As an alumnus of the University of Texas, it is with a heavy heart that I acknowledge last night's 37-21 victory. The score is somewhat misleading because Alabama ultimately scored touchdowns off two turnovers by backupTexas quarterback Garrett Gilbert in the final two minutes of the game. Texas also inexplicably gave away a touchdown in the closing seconds of the first half off a bobbled shovel pass deep in Texas territory.
I am proud of the Texas Longhorns whom lost their most valuable player, Colt McCoy, the winningest quarterback in college history, 5 Longhorn plays into the game on a shoulder injury. The Longhorns had the first 2 scores in the game, but Garrett Gilbert, with little playing time this season, was facing one of the nation's top defenses and was ineffective for the remainder of the half, including giving up the freak interception touchdown when almost everyone (including me) thought Texas would run off the remainder of the clock and regroup at halftime. (There was also a scare at one point when Gilbert was shaken up, and Texas was facing a nightmare scenario of trying to win a national championship with a third-string quarterback.) Gilbert finally got his bearings in the second half with two brilliant touchdown passes and a two-point conversion to close within 3 points. The momentum was with Texas, and there seemed to be a legitimate shot of realizing a backup quarterback's Cinderella dream of winning an improbable national championship.
Heavily favored Alabama earned their victory, and I congratulate them. But the game was closer than the score indicates, and when you knock out the best college football quarterback and player early in the game, Alabama should have put away the game early. In fact, Texas gained more offensive yards than Alabama; I do not think a single viewer of the game would have predicted that after McCoy was injured in the first quarter. I think that Gilbert is going to be a worthy successor to McCoy next season.
New Jersey Senate Reaffirms the Traditional Definition of Marriage
The New Jersey Senate yesterday turned back a "gay marriage" bill 20-14, building on a recent trend of blue state victories defending the traditional institution of marriage (e.g., Maine and New York). Lame duck Governor Corzine had promised to sign the bill if it passed.
Another Little-Noticed Democratic Scandal
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley's successor as Baltimore City Mayor, Sheila Dixon, resigned in an Alford plea deal which concedes (without admission of guilt) a count of perjury on the nondisclosure of gifts, essentially wipes last month's conviction off her record, avoids jail time, and allows her to once again seek public office in 2 years and to retain an $83,000 annual pension. Dixon was convicted in December on a misdemeanor charge of embezzling gift cards, targeted for the poor, to make purchases of electronics. Dixon, twice divorced and unattached, while city council president had solicited charitable donations from a developer, whom had the cards delivered to her office. Dixon claims that she thought that the over $500 in gift cards, which were delivered anonymously to her office, were a romantic gesture from another developer, her married lover.
Thomas Sowell on Health Care Reform.
IBD has been running a series on health-care columns adapted from a chapter in one of Thomas Sowell's books, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. (I am largely paraphrasing Sowell's discussion, using my own examples below.) There are a couple of relevant takeaways from a related podcast dealing with the obfuscation of third parties in health care decisions that I want to focus on.
First, there is the well-known insanity of flexible spending accounts, which perfectly encapsulates how government regulations muck up health care utilization. There is a well-known "use-it-or-lose-it" provision. You estimate within certain restrictions how much you can put of your salary tax-free for expected relevant expenditures. Not only that, but the government has lax restrictions on what exactly can be purchased using flexible spending dollars (e.g., all it may require if your medical provider's signature), including consumables such as artificial birth control and eyeglasses (Sowell's examples).
What happens, as Sowell points out, is that you run into end of fiscal/calendar year spending spree we've traditionally seen in government or corporate settings; managers are worried that their next budgets may get a below-average boost or even frozen or cut--if they turn out to have been "too efficient" in their spending. (There are, of course, legitimate reasons why they go below budget, e.g., a key position has not been filled.) So you may see a blip in fiscal year spending. The same type thing occurs with the "use-it-or-lose-it" regulation. Sowell wears glasses, so he uses the example of suggestions of employees with slack in their flexible spending plans buying new glasses, not because they need new glasses, but why not update the style versus lose your money in the plan. (I have never been able to understand why there wasn't an automatic rollover; some years might have more out-of-pocket expenses than other years. You should have an incentive to save--not an incentive to make frivolous purchases of medical products and services.)
When progressives talk about health care insurance, they are talking of a perversion of insurance. We are not talking simply about coverage for high-cost genetic defects, devastating catastrophic illnesses (cancer, MS, ALS, etc.) Zero wait periods, an approach favored by progressives, makes about as much sense as allowing homeowners to enroll in flood insurance during a hurricane watch; it introduces moral hazard by forcing prudent policyholders or owners to subsidize people whom choose, until that point, not to pay for insurance.
Conservatives have a more pragmatic approach: legitimate reform. For example, you eliminate an incentive for insurers to dump high-risk patients by providing reinsurance to insurers. You address guaranteed issue by shoring up subsidized state/regional high-risk pools and spreading the costs. You provide fairness by flattening government subsidies (vs. allowing the current tax bias in favor of union-negotiated gold-plated plans and no tax subsidy for those whom pay for their own insurance with after-tax dollars) and allowing smaller businesses to join together, self-insure and be exempt from state-specific expensive mandates. You increase competition by doing things like allowing insurers to market a no-frills basic health coverage across states. You address the high costs of defensive medicine and provider availability by enacting comprehensive medical malpractice tort reform.
What is NOT transparent--or in accordance with the rule of law--is some convoluted, lengthy piece of legislation which is secretly negotiated by a select number of elite Democratic leaders, whom then will arm-twist rank-and-file Democratic legislators to give Obama a win for the State of the Union
Political Cartoon
IBD cartoonist Michael Ramirez notes that Democrats are more concerned with privacy of back room deal making on the Democratic Party Health Care Bill than the privacy of travelers at airports. As for Speaker Pelosi, I think she misunderstood the question: it wasn't a question about transparency of her and other Dems' excuses for secrecy in negotiating a deficit-spending trillion-dollar health care bill. (CAUTION: If you see this sausage being made, you may actually get disgusted by how the progressives inefficiently spend other people's money and become a CONSERVATIVE!):
Bonus Video: Obama's Credibility on Health Care Bill Transparency
Musical Interlude: BBMak's "The Ghost of You and Me"
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