I worked at a lot of places and had a lot of health plans over the years. Each one paid for everything, accidents, cancer, operations, obstetrics, drug addiction, chiropractice, mental illness, prescription drugs, you name it. That's the ordinary company health plan.
Is that gold plated? What more could a health plan offer?
I think the current talk about taxing gold plated health plans actually means taxing all company plans. Which means taxing most people's health plans, since most people get their health insurance thru their company.
The real reason companies offer nice health plans is the tax break. The plan is tax free to the employee, and so a dollar of health care is worth $1.50, more than a dollar of ordinary taxable salary to employees. Eliminate that tax break and companies will decide it's easier to just pay salary rather than messing around with health care. Given five or ten years and most of us are out of company paid health care and doing God knows what.
You cannot finance health care by taxing health care. It's like hoisting yourself by your bootstraps. Obama needs to learn this.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Yet another thing Obama didn't talk about
He said nothing about allowing nationwide sale of health insurance. Right now, only insurance companies licensed by the state can sell insurance in that state. Few insurance companies have the time, money, and lawyers to get licensed in all 50 states. So us patients are limited in our choice of insurance company to the few that operate in the state we live in.
We could pass a federal law allowing any insurance company licensed by one state to sell insurance in every state. This would increase competition between insurance companies, and lower premiums. And not raise our taxes at all.
We could pass a federal law allowing any insurance company licensed by one state to sell insurance in every state. This would increase competition between insurance companies, and lower premiums. And not raise our taxes at all.
Words of the Weasel Part 10
"Is the recession over?" asked a newsie.
"Probably in a partial limited sense" said Paul Krugman on the ABC Sunday pundit show. Paul Krugman is supposed to be an economist although he is actually an editor of the New York Times. Classic evasion reply, saying both yes and no at the same time.
"Probably in a partial limited sense" said Paul Krugman on the ABC Sunday pundit show. Paul Krugman is supposed to be an economist although he is actually an editor of the New York Times. Classic evasion reply, saying both yes and no at the same time.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Going back to Firefox 3.0.12
The firefox web site doesn't show any of the 3.0.yadda-yadda versions. I just downloaded 3.0.12 from here. Works good, much better than 3.5.1. The 3.5.xx versions do have a faster render engine, it can paint the screen faster. But it has some kinda bug about opening new websites which cripples it so badly that the 3.0.xx version gives a better browsing experience.
FireFox 3.5 and the firewall, again
Firefox 3.5 is still having great difficult finding websites. Click to go to a site and often as not you get a "cannot connect to server" error message. I turned the firewall clean off, ran barefoot, and the problem is still there. I'm going back to 3.0.10
Fed unveils borrower protection rules.
After two years of mortgage catastrophes that brought on Great Depression II, the Fed is proposing a few little tweaks to mortgage policy. Just hand the borrowers a slip of paper with a few numbers on it before they sign the mortgage. The paper, if read, would warn about negative amortization (payments aren't big enough to reduce the outstanding balance)and balloon notes, (incredible amounts of money still owned the bank when the mortgage runs out). The lender is supposed to "provide clearer information" on how much the bank might jack up monthly payments on Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs).
And they want to restrict kickbacks to mortgage brokers for steering marks into higher rate mortgages.
Oh yes, they want to revise how the interest rate is computed.
This weak tea is supposed to protect us from Great Depression III, coming to an economy near you.
How about standardizing the way interest is computed? My little local bank has a sign in their lobby listing two different interest rates for every kind of loan they would make. I asked about that once, and received a complicated explanation as to what the difference was. How can I shop for the lowest rate when each lender figures the rate a different way? Having a standard way of computing interest isn't a restriction on the right to make money.
Then there is the title insurance scam. The bank or someone gets a free few thousand dollars to guarantee that no shyster lawyer will turn up and claim ownership of the property because of an uncrossed T or undotted I in the title. That ought to be outlawed.
They ought to outlaw "points", another few thousand dollars claimed by the bank at closing for no particular reason. Banks charge "points" because they can.
They ought to outlaw mortgage brokerage completely. Everyone knows that you get mortgages from banks. Home buyers can go to the bank without paying a mortgage broker a fat fee for getting them in the bank door.
They ought to outlaw the termite inspection scam, the radon inspection and mitigation scam, the smoke alarm scam, the urethane insulation scam, and the lead paint scam. The house is sold as is. Should the new owner desire these various improvements, he is free to pay for them. The state should not force the seller to make these expensive and unnecessary improvements that the seller doesn't care about.
And they want to restrict kickbacks to mortgage brokers for steering marks into higher rate mortgages.
Oh yes, they want to revise how the interest rate is computed.
This weak tea is supposed to protect us from Great Depression III, coming to an economy near you.
How about standardizing the way interest is computed? My little local bank has a sign in their lobby listing two different interest rates for every kind of loan they would make. I asked about that once, and received a complicated explanation as to what the difference was. How can I shop for the lowest rate when each lender figures the rate a different way? Having a standard way of computing interest isn't a restriction on the right to make money.
Then there is the title insurance scam. The bank or someone gets a free few thousand dollars to guarantee that no shyster lawyer will turn up and claim ownership of the property because of an uncrossed T or undotted I in the title. That ought to be outlawed.
They ought to outlaw "points", another few thousand dollars claimed by the bank at closing for no particular reason. Banks charge "points" because they can.
They ought to outlaw mortgage brokerage completely. Everyone knows that you get mortgages from banks. Home buyers can go to the bank without paying a mortgage broker a fat fee for getting them in the bank door.
They ought to outlaw the termite inspection scam, the radon inspection and mitigation scam, the smoke alarm scam, the urethane insulation scam, and the lead paint scam. The house is sold as is. Should the new owner desire these various improvements, he is free to pay for them. The state should not force the seller to make these expensive and unnecessary improvements that the seller doesn't care about.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Real trains don't do rear end collisions
Real trains? Those are the trains with a real engineer, not a microprocessor, running the train.
The first unreal train was Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) out in San Francisco. Originally designed for fully automatic, hands off, no engineer running, to save on California labor costs. Half way thru the project a design review showed the automatic control system was downright dangerous. The central computer (a Data General Eclipse if memory serves) would order a train to close doors and accelerate out of the station. The computer assumed that the trains did as ordered, and so, if it had ordered train 1 to depart the station, it assumed the station was clear and ran train 2 right into it. At the design review it was pointed out that should train 1 suffer anyone of a myriad of ordinary faults (blown fuse, broken wire, loose connector, etc,etc,ad nauseum) it would fail to depart the station as ordered, and the computer would ram the next train right into the back of it.
The project was too far along to redesign the cars and add a real engineer's position. They gave the poor engineer a windshield to look out of, and a big red panic button to slam on the brakes. Nothing more. The engineers rode along with the central computer running the train, and the engineer sitting in the front waiting for a catastrophe that required him to hit the panic button.
Couple months after opening, a BART train drove right off the tracks. It was the end of the line, and instead of heading back, the train drove forward off the end of line. It plowed thru a huge sand pile left as a bumper and wound up looking foolish. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
They asked the engineer why he had failed to hit the panic button before the train ran off the tracks. The answer went something like this. "I've been sitting in the front of that stupid train for 8 hours doing nothing. I must have not been paying attention, and we were off the tracks before I could do anything about it."
Lesson learned. Until the guy sitting in the front of the train is actually running the train, throttle, brakes, open and close doors, whistle for the grade crossings, watch the block signals and don't go thru a red signal, he will doze off, text message, read a book, anything to relieve the boredom, he isn't going to be alert enough to do any good when the automation breaks down.
Better not to have automation. Have the engineer actually run the train. You gotta pay him just to sit there, might as well have him operate the train. Save money, omit the automation.
The first unreal train was Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) out in San Francisco. Originally designed for fully automatic, hands off, no engineer running, to save on California labor costs. Half way thru the project a design review showed the automatic control system was downright dangerous. The central computer (a Data General Eclipse if memory serves) would order a train to close doors and accelerate out of the station. The computer assumed that the trains did as ordered, and so, if it had ordered train 1 to depart the station, it assumed the station was clear and ran train 2 right into it. At the design review it was pointed out that should train 1 suffer anyone of a myriad of ordinary faults (blown fuse, broken wire, loose connector, etc,etc,ad nauseum) it would fail to depart the station as ordered, and the computer would ram the next train right into the back of it.
The project was too far along to redesign the cars and add a real engineer's position. They gave the poor engineer a windshield to look out of, and a big red panic button to slam on the brakes. Nothing more. The engineers rode along with the central computer running the train, and the engineer sitting in the front waiting for a catastrophe that required him to hit the panic button.
Couple months after opening, a BART train drove right off the tracks. It was the end of the line, and instead of heading back, the train drove forward off the end of line. It plowed thru a huge sand pile left as a bumper and wound up looking foolish. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
They asked the engineer why he had failed to hit the panic button before the train ran off the tracks. The answer went something like this. "I've been sitting in the front of that stupid train for 8 hours doing nothing. I must have not been paying attention, and we were off the tracks before I could do anything about it."
Lesson learned. Until the guy sitting in the front of the train is actually running the train, throttle, brakes, open and close doors, whistle for the grade crossings, watch the block signals and don't go thru a red signal, he will doze off, text message, read a book, anything to relieve the boredom, he isn't going to be alert enough to do any good when the automation breaks down.
Better not to have automation. Have the engineer actually run the train. You gotta pay him just to sit there, might as well have him operate the train. Save money, omit the automation.
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