Category Archives: General Cynicism

Editorial in the NY Times. 98% of people in Massachusetts have insurance. There has been little fiscal strain, under 1% of the budget in 2010. The mandate works.

It’s pathetic that we can’t seem to get this right.

A fine discussion of the coming food crisis by Lester Brown in Foreign Policy and discussed on Fresh Air:

Brown points out the effect of global warming on food production and the jockeying by various countries to control future harvests. Yes, Virginia, there is no doubt that there is global warming and that the consequences are very sobering.

Already in 2011, the U.N. Food Price Index has eclipsed its previous all-time global high; as of March it had climbed for eight consecutive months. With this year’s harvest predicted to fall short, with governments in the Middle East and Africa teetering as a result of the price spikes, and with anxious markets sustaining one shock after another, food has quickly become the hidden driver of world politics. And crises like these are going to become increasingly common. The new geopolitics of food looks a whole lot more volatile — and a whole lot more contentious — than it used to. Scarcity is the new norm.

More alarming still, the world is losing its ability to soften the effect of shortages. In response to previous price surges, the United States, the world’s largest grain producer, was effectively able to steer the world away from potential catastrophe. From the mid-20th century until 1995, the United States had either grain surpluses or idle cropland that could be planted to rescue countries in trouble. When the Indian monsoon failed in 1965, for example, President Lyndon Johnson’s administration shipped one-fifth of the U.S. wheat crop to India, successfully staving off famine. We can’t do that anymore; the safety cushion is gone.

And:

At the same time, the United States, which once was able to act as a global buffer of sorts against poor harvests elsewhere, is now converting massive quantities of grain into fuel for cars, even as world grain consumption, which is already up to roughly 2.2 billion metric tons per year, is growing at an accelerating rate. A decade ago, the growth in consumption was 20 million tons per year. More recently it has risen by 40 million tons every year. But the rate at which the United States is converting grain into ethanol has grown even faster. In 2010, the United States harvested nearly 400 million tons of grain, of which 126 million tons went to ethanol fuel distilleries (up from 16 million tons in 2000). This massive capacity to convert grain into fuel means that the price of grain is now tied to the price of oil. So if oil goes to $150 per barrel or more, the price of grain will follow it upward as it becomes ever more profitable to convert grain into oil substitutes. And it’s not just a U.S. phenomenon: Brazil, which distills ethanol from sugar cane, ranks second in production after the United States, while the European Union’s goal of getting 10 percent of its transport energy from renewables, mostly biofuels, by 2020 is also diverting land from food crops.

This is not merely a story about the booming demand for food. Everything from falling water tables to eroding soils and the consequences of global warming means that the world’s food supply is unlikely to keep up with our collectively growing appetites. Take climate change: The rule of thumb among crop ecologists is that for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the growing season optimum, farmers can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. This relationship was borne out all too dramatically during the 2010 heat wave in Russia, which reduced the country’s grain harvest by nearly 40 percent.

Read the entire article to understand the long term ramifications.

Medicynical Note: There are almost three billion people in the world, more than ever before. Warming deniers, if they can get past simple denial of warming, want to believe that the world has warmed before so what’s the big deal. The big deal is that this has never happened with some many people in the world. In some ways we’re remarkably like lemmings.

Our conservative right to lifers believe that by not allowing women to choose whether or not to have children they are doing some good. There are however, other consequences of their short sighted views:

new study finds that the cost of unintended pregnancies is large, and much of the bill — about $11 billion per year — goes to government programs and ultimately taxpayers.

And:

They found that rates of unintended pregnancy are far higher among poor and near-poor women (those with incomes under twice the federal poverty level) than those with higher incomes. As a result, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the 1.6 million births resulting from unintended pregnancies in 2006 were paid for by public health insurance programs. Put another way, just over half of all births paid for by those programs, 51 percent, were the result of unintended pregnancies.

Medicynical Note: These “moral” people think nothing of impinging on the freedom of choice of women while condoning cutting support programs to these same mothers and children, sentencing them to a life of struggle and poverty. Not a very pretty picture.

An added consequence of this type budget cut will be it’s impact on contraception access and use which will add up to more unintended pregnancies and more of the above. The policy change is counterintuitive, sacreligious and not very smart.

But then again that’s America in the 21st century–continuous war, “enhanced interrogation,” 50 million uninsured, budget cuts to the poor and middle class, don’t raise the debt limit and, oh yes, according to reliable sources the world is to end on May 21st.

From the Economic Policy Institute:

The graph shows the proportion of those covered with various types of Health Insurance paying more than 10% of their income out of pocket (not covered by insurance) for medical expenses.

Note the poor coverage offered by the non-group insurance when compared with the relatively stable public insurance.

Medicynical Note: Insurers would like us all to be in the individual group. Basing their premiums on a person’s pre-existing condition so as to charge those with illness more (perhaps so much that insurance is unaffordable). Incidious as it may seem their unstated goal is to make health insurance unaffordable for those who use it, and need it most. How else to explain the huge rate increases being requested in various locales by insurers on people with individual coverage.

Alternatively, insurers offer insurance that is less comprehensive with more out of pocket expenses as noted in the graph.

At a minimum insurers offerings must be based on community risk rather than individual risk. This assures insurability for those with the misfortune of having and developing problems. For this to work as has been noted by our government, economists and others caring about the issue, an insurance mandate is necessary–similar to that used in car insurance.

The Health insurance industry, like the pharmaceutical industry, is enjoying record profits for the third year in a row.

There’s no recession when you can charge cost plus and eliminate those who need to use insurance:

The UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest commercial insurers, told analysts that so far this year, insured hospital stays actually decreased in some instances. In reporting its earnings last week, Cigna, another insurer, talked about the “low level” of medical use.

Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care.

Medicynical Note: Part of the reason is decreased demand for services because of high deductibles and co pays.

What’s also likely is that businesses are, increasingly, not offering insurance as an employee benefit and/or the insurance offered is too expensive for those in low paying jobs. Our non-system is cleverly designed to push those with illness out of work sponsored coverage and into the individual market. For example if you become ill and can’t work for a time, you lose your work sponsored insurance. You can purchase it through COBRA but that’s much more expensive as are policies on the individual market. For those with marginal income (probably most of the citizens in a country with a median income of $50,000/year) insurance suddenly becomes unaffordable and unattainable just when you need it most.

Devilously clever are those insurance guys!