It’s always tough to know how people perceive you, but sometimes I get the sense that I come off as somewhat serious on this blog — at least compared to my natural inclinations. Work and parenting have made me more of a dull boy than maybe I was in the past. But, in a lot of ways, I’m still a kid at heart. Anyway, it’s a holiday weekend, and in that spirit, here is some random non-serious Stuff That I Like:

Jokes. I like all kinds, stupid, filthy, offensive, whatever, but sometimes the cornier the better sometimes: A string walks into a bar. Bartender says, “we don’t serve your kind here, get out.” Undeterred, the string goes to a second bar. Same result, “we don’t serve strings here, get out!” So, the string decides some ingenuity is called for. He finds himself a nice rough tree, rubs his head and his feet against the bark, then he contorts himself and twists himself round and round. He goes into the third bar. The bartender looks at him skeptically for a moment, and asks gruffly, “you a string?” To which the string replies, “Nope, frayed knot.”

Movies. Again, I like all kinds. But my friends have marveled at my tolerance for craptacular movies and TV – especially in the “nerd makes good” genre. But some favorites I’ve probably listed before: Starship Troopers, Repo Man, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story; Office Space; Road House; Young Guns; UHF; The Essential Cusack Trilogy: Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, & Say Anything; Flash Gordon . . . the list goes on and on, I’m sure I’ve left out some great cheese.

Beer. I’m a big fan. In college it looked like maybe I was headed for a life of problem drinking. But, once I got a job, consumption reduced. Kids further reduced the consumption. Now, I’m a pretty tame drinker. Usually one or two at a time – the very occasional big binge when I get together with old friends. I like upper end beers and swill, don’t have much use for intermediate beers, I guess. It’s either Natural Light or Old Milwaukee on one end or Guinness, Three Floyds, or a craft beer on the other. The mid-range beers, maybe Beck’s or Heineken, don’t seem worth the bother.

Other random things that come to mind: grilling, really processed popcorn, dogs, golf, hiking, sleeping, video games, Eastern Indiana Pizza King, Skyline, sword & sorcery fantasy books, road trips, driving through the night, home made chex mix, Weird Al, roller coasters, back scratches.

The serious stuff enables life, but the random fun stuff is what you’re living for. What about you guys, what are life’s simple pleasures? In any case, here is to an enjoyable Labor Day weekend.

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

People supporting health care reform are posting this sentiment on Facebook and Twitter. I agree with the sentiment, but literally, I don’t think it’s true. For example, if some 90 year old white supremacist pedophile needed to bankrupt the nation for an extra two weeks of life on a ventilator, I’d say he should die because he can’t afford health care and, better he should go broke than everyone else.

I think we need to abandon our system, not because a person can die for lack of resources or because poor health can cause financial hardship, but for the more mundane reason that it’s not working well. And, we ought to model our system after one of the ones that is working better. “Better” in what way? Less medical expense per capita in exchange for better results. Infant mortality would be one metric. We rank 33rd there. We’re the most productive country in the world, we and we can’t do any better than 33rd in terms of keeping our kids alive for their first year. Clearly, we’re doing it wrong.

More is spent on health care in the United States on a per capita basis than in any other nation in the world. A study of international health care spending levels published in the health policy journal Health Affairs in the year 2000 found that the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and that the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. The authors of the study conclude that the prices paid for health care services are much higher in the U.S. Medical debt is the principal cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, weakening the whole economy.

According to data compiled and published by the international pharmaceutical industry, the US is the world leader in biomedical research and development as well as the introduction of new biomedical products; pharmaceutical industry trade organizations also maintain that the high cost of health care in the U.S. has encouraged substantial reinvestment in such research and development. Despite that, the US pays twice as much yet lags other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy, which are among the most widely collected, hence useful, international comparative statistics. For 2006-2010, the USA’s life expectancy will lag 38th in the world, after most rich nations, lagging last of the G5 (Japan, France, Germany, UK, USA) and just after Chile (35th) and Cuba (37th).[9]

We shouldn’t keep doing it wrong because of ideological fears of “socialism” or dogmatic notions that “taxation = theft.” Abstract figments of our imagination and word games shouldn’t stop us from getting better results. Similarly, in my mind, we shouldn’t structure our system around sentimentality about how every life is worth unlimited resources. Instead, we should strive for efficiency. How are we going to most effectively use our money to get the healthiest population we can?

I don’t know the *right* answer — if there is one *right* answer — but we should look to systems that are working better than ours: single payer systems like Canada or Australia; government run systems like England; multi-payer, public/private systems with compulsory premiums like Switzerland; or whatever works.

Via the IU News Room:

The Indiana University band played a special wakeup call for NASA’s Discovery space shuttle Tuesday morning (Sept. 1, 2009).

STS-128 Pilot Kevin Ford, a NASA pilot since 2000 who embarked upon his first space mission as pilot yesterday, requested that Houston play “Indiana, Our Indiana,” in honor of his late brother, David C. Ford, an IU alumnus and former state senator. The astronauts were preparing for the first of three space walks planned for the mission, which will include the removal of a depleted amonia tank for return, installation of the new tank assembly and retrieval of a materials processing experiment outside the European Space Agency’s Columbus module.

Indiana, our Indiana, Indiana we’re all for you.

Jeff Swiatek, writing for the Indianapolis Star, reports that the Daniels administration is considering rejecting federal money to pay unemployment benefits, citing concerns about strings attached to that money. In particular, a condition for receiving the $148.5 million is that the state offer unemployment benefits to two of the following three categories of workers: 1) Workers who quit their jobs to enroll in job-training programs; 2) Laid-off workers who have dependent children; or 3) People who quit their jobs for “compelling family circumstances,” such as domestic abuse.

The real debate is whether these policy choices are the right ones. If they are, then the legislature should make them and take the money while it’s available to help fund the transition. If they aren’t, then the legislature shouldn’t make them just to get the money.

I have to say that I’m scarred in this debate by my experience as a debt collector. There are plenty of people who just get in a tough place because of the economy. But, there seem to be a non-trivial number of deadbeats out there. Guys (and it’s almost always guys) who work a couple of months, live on unemployment for awhile, work a couple of months, then take a couple of vocational classes but never really finish the course, then work a couple of months, then maybe start applying for disability. These guys will usually owe child support and maybe be in and out of jail on low level offenses. Contact with these types of people has dampened my desire to expand unemployment benefits. But if they happen to be a relatively small part of the system, concerns over these abusers of the system shouldn’t drive the policy.

According to an article in the Indianapolis Star by Daniel Lee, a spokesperson for WellPoint says that health care reform shouldn’t focus on health insurers. Their bureaucracy, profits, advertising, and lobbying expenses apparently aren’t fat that needs to be cut out of the system. Rather, we should trust health insurer’s promises that really this time they are pretty much fixing things on their own.

Abdul had some pretty good coverage on this one. He reports that the WellPoint spokesperson said that “individuals with pre-existing conditions can be pooled with other high risk customers.” It would be like an insurance ghetto for sick people!

She complains about the sort of competition that would be in place if there was a public option. The problem right now is that the incentives are not in place for insurance companies to compete to see who can provide the best coverage for the lowest premiums to the most people. Rather, the incentive is to see who can cherry pick the most healthy people, deny the most claims, and avoid the most “medical loss” (i.e. actually paying for health care with premium dollars received). The medical insurance industry has zero credibility at this time. Their operations are opaque, their bureaucracy is byzantine, and their track record is horrible.

I got a brief mention in an article by Sophia Voravong in the Lafayette Journal & Courier regarding the dismissal of a lawsuit against local police by a woman who was injured in the course of the police response to her 911 call reporting the shooting of her son by her ex-boyfriend.

I represented the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department on this one. The case ended with the Plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal of the state law claims late last week. My inclination is to just be happy with adding a significant case to the victory column. And, I am pleased. But, I think it’s critical to remind myself that this isn’t a game. I don’t think any litigator can entirely get past the competitive nature of the litigation process. But underlying the process are real people with real problems.

In this case, there is a woman with significant injuries and medical expenses, there are police officers who feel they did the right thing and got sued for their efforts, and there are government officials trying to keep their citizens safe and protect taxpayer dollars.

The short version is that the woman’s ex-boyfriend broke into her house, murdered her son, knocked her unconscious, stuffed her into the passenger’s side of her car and attempted to flee. As he attempted to flee, the police opened fire to stop him. Shortly after the gunfire, the ex-boyfriend hit a parked police cruiser and flipped the car. The woman suffered significant injuries as a result of these events.

If you want the gory details of the case, the federal court’s order finding that there were no federal Constitutional violations of the woman’s rights by the officers is here and it lays out a more detailed factual background. The federal judge remanded the case to state court for consideration of her state law claims. Due to the interaction between federal constitutional law and Indiana’s law enforcement immunity provisions, her legal case would have been a tough one to make in light of the federal court’s decision.

It’s too bad the murderer, as is often the case with such people, had no money. He was convicted of murder and will, therefore, never have any money. His ability to cause harm far exceeded his ability to pay for that harm. With the true wrongdoer unable to pay, someone was going to have to sustain a loss that was largely or entirely of the ex-boyfriend’s making. So, while I’m pleased that I was able to help prevent my clients from having to bear the loss, that happiness has to be tempered with the understanding that the woman has to bear the loss.

My legal writing professor advised us never to ask a rhetorical question because opposing counsel is probably more than happy to answer it. I don’t know if Leo Morris considered his question rhetorical, but I went ahead and offered some possible answers anyway. Leo asks, with respect to health care, “how can anyone seriously argue that further government involvement will reduce costs?”

My response:

1. Lower administrative costs. Government programs don’t have to pay shareholders, CEOs, or – depending somewhat on the nature of the government insurance plan – legions of bureaucrats to flyspeck each claim to see if it can plausibly be denied.

2. Economies of scale. The bigger the pool of insureds, the easier risk is to manage. For a big enough population, you can predict the risks fairly accurately. Additionally, with that kind of purchasing power, you can negotiate good rates.

3. Stitch in time. If uninsureds or underinsureds get treated sooner rather than later, their care will generally be less expensive.

And, as Craig points out, there is empirical evidence. We are not forging new ground here, other countries have pulled this off. Compared to them, however, the United States spends more on health care as a percentage of its GDP than other industrialized democracies that maintain a single-payer system.

Bill Engle has an article in the Richmond Palladium-Item entitled “Labor Day festival promotes fitness.” When I saw that headline, I thought that an old classmate of mine, John Dils, was probably involved somehow. I was, therefore, happy to see that he was the first person quoted for the story.

The Whitewater Valley Fitness Festival, kicks off [on Labor Day weekend] with a 6.2-mile road and trail run beginning Friday, called the Richmond Baking Jailbreak 10k. The event starts behind the Wayne County Jail and proceeds onto the Cardinal Greenway hiking/biking trail.

Other events planned include a nationally sanctioned bicycle road race in the city’s Depot District on Saturday, a triathlon/duathlon near the new Reid Hospital campus on Sunday and a recreational bike ride, called Ride for the Greenway, on Labor Day.

So, if you’re in the area, you might check out one of the events.