Taunter Media

Wow.  Big thanks to James Kwak at Baseline, Mike Konczal at both The Atlantic and Rortybomb, Felix Salmon at Reuters,  Orangederange at Digg, and everyone who took the time to comment recently.  Only eight of my posts have even broken the hundred view mark; to have one just shy of ten thousand is rather surprising.  I suppose Malcom Gladwell was onto something when he wrote about Connectors.

Not to mention thanks to the casino executive who taught me the important lesson that in a world fixated on procedural justice, only losers load dice and mark decks.  Winners write the rules.

I hope rescission is the straw that breaks the camel’s back in getting the public to recognize the fundamentally adversarial nature of individual relationships with insurance companies.  Although you may have frequent interaction with the company – sending premium checks, getting prescriptions filled, etc – at its core the relationship is more of a one-shot thing than intuition would tell us.  The very incentives of the system, the very distribution of expenses that allows a carrier to cut a large chunk of its expenses while affecting very few clients, is what creates a world of post-underwriting.  It will not change until the provider of catastrophic coverage ceases to be profit-maximizing.

Unfortunately, the very week that rescission has become a discussion topic is the week that progress seems least likely.  In the House, Blue Dogs have advanced the contradictory arguments that the public option is too expensive and should pay rural doctors more; I suppose they have little fear of hobgoblins.  They have won the battle to separate a public option from CMS.  In the Senate, Max Baucus has so insisted on not doing anything that it seems increasingly clear he does not want to do anything.  In a week of military analogies, he is McClellan in the Peninsula.

The Union would not have won the Civil War if Lincoln had allowed the military to prosecute it at its discretion.  Obama is facing the same challenge: compromise with each stakeholder and get nowhere, or insist on a particular course of action and risk discovering that the opponents are stronger.

It could be that, faced with an honest accounting of the costs in money and flexibility, Americans and their elected representatives would prefer not to expand Medicare’s services to all people (with the government comping the premium for those over 65).  But let’s find out if that’s true.  Let’s take a clear stand in favor of something, not merely against the status quo, and talk about what health care can look like if we change a handful of rules.

Before I wrote about rescission, I advocated the Taunter Drug Plan:

Most Favored Nation for the United States. Any pharmaceutical company can charge any price it wishes for any drug in the US.  However, no drug may cost more in the US than its cost in the lowest-priced other OECD country.  If Merck wants to sell a drug in the US for $100/pill, it is welcome to give it a shot.  But if it decides to sell it for $5/pill in Germany, the most they can charge in the US is $5.  We might as well get the benefit of other nations’ volume discounts.

It would be an easy way to reduce the price of prescription drugs and maintain market feedback mechanisms, but it’s not likely to happen, because the Administration is terrified of Harry and Louise coming to get them.  And so we have something that rapidly approaches Thelma & Louise – a futile, doomed gesture for want of taking the time and effort to clearly explain the situation:

Obama likes to ride in the lead, but he has demonstrated the ability to counterpunch when necessary.  John and Cindy McCain were gloating about their poll numbers on the View two months before election day; that didn’t turn out so well for them.  With the will to fight, Obama will win.  Is he up for it?

It has been a fun week.  Let’s end on a cheerful note that has nothing to do with health care reform, the financial crisis, or military entanglements:

UPDATE

As noted below, several other sources linked on Monday.  A truly impressive part of that traffic came from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, who brought me my first 7,500+ view day.  Also thanks to Lambert at Corrente Wire, whoever runs The Browser, and all of the other links that are just starting to populate the trackbacks.

I think it’s safe to say that very few of the links would have happened without the handful of regulars who were here when 75 views was a good day.  You know, last week.  Anne, Bond Girl, Sparhawk, Stats Guy, Stephen Dodson…sounds like a bunch of names only Dubya could imagine.  Thanks.

UPDATE OF UPDATE

Krugman.  I have been a regular Krugman reader since his late 1990s articles on Slate - go here, here or here to see the master at work – and in the small field of people who try to make economics accessible, he stands alone.  Thanks, Paul.