Thursday, August 2, 2012
With Liberty and Health Care for All
The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.
—Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
It is becoming increasingly apparent that it’s important for the poor to stay healthy. There is no way the seventh richest country in the world is going to be able to care for the poor if they get sick and they owe it to the rest of us to stay healthy. If they don’t, it inflicts on the more fortunate a sense of guilt, except of course, among those who attribute the state in which the poor find themselves, to their own lack of initiative. Those are people like Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.
In Texas one out of four people or 25% of its population has no health insurance, the highest number of uninsured in any state in the union. If the governor opted to accept all the benefits available to Texas under the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), an additional 1.7 million Texans would find themselves insured through no effort on their part. That is an undesirable result since bestowing benefit without requiring effort encourages the indolent to remain indigent. That helps explain why Governor Perry is declining to expand Medicaid in his state. As he explained on Fox News, “The bottom line here is that Medicaid is a failed program.” To expand this program is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic” (although in the case of Texas it’s 1.7 million people.) He refuses to expand the program even though a report from Harvard and another from the Congressional Budget Office state that health insurance is a good thing for people to have and expanding Medicaid programs enables more people to enjoy the benefits it provides.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine compared mortality rates of the poor in seven states, three of which expanded their Medicaid programs beginning in 2000 and four of which did not. The states that expanded coverage were Maine, New York and Arizona and the states that did not expand coverage were New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada.
The study found that “Medicaid expansions were associated with a significant reduction in adjusted all-cause mortality (by 19. 6 deaths per 100,000 adults, for a relative reduction of 6.1%). . . .” The report states that: “Mortality reductions were greatest among adults between the ages of 35 and 64 years, minorities, and residents of poor counties.” The report says that: “These findings may influence states’ decisions with respect to Medicaid expansion under the ACA.” The conclusion is correct although not necessarily producing the results the authors may have anticipated. Given the fact that there is a decreased risk of mortality among those who have health insurance Mr. Perry will undoubtedly be reinforced in his belief that Medicaid should not be expanded in Texas. What Mr. Perry and others like him want, is for there to be fewer indigent people in their states. If this cannot be accomplished by getting the poor to develop incentive and find work, it can be accomplished by increasing the mortality rate among the poor by not expanding access to health care, thus producing the same result helping them find employment would produce.
The Harvard report also cites the good results observed in the Medicaid expansion lottery that took place in Oregon beginning in 2008 that was discussed here some weeks ago. That study found that people with health insurance enjoyed better health than those without insurance, were less likely to be burdened by unpaid medical bills and more likely to make regular visits to a family doctor. Overall they enjoyed better health than those without insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office should also give Mr. Perry comfort. It has released the results of its study on the affect of the Supreme Court ruling on the number of people who will still be uninsured when the new law has taken effect. It was originally thought that if the expansion of Medicaid were compulsory 33 million people now lacking insurance would obtain insurance with its accompanying benefits by 2022 when the law took full effect. Since states were given the option by the Supreme Court of refusing to expand Medicaid coverage to cover low income childless adults, the CBO now believes that 6 million people will not be added to the Medicaid roles although 3 million of those will probably get insurance elsewhere thus leading to 3 million more U.S. citizens being without health insurance than the CBO had calculated when ACA first became law. Applying the results of the Harvard study to those 3 million, one can conclude that there will be increased mortality rate among this group thus demonstrating that there is more than one way to reduce the number of poor who are living among us. That, if nothing else, should give those who oppose ACA something to cheer about. Who’d have thought it?
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Religious and Sexual Orientation in the BSA
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s DictionaryPrejudice, n. a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
It’s not 1991 in the Boy Scouts of America. That was the year that the Girl Scouts issued a Statement in which they said: “As a private organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. respects the values and beliefs of each of its members and does not intrude into personal matters. Therefore, there are no membership policies on sexual preference.”
It’s not 1993 in the Boy Scouts of America. That was the year that at the Girl Scouts’ national convention in Minneapolis it was decided by a vote of 1560 to 375, that a girl scout could pledge service to “God,” “Allah”, the Creator” or anyone else she wished. B. LaRae Orullian, its national president said: “The important thing is that the spiritual principles which continue to be the fundamentals of Girl Scouting recognize that there are some religious groups . . . that believe in a spiritual motivating force, but use words other than God.”
It’s not 2003 in the Boy Scouts of America. In a 2003 Girl Scout tract entitled “What We Stand For” the organization said: “The Girl Scouts value diversity and inclusiveness and, therefore, do not discriminate on any basis. . . . We believe that sexual orientation is a private matter for girls and their families to address.”
It’s not 2011 in the Boy Scouts of America. That was the year that the Girl Scouts of Colorado said: If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”
It’s 2012 in the Boy Scouts of America. It could be 1910, the year the organization was formed. It could be 1993. That was the year that the Boy Scouts defended a suit brought by 10-year old Mark Welsh who lived in Chicago and wanted to become a Boy Scout. Since he was a boy he was the right sex, and since he wasn’t gay, he had the right sexual orientation. His only failing was he did not believe in the Boy Scout’s God. In fact, he said he didn’t believe in any god. He was an atheist. That was too much for the Boy Scouts. They denied him admission. He sued demanding to be admitted to the scouts. The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two of whose members had been left stranded in the 19th Century upheld the Scouts. They said letting young Mark in would “run the risk of undermining one of the seedbeds of virtue that cultivate the sorts of citizens our nation so desperately needs. [Bigots].” So much for Mark.
While looking back fondly on that outcome, the Boy Scouts of America continue to march forward into the 19th Century. In April 2012, Boy Scout den mother, Jennifer Tyrrell, of Bridgeport, Ohio, was told by the Boy Scouts that she could no longer serve as a den mother because she was a lesbian. On July 1, 2012 she delivered a petition with 300,000 signatures on it to the Boy Scouts demanding that she be reinstated. Shortly after she submitted her petition the Boy Scouts of America announced the conclusion of a 2-year study on the question of gays in the scouts and reaffirmed the policy of “not granting membership to open or avowed homosexuals.” The organization reaffirmed its belief that admitting atheists, agnostics and gays would reflect badly on the organization. Bob Mazzuca, Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts explained the policy saying: “The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family . . . . and at the appropriate time and in the right setting.” This is a progressive attitude since it means a boy who engages in same-sex orientation discussions at home is not offensive to the organization. However, parents who learn of what the scouts would consider a son’s incorrect sexual orientation should keep that information within the family and not share it with a prospective scout troop.
According to documents released in a 1993 lawsuit against the Scouts, between 1971 and 1991, 1,800 Scout Masters were removed from their posts because they were suspected of molesting boys. In some cases the offending individuals were simply reassigned to other posts. In 2010 a jury awarded an Oregon man $18.5 million for abuse suffered by a man at the hands of his scout master during the 1980s. In 2009 a Burnsville, Minnesota scoutmaster was arrested and charged with six felony counts of sexually abusing scouts in his troop. In 2011 he was found guilty of assaults on one boy and faced additional charges. In March 2012 a boy scout volunteer was found guilty of first and second-degree sexual assault of one of the scouts who visited him in his home.
Heaven only knows what things would change if the Scouts were now to admit gays and atheists. The answer might well be-nothing.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Bankers and Madoff-Peas in a Pod
I think a lie with a purpose is wan iv the’ worst kind an’ the mos’ profitable.
— Finley Peter Dunne, On Lying
There was something refreshing about Bernie Madoff. He robbed Peters to pay Pauls and it worked well until there were more Pauls than Peters. It was straightforward and simple. And that is the difference between him and Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the many other large financial institutions that cheat those with whom they deal. Bernie was not subtle. No Congressional hearings or hearings in the British parliament were required in order to understand what happened.
A man named Diamond runs Barclays and a man named Dimon runs JPMorgan Chase. The similarity in names is not all they have in common. Each man has presided over an institution that has dealt less than fairly, in the case of JPMorgan, with its customers, and in the case of Barclays, with consumers everywhere. JPMorgan did it by ripping off its customers and Barclays did it by manipulating the LIBOR rate. (It is now reported that four other major European banks are being investigated for similar behavior.)
Barclays manipulated the LIBOR rate from 2005-2009. The LIBOR rate is the rate banks charge each other for inter-bank loans. According to Ezra Klein from 2005 to 2007 Barclay’s placed bets that LIBOR rates would increase. Barclays would then report artificially high rates to the authority gathering the rates from the banks to establish the LIBOR rate thus improving the chance that the LIBOR rate would go up and the bets the firm made would pay off. Investors on the other side of the bet were losers and borrowers whose interest rates on loans were set to LIBOR were paying artificially high rates. Beginning in 2008 when the solvency of financial institutions was being questioned, instead of reporting artificially high rates Barclays reported artificially low rates leading regulators to believe the bank was healthier than it was thus reducing the likelihood that its stability would be questioned. (When rates were low consumers benefitted since mortgages, credit card loans and other financial transactions are tied to those rates.) When the LIBOR manipulation came to light, Mr. Diamond sent a memo to staff saying he was “disappointed because many of these things happened on my watch.” On July 2 he said that although disappointed he would not resign his position. On July 3 he resigned. Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said the episode was “evidence of systematic greed at the expense of financial integrity and stability” and said the bank was in flagrant breach of its duty “to observe proper standards of market conduct. . . .” Any reader who tries to understand my attempt to describe the LIBOR manipulation and its effects will certainly appreciate the simplicity of Mr. Madoff’s scheme.
JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest mutual fund managers in the country. In addition to selling its own funds, it is in a position to sell other funds to its customers. According to a story in the New York Times its sales personnel were encouraged to sell customers its proprietary funds rather than those of competitors, even when the competitors’ funds had historically performed better than the bank’s funds. One former employee said he was “selling JPMorgan funds that often had weak performance records, and I was doing it for no other reason than to enrich the firm. I couldn’t call myself objective.” Some people might have been surprised at those disclosures thinking that the bank would have reformed its ways after 2011. That was the year the bank was ordered to pay $373 million to American Century Investments because it failed to honor its agreement with American Century to promote American Century products when it acquired that firm’s retirement-plan services unit. The arbitrators who heard the case said JPMorgan employees were rewarded for pushing JPMorgan’s own products.
Goldman Sachs is another venerable institution that benefits itself at the expense of its customers. In March 2012 Chancellor Leo Strine of the Court of Chancery in Delaware issued a lengthy ruling in the case of in re El Paso Shareholder Litigation. He criticized Goldman for its blatant conflict of interest when trying to acquire El Paso Corp describing it as “disturbing behavior.” Jonathan Weil who writes for Bloomberg, made the observation about Goldman’s conduct in that transaction that Goldman had “every incentive to maximize its own investment and fleece El Paso shareholders.”
At roughly the same time Chancellor Strine’s opinion was making the news a former Goldman employee published an op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he said, among other things, that the firm’s clients were “sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. . . . It is purely about how we can make the most possible money off them {clients.}.”
Readers should understand that the foregoing does not purport to be a complete list of banks that have devised schemes to enrich themselves at the expense of their customers. It is only a small sampling. As I said at the outset, the nice thing about Bernie was how straightforward his malfeasance was. Everyone can understand it. The banks are no more honest than he-just more artful.