Should Single Men Pay For Pregnancy And Delivery in Their Insurance Policies?

The argument that they* should not have to do so will not die.  I have addressed it in great detail in a post from  last March.  It gives you some artillery to take down those types of arguments. 

If nothing else works, simply say that you won't pay for anything you might not biologically need, such as treatment for prostate or penile cancer if you happen to lack those organs, or for anything caused by an activity you yourself do not practice, such as orthopedic surgery after a water-skiing or boating accident if you hate water sports and never go near any lake, sea or river.

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* Or post-menopausal women or any other group not planning to give birth.  For some weird reason the services which people feel shouldn't have to be covered for other people are always services only women need, even though there are services women do not directly need.  Viagra, say.

A Literary Thought About Jane Austen

This story about the favorite books of twenty-five famous women has a fascinating Virginia Woolf quote about Jane Austen:

J.K. Rowling:

“Emma by Jane Austen. Virginia Woolf said of Austen, ‘For a great writer, she was the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness,’ which is a fantastic line. You’re drawn into the story, and you come out the other end, and you know you’ve seen something great in action. But you can’t see the pyrotechnics; there’s nothing flashy.” —Oprah, June 2014

Compare that to Austen's own statement from a letter to J. Edward Austen:

What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?

She sells herself short, of course, and probably J. Edward Austen too long, because she worked very hard erasing, editing and rewriting.

That can be seen by comparing her last book, Persuasion, with her earlier ones.  She didn't have the time (having a date with death) to hone and hone and hone Persuasion the way the earlier books were polished, to make the sarcasm subtler and harder to spot (which makes the spotting more hilarious).

Where I Agree With Jennifer Rubin

Not the kind of title I thought I would ever write, but in the Trump Reich things change.  Rubin, a conservative columnist, has written a fairly straightforward piece on the way the Republican Party has brought us much closer to the dawn of a dictatorship:

Let me suggest the real problem is not the Trump family, but the GOP. To paraphrase Brooks, “It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a [party’s] mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing.” Again, to borrow from Brooks, beyond partisanship the GOP evidences “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code.”
Let’s dispense with the “Democrats are just as bad” defense. First, I don’t much care; we collectively face a party in charge of virtually the entire federal government and the vast majority of statehouses and governorships. It’s that party’s inner moral rot that must concern us for now. Second, it’s simply not true, and saying so reveals the origin of the problem — a “woe is me” sense of victimhood that grossly exaggerates the opposition’s ills and in turn justifies its own egregious political judgments and rhetoric. If the GOP had not become unhinged about the Clintons, would it have rationalized Trump as the lesser of two evils? Only in the crazed bubble of right-wing hysteria does an ethically challenged, moderate Democrat become a threat to Western civilization and Trump the salvation of America.

Rubin also singles out the demonization of "gays, immigrants, Democrats, the media, feminists, etc" as one of the major tactics of the Republican politicians and writers.

I was reminded of this when I had to look up a reference at the National Review and all the other articles they thought were similar to the one I was reading were really about how horrible women are and especially how horrible feminists are.  National Review online is supposed to be the martini-sipping older gentleman in the conservative coalition, not the rabid rubble-rousing Breitbart.com, but there's not much -- except the strength of the vicious language -- to choose between them.

The Republicans have been appealing to the hind-brain for a long time by creating many groups of "Others" and it is those "Others" who are responsible for all evil in this world, never mind any lack of evidence.

And for what purpose?  To win the game.  It IS a game the Republicans play, and the only object is to win, or at least make the others lose.  That losing seems more central than any actual conservative victory, because the pain of the Democrats is sweet and to watch their humiliation is delightful, even if the conservatives end up suffering at least as much.

So yes, I agree with Rubin when it comes to this particular piece, but she has certainly been an avid player in that game.   If the cost of all that winning is the end of democracy, then, my friends from all sides of the aisle, we are screwed.

Swords, Not Ploughshares. The Republican Love of War.

Military spending is the holy cow of the Republicans.   By July 14, the House Republicans  had passed a bill which would give the military ninety billion dollars more than the six hundred billion dollars Trump had asked.   Imagine that!  The party which sees government waste and duplication in almost all programs is willing to give the military more than the president asked, and appears to want to add "unneeded bureaucracy to the Pentagon" by creating a new military branch for space.

Remember that these are the same House Republicans who have worked very hard to make certain that lots of Americans will lose their health insurance coverage.  Thus, certain types of dangers to life matter to them, while other types do not matter at all.*

It's not hard to understand that paradox. 

Rich people can afford to protect their lives against health risks, even without health insurance, but certainly with private health insurance, while even rich people can't afford their own high-tech military to protect them against possible attacks by hostile foreign powers.  And weapons to kill people with are manly.

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*  It's possible to argue that all economic theories accept that the military constitutes a public good which the government should provide, while only certain aspects of health care (the treatment of communicable diseases and basic medical research) pass through the strictest analytical colander. 

But I very much doubt that the House Republicans are driven by such concerns, because, first, they tend to promote market alternatives in other areas where economic theory demonstrates that they will not work well (such as in many parts of health care), second, because no theory of public goods justifies overspending on the military, and, third, because this is the only public good on which the conservatives are willing to splurge.

The Priceless Views of Tom Price, Health and Human Services Secretary

Tom Price  has given a fascinating interview, this one (the video).

I couldn't believe my ears.  Secretary Price spoke some weird language*, not English, but sadly it is a language we have heard before.  Try to catch him in the utterance of one truth, or even in something that isn't just sad soundbites about how the new health care system will give all Americans their choices back**, away from the nasty Washington, DC, elites.  Those choices, of course, depend on the consumers having enough money to pay for good policies.  If that's not the case, there's always the choice to suffer and even to die of treatable conditions.

That is one frightening interview, especially given this:

HHS Secretary Tom Price gets enormous new power over healthcare standards and even state budgets. The essence of the amended bill’s bait-and-switch structure is the creation of several slush funds to moderate the costs to states of various repeal provisions, especially the drastic cutback in Medicaid funding.

Those slush funds, however, would come under the control of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. A known enemy of Medicaid and of expanding healthcare services for women and the needy, Price would have the authority to apportion those funds as he wishes, favoring some states over others because of their politics and policies, for example.

As former Medicare/Medicaid chief Andy Slavitt observes, there are no rules or standards guiding Price’s hand — he could dole out all the money to red states or pull funding from others at will. The money doesn’t have to go to services for low-income people or to replace lost Medicaid funding. He could shortchange states that require health plans to cover abortion — such as California and New York.

“The bill is a giant ‘Trust Tom Price’ bill,” Slavitt tweeted. And even if the money is apportioned responsibly, it’s not enough: The total in the slush funds, Slavitt calculates, would restore barely 10% of the cuts in Medicaid.

That LAT article is worth reading in its entirety.

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* A "feel-good" language, promising everyone a paradise, while the whole proposal will be tax cuts for the wealthy and worse care for older consumers, anyone with pre-existing conditions or anyone currently on Medicaid.

**  The term "choice" in the health care context is almost preposterous.  Very few consumers have the training and skills to determine what kind of care they need, which provider is the cheapest but of acceptable quality, or which health insurance policy best matches their future risk profiles.  Then there's the hidden second meaning of "choice" here, which has to do with withdrawing funding and letting people try to decide how they can avoid medical bankruptcy.