Crazy Hospital Charges Medical Savings Accounts July 17, 2003January 22, 2017 BREAKING NEWS the Borowitz Report: ARI FLEISCHER NAMED NEW IRAQI INFORMATION MINISTER Governing Council ‘Extremely Powerful,’ New Spokesman Says And now . . . Stephen Gilbert: ‘Jonathan asks: ‘Why do hospitals charge higher rates to the uninsured (i.e. those who have the least money)?’ Answer: Because they can. The uninsured don’t have the bargaining (or political) power to get lower rates. (Although it is possible to negotiate lower rates. I had arthroscopic knee surgery a few years ago, $6000 for a 20 minute ‘procedure.’ A friend suggested I speak to the billing person at the doctor’s office and ask if I could get a discount. She reduced the bill to ‘only’ $5000. I went out and got health insurance a month later.) One benefit of health insurance is you get the lower fees even when you haven’t reached the deductible limit. I got a high deductible policy so I could open an MSA (when are you going to write about THEM? a great deal!), but still benefit from the rates Blue Shield has negotiated with its providers even when it’s me rather that Blue Shield who pays the bills.’ ☞ Good points! Here is the IRS info on Medical Savings Accounts. If you are self-employed, or work for/own a small business, and have no health insurance, definitely check it out. Or visit medicalsavings.com to get some idea of rates. (I have no idea whether this outfit is reputable, but I was fascinated to see that my monthly rate would be $213 if I lived in poor Florida zip code, versus $633 if I lived in a rich one. It makes sense rates would vary geographically – care in Manhattan, New York, is going to cost more than care in Manhattan, Kansas. But I had not imagined it would vary that much.) Jim: ‘The answer to Jonathan’s question about hospital charges is in several parts. First, he is incorrect about charging the uninsured or cash customer double or triple, but 30-40% more is very common. Second, bulk customers, like insurance companies, get better rates in any business. Third, with insurance companies the certainty of payment is much higher than with a private party and this is worth money also. Fourth, the insurance companies negotiate rates well in advance of need. You can also negotiate in most cases but [sitting there bleeding], few try.’ Mike Broderick: ‘Insurance companies have the ability to send their customers elsewhere. The uninsured aren’t likely to shop around when they have a critical need for care, which is usually the situation when such people see a doctor – at least it was for me when I had no insurance.’ Edward: ‘Given that in my ER over one-third of patients pay nothing, it makes sense to negotiate with those who do pay. Overall, we lose a little bit on every patient, but we try to make it up in volume.’ Ralph Sierra: ‘As an uninsured person who pays the top rate for medical care, I’d like to give my layman’s opinion on that. Doctors and hospitals set their standard rates artificially high because they know that insurance companies and Medicare (who pay most of the bills) will insist on negotiating a discounted rate. If the doctors and hospitals gave those same discounts to the uninsured, the insurance companies would insist on negotiating an even greater discount. And on and on.’ Ed Biebel: ‘I have a personal story about why the hospitals charge the uninsured outrageous rates. At least what they told my parents and brother is that Medicare and Medicaid make them do it. My brother was being seen at the Epilepsy center at one of Philadelphia’s university hospitals. The doctor suggested brain surgery might be the only way to correct his seizures and admitted him for two weeks of pre-surgery tests. A month or two after the tests, his employer filed for bankruptcy and closed. Unbeknownst to the employees, the employer was several months in arrears on health insurance premium payments. As a result, the insurer terminated all of the employees’ insurance as of the last premium they received, which was before my brother’s hospitalization. My brother was now responsible for over $100K in hospital bills. He thought he had insurance but now he didn’t. My brother, who was working as an apprentice in a printing company, certainly didn’t have that kind of cash. ‘He tried negotiating with the hospital but they filed suit against him. He saw personal bankruptcy as his only choice. When he went to file bankruptcy, the law firm for the hospital claimed that ‘he was indigent’ under an obscure Pennsylvania law and threatened to file suit against my parents and place a lien against their home. My brother was able to finally negotiate to file to ‘reorganize his debts’ and pay out about 50% of the bill over time. ‘There were some good people. His neurologist forgave all of his bills and convinced all of the doctors that treated him to do likewise. But that was a drop in the bucket compared to the hospital bill. My brother did not qualify for charity care under the law. ‘When we asked why the hospital was *so* tenacious in pursuing him, we were told it was not a matter of economics but of Medicare / Medicaid rules. We were told that Medicare / Medicaid regulations require that hospitals demonstrate that they pursue debts with vigor. If the hospitals allow the debts to be just written off, Medicare feels that it pays a disproportionate amount of the cost of healthcare and threatens the hospital. Essentially, the average cost of healthcare goes up because of bad debts, so Medicare has a vested interest in making sure that as much is collected as possible. The hospital claimed its hands were tied. ‘It was a real eye-opener to my family on the state of health care. It was very disheartening because my brother only wanted to be better and live a normal life. If he was destitute, we would have been fine. It he was wealthy, he would have been fine. But as an average working class guy, he was screwed and there was no one to help him.’ ☞ I heard on the news over the weekend that some in Congress have begun investigating this problem, hoping to find a way hospitals can be less ruthless when it comes to collections. The solution to the health care mess, I think, is probably just more tax cuts for the best off. That last tax cut was, in the President’s words, ‘itty-bitty,’ and perhaps not enough to do the trick. ‘If this is class warfare, then my class is winning.’ – Warren Buffett
Beating Uncle Out of $600 July 16, 2003January 22, 2017 QUICK STRESS TEST This is quite stupid, of course, but kind of fun. SONY – NO BALONEY Craig: ‘Looks like Barron’s has picked up the ‘Sony is a good value play line’ this week. Of course, your readers picked some up at $24.75 several weeks ago.’ ☞ Click here to see the Barron’s story if you have an on-line subscription to the Wall Street Journal. With SNE now up 34% in 10 weeks, the question becomes whether to take a quick profit. I’m holding mine, but claim no special knowledge. TAKE LOSSES AND GAINS IN SEPARATE TAX YEARS? Jim Batterson: ‘This is just an idea and I thought I would run it past you. In the past, if I had, say, a $3000 capital gain, then I would look for a $3000 capital loss that I could take in the same year to offset it. That seemed to make sense. But now, say I’m in the top bracket, 35% or whatever it is, and I have both a $3000 capital gain and a $3000 capital loss, both unrealized. Doesn’t it make sense for me to take the $3000 loss this year, reducing my (35% taxable) ordinary income by $3000, and taking my capital gain next year, taxable at 15%? Instead of netting the two out and paying zero taxes, I’m saving $1050 the first year and paying $450 the second year, saving $600. This just seems too easy.’ ☞ No, this is exactly right, and can be helpful to some folks. Note, though, that the favorable long-term capital gains rate applies only to assets held more than a year. And that it’s generally a mistake to let the tax tail wag the investment dog. By waiting to take the gain, you could see it disappear – or turn into a loss. Or, if you took the gain this year, delaying the loss to next year, that loss could grow wider. Of course, it would be odd if you always guessed wrong about these things – that would be something of a talent in and of itself. Rather, over time, your decisions would probably even out. Sometimes, waiting til January to sell would cost you money, as the stock fell in the meantime; other times, it would actually improve your results, as the stock rose. So it certainly makes sense to be aware of this strategy in the latter months of the year . . . but, I think, not to be so tickled by having discovered it that you wind up selling a stock you might do better holding – or holding a stock you might do better selling. Perhaps a final thing to note is that to folks in the 35% tax bracket, $600 every couple of years is not that big a deal. They may routinely be trading in larger size, facing gains and losses of $15,000 or $50,000, say – all the more reason not to base decisions too much on that $600. Most people, by contrast, are in lower tax brackets – even after factoring in their state income tax – so for them, the advantage of this strategy shrinks or may even disappear. Tomorrow – I’m almost sure of it – Crazy Hospital Charges
Compensatory Time Off July 15, 2003March 25, 2012 Those of you who read yesterday’s long column truly put in overtime. Consider this your compensatory time off.
The Texas Miracle, The Florida Miracle, and Rush July 14, 2003February 23, 2017 You saw the front page of Friday’s Times? The Texas education miracle touted during the 2000 campaign appears now to have been slightly less miraculous. An audit of 16 Houston schools for the school year 2000-2001 recommended reclassifying 14 of them from ‘best’ to . . . well . . . there’s no easy way to put a good face on this . . . ‘worst.’ It seems that – for example – one school that had reported no drop-outs for the year had . . . well . . . 462 drop-outs. Stuff like that. Is it possible we were misled? It reminds one of the other Governor Bush – the one in Florida – who slashed the budget for drug treatment programs by 85% but claimed in a televised gubernatorial debate to have raised funding by 60%. He accomplished this miracle by shifting employees – who continued to do precisely what they had been doing before – from one accounting category to another. Honest, compassionate conservatism. I know one risks being branded unpatriotic for suggesting it, but one almost senses the possibility the Bushes are not entirely honest with their followers. We were told President Bush barely even knew Ken Lay, and thought of him as an Ann Richards supporter. We were told that the secret energy policy discussions – with a long list of industry executives not even a lawsuit by the General Accounting Office could pry loose – were designed to benefit the public. We were told that California’s instant energy crisis, which drained so many California dollars to Texas, was real and would require construction of hundreds of new power plants to resolve. We were told we could slash taxes for the wealthy without raiding the Social Security Trust Fund. We were told that this latest tax cut for the wealthy was crafted specifically to create jobs. We were told, during the second presidential debate, that ‘most of the tax reductions go to people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’ We were told, in the State of the Union Address, that Saddam Hussein had tried to procure uranium ore from Africa. I know I’ll now get some unsigned e-mails about sex in the Oval Office and fundraising in the Buddhist Temple. But it’s worth noting three things. First, as we learned in kindergarten, two wrongs don’t make a right. Second, deceptions that directly impact hundreds of millions of lives are different from denying a sexual affair or crossing a fundraising line. Third, Al Gore didn’t cross a fundraising line. In most of the famous Clinton/Gore scandals – including the Buddhist Temple – investigation exonerates (albeit much too late to do any good). The Buddhist temple? Read Jeffrey Toobin’s 5,000 word piece in the New Yorker – Al Gore did nothing wrong. Inventing the Internet? He never said he did (but he was its key booster in Congress). Hillary’s $100,000 commodities windfall? Read the 60 pages on this in Jim Stewart’s Blood Sport. Clintonites trashing the White House on their way out the door? Simply didn’t happen. But you wouldn’t know any of this from listening to Rush Limbaugh, or much of it from listening to Fox News. Speaking of which, did any of you get this, that’s been going around the Internet? It came to me from a well-meaning friend who prefaced it by saying, ‘I am not a Rush Limbaugh fan, but, love him or loath him, he nailed this one right on the head.’ Here’s the part with which I quibble: Our own U.S. Congress just voted themselves a raise, and many of you don’t know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month, and most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They also do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn’t have to pay into the system. Here’s my quibble: It’s not true. You have to be in Congress five years before qualifying for any pension, not just a single term. And the formula multiplies your salary by 2.5% for each year served. Thus you have to be there for 40 years to retire with full pay (which is still less than $15,000 a month). Also, it’s not true that Congressfolk are exempted from Social Security. For the last 20 years, they have had to pay into Social Security just like everyone else. And yet you may also have seen this one, which, like the other, has been zooming around the Internet for a long time: Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made. And that change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us and then watch how fast they would fix it. If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve. WE, each one of us… can make a difference. How many people can YOU send this to? (Click here for more details, if you’re interested.) In fairness to Rush Limbaugh – words I wish he might utter more often towards others – I have not verified that the column attributed to him was ever actually written or spoken by him. But a quick Google search (on, for example, ‘Rush Limbaugh’ $1,185,000) shows that an awful lot of people think it was. And I find no links to columns by Limbaugh – horrified by this – repudiating it. So one of two things is possible. Either he actually misinformed tens of millions of people in this huge way – playing on their frustrations and making himself yet again the voice of simple reason they can rely on for their understanding of the world – or else someone fabricated it and he let it go. As he let go the misstatements of David Brock. When Brock was writing horrible things about people Limbaugh didn’t like, Limbaugh read those things over the air. When, years later, Brock wrote Blinded By the Right, acknowledging that much of what he had written (and Limbaugh had read) was untrue, Limbaugh failed to correct the record. Contrast that with, say, the New York Times‘ handling of the Jayson Blair mess. Made aware that they had published fiction thinking it was fact – albeit fairly harmless fiction that would not, say, take a nation to war or turn elections one way or another – the Times responded with a colossal soul-searching, disclosure, and management shake-up. Limbaugh reaches more people than the New York Times – many of whom proudly call themselves ‘ditto heads’ – and certainly reaches more voters in swing states. When are these ditto heads going to realize how scary this is? And start thinking for themselves? When are they going to start wondering whether Bush leadership is really the best, and most forthright, we are entitled to? To borrow a phrase from above . . . ‘How many people can YOU send this to?’ (Have you seen our latest video?) [Still Coming: Crazy Hospital Charges]
Crazy July 11, 2003February 23, 2017 CRAZY HOME PRICES Bill: ‘I concur with Flynn M. – purchasing a house in the Bay area of California is a nightmare! My wife and I just started looking at buying a house in Pleasanton (about 30 miles due East of San Francisco). We’ve looked at houses in the $500k-$650k range – average houses. We saw a ‘fixer-upper’ at $530k! We may have to move 30 miles away just to get an average house for $350k! Crazy.’ CRAZY ECONOMIC POLICIES ‘Some conservatives credit Mr. Bush with an ingenious plan to starve the government beast: the huge tax cuts will eventually force huge spending cuts. But this is rather like praising an alcoholic for his ingenious scheme to quit the bottle by drinking himself into bankruptcy.’ – The Economist, July 3, 2003 CRAZY FOREIGN POLICIES ‘To address concerns about the savage violence engulfing ‘postwar’ Iraq with a cocksure ‘Bring `em on!’ as [President Bush] did last week . . . showed a lack of capacity to identify either with enraged Iraqis who must rise to such a taunt or with young GIs who must now answer for it. . . .‘ – James Carroll ☞ And several of you sent me this, from the Austin, Texas paper: Bush’s Bring ’em on speech rings hollow as he cuts benefits for soldiers, veterans SPECIAL TO THE AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN – Gary Chapman Thursday, July 10, 2003 Many veterans, like me, are still shaking their heads in disbelief over President Bush’s recent bluster about the Iraqi opposition killing our troops one by one almost every day. “Bring ’em on,” said Bush, sounding like a character out of a bad Hollywood movie or an ad for TV wrestling. It’s impossible to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy uttering something so shallow. But Bush knows his audience: millions of baby boomer men who missed military service but who still harbor adolescent fantasies of guns, glory and conquest. These are the same men whose pulses raced over Bush’s “Top Gun” performance on an aircraft carrier, a piece of bravado that left many veterans appalled. The Bush administration, playing Roman empire overseas, is starting to treat its own citizens like a Roman mob, manipulating us with spectacles, theatrics and cheap taunts at an enemy while our soldiers are in harm’s way. When I was in the Army, we had a term for officers in love with themselves when they were armed and in uniform. We called them “showboats.” This was a term used as a warning to other soldiers. Showboats would get you killed because of their vanity, their poor judgment and their machismo. Showboats were to be avoided at all costs. We preferred officers who were cynics and fatalists like us, and quietly secure enough to rely on the usually more experienced sergeants they commanded. Such officers understood that war is always a tragedy, sometimes an unavoidable one, and not an adventure. Officers like that were outnumbered by showboats. Infantry grunts knew that. We now have a government full of showboats, many of whom never served. Every report coming back from Iraq says that our troops’ morale is bouncing off rock bottom. They’re in urban combat; it’s miserably hot; they’re increasingly hated by the Iraqis. There’s nowhere to escape the heat, the hostility and the threat of death. There is no exit strategy; people like U.S, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have concluded we’ll be in Iraq for years. Not you and me, of course. Some unlucky 20-year-old with a flak jacket, helmet and 30 pounds of gear in 110-degree heat, a nervous human target facing angry Iraqis, among whom could be an assassin or a suicide bomber. The situation is not much different in Afghanistan, our other even more forgotten war, where our control extends to a small perimeter surrounding Afghan President Hamid Kharzai. The rest of the country is back in the hands of warlords or religious fanatics. Bush has inexplicably acquired a reputation as a friend of the military, but it’s based on symbolism rhetoric. Not only are our military fronts in a grave state, but Bush has cut the budgets that help soldiers overseas. Even the Army Times complained about Bush’s cuts in a lead editorial on June 30. The White House opposed a doubling, to $6,000, of the benefits paid to families when a soldier dies in combat. In October, the White House announced a planned rollback in monthly “imminent danger” pay and in family separation allowances, even though the military is turning to reserve forces. The White House also cut budgets for upgrading military housing, and it proposed caps in pay rates for the lowest ranks of enlisted personnel. It also whacked veterans’ benefits, cutting $14.6 billion over 10 years. Bush is waging war on the working families of soldiers, too, by changing the rules on who is eligible for overtime pay, attacking trade unions, cutting social service benefits, and rewarding his wealthy friends with tax cuts. Congress is blameworthy too, led by flag-waving military service evaders such as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Out of 535 members, only Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has a son serving in Iraq. The hypocrisy of this administration and its allies in Congress is breathtaking. Then again showboats are a type who are usually objects of comic scorn. When are Americans going to come to their senses about their government? Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the LBJ School. Contact him at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu Enough craziness for one morning. Monday: Crazy Hospital Charges
More Advice for Daniel S. July 10, 2003February 23, 2017 But first . . . April Stevens: ‘Twice I have been billed a late fee when I forgot to mail the credit card bill by the due date. Each time I have called and argued against the fee – and it has been removed. In one case, I had to call back again after the payment was credited, to remove the late fee. Once you do this, make sure to bury that card at the back of your wallet and place an alternate credit card in its place, because banks will only cancel a late fee once a year – and you don’t want to make this mistake twice in one year on the same card.’ And this . . . Our old pal Borealis – Gibraltar’s rock of Pink Sheet high fliers (not least because it is actually headquartered in Gibraltar) – continues to be valued at roughly the same $3.50 or so it’s been since I started buying and writing about it years ago. There are Manhattan apartments that sell for more than this company. (With 5 million shares outstanding at $3.50 each, the whole thing is valued at $17.5 million.) Well, this week one of its majority-owned subsidiaries announced a deal with Rolls Royce. Not that any actual money seemed to change hands, or that there is any assurance – remotely – that anything will come of it. I still have to assume that Borealis will eventually be zero; it is the only prudent assumption one can make. But the stock holds firm and the dream lives on. And now . . . Bob Fyfe: ‘Here’s some more advice for Daniel S. [who just started paying down the mortgage on his $495,000 starter home]: ‘1. Delay the home improvements (as you suggested) and use the $40K to pay down the home equity line of credit. No sense paying 3.75% (going to prime soon) when you can’t earn that same rate or more in a safe, liquid investment. (If you can earn it, please let me know where.) If it turns out that you need the $40K, write a check from your credit line. And can you get prime minus 1/4% in the Boston area? Or are you tapping too much equity to get that kind of rate? ‘2. Probably a good time to check to see if you have enough term life insurance. And you’ll want this for your wife as well. She’s providing full-time daycare for three years and possibly after-school care beyond that. ‘3. ‘Should I be taking drastic steps to reduce my budget?’ Yes! I presume that the house has a kitchen. Use it. ‘All-in-all, I don’t think that you’re in ‘trouble.’ You’re certainly living closer to the edge than I would be comfortable with, but looking at it objectively, you’ve got a $68K gross income after-housing. So you’re certainly no worse off (in terms of standard of living) than a family earning $70K that just bought a $150K house. The big difference is if you lose your job. Bottom-line is I wouldn’t sell now. I would get the home-equity line of credit paid off as soon as possible to cut your monthly expenses and give you a financial cushion.’ Flynn M.: ‘I think the fellow who responded to Daniel S. last week just hasn’t opened his eyes to the Boston area, or New York area, or San Francisco area. Guess what: $495,000 is a very, very reasonable price for a home in Boston. There are very few on the market for below that in an area with halfway decent schools or that don’t need thousands upon thousands of fix-up. So Daniel actually probably feels lucky. I have no idea what average people, who make $50K or less a year, do on the coastal cities. If things keep going the way they are, there simply will be no room for them at all, I’m afraid. I think we should cut Daniel a break and be charitable – come on, he’s at the low end of the market! It ain’t cheap out there, folks, and frankly . . . we should all be running scared.’ ‘If this is class warfare, then my class is winning.’ – Warren Buffett
More On Your Credit Score July 9, 2003February 23, 2017 Last month, I suggested you visit myfico.com to find out your credit score. As I pointed out, your score can matter. The average rate charged on a 30-year fixed home mortgage recently was 5.28% for someone with a top-bracket FICO score, versus 5.94% for someone just a couple of notches down – an extra $15,000 in interest over the life of a $100,000 loan. For someone one FICO rung from the bottom, the average 30-year rate was 8.53% – an extra $80,000 in interest. As usual, your feedback was more interesting than my original. (See, especially, Jonathan Hochman’s advice.) Craig Wiegert: ‘I think it’s important to point out that many people can get free or reduced-free credit reports depending on their state of residence. Click here for the list of states. The downside is that the credit report is snail-mailed instead of being instantly available Online.’ ☞ Click there even if you hate snail mail. Lots of useful info. Les Rosenbaum: ‘Which of the three credit reports should I get for $12.95?’ ☞ If money is no object, get all three. Otherwise, I doubt it matters much. I’d go with Equifax just because I think it’s the biggest. Duncan Smith: ‘For the real control freaks, there’s creditexpert.com, which for an $80 annual fee lets you check your credit report and credit score any time you want. There’s even a ‘Credit Score Simulator’ that lets you play with various parameters to see how they would affect your score. One of them is ‘Total revolving credit card limit.’ As this one increases, so does your simulated credit score. This seems like the opposite of the FICO score, which you mentioned (creditexpert.com is run by Experian). I guess the bottom line is, it’s tough to get those last few score points, especially when some things will increase one company’s credit score while decreasing another one. Now that more companies (e.g., car and home insurance) are using credit scores, it would be nice if there was a bit more transparency around how these scores are calculated, and maybe even consistency between companies.’ ☞ Note the free 30-day trial period. Jonathan Hochman: ‘Credit scores are an excellent point to discuss. For most people reducing the cost of credit is their best opportunity for risk-free ‘profit.’ It is probably worth $69.95 to buy an unlimited credit report monitoring service such as My.Equifax.Com. By checking frequently one can see how every action affects the score. Equally important, one can make sure that identity theft does not occur. It is also a good idea to request an investigation of any small errors discovered – such as accounts listed as ‘open’ that really have been ‘closed’. One may also find small overdue accounts that are either mistakes or things that have been innocently overlooked. ‘For instance, I once found that somebody had opened a Discover Card in my name at a bogus address, and had taken a $100 cash advance. This debt was in collection. Discover did not bother to track me down because the debt was so small. It was just sitting in my file dragging down my score. One phone call solved the problem. Another time AT&T assessed bogus charges on a cellular phone account that I had closed long before. The past due debt was finally cleared up after a repeated phone calls and letters to AT&T. ‘People need to be aware that every charge account, both those still open and those closed, may reduce their credit score. Many merchants have a special credit come-on where they offer a 10%-discount-on-today’s-purchases if you simply open an account. This can be an extremely costly mistake. The discount means nothing compared to paying an extra 0.5% for a mortgage or car loan. ‘Somebody who applied to rent one of my apartments told me he had good credit. Actually he had a low credit score because of twelve unpaid parking tickets, about $600 total. The parking authority had reported each ticket as a separate $50 collection account! This was probably much worse for the credit score than if the whole pile of tickets had been reported as one bad debt. ‘Rather than hunting around for the best stock, or for an extra 0.25% return on a savings account, people ought to go after the big nut: reducing home and car loan interest expense. In addition, a bad credit score can be an obstacle to renting an apartment, buying insurance or getting a job.’ ☞ Thank you, Jonathan! [Jonathan asks: ‘Another topic: Why do hospitals charge two to three times higher rates to the uninsured (i.e. those who have the least money)? Why doesn’t Congress pass a law that hospitals have to charge the same fair rate to every patient? Make it illegal to discriminate against the uninsured.’ Any doctors or hospital administrators in the crowd want to tackle that one?]
If . . . July 8, 2003January 22, 2017 From the estimable Charles Kaiser to the editor of the New York Times last week (emphasis added): Re “Justices, 6-3, Legalize Gay Sexual Conduct in Sweeping Reversal of Court’s ’86 Ruling”: The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas is a triumph of justice and common sense, but it is also a triumph of politics. The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan only after a Democratic Senate rejected Robert H. Bork. The rest of the margin of victory was provided by two appointees of President Bill Clinton, the first president to be elected after openly courting lesbian and gay support. If Mr. Bork had not been rejected, or Mr. Clinton had been defeated, Bowers v. Hardwick might have lasted much longer as the law of the land. Moral? Politics matters. If you want to imprison doctors for performing abortions, outlaw stem cell research, or lighten the burden on taxpayers earning $86 million a year* . . . if you want to protect the right of hunters to buy armor-piercing bullets and silencers, assure that contested presidential elections will go the Right way, or jettison the separation of church and state . . . if you want more cuts in funding for after-school programs and arts programs and drug treatment programs so that we can responsibly afford to lower the taxes of people earning $86 million a year . . . if you favor depleting the Social Security Trust Fund in order to lower the taxes of the ‘little people’ – folks earning just $300,000 a year, say – then you should send a contribution to the Republican National Committee. (And there are other reasons! One-party control of all three branches of government! Looser environmental regulation! Tighter limits on veterans’ benefits!) Between the RNC and what the President is able to raise for his uncontested primary fight, your side is expected to have well over $500 million dollars to win the White House in 2004. You can make it half a billion and ten. Or . . . if you take the other side of this . . . if you don’t want your tax dollars used to federally prosecute a man for holding up a protest sign in a crowd of Bush supporters (see June 25), or if you’re not a fan of increasing media concentration . . . consider sending $10 to the Democratic National Committee (of which, newcomers to this site please note, I am treasurer). Click here. *Had the Bush tax cuts been in effect in 2000, the latest tax year for which data is available, the 400 Americans who showed income of $86 million or more would have saved an average of $8.3 million each, lowering their federal tax burden from 22.3% to a somewhat more bearable (though in Bush’s view still too high) 17.5%. ‘If this is class warfare, then my class is winning.’ – Warren Buffett Tomorrow: More On Your Credit Score
Erik Gordon Is Not Dead July 7, 2003February 23, 2017 Hope you had a fine Fourth. Ours was crustaceous. Except that I am temporarily without broadband, and I am going out of my mind. So I’d urge you to do yourself a favor, if you’re not connected: get connected. Without a high-speed connection, the web is agonizing. With it, it is astonishing. Similarly, I’m guessing this is the year TiVo (the product, not necessarily the stock) finally takes off. We got yet another one, hooked it up, and the very first show it taped was last week’s ‘Sex and the City’ – which had a major story line on . . . Miranda hooking up TiVo for the first time. Spooky. I went to look at the stock, which had been around $6 last I’d checked, and saw it pushing $14. With hindsight, of course, I should have held on (bought it between $3 and $6, sold it at $6) – kicking myself. (Ow! OW!) Knowing nothing about TiVo, really, except how wonderful it is, I can see it selling 1 million units this year and the stock hitting some wonderful high price . . . but I can’t bring myself to buy back in after it’s doubled. And there’s no guarantee, of course, it will surmount its considerable challenges. But the stock aside, how can you live without TiVo? I won’t go through all the reasons again (search the archive for several columns). I’m just telling you: if you watch TV, you want this. (And if you don’t watch TV, you’re missing a lot of great stuff.) RETIREMENT ASSUMPTIONS Jim Batterson: ‘I’ve been using a tool on my Ameritrade account that helps me calculate if I have enough money to retire on. I enter my assets and income and social security benefits and all that, but it also asks me to enter (1) what inflation rate I want to use in calculating my expenses, and (2) what percent return I expect to make on my investments. I find that the calculations are extremely sensitive to these numbers, and yet I have not much idea of what I should use. If you were taking your best guess, what numbers would you use?’ ☞ Yes, it all boils down to this. And you don’t even need to make two assumptions, really, just one: the degree by which – if at all – your after-tax gains will outpace inflation. For 25 years, I’ve been cautioning people not to expect more than 3% – and even that’s no cinch. If it turns out we’ve been too conservative, great! HE’S BACK! Kate: ‘My favorite correction. It comes from the latest issue of Harvard Magazine. To wit: Correction: We have learned that the obituary for Erik Humphrey Gordon, ’95, which appeared in the July-August ’01 issue, was based on false information provided by the subject himself in an effort to get off Harvard’s mailing list. Mr. Gordon is alive and well in New York City. We apologize for the error. See www.crabwalk.com/misc/harvard.php for Mr. Gordon’s side of the story.’ LET’S HOPE HE’S NOT! Jim T: ‘I caught the tail end of Nader’s appearance on Crossfire. I am sure you are familiar with the acronym for the Green Party in America. GREEN: Guarantee Republicans Elected Every November. Seriously, something needs to be done about him.’ ☞ These things have a way of self-correcting, I think. The 97,000 people who voted for Nader in Florida, for example, have got to be wondering whether it was true what he said – that it didn’t matter who won. Later This Week: More On Your Credit Score
Out Trapping Lobsters July 3, 2003March 25, 2012 I sit here with 350 thick rubber bands, one for each claw. Someone else is out buying butter. A lot of work goes into a clam bake. Happy birthday, America. Let’s talk Monday.