A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

31 October 2015

As October ends

Halloween — give the kids candy. Some years ago, I decided to save trick-or-treaters from sugar. So I handed out two number two pencils to every masked beggar that rang my doorbell. My dentist would have applauded. But no one else did. The next morning I found my driveway littered with broken pencils.

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Welcome back, Amanda Curtis. She announced she’s running for HD-74 down in Butte-Silverbow land. HD-74’s current representative, Democrat Pat Noonan, is termed-out and running for the Public Service Commission, opening up the seat. Curtis, who has not yet filed her C-1 with political practices, served in the 2013 legislature, making a name for herself by posting daily selfie video reports on the internet.

She didn’t run for re-election so that Noonan could have a safe seat, then in 2014 found herself running for the U.S. Senate as a last minute replacement after John Walsh withdrew his candidacy following the revelation he was a plagiarizer (the National War College revoked his masters degree and ground his name off the bronze honor roll). After a faltering start, she gave a good account of herself.

Curtis is a young mathematics teacher and an accomplished folk musician. Montana’s Democrats need more like her.

Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Federal government officials are urging consumers to shop around, reports the New York Times, lest they get clobbered by huge price increases. Blueshield and Bluecross price increases will make people livid. Two examples:

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee said the 36 percent rate increase was necessary because it had lost money on its marketplace business after underestimating the use of health care by its new customers.

In Minnesota, officials approved increases averaging 49 percent for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the largest insurer in the market. Even with the increases, the company said, “Blue Cross is likely to experience continued significant financial losses through 2016.”

I strongly suspect that a lot of health insurance companies deliberately lowballed initial prices to draw in customers, all the while intending to jack up prices in a year or two knowing that most people simply want to choose a policy and stick with it. Only economists in love with gratuitous complexity have fun comparison shopping for health insurance. For everyone else, it’s an annual ordeal worthy of a prescription for Valium — and a scathing indictment of the Affordable Care Act’s dependance on private health insurance instead of an everyone covered for everyone federal single-payer system financed by progressive taxes.

If you’re voting on Tuesday, wear a raincoat and heavy sweater. The Flathead’s forecast calls for rain or snow and a high of just 42°F. I doubt anyone will have to wait more than a few minutes to vote. A mail ballot would increase turnout, and some municipalities, egged on by local election departments, are voting by mail, but a better solution would be putting municipal (and school board) elections on the general election ballot in even-numbered years.

I continue to oppose mail ballots, by the way. They reduce the experience of voting from a solemn rite of democracy exercised in the presence of one’s neighbors to a ho-hum experience akin to paying a utility bill exercised at the kitchen table in the presence of one’s salt shaker.