Submitted by hipparchia on Sat, 06/01/2013 - 12:37am
The Dartmouth Atlas is a decades-long project that has primarily documented that some dead old people are more expensive than others and that some parts of the country seem to have more expensive dead old people than do other parts of the country. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 9:29pm
CNET Founder Halsey Minor Bankrupt 5 Years After Firm's $1.8 Billion Sale:
[Halsey] Minor, 47, who sold CNET Networks Inc. to CBS Corp. in 2008, says he owes as much as $100 million and only has, at most, $50 million to pay his debts thanks to bad bets on real estate and other ventures that took him out of what he calls his technology comfort zone.
He’s made sure that he won’t be the only one who’s uncomfortable. There’s no money for his unsecured creditors, he said in his bankruptcy petition, which seeks to hand over all his eligible assets to a court official who will sell them to the highest bidder and wipe Minor’s finances clean for whatever he decides to do next.
“Choosing Chapter 7 is clearing the slate,” said Bob Rattet, a bankruptcy lawyer in White Plains, New York. “He isn’t required like Middle America to pay his debts, because they’re mostly business-related.”
Of course! Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 1:50pm
Yet another way ObamaCare creates second-class citizens by "the luck of the draw." Robert Laszewski in The Health Care Blog:
Are people going to get more coverage for their money? Yes. Do they want more coverage if the premium costs for those plans is a lot higher? Likely yes if taxpayers are paying for most of it. If not, clearly they didn’t want to pay for it before. Come January, lots of California consumers in the small group and individual market are going to get a letter from their existing insurer telling them their current plan is no longer available and the cost of the new required plans will be a lot more.
Simply, the new law is taking plan design choices away instead of letting the consumer decide what is good for them. Does that matter in California?
As the LA Times reported, “The average premium for individual plans sold through EHealthInsurance in California was $177 per month last year. Covered California said the average premium for the three lowest Silver plans statewide will be $321 a month [+81% over two years], albeit for more comprehensive benefits.”
For those insured right now, and the estimated 40% that won’t be eligible for a federal premium subsidy, that sure looks like rate shock to me.
Yep, even worse, the ObamaCare public relations push compared apples to oranges -- or rather, to lemons -- in two different ways: Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 12:37pm
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 10:28am
Submitted by danps on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 6:30am
Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
The music business was probably the first big segment of the entertainment industry to need to figure out the Internet. Napster forced the industry to think about it because Napster's original version used peer-to-peer technology, which allowed users share their own music files and copy others'. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 12:30am
Basically for security and stability it's always best to run the current version of everything. So I brought all the modules up to date. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 05/31/2013 - 12:06am
Because Montana is Max Baucus's home state, that's why.
After his own constituents in Libby, Mont., became uninsurable by private insurance due to industrial pollution with carcinogens and were unable to get the courts to hold the polluters responsible, [Senator Max] Baucus came to the rescue. He simply tucked a little provision into the massive health reform bill making affected Montanans eligible for — you guessed it — Medicare.
No health insurance exchanges for these hardworking folks. Nothing but the best for Libby. By taking the simple, direct and most efficient route to expanding health-care coverage, Mr. Baucus did the right thing by his constituents. But Baucus made sure that everybody else had to settle for Obamacare.
If there's anything I hate more than ObamaCare's horrible system architecture*, it's the way ObamaCare relentlessly creates second-class citizens. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Thu, 05/30/2013 - 11:45pm
Video of Cooper Union commencement, including carré rouge:
Submitted by letsgetitdone on Thu, 05/30/2013 - 10:15pm
It makes a good headline; but it’s dangerous to say “austerity is dead,” just because new budget projections indicate that the deficit has already been cut by $200 Billion more than in previous projections, and because the Reinhart-Rogoff study has been debunked successfully, and, hopefully, irretrievably. Austerity will only be dead when legislators, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Central Bankers, and international lending organizations stop trying to implement it, whether or not they stop because deficits have already been cut.
Of course, those claiming austerity is dead, mean by their claim that deficit cutting efforts have already been successful enough in the United States that future projections in all the mainstream budget plans now show only “moderate” deficits (See the Table which now includes CBO revised budget projections.) These don’t signal a debt crisis, and instead suggest that we can now turn to the really serious economic, health, and environmental challenges we face. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 05/29/2013 - 5:04pm
From selling "hope and change" to selling insurance. How transformative! Kaiser:
President Obama To Hit The Campaign Trail For Health Law
President Obama often tells audiences that he has waged his last campaign. But that’s not exactly true.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 05/29/2013 - 2:59pm
Plants that repel mosquitos. When I'm done planting, I hope to then sit in my garden, not working in it, but working on my computer. But yesterday, when we had our brief moment of sun (snarl), I noticed a mosquito. So I'm wondering if there are plants that repel them? I did a quick Google search, but what I'm really wondering is if anybody has personal experience. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 05/29/2013 - 2:06pm
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 05/29/2013 - 1:53pm
Since Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg gave the Cooper Union commencement address 10AM -- and what a signal that is -- I thought I'd check out twitter to see if anything exciting happened, like a case of entartism, but if it did, there's no reporting on it yet. Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 05/29/2013 - 12:40pm
I went and got straw yesterday, so I'm going out into the garden, even if it is only 60°, and plant some stuff. Read below the fold...
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