Daily Archives: 2013-04-30

Smokers in California escape their fair share

I heard a story on NPR this morning about how California is doing something about that evil Obamacare rule that allows insurers to “discriminate” against the most unfortunate of those among us – smokers. Obamacare actually (gasp) allows insurers to charge up to 50% more on premiums to smokers! How unfair, doesn’t Obama understand that these poor smokers have no choice, they are poor helpless victims of the big evil tobacco companies! Apparently smoking is much more prevalent of a lifestyle choice among the “poor” – so where Obamacare provides the “poor” with “affordable” health insurance, the smoking allowance allows insurers to basically add back all the “savings” – yes, that is the world’s smallest violin you hear in the background.

Funny, somehow the “poor” can afford to buy cigarettes (anywhere from $300-$3000/year depending on where they live and how much they smoke), yet they can’t afford the additional premium on their insurance policy attributable solely to something they choose to do. “Affordability” is one of those words thrown around a lot without any thought to what it actually means. Affordable simply means that one prioritizes the expense. Affordability all depends on how you order those things in your life that you value. One could claim a private school education for their child is unaffordable – and that would be true if they choose to spend their money first on a larger fancier house, on fancier cars, on cable TV, on high speed internet, on new clothes every month, then yes, not much is left for a private school education. But, one could pay for the education first, and then with what is left over structure their life around that so that they live in a smaller house, drive older cars and then at that point they would find cable TV and high speed internet become the “unaffordable” goods. To claim that health insurance or any other good is “unaffordable” is to simply be proclaiming it is not the thing you most highly value. Now one might argue that a $10 million mansion is unaffordable to nearly everyone and no amount of prioritization will make it so, true enough. But we are talking about affordability within the context of normal consumer goods and services, not about super luxury goods and services for which their lacking in the market is a concern to anyone. No one is crying about the “unaffordabiilty” of 50 foot yachts among the general public.

Not that I agree with the mandates Obamacare makes upon insurers in terms of what they can charge and how they can determine what they charge but at least I can understand why those who support Obamacare don’t want insurers to discriminate based on characteristics we can not control (i.e. gender, age, health status) – you are who are and there is no choice in the matter. Of course this “equality” mentality just means those who cost insurers less must pay more to subsidize the more costly demographics (witness France, where female drivers must now pay MORE for their auto insurance because in the name of equality it was deemed unfair that safer, more prudent female drivers be charged less than their male counterparts). But come on, cigarettes? Please, this is ENTIRELY the choice of the smoker. Are they addictive? Sure, but it is not IMPOSSIBLE to quit, plenty of people do it all the time. They are treating smokers like they are helpless victims who have no control over themselves. Please, give me a break.

This story highlights all that is wrong with socialized medicine. Those who willfully engage in bad behavior that affects their health must not be made to bear any of the cost of associated with their behavior – that is the job for the rest of society.

War Against the Constitution

In the wake of the Boston bombing many of those who claim a deep and abiding respect for the Constitution show a curious tendency to ignore those parts of the Constitution that tend to interfere with their desire for instantaneous revenge (i.e. 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments). The desire for revenge is understandable. Those desires exist today just as they did 200 or 2000 years ago. However, human passions, being irrational as they are, must be put in check so that human reason may triumph in our collective attempt to mete out justice. Fortunately for us, the founding fathers of this country realized that perhaps there was a more ethical manner to ensure justice than relying on a pitchfork-wielding mob. Thus was born the 4th-6th Amendments.

Ensuring that everyone accused of a crime, no matter how heinous, is afforded their full Constitutional rights does not protect the guilty – it protects the innocent. It protects you. It ensures that if YOU are wrongly accused YOU have the right to demonstrate how your accuser’s evidence is flawed. The greater the heinousness of the crime one is accused of does not increase the likelihood of one’s guilt. If the accused is truly guilty, then evidence of that guilt should not be terribly hard to uncover.  A guilty verdict will be assured and the validity of that verdict made public. It is curious how the more sure people are of an accused’s guilt the more annoyed they get with the idea of “wasting time” on a trial. If you are that certain of the guilt then what could possibly be lost by burying the accused in a mountain of evidence at trial? To suggest trials are not needed because no one would ever be accused of a crime without evidence is to accept man as an infallible being.

Although some people have often desired to dispense with trials involving particularly gruesome crimes they had resigned themselves to the fact that the Constitution said they had to follow these rules so they just put up with it. But now the war on “terror” has given these types a novel avenue by which they can circumvent the restraints of the Constitution. It’s the same old ruse all totalitarian governments play: foment fear over an imagined or provoked enemy. In their fear the people will do anything the government tells them if they believe it will ensure their safety. But tangible enemies come and go. The ideal enemy for the state would be one that could never disappear. An incorporeal enemy such as the concept of “terror” is just such an enemy. But people aren’t quite that stupid, they need to see a real human face for their enemy. Simple enough – label anyone you believe to be on the wrong side of this war as an “enemy combatant” and “poof” their rights are gone, because the rules in war are different after all. This is not to suggest such “combatants” have done nothing wrong, rather that all should be allowed to prove as much.

Sadly these circumventions of the Constitution will become permanent, just as this state of war is now permanent – how would one sign a treaty with “terror” after all? These circumventions of the Constitution will take place on US soil because naturally “terror” can exist anywhere in the world. We can bomb our enemies abroad, but here at home, that would be too messy. At home we simply declare an emergency and invoke “temporary” martial law. Boston was sadly our first taste of what that martial law may look like: a band of heavily armed Gestapo barks orders at you at gunpoint to your face to vacate your house and then searches it to their heart’s content, without a warrant, all in the name of “law and order”.

The application of the label “enemy combatant” means one has no right to confront their accusers, to see the evidence against them or to even attempt to provide evidence showing their innocence. Better hope you don’t have a similar name or appearance to an accused “enemy combatant” or were in the wrong place at the wrong time – because you have no right to demonstrate that you aren’t the person they think you are. We should be wary of our clever traps, as we ourselves may become ensnared in them.