, Christie, Cruz, Huck, Paul, Ryan

[Jeff Dobbs]

FTSAH...

The last thread is currently sitting on 1,120 comments. This puts it in the list of top 10 most commented threads in JOM history. It was peter's 12:40 PM comment yesterday, the penultimate comment of that thread (so far, anyway), that accomplished that feat.

A July 2013 Zimmerman thread is now number 11. And there have now been 20 threads at JOM that have surpassed 1,000 comments.

The commenter who posted the last comment on that Zimmerman thread is the same person who currently has the last comment on the last thread. However, since the last thread's comments will remain open until Friday, that may change.

[jimmyk on iPhone]

"The other is that a company has a captive base to get better rates."

Companies could still offer these plans at advantageous rates, and to get adequate participation they could even require or subsidize participation. But people could also join other groups to get insurance, so that they wouldn't be SOL if they lose their jobs. And I would guess that most people over 40 would T least get a catastrophic policy, which addresses Cathy's earlier concern.

I'm sympathetic with the view that a lot of people won't get insurance, but then we also need to get rid of laws requiring private hospitals to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay.

[narciso]

in the kingdom of the blind, he turned out to be the one eyed man:

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/28/gibbs-obama-gave-up-trying-to-change-washington-long-ago/

[Truthbetold]

jimmyk

How would they get the hospitals on the southern border to deliver all those future votes for the democrats?

[Thomas Collins]

H&R, have you done a statistical analysis on how long it would be reasonably likely for a JOM thread to get into five figures? I'm thinking some threads for some reason provoke more frequent posts per minute, so an overall average approach wouldn't work.

[narciso]

Wendy Bathory, shoots and misses;

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/01/wendy_davis_as_the_soap_churns.html

[Ignatz]

--Look, the system that we had developed over decades of cheaters finding holes and the holes being closed. Basically every one of those holes was a surprise when it appeared. Thinking that we can just throw it all away and enter a state of utopia is just as much stupid hubris as the Obamacare hubris of thinking that we can throw everything away and re-engineer something new from scratch at in a short series of 3am dorm-room bull sessions.--

Why is a utopia no one promises, except for loony socialists, always used as the comparison?
Markets work.
That's why DrF has fire and life insurance to buy at reasonable rates.

[Truthbetold]

Ignatz

What the politicians and the elites won't tell you is. The numbers don't work!

Remember what Rahm Emanuel says about a good crisis.

[jimmyk]

Look, the system that we had developed over decades of cheaters finding holes and the holes being closed. Basically every one of those holes was a surprise when it appeared. Thinking that we can just throw it all away and enter a state of utopia is just as much stupid hubris as the Obamacare hubris....

I'm going to guess that some of those holes were the consequence of ill-conceived regulations. But regardless, is the idea that somehow when we "throw it all away" we also throw away all the accumulated knowledge of the past 50-100 years? Why would we do that? And why would simple removal of a tax break have that effect anyway, any more than the myriad of other policy changes that have occurred every year prior to Obamacare?

[Thomas Collins]

That Davis hasn't been run out of the race shows how progs stick up for their own. Imagine this scenario. Davis is the Dem candidate and is a paraplegic. A Dallas newspaper comes out with an article that Abbott married a woman who drained her 401(k) to put him through law school. After the woman made the last law school tuition payment, Abbott dumped her and encouraged her to take child custody. Abbott then made a statement that those who haven't walked in Abbott's shoes shouldn't criticize him. The GOP would have quickly abandoned Abbott.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

ThomasC-- very true, but that is the difference between a gangster organization and a legitimate one.

[Old Lurker]

"... but then we also need to get rid of laws requiring private hospitals to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay..."

That always seemed to me to be one of the worst ideas ever, and given the slide into the abyss that followed, it has proven thus.

Emphasis on "private". If taxpayers are willing to pay for passing out that goodie, they should fund public hospitals to do it, or in the alternative they should pay retail to private providers. But forcing a private company to provide a public service for free is the worst kind of liberalism.

[jimmyk]

Is anyone else as surprised and dismayed by this table as I am?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_insurance_coverage

The US is alone in the world when it comes to private health insurance. (I looked it up because I thought that other countries with substantial private insurance could provide some insight into the above discussion, but it turns out there are none!)

[GMax]

Wendy cant leave the race because the Democrat bench is threadbare and they basically have no one else to run in Texas. She stays, but is damaged goods that will not attract even the normal 41% for prog losers in statewide races.

[Danube on iPad]

"...people aren't willing to pay a market rate for the amelioration of risk because they don't really believe that bad things are going to happen to them."

That's simply not true. Millions and millions of people do precisely that. I myself did so until I became Medicare eligible.

[Jeff Dobbs]

TC:
have you done a statistical analysis on how long it would be reasonably likely for a JOM thread to get into five figures?

Not until now!

Now, it's all about current events and how long a thread stays at the top -- the thread topic itself is almost completely irrelevant. That Zimmerman thread didn't get comments because it was a Zimmerman thread, but because the Zimmerman trial had reached its climax. It could have been a thread about Krugman's new paleo diet and it would have gotten that many comments.

The most commented thread in JOM history was a generic Saturday Morning thread with almost zero content but since TM didn't post a new one for 5 days, history was made.

The highest concentration of comments is easily during presidential debates. But a debate thread has little chance making it on the list of top commented threads because election season sees so much action that new threads are generally being created multiple times per day.

It took a two and a half hours during the third and final Romney/Obama debate to rack up 600 comments. If TM refrained from putting up new threads, at that rate we could hit five digits during a 41 hour-long debate.

If we were really committed.

It's just that I doubt some people's committment around here. I'm not naming names, you people know who you are.

[Truthbetold]

jimmyk

Not for long.

[cathyf]

The reason that DrF can buy fire and life insurance at reasonable rates for the risks covered is that in our culture we don't have any problem with having people only get their fire insurance and life insurance claims paid if they actually bought the insurance and paid the premiums.

In my community the Red Cross will come if your house burns down and give you free stuff. If you die and your family can't afford to bury you the community will take up a collection. But everyone understands that this is charity and you are getting something that you are not entitled to. Not so with health care claims -- a huge fraction of our population thinks that if people are sick then they are simply entitled to have other people pay their bills. That it's not charity -- that they are just as entitled to the money as if they were the chumps who paid premiums.

In order for insurance to work, there MUST be a downside to refusing the pay the premiums. The people who pay the premiums must get something that the people who don't pay the premiums don't get -- and that thing must be at least as valuable as the premiums.

Subsidizing the premiums (through the tax code or otherwise) is one way to close the gap between price and value. There are other ways -- if you don't have health insurance and your child gets sick, we pay for your child's care but you lose everything you own is SUPPOSED to be the way that it works, but the soft-hearted/soft-headed have screwed that up. Without insurance-buyers receiving something of value that non-buyers don't get there won't be insurance. This is not complicated, it is simply how markets work. If the non-payers can't be excluded from receiving the product, then no one will pay. If no one pays, then there is no money to pay the costs of providing the product. If there is no money, the product cannot exist.

Having a tax advantage that only goes to people who pay insurance premiums is ONE way of giving something of value to people who pay premiums. If you want to get rid of that, then you have to come up with another thing of value that people will receive for their premium money -- because they are not receiving insurance coverage for their premium money. Because they are de facto covered whether they pay the premiums or not.

[MarkO]

"...people aren't willing to pay a market rate for the amelioration of risk because they don't really believe that bad things are going to happen to them."

How many people? Six? Young? Reckless? Where on earth would someone get this idea?

[rse]

stephanie-hubby went to get diva as I was driving my parent's car while mine was serviced. Otherwise it would be separate cars stuck.

The school district sent out message alerting parents they were letting out school at 1:45. Message went out at 1:50. By then all roads were at a stand still. Kids will likely be sleeping in schools and it is going to 16.

When you elevate people to be in charge because they are greedy and mediocre we cannot be surprised they make such poor decisions.

OL-I have been thinking of what was said this morning on school choice. The game plan seems to be that we all pay property taxes so the public sector can employ lots of people around the idea of education. Property ownership is allowed but the public sector and cronies want to extract a great deal of the benefit for themselves.

[Old Lurker]

Cathy as you know, the Pelosi's among us are shocked that the phrase "promote the general welfare" in the preamble of the Constitution does not mean the same to me that it means to her.

[cathyf]

How many people that you thought were intelligent have told you stories like the following my mother told me:

In the 50's, her cousin moved to LA and got her first job. They had health insurance, but she thought that it was too expensive. So she declined the insurance, and she put the money that she would have paid in to a savings account, and then she paid her medical bills over the years out of the account. And she had money left over at the end -- a LOT of money, because she didn't get cancer, and wasn't in a terrible accident, etc.

My mother took this as an example showing that insurance is a rip-off.

[Sue]

The democrats had an excellent candidate last time around. Mayor of Houston. He did about like any other democrat in Texas.

[narciso]

the frogs forget about the scorpion.:

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/house-republicans-leak-their-amnesty-plan-to-ny-times/

[Old Lurker]

RSE, this Fox headline:

"SILL ILLITERATE
US spends $200M, but Afghan troops can't read."

Means that we got off cheap over there. We spend so much more than that at home so kids can be illiterate.

[Old Lurker]

Cathy, between your husband and your mother, you should not exist as we know you.

[Beasts of England]

@cathyf: I follow your mother's conclusion - however, what it shows is that insurance behaves precisely as designed: a hedge against catastrophe. Whether it's health, life, home, or automotive insurance: if you lose, you win and if you win, you lose.

[Beasts of England]

Let me clarify that a bit: if you pay into an insurance pool and make no claim, you've 'lost' your premiums, but have won in the fact that you've had no claim. If have a claim, you've 'lost' (endured a risk event), but you've received a wonderful return on your premiums.

[Dave (in MA) (on a MAC, yuk)]

Posted by: 386J-I-B289 | January 28, 2014 at 02:18 PM,

You know how I can tell that's a photoshop? The hands are not manly enough to be Hillary's.

[cathyf]

jimmyk, yes, that list, and the US's place upon it, tells the story about the whole world. The US has had private health insurance, and the private health insurance has harnessed vast sums of money that basically can only be spent on sick people. That vast pool of private insurance money has funded incredible advances in health care. Which the entire world acts as parasite upon. And the rest of the world is really pissed that our health care entrepreneurs have created all of this technology that then THEIR sick people think that they should get, too. Without the ability to treat/cure people it's not euthanasia to allow them to die.

Once our private insurance premium dollars are no longer being collected, it's all over. What we have now, we will continue to have, and it will be cheap (because the old stuff is always cheap.) But there will be no more new stuff.

[sbwaters]

My Fair Lady ending happy or tragic?

Neither one.
-- Happy implies Henry won a lady.
-- Tragic implies Eliza had to give in.

But both had to come to an accommodation with the strong characters each possesses. It was a win win because each learned from the experience.

[cathyf]

if you pay into an insurance pool and make no claim, you've 'lost' your premiums, but have won in the fact that you've had no claim.

THIS right here is Ground Zero of the Democrat War On Health Insurance. According to the dems, you have been ripped off, and they are "making it right" by forcing the insurance companies to give everybody not just the sick people all sorts of "free" stuff.

[Old Lurker]

--Happy implies Henry won a lady.
--Tragic in that Henry now has a lady.

[boricuafudd]

CathyF

I was thinking about what you said and one way to do it. It is similar to the way the government collects its student loans that were defaulted on:

If you don't have insurance and rack up a large bill the government will pay the bill but it will recover the money by;

a- 5% out of every check from your earnings until the debt is satisfied
b- Any refund that you might be entitled to will go to satisfy the debt
c- Any gov't assistance received will be reduced until debt is paid

This will hopefully incentivise people to buy insurance as they will pay regardless.

[jimmyk]

Having a tax advantage that only goes to people who pay insurance premiums is ONE way of giving something of value to people who pay premiums. If you want to get rid of that, then you have to come up with another thing of value that people will receive for their premium money -- because they are not receiving insurance coverage for their premium money. Because they are de facto covered whether they pay the premiums or not.

I agree with this, except for the last sentence. What you get if you aren't covered (pre-Obamacare anyway) is vastly inferior. But your basic point is right. The question is whether whether the current system of all carrots and no sticks is sustainable. Rather than use the carrot of a tax break, why not the stick of repealing EMTALA, and limiting treatment of the uninsured to crappy public facilities such as the taxpayers are willing to fund per OL's suggestion above?

[Old Lurker]

d- repaying the balance of your assistance comes out of your estate off the top.

[boricuafudd]

OL
Yes, that is a good addition.

[Danube on iPad]

"In order for insurance to work, there MUST be a downside to refusing the pay the premiums. The people who pay the premiums must get something that the people who don't pay the premiums don't get -- and that thing must be at least as valuable as the premiums."

On that point we are 100% in agreement.

To say that there is universal coverage in those OECD countries tells us nothing about their people's access to care, nor the quality of that care.

[Stephanie Yes I'm in how bout you?]

Yea, the dil has made it to 400 and is now creeping toward the Northpoint area and home.

You know if the DoT would start pushing cars that are left abandoned off the roads with the snow plows alot less cars would be abandoned.

Immediate example of the stick approach to behavior modification.

Rse, did everyone make it home yet and safe?

[Miss Marple]

Stephanie, this is why we had massive closings when we got hit a couple of weeks ago. Most people here don't abandon cars, but they run off the road and block lanes because they can't move or they crash into each other, all of this tying up traffic and making clearing the roads harder.

So they declare SNOW EMERGENCY and everyone has to stay off the roads or they will be ticketed.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Stephanie:
You know if the DoT would start pushing cars

If Denver had won the Super Bowl when Tebow was QB, DoT would have created a traffic jam to rival the one you're going through now.

[Old Lurker]

Isn't DoT too old to be pushing cars?

[AliceH]

If health care is considered a right, then premiums are just taxes - because there is nothing being "insured" that isn't already assured.

[cathyf]

And here is what Huckabee SHOULD have said:

Two years ago, in a 2012 primary debate, the Democrat Party operative George Stephanopoulos first started spreading this bizarre fantasy that Republicans have some problem with women using birth control. In 2012, at the moment that he was telling this strange lie, you could go to the Target and buy a 28-day prescription for the generic birth control pill Tri-Sprintec for $9. In 2014, after Obamacare's new prescription rules and contraception mandate have gone into effect, that exact same generic drug now costs $28.59. More than TRIPLE. This is a GENERIC drug. The drug manufacturer did no research, did no development, does no research, does no development, no NOTHING for the extra $19.59 per month. $254.67 per year of PURE GRAFT is going to the Democrats' friends in the drug manufacturing industry for EACH woman. Why do the Democrats think that they can get away with this? They think all they have to do is squawk, "SEX, REPUBLICANS, BWAAWWKKK!! SEX, REPUBLICANS, BWAAWWKKK!! SEX, REPUBLICANS, BWAAWWKKK!!!!!" and women won't notice that they are being massively ripped off by the Democrats and their cronies. And that all that insurance premium money which should be going to take care of sick people is instead going into the Obamacrony pockets.

[Miss Marple]

AliceH, Which I think was Roberts convoluted reasoning.

My analogy is food. We don't want people starving on the streets in our country, so we provide food stamps and food pantries.

However, no one guarantees people a steak dinner or lobster thermidor all month. If they blow their food stamps on that, they have to eat gruel until the next payment. Food pantries hand out staples, not snacks and gourmet stuff.

Health care basics can be covered by Medicaid, but once you get to the expensive stuff you need shared risk insurance or large cash payments or a rich relative.

Also, I think mooches should get treatment in large wards with no amenities like TV.

[boricuafudd]

Steph
While I have fond memories of my house on Barrow County, it is times like these that the 1 and 1/2 hour drive each way down I-85 to get to work make me happy I left.

That and the memories of the 3 weeks without power after the Ice Storm in 2000

[jimmyk]

Here's how NBC would have edited cathyf's 4:42:

Mike Huckabee admits: "Republicans have some problem with women using birth control."

[boricuafudd]

Jimmy K
Or:
Republicans think that women are not worth $254.67 per year.

[cathyf]

Yep.

[AliceH]

jimmyk: that OECD country comparison considers you covered by public insurance if you're eligible, and covered by private insurance if it's your primary health care payment system. Not quite the same criteria there, though I suppose it is useful to answer some questions. It doesn't reveal, for example, that ~40% of Canadians have private insurance for prescriptions - because it's not "primary".

I note Germany has 11% listed as Primary=Private insurance. Details under the article for Germany adds:

"Certain groups of people (lifetime officials, self-employed persons, employees with high income) can opt out of the [fairly comprehensive health insurance plan provided by statute] plan and switch to a private insurance contract."

[Stephanie Yes I'm in how bout you?]

Yep, glad I'm not still doing IT contract work at my last place as it was 26 miles each way and smack in the middle of downtown where reports are it is taking one hour to go four blocks on Peachtree.

Dil left work at twelve thirty and is still not home. Perspective: on a good day 4 1/2 hours in the car heading south would have you in Florida from downtown.

[boricuafudd]

I worked in the Buckhead area near Sidney Marcus but leave at 5 am to beat the traffic (hah) eat breakfast and lounge for a bit before work. Then leave work to be home by 7 pm unless...

I hated Hartsfield so much, that when I travelled on business I would use Birmingham or drive the 8 hours and use Orlando.

[clarice]

Andrea proves she's an idiot--bgates, this is priceless: "I thought Iraq was our closest ally before that speech, because remember Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand that one time? (That was back when a smile and a handshake meant ideological alignment and a pledge of support, not like today when smiles and handshakes and bows and bro hugs are just empty diplomatic forms.)"

[clarice]

Who wants to enroll here?
http://i.imgur.com/WGDg5KB.jpg

[jimmyk]

that OECD country comparison considers you covered by public insurance if you're eligible, and covered by private insurance if it's your primary health care payment system.

Thanks, AliceH, I figured it was probably doing something like that because I know in a lot of those countries people supplement the public with private. But still, it seems that there is almost no major country where virtually everyone isn't eligible for public insurance, which makes comparisons about private insurance choices almost impossible.

[Stephanie Yes I'm in how bout you?]

I'm in Snellville and when I worked at SunTrust I left at 5 too and worked 6:30 to 3:30 to avoid traffic. Used to sit in the food court in the am and enjoy a diet coke and a grits scramble before I took the elevator to my office.

[boricuafudd]

Clarice

That looks like a great Art School! LOL

[boris]

"What you get if you aren't covered (pre-Obamacare anyway) is vastly inferior"

This point might seem like a stretch but it's not.

Vastly inferior to what?

Without the old system ALL medicine would be vastly inferior to what we currently have.

People without coverage NOW are getting care that is vastly SUPERIOR to what would have been available without the old system.

People without coverage NOW are getting care that is vastly SUPERIOR to what was available to everybody in their parents generation.

The NEW system will guarantee ALL our grandchildren's medical technology will be vastly inferior to what they would have had.

The claim might be made that the NEW system is more fair to some people NOW (ha!) but it clearly is going to be vastly unfair to everybody in the future.

[Stephanie Yes I'm in how bout you?]

The suckiest commute I ever had was Snellville to Smyrna. I actually took 85 into the city and 75 back out just to avoid 285 in the north side at 6 am. Reverse that in the afternoon at 4. Ick.

Of course in a few years I would have only been 500 yrs from the new Braves stadium. That would really suck without season tix. Workers in that area should add season tix to their comp packages instead of bonuses. Could sell em or use em and avoid traffic if they choose.

[boricuafudd]

Yes, that is a terrible commute, when I had to go to Marietta it was easier for me, coming from further north to take Duluth Hwy to 400 by the time I hit the 285 traffic was better until it got close to the 75 junction.

[jimmyk on iPhone]

"The NEW system will guarantee ALL our grandchildren's medical technology will be vastly inferior to what they would have had."

If by NEW you mean 404care, who are you arguing with?

[boris]

Not arguing with anybody. But if you want I suppose I'd start by claiming that everybody under the old system has access to care that is superior to what would be available if health insurance had been strictly individual based all along.

So my position is that any change to the old system intended to make it more fair to people today, without considering the effect it will have on future generations, is short sighted.

[AliceH]

I just need it to keep working for 40-50 years. ;)

[jimmyk]

everybody under the old system has access to care that is superior to what would be available if health insurance had been strictly individual based all along.

I guess you mean "individual based" as opposed to "employer based." The only change we'd discussed was ending the tax break, which wouldn't necessarily make it "individual based." And the idea isn't to make it more "fair," whatever that means, but more efficient. 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.

[boris]

"The only change we'd discussed was ending the tax break"

And non denial ...

"My guess is that without the subsidy people would shift more towards high-deductible coverage ..."

My guess is that a lot fewer people would be getting employer or individual coverage and medicine would advance more slowly.

My guess is the system we had, for a number of reasons, provided a large number of people working for successful corporations with an incentive to finance a health care system much better (if less "efficient") than we would have without it. Those people were happy with what they had. and everybody else was getting the benefit of the advances they financed.

And having health insurance as a pre-payroll expense, however that happened, played a larger role in that advance than your guess appears to grant.

[Ignatz]

--There are other ways -- if you don't have health insurance and your child gets sick, we pay for your child's care but you lose everything you own is SUPPOSED to be the way that it works, but the soft-hearted/soft-headed have screwed that up. Without insurance-buyers receiving something of value that non-buyers don't get there won't be insurance. This is not complicated, it is simply how markets work. If the non-payers can't be excluded from receiving the product, then no one will pay.---

So then you are talking about the post Barrycare situation because prior to the preexisting conditions crap and all the rest of it if you didn't have insurance and you had assets when you got very sick you could very well be forced into bankruptcy and if you could have bought it but didn't that is precisely what should happen to you.
It's not that non payers can't be excluded from receiving the product; they must be bankrupted as their form of payment if they could have paid but chose not to. That is just as much a market signal as price of the premium, perhaps more so.

Health insurance is not like fire insurance because if you lose a house you didn't insure you have only suffered a financial catastrophe when society refuses to build you a new one and you can find somewhere else, even if it's a hovel, to live.

It's rather different for society to refuse to save your life so the price has to be extracted elsewhere than refusal of service. My cold-hearted libertarian hat says that's the way it should be, but my Christian one says if private charities cannot handle the load there is a place for state governments (not the Feds) to step in and require treatment while extracting whatever cost it can from the non payer.