My wife started sniffing my face. It took a while to figure out, but apparently my new aftershave smells just like what she still loves from her (clearly mis-spent) youth.

Not only have I spent the past few weeks living in an Axe ad, but it’s really nice after shave.

So, I was pretty excited to see that Manson had recently been interviewed by talk show bully Bill O’Reilly. Now, O’Reilly and Moore couldn’t be more different so I was please that Manson still avoided taking the bait and responded to all of the questions thoughtfully, intelligently, and with humor. 

Manson seems like a neat guy – too bad I can’t stand his music.

According to the quoted report, there are only one fourth as many health savings accounts as high deductible health plans. This would only make economic sense if health plan members anticipated having no out of pocket health care expenditures. How could this be the case? Only if these members were significantly healthier than the population as a whole, or if those members were foregoing cost effective preventive care (though some disagree on the cost effectiveness of preventive medicine). Therefore, high deductible employer-sponsored health plans would be one means (and an economically inefficient one) for employers to shift the cost of health on to the overall society.

I believe that there are two fundamental principles that must guide us through the inevitable health care crisis that is looming on the horizon. First, we must bring personal responsibility back into the payment of health care. Health insurance was originally established to cover only catastrophic illnesses. Over the years, it has moved toward a semi-socialized program that has most of the costs covered by employers and the federal government. But in the end, all these two entities do is take our money through lower pay and higher taxes. We need to take these “middle men” out of the system for all routine health care. It would cut out huge administrative overhead costs that corporations and government spend that if we kept in our pockets would give us more money than we now have to spend on health care.

Second, we need to bring the market back into health care. Government controls health care at the local, state and federal levels. The pages of laws and regulations that control health care would make the 60,000 pages of the tax code look like a short story. The percentage of health care dollars that actually go to direct health is incredibly small. Some studies over the years have shown that 80% of the dollars in the system go to administrative costs. Government’s attempt to manage health care have contributed more than any other factor the the health care cost crisis.

For his conclusions to be correct, the following would need to be true:

1. Non-managed (“traditional”) health plans would need to be less expensive than managed care plans. However, the decision of most corporations to select HMOs, EPOs and other managed care options suggests the opposite.
2. Government managed care, such as Medicare, would have to be more expensive to administer. Though there are plenty of contradictory articles on the web, research suggests that government Medicare is less costly to administer than private Medicare HMOs, though those HMOs insure healthier patients.
3. Some significant portion of health care costs would need to be “discretionary” rather than urgent or emergent. The opposite, in fact, seems to be the case. Health plans find themselves needing to incentivize members for preventive care. These plans find such incentives to come out positive on a cost-benefit analysis because they avoid the sorts of catastrophic conditions that Jeff suggests should be the true use of health insurance. Moreover, without middlemen negotiating rates, physicians and facilities would be free to charge whatever they liked.

I’m not sure where Jeff gets his data–I don’t want to dispute his assertion that 80% of health care dollars are spent on administration but I would appreciate cited sources. More important, though, is that he seems to ignore the fact that good health is a very real public good. People with overall poor health, whether from poor nutrition, poor lifestyle, or poor preventive care, are more susceptible to the contagious diseases that are at the center of concerns about pandemics. Access to health care could even be considered a homeland security or national defense issue: healthy individuals are less susceptible to bio-terror attacks and would be better able to join the military in a time of true national emergency.

Uploaded by OPHOTN on 22 Dec ’05, 8.12pm PST.

• The Fund is Zionist, and believes in the establishment and continuation of the Jewish state in its present, historic location.
• The Fund works for political and economic equality for Israel’s traditionally less empowered populations: women, immigrants, Arabs, Bedouin, and Druze. Much of Israel’s international, political, and diplomatic strength comes from its position as the Middle East’s only free and democratic society. The New Israel Fund’s work helps to ensure that continues.
• The Fund supports organizations I know, believe in, and have worked with in a brief stint doing fundraising during college.

The war and recent battles between Israel and Hezbollah further demonstrate that modern wars cannot be won against weaker states or non-state actors. Military victory becomes political defeat, and anything less than total military victory becomes an implicit victory for the defeated. Israel could have learned that from American experience in Iraq. The only way Israel will win is to continue to be the only country in the Middle East where Arab citizens can vote freely, pursue economic interests freely, and criticize the government freely and without fear of persecution or violence. I hope that my support of the Fund will help to strengthen Israel for these continuing victories.

In their words: “NEW ISRAEL FUND works to strengthen Israel’s democracy and to promote justice and equality for all Israel’s citizens. The leading funder of social change in Israel, NIF supports grassroots organizations working to safeguard civil and human rights, bridge social and economic gaps, and foster tolerance and religious pluralism.”

Here’s my brilliant idea: a large plastic bag–with a huge mouth and a drawstring closure–should be folded and affixed to the top of every shipping box. Inside, outside, doesn’t matter where. Bonus points if both the peanuts and the bag are made from some kind of biodegradable plant-based plastic.

Officials in US President George W. Bush’s administration turned down a 2003 Iranian offer to begin talks with the US, recognize Israel, and end support of Palestinian terror organizations, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Of course, this was under Iran’s former reformist president. And the talks may not have gotten anywhere. But I’m surprised the administration let go of an opportunity to show that invading Iraq and Afghanistan worked. “Invading one of the Axis of Evil forces other to the negotiating table.” Great headlines. Unfortunately, all we did was undermine the reformists. Bummer.

US rejected Iranian overtures in 2003 | Jerusalem Post

Why then do most colleges and universities have explicit rules forbidding student affairs staff from participating in sites like FaceBook or MySpace? Paradoxically, it is precisely because of student candor. If a student were to post, say, morbid poetry and then attempt suicide and it were found that school employees had read the poetry and did not act, the school might be held liable. But students post lots of morbid or disturbing work but engage in comparatively little self injurious behavior. And there’s no way even a highly trained professional, like my wife, could separate the dangerous from the banal.

Parents and students interviewed seemed most upset about the invasion of privacy, the inappropriateness of holding students responsible for activities outside of school, and for usurping parental responsibility. I hope that the school board has also considered their liability if students and their families come to expect monitoring? (via Consumerist)