Sometimes

Every now and then, Cat Valente says something I can agree with almost whole-heartedly.

Because this novel [Red Plenty] about Soviet utopia is only unexpected and remarkable (the book itself is quite good, what I mean is the concept) if you think it's bizarre and science fictional that Soviets, in enacting the Soviet system, expected it to work and believed in it, believed it would make a better way of life.

She goes into the American mindset of "LOLZ, U COMMIEZ LOST & WE WON HAHAHA" and the America FIRST and ONLY! exceptionalism:

One thing Russia was not wrong about was how much Western oligarchs suck, and how little they care for anything but themselves. We are stuck in an almost comical version of olicarchical capitalism, one familiar from any Soviet cartoon, but by god you had better put your hand over your heart when that flag comes out. What are you, a communist? An atheist? A foreigner? Please do not look at the highly successful socialist programs this country has enacted, that brought prosperity and equality, and are being dismantled at this very moment in order to make room for even more satire-become-reality oligarch theatre. Please do not think about any other choices, ever, or how other humans might have made different ones.

Several of my former-East-German friends here on DW have an instantaneous prickly reaction to Besserwessi. It's the same damned thing.

High deductible health plans don't work for the already-sick.

I've been saying that for years, and finally there's some evidence.

Atul Gawande, via Ezra Klein:

The firm had already raised the employees’ insurance co-payments considerably, hoping to give employees a reason to think twice about unnecessary medical visits, tests, and procedures -- make them have some “skin in the game,” as they say. Indeed, almost every category of costly medical care went down: doctor visits, emergency-room and hospital visits, drug prescriptions. Yet employee health costs continued to rise -- climbing almost ten per cent each year. The company was baffled.

Gunn’s team took a look at the hot spots. The outliers, it turned out, were predominantly early retirees. Most had multiple chronic conditions -- in particular, coronary-artery disease, asthma, and complex mental illness. One had badly worsening heart disease and diabetes, and medical bills over two years in excess of eighty thousand dollars. The man, dealing with higher co-payments on a fixed income, had cut back to filling only half his medication prescriptions for his high cholesterol and diabetes. He made few doctor visits. He avoided the E.R.—until a heart attack necessitated emergency surgery and left him disabled with chronic heart failure.

The higher co-payments had backfired, Gunn said. While medical costs for most employees flattened out, those for early retirees jumped seventeen per cent. The sickest patients became much more expensive because they put off care and prevention until it was too late.

If you're young and generally healthy, or if you have a high enough income to support putting away $5000 or more a year, a HDHP + health savings account may work for you. If you're the other 80% of the population, chances are it won't.

Work.

I got some work done today, about 200 words net. Today's writing includes the final of the Galactic Cup and a bunch of soccer talk.

It'll probably bore the heck out of everyone else.