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OWS Evolves

Maddow is way too "lefty" for me on lotsa things, but she's about the smartest there is when it comes to spotting and then connecting the dots; and articulating the politics of it all.

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A Variation On Double-Think

Today's Pix

Sounds Kinda Important, Actually

via Balloon Juice yesterday:

Today is the day that a significant part of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Today is the day that companies that sell and provide health insurance have to start spending 80% to 85% of their income from insurance premiums actually delivering the services for which they charge their customers. Overhead like office space and supplies, marketing expenses, salaries, and yes, profits have to come out of the remaining 15-20%. The rule is called the the medical loss ratio, and in an important decision recently by the Department of Health and Human Services, the insurance companies cannot count the sales commissions that they give out to the people who sell you your insurance plan against the medical loss ratio.

So lemme see - Repubs are promising to "repeal ObamaCare", which (so far) means:

• they want 4,000,000 small businesses to lose their tax breaks
• they want state governments to lose federal help in meeting their Medicaid obligations
• they want the feds to stop cracking down on Medicare fraud
• they want people taking early retirement to lose their Gap Coverage
• they want 4,000,000 seniors to lose the donut hole discounts on Brand Name meds
• they want the 15,000,000 young adults who can now stay covered by their parents' insurance to lose their coverage
• they want insurance companies to go back to using tricks and traps to justify rescinding coverage; and they don't want any way for a patient to appeal rescission. 
• they want the 20,000,000 Americans who used to be subject to denial of coverage due to "pre-existing conditions" to lose their coverage
• they want the insurance companies to arbitrate payouts according to business considerations instead of clinical evaluation.
• they want 20,000,000 low-income Americans to lose access to Community Health Centers
• they want Americans living in (mostly rural) underserved ares to lose support for the docs and nurses who want to stay in those places, but can't afford it

And as of 02-DEC-2011, they want the insurance companies to continue to have the option of jacking up your premiums in order to pay sales bonuses, and to pay out nice fat stock dividends, and, and, and - the law now requires the insurers to pay out 80% of their revenues to healthcare providers.  As much as I hate strict regulation on actual levels of profit and reward, I can't help but see this as a common-sense attempt to get us all to understand that healthcare is just one of the things that can't be shoehorned into the standard business school model.

Take a quick peek at the ObamaCare Timeline.

Crooks & Liars vs Naomi Wolf

C&L blogger Karoli is engaged in what I characterize as a cat fight with Naomi Wolf over Wolf's assertion that some city governments coordinated with DHS regarding the crackdown on OWS.

While I agree with a lot of the commenters that Karoli doesn't need to parse Wolf's statements quite so closely, I think Karoli is mostly right to remind us that intuition is important and should not be ignored, but real evidence is what we're supposed to be looking for - not suspicion and innuendo and assumption. 

Naomi Wolf Defends Herself By Ignoring Her Grand Conspiracy Theory

Oops - Herman Cain Could Be Out

So my prediction turns out to have been (apparently) totally wrong.  In a post from early November, I said the allegations of sexual impropriety would help Cain rather than hurt him.  Looks like I was way off on that one - and that should come as no big surprise to anybody.

Anyway, Herman says he'll be meeting with Mrs Cain this weekend, and should be making "a major announcement" about plans for his campaign.

Given that "sources close to the Cain family" have said Herm's marriage "never felt real", and that it seems he had to request a meeting with his wife to talk it over, everybody's calling this one done.

Christmas Lights

This is easily one of my absolute favorite times of the year.  I just get kinda jazzed about Christmas.  And one of the things that really gets me going is seeing the decorations go up - especially the ones that show a sense of the season that's a little (or a lot) skewed from "normal".

Coin-Operated Politicians

From the Ron Paul campaign (hat tip - BlueGal via facebook)

Somethin's Up

I'm not a big fan of either Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, but when they're both singin' the same tune on a particular issue, I start to get the feeling I should pay a little more attention to what they're trying to say - at least on that one thing.