Corruption and Obamacare

I still don't see any evidence that Obamacare will reduce health care premiums for ordinary Americans. These cost controls were promised as the prime reason for Obamacare back when Barack Obama first ran for president. At Huffpo, Wendell Potter explains some of the reasons that healthcare premiums continue to skyrocket. It's a story permeated with corruption, involving the malfeasance of both Democrats and Republicans. Here's the introduction to Potter's article, "Why Americans Pay So Much for Health Care: Friends in High Places (Just Not Your Friends)":

If you wonder why we spend more money on health care than any other country but have some of the worst health outcomes, you need look no further than the halls of Congress to it figure out. And you need look no further back than the recent "fiscal cliff" drama for compelling proof of how decisions are often made, not based on protecting the public's interest and bringing costs down but on protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms and other special interests that grease the palms of our elected officials.

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Free Internet for all

Shall we vote for our phone companies' profit margins or for Internet access for all, resulting in true growth? The answer should be obvious to anyone who is not a phone company. The Washington Post reports:

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor. . . . . “We want our policy to be more end-user-centric and not carrier-centric. That’s where there is a difference in opinion” with carriers and their partners, said a senior FCC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is still being considered by the five-member panel.

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Iceland kicks out FBI after learning of Wikileaks investigation

According to Rixstep, FBI agents landed in Reykjavík without prior notification in an attempt to investigate WikiLeaks operations in the country, but Home Secretary Ögmundur Jónasson found out about the visit and forced them to leave the country, with the Icelandic government then issuing a formal protest to US authorities, according to Islandsbloggen.

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The urge to believe

In this 2010 TED talk, Michael Shermer indicates that we have evolved to be pattern-seeking creatures because it is often more dangerous to suspend belief than to acknowledge that a pattern (e.g., a predator) exists. It's a video full of good ideas. What I found most interesting, though was Shermer's discussion of an experiment run by Jennifer Witson of UT Austin. Using a patternless printout, she found that those who were more likely to find patterns were those who felt less certain and out of control. Great follow-up example at minute 7: Baseball players are more superstitious when batting (where the best only succeed 3 out of 10 times), whereas they are not superstitious when fielding (where they are 95% successful). At min 8, Shermer explained that those who believe in ESP tend to see more patterns that didn't actually exist. What comes to mind is that conservatives tend to be more control oriented, and more likely to embrace and lunge at patterns that don't actually exist. At min 9: Drugs that reduce psychotic behavior (seeing patterns that don't exist) leads to more euphoria and creativity. Delightful illustration that we have hyped up face-recognition software (min 13). A companion doctrine to patternicity is agenticity, recognizing agents who don't actually exist. Sherman points out that agenticity explains many conspiracy theories (min 15). Hilarious ending. Shermer's discussion continues at this recent post at Huffpo, which includes his "baloney detection kit."

  • Does the source of a claim often make similar claims?
  • Have the claims been verified by another source?
  • Has anyone gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only confirmatory evidence been sought?
  • Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing explanation?
  • Do the claimants' personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?

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