Scott Carpenter, during a water egress test in 1962.
Hey, y’all — sorry about not posting yesterday. Busy.
To get things kicked off, here’s an open thread — Silence likes them, if no one else does.
Possible topics:
Obama and the Republicans are finally talking. Are you thrilled? Didn’t think so…
The State had a piece this morning about how seedy Finlay Park has become, according to many. Thoughts.
I see Nancy Mace has sold her share of the blog to Will Folks, as she continues her bid for the U.S. Senate. I need to give her a call and learn more about what she’s up to.
Godspeed, Scott Carpenter. I can’t believe he was 88. The second American in orbit, he was John Glenn’s straight-arrow ally in trying to get the other Mercury astronauts to behave themselves — according to Tom Wolfe.
Related Posts
The parks in general need either more funding or better supervision. I was in Maxcy Gregg Park chatting with my apparently homeless couple friends a few days ago, and they agreed that even when maintenance is done, it is not a very complete job!
Or they just mow the day lily beds.
Andrew Sullivan:
The Sunlight Foundation figured out the list of contractors who worked on the Obamacare website, and noted that the big ones not only are well-known DC power-player insiders, but they’re also big on the lobbying and political contributions side of things. You’ve got companies like… Booz Allen Hamilton, famous for promoting cyberwar hype and employing Ed Snowden. There’s defense contracting giant Northrup Grumman. Then there’s SAIC — which I can’t believe can still get government business. This is the same firm that famously was given a $380 million contract to revamp the FBI system, on which it went $220 million over budget, and then saw the entire system scrapped after it (literally) brought some users to tears, and the FBI realized it was useless in fighting terrorism. SAIC is also the company that NYC Mayor Bloomberg demanded return $600 million after a city computer project (budgeted at $68 million) actually cost $740 million. SAIC has a long list of similar spectacular failures on government IT projects.
—
People in the real world get fired when they screw up implementations as badly as Obamacare has gone. In government? You get a bigger check.
And yet they are all private contractors, not government employees who have done this shabby work. I guess this means the private sector is fallible. I hope they get fired too. Lets wait and see what happens instead of presupposing.
Good point. Most big projects in the federal government have a private component. We couldn’t have landed on the moon without them. Nor could we have landed on the moon without the Federal government taking the lead. Not sure why all this animosity toward the Feds.
They are private contractors selected by government workers. Private contractors who have a poor track record of implementation. Why are they repeatedly selected? Because the people in government making the decisions don’t have a stake in the game. Also because there are rampant cases of kickbacks to those procurement people as well as large donations made by the contractors to political parties. It’s not a market solution – it’s the worst case of a rigged system and zero accountability.
A real market solution would have put the specifications out for the system and allowed any number of companies to come up with a system and prove it would work.. then pick the best one using a panel of non-government employees.
The implementation of Obamacare is what you get when you combine the worst of all possible methodologies.
A private implementation would also include a service level agreement (SLA) that would require the vendor to refund money if they were unable to meet system performance metrics.
From Slate.com:
Development Seed was only able to do the work after being hired by contractor Aquilent, who navigated the bureaucracy of government procurement. “If I were to bid on the whole project,” Gundersen told me, “I would need more lawyers and more proposal writers than actual engineers to build the project. Why would I make a company like that?” These convolutions are exactly what prevented the brilliant techies of Obama’s re-election campaign from being involved with the development of healthcare.gov. To get the opportunity to work on arguably the most pivotal website launch in American history, a smart young programmer would have to work for a company mired in bureaucracy and procurement regulations, with a website that looks like it’s from 10 years ago. So much for the efficiency of privatization.
Unless you are the CEO of a big financial institution. In that case you screw up AND screw your customers AND cheat your stockholders and end up with a bigger bonus.
AND you are a huge financial supporter of Obama and get a post in his cabinet or pay $38K to attend one of his fund raisers.
The government shutdown is affecting things like denying veterans benefits, how is it affecting things like EBT cards, Section 8 subsidies, Obamaphones, etc.? I don’t agree with shutting off veterans benefits (for people who have earned the benefit) vs. those others (for people who have done nothing to earn the benefits).
Like those folks who receive farm subsidies? Those would be the first payments I would stop. Especially those who are in congress.
I’m not going to argue with farm subsidies, but it seems that you’re willing to cut from those actually producing food rather than doing nothing more than consuming food.
Not every farmer makes self-sustaining income from farm subsidies. My cousin is the largest farmer and received the amount of farm subsides in his county last year. He farms 25 quarters of land (4000 acres), his subsides covered about half of just his fuel costs for the year. The 2 quarter family farm is no longer possible except for hobby farmers. Let’s talk basic equipment to farm, a new tractor is $250,000 a new combine with header is close to $300,000, a cultivator is $50,000, a sprayer can go from $65,000 – $300,000. The machine shed (80 x 140) to house this equipment (because you don’t park a Ferrari outside) will run you $150,000. Can you use less expensive equipment, yes, but you will have more downtime and your maintenance costs will go up. Did I mention crop prices are pretty much the same as they were in 1980? At the end of the year when he did his taxes he cleared $50,000. He could have made as much as an assistant manager of an auto parts store and worked half of the number of hours per week.
Tell me again how much those using EBT cards, Section 8 housing, and Obamaphones invest to receive their subsidies.
bud, farm subsidies have been cut, veterans benefits have been threatened to be cut, the only welfare cuts I’m hearing of being cut are WIC payments.
OMG. SDII – et al. All over again.
I’m not familiar with any SDII program, is that a disability program?
Yup….I already told Brad
May have spoke too soon, reports of EBT cards being denied across the country today.
#3
Only because nobody else has said it:
So long, Caligula. Best get to “selling” some of those “books.”
[Wonder why the quotation marks on ‘sales’ in second to last paragraph?]
And in today’s issue of The State, we learn that if you live in Lexington and want to purchase a policy from the Obamacare exchange, you have to purchase a specific non-Blue Cross policy in order to use Lexington Medical Center. Obamacare should be renamed HMObamacare… just wait until people find out that all their doctors aren’t available on the same policy.
“If you live in Lexington County and expect to go to Lexington Medical Center, the hospital is only in-network on one of the four companies providing coverage on the Health Insurance Marketplace in South Carolina, Coventry Health Care of the Carolinas. If you buy a marketplace plan from BlueCross BlueShield of S.C. or BlueChoice Health Plan, you would want to schedule hospital procedures in the Midlands at Providence Hospitals or Palmetto Health facilities. For another insurance provider, Consumers’ Consumers’ Choice Health Plan, both Lexington Medical Center and Providence Hospitals are out-of-network.”
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/10/11/3033695/midlands-hospitals-arent-in-some.html#storylink=cpy
More –
Many of the shoppers on the new marketplace are new to insurance coverage and don’t have physicians they are used to seeing. They will find plenty of family physicians on the networks, though some might not be accepting new patients. Also, there are limited choices for some specialties in some counties.
For instance, BlueCross and BlueChoice networks have two speech language pathologists in Richland and Lexington counties, while Consumers’ Choice has one and Coventry has none. Consumers’ Choice has three local allergists in its network, while BlueCross and BlueChoice have seven and Coventry has eight.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/10/11/3033695/midlands-hospitals-arent-in-some.html#storylink=cpy
So we increase the number of insured, set up limits on which doctors they can use (if they are taking new patients) – is there any doubt that there will be longer wait times for appointments for everyone?
Is HMObamacare’s implementation at New Coke level or Edsel at this point?
Hey, at least New Coke sold some product.
Yeah but people who knew the original product hated the new product and demanded the old product be brought back.
And dramatically outperformed Classic Coke and Pepsi in blind taste tests….which is the same as ACA/Obamacare. Folks actually like it; just some don’t like the concept….
The majority of people who like Obamacare are those people getting subsidies. I bet if New Coke sold for a nickel, it would have sold more too.
That isn’t true – as fact or as hyperbole.
Show me the numbers, Mark. A recent Rasmussen poll found:
“Thirty percent (30%) of all voters believe the nation’s health care system will get better under the new law. Fifty-one percent (51%) still think the law will make the health care system worse.”
So of the 30% who think it will get better, you’re telling me a majority of them are NOT people who will get subsidies?
Who cares what a majority of people think in this regard. The fact is that the marketplace is driving prices down. Insurance companies are being forced into the kind of market efficiencies everybody else has been dealing with!
@Kathryn – the marktetplace isn’t driving prices down at all. The government is setting reimbursement rates. Hospitals and providers are deciding instead to not participate. There are no market forces at work here.
Surely you’ve read all the stories across the country of people whose insurance has increased significantly or been terminated? The reason rates appear lower in some cases is due to the high deductibles. Someone may get a cheap subsidized policy but then be on the hook for $6000 in deductibles.
We’ll see NEXT year how the marketplace is working. The rates for 2014 are based on a lot of healthy people buying insurance. If that doesn’t happen, the so called “death spiral” kicks in where rates increase even more.
Doug, the government only sets reimbursement rates for medicare and medicaid. Private insurance companies which are sold on the exchanges set their own prices for policies and negotiate their own reimbursement rates with providers. Certainly the medicare rates will affect the market and will have some effect on the reimbursement rates private insurers arrive at, but the government is not setting the reimbursement rates of private insurers. The new law requires what policies offered on the exchanges must cover, but private insurers offer the policies for sale on the exchanges at the prices they choose – so market forces are in play. For the first time, consumers can compare comparable policies side by side – the resulting competition is a market force which will affect policy pricing.
No, Doug, the stories. I read are about people who had insurance and now are paying half, or less….
Really. What about the young people who are allowed an extra few years to establish a career while they stay on their parents plan? How about the folks who receive checks from their insurance company when they refund overcharges since they are now required to spend 85% on actual care? Or those with pre-existing conditions who can now buy insurance. What about the folks with long-term illnesses that aren’t faced with a $1million lifetime cap?
@Kathryn – do you just ignore the stories about people who have lost current insurance or had their rates increased significantly? I know there are some people who are able to buy insurance now. That’s a given. But the lies that were told about being able to keep your insurance or your doctor were just that – lies.
@Scout
When the government plan includes all sorts of “free” stuff, the cost is distributed across everyone by increasing the rate. That’s the hidden part of Obamacare – unmarried, young males are expected to pay for the colonoscopies of the middle aged and maternity care for wives they don’t have. This is where Obamacare will fail – when young people realize they are better off paying a fine than paying for insurance coverage they don’t need.
And Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low that many doctors will not accept those patients. This has the consequence of the best doctors who can get by without Medicare/Medicaid being unavailable to the poor/old. Every action used to manipulate the market has consequences. It’s a basic principle of economics.
Doug, I’m not sure where you’ve been but this doctor-out-of-network issue has been a problem for a long time. In fact many of the issues you cite are things that folks have complained about with the old healthcare system for decades. The confusion, long waits, very expensive policies, denial of care (death panels anyone). All of this and more have plagued our healthcare system for far too long. Sadly Obamacare has not addressed all these problems but it has addressed some.
Yeah, bud, so Obamacare is just a continuation of the same problems – and in fact makes it worse by adding more people into the system that is already overloaded. All Obamacare deals with is prices and demand – by reducing prices thru price controls, there will be fewer providers willing to accept that level of payment. By increasing demand, there will be more people competing for the same resources. So the net impact is negative overall.
Well, some of us would have preferred a universal network, a/k/a single payer, but…..
I think single payer would have had a much easier sell in the long run. Instead, Democrats wanted to do SOMETHING to give Obama a legacy. Of the options they had available, they chose the worst one and then went ahead and screwed up the implementation. And we haven’t got to the worst part yet – when not enough healthy people buy into the scam.
It isn’t a scam, but a compromise. Silly Obama! He should have just driven through single payer. I wonder if Teddy Kennedy’s untimely death had a significant impact….
It’s not a compromise if only Democrats voted for it. And choosing something that is worse than the other two options isn’t compromise either. Prior to Obamacare, most Americans were happy with the insurance they had. They could have made incremental fixes (lower Medicare age to 55 or 60), implement the portability and pre-existing conditions regulations. That would have been a great start.
Doug,
Things will work out far better than you expect. You are drinking your own cool aid.
You seem not to understand just how many uninsured people there are. They aren’t poor, or they would have a gov’t plan. And they don’t work for the government or for big business. So they aren’t like you; and they don’t have good, stable insurance options. Where you are right is that these are probably the hardest people to reach – and to not stigmatize.
It really would be helpful if you could refocus your angst. Things are not as bad as you think, structurally. Clearly the launch was a colossal misfire. And you are right, private industry would never launch nationwide off the bat. This website should have trialed in a few states, then added a few more as warranted. A lot of the failure probably had to do with reaction to the Obamacare Bad crowd of NIMBYs. Fear, unfortunately, I s a tough nut to crack.
<3 what Mark said
I think it would be tough to implement a national law in steps….
” Prior to Obamacare, most Americans were happy with the insurance they had.”
-Doug
This is true, for what it’s worth. But that never really was the issue. We have problems with hunger in this country, and yet it’s true that most Americans who get enough to eat are happy with their food. We have a problem with education in this country, and yet most High School Graduates in the top of their class are happy with their education.
Likewise, most Americans who are uninsured are not happy with the insurance they don’t have.
Do you just not care that the system we had did not work for a good percentage of the country? As long as you have yours, everything is ok?
Mark – a lot of the uninsured are uninsured by choice. Yes, there are people who could not buy insurance due to pre-existing conditions or cost. But I think you and others overestimate the number of people who will be helped by Obamacare – the subsidies only deal with a small part of the problem. If you are making $30K a year and your subsidized insurance gets you a policy for $2K, that’s fine. But when that policy comes with a $6K deductible, where are those people going to find the money to pay for those initial costs? 6K may as well be $60K.
Add onto that the known fact that in order for Obamacare to be viable, millions of healthy young people have to buy insurance they normally would not purchase and its easy to see what will happen next year. The people who really needed the insurance will buy in, incur significant expenses, and when the pool of insured DOESN’T include a lot of healthy people, the insurance companies will be able to jack up rates next year.
I’m sorry. I don’t fall into the “at least we did something” crowd. I look at the facts and assess them. There were plenty of options that would have been smarter, cheaper, and better. Obamacare chose the wrong path.
@Scout
You can’t fix everything. And many times the government fix makes the problem worse. Education spending increases and the results stay the same. Food stamps are used to buy unhealthy food or used by people who don’t deserve them.
I believe in people being responsible for others, not abdicating the responsibility to inefficient, wasteful government programs.
And Scout, here’s what happened Saturday when there was a “glitch” (we used to call that failure) with the EBT cards at one Wal Mart in Lousiana. When the system was down and a manager was told to allow people with EBT cards to use them without checking the limits, there was a mad rush on the store by EBT card holders who basically cleaned out the shelves. This is what you get when you turn people into government dependents.
http://www.ksla.com/story/23679489/walmart-shelves-in-springhill-mansfield-cleared-in-ebt-glitch
MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA) –
Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.
Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says Walmart was so packed, “It was worse than any black Friday” that he’s ever seen.
Lynd explained the cards weren’t showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn’t press charges if she left the food.
No it doesn’t. It solves some. There’s no denying that more people will be insured. It’s also likely that costs will rise more slowly, especially compared to the early 2000s. Some problems still exist but overall things are getting better. Let the ACA play out then we can address remaining issues.
Yesterday I had the very painful experience of shopping at the phone store. The sales guy was rude, pushy, unhelpful and in the end we just walked out. All we were trying to do was upgrade my wife’s phone. She continues with her out dated phone for a while longer. That’s better than giving that rude SOB any kind of commission. What is it with these people that it is some kind of insult when you don’t want to buy the expensive phone “bundle” from them? They insult your intelligence by saying you can get this essential “bundle” of overpriced crap for $50 instead of the normal $90. A car charger can be bought at the flea market for $5 at Walmart for $10 and even the gas station for $12. Why pay $25?
My experiences lately with for-profit businesses has been sooooooooooooooo much worse than anything I’ve ever done at the DMV, the Post Office, the county tax assessor’s office or any other government entity. Yet somehow the myth continues that dealing with anything involving the government is worse than with private companies. That’s just laughably ridiculous.
And you’ll be going back to that phone company, right? You just don’t seem to understand the basic concept that the private sector isn’t perfect but the long term impact of providing poor service in the private sector is failure. That is not the case with government monopolies. Why is that so hard to understand?
Do you still shop at Sears and K-Mart? Do you drive a Pinto? Do you fly on AirTran?
Not that particular store. But let’s face it they’re all pretty much the same. I rarely go anywhere when I’m not accosted with high pressure upselling. Even the burger places push their apple pie and seem to get their feeling hurt when you don’t order a drink. Free enterprise really isn’t this magical wonderland of goodness and happiness and wonderfulness that it’s rabid supporters claim it to be. It’s more like walking through a minefield.
Wow… that’s all I can say.
Capitalism works best when there is significant competition. In many industries that is being lost. The cel phone industry is one of those. It is now common to pay a $30 upgrade fee when that was not the case until recently. I blame the concentration of the industry. Sadly our ever more conservative government looks the other way while a few fat cats get rich and consumers suffer.
@bud – my cellphone bill for my family of five dropped $100 a month this year and added unlimited minutes. Why? Competition. My cable bill was cut in half when I was able to switch from Time Warner to DirecTV. Why? Competition. I can but twice the computer for half the price than I did two years ago. Why? Competition.
And I can go to the DMV and be greeted by a sour faced drone who would love to do anything else but deal with me. Why? No competition.
This may be the most distrurbing news I’ve read in a while:
http://www.stripes.com/jpac-admits-to-phony-ceremonies-honoring-returning-remains-1.246322
— The Department of Defense unit charged with recovering servicemembers’ remains abroad has been holding phony “arrival ceremonies” for seven years, with an honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins off of a cargo plane as though they held the remains returning that day from old battlefields.
The Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that no honored dead were in fact arriving, and that the planes used in the ceremonies often couldn’t even fly, and were towed into position. The story was first reported on nbcnews.com.
The ceremonies at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii are held up as a sign of the nation’s commitment to its fallen warriors. They have been attended by veterans and families of MIAs, led to believe that they were witnessing the return of Americans killed in World War II, Vietnam and Korea.
Well, if that’s the most alarming news you’ve heard….
What’s worse than a military that stages fake funerals for propaganda purposes?
Doug, Do you perceive the difference between an attempt to provide pageantry to honor a memorial and an attempt to deceive or cover up? Should they just mail the remains in a zip-lock bag via USPS parcel post?
Do you decline to attend open casket funerals? Or rail against the fakery of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Or grimly shake your head when a volunteer military honor guard fires blanks to salute a veteran’s burial?
Save your powder for the real stuff, because unfortunately cover-ups do happen. Just not here with this.
Did you read the story, Mark? It’s a total setup. They are making it look like they are taking remains off planes that have arrived on the base. Planes that don’t fly are wheeled in, the remains have already been taken to labs.. containers are draped in flags to give the appearance of being coffins.
“NBC writes that the ceremonies have been known among some of the military and civilian staff at the base as The Big Lie.”
This isn’t me making a big deal of nothing. This is in the Stars and Stripes paper based on an NBC news report.
If they want to have a ceremony, that’s great. But to set up an elaborate phony ceremony is 100% wrong.
I didn’t and it doesn’t matter. It’s a silly thing: The question is, did they appropriately honor the soldiers’ memory and did the families, etc feel honored or deceived? If honored, non story. End of story…
Thanks, Mark, for establishing that you didn’t even bother to read the story before commenting.
It was a big enough story for NBC News to do an investigation and the military newspaper to publish it. But since you don’t think its a big deal, I’m sure it can be dropped.
When they do a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, nobody is pretending that the grave is empty and rigging up a burial every time. In this case, they wheel out a non-functioning plane and pretend that they are bringing out remains. The people who are there to honor those remains were led to believe that it was actually happening. It’s a stage show meant to drum up a response. I’d rather see them spend all that money on actual wounded warriors. But if you’d prefer pageantry over reality, that’s your choice.
Um…chemical weapons deployment in Syria? A wealthy country that let’s children go hungry to prove an ideological point? An 18 year shot in Five Points at 2:30 AM?…..
Hunger isn’t new, nor chemical weapons in Syria. Shootings in Five Points? Just another Saturday night in Soda Town. If you’re out in Five Points at 2:30 a.m. you should be wearing Kevlar.
Sure if you want to gloss over stuff, but denying federal funds to poor kids is, and large scale deployment of chem weapons is, and no USC student has been shot since I have lived here….then again, government cover ups have been around for a while….
Kind of callous, Doug. Kids all over are out at 2:30 am.
It isn’t the students that are the problem, it’s the drop-outs who are.
I guess I have a different approach to parenting in that I wouldn’t expect my 18 year old to be in an area that is devoted to drinking at 2:30 in the morning. They can be anywhere they want, but if its out at bars in Five Points I would be quick to express my concern.
And I’ve been in Five Points (at Cook Out) multiple times late enough at night this year to know its no place you’d want your own kid to be after midnight. A concentrated small area devoted to drunkenness is ripe for bad things to happen.
Nothing good happens after midnight. I don’t care what Eric Clapton says. Or Wilson Pickett, either.
I kind of doubt that these parents expected their “18 year old to be in an area that is devoted to drinking at 2:30 in the morning.”
I doubt that permission was given, or any sort of parental decision at all was made in this case.
Of course, I could be wrong…
How do you know where your kids are these days unless you have a GPS on their phones?
And the victim could easily have been a 21 year old student and it would still be significant.