Month: March 2024

A new study published in JAMA shows that the informal health care network¹ increased its provision of abortion pills following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. Here's a summary of their findings:

The average provision of abortion pills increased by about 4,500 per month nationally following the Dobbs decision.

But this is not what interests me. Rather, it's the furious reaction of Michael New over at National Review, who insists that the "purported" results are unreliable:

The data that appears in the JAMA article are self-reported by organizations that...have an interest in showing that there is a high demand for self-managed chemical abortions when strong pro-life laws are passed. Furthermore, taking the data at face value, we see that chemical-abortion pills ordered does not necessarily equal chemical abortions obtained.

Of course the data is self-reported. How else can you do a survey? And as New himself admits, the authors adjusted their findings for average usage rates, which ranged from 86% to 99%. I agree that the study is a little on the patchy side, but it's basically OK.

But New says this is just part of a trend of pro-choice organizations fudging the data. In particular, he points to a New York Times piece from last year about the Texas Heartbeat Act. The article says that in-state abortions went down dramatically in Texas, but the reduction was offset by increases in medication abortions and out-of-state abortions. But here's the weird part. The Times analysis suggests the net number of abortions in Texas went down by about 750 per month. New thinks the liberal Times got it wrong because his preferred analysis suggests the birthrate in Texas went up by about 1,000 per month. My own quickie analysis bears this out:

But what this means is that both measures are in pretty good agreement, especially given the inherent fuzziness of short-term data. There's nothing to complain about here.

Anti-abortion folks are just hellbent on trying to prove that Dobbs, along with subsequent state laws banning abortion, had a huge impact on abortion. But there's now a mountain of data all pointing in the same direction: The impact has ranged from nothing to small. Even in red states, people who want abortions are willing to go to significant lengths to get them.

¹Community networks, telemedicine providers, and online vendors.

This is a picture of the Christmas Tree Cluster and the Cone Nebula (upside-down at at the top), jointly catalogued as NGC 2264. It's a star-forming region containing both young and old stars.

I took this picture last month and it plainly didn't have enough exposure time. I had planned to do it over when I had an entire night at my disposal, but by the time a month had passed it was even lower in the horizon and my window had passed. I'll give it another try in autumn or winter, when it will be visible all night.

For no particular reason, here's another health care chart. This one shows how much people spend each year personally on professional health care. It doesn't count aspirin or massages or stuff like that. It's the personal share of employer premiums plus out-of-pocket costs not covered by insurance. This is per-person; spending per family is higher but the trend is the same.

Note that this number hasn't gone up for the past six years.

Donald Trump has been let off the hook for the full amount of the $454 million bond he was ordered to pay in his business fraud case. An appeals court cut it to $175 million.

This is disappointing for those who enjoy watching Trump squirm, but it's probably reasonable. The court gave no reason for its decision, but more than likely it's because they thought the original penalty was excessive and was likely to be reduced. And since they're the ones who would reduce it, who would know better?

When you see figures for K-12 teacher pay it's normally an average of all teachers, including those who have master's degrees and PhDs, or specialized skills such as ESL. But what about your garden variety fourth-grade teacher with a BA? They now make less than the average for all workers:

The average base pay for teachers with a BA is $53,000, with a range of $42,000 to $59,000 depending on experience. This doesn't count potential extras, like pay for coaching or for teaching summer school. It's also for a 37-week year.

Note that $53,000 is a national average. Pay ranges from a low of $37,000 in Missouri to a high of $69,000 in California.

I don't really know anything about Candace Owens. I gather that she's a fairly standard issue MAGA lunatic, but she drew attention recently for parting ways with the Daily Wire following some arguably antisemitic comments. So what's made her so popular?

This reminds me of a theory I've long held: everyone believes that the intelligence needed for political office (or political commentary) is whatever their own intelligence happens to be.

This is a corollary of the fact that we don't take politicians seriously. The same belief, for example, isn't true of doctors or quantum physicists. Most people are happy to admit they aren't brainy enough for those occupations. But politicians aren't viewed as people who need to know things. They merely need to have political views, and nearly all of us base our political views on emotion, not thinking.

So if your favored politician isn't smart enough to know the elements of the nuclear triad, what of it? If you didn't know it either, it hardly seems disqualifying. In fact, smarter politicians are annoying because they're always trying to explain things and all they do is confuse you.

If I'm watching Jeopardy and I happen to know an answer that no one on stage knows, I immediately think what a bunch of idiots! But if they know something I've never heard of, I immediately think how can they expect anyone to know that??? In other words, the ideal level of knowledge is whatever my knowledge happens to be. It's the same way on the freeway: there are people who drive too fast and people who drive too slow, and I'm the only one driving at the perfect speed.

Politics is the same way. As long as you're not stupider than me or smarter than me, you're fine.

Ronna McDaniel spent the past seven years as chair of the Republican National Committee until Donald Trump fired her a few weeks ago. On Friday she was hired by NBC News on a reported $300,000 contract.

Today she was interviewed on Meet the Press. The interview was scheduled weeks ago, before McDaniel was hired, but it was still awkward. Longtime NBC political analyst Chuck Todd went ballistic afterward:

Let me deal with the elephant in the room. I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.

....There's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this, because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. So that's where you begin here. And so when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility you've got to ask yourself, "What does she bring NBC News?"

Kudos to Todd for saying this publicly, but I still have to ask: Now that he's no longer the anchor of MTP, Todd is willing to say that the RNC is basically a bunch of thugs and liars. Did he ever say that while he was the anchor of MTP?

Maybe he did! Please school me if he's ever spoken the truth about this before. Somehow, though, I doubt it. It's sort of like all those Republican members of Congress who stolidly go along with everything until they leave office, whereupon they suddenly admit their party has been a disgrace for years. Maybe say it a little sooner, guys?

Did you know that health care inflation has been lower than overall inflation for the past decade? It has:

This has kept Medicare costs nearly flat recently, though CMS projects this will change over the upcoming decade:

The reason for the increase is not because medical inflation is expected to be high. In fact, CMS estimates it will continue to be lower than overall inflation. It's because the leading edge of the boomer generation is starting to enter their 80s, when they'll require far more medical care than they have in their 70s.

A few months ago the LA Times ran a story about a serial squatter who rented an Airbnb guesthouse in Brentwood and then refused to move when her time was up. She ended up staying an additional 570 rent-free days.

Response: Nothing.

The Times tried again in February with a story about an abandoned office tower covered in graffiti. The story got some brief play, but that was all.

Response: Nothing.

Later in the month the Times wrote about a Hollywood mansion taken over by squatters. It included the titillating fact that one of the squatters was an OnlyFans model making "content" for her page.

Response: Nothing.

In Early March the New York Post tried its hand at the genre with a story about a squatter "living the luxe life" in a $2 million home in Queens.

Response: Nothing.

Finally, the LA Times got back in the game with a story about Flash Shelton, the "Squatter Hunter." For a fee of $5,000 or more, Shelton and his team "out-squat" squatters and get them to leave.

Response: Bingo! Fox News picked it up. Ben Carson got involved. Joe Rogan did a podcast and Elon Musk tweeted about it. Inside Edition did a segment. CNN, CBS News, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail all piled on. This is why you're suddenly hearing about squatters:

Stories about an "epidemic" of squatting have been common for more than a decade, and there's no reason to think it's on the rise at the moment. Even the LA Times piece about Flash Shelton admits "squatting isn't common" (in the 23rd paragraph), and says he's handled ten jobs "over the last few months" (in the 34th paragraph).

Still, if you push a button often enough eventually you'll get a response. That's how squatting finally went viral.

Obamacare has been around for ten years and it's been growing steadily more popular the entire time:

Even a third of Republicans have a favorable view of Obamacare these days. To put this into perspective, the overall approval rate for Obamacare is 59%. That compares to about 80% for Social Security.

And use of Obamacare has nearly doubled since Joe Biden was elected:

Expanded subsidies are probably the main reason for increased use of Obamacare, but not the only one. Following the pandemic many states started unenrolling people from Medicaid, and some of those who lost coverage switched to Obamacare. Overall, though, net coverage has gone up.