The whole idea of insurance is to spread the risk among the largest population. Let's say that we want to help people who get Multiple Sclerosis a terrible condition that attacks people at random. If everyone is covered by MS insurance we can amortize it over 300 million and have a per capita charge of $ 1.00 per person.

If the number of people who buy the insurance is reduced the per capita charge increases.

If we force the insurance company to provide care for all of the MS but don't require a mandate this creates a situation of "ADVERSE SELECTION";



Legislative Adverse Selection occurs when legislation destabilizes the natural selection then it creates a death spiral for the insurance plan. When you mandate that the insurance company must accept everyone regardless of pre existing conditions BUT then takes away the individual mandate they are creating Legislative Adverse Selection.

If we require Health Insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions but don't have an individual mandate we will set up a death spiral for the ACA.




Unable to kill the ACA by guillotine the Republican Senators killed by slow strangulation.

Senator Collins, Senator Murkowski and all of the others who said that they would protect the ACA and healthcare for the middle class and poor lied.

The ACA is now a dead health plan walking. It will take a couple of years but without the mandate it will be a plan that will end up only with those who have current conditions signing up for it and others opting out as premiums will start to radically increase.

This is the most cynical move possible. Keep the popular requirement mandating insurance companies must take everyone and then take away the individual mandate so that the plan becomes unsustainable.

At some time in the 5th century BC Aeschylus enumerated a truth that has been repeatedly confirmed in our lifetime, "In war, truth is the first casualty."

We can now update that with “In neo fascism, epistemology is the first casualty”

Systemic philosophical or theological discussion doesn’t start with what you know but the more important question “how do you know what you think you know”. Up until Copernicus knowledge was thought to be the recitation of the obvious: God made us, we live by simple rules and noting that which can be easily observed.

When Copernicus established that the most obvious known fact, that the Sun “rose in the East and set in the West” was not a fact and that we were instead a sphere rotating through space, human reasoning went through a crises of epistemology. How should we know anything? Are we even human beings or could we be (in the absurd) a butterfly dreaming that we are humans. Descartes established a new foundation with “I think therefore I am”, that knowledge can be certain on the basis of rational discourse and the use of the scientific method.

In 1970 Alvin Toffler observed in “Future Shock” that technological change would continue to speed up until it would happen at a rate that was faster than the psychological ability of society to absorb it. It would create pockets of fear. That is exactly what we are witnessing.

Please take a minute and read this disturbing article by The Guardian. It documents that farmers in the US are committing suicide at a rate much higher than not just the population but higher than other high risk groups, like veterans.



When we look at the irrational embrace of neo fascism in Trump and scratch our heads why rural parts of the country (and other countries), even those that are located close to normal urban and progressive communities, embrace policies of tribalism, we can see the reason, they are filled with fear. Fear is the fuel that has empowered fascism for a hundred years. In their fear they cling to their guns, their bibles and the false memory of a simpler time when society could be ordered by the simple observation in known truths; The sun rises and sets and human society was based on families that had a simple formula – a man, a women and children, that all you needed to succeed in the work place was to show up and work hard.

We need to face that what we are seeing is in fact a new branch of fascism. It is a world view that is not based on reason or fact but the Nietzsche like birth of the “strong man” who intends to reorder society not by reason but as an extension of their personality camouflaged democratic institutions. In this way Trump is like other “strong men” of fascism like Mussolini.

Truth, for people like Trump, is simple; it is not in a fact but in bellicose repetition of a lie where the truth of a thing is established not by reason but by the forceful assertion of a phrase. In the New York media and property world Trump was able to establish a win by simply wearing down critics by an obstinate repetition of a lie and that is the game that he is playing now.

Where the News Media went wrong with Trump is when they allowed him to state a known lie and after a few attempts at questioning “went on” to the next object. When Trump entered the absurd world of “birtherism” the news media should have never asked him another question, never moved on. They should have repeatedly asked him to explain how he arrived at that lie. Until he conceded that lie then they should have not let him make any other point. He won by his persistence.

We must now re-establish reason as the currency of public conversation. We should never again let one of our courageous leaders be targeted by absurd allegations that parallel Trump’s tactics of bellicosity and repetition as a substitute for fact and reason.

We should also understand that for many in the rural areas of our country the embracement of Trump is a cry for help. The are afraid of the future that takes their children to live in urban areas far away and eliminates jobs that have provided stability for families for generations.

How can we take the higher road, understand the pain that has mobilized our political enemies into an eruption of fascist irrationality and find a path forward that unites our common interest based on shared values? I would suggest we could accomplish this by simply recalling the wise leadership of the man who spent 8 years doing it day in and day out. The strange reality we live in is the country that has tens of millions that support Trump is the same country that elected and re-elected President Obama.

We must insist on a return to compassion and reason. Exhaustion, lassitude and defeat are not options.

It is entirely possible that all 51 Republican Senators want to pass a terrible tax bill.

However there is, I believe, a much simpler explanation for the Senate vote.

They passed a terrible bill that will not get past the debt hawks in the House and the House Republicans will make substantial changes and return it to the Senate where it will lose at least two more Senators and fail.

Why would the Republican Senators who are seriously against this legislation (and there may be more than those that telegraphed a problem with it) vote for it?

They are tired of being blamed by the radicals in the Republican House and getting challenged in primaries by Tea Party. The House can pass the Senate bill without any changes and send it to the President. If they make any changes the Senate Republicans can say "we did what we had to do but it is the purists in the House that sabotaged it".

Of course if the House Republicans pass the Senate bill then it will hurt the Republican Senators in the General Election but not in the primaries and that is their greatest concern. Senator Lugar, Bennet and Murkowski all lost in the primary and would have easily won in the GE. Murkowski won on an independent ticket.

The Senate Republicans have put a bullet in the chamber and dared the House to pass it knowing that if it goes back to the Senate it will not pass, especially if they lose on Tuesday and the responsibility will be 100% on the House Republicans.

Woke up to this



It is a stupid excuse of course but the question who drafted it is of no consequence. The point is that Trump tweeted it out and found nothing untruthful with it.

However this is just more lies on other lies. No attorney is drafting tweets for Trump to send out. All attorneys are telling Trump to stop talking about the case, stop tweeting about the case and refer all questions to a single attorney that represents the entire defense team. If that attorney says anything more than "We have no comment" he will be sacked.

Have Dowd and Savino explain minute by minute before FBI agents what happened and maybe we can get these asses understand that they have to stop lying but more likely we are going to get more guilty verdicts.

Evidence of a cover up (lawyer ate the tweet) about a cover up (the actual tweet) of a felony obstruction claim(Flynn lying to the FBI) about the conspiracy (conspiring with the Russians to modify the sanctions) of sedition (not treason).



We are literally watching people commit felonies before our eyes in slow motion. If the lawyer states before FBI agents that he drafted the tweet and did not, its another level of obstruction. Whether he drafted it or not it has been tweeted out and Trump hasn't disowned it. Who "drafted" the tweet is of zero relevance.