‘Atlas Shrugged’ – 50 years later. Short version: Rand was interesting, but her selfish-extreme ideal is no better than the Marxist selfless-extreme ideal. A balance is necessary.

It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how.

Originally uploaded by amasson.

As it turns out, Harper, like our son Cole, is a climber. The other day, we found her in our toy closet up on the top shelf. She *really* wanted to play with Mr. Potato Head.

House Bill 1830. Local road and street account. Provides that the first $30,000,000 of the investment earnings on the major moves construction fund during each of the next two state fiscal years is to be deposited in the local road and street account. Rep. Austin.

This bill passed the House on a party-line 51 to 48 vote. It has now been referred to the Senate Rules committee. To quote Bones McCoy, “It’s dead, Jim.” (Or so I suspect.)

[tags]HB1830-2007[/tags]

(h/t Good Brownie) Health insurance jumps twice inflation rate:

Since 2000, health insurance premiums have gone up 78 percent; wages 20 percent.

Mr. Brown also spots a New York Times article:

Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.

“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said[.]

This is simply unsustainable. Americans pay more and get less for their health care dollar than just about anybody. If money is no object, you can get outstanding health service in the United States. If you have decent insurance paid for by somebody else, things work pretty well too. But if you’re paying for your health insurance premiums or your medical expenses directly out of pocket, things can get pretty hairy, pretty fast.

The Associated Press has a story appearing in the Indianapolis Star entitled Hoosier focus of personal injury scheme. An individual by the name of Howard Awand has been indicted for allegedly conspiring as a medical consultant to fraudulently inflate settlements and judgments in personal injury cases. Awand denies the charges, but according to the indictment:

Awand owned and operated Nevada Medical Investments, a corporation that purchased accounts receivable and collection rights from health care providers, and Nevada Medical Consultants, a corporation “through which Awand purportedly provided medical consulting services.”
The indictment alleges that Awand conspired with doctors and lawyers from September 2001 to about November 2003. According to the document, Awand and others performed excessive medical procedures at inflated costs without the fully informed consent of the client and patient, and improperly influenced the sworn testimony of health care providers through promises and payments of kickbacks and protection from medical malpractice lawsuits.
Unnamed doctors performed medical procedures on patients without revealing agreements between Awand and the health care providers, the indictment said.
Lawyers involved in the scheme concealed from clients, the courts, defendants and others the “inherent conflicts of interest and self-dealing relationships arising from the undisclosed agreements” between the coconspirators, it said.

It looks like the indictment may have stemmed from Awand’s involvement in a Nevada case discussed in a column by Jane Ann Morrison in the November 14, 2005 Las Vegas Review Journal. In June 2002, a woman named Cynthia Johnson was rear-ended by a federal prosecutor. (Federal criminal defense attorneys can begin cracking jokes . . . NOW). Apparently Johnson checked with a family friend/doctor who got in touch with Awand. Almost immediately, Awand had arranged for her to see a particular orthopedic surgeon. The orthopedic surgeon then instructed her to see a particular attorney. Even though the case had settled, Ms. Morrison’s column reported that the interest of federal prosecutors continued. “Reports still float back to me of a dogged FBI agent asking questions around town about fees paid to doctors, how personal injury case referrals occur and whether anything unethical or illegal is occurring.”

In fact, it looks as if Ms. Morrison has written a number of columns on this subject: one on 12/01/05, and one on 7/20/06 also pop up with a Google search.

According to the 7/20/06 article, it looks like Awand may have gotten a piece of the action by purchasing liens on the medical procedures through his Nevada Medical Investments. Ms. Morrison cites a Colorado case where the plaintiff underwent medical procedures which would have been paid by her medical insurer. However, her attorney apparently directed the hospital to go through Nevada Medical Investments rather than through the plaintiff’s medical insurer. “[The] two surgery liens totaling $40,311 were purchased by Nevada Medical Investments. Soon after her settlement, the business wanted Veirs to pay $234,000 to settle the liens.”

A KLAS investigative reporter named George Knapp has apparently opened up a blog entitled “howardawand.blogspot.com,” but I don’t see any activity on that blog since March 2006.

So, with all of that as easily retrieved information, I suspect that Mr. Awand’s attorney was being a little disingenuous when he said, “I don’t understand the charges against my client. You can’t have a conspiracy all by yourself.”

(Via bilerico,) Bruce Hetrick’s satirical look at SJR 7 in the Indianapolis Business Journal:

Hi. Big Brother here. You know me: Mr. Government-Knows-Best,

Mr. Run-Your-Life-For-You,

Mr. Tell-You-What-You-Can-and-Cannot-Do.

I realize I’m not popular in these Hoosier parts. I know I’ve failed to mandate the use of motorcycle helmets. Failed to mandate the use of safety belts in trucks. Failed to stop you from smoking up that old Chevy Malibu with your little munchkin ridin’ shotgun.

Granted, after decades of futility, I finally conned you into daylight-saving time. But that was an aberration. And you’re not happy about it. And a huge percentage of you opted out, anyway.

More typical of your Hoosier resistance to regulation: You have the second-highest smoking rate in the nation and the heart disease, cancer and death rate to show for it. But you won’t even consider joining Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington in passing a statewide smoke-free workplace law.
But there is one issue where you love me, baby. One topic where even you government-be-damned, you’re-not-the-bossof-me Hoosier masses crave Big Brother’s meddling.

On that issue, you dig discrimination. You clamor to keep folks different from you quietly closeted.

Hypocritical as it may seem, all you members of the none-of-your-business, anti-bureaucracy crowd beg me to regulate the lives and loves of one infinitesimal subset of humanity.

And it’s not the rapists. Not the spouseabusers. Not the sex offenders. Not the child-molesters. Not the deadbeat parents. Not the polluters. Not the puppy-killers. Not the murderers, muggers, drunks or thieves.

Nope, the ones you want me to rein in are men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women. For when it comes to this horrible, terrible, devious, dangerous threat to humanity and the planet, you love to have Big Brother dictate who can love whom, and under what circumstances and whether we even speak of such salaciousness.

I think this does illustrate a fault line in the Republican coalition we’ve seen over the past couple of decades. Pro-business interests tend to desire a weak government that doesn’t do much except help enforce contracts and keep the market stable and safe enough to allow business as usual to be conducted. Social conservatives seem to envision a stronger, more intrusive government, at least in certain areas like, for example, gay marriage, rights (or lack thereof) for unmarried couples, abortion, religion in schools, etc.

The bad year at the polls in 2006 might put a little more stress on the fault line. A bad year in 2008, and maybe we’ll be looking at a seismic shift.

Via bilerico, Sen. Anita Bowser (D-Michigan City) has passed away at the age of 86 from breast cancer. Rest in Peace Senator.

I recently picked up a book entitled “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel Dennett. He cited an interesting quote by Richard Dawkins:

[M]odern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Dennett goes on to address the response of theists that, be that as it may, there is a huge difference between believing in a Higher Power and not. Dennett’s suggests that, while most theists might call their idea of a Higher Power “God,” they mean entirely different things. Dennett compares this to saying that Lucy likes Rock [Hudson,] and Desi likes Rock [& Roll].” And then trying to say that there is something significant about Lucy and Desi both liking Rock. I don’t think theist definitions of “God” are quite that distinct, but I can go most of the way. The most I think we can say universally about the God/Higher Power of theists is that they believe in something that is outside nature. Any additional qualifications and you start having a God in which some theists do not believe. Make God some sort of super-being, for example, and you exclude all of those who believe God is some sort of ineffable essence.

For my part, if what we mean by “God” is something “beyond nature,” I can go so far as to say I’m agnostic. Agnostic means, “without knowlege.” I don’t see any real basis for believing that there is a human like superbeing who plucked out a rib and molded it into a woman, told Noah to build a boat, and had him put all of the animals except for the dinosaurs into it before flooding the earth. But, I can’t wrap my tiny little brain around the idea that all of the stuff that currently exists just simply “always existed.” (Then again, having a Higher Being that is a First Cause pretty much leads to the same question — where did the First Cause come from. We’ll just say “magic” and leave it at that for now.) So, I guess it’s fair to say I’m an atheist with respect to Poseidon and Baal and all of the Gods that no longer are the subjects of belief. I’m an atheist with respect to Jehovah and Jesus’ Dad and Allah and the other Gods who are currently having their period of belief. And, I’m agnostic with respect to the potential that there is/was a God/Higher Power that was a First Cause.

Just some random thoughts for a Sunday morning, I suppose.

I was amused by Gov. Daniels reaction to the Democratic budget bill that passed the House of Representatives. According to this story by Bryan Corbin writing for the Evansville Courier Press, Gov. Daniels reacted to the absence of any funding for I-69 in the budget bill by calling it “a friendly poke in the eye.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels reacted this morning to recent developments in the Democratic-controlled Indiana House, which passed a budget without funding Interstate 69 and also drained $60 million from the Major Moves fund to pay for local street projects instead of I-69.

Daniels termed it a “friendly poke in the eye” from House Democrats but said he does not believe they truly oppose I-69. He assumes they ultimately will fund it. Daniels appeared with Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, a Democrat.

I think Daniels’ reaction strikes pretty much the right tone. He lets it be known that he doesn’t like the absence of I-69 funding, but “it’s just business,” as they say.