With each passing year, I feel a little less cool when I venture into Uptown. Before long, the Hipster Police will turn me back as soon as I cross Lake Street. I’ll tell them I simply want to admire the tattooed women in their sundresses, but they’ll just shake their heads and point me to the nearest Applebee’s.
Enjoy the weekend.
My prediction about today’s Supreme Court decision was wildly off the mark, but I’m thrilled with the final result. We’re still trying to parse the Court’s ruling on the Medicaid expansion and what it means for Minnesota. The Court treats the expansion as an entirely new program that exists separately from Medicaid: Original Flavor. Frankly, it’s a weird result and the reasoning seems shaky at best. I don’t think any legal scholar can articulate how the Court will distinguish between a non-coercive expansion of an existing program and the creation of a new program that is independent of the parent program. But, whatever. Most, if not all, will likely participate in the expansion because of the big carrot the federal government is offering in the form of federal funding.
So, a busy summer lies ahead for me. And in a couple months, I can start worrying about the fall election. My professional life is a series of cliffhangers.
Here’s one of the best quotes I’ve read regarding public opinion and health care reform:
The truth is that healthcare reform is a very confusing and highly technical topic. Americans may support a policy presented in one form, but not in another. Americans may approve of certain individual policies of Obamacare right now, but may not once a strenuous debate takes place. For many, Obamacare remains for the most part an abstraction, which they find hard to judge without having directly felt the effect of several key measures, such as the individual mandate.
Keep these words in mind as both political parties do their damnedest to spin tomorrow’s Supreme Court decision. Most Americans simply don’t spend much time thinking about this stuff and they really shouldn’t have to. They just know that the current health care system is increasingly broken and they want it fixed. Whatever happens tomorrow, those attitudes won’t change anytime soon.
A few thoughts on the iPad after using it for several days:
My prediction for Thursday: Chief Justice Roberts hands out thick rolls of papyrus to all reporters in the courtroom. The reporters must then figure out that the papyrus contains the decision written in invisible ink. After holding the manuscript over a candle flame, reporters must then decipher the revealed hieroglyphs to read the opinion. Experts in dead languages will have to be called in.
My employer was kind enough to award me a cash achievement award, so I suddenly found myself with a bit of a windfall. I suppose I could have spent it all on hookers and blow, but that seemed excessive. Instead, I decided to pick up an iPad. I know, I know, I’ve said before that I didn’t see the point of owning one given its inaccessibility, but I decided it might be handy to have a portable device with a bigger display than my phone. And reading magazines on the iPad is quite nice. Still, I hope accessibility on the device eventually improves.
I also have a little left over to spend on hookers and/or blow.
Finally, if you haven’t seen this live version of this summer’s earworm “Call Me Maybe”, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It’s bubblegum pop delivered with genuine sweetness and charm. I’ve seen it a few times and a silly grin still spreads across my face whenever I watch it.
Thanks to those of you who responded to my half-formed idea to Kickstart an open-source on-screen keyboard. I should have realized that there were already a few options available (especially to Linux users). Still, it may be worth my time doing some additional research. If you or someone you know uses an on-screen keyboard, I’d be interested in hearing what features are important to you or what you think is missing from the currently available options. Or are there other accessibility utilities that could be improved or for which there isn’t an open-source alternative?
I’ve been reading lots of articles about how game designers, fashion designers, musicians, and other creative types are using Kickstarter to crowdfund various project, which got me thinking about how it could be used to fund accessible technology. And then I started thinking about the on-screen keyboard that I use to write things like this. It’s proprietary software that hasn’t been updated in several years and a single-user license costs $350. And then I thought about how many people with disabilities simply don’t have that kind of money to spend on adaptive software.
And then I thought that it would be great if there was an open-source, cross-platform on-screen keyboard with plenty of customization features that anyone could download for free.
And then I wondered if it would be possible to pay a talented programmer or two a few grand (or ten or twenty) to design something like that. And then I wondered if this could be funded via Kickstarter.
Thoughts? Do you think it would get funded? Would I be able to find reputable coders to work on something like this? I wouldn’t keep a dime, so I’m not interested in making a profit. It just seems like a cool project that could help people.
Dear Supremes,
Can you please just issue a ruling on health care reform already? I’m wasting far too much time reading opinion pieces speculating on how you might rule and what it will all mean for the election, the Democrats, the Republicans, the health care system, the country, and possibly even the fabric of reality itself. I should be enjoying my summer, not obsessing over the import of comments made by one of your brethren at some lecture. Seriously, just do what you’re gonna do so I can get my back to my typical evening routine: check e-mail, check social networks and RSS feeds, blog, scour Internet for new fishnet-themed erotica with a single-minded drive usually reserved for overcaffeinated grad students pulling an all-nighter in the library.
Sincerely,
Me
Last Friday’s episode of the Planet Money podcast examined whether Medicaid actually helps people or whether it’s a waste of public dollars. Alex Blumberg interviews Katherine Baiker, a Harvard researcher who had the unique opportunity to compare people receiving and not receiving Medicaid after Oregon held a lottery to fill 10,000 openings in their Medicaid program. Her findings conclusively show that enrollees enjoy better health and increased financial stability, but at a significant cost because Medicaid enrollees use more health care services.
Professor Baiker cautions health care advocates against making claims that expanding Medicaid saves money (something of which I’ve been guilty of doing). Instead, we should focus on the actual improvements in health that Medicaid provides to low-income people. Policymakers can then have an honest debate about whether better health outcomes are worth the additional public dollars. It’s sound advice for us wonks. Sometimes we’re a little too eager to quantify our policy preferences in terms of dollars and cents. We fear that talking solely about the differences Medicaid can make in people’s lives might sound a little too…earnest. But we shouldn’t be afraid to sound earnest as long as we are clear-eyed about the costs associated with our positions.