There are a lot of good quotes in this article comparing what Trump and McCain did during the Vietnam War, but the juxtaposition of the pictures is what makes it great. I don’t want to spoil it for you, just read the whole thing.
Archives for July 2015
PMURT PMURT PMURT
The Washington Post has the most promising GOP poll numbers yet…for the Democrats.
Businessman Donald Trump surged into the lead for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, with almost twice the support of his closest rival, just as he ignited a new controversy after making disparaging remarks about Sen. John McCain’s Vietnam War service, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Support for Trump fell sharply on the one night that voters were surveyed following those comments. Telephone interviewing for the poll began Thursday, and most calls were completed before the news about the remarks was widely reported.
Although the sample size for the final day was small, the decline was statistically significant. Still, it is difficult to predict what could happen to Trump’s support in the coming days and weeks as the controversy plays out.
Even with the drop in support on the final night of the survey, Trump was the favorite of 24 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. That is the highest percentage and biggest lead recorded by any GOP candidate this year in Post-ABC News polls and marks a sixfold increase in his support since late May, shortly before he formally joined the race.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who announced his candidacy a week ago, is in second place, at 13 percent, followed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush, at 12 percent. Walker’s support is strongest among those who describe themselves as “very conservative.”
Trump getting close to Cole’s Number (27%) here because he’s saying exactly what the lizard-brain base wants him to say: I’ve Got Mine, Screw The Rest Of You. It’s working.
Yes, he’s going to take a hit for his McCain remarks but eventually that’s going to be a point in his favor. The guy is unrestrained red-state, red-meat id and the mob loves him.
Trump is who the Republican party really is: a horrifically racist rich bully who does not give a damn who he steps on to get more. He’s not leaving the race. The donors can’t cut him off. The party can’t censure him. He simply is, barbaric yawp and all. Besides, El Rushbo is rallying the troops to defend him.
Human political metastasis personified is a strange thing to watch, but it does explain the hair.
Spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Steve M digs up an interesting fact from the recent WaPo-ABC poll in which Trump leads the Republican field by eleven points: Trump polls at 32% among voters with no college degree, and only 8% among voters with a college degree.
That’s quite a split. It’s worth noting that Republicans who consider themselves Tea Party members are more likely to have gone to college than other Republicans.
Spent four years prostrate to the higher mindPost + Comments (74)
Why not charge more?
Insurance companies can make their money in two basic ways. The first is to organize themselves as a funky looking hedge fund with an odd cash flow model. Insurance companies often will invest their reserves in a wide variety of instruments, some liquid and some extremely illiquid in an attempt to get better than market rates of return. Health insurance companies, if they keep only slightly more reserves than required, often can’t play this game too aggressively as they need a lot of cash on hand. Property and other insurers that operate on longer contract horizons with fewer but bigger pay-outs are more likely to make their money as finance companies.
The other, and far more prosaic way an insurance company of any type makes money is to pay out less in claims than they collect in premium revenue.
None of this is earth shattering, but I want to reply to a comment by Raven on the Hill as it is something I’ve seen a number of times — namely that the ACA is a corporate give-away that will only feed the gaping maw of corporate America. There is a limited model where I can see that critique, but in general, I think it is more of a shiboleath instead of a model.
The insurance industry only gets paid if it funds treatment. And these days the percentage they can take is limited to 15% (the medical loss ratio) (or I think 20% in some cases) depending on the type of insurance. So how to increase profits? There is only one way: spend more on treatment.
The one case where this makes some sense is when an insurer is the only insurer in a region, and it is operating right at the threshold medical loss ratio. If the insurer is the only insurer in the region, they are taking on all of the medical risk, but they are probably fat and lazy. Here the decision to either make hard decisions and start saying no to high cost providers who want to perform low value treatment versus raising rates can look attractive. Cutting administrative costs would be a second choice (trust me, I spent a year of my life on a project that had a goal of reducing mail costs by a nickel per member per month (PMPM), three years out, the reduction was six cents PMPM, so it was a smashing success) .
There are a couple of constraints on how high the rates can go. National insurers are available to provide a ceiling on rates, state level political pressure can name and shame rate increases downwards, and finally PPACA has lowered the cost of entry for insurers to enter new markets as the exchanges can serve as the a common, low cost sales platform. If a monopolistic insurer started to charge as its base Exchange rate $1,000 PMPM for 21 year olds, I guarantee that there will be 10 insurers looking to enter that Exchange market for the next open enrollment as there is too much money on the table not to.
Now if that same insurer is operating at three or four points above the minimum required MLR, raising rates to increase profits could work. However, cutting the MLR and administrative costs are other ways to increase profits. Here the insurer could offer a narrow network with 80% of the providers of its broad network in order to exclude the high cost, always ordering expensive treatment providers.
One of the major differences in the PPACA world versus the pre-PPACA world for this monopolostic insurer is the underwriting standards. Previously, the insurer could underwrite based on medical history and experience. That meant each individual could be assigned a unique price point. In practical terms, the insurer could have several thousand price points for a single product in a single county depending on age, gender, zip code, BMI, smoking history along with dozens of perosnal and family history variables. In economic terms, underwriting allowed for an insurance company to massively segment a market. A perfectly segmented market with no information costs would lead to insurance being offered at each individuals maximum willingness to pay. This means the insurance comnpany would collect a massive amount of the social surplus as monopoly rent.
In the PPACA world, insurers have far less ability to segment the market as they can only use age, zip code and smoking history as direct pricing variables for individuals. There might be 80 PPACA allowed price categories instead of 1,500 potential price points for the same zip code in the pre-PPACA world. Some of the social surplus is returned to the general public.
That is the monopoly case. I think it is an interesting case, but it is a limited case for both empirical reasons as there are very few pure monopoly regions in this country, especially on Exchange (West Virginia is one, I think significant parts of Alabama is another), and the binding constraints of fat, dumb, lazy and already paying out at minimum allowable MLR. Now let’s take a look at the other extreme, the perfect competition model.
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Like Thunderbolt
The Freedom to Marry group is going out of business for the best possible reason: They won the fight. The group put together this celebratory video that might result in dust stimulating your tear ducts:
It’s important to remember the victories. This was one.
Open thread.
[H/T: Vox]Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Like ThunderboltPost + Comments (58)
Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread
In all seriousness, I assume he's going to demonstrate how he gets his hair like that. pic.twitter.com/iHYtqK0Xgf
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) July 21, 2015
.
Sure, like you could’ve resisted.
Guess Little Prince Rand is missing the attention of his Trump-curious bros. Because, seriously, from the Washington Post:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is working on legislation to allow soldiers to carry guns on military bases, and could introduce it as soon as this week. That could establish him as a leader among conservatives who say last week’s massacre at a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruiting station should change how the military looks at the issue…
Paul’s commitment to gun rights has a stronger pedigree than Trump’s. He is closely tied to the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that positions itself to the right of the NRA.
“I think guns are a great deterrent anyway,” Paul said on Monday. “I’ve also had bills, for a couple of years now, making it easier to arm pilots. “
In the wake of Chattanooga, Paul has also criticized immigration laws, asking whether they are letting anti-American elements into the country. “I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism,” he told Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle last week. Paul expanded on those comments Monday, recalling how he had wanted “Rubio’s legislation” – i.e., the stillborn 2013 immigration reform bill – to add screening for potential terrorists.
“We wrote a letter to Harry Reid, saying we should slow the bill down, and have a discussion about putting the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System in,” said Paul. “It gave extra scrutiny to countries that had radical elements that were professing a desire to harm Americans or America. I don’t think it has to say one religion or not, but I think you find out that most of the anti-American movements around the country do seem to be coming from predominately Islamic countries.”…
Guess it’s not pandering if he really believes that being scared of the correct “radical elements” is more important than eliminating redundant and worthless government paperwork, right, men?
Movie Night
Any Netflix recs? Thinking about Taichi Zero but it looks kind of cheesy.