My brother sent me this mocking picture making the rounds on the Internet. I thought it was àpropos in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. The coverage in Washington of the hurricane-that-wasn’t has been absolutely bizarre. It is good to see that this city does not just panic with an inch of snow. We panic with any weather above a flurry or a misting. Folks in parts of North Carolina and other coastal areas have had legitimate concerns (including New York, Vermont and other areas) and Irene’s flooding and power outages were expected to take quite a toll in those hardest hit areas. However, the D.C. coverage was comically ridiculous. I watched one story of how Irene had began “its trail of misery and destruction” toward Washington. General Sherman’s March To the Sea had less dire reviews. I am only talking about Northern Virginia and Washington where the coverage continued in sharp contrast with the actual forecasted weather for our area.
I have been admittedly snarky of the coverage for days, particularly the last 24-hours when the hurricane was a Cat-1 hitting hundreds of miles away. Having lived through pretty big hurricanes in Louisiana, I have a respect for the storms but there was never any predictions of serious rain in my area. For days, I have been checking the various weather sites only to find predictions of two inches of rain and strong winds on Saturday night (with clearing on Sunday). I would then turn on the television or go on the Internet and find live, round-the-clock, breathless coverage of the “misery” and “destruction” coming to Washington. At no time did the forecast predict anything more than roughly a couple inches of rain and high winds. There was clearly a chance for power outages due to the soaked soil and winds, but the coverage in this area was positively apocalyptic.
In addition to ratings, the hysteria did produce record sales at stores as people prepared for the apocalypse with bodies stacked like firewood in the streets.
Everything closed despite the fact that only two inches of rain and some strong winds were predicted. This morning, the coverage continues with reporters showing the same pictures of a couple of trees down to fill time. The rest of the coverage is largely “things that did not happen” stories. My favorite this morning on Channel 4 (NBC) was how in Alexandria the harbor man thought that people who tied up their boats for high tide might have to come back and tie the boats for lower tide. The reporter then went to show how the water has not risen and how high water could have been a problem in causing flooding — if there was high water. As predicted in the actual forecasts for days before the hurricane (as opposed to the news coverage), we had some trees down, some power outages, and rain. Various forecasters (here and here) objected to the overblown claims in places like Washington before the storm hit.
I was not alone in feeling a significant loss of credibility for our local media in the hype leading to the storm — which seemed overtly disconnected to the actual predictions of rain and wind. Of course, at the coast, there were some curious moments such as the reporter who gave a live account while covered in what appears toxic foam.
We decided not to join the apocalyptic preparations and instead invited a couple of the friends of the kids over for a hurricane party and sleepover. Our power went off for exactly twenty seconds, but we had a grand time and watched “Cats v. Dogs” while devouring bags of popcorn. The overkill coverage will only make it more difficult for media and the government to get people to believe them next time when there is a serious threat, in my view.
Of course, most everything is still closed today as we clean up the carnage of blown leaves and soggy lawns in our area. In your view, was Irene overblown?
Roco is correct:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-06-20-medicare_N.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/retirementspecial/02health.html
Mike and Roco: Either they are full of it as Mike say, or they prefer to gouge. Any responsible doctor will take Medicare, even those who do not take Medicaid. Medicaid reimbursements are lower, but I have had a suspicion for a long time that many doctors don’t want to take Medicaid because it is for poor and disabled people who have not worked enough to qualify for Medicare. That means your waiting room will be full of……..wait for it………..poor people. You know the type: bad teeth because they cannot afford a dentist, and raggedy clothes. Those folks.
“That is interesting, doctors around here are telling me they are not taking medicare/medicaid patients because they dont get reimbursed properly.”
Roco,
Those Doctors are full of shit. I haven’t run into one Doctor who doesn’t gladly accept Medicare and I’ve had the best doctors in their fields.
“Where is the liberal not for profit health insurance company?”
Roco,
I know of one, since first my father and now I have been covered by it for more than 60 years. It was GHI/Blue Cross Blue shield of NY. It was a great insurance company and since between my Mother, Father and I it covered
12 heart attacks and 3 strokes, not to mention numerous broken bones and other health issues. It stopped being great when in the 90’s with the connivance of Guiliani and the Republican Governor it was allowed to become private, with very healthy bonuses for the people who were previously in charge. It’s gone downhill ever since, but luckily with Medicare it is now my secondary insurance. There are probably many more that suffered that fate for the simple reason of someone profiting and the consumer losing.
“I know from personal experience that what you say is not true. Now my experience may be isolated but I kind of doubt it. We have, in 20 years, only been denied a few things, none of which were life threatening.”
You and your family are very lucky because that is not the common experience. Also too, unlike the majority of those covered, you as a businessman could probably afford a really good policy.
“I thought liberals werent greedy?”
Roco, if you would look beyond your dogma for a minute you might realize that you project a lot of beliefs onto people that are baseless and merely cant. One of the biggest misconception you have is that people who care for the welfare of their fellow humans must be self sacrificing altruists. they most certainly are not in almost all cases. They are realists who understand that the good of all of people make the world a better place to live in. They also understand that while wealth is certainly nice to have, it is far from a good determinant of a happy life.
Otteray Scribe:
“Since I got on Medicare, my insurance troubles have all but vanished. If my doctor wants to refer me to a specialist, he does not have to call the insurance for an OK first. Also, when I go to his clinic for something, he knows he is going to get paid.”
That is interesting, doctors around here are telling me they are not taking medicare/medicaid patients because they dont get reimbursed properly.
Otteray Scribe:
Sergeants and secretaries may run the army and the office but I doubt they make strategical decisions which either save/cost lives or move businesses along toward profitability/bankruptcy.
Every executive needs a good secretary to free them up to make good decisions.
By the way, you do understand that before you are a general or a CEO you did do work and you did it very well and are probably sharp as hell. It is easy to second guess or make light of someones work.
When you are not a farmer, farming looks easy. Just throw some seed and fertilizer on the ground and step back and make some big money.
Roco, my son quit the practice of family medicine because of insurance companies. He found he was spending more time on the phone arguing with insurance clerks than he was treating patients. Why should some insurance clerk with no more than a Bachelor’s degree at most be telling a doctor whether a patient should be admitted to the hospital? Why should he have to spend twenty minutes on the phone arguing with an insurance company why a patient with chest pains should be admitted to the hospital for a cardiac workup?
If you have had few things denied, you can probably thank your doctor and his or her staff for running interference for you. Since I got on Medicare, my insurance troubles have all but vanished. If my doctor wants to refer me to a specialist, he does not have to call the insurance for an OK first. Also, when I go to his clinic for something, he knows he is going to get paid.
Gene H:
“For profit health care insurance by its very nature makes profits off of not paying for health care treatment that can save or improve the quality of life for people.”
I know from personal experience that what you say is not true. Now my experience may be isolated but I kind of doubt it. We have, in 20 years, only been denied a few things, none of which were life threatening.
From my vantage point, we have had 3 health insurance companies, they have all gone out of their way to help us and given us case managers who actually did act as our advocate.
Somehow I doubt I am isolated case and I can tell you the insurance companies have lost a good deal of money on us.
And the drug companies? The new drugs are literally a life saver for a person very close to me. Those new drugs and that evil profit they generate have prolonged that persons life. 20 years ago life expectancy was 18, it is now 35 in large part thanks to “evil” profit which pays the salaries of the good men and women who do that exceptional work.
I thank God [the creator of the universe, nature, etc] everyday that drug companies and insurance companies make big huge profits and hope they continue to do so.
Are there evil people who exploit others? You can bet on it, are they the rule? No way, the majority of people are good and decent. Or so I have found in my years of life.
Roco, why is Gene’s (or anyone else’s hourly rate) relevant to the discussion? One’s hourly charge is for work done. It would be reasonable for a lawyer to charge a couple of hundred dollars for an hour of work, but how can one justify paying a CEO a couple of thousand an hour? Nothing I ever did in my life would justify the kinds of reimbursement some top level corporatists are awarded. Note that I said, “awarded,” not, “earned.” There is a difference.
When you hire a lawyer or other professional, you are paying for not only the professional’s time, but also for the supporting staff and infrastructure. Hire me and you are also hiring the company–that is why the reimbursement is in three figures, not two per hour. But a top echelon corporate executive does not actually do “work,” yet is reimbursed millions per year. In some cases that comes out to five or six figures per hour. Yet, much of what many executives do could be done by a robot or skilled office manager. And truth be told, many top offices are run more by the secretarial staff than by the boss. I remember reading a humorous story years ago, entitled, “Sergeants Run the Army.” More truth to that than many CEOs and Generals would admit publicly.
Gene H:
what do you consider an hour of your time to be worth and why is it worth that amount?
Roco,
First, yeah, we all know your religion by now.
Second, the existing insurance companies are the greedy ones. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t resist a single payer system so vigorously.
Third, bullshit. I don’t call profit evil. I call unjust profit and/or profit at the expense of human life evil. Which is exactly the scenario current American health care insurance creates. Money isn’t the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil. Capitalism is simply a tool. It’s not the ONLY tool and it’s most certainly not the best tool for every job. Like any tool, it is also capable of being misused and in the case of capitalism the leading cause of misuse is the pursuit of greater and greater profits no matter the societal cost. Greedy and venal people create suffering in the world by their bad acts – both illegal and legal but unethical – in pursuit of profit, but an honest profit is perfectly acceptable. It’s not a person making an honest living that’s the problem. It’s not making money that makes a person evil. It’s how they make their money that makes them evil. For profit health care insurance by its very nature makes profits off of not paying for health care treatment that can save or improve the quality of life for people. The purpose of health care insurance should not be profits for insurance companies. It should be reducing the cost of care by distribution of risk not matter what care is medically required. You cannot do that in a for profit model without taking actions which either result in the death or the reduction of the quality of life for people all so some ass can get a bonus. That’s evil.
Gene H:
I thought liberals werent greedy?
Gene H:
“The pursuit of profit in every aspect of life puts the worship of money in the form of private profits above all other considerations including something even more important to a civilized society; the general welfare of the citizens.”
the pursuit of profits has increased the standard of living immensely over the last 200 years. It is that pursuit that has lead to just about every major life saving, life extending and life enhancing product or service now available.
The pursuit of profit does more for the general welfare than all the trillions ever spent by government. A civilized society has evolved to be able to pursue profit, we no longer have to kill each other for resources, we can trade with each other. That fact alone has improved the welfare of countless millions of human beings.
It is not money we value but human life, you call profit evil but what is profit? Nothing but human activity, a mans life, the sum total of his time spent on earth. Man must make profit to move forward and improve. That improvement helps all of us. Just look at what Steve Jobs has done in the pursuit of profit.
What’s holding it back?
Greed, Roco. Simple stupid greed.
Gene H:
Where is the liberal not for profit health insurance company?
Such an insurance company would surely draw a lot of people. So, where is it? What’s holding it back?
There must be some liberal somewhere who wishes to help his fellow man with his own money and not someone else’s.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/29/new-cnn-poll-perry-sits-atop-gop-field/ This is the third poll that gives Perry a double digit lead. Ron Paul drops to 6%. Palin is at 10%. She will probably not run and endorse Perry.
Roco,
It’s not about control except in your case and that desire for control is directly linked to a desire for profits. Some human endeavors simply should not be done on a for profit basis. It’s not only unjust, it’s inefficient. Take for example the bloated salaries of health care insurance executives, the systemic inefficiencies of forcing providers to maintain multiple paper trails and the desire to pay dividends to stockholders. Where does this money come from? It comes from collecting premiums and not paying claims and calling the differential profit. Just so with other forms of infrastructure, when you add the profit motive, you are skimming monies that could be used to improve the services to pay out ridiculous salaries and meet investor expectations that are driven not out of maximizing resource usage but rather maximizing profits. As the population of not just this country, but Earth, increases, waste to generate profit in an age of declining resources to meet demand will sooner rather than later show the folly of seeking to profiteer off of every civilized endeavor. The Romans didn’t build aqueducts and sewers and roads and harbors for personal profit. They weren’t privately owned. They were publicly owned and for the use of any and all citizens. They built them because potable water and sanitation and transportation address fundamental necessities for civilizations of scale.
Public systems paid with tax dollars from an equitable tax schema would insure Warren is paying more too. He just wouldn’t be paying trumped up administrative costs and dividends nor would any other citizen/owner/user of that infrastructure. Money is not a God. Some endeavors should simply be done in the public interest driven by duties held to the public trust. The pursuit of profit in every aspect of life puts the worship of money in the form of private profits above all other considerations including something even more important to a civilized society; the general welfare of the citizens.
puzzling, as one who has depended on the NOAA to keep me out of trouble for more than fifty years, and who knows more than a little about micrometerology, I am appalled at any suggestion of privatizing such an essential service. Pay to play? I don’t think so. When I get a wx briefing from flight service, I do not want to have to wonder if it is accurate because they do not want to affect the bottom line of some client who wants to sell tickets to an event.
No forecast is totally accurate. The latest computer modeling is infinitely better than the forecasts based on pencil and paper calculations that were the standard when I first started flying. Anyone who has even a smattering of knowledge of fluid dynamics knows that you have to apply a healthy dose of chaos theory calculations into a weather forecast. And to puncture your balloon regarding private forecasting, did you forget about Jeff Masters’ Weather Underground and Accuweather? Those two companies do a fairly good job and anyone can hire them for specialized forecasts. It is a wide open market. I just do not want my FAA flight service station using them when they give me a wx briefing.
As for how accurate information gets disseminated, it is always smart to ignore the commercial weather forecasters and their breathless on-air personalities. I have NOAA bookmarked and the NOAA reporting station nearest to me linked so I can get it instantly. Go to the source, not the talking heads.
*gold medal
OS,
The point is not that NOAA was accurate or inaccurate in this particular case, although even on that there is disagreement to your claims of a “gold metal” forecast:
NYT: Hurricane Lost Steam as Experts Misjudged Structure and Next Move
Government weather forecasts dominate the media message and have eliminated a market for private hurricane forecasting. There is no check or balance to agency mistakes since there are few alternate sources of information. We will never know how accurate hurricane forecasts could be until private-sector level innovation and expertise is allowed to return to this field.