A Public Service Announcement Worth Listening To

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

This Makes Me Feel Better

Gotta love Garrison Keillor.

Sept. 23, 2009 | The president has declined to talk about racism in connection with the carpet-chewers of the right who are suffering road rage over his existence, and he's wise to turn that one down. The country doesn't need a sermon on race or civility right now. What it needs is to believe that our leaders are trying to do the right thing, no matter how inconvenient, and if they forge ahead and fix health insurance, then the ragemeisters of the right will find other hobbies.

Mr. Obama is a Chicago guy, and he doesn't wilt if some gin-crazed cracker from South Carolina calls him a liar, so don't trouble your pretty head about civility.

It was women's suffrage that tamed politics. All through the 19th century, going back to Jefferson vs. Adams in 1800, politics was a blood sport. Hecklers followed a candidate like fleas on a dog. Newspapers were rip-snorting partisan and tore into the opposition with gay abandon. The English language is rich in invective and it all got used. When you went after your opponent, you got warmed up by calling him a horse thief, drunkard, agnostic, wife-beater, agent of Satan and tool of Wall Street, and then you got to the serious stuff. But once women appeared, in their little pinafores and corsages, we became, temporarily, a quieter, gentler people than we actually are and sat still at League of Women Voters forums on world federalism and perused the editorial page, written by silver-haired gents with distinguished jowls who penned judicious columns of On The One Hand This, On The Other Hand That, and nobody ever yelled at them except their wives.

That's sort of gone now. Now a column appears online and then the anonymous reader comments and the reader says, AW SHUT YER TRAP YA BIG FAT NOBODY, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? NUTTIN, THAT'S WHAT. GO BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE YA COME FROM. It's a loud raspy voice that was familiar to Lincoln and Mark Twain and now it's back, thanks to the cranky right, which feels disenfranchised by the election of Obama. And to their delight they've found that it drives the center-left right up the wall.

The old union guys who built the Democratic Party enjoyed public face-offs and knew how to deal with hecklers -- you get up close to them and snap their underwear -- but the party's been taken over by academics who come from a medieval world where your insignia grants you a worshipful hearing. As Shakespeare wrote, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark." But that ain't going to happen in politics.

The right believes that if you throw enough mud, some will stick, and if you characterize healthcare reform as an evil plot by one-eyed space aliens, you can defeat the thing. The fact is that there are 40 million uninsured Americans and soon, if nothing is done, there will be more. This is a moral dilemma, the same as if habeas corpus only applied east of the Mississippi or that green-eyed children will only be educated through the sixth grade. Not acceptable in the country I live in. And it's up to people who care about the common good not to be scared off.

The right is operating in the grand old irreverent American middle-finger spirit of contrarianism. The carful of kids who drive country roads busting mailboxes with baseball bats are expressing the same freewheeling spirit and the computer hackers and graffiti artists and every conscientious rock 'n' roll band for the past 50 years.

But the price of being an angry jerk is that nobody wants to invite you over for supper except your mother, and even she feels a little uneasy. It's very simple: The anonymous bums in the bleachers can abuse the umpire, but the players can't because they have numbers on their backs. Bold contrarians get thrown out of the game. The American people, by and large, don't admire wackos. A few wacko congressmen can't do much harm, but you wouldn't want them on the County Board. You want sober people who can add and subtract. And you don't want one to marry your sister. The angry guy in a lather about Mr. Obama to the exclusion of rational thought will have to go to the weenie roast alone and nobody is going to dance with him except out of pure pity and I'm not sure he's going to enjoy that.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of "77 Love Sonnets," published by Common Good Books.)

© 2009 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

No Racism Here

I haven't posted for a while because the blog post that has been bouncing around inside my brain is one that questions whether hate speech can actually encourage physical violence. The problem is I can't write about the radical rhetoric of the Right without violating my own pledge of civility.

So, instead, to answer the question of whether the Tea Party gatherings have gone too far . . . perhaps even scratched the ugly scab of racism open . . . I give you these images and allow you to decide their intent.

Thanks, Extreme Right!

It's official: the Right has gone so far off the deep end that their credibility is in tatters. Shouting at the President during a joint session of Congress trumps even the birthers in the quest to turn the Republican Party into a club for conspiracy theorists and paranoid schizophrenics. Obama, whose overhaul of health care really is game-changing, seems downright moderate next to the folks with the swastika posters who shout at women in wheelchairs. So tonight, I thank Rep. Joe Wilson for further perpetuating the stereotype that all Republicans are on the fringe. Of course, this stereotype is false, but who I am to tell Conservatives how to manage their image?

Obama Steers Student Down Wrong Path

Well, it's out, and it's every bit as bad as we had imagined. President Obama's address to the nation's students includes some heinous and immoral ideas that are totally inappropriate for children. Read it for yourself, but I think that asking kids to work hard and take responsibility for their education is clearly something straight out of Marx. What we will say next that individuals have responsibilities beyond their own? Sacrilege I tell you!

Read this and see how much of it you can stomach!

The President: Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

That German Healthcare

I have been intrigued by the liberal use of Nazi imagery to deride those who champion health care reform and claim that Obama's views on the issues are somehow parallel to those of Hitler's. This got me wondering was it Hitler who brought universal health care to Germany? The answer is no. The roots of the current German health system date back to 1885 . . . just a bit before Hitler's time.

Ok, so the Germans are about 150 years ahead of us in the health care debate, but their system sucks, right? Not so much. With just a little bit of digging, I found a number of reputable websites that describe the German system in a way that make it seem, well, downright logical.

I particularly liked the question and answer format of the post I found on

http://www.healthcaretownhall.com.

Read it for yourself and see if the German system sounds like something worthy of Nazi iconography.

Inside Germany’s healthcare system

Continuing our series of interviews looking at health systems from around the world, Milliman consultant Axel Meder discusses the healthcare system in his native Germany.

Q: The healthcare system in Germany has been in place for a long time. How is it funded?

A: The system is more than 150 years old, and has remained viable through economic ups and downs—notably, two world wars and the depressions that followed. It’s a hybrid system, funded through both public and private entities. Most of the population is covered through the public system. But those who are self-employed or who earn more than 4,050 Euros per month may purchase private health insurance coverage. We call it “substitute” coverage, because it takes the place of the public insurance coverage others use.

Q: Are there differences in coverage between the public and private systems?

A: In the German healthcare system, coverage is mandatory. All citizens can see a physician or use a service as they see fit, regardless of whether they are covered by public or private insurance. It is essentially a one-tier system. About 90% of the German population is covered by the public healthcare system, with the remaining 10% covered privately. Private insurance must provide a minimum level of coverage and it also allows people to purchase additional benefits, like a single-bed hospital room, consultations with the chief doctors, and upgraded benefits for prescription drugs. But all patients have access to essentially the same treatments and options, although there are physicians and clinicians who offer their services to private patients only. There is no obligation for higher-earning people to opt out of the public system—private insurance is entirely voluntary.

Q: How is the insurance funded?

A: Financing for public health insurance is pay as you go. The premium one pays depends upon income. This year, the rate is 15.5% of gross income up to a maximum of 3,675 Euros per month. The employee pays 8.2% and the employer pays 7.3%. After retirement, the premium rates remain the same; only the basis changes from gross wages to state and private pensions. So after retirement, the state pension system pays the 7.3% instead of the employer

Private insurance premiums are initially rated based on risk factors such as gender, age at purchase, and coverage. Premiums cannot increase due to the increasing age of an individual, but can increase for inflation, changes in medical practice, and utilization, for example, if more insureds receive expensive treatments or drugs. In addition, private insurance premiums usually include a risk premium (for the underwritten health risk), lifelong aging reserves, cost loadings, and a contingency margin between 5% and 10% depending on exposure. The contingency margin ensures coverage in the event there is a major problem affecting many people, such as a pandemic or other catastrophe risk. Most years, this part of the premium is not used, and it becomes profit for the insurance company. Some of the profits are repaid to insureds; for instance, if a person doesn’t make any claims during the year he may get back 5%, 10%, or even 30% of the premiums paid.

Q: What is the purpose of lifelong aging reserves, and how do they work?

A: When a person is young, an aging reserve is added to his or her premium and is invested in an interest-bearing account. It must earn 3.5%, but often earns more. In this way, when the risk-based premium is higher later in life, the invested amounts can offset what might otherwise be an unaffordable premium, so coverage can continue. The aging reserves are tax-privileged for policy holders and insureds, and they can be used only for this purpose. The 3.5% interest earned is mandated by law and can be reduced only if there is a sustained reduction in market interest rates. If someone changes private insurance companies, he or she takes part of the aging reserves they’ve built up to their new insurer. Insurers have built up aging reserves of more than 125 billion Euros through the private system.

Q: Under what circumstances does a person lose or change coverage?

A: Everyone in Germany has to be covered, either through public or private insurance, so a person cannot lose coverage. People always have the right to cancel their policy and choose a different one. Companies have the right to cancel the policy only in the first three years. The private system tends to be more attractive for younger people, because of lower premiums and the reserve account. When someone is around age 45, the premiums in the private system may be higher than in the public system, so private insurance becomes less attractive and only a few people change from public to private insurance. If someone opts out from public insurance, he or she cannot go back into the public system.

Q: Can insurance companies change the premiums in the private system?

A: Insurers can change premiums under certain circumstances. For example, inflation, changes in the billing rates of physicians, dentists, and other service providers, or medical/technical advances. In these circumstances, insurance companies are able, and obliged, to examine their premiums to make sure they are planning adequately for their risk. When the premium increases, the increase becomes, in effect, a new layer of coverage, beginning with the age of the insured at that time.

Q: How does the availability of public insurance affect German insurance agents and companies who sell private coverage?

A: Private health policies are typically sold by independent brokers and agents. As private health insurance is a consulting-intensive product, direct sales play a lesser role. The lifelong aging reserves mean that the private insurance premiums are higher in the early years of the contract, making the policies more challenging to sell. Therefore, most of the policies are sold when the insureds are at age 25 to 40. Private insurers also offer supplemental insurance, which is not considered to be a substitute for public coverage. With these policies, one can purchase enhanced benefits like a private room in a hospital, or overseas coverage.

Q: How do private and public insurance coexist in Germany?

A: Some constituents would like to see the private insurance system abolished, but others believe its existence is critical to the system’s survival and that some physicians and providers would not survive without it. From an actuarial perspective, the private insurance system is more financially solid compared to the public pay-as-you-go system, because private premium rates include assumptions for, among other things, interest and increasing benefits. However, when interest rates are low, it can be difficult to earn the mandated 3.5% return on the reserves. In addition, as private premiums are increased, the resulting premiums are becoming unaffordable for retirees on fixed incomes. Insurers are trying to defuse this situation by using more of the surplus capital they have accumulated to mitigate increases.

Why the Death Penalty Must Be Abolished

The fear that an innocent person might be executed has long haunted jurors and lawyers and judges. And, in recent years, so many men have been exonerated from the nation's death rows that some states have been forced to place moratoriums on their capital punishment systems. Death penalty proponents have invariably seen such exonerations as evidence that the system is working, as a kind of insurance that no innocent individual will ever face death.

That argument no longer holds water. After an exhaustive investigation, David Grann (a reporter for The New Yorker)has reached the conclusion--supported by voluminous research--that Texas executed a man, Cameron Todd Willingham, on forensic evidence that was so poor that arson experts who reviewed it after Willingham's conviction (following a two-day trial)called it little more than folklore. No one, however, not even the governor of Texas was willing to grant Willingham a new trial or even a stay of execution. In fact, Grann's work reveals that none of those who could have righted the scales of justice for Willingham even bothered to read the evidence of his innocence.

If you haven't heard of this case, take a moment to read it at and say a little prayer that sooner rather than later, we will come to our senses and abolish capital punishment.

Secession for Texas? Obama a Marxist?

Texas Governor Rick Perry has officially out-tea-partied even the most rabid of the hard Right by suggesting that Texas might well be forced to leave the union if American continues to drift left . . . presumably into the dangerous waters of Marxist or Nazi (your choice) totalitarianism. (Never mind that those two systems of government are diametrically opposed; a gun strapped to your leg at a town meeting is enough logic for those who see no conflict with drawing swastikas on Obama while calling him a communist.)

Perry's contribution to the lunatic fringe was reported in The Huffington Post, which reported Perry's remarks late Wednesday, saying "Perry suggested [at one of three Tea Party gatherings he planned to attend] that Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. 'There's a lot of different scenarios,' Perry said. 'We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that'?"

Clearly, Texas must be a Conservative paradise. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in Rick Perry-land, which the Commonwealth Fund ranked 46th out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia in terms of the overall quality of its health care system, 50th in children's access to health care, 44th on equity, and 42nd in overall quality of children's health care?

Personally, I'd love to be an educator in a state whose students are 49th in verbal SAT scores in the nation and 46th in average math SAT scores.

I could go on and on about "utopian Texas," but the reality is that these comments were not meant to be taken seriously. They were, instead, meant to stir up the base in advance of what could be a tough Texas Republican gubernatorial primary. That Perry thinks of the Tea Party as his base speaks volumes about the state of the Republican party,not just in Texas, but across the country. Things are pretty bad for Republicans, and without the emergence of Lynne Jenkins' "Great White Hope," Perry soon may need a lifeboat to navigate the waters of Nazi-Marxist-Islamic-Pacifistic progressivism.