Day Zero +1825

Yep - one day at a time.

One scary summer down, we shall see about the future.

Now I gotta clean house...

jc

PS: Interesting note on probiotics - I emailed him and I think I will try it.

Congressional staff (trust me, no Congress critter could do this alone) hobble this "and the kitchen sink too!" piece of legistlation together, and yet when it hits the real world >BAM< it falls apart.

Whodathunk?

From my favorite website Instapundit.com:

ONE OF OBAMACARE’S WEAKEST LINKS: Information Technology.
During the design and passage of the Affordable Care Act, its architects and supporters described a fantastic new system for buying insurance. You would go onto a website and enter some simple information about yourself. The computer system would fetch data about you from various places — it would verify income with the Internal Revenue Service, check with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that you were a citizen or legal resident, and tap a database of employer coverage to make sure that you were not already being offered affordable coverage (defined as 9.5 percent of your income or less) by your employer. Provided you passed all those tests, it would calculate what subsidies you were eligible for, and then apply that discount automatically to the hundreds of possible policies being offered on the exchange. You would see the neatly listed prices and choose one, buying it as easily as you buy an airline ticket on Travelocity.
Before I went to business school, I used to work in an IT consultancy, and setting up this system sounded like an enormous job to me — a five- to eight-year job, given government procurement rules, not a three-year rush special. But Obamacare’s stewards seemed very confident, so I assumed that they must have it covered.
As time wore on, the administration has steadily stripped major components out of the exchanges and the data hub behind them as it became clear that they couldn’t possibly make the Oct. 1 deadline when all of this was supposed to be ready. The employer mandate was delayed, and then it was announced that at least some of the exchanges would be relying on self-reporting of income, rather than verifying with the IRS. . . .
How did we get to this point? The exchanges were the core selling point of Obamacare. (The Medicaid expansion was actually a bigger part of the coverage expansion, at least until the Supreme Court ruled that the administration couldn’t force states to take part, but it tended to be downplayed, because no one’s exactly a huge fan of Medicaid.) They were going to introduce competition to a fragmented and distorted marketplace, and make it easy for middle-class people to buy affordable coverage from a bevy of insurers. How can it be that one week before the deadline for opening, no one’s really sure the exchanges are going to work?
The country’s in the very best of hands. Plus, from the comments:
If Obamacare were merely an IT project I wouldn’t think twice about it. I would take it in a heartbeat over what Obamacare actually is.
Obamacare is not about the exchanges and I’m stunned that you would say that it is. Obamacare is a five-fold reentrenchment of the insane health care payment system that we have somehow allowed to evolve from its origins as a wretched socialist mistake made in the 1940s by the wretched socialist FDR administration attempting to put price caps on salaries.
Obamacare is a giant leap forward on the path of more bureaucracy, less choice, worse quality, and higher cost. It continues removing decisions from consumers and providers and placing them with third parties. It makes health care decisions even more contingent upon rulings by the IRS (THE IRS!!!) than they already were – and the fact that our health care financing system is largely overseen by our tax collection agency should be absurd on its face, and yet Obamacare doubles down on this absurdity.
If it were all about the exchanges I’d be ECSTATIC. Write the specs then take bids from Amazon and IBM and Raytheon and call it a day. It’d be full of problems but it would work eventually.
What we have instead will never work, even if the exchanges someday do. What we have instead will only serve to make things worse.
Amazing that this dumb law, and huge financial costs for the nation, ultimately stem from FDR’s dumb wartime wage controls, but in fact that’s correct.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Glenn, first off, please do not use my name if you choose to mention anything I say in this email.
I work for one of the largest Telecom providers in the country. I’m an engineer who designs dedicated data links (DS3s, OC3s, etc…) for major companies across the US.
For background, some of these circuits can be put up fairly quickly, but not the ones that I work on. The ones I design can take up to 90 business days to install.
Anyways, a few weeks ago, we got deluged with orders for circuits that needed to be installed by October 1st. These were circuits to support Obamacare.
Needless to say, they aren’t going to make that deadline. Some of the circuits are being held up due to construction builds that won’t be complete until the end of November. The others won’t make the deadline due to the complexity and the number of various companies involved.
The customer is basically screaming and escalating but because they requested the orders so late, there isn’t much that can be done.
I can only imagine that this same scenario is playing out with other Telecom companies in the United States.
The country’s in the very best of hands.

What the hell - I'm on their naughty list anyway...

Another e-mail to my congress critter:

Did you support the Obamacare waiver for your staff?

Are you in favor of repealing the Obamacare waiver for your staff?

Answers please. The louder and clearer the better.

jc

Lets see if Ed Royce answers this one...

jc

BTW: still waiting on a response on the last one.

Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Morons... led by complete morons

And to think that people actually pay him for his "serious manner" and "deep insight".

Bullshit.

This guy talks to no one other than the self appointed "consensus makers" of the same ilk and therefore confirm all their looney ideas to themselves, congratulating said ilk about their deep brilliance.

Bullshit.

Bill Moyers should be put in the alzheimer's ward and left to dazzle the nurses there on an hourly basis with his deep brilliance.

Syria is not climate related (whatever the hell that means) and he is clueless about the millennia of undercurrents that shape that battlespace.

What can the US do there?

Short of cleaning the surface of the earth of every human within the borders of what we currently call "Syria", nothing. A bomblet here and there will change nothing.

Grrrrrrr...

jc

Another note to my Congress Critter

I actually kind of like him, but even Ed Royce needs his feet put to the fire...

The actual note:

Just a quick note so you can use your next few session days usefully representing me...

Immigration: NOTHING COMPREHENSIVE (like the Senate bill)

Syria: We have no dog in this fight. POTUS made his red-lined bed, let him lie in it.

ObamaCare: Defund it. Not just discretionary funding, ALL OF IT.

Wrap it up quick and get out of there...

Thanks-

jc

PS: Give my best to Patty Shay!

Just as I like it - short and sweet.

Not that he will ever read it...

jc

I always thought that the antibiotics had something to do with it...

http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/08/29/quitting-smoking-can-lead-to-weight-gain-but-changes-in-intestinal-bacteria-not-increased-appetite-likely-to-blame/

After taking antibiotics for, what seemed forever, I have gained 50 pounds since my pre-cancer days.

Flora and thyroid... a nasty combo.

Gotta go get some ice cream now-

jc

Weight gain in ex-smokers likely caused by changes in intestinal bacteria, not increased appetite

David Rockne Corrigan | 13/08/29 | Last Updated: 13/08/29 5:03 PM ET
More from David Rockne Corrigan | @rocknecorrigan

Swiss researchers have found that changes to intestinal bacteria, not increases in calorie intake, are to blame for weight gains in people who quit smoking.

Grant Black/Calgary HeraldSwiss researchers have found that changes to intestinal bacteria, not increases in calorie intake, are to blame for weight gains in people who quit smoking.

A question for all of the on-again, off-again smokers out there: Have you noticed that you gain weight every time you quit smoking?

If the answer is yes, as it is for many — 80% of people who quit smoking put on an average of 15 pounds — you may be surprised to learn that it has little to do with your calorie intake.

Researchers in Switzerland have found that weight gains after quitting smoking are due to changes in the composition of intestinal flora, and not due to increased calorie intake.

They found that weight increases occur even if the calorie intake levels remain the same or even decrease compared to levels before ditching the cigarettes.

Researchers attributed the weight gains to changes in the bacterial diversity of the intestine.

For the study, a group of 20 people were asked to give stool samples. The group included five smokers, five non-smokers, and 10 people who quit smoking one week into the study.

Weight increases occur even if the calorie intake levels remain the same or even decrease compared to levels before ditching the cigarettes

While bacterial diversity underwent little change in the smokers and non-smokers, there were lots of shifts in the intestines of those who quit smoking.

Test subjects who quit smoking gained an average of 4.8 pounds over the course of the nine-week study, even though their eating a drinking habits remained the same (for the most part — towards the end of the study, these participants drank more alcohol than they did before they quit smoking).

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesBelgian scientists have discovered a link between intestinal flora and complications related to obesity.

Another recent study concerning the diversity of intestinal flora has shown that there is also a link between that diversity and a susceptibility to medical conditions and complications related to obesity.

The research shows that people with fewer bacterial species in their intestines are more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

“This is an amazing result with possibly enormous implications for the treatment and even prevention of the greatest public health issue of our time. But we are not there yet, now we need studies in which we can monitor people for a longer period,” said Jeroen Raes of the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Belgium.

Obesity is a medical concern that has grown to become an epidemic in many parts of the world. It is expected that obesity will affect more than 700 million people by 2015.

Jim's Random Blog on Family, Politics and Cancer - A Time Capsule