Hysteresis

 Many of you who "stumble" onto this post may not know what the meaning of the word "hysteresis" is and that's ok. I'm and engineer so I'm familiar with the concept from electronics, and inductors to be more precise. The phenomena of hysteresis however, applies to more than just natural systems but has applications in economics too.

I'll explain. Hysteresis is the phenomena where a device, system or organism when subjected to a change or stimulus has a (potentially) expected reaction but there is a significant time delay between the two. In the context of our political system, it means that usually the person in charge in period one, is responsible for whatever happens in the next person's tenure. This could partially or totally. The reasons for this are relatively obvious to most of us. Some policy choices and decisions just take time to implement and then promulgate through a massive economy.

Why am I bringing this up? I keep hearing people trying to blame the current president for inflation and other economic woes after 2 years in office. If my theory is right, we're just now feeling the impact of decisions and policies that were put in place in the last administration just as trump experienced good times while he was in office as a result of the Obama administration. The effects of the Obama administration were probably even more cemented into our economics because he was in office for two terms. 

I'm not an economist so I don't really know just what the delay, hysteresis, is due to radical changes in policies actually is, but I suspect it's measured in years. What happened in the previous administration that are now heavily impacting our current situation? I probably cannot come up with them all but some that I can think of include poor handling of the pandemic, cozying up to Putin, robbing the poor to pay the rich, isolating the US in global markets without any plans for remediation and this constant false notion of America and Patriotism. All of these, to name a few, have taken time- albeit some of them, like the Patriotism bit (you know "stop the steal"), were pretty short periods- to show their effects on the US as a people and on the economy. I think this is because the "deplorables" were already waiting in the wings.

It's natural to blame the President of the country for all of its ills but the reality is that nearly all of the ills began well before the President took office. As countries go, the US can change on a dime whereas most other countries may take years to change. This is due to our relatively short democratic elected official tenures. Let's see, Putin has been the head of Russia for 30 years now?? The US has probably had at least 4 complete administration changes in that time. The two party system worked pretty well for a while in the sense that change was slower so the changes didn't seem so dramatic or draconian. Now however, we get one party in who makes a bunch of changes and then the other party gets in and tears them all down again. We're not longer keeping up with the times but rather reversing the hands.

The point of all this was to merely point out that blaming the current President for any ills you're experiencing right here and now, is mostly ludicrous. It's also selective because if you are pro-life (in as far as unborn babies go) and blame Biden for inflation, then you must also congratulate him for the Dodd decision- whether he supported it or not. Do you see how this works now? The point is that one side of our political system consistently uses double standards to reward a given administration about, well just about anything by leaving out the important bits. My big fear is that the other side will now start doing the same thing out of desperation. At that point, you may as well let the military take over.

If you've ever seen any Jordan Klepper videos, it re-enforces something someone told me long ago which is that, "you can't argue with a dumb guy."

Starting up in 2022...again

It's been some years since I've commented on or made observations about the goings on here in the world. Let's just say, things have "moved on" since my last rant in 2017 when George W. Bush was the President here. I'm certain that he's delighted to no longer be listed as the worst president of the US, leaving that dubious accolade to Herr Drumpf. 

Just to "tee" things up, some of the idiocies going on the world now include minority control of the US as a standard, Putin the command trying to get into the history books by reconvening the Soviet Union (not quite like getting the band back together), the exorcism of women's rights by relegating 50% of the earth's population to canine status and a cataclysmic climate situation that will create a world something akin to a Mad Max movie set. There are more, of course but these are the one's on my mind right now.

The most astounding things that have happened politically since I last blogged (sounds awful doesn't it? It's probably going to be illegal soon), is that the Republican Party has been taken over by some evil force that thinks their bizarre notions of human behavior and societal liberties include only white males with machine guns and anything or anyone else is an aberration and well, just unchristian like. This has created THE most dangerous country on the planet only you wouldn't be able to convince them of that to wit I say, just ask anyone from any other country what we are. We've moved from the Ugly American to the Crazy American.

It dawns on me that the Republicans went to war to fight the Taliban, a brutal mysoginistic band of males that seek a world where women are mere vessels for baby making and slaves to their male "mates". Does this sound familiar? Republicans, without even realizing it, are the US incarnation of the Taliban. That leads me to my dilemma. I've been trying to find a phrase, like libtards, that links the monikers of republican and Taliban together. To date I've come up with nothing snappy which is a damn shame. I'll keep working on it.

Enjoy the Jan 6th hearings and the various spectacles surrounding the last administration...and I'm hoping it's the last one...

Healthcare 2

I was just reading that Aetna was pulling out of the ACA exchanges in all states. I suspect this is because they are not making enough money on operations so it's a bad business deal. Well, health care is a bad business deal for them because it doesn't really lend itself to the insurance model- period; and it never will.

Insurance is based on statistics. Specifically the statistic that the big payouts are at least 3 sigma off the mean population (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to study up on large, normal, population distributions). In  a normal distrubution, which large populations tend to gravitate toward- a small percentage on the low end of the curve never get sick at all and at the top is the small percentage that is sick all the time (in the case of health care, a large part of the sickest are "known" and no probablistic...we refer to them as "pre-existing" conditions). The largest part of the population is between those two extremes. Socio economic class works similarly in the US with the poorest of the poor at the bottom, and the richest of the richest at the top with a very large middle class. This rant isn't about population changes so I'm assuming, for now, that we are all normally distributed.

The perfect world of insurance has those that never or rarely making a claim, in essence, subsidizing those that are misfortunate enough to need the help and, on average, rates for everyone could be the same. But, insurance companies are allowed to "game the system" by fixing the populations. In the auto insurance industry, you are part of the big pool right up until your aren't. They you are put in another pool where they can charge you more money or eliminate you entirely from their population. Modern information systems see to it that you carry this information along with you even if you need to switch carriers. So what does this have to do with healthcare?

First, healthcare is only partly catestrophic. Most of it is routine and therefore doesn't lend itself to a catastrophic insurance model. Second, you can't put the "bad drivers" back into the pool without the "good drivers" subsidizing them. This is the "pre-existing conditions" pool that republicans are fond of talking about. A human, unlike a car, with a pre-existing condition is unlikely to manifest ever as part of the normal (middle class in my example) distribution with time, whereas, if the car business one accident does not mean you will have a second and eventually you become part of the normal distribution again. Also, not that your car insurance doesn't cover oil changes, brake replacements and the like. I healthcare, the equivalent procedures have to be done for a variety of reasons which I would hope are obvious, but yet the ARE part of your healthcare insurance. This is, in part, why healthcare doesn't lend itself well to the insurance model.

Now consider that some health related services keep you from (or delaying) catestrophic health events. In the driver world, they make you go to defensive driving school in hopes that you don't have another accident or get another ticket. The equivalent in healthcare is preventive medicine. In the current scheme, most insurance cover a very small amount of preventative health care. In my opinion, they cover just enough to get you into the system so they can keep track of you and to keep you going to the doctor's so as to improve their overall income...the more people go to the doctor for routine non-costly visits, the more co-pays and the more of the deductable goes to the insurance companies. On the flip side, they might find something seriously wrong too. While this might cause a major outlay, I'm betting that it's still less expensive than treating a pro-longed condition when it is finally diagnosed down the line (and sure there are probably exceptions). As long as the entire population pays into the pool (healthy and sick alike), there should be no issues providing all needed services.

This is where the big rub comes in. The ACA addressed the "pool" problem by doing the following: Young and old, sick and healthy all had to pay into the system in some way. Further, they expanded Medicare (known in the US as the most efficient health care system available) to cover more people, in effect, adding tax dollars into the pool for those that cannot afford them. Presumably, Medicaid would pick up the rest. The republican version of the ACA...eliminates nearly everything above. Only two things can happen: Only really wealthy people will have any kind of insurance or; we'll go back to the way it was before where only corporations will provide health coverage. The problem with the latter is that they (companies) are already shedding this expense so, unless something happens, we're going to end up with only wealthy people having guaranteed health care. Emergency rooms will be back in vogue and care will be even more expensive not to mention that people will die. It will be that drastic.

Editorial note 2022. I just realized I never hit the publish button so I did to complete the record....sorry!