Insurance: a financial product in which a consumer buys a policy promising payment in the event that some risk occurs, and the insurer prices based on the likelihood of that risk occurring, and its likely severity. Home insurance premiums are based on the risk of that individual house being robbed, or damaged by fire, or storm damage, or the like, and actuaries price that risk based on crime rates in the neighborhood, the proximity of a fire station, the cost to... Read more
So it’s official: the GOP has had so little support for the “American Health Care Act” that it pulled the plug and is now saying, “well, we tried — on to tax reform!” In other words, bitching and moaning about Obamacare has proven easier than fixing it — not because the fixes were too difficult, but because the Republican leadership just didn’t have the political skills needed to corral a fractious party. To be sure, the Ryancare plan had a... Read more
They’ve caught the individual believed to be responsible for hoax bomb threats on JCCs, not just in the U.S., but in Australia and New Zealand as well. In Israel. He’s a teenager. And Jewish. We don’t know much more, except that this was a multi-nation effort, and that he used very sophisticated technology to disguise the origin of the calls, and the agencies that found him used equally sophisticated technology to find him. Here’s a link to the CNN article,... Read more
Can we preserve American culture, and American values, with “other people’s babies”? Representative Steven King found himself accused of white supremacism for a tweet in which he said, in part, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” and in an article at the National Review, Jonathan S. Tobin wrote, in defense of immigrants, that, as was the case throughout our history, the next generation of immigrants would just as surely adopt American values of “liberty, democracy, and the rule... Read more
Spoiler alerts, for those who care about these sorts of things. I have to admit — I’ve been watching this show while exercising on the exercise bike in the basement in the mornings. And I know that there are a lot of people — on my facebook news feed, for instance — who love, love this show. But, while it’s a fine enough show, I just can’t get emotionally invested in it, because the people and the situations don’t feel... Read more
Sure, there’s probably tons written about this in the academic literature, but remember, I’m just an actuary, who blogs as a way of thinking about issues that are interesting to me, rather than with (most of the time) a specific agenda to promote. Something that’s always seemed “off” to me is the explanation that secularism is the inevitable result of the prosperity of our current times, so that religious observance will inevitably, absent a catastrophe that sends us back into... Read more
Yeah, just a question. No agenda. Open forum — do you celebrate? If so, why? How? And does one need to be Irish to do so? Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thadz/6086081141; public domain; Detail of St Patrick with a shamrock in a stained glass window at the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Navy Pier in Chicago. Read more
Perhaps you remember this from history class in school: in the system of slavery as it existed in the American South, it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write. The State systematically denied slaves the ability to gain an education, because they believed that the ability to read and write would enable slaves to fight against their oppression. It could be said that their human right to an education was being denied them, though it’s a trivial... Read more
New, must-read article in The Atlantic, by Peter Beinart: “Breaking Faith; The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.” A few excerpts: [Secularism is] making America’s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.”... Read more
There’ve been a number of opinion pieces again recently on the question of whether it’s appropriate for health “insurance” plans to pay for routine expenses. To a certain degree, high deductible plans attempt to return health plans to a true insurance model, covering the heart attack but not the doctor’s visit for the flu, but even these plans, under ACA regulations, and, previously, in order to qualify for HRA status with a pre-tax reimbursement account for pre-deductible expenses, are required... Read more
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