5 Jan 2010
Health Care Legislation, Part 12:
by Richard Belzer
in Amusements, Regulatory Policy
Cartoonist Lisa Benson explains the "individual mandate."
Cartoonist Lisa Benson explains the "individual mandate."
Both the Senate and House versions of health care legislation include provisions that would prohibit insurers from declining to underwrite people with preexisting conditions and prevent them from imposing annual or lifetime caps on coverage.
Today's Shoe illustrates one of the problems with these proposed restrictions.
More...The Washington Redskins football club has prevailed in a lawsuit alleging that the team name is racially disparaging and thus must be changed.
More...The National Academies of Science, a notoriously serious organization, is now selling H1N1 ("swine flu") tschochkes.
More...Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" Carl Bialik writes in an August 7 blog post about the claim made by Sky Andrecheck that baseball would be no different if the numbers of balls and strikes were reduced to three and two, respectively:
Specifically, writing on Baseball Analysts, [Andrecheck] presents data suggesting that a game where three balls earned a batter a walk but two strikes ends his at bat would have very similar outcomes to what we know as baseball, but get to those outcomes a lot faster — and with fewer pitching changes.
Andrecheck commits an elementary statistical error and he incorrectly assumes that at-bat data are true.
More...UPDATED. SEE "MORE".
The Panic of 2008 and subsequent recession have put a damper on the wine market, especially at the high end. As a member of too many wine clubs (still the best way to access fine West Coast wine from the East Coast), I have seen more discounting by wineries in the last six months than I observed in the previous six years.
So it should not be surprising to see a bevy of entrepreneurs pop up who are attempting to exploit these depressed conditions. The Los Angeles Times published an intriguing story by reporter Patrick Comiskey about new web-based vendors doing exactly what we'd expect ("Good deals go fast on wine websites," July 8, 2009). Of the vendors Comiskey mentions, Wines 'Til Sold Out seems to have the most unusual business plan: they sell tranches of a single wine, one at a time, first come first served, presumably (but not verifiably) until they are sold out -- then move on to another wine.
After reading the article, I signed up with Wines 'Til Sold Out to investigate.
More...Attendees of the annual American Economics Association annual meeting received an email asking them to participate in a survey:
Every five or six years AEA does a survey of the economists who attend the ASSA meetings. The survey results affect decisions concerning future annual meetings. Please help us out by taking a few minutes to complete the survey.
This "survey" produces information with little or no value.
More...After resisting the pressure for months (years?), managing editor Richard Belzer on Sunday succumbed and joined Facebook. I rationalized it as a research project, of course. More...
The Washington Post's Ivan Carter writes that the NBA has decided to fine players who 'flop'. Will it work? More...
College basketball programs are not known for producing college graduates. Now that the Final Four tournaments are set, how do the competing teams perform academically? More...
