Health Care Law

I’m not going to talk (directly) about the Affordable Care Act. I’m not going to discuss whether or not it’s “working”, or whether or not it’s helping or hurting people. I only came to say this:

Republicans don’t get it.

The ACA is not a set of 12 disjoint unrelated rules. The ACA was a compromise carefully built to get the approval of numerous parties with their own agendas. Like most compromises, nobody was completely happy, but everybody was happy enough.

You cannot take your favorite watch, complain that the springs inside are bothering you, have the springs removed, and then blame the jeweler because your favorite watch is broken.

And you cannot, five years later, pick and choose the pieces of the ACA that you want to keep and repeal the parts you don’t.

Priorities

When I first decided to start my blog, there were some idiots in the news that I felt I needed to comment on.

One guy, for example, lived in an ultra-rural area that did not have a municipal fire department. On purpose — they had held elections to consider founding one and voted “no”. So a nearby town offerred fire protection as a subscription service. This guy opted — repeatedly — not to join. So when his house burned to the ground, he was amazed that the fire department — which responded to protect its subscribers’ homes nearby — did not help him.

Or another guy, who refused to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), who then became ill, could not afford coverage, and was amazed to find out that there isn’t some sort of government program for people like him without medical insurance. There is — it’s called the Affordable Care Act and you refused to sign up for it.

Then it was quiet for a while regarding idiots in the news, and my blog sat unused. Until today.

http://www.theportlygazelle.com/2016/07/09/4-year-old-girl-drowns-because-father-was-too-busy-playing-pokemon-go/

This guy was so engrossed in his video game that, when his 4-year-old daughter was in the way, he sent her outside to go play in the pool, where she drowned.

So after he retrieved her body from the pool and called an ambulance, he was quoted as saying

“I was trying to catch a Magikarp [pokemon character]”

“I never caught that Magikarp.”

And the money quote

“If I ever catch a Magikarp I’m gonna name it after my daughter so I don’t forget about her”.

Tax season

Just a quick story for tax season. This happened at least 20 years ago, so I don’t remember the specific details.

A woman I knew worked with a woman. We’ll call her Lucy because she was kind of annoying and bossy.

(Just as an example, Lucy insisted the temperature in the office be turned up to 78 because she was always cold. My friend tried but failed to convince her “If you’re cold, you can put on a sweater. If I’m warm, I can’t take off my shirt.”)

They worked at a local public university. Lucy had been there for years, and at one point, Lucy got a small mini-promotion to “team leader” or something like that, and with the promotion came a small raise.

In the course of processing her raise, the payroll department somehow screwed up her tax withholding settings. The end result was that her first after-raise paycheck was smaller than her previous one.

Thus did Lucy become the first person in anybody’s memory to appeal a raise.

Calendars

Here is the problem with the McConnell plan for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s fiscal year (for lack of a better term) runs from October through August.

It is now March 2016.  All of the cases heard by the late Justice Scalia will be decided in the Summer of 2016 with 8 justices voting.  Any votes cast by Justice Scalia will not be counted.

New cases will be heard starting in October 2016 with 8 justices.

Those cases will be decided starting (roughly) January 2017 with 8 justices.

A new justice will in theory be nominated in January 2017 and confirmed in March 2017.

The Court will still announce decisions through the spring and summer of 2017.

Not until October 2017 will the Supreme Court be back to its full complement on 9 Justices.  That’s a year and a half from now.

So tell me again how the Republican Party is serious about governing.

Obstruction

The Republican Party has a problem. They are perceived by a large segment of the population as the Obstruction Party. They are not the party of governing; they are the party of preventing governing. They opposed relief aid for natural disasters, they opposed their own health insurance overhaul plan, they shut down the federal government, they refuse to confirm judges, they oppose anything that President Obama proposes.

But now they want to win a national election. To do that, they have to — in the words of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) — stop being the Stupid Party. They need to prove that they are a party that can govern the country.

So with the whole world watching, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCollenn (R KY) said, regarding the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

“Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Yep.  That ought to do it.

The Other Guy

Somebody went home last night and told this story:

 

I was driving, and I came up to a four-way stop sign.  There were cars waiting at all four streets, but I was just making a right turn, so I went straight through.  And this guy coming the other way almost plowed into me!

The value of your data

Your personal data has no value.

Don’t take my word for it.  Ask Judge Joanna Seybert of the Eastern District of New York.

She recently ruled in a class-action lawsuit against Michael’s — the arts-and-crafts store chain — that the plaintiff — Mary Jane Whalen, a woman whose personal information was indeed stolen from Michael’s — had suffered no specific loss nor any specific imminent damage that could be directly attributed to Michael’s.

For example, the people who copied her credit card number and tried to use it?  Whalen is not responsible for the charges.  Ergo, no damage. The money Whalen spent on credit monitoring services?  Not sufficient to establish standing.  The risk of future fraud?  Purely hypothetical.

The actual value of her private information which is irrevocably available for purchase by the highest bidder?  According to the court, zero.

So the next time you read about — or are impacted by — a data breach from a major corporation, don’t worry.  They didn’t take anything of value.  Just your private information, your home address, maybe your credit score.

You can read a a more detailed article or the full text of the court decision .

Discontinued

There is an item that I buy, about every 6 months or so.  For at least the lst 10 years, my wife and I have relied on this item to get a good night’s sleep.

 

This past summer, I went to place my regular order, and I can’t find the order button.  So I read the item description — which I usually don’t bother with, I just order it — and it contains both of the phrases “best-selling item” and “discontinued”.

 

I personally think it goes beyond “I don’t like change” to say that “This is our best-selling item; let’s discontinue it” is a crazy idea.  But oh well.

 

I’ve spent the last six months trying to find a similar item that works as well as the discontinued one.  No luck yet.  Haven’t fallen asleep at the steering wheel either, so maybe the replacement is doing a better job than it feels like it’s doing.  But I really miss the old one.

Emergencies

So a friend of ours died recently. I’m not going to name him. But I’m going to point out that he lived on the East Coast, far away from his family who almost all live in the Midwest. I don’t know what kind of social life he had, but there is a 2-week period between when he was last seen and when he was found.

So I’m just going to say that if you live alone, and you’re on the elderly side, you should find at least somebody who

• has your house key
• speaks to you every day or two
• knows your basic medical history, especially your medicine allergies
• knows how to contact your family, your employer, a few of your closest friends, and the leaders of any groups you may belong to

Experian

All of this info comes right from a letter from T-Mobile’s CEO.

Experian is a credit bureau.  They maintain records about your credit cards, including the applications that you might fill out with your name, birthdate, Social Security number, and mother’s maiden name.

T-Mobile uses Experian to process credit applications for new customers.

All of the T-Mobile customer application records from September 2013 through September 2015 were stolen from Experian.

Affected customers can get 2 years of free credit monitoring.

And who is going to monitor your credit for you?  Experian.

Fortunately, this particular breach doesn’t apply to me.  Because I think I’d pass on that offer.