Just a few quick hits as my coffee brews:
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Growth in employer health benefit costs, 1981-2014. pic.twitter.com/XlBhu7uWwe— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) October 9, 2014
The gap between the blue line and the red line is where most of our pay raises went for the past generation. If those two lines are equal, then healthcare costs are growing at the rate of the general economy’s inflation, which means more cash in our pockets.
- New York Times Upshot on Medicaid recipients liking Medicaid:
A study published in the journal Health Affairs found that poor residents of Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas, when asked to compare Medicaid with private coverage, said that Medicaid offered better “quality of health care” and made them better able to “afford the health care” they needed….But repeated surveys show that the program is quite popular among the people who use it. A 2011 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 86 percent of people who had received Medicaid benefits described the experience as somewhat or very positive. A slightly more recent Kaiser survey showed that 69 percent of Americans earning less than $40,000 a year rated the program important to them or their families.
Speaking off the cuff, this makes sense as the the Medicaid recipient’s counterfactual is not Medicaid or a Cadillac plan; it is Medicaid or nothing or a patchwork of charities with lots of different hoops to jump through. Could Medicaid be better– hell yeah, but does it do a decent job of providing healthcare to people who otherwise can not afford it; yes.
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MT @PolicyRx: After Arkansas adopted private option… • ED use ↓ 2% • uninsured ED use ↓ 24% • uninsured hospital admits ↓ 30% #nashpconf14 — Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) October 7, 2014
The last two items were expected as uninsured care of all types should be going down, especially in Medicaid expansion states. The first one, Emergency Department usage decreasing is a bit of a positive surprise as the Massachusetts evidence suggested increased ED utilization. I am curious as to what Arkansas is doing to decrease utilization — can it be taken to scale?
- Should see a decline in Solvaldi utilization for patients who are not in Hep-C crisis as everyone is waiting for the FDA to approve several new Hep-C drugs/drug combinations
- This video below will produce several hours of discussion at the next referee clinic. My college chapter was split 50/50 on whether or not there was offside or a good goal including an even split among the MLS/FIFA ARs. I have offside as the keeper has to respect the central runner who attempted a play onto the ball.
NorthLeft12
Richard, I don’t see why their should be any confusion at all. The central player was offside, made a play on the ball [almost touched it] that the keeper had to, and did react to before slipping to the onside player. Obvious offside.
I guess I don’t understand the point of view of the guys who would call it onside, unless they are trying to say the central player was onside. If the central player did not make a move to the ball, I would call it onside. But he did make a move for you.
Lee
Absolutely offside!!!
The player was right in front to the keeper going for the ball he was in the play even though he never touched the ball.
A player is tieing his shoe at one end of the field in one thing. Going for the ball in front of the keeper is not that same thing.
Richard Mayhew
@NorthLeft12: Here is a rough paraphrase of an MLS AR who called good goal as he explained his thought process:
The central argument of this clip is what constitutes active involvement in play — is it an attempt to play the ball (which would make this a clear offside) or an actual touch on the ball (good goal). This clip or something like it will be at every single clinic I go to this winter.
Richard Mayhew
@Richard Mayhew: Further note the assistant referee in the clip called good goal.
ThresherK
Agreed, I’d consider it offsides.
Study question: What if a central attacker in a similar play were to have dummied the ball? (He’d have to have been closer to it, but…) He’s not playing the ball, but is he in the play?
Does that change the circumstances?
Jeffro
Offside! (no extended rationale or reasoning, just “Offside!”)
Happy Friday to all.
Richard Mayhew
@ThresherK: According to the most recent NISOA interpretation a dummy on the ball is not active involvement therefore in that hypothetical it is good goal. I am not sure what the USSF/FIFA interpretation or instruction is on dummies.
big ole hound
I think the video sums up the reason that I and most of my friends will not watch soccer. The defenders are actually stepping forward to make the play illegal instead of continually defending their goal. It is nice to watch the flow of the game and then this absurd event occurs. I would love to see “defend ’til the end” with some kind of hockey style off sides employed. That would allow those sideline refs to do more to clean up the game too.
Joseph Nobles
Speaking of Arkansas and the Medicaid expansion, this Forbes piece hit yesterday and claims some sort of shenanigans there:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/10/09/gao-bombshell-hhs-cooked-the-books-to-expand-obamacare-in-arkansas/
I’m not qualified to say anything about the pros or cons of that article. My intuition or Obamabotness is saying that it’s more Arkansas’s problem than HHS, though blaming Obamacare makes for a better headline. But I couldn’t say.
Matt McIrvin
Well, it means more cash in the employer’s pocket. Why would they raise anyone’s pay without being forced to?
NorthLeft12
@Richard Mayhew: So the MLS AR thinks a keeper who is aware of the position of the players around him and their potential redirection of the ball is “screwing up”?
If he ignored the oncoming central player and kept moving to his left he would have looked awfully foolish when that player touched the ball and redirected it through the spot the keeper just moved from. I think the keeper made an intelligent play, as his reaction should have forced the ref to judge that the offside player did have an impact on the play. But I am no ref, just a former coach and player.
Richard Mayhew
@Joseph Nobles: There is a problem with budget neutrality in the 1115 waiver for Arkansas — their projections for budget neutrality had a magic asterick in the assumption that an Expansion only Medicaid network had to be as comprehensive as an Exchange private network AND that the only way to get that big of a network meant going to straight commercial rates. Neither assumption is that good of an assumption. I have a piece on Arkansas that is marinating right now and while there are a lot of positive things, 1115 compliance is a major risk factor/negative.
SP
Clearly offside. I mean, what if the player had been way off, such that the goalie had to run around him to block the shooter? In that case he didn’t play the ball but he made the goalie go out of position, which is clearly offside.
@NorthLeft12- The only argument for that is the goalie should have known that player was offside (which is hard to tell from directly in front and not lateral) and realized that player, being offside, essentially doesn’t exist with respect to a legal attack. But I don’t see how you can expect goalies to judge that unless the offside is at least a yard.
Richard Mayhew
@NorthLeft12: Not quite, he should have been tracking the ball (he wasn’t as his eyes’ focus was on the central attacker) with his core focus, and been aware of the central attacker with peripheral. The keeper’s job is the ball, nothing else.
We’ve been shown dozens of clips at the pro-level where an attacking player is in an offside position and is within feet of the keeper as the ball enters the goal area from an onside player where there is no offside infraction according to what USSF/FIFA wants. Proximity to keeper is very narrowly read as interference or involvement in play at the pro level (now move it down to U-14, every ref in the room has offside/no goal).
Joseph Nobles
@Richard Mayhew: Thanks and I’m looking forward to the upcoming article. Glad it was already in the works.
Edmund Dantes
I’m also confused by the MLS AR reasoning.
Is he saying it’s the goalies job to know whether a guy is offside and thus can’t play the ball, and he should only move towards players that are onside?
Also, on a cross pass how is the goalie supposed to know which players were offside as according to the AR the goalie’s eyes are supposed to track the ball?
Edmund Dantes
Watching it again. I would buy the AR explanation if the attacking offside player doesn’t make a play for the ball and come very close to redirecting it.
Elizabelle
@Joseph Nobles:
Sourcewatch on “The Foundation for Government Accountability”, which contributed the Forbes article.
(And thanks to whoever pointed out recently that Forbes has outsourced a lot of online comment to non-journalists.)
I have not read the linked article, but it’s interesting to see who put it up. On Forbes, that great friend of the American middle and working class.
Gene108
Interesting chart. Wages actually went up in the 1990’s. The only time there has been real wage growth since the 1970’s.
I am not sure, if it can be correlated to the modern drop in employer cost though, without looking at how much cost shifting has happened to employees paying their premiums or higher deductibles, pushing out of pocket costs onto employees.
Richard Mayhew
@SP: Totally different scenario — easy offside as the player who should not have been there was actively interfering with play.
The easiest way to visualize these types of offsides is to imagine that Scotty beamed up the offending player — should that action have changed the subsequent play/actions of the defensive team? If no, no infraction, if yes and only if it is because the defending team was playing smart, then offside.
Richard Mayhew
@Edmund Dantes: this is why this is great clinic tape — it is damn close and either interpretation has a lot to go for it…. We’ll argue about it for an hour or two, get consensus/word from on-high, and then argue about it some more in the bar after the clinic.
Shygetz
That interpretation drives me nuts…it requires the referee to insert him/herself into the goalie’s shoes and determine, post hoc, what the smartest play for the keeper should have been, and to effectively penalize the keeper if he makes a different play. I’ve looked at the rules, and I see no rule saying the keeper must only track the ball. The central runner materially affected the play from an offside position, so definitely offsides.
Edmund Dantes
I agree this is fascinating argument.
The only reason I wouldn’t agree with the AR, is that as a goalie even if I’m tracking the ball at some point I have to account for the players. Otherwise, I’ll get caught with my pants down when they pass to someone I wasn’t aware of or coming from an angle into position to attack a ball I was expecting to go through.
As that ball crosses, I have to somewhat respect the central defender ( who on a crossing pass it would be almost impossible to know if he’s offside and a dummy or an active shooter) the split second hesitation of respecting him then leaves me open to the man on the back post.
It’s going to be an interesting discussion, but it would be more interesting if the player didn’t lunge at the ball then it becomes really really gray.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
No disrespect meant, but when did it become the ref’s job to tell the keeper how to do his job? No keeper plays only the ball: we have to cut off the possibilities where the ball could possibly be several seconds from now, and that means knowing where the various offenders could possibly be several seconds from now.
A skilled keeper knows where the ball will go if left alone, and does not need to track it with core focus on a rolling cross. His main concern is detecting whether the players can manage to affect its trajectory.
Richard Mayhew
@Edmund Dantes: Without the lunge, at the pro-level, 98% of the ARs will give a good goal, and the other 2% will have a very uncomfortable post-game debriefing by their assessor/mentor.
It is the lunge that makes the argument worthwhile — when does active involvement in play start…..
NorthLeft12
@Richard Mayhew: Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
Amir Khalid
@big ole hound:
The offside trap (not “offsides”; the plural is common in US English, but wrong) is a widely used and perfectly legitimate defensive tactic. Offside traps are beatable if a forward can think fast enough on his feet. Those who keep falling into them are playing without thinking.
As for the refereeing call, I’d say no goal. A forward is offside and interfering with play.
lethargytartare
@Richard Mayhew:
this shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play keeper that it no longer surprises me that refs get offsides wrong so much.
Are refs actually instructed now to judge plays based on how they think a player “should” play their position?
lethargytartare
@Richard Mayhew:
it’s not close at all – without the central runner the keeper can come off his line and likely collect or parry the ball before it ever reaches the far post.
cmorenc
@Richard Mayhew:
Another vote for “no goal – interfering with play”.
The USSF definition of “interfering with play” is broad enough to cover this situation (my italics added): “…playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a teammate. A player can be considered playing the ball even without touching it if, in the opinion of the referee or assistant referee, that player is making an active play for the ball and is likely to touch it.” The caveat is that many will argue that the italicized proviso was added to cover the situation where an offside attacker is racing the goalkeeper to a 50-50ish ball, so the referee team does not have to wait for a likely injury-risking collision of bodies to occur, and not the general situation where an offside player moves toward the ball but an on-side player gets to it first.
I also think the USSF definition of “interfering with an opponent” (for offside purposes) alternatively covers this situation: (again my italics added) “…preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision or movements or making a gesture or movement which, in the opinion of the referee, deceives or distracts an opponent. Interference can also include active physical or verbal distraction of the goalkeeper by an opponent as well as blocking the view of the goalkeeper.” The counter-argument is that defenders (including the goalkeeper) are ordinarily supposed to defend the incoming attack, concentrating on where the ball momentarily is (or which attacker is momentarily in possession) without attempting to take into account close offside judgments, and leave those up to the referee team to sort out whether a violation has occurred or not. Although this is valid with respect to opponents in an offside position who are not positioned to attempt to play the ball without a pass or deflection in their direction, this approach to non-involvement becomes invalid when an offside player is situated to make a plausibly imminent play on the ball without intervening pass or deflection. Which is exactly what we have here – from the goalkeeper’s perspective, the charging offside player has a high probability chance of reaching the ball on its existing trajectory, even though in fact the probability (barely) fails to play out. I can’t see how this is anything other than an “active physical”… “distracting movement” in the words of the ATR. It’s stupidly pedantic to insist otherwise.
Mike E
Wait…AR adopted the private option but Medicaid is offsides?!
Lee
@Richard Mayhew:
Using this example then it is still offside. If the center attacker had not been present, then the keeper would not have had to cover the shot he could have taken and could have followed the ball across the goal to prevent the goal. If you watch the keeper he pauses long enough to make sure the center attacker is not going to get the shot and then moves to his left.
We have the luxery of watching this after the fact and not in real time so I sort of understand why the referee called it as he did especially with the rule you mentioned above. Which I still think is stupid and if some team wanted to could exploit the hell out of it.
Eric U.
@big ole hound: they tried to get rid of offsides in soccer and it turned it into a really boring game. There is an obvious risk the defenders take in moving away from the goal.
Lee
@lethargytartare:
I’m glad you brought that up. I was just going to let it pass.
Mike Lamb
@Richard Mayhew: That MLS AR’s logic is utterly absurd and causes me to worry for the refereeing at the MLS level. The goalie has to track the ball and the players. Effectively what this guy is saying is that the keeper should be behaving as if there are no other players on the pitch, just the ball. In that circumstance, and taking it to its logical (if extreme) conclusion, the goalie isn’t even worried about stopping a shot as the cross is clearly going wide. No one plays keeper that way.
Or, looking at it another way, suppose the goalie ignores the central attacker, believing him to be offside, but in the alternate scenario, the first man through touches the ball into the net, with the referee not giving offside by mistake. Now the keeper is getting crushed for assuming a call would be made, rather than honoring the most dangerous attacker.
Sierra Nevada
Clear offside.
The quote from the AR is everything wrong with soccer officiating. This quote you provide is plain incompetent jackassery:
“The goalkeeper, at this level of play, is responsible to track the ball and not the players, the keeper screwed up as he should have been primarily focused on the ball and not the oncoming attacker”
Having spent a considerable amount of time playing keeper at middling level, and central defense at a higher level, I can say that a keeper that simplemindedly plays the ball and not the oncoming attack is a freaking moron.
The AR’s job, at any level above U6 or maybe U8, is to raise the flag the moment a player in an offside position becomes involved in the play. Even if they think, as an individual, that footy should be played “a certain way” such as “keeper tracks the ball and not the players,” that opinion is not what an AR is supposed to “track.” An AR’s job is to track freaking offside positioned players and raise the danged flag if they become involved in the play. That stupid AR wanted to command the whistle instead of the flag.
Violet
@Matt McIrvin: This was my issue with Wal-Mart eliminating health insurance for part time workers. They’re not going to raise the workers’ pay. It’s just more money for Wal-Mart.
Cacti
O/T but outstanding news in the world of medicine:
A Harvard research team may have discovered a cure for type 1 diabetes, using stem cell therapy.
Link
Richard Mayhew
@Lee: I agree, that is my logic for going offside/no goal
but my college chapter spent 2 hours on this clip last night and I thought it was an interesting point of discussion and it was a split room.
Sierra Nevada
As an additional aside, I wonder what a genius level player like Pirlo would do with the knowledge that offside players that make feints at the ball are not offside.
Look at what Pirlo did in the last cup. He made a shooting run on the ball to freeze a defender, and then laid off it (wicked grin on his face) to allow his teammate to net it. Defenders, and keepers, must respect attempts on the ball, and you make the calculus in front of the net more complicated, not less, by making them wonder which ones are offside and which not.
daveNYC
@Richard Mayhew: I’m still not getting the point I guess. The idea is the keeper should play the ball, right? But he’s going to play the ball differently depending on if there’s a player from the other team nearby. Is the expectation that he be able to judge if the center player is offsides, and therefore ignore the fact that he’s close enough to make a play for the ball? Even if he hadn’t made the lunge for the ball, wouldn’t the keeper have to adjust his play to account for the fact that he might try and make a play for the ball?
I appear to be missing something from the argument here.
Adam C
@Richard Mayhew: I find it very interesting that there was a discussion, but like the commenters here I’m a little bit outraged. The referee’s attempt to pin the blame on the goalie is asinine; IMO the offside call should be completely independent of the goalkeeper’s actions, even if he’s over at the side having a tea.
More importantly, it ignores the fact that the goalie is not only supposed to track the ball, but get into position to make the save. The keeper’s struggle on this play was not from looking in the wrong direction, but because he had to come out of his goal to cut down the angle on the centre attacker’s potential shot. If the offside player were teleported away, the keeper’s actions would clearly be different.
lethargytartare
@daveNYC:
what you’re missing is the very big reveal that 50% of refs don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
which is much as I expected.
piratedan
what I love about this is that its a clear illustration of just how bent we are as a country, we have an indication that the ACA is working as intended for the most part in a place where there was a lot of heated debate and stacking of the rules to try and ensure that it doesn’t work and yet the majority of the discussion is regarding a soccer rule interpretation.
sometimes, we really do get what we deserve….in our elected officials and less than well compensated professional sports arbiters…
Gin & Tonic
A worldwide hit is a-bornin’. So yes, this is nominally football-related. I posted last night about the ever-more-popular “Putin khuylo!” chant making an appearance at the Ukraine-Belarus match in Belarus. Turns out it was also quite the hit at the Lithuania-Estonia match.
lethargytartare
@piratedan:
your contribution to the more important ACA discussion is duly noted.
oh, wait, never mind.
Eric U.
Richard’s post on medical issue usually leave BJ commenters in stunned silence. Not really very sure why that is, but I rarely have any comment even though I appreciate the posts. Just about any other post gets a few OT comments
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Still going with my non-explanation explanation here.
piratedan
@lethargytartare: and if you’re a long time lurker, you’ll understand that your snark is duly noted with the accuracy of your statement missing the target and with an arrow sitting in the knee of a retired adventurer sitting in the stands….
piratedan
@piratedan: @lethargytartare: my apologies, it’s Friday and I’m not having the best of days and since I actually do participate in a fair amount of Richard’s posts, I felt unduly cranky about your snark….
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: Also, too, more money for the parasite class that are the executives.
CEO “compensation” never, ever lags or slows down. It only increases, regardless of what else is going on with the enterprise’s expenses, be it raw materials, or health insurance rates, or commercial rents, or paying those pesky employees who actually create the wealth in the first place.
Villago Delenda Est
@Eric U.: Well, you know, this stuff is REALLY wonky. Richard explains all this well, but it’s still not easy to grok. Which means that for the airheads who constitute the Village it’s not just figuratively, but literally impossible for their tiny cocktail shrimp addled brains to process. All they know is that it doesn’t directly benefit them, but it does fuel the ongoing political horse race. It doesn’t impact them directly in the pocketbook that they can perceive, but it does give them something to chatter about, no matter how insipidly.
lethargytartare
@piratedan: no worries
SFAW
Offside.
The center attacker not only had the opportunity to (as in: it was within reasonable expectation that he could/would) redirect the ball to the keeper’s right, but he made a significant attempt to do so. The center attacker did not make any attempt to let the ball pass him by – he dived/dove for it feet-first, he did not try to pull his foot back to let it go to the eventual “goal” scorer, and so on. So the “feint” idea doesn’t really hold up. Unless, of course, MLS rules now state that a keeper must be able to determine whether an attacker is fast enough to reach a “free” ball, and direct his (i.e., keeper’s) attention elsewhere if it is clear – or even questionable – that the attacker cannot reach the ball.
And it is a reasonable assumption because he made a strong attempt at redirection, the keeper focused on him for a significant amount of time, thus providing the winger the opportunity to score after the center attacker missed it.
The MLS AR must vote Republican – blaming others for his screw-up.
cmorenc
@Mike Lamb:
Calling the situation an offside violation is actually consistent with the above passage, if you sensibly interpret what “playing the ball” encompasses rather than obliviously applying an absurdly literal, narrow meaning to it. “Playing the ball” also inherently includes taking into account the probabilities, directions, and relative imminence of plausibly likely deflections the ball may take from its current momentary path. It is the significant lack of one of these elements which makes a situation a non-violation where a forward ball could be touched by either of two attackers, one offside, one not and the result turns out to be the onside player.
Lee
@Richard Mayhew:
This post (and the 50% who think it was a good goal) has been peculating in my head as I working on other things.
Show this clip to every coach and player older than U8 and tell them that the rules will allow this as a good goal and they will immediately come up with dozens of scenarios that will exploit the hell out of it. Those changes would probably fundamentally change the game.
The other thing is a bit fuzzier. If the argument is that the keeper should have ignored the center player because he was offside, then they are changing the role of the keeper. The keeper will now have to make a judgment call on offside (hoping he gets it right) before they attempt to defend against another player.
If the argument is he screwed up by not following the ball, you can see in the replay they are completely and totally wrong. The keeper reacts to center player then shifts left to the next player. Sure it was too slow to stop the shot, but had the center player not been present, he would not have had to stop to defend against him. Hell I’d even acknowledge that if the center player not lunged towards the ball it would be easier to construe this as a good goal but then again the keeper probably would have shifted left faster and stopped the shot.
The Raven on the Hill
Having been in both Medicaid and the lower reaches of the exchanges, Medicaid. Thing is, with Medicaid, you don’t have to worry about being a medical billing expert, or wondering if your insurance company is going to do something creepy. Of course, the insurance companies are trying to fix that. Gotta get some of that fine fine money.
pseudonymous in nc
Or, in America, more cash in the pockets of executives and shareholders, because rank and file workers haven’t earned it.
And that was totally offside. If you’re in that part of the box, and the ball passes through that part of the box, there is no way you’re not interfering with play.
@Richard Mayhew:
…spoken like someone who hears “who’s the bastard with the flag?” echoing out from the terraces on a regular basis.
pseudonymous in nc
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’d almost think that executive pay was decided by other executives whose pay, in turn, will be decided by other executives.
SFAW
@pseudonymous in nc:
No kidding. Especially when one considers that the REAL way CEO comp gets decided is by asking the “takers” (a/k/a moochers a/k/a “loosers who don’t work hard enough”) that work for him/her: “What would YOU pay your CEO? And please take into account that he works harder and longer than you, and is generally a better person than you, because he’s a ‘Maker,’ unlike you. You loser.”
I’m still not quite certain how guys like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein get the designation “Maker,” when most of their (combined) legacy has been “Job Destroyer.”
bobbo
Something tells me that all that money that was going to health care instead of into our pockets will still not be going into our pockets, but into the pockets of our Galtian overlords/”job creators.” Because freedom.
Mart
This atheist Catholic Youth Charities ref says offsides. The defense of it being a goal because of where the goalie should be looking sounds like gibberish to me. But I am an old.
grrljock
From the slow motion replay angle, the central attacker was in front of the defender before the ball was kicked his way. Offside and no goal.
I read the NYT article on Medicaid satisfaction and had same thoughts as you. Regarding decrease of ER use after PPACA, this is actually the intuitive result for me, as people who previously resorted to using the ER for care can now access clinics/doctors offices.
? Martin
Offsides for all the reasons previously stated. The central runner should have recognized he was offsides and not interfered with the play.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Cite at RT.com or it didn’t happen!
/Bob in Portlandgrad
M.C. Simon Milligan
Offside. No question at all in my mind.
Atrocious defending by Dinamo to let Ilicic in unmarked on the back post though.