24 June 09

Workout notes 4.2 mile run (40:47) followed by a 3 mile walk (untimed but periods of technique) and stretching/push-ups (2 sets of 30).

I was surprised at how bad the run felt (legs were ok but I got out of breath towards the end) and at how good the walk felt.

I am always sluggish after donating blood.

Health Care

Here is some advice for the President:

From Robert Reich: here he shoots down common “anti-public arguments”. I’ll post a couple of his arguments.

Without a public option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of health care — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.
[...]

Critics complain that a public plan has an inherent advantage over private plans because the public won’t have to show profits. But plenty of private plans are already not-for-profit. And if nonprofit plans can offer high-quality health care more cheaply than for-profit plans, why should for-profit plans be coddled? The public plan would merely force profit-making private plans to take whatever steps were necessary to become more competitive. Once again, that’s a plus.

Critics charge that the public plan will be subsidized by the government. Here they have their facts wrong. Under every plan that’s being discussed on Capitol Hill, subsidies go to individuals and families who need them in order to afford health care, not to a public plan. Individuals and families use the subsidies to shop for the best care they can find. They’re free to choose the public plan, but that’s only one option. They could take their subsidy and buy a private plan just as easily. Legislation should also make crystal clear that the public plan, for its part, may not dip into general revenues to cover its costs. It must pay for itself. And any government entity that oversees the health-insurance pool or acts as referee in setting ground rules for all plans must not favor the public plan.

Paul Krugman: points out that most Democrats who are against the public option come from small population states in which certain plans have no competition at all:

Great catch by Digby, who quotes Sen. Blanche Lincoln about how terrible it would be if a government-run insurance plan undermined free-market competition, then links to this:

The Justice Department considers an industry to be “highly concentrated” if one company has 42 percent of the market. In Arkansas — Senator Lincoln should take note — Blue Cross Blue Shield has 75 percent of the market. If you take government self-insurance plans out of the equation, it’s higher. The state ranks as the ninth most concentrated in the country. Is it any wonder that insurance premiums have risen five times as fast as wages?

The truth is that the notion of beneficial competition in the insurance industry is all wrong in the first place: insurers mainly compete by engaging in “risk selection” — that is, the most successful companies are those that do the best job of denying coverage to those who need it most. But in any case, Arkansas is in effect a one-insurer monopoly state, with no competition at all — unless a public plan is created.

As far as the Republicans: Krugman sees them as hopeless and so resorts to some ridicule.

Hint:

Krugman fears that President Obama might be a bit too ready to compromise and that he will be willing to throw the public option under the bus (which is why Krugman backed Hillary Clinton in the primary)

Science/Religion Mano Singham has a thoughtful post about the accommodationist controversy:

While this debate has been going on for some time, the latest resurgence was triggered by Jerry Coyne, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and the author of a new book Why Evolution is True (which is on my reading list), who wrote a scathing review of two new books by scientists trying to reconcile science with religion: Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution by Karl W. Giberson and Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul by Kenneth R. Miller. The review, titled Seeing and Believing: The never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion, and why it is doomed to fail, contains arguments and conclusions that will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but it is all in one place and very well-written, well worth reading.

In the accommodationist camp are people like biologist Kenneth Miller, philosopher Michael Ruse, journalist Andrew Brown, and chemist Francis Collins. (You can read my detailed nine-part review of Collins’s appalling book The Language of God here.)

There have always been religious scientists who manage to find reasons to hold on to their faith in the face of the challenge posed by science. Michael Shermer puts it well when he says that the people who believe weird things are not stupid: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.” (Why People Believe Weird Things (2002), p. 283). More problematic is the accommodationist view taken by prestigious scientific organizations like the National Academy of Science (NAS), which I will examine at a later date.

In the anti-accommodationist camp (sometimes referred to as the ‘new atheists’) are people like Richard Dawkins, biologist Jerry Coyne, biologist P. Z. Myers, and philosopher Daniel Dennett. Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that my sympathies lie entirely with this latter group. (Also see here and here.)

Read the rest of this post; Singham goes on to discuss the legal ramifications of seeing sciences as being incompatible with religion.

Politics again Kathleen Parker has some fun at the expense of possible Republican candidates for 2012. Of course, the usual caveats apply.

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