Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Creative accounting…

Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red…

The so-called doc fix was part of the original House bill. Because of its high cost, Democrats decided to pursue it separately. Republicans say the cost should not be ignored. Congress has usually waived the cuts to doctors year by year.

And rosy assumptions:

There has been a lot of talk lately about the CBO scoring of the health bill. Here is one thing people should understand about their numbers: When they estimate the budget impact of a bill like this, they assume the path of GDP is unchanged.

Recall that the bill raises taxes substantially. Some of these tax hikes are the explicit tax increases on capital income to pay for the insurance subsidies. Some of these tax hikes are the implicit marginal rate increases from the phase-out of the insurance subsidies as a person’s income rises. Both of these would be expected to reduce GDP growth.

Indeed, to be very wonkish about it, these tax changes could have especially large GDP effects. Some people like to argue that taxes have small GDP effects because income and substitution effects offset each other. But if you give someone a subsidy and then phase it out, both the income and substitution effects work in the direction of reducing work effort.

I read this AP article this morning, and it brought to mind an exchange from the movie Trainspotting. In it Sick Boy details his grand theory. The exchange ends thusly:

Renton: So we all get old and then we can’t hack it anymore. Is that it?
Sick Boy: Yeah.
Renton: That’s your theory?

So the article was about health care.

The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation. That’s mainly because policies in the individual insurance market would provide more comprehensive benefits than they do today.

For most households, those added costs would be more than offset by the tax credits provided under the bill, and they would pay significantly less than they have to now.

That’s the fucking plan? That’s the savings? The savings plan is to force prices higher and say they’re lower by adding further complication to the tax code via new credits? Brilliant!

Geezus. It’s 9AM and I’m so ready for a Guinness.

For whatever reason, my normal temperature is well below the norm of 98.6º* and is usually around 96.7º. This morning my temperature has returned to its normal state for the first time in about 5 days.

I’m not sure what I had, but it involved several days of symptoms including some combination of fever, fatigue, grogginess, and sore throat. Anyway, I’m feeling much better now.

I’m really happy to have lost 3 days of productivity during what is effectively one of the busiest weeks of the year at work. Plus there are some other deadlines, not even including that whole federal tax deadline [thankfully Virginia has a breathing-room enabling deadline of May 1st], quickly approaching.

* Wikipedia says “The value of 36.8 °C ±0.7 °C, or 94.2 °F ±1.3 °F is the common oral measurement.” That would indicate that my normal temperature is actually quite a bit above the population norm. However I’m pretty sure there’s a typo in that sentence because 36.8°C = 98.2°F and later in the article it says “[t]he median daytime temperature among healthy adults… in the mouth (oral) is about 36.8 °C (98.2 °F)”. Time to make my first ever WikiPedia edit…

ADDENDUM: This is the first time I’ve really been sick in about 2 years. The last time was when several of us headed to the Tennessee hills for Skippy’s bachelor party. By the time we got to the cabin I was nauseous and felt pretty bad the whole time we were this. This weekend was frat alumni weekend. Given my work load, and now given the illness, I’m extremely glad that I opted to stay home. However I’m starting to believe that my body is developing the capability to shut down preemptively when frat-club hijinks are impending.

I just learned about a new “surprisingly simple” way to fight cancer:

When we diagnose cancer, the treatment is still primarily surgical, commonly combined with radiation therapy and anticancer drugs. The aim of these treatments is to suppress, or arrest, the unrestrained growth of cells in the body organs or tissues. In the case of many man-made systems we are similarly faced with situations where processes deviate from the normal operation of the system. But the remedy for such deviations is surprisingly simple: negative feedback.

Hmm, feedback. I do hate cancer and I do love modern control theory! Tell me more!

Negative feedback means that the system’s output is fed back into the same system in order to enable the system to determine the difference between the actual and the desired output, and to make the necessary corrections in its own operation. For example a vehicle’s speed control uses the difference between the actual and the desired speed to adjust the fuel flow rate. Those systems which feed back their own output for self-regulation are said to be closed-loop control systems.

Yup, I get that. I use the cruise control all the time. (more…)

In today’s NYT business section, Tyler Cowen writes why reducing the middlemen from health care won’t make it a “free lunch.” The basic point is that lower overhead costs are generally created by shifting the costs to health care consumers, generally in the forms of either fewer available treatment options, or longer waiting times for treatment.

This is not groundbreaking, but it reminds me of some information from an EconTalk podcast with Richard Epstein. From the time starting at 33:58:

“Often Times, the sale of drugs goes down in absolute units when they become generic… but what happens is, if you don’t have a brand name, it’s harder to sell it. And if there are 11 guys making it, nobody wants to advertise it. So that the thing tends to disappear from consciousness… Ironically, one of the things you could argue respectably now is that lengthening the patent term will actually help consumers in addition to producers by making sure that somebody’s keeping that drug in everybody’s face.”

The basic economic analysis predicts the presence of generics will dramatically shift the supply curve which seems to predict an increase in quantity of drugs at reduced prices. But the lack of advertising pushes the demand curve even further in the opposite direction. This seems to indicate a dramatic monetary savings at the cost of fewer people getting the drugs they want or need.

I’ve said it. You’ve said it. Our mothers have said it. Our fathers have said it. Our fathers’ brothers’ cousins’ nephews’ former roommates have said. And it’s stupid. There shouldn’t be a law.

Why? Because people who make laws say that. They believe it. Then they make a law. It’s usually a stupid law.

For example, mandating child car seats. They’re expensive, bulky, and not necessarily a major safety improvement. And they’re often misused. From an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

The Minnesota Safety Council estimates more than 80 percent of child car seats used in Minnesota are not properly installed.

I was just about mention that Freakonomics talked about car seats and their worthlessness a bit. So I just went to their blog to search for any content they had about car seats. Well “search” turned into the 2nd visible post on their blog today. Consumer Reports recently found:

When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.

CONGRATULATIONS! You just spent your money on a government mandated piece of shit! But remember, car seats are for “the greater good” and “for the children” and “for the future.”

But there was another article that caught my attention today. In part it was because a drunk crashed his truck and collapsed a whole bridge. But as I read it commented on his BAC.

A preliminary breath test at the crash site showed Campbell’s blood-alcohol content at .21, nearly three times the legal limit of .08. He blew .13 after completing field sobriety tests and a Datamaster test showed .147.

Hows that for accuracy and precision! Do the police use the average? The min? The max? The median? The mode? The average was .162 with a standard deviation of .042… or about 25% of the average. Hey, it’s close enough for government work!

And I almost forgot to rant about other stupid legislation, such as nutrition labels and movie, tv, and video game ratings. What has this information done? Made us fatter and focus on adult, R-rated, and most extreme video games. FUCK YEAH!