Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

You cannot shame the shameless.

When we show up, we win.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

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Late Night NSFW Open Thread: The GOP After Dark

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New developments in Repubs in Disarray!, courtroom edition:

Via TPM, per the NYTimes — “Law Firm Defending Trump Seeks to Withdraw From a Long-Running Case” [gift link]:

A law firm that has long defended Donald J. Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a yearslong case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”

The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Mr. Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.

But late on Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign communications adviser, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.

In the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Mr. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.

The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president…

[*chef’s kiss*]

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Perspective on a Wednesday Night! (Open Thread)

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Looks like we can use an open thread!

Yes, Henry is lying on 4 beds piled high, and snuggling with his favorite stuffed baby.
Nice work if you can get it!

One more week and it’s haircut time.

Open thread.

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War for Ukraine Day 799: Odesa Targeted With Ballistic Missiles

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Just a quick Rosie update: She’s eating more, starting to put weight back on, and is significantly improved from the weekend and Monday. I, however, am still sleep deprived and exhausted. The other good news is that the oncology vet is excellent and has made it clear that despite the protocols, she’s treating the dog. So if we have to push a treatment back a week or two, then that’s what we’ll do.

The Russians bombarded Odesa today.

They also hit Kharkiv itself and Zolochiv in Kharkiv Oblast again too:

Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Planning the National Conventions

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So far, defining the difference between the two parties:


The RNC wants to Speak to the (Secret Service) Manager, per the Washington Post:

… Milwaukee’s plan to host protesters in a one-block city park about a quarter-mile from the arena is dangerous because thousands of convention attendees will be forced to walk by the park en route to the festivities, a lawyer for the Republican Party wrote in the letter. The park is situated between two main streets that the Republican National Committee says convention attendees will use to get to the venue.

“This will force thousands of peaceful attendees and demonstrators, who may otherwise choose to avoid or limit direct, proximate engagement with one another, to be in extremely close, consistent, and unavoidable proximity. As recent college and university campus clashes make plain, forced proximity heightens tensions among peaceful attendees and demonstrators of differing ideologies and increases the risk of escalation to verbal, or even physical, clashes and corresponding law enforcement intervention,” wrote the lawyer, Todd Steggerda of McGuireWoods.

Instead, the GOP wants the Secret Service to include the area called Pere Marquette Park in its security perimeter, which would force the city to choose a different area for its “First Amendment Zone.” Pere Marquette is the closest large park to the arena. The RNC has proposed another park by City Hall across the river from the arena, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

In the letter, Steggerda wrote that the RNC asked low-level Secret Service officials to change the plan, but “this critical shortcoming has not been addressed.” By sending the letter, the RNC is escalating the dispute to the director of the Secret Service and demanding a meeting to discuss the issue…

Secret Service officials have told city officials that they do not want to get involved in a political fight, said another person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations.

“This was not set up to stick it to the Republicans. This was where we were going to have the protest area for the Democrats in 2020 as well,” this person said….

Meanwhile, on our side…


This is the entirety of Byer’s Spielberg-related scoop at Puck:

Spielberg to tell Biden’s story at D.N.C.: Steven Spielberg hasn’t made a movie since The Fabelmans in 2022, so there’s a ton of speculation about what project he’ll tackle next. Surprise: It’s not a movie. I’m told the Oscar-winning filmmaker has been quietly but actively working with the Joe Biden campaign to help choreograph August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Starting a few months ago, Spielberg has participated in multiple strategy sessions on how to best tell the president’s story, his accomplishments, and his vision for a second term. Spielberg is a big Biden fundraiser, of course, and his friend and former DreamWorks business partner Jeffrey Katzenberg is a chair of the Biden campaign. I’m told Spielberg also quietly consulted a bit on the 2020 convention, which was held virtually. But Steven will play a bigger role this time, according to a source familiar with the planning, and while there’s no short-film project in the works right now, he could even direct or produce something that would be shown at the convention, as he did in 2008 for Obama. (The Biden campaign and a rep for Spielberg both declined to comment.)

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Negative Premium Plans and the ACA

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Yesterday afternoon, I was having a beer and a long discussion on Zoom with my friend and most frequent co-author.  We’re trying to figure out what our combined research agenda for the next couple of years looks like after we get through a couple of current and near future projects.  We think we have some cool questions that both build on our previous work while also being intellectually interesting and extremely policy relevant.

We got cool stuff in the near and long term pipeline.

However, one of the more useful parts of the conversation was the decision to send an idea of mine that has been bugging me for 6+ years to the big farm upstate where good projects go to play with other really good projects.  I want to study negative premium plans in the ACA but we can’t figure out the data or the approach.  I’m throwing this out there for anyone to steal and do really cool things with as I want to read your paper in 2027 but I don’t know how the hell to write that paper.

We know that zero premium plans are pretty common in the ACA (as well as Medicare Advantage and Medicaid Managed Care).  We know token positive premiums create substantial administrative burden.  Every ACA paper that I write (including my dissertation) has a line that says something to the effect “premiums are minimally bounded by zero….”  That is not quite right!  Sometimes there are extremely lagged negative premium plans or in non-econ language — sometimes there are plans where you eventually get paid to buy them.

WHAT?

Yeah, this is weird.  It is an artifact of the Medical Loss Ratio(MLR) regulations.  MLR rules state that over a 3 year rolling window, an insurer has to spend 80% of qualified premiums on either medical/pharmacy claims OR qualified quality improvement projects.  In reality, gross premiums are greater than qualified premiums, so the actual ratio is around 75%(ish).  If an insurer over that three year window in a state-market segment has an MLR below 80%, the insurer-segment has to send out rebate checks to enrollees from the last year of the three year window.

Most of the time, MLR rebates are going to be actuarial noise as insurers aim to be just above the cut-off point and sometimes they miss high and sometimes they miss low.

HOWEVER— in 2018, the ACA market was an ungodly mess.

Lots of insurers decided to leave in 2017 for the 2018 plan year as they had no idea if the market would still exist when they had to do their rate filings in summer 2017 due to Repeal and Replace and they had no idea what was happening with Cost Sharing Reduction subsidy payments.  The surviving insurers did what insurers and actuarials do when they are scared — massively jack up rates.  They also put the cost of CSR payments into their Silver premiums in a move known as Silverloading.

More particularly, a few insurers, including one in Virginia, were local monopolists and realized that they could send premiums through the roof  and most enrollees who got subsidies would not be effected (interesting side note — GOLD enrollees facing a massive relative price shock… find new grad student minion to pitch).  By summer 2018, it was obvious that insurers were Scrooge McDucking it for 2018 as premiums skyrocketed, enrollment stayed flat-ish and claims were flat-ish.

By the start of 2019 and especially the 2020 Open Enrollment Periods, it was obvious that a couple of insurers would need to issue huge ass MLR rebate checks for their 2018 pricing.  And an individual who could buy a low to no premium plan in one of these insurers was effectively buying an option that was very likely to be in the money on one of those huge ass rebate checks.  The combination of normal ACA subsidies, and Silverloading would drive down their premiums at the point of purchase and the MLR rebate check would, eighteen months later, make their effective net premium negative by a whole lot.  In some cases it could be a several thousand dollar check.

The companies that were very likely to be giving out honking huge rebates was pretty predictable — so did attentive enrollees buy their option?

I want to answer this question but the data has never been good enough….

So feel free to use this set-up as I want to read your paper in 2027.

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