Daily Archives: 5 February 2014

Program Design

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This begins with an objective, cold-eyed analysis of the requirements of the program—which means no a priori assumptions can be made.  Even the most blatantly obvious underlying premises must be questioned and tested.

For instance.

The architects and designers of Obamacare (I’m being generous with those terms, but let’s go with them and see where we wind up) assumed, without checking, the following:

  • just about everyone wants health insurance
  • health insurance will make people healthier
  • those with health insurance are more likely to seek care from physicians and less likely to go to emergency rooms

Michael Barone, in the WSJ article at the link above, provided some data on the legitimacy of those unchecked assumptions.

  • a McKinsey & Co survey of those believed eligible for ObamaCare health-care exchange Plans found all of 11% of those who bought new these last couple of months were previously uninsured
  • two small insurance companies reported that only 25%-35% of those purchasing were previously uninsured

On those other two…assumptions…Barone described an in situ State of Oregon randomized experiment (in function, if not in intent) in the form of a lottery for allocating scarce Medicaid funds to applicants.

  • after two years of Oregon’s lottery, there was no significant difference between Medicaid-insured and uninsured in blood-sugar level, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels
  • those with Medicaid plans were 40% more likely to go to emergency rooms than those without insurance

Where were the Obamacare program architects and designers?

Are Liberals Embarrassed by Patriotism?

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Or are they just afraid of it?

Fort Collins High School won’t allow its students to celebrate America and Americanism.  Full Stop.

Administrators’ pseudo-rationale is this:

  • they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants
  • they didn’t want to be exclusive to any other country
  • they just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable

Yet the students are required to participate in Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  The students, though, aren’t as dumb as the high school’s…management team…thinks they are.  One student, all of 16 years old:

There are men and women fighting for our country and we should be able to celebrate that and be proud that we live in a country where we are allowed to vote—the right to free speech. They won’t even let us celebrate it.

Never mind that “anyone from other countries or immigrants” are here to be in American, to reap the benefits of American culture.

Never mind that there isn’t any other country here, so that exclusivity is a cynical red herring.

Never mind that these administrators make the rest of us Americans, including their own students, uncomfortable with their…attitude…or that their attitude is offensive to the rest of us Americans.

Americans don’t count in Liberal minds.

As Todd Starnes put it

shame on the administrators at Fort Collins High School for treating American school children like second-class citizens.

Update: Fort Collins High School Principal Mark Eversole may have seen the light, or at least he’s reversed course and is allowing the students to put on their ‘Merica Monday–renamed America day.  Here’s the letter he wrote to parents:

We apologize for our recent decision regarding My Country Monday and that it was seen as not patriotic. This could not be further from the truth. The original intent of Spread the Love week at Fort Collins High School was to unify the student body. When students first proposed “Merica Monday,” we felt that it was against this unifying theme and disrespectful to our country. Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way to describe life in the United States. This is what led us to discuss alternatives with students. We were surprised that our community interpreted our actions as anti-American. We are a proud public school in America and support many activities to celebrate our great nation. Due to this outpouring of sentiment and misinterpretation of our intentions, we have decided to rename the first day of Spread the Love week to “America Day” as opposed to “Merica Day.” We look forward to enjoying the creativity and energy of our students as they celebrate their patriotism next week.

This doesn’t entirely settle the matter, but it’s a step–however grudgingly taken–in the right direction.  Todd Starnes has more.

As do I: Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way….  Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’ve not heard it in any way other than neutrally.  Be that as it may, there’s also a so what factor, and another one: so were Yankee and Yankee doodle slang terms used in negative stereotypical ways.  Eversole would do well to review some American history the next time he thinks about deprecating American patriotism.