A Stitch in Haste

Congress has approved, apparently by veto-proof margins, yet another farm bill that yet again benefits rich farmers at the expense of all taxpayers. This while the ethanol mandate mania continues to artificially inflate the price of corn (and, thanks to substitution effects, other crops as well).

Will the chief executive, widely thought to be an illiterate moron, be so easily manipulated by the corn lobby?

Oh, sorry, wrong "chief executive widely thought to an illiterate moron" —


Of course, Robert Graves' Claudius was not an illiterate moron, so perhaps the analogy isn't all that appropriate after all. Still, Hail Bush! for his intended veto of this corrupt, rent-seeking farm bill.

Once I return from my undisclosed location, I will for the first time ever have earned "elite status" with an airline (Continental). Indeed, my choice of destination was based in small part on the mileage accrual (i.e., the shortest possible flight to make it to 25,000 miles).

Elite status on Continental comes with many perks: priority check-in, priority baggage handling, priority seat selection, priority boarding ...

... and, much to my delight, priority security screening at Newark Airport.

As I've noted before, the notion that there is an "express lane" at security for First Class and elite status fliers stirs indignation among some malcontents.

A New York Times Magazine contributor, for example:

There have always been special queues for first-class check-in and boarding. Those are part of a private transaction between an airline and a customer. But two-tiered security checks are a different story. Airport security, after all, is not a business transaction. It is justified as national defense, mandated by federal law, overseen by the Transportation Security Administration and carried out by either the T.S.A. or a private security service under its ultimate authority. It exists in its present form because of the national emergency of Sept. 11, 2001. It is financed by a "Sept. 11 security fee" that all fliers pay.

The T.S.A., whenever it is called on the carpet (which is often) about the two-tiered system it countenances, responds with the same piece of casuistry. The rich are scanned the same way as everyone else, the T.S.A. insists, but the formation of the queues themselves is not our department. "That real estate in front of the checkpoint is owned by the airlines," one spokeswoman told USA Today in 2006. (The law is not crystal clear. It gives supervisory responsibility for the entire airport to a T.S.A. "federal security director.")

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Just as it was preposterous for Hillary Clinton to dismiss economists (and, therefore, economics itself) as "elitist," so too is it preposterous for this malcontent to dismiss a priority queue at airport security as "casuistry." It ignores the pesky fact that, so long as the TSA staff are kept busy (i.e., not standing around twiddling their thumbs waiting for a first class passenger to show up), then what difference does it make, from an objective "just keep 'em moving" perspective, how the passengers are sorted? If the screeners are all working continually, then what exactly is the problem from the perspective of "security"? (For an isolated but far better example of the point the author is trying to make, one that help keeps the current debate in perspective, see this old post — but note the differences in the analysis too; they are all-important.)

(And, talking about "casuistry," the notion that an airport's "federal security director" does or ought have authority to impose egalitarianism for its own sake — rather than focusing exclusively on legitimate "security" concerns — is the worst kind of specious, bureaucrat-inspired, Kip's Law sophistry.)

Indeed, the malcontent reluctantly concedes barely a column-inch later that, even if the airlines needed a justification for establishing priority lines at security (they do not), they actually have one:

Although there is no principled argument for segregated airport security, maybe there is a pragmatic one. Elite travelers tend to be repeat travelers. As likely as not, they have had their luggage rummaged through three times in the past week, and the airlines — or their databases — know who they are. If there were some security-based system for speeding their transit, that would be great. Since there is no such system, maybe the rough-and-ready class system is (without meaning to be, of course) fair.

Economic science (in the form of "operations research" generally and "queueing theory" specifically) is, we are told, not "principled" but merely "pragmatic." If it is "fair," then it is so only by accident. The libel of "economists as elitists" strikes again.

One last hasty stitch:

James May, C.E.O. of the Air Transport Association, which represents the big airlines, told a Senate committee in 2006 that money spent on Registered Traveler had been "wasted." The airlines' views are not surprising — after all, Registered Traveler makes available for $100 a perquisite that they have been using to sell $4,700 tickets.

That is a flat-out lie. The airlines opposed "Registered Traveler" (now run by "Clear" and "FLO") because it was poorly designed, not because it would steal their business class revenues. (Indeed, opposition was based in large part because $100 was deemed too expensive, not too cheap.) It is simply absurd to think that huge swaths of the business traveler population will suddenly trade down to coach merely because they can save a few minutes at the security line via paid pre-screening programs.

It is easy for some to couch antipathy for the better off as a quest for "egalitarian fairness." But to sacrifice one harmless scrap of efficiency at what is already one of the least efficient processes in all modernity strips the facade from the malcontents' argument and exposes their underlying sociopathy.

The New York Times pulled a rather "artistic" stunt in continuing to "paint" malevolence toward the successful as concern over the fiction of "rising income equality" —

Sotheby's estimates it will raise a record $375 million to $477 million. Christie's hopes for $280 million to $390 million, also a record. Both hope to sell paintings at prices once reserved for large corporate jets or small islands: Sotheby's expects to get $70 million for a triptych by Francis Bacon, almost $20 million more than the record for the artist set last year.

Reassuring as it may be to see a least some consumer spending booming, the art world's ever rising valuations are a symptom of a growing imbalance in the American economy: the unprecedented concentration of the spoils of growth at the very top.

How typical of the Times editorial board to confuse business with war ("spoils"?) and to reframe all human transactions as antagonistic "us versus them" confrontations.

In any case, rising revenues can, and likely are, more explained by increased volumes than by increased prices; one triptych does not a market trend make. (Indeed a different "Times" article about the Bacon triptych suggests, contra the New York Times, that the two great auction houses are not doing all that well right now. Go figure.

(Incidentally, the Bacon triptych is currently owned by a Swiss, not an American. How it therefore has anything to do with "rising income inequality in America" remains, like so much contemporary art, a matter of abstract interpretation — i.e., pompous gobbledygook.)

Meanwhile, the fact that there is an increase in art auctioning could just as easily suggest that times are tough for the hyper-wealthy: why sell art unless you need the money? Unlike a truly productive industry, an auction market for pre-existing goods is a zero-sum game: for every buyer eager to spend money, there must be a seller eager to receive money. This would suggest, if anything, distress within the collector class. (Recall that auctioned masterwork art is, to be blunt, "used" art. Would a boom in the used car market necessarily signal good times in Detroit?)

And besides, this is all presumptive speculation anyway. How do we know that all this art isn't being bought and sold by museums and other institutions? Or perhaps in some instances a wealthy collector dies, and the estate is being sold to disperse the wealth among the heirs. (As I've previously noted, haters of American mega-prosperity generally refuse to acknowledge the fleeting nature of American entrepreneurial wealth across generations. Unlike Europe and Latin America, there are in fact astonishingly few multi-generational American business dynasties (unlike political dynasties, which are all too ubiquitous in America).

In any case, the leftist malcontents who continue to bemoan "rising income inequality" continue to ignore that income itself is rising across all demographics (just at an unequal rate), and that the U.S. does not have a caste system: the people in the top 1% of incomes today are not necessarily those in the top 1% yesterday or tomorrow. This phenomenon — call it "turnover" or "churn" or whatever you like — is even more pronounced at the other end of the distribution: the "bottom 20%" of households by income are largely immigrants — who promptly make their way upward and out of the bottom 20%, replaced by new immigrants more than eager to be "victimized" by rising income equality.

It's quite simple really: The best way to care about the poor in America is by not caring about the rich in America.

(I sincerely hope this does not become a regular feature here.)

One of the first industries the looters went after in Atlas Shrugged was, of course, oil.

And who is better at looting than politicians?

U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski said it's time for America to stand up to the big oil companies and shout out, "We've had enough."

Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, was in town Monday to announce his introduction of House Resolution 5800, the Consumer Reasonable Energy Price Protection Act of 2008. The bill, introduced on the House floor April 15, would allow the federal government to tax windfall oil and gas profits resulting from historically high oil and gas prices that average Americans struggle to afford, he said.

Kanjorski said industries yield windfall profits when earnings exceed what a Reasonable Profits Board determines is rational, as laid out in the legislation.

Rational profits? As determined by a Reasonable Profits Board? Would Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe be eligible to serve on it? (If not, then perhaps Ms. Maureen Felix of West Orange, New Jersey, is available.)

The futility of pointing out, "reasonable to whom, by what standard" is not lost on me. The impermeability of the blood-brain barrier between politicians and reasonableness is common knowledge.

Also not lost on me is the futility of pointing out, yet again, that "big" oil companies actually consist of numerous small shareholders, either directly as individuals and households (such as those that the "reasonable" Representative Kanjorski putatively serves), or indirectly — as employees (whose pension funds own oil company stock), small business owners (who retirement accounts include index funds that include such stock), students (whose college endowment funds own such stock) or anyone else who indirectly benefits from "obscene" oil company profits.

Equally futile would, I suppose, be asking where one goes to apply for a seat on the Reasonable Taxation Board:


(Click to enlarge.)

Via Tax Policy Blog.

(For the uninitiated, Directive 10-289 here.)

Some defenders of a tort reform program implemented in Texas since 1995 try to pull a fast one:

Savings from reduced damages awarded by juries and fewer lawsuits filed against large businesses since the mid-'90s has created a climate in which medical and insurance companies can expand, the study states. Across Texas, the reforms have resulted in nearly $113 billion in additional annual spending, almost 500,000 new jobs and $2.6 billion a year in increased state budget resources.

As I commented over at Kevin, M.D., where I saw this sleight-of-hand:

Um, no.

This is what economists call the Broken Window Fallacy.

You are only seeing the macroeconomic benefits achieved (for insurance companies and defendants). You are not seeing the macroeconomic benefits foregone (for affected plaintiffs).

The additional money meritorious plaintiffs would have received but for tort reform would also have "stimulated the economy" in one form or another.

The net effects may tilt one way or the other -- there's little way to know for sure. But evaluating a policy -- any policy -- based only on the gross effects ("what is seen") while ignoring the offsets ("what is not seen") is an fundamental logical error.

Unfortunately, it is a fundamental logical error that permeates almost every aspect of American factional politics -- including health care policy generally and tort reform specifically.

I am fully aware that Texas was a unique situation in which fundamental legal injustices were reportedly occurring against malpractice and product liability defendants in civil lawsuits. Point conceded. But tort reform for the sake of better legal outcomes (i.e., more "fair and just" outcomes) is altogether different from tort reform for the sake of economic growth. That way madness lies.

Access to the Bastiat-betraying report here. My old chain on asbestos liability here; on Vioxx liability here.

Some defenders of a tort reform program implemented in Texas since 1995 try to pull a fast one:

Savings from reduced damages awarded by juries and fewer lawsuits filed against large businesses since the mid-'90s has created a climate in which medical and insurance companies can expand, the study states. Across Texas, the reforms have resulted in nearly $113 billion in additional annual spending, almost 500,000 new jobs and $2.6 billion a year in increased state budget resources.

As I commented over at Kevin, M.D., where I saw this sleight-of-hand:

Um, no.

This is what economists call the Broken Window Fallacy.

You are only seeing the macroeconomic benefits achieved (for insurance companies and defendants). You are not seeing the macroeconomic benefits foregone (for affected plaintiffs).

The additional money meritorious plaintiffs would have received but for tort reform would also have "stimulated the economy" in one form or another.

The net effects may tilt one way or the other -- there's little way to know for sure. But evaluating a policy -- any policy -- based only on the gross effects ("what is seen") while ignoring the offsets ("what is not seen") is an fundamental logical error.

Unfortunately, it is a fundamental logical error that permeates almost every aspect of American factional politics -- including health care policy generally and tort reform specifically.

I am fully aware that Texas was a unique situation in which fundamental legal injustices were reportedly occurring against malpractice and product liability defendants in civil lawsuits. Point conceded. But tort reform for the sake of better legal outcomes (i.e., more "fair and just" outcomes) is altogether different from tort reform for the sake of economic growth. That way madness lies.

Access to the Bastiat-betraying report here. My old chain on asbestos liability here; on Vioxx liability here.

There are certain axioms, certain fundamental pillars, upon which this blog is based. One is that all politicians are, by definition, moral defectives. Another is the ubiquitousness of the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling. Another is Kip's Law.

Yet another — one you have seen repeatedly here — is that the laws of economics are no more subject to repeal by a legislature than are the laws of physics.

Perhaps it's time to add a flying buttress to that last pillar: No truth, including economic truth, can ever be "elitist" —

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday dismissed the "elite opinion" of economists who criticized her gas tax proposal, using a term that has dogged rival Barack Obama in recent weeks.
...
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.

"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.

When Clinton or a member of her family becomes sick or injured, does she rely on "elite" physicians for care? If she becomes president, will she dismiss the "elite" pilots who fly Air Force One? Why does she need Air Force One at all — the only thing stopping people from flying around like Superman are the "disadvantageous" views of "elite" physicists.

Economics does admittedly lie in a twilight zone between the metaphysical certitudes of the hard sciences and the subjective gobbledygook of the humanities. Point conceded.

But an economic truth such as, "all resources are scarce and must somehow be rationed" is closer to a physics-based law of conservation than to a humanities-based pronouncement that "everyone has a right to..." An economic truth such as, "people respond to incentives" is closer to a physics-based "for every action..." than to a humanities-based "from each according to..." A graph containing a supply and demand curve — and the distortions government policies impose on them — is closer to a Grand Unified Theory than to a piece of indecipherable "abstract art."

To call economists "elitist" is to call economics "elitist" — which is also to call science, logic and reason "elitist."

More thoughts from — heck, too many people to cite.

Obsidian Wings, critiquing John McCain's health care not-quite-reform not-quite-proposal, relays an anecdote:

Shirley Giarde of Walla Walla, Wash., was not prepared when her husband, Raymond, suddenly developed congestive heart failure last year and needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. Because his job did not provide health benefits, she has covered them both through a policy for the self-employed, which she obtained as the proprietor of a bridal and formal-wear store, the Purple Parasol.

But when Raymond had his medical problems, Ms. Giarde discovered that her insurance would cover only $22,000, leaving them with about $100,000 in unpaid hospital bills.

Even though the hospital agreed to reduce that debt to about $50,000, Ms. Giarde is still struggling to pay it — in part because the poor economy has meant slumping sales at the Purple Parasol. Her husband, now disabled and unable to work, will not qualify for Medicare for another year, and she cannot afford the $758 a month it would cost to enroll him in a state-run insurance plan for individuals who cannot find private insurance.

To which I relayed a comment:

Perhaps the problem isn't so much with health insurance as with Ms. Giarde's "Purple Parasol" business model. If her business can't produce enough income for her to pay her bills, then she's in the wrong business.

Debate a "right to health care" all you like, but don't claim that there is a right to run an unprofitable, sub-mediocre business and then get taxpayer-extracted health insurance on top of that.

P.S. What exactly was the back story of Mr. Giarde taking a job with no health benefits in the first place? Because I have no doubt that there was in fact a back story.

It's bad enough seeing starving (i.e., crappy) artists demand — and receive — forced taxpayer purchase of their "art" through public funding. Are we now to see the equivalent of forced consumption of bridal gowns (among countless other services) from inadequately profitable (i.e., badly run) bridal shops (among countless other services), through the money laundering socialist concept known as "universal health insurance"?

Obsidian Wings, critiquing John McCain's health care not-quite-reform not-quite-proposal, relays an anecdote:

Shirley Giarde of Walla Walla, Wash., was not prepared when her husband, Raymond, suddenly developed congestive heart failure last year and needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. Because his job did not provide health benefits, she has covered them both through a policy for the self-employed, which she obtained as the proprietor of a bridal and formal-wear store, the Purple Parasol.

But when Raymond had his medical problems, Ms. Giarde discovered that her insurance would cover only $22,000, leaving them with about $100,000 in unpaid hospital bills.

Even though the hospital agreed to reduce that debt to about $50,000, Ms. Giarde is still struggling to pay it — in part because the poor economy has meant slumping sales at the Purple Parasol. Her husband, now disabled and unable to work, will not qualify for Medicare for another year, and she cannot afford the $758 a month it would cost to enroll him in a state-run insurance plan for individuals who cannot find private insurance.

To which I relayed a comment:

Perhaps the problem isn't so much with health insurance as with Ms. Giarde's "Purple Parasol" business model. If her business can't produce enough income for her to pay her bills, then she's in the wrong business.

Debate a "right to health care" all you like, but don't claim that there is a right to run an unprofitable, sub-mediocre business and then get taxpayer-extracted health insurance on top of that.

P.S. What exactly was the back story of Mr. Giarde taking a job with no health benefits in the first place? Because I have no doubt that there was in fact a back story.

It's bad enough seeing starving (i.e., crappy) artists demand — and receive — forced taxpayer purchase of their "art" through public funding. Are we now to see the equivalent of forced consumption of bridal gowns (among countless other services) from inadequately profitable (i.e., badly run) bridal shops (among countless other services), through the money laundering socialist concept known as "universal health insurance"?

...sightseeing tour?

[T]wo recent college graduates are rattling the genteel world of Washington tour guides.

Ben Hindman and Brody Davis are giving tours for free.
...
Not entertained are the city's professional guides, who "really don't like us," says Hindman, 24, a Bostonian who found the inspiration for DC By Foot in Berlin, where he took a tour from a tips-only guide.
...
Actually, says Tom Whitley, who handles marketing for the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, D.C., "it would be foolhardy for highly skilled guides to get into some kind of a fight with people trying to pick up tours out on the street. Let's just say that it's much more likely that a person who wants a qualified guide will go out and get a professional guide."

I took one of those Berlin tips-only tours back in January — and the guide (an Aussie expat) was fine if a bit too unaesthetically punk in his appearance. In any case, the Berlin company is a large, full-fledged enterprise that interviews and trains the guides and advertises the service on their behalf (I believe the guides pay the company a per-diem fee in exchange for access to the tourists from whom they earn the tips). It's an entirely reasonable business model that seems to work well (especially for the better guides) — there were, for example, over a hundred tourists waiting when I went (on a bitterly cold January day, incidentally — my guide said that 100 people was dismally low turnout for that time of year).

More interesting to me is the fact that there even is such a thing as a "Guild [sic] of Professional [sic] Tour Guides of Washington, D.C." First, "tour guide" is not a profession, but merely an occupation — just as "journalist" is not a "profession" but merely an occupation. Second, I'm not sure that tour guides need a "guild" — which used to mean a limited-entry oligopoly structure sanctioned by the government.

Surely this "guild" isn't that kind of guild. No one would dare suggest that it is a proper function of government to establish a "tour guide guild" with legally enforced barriers to enrtry, right? No one would dare suggest that public health or safety are so threatened by dangerous tour guides that the government should start regulating the industry, with licensure and registrations fees and bans on tips-only business models, right?

Right?

To review: The problem with the way the Internal Revenue Code treats employer-provided health care benefits to employees is not that employers can deduct such benefits (most notably insurance premiums), thereby providing them tax-free (or at least tax-advantaged) to employees. The problem is that only employers can deduct the cost of such benefits (i.e., if the employer were to substitute more wage for less benefit, then the employee would be worse off net of taxes). The problem is not one of magnitude, but one of neutrality. An expense -- such as health insurance premiums -- either should or should not be tax advantaged. Who nominally pays the premium should be utterly irrelevant.

This is why I'm having so much trouble processing John McCain's proposal:

McCain's prescription would seek to lure workers away from their company health plans with a $5,000 family tax credit and a promise that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find cheaper insurance that is more tailored to their health-care needs and not tied to a particular job.

Under McCain's plan, $3.6 trillion worth of tax breaks over a decade that would have gone to businesses for coverage of their employees would be redirected to individuals, regardless of whether they are covered by a company plan.
...
McCain's plan is aimed primarily at giving individuals the power to make health-care decisions by granting the same tax breaks for insurance whether workers get a policy from an employer or on their own. Aides call it a "radical" rethinking of health care that would drive costs down and give people more choice.

I'm not sure that's correct:

Under current law, the federal government gives a tax benefit when employers provide health-insurance coverage to American workers and their families. ... Many workers are perfectly content with this arrangement, and under my reform plan they would be able to keep that coverage. Their employer-provided health plans would be largely untouched and unchanged.

But for every American who wanted it, another option would be available: Every year, they would receive a tax credit directly, with the same cash value of the credits for employees in big companies, in a small business, or self-employed. You simply choose the insurance provider that suits you best.

So which is it -- true tax neutrality or the abolition of employer-based health insurance? They're not the same thing.

And is a $2,500 tax credit a true and fair equivalent of a year's worth of employer-provided health insurance? Why should there be any limit, if the policy goal is "more health insurance"? And would the credit be insulated from progressivity in the income tax?

If McCain's answers to those questions are the correct ones, then his proposal has merit. Stated differently, when McCain says employer-based benefits would be "largely untouched and unchanged," what precisely does he mean by "largely"?

(Of course, a hypothetical "President McCain" would face a not-at-all hypothetical "Democratic Congress," so this is all academic anyway.)

More thoughts from Cato's Michael Tanner, Reason's Jacob Sullum, Rolling Doughnut.

---

Meanwhile, still no one discusses the modest first step of scrapping the absurd "use it or lose it rule" for flexible spending accounts. Oh well...

---

Also meanwhile:

We need to adopt new treatment programs and financial incentives to adopt "health habits" for those with the most common conditions such as diabetes and obesity that will improve their quality of life and reduce the costs of their treatment.

Watch your diet, walk thirty or so minutes a day, and take a few other simple precautions, and you won't have to worry about these afflictions.

Dr. McCain's Miracle Elixir: Just walk thirty minutes a day and you'll live happily forever after!

What is it about politicians that makes it impossible for them to give a speech without making at least one asinine remark? In any case, it's rather sad to see a supposed "conservative" capitulate so abjectly on the question of anti-liberty nanny statism meant to "nudge" people into the "correct" decisions. File that under "M for Maverick" I suppose.

To review: The problem with the way the Internal Revenue Code treats employer-provided health care benefits to employees is not that employers can deduct such benefits (most notably insurance premiums), thereby providing them tax-free (or at least tax-advantaged) to employees. The problem is that only employers can deduct the cost of such benefits (i.e., if the employer were to substitute more wage for less benefit, then the employee would be worse off net of taxes). The problem is not one of magnitude, but one of neutrality. An expense -- such as health insurance premiums -- either should or should not be tax advantaged. Who nominally pays the premium should be utterly irrelevant.

This is why I'm having so much trouble processing John McCain's proposal:

McCain's prescription would seek to lure workers away from their company health plans with a $5,000 family tax credit and a promise that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find cheaper insurance that is more tailored to their health-care needs and not tied to a particular job.

Under McCain's plan, $3.6 trillion worth of tax breaks over a decade that would have gone to businesses for coverage of their employees would be redirected to individuals, regardless of whether they are covered by a company plan.
...
McCain's plan is aimed primarily at giving individuals the power to make health-care decisions by granting the same tax breaks for insurance whether workers get a policy from an employer or on their own. Aides call it a "radical" rethinking of health care that would drive costs down and give people more choice.

I'm not sure that's correct:

Under current law, the federal government gives a tax benefit when employers provide health-insurance coverage to American workers and their families. ... Many workers are perfectly content with this arrangement, and under my reform plan they would be able to keep that coverage. Their employer-provided health plans would be largely untouched and unchanged.

But for every American who wanted it, another option would be available: Every year, they would receive a tax credit directly, with the same cash value of the credits for employees in big companies, in a small business, or self-employed. You simply choose the insurance provider that suits you best.

So which is it -- true tax neutrality or the abolition of employer-based health insurance? They're not the same thing.

And is a $2,500 tax credit a true and fair equivalent of a year's worth of employer-provided health insurance? Why should there be any limit, if the policy goal is "more health insurance"? And would the credit be insulated from progressivity in the income tax?

If McCain's answers to those questions are the correct ones, then his proposal has merit. Stated differently, when McCain says employer-based benefits would be "largely untouched and unchanged," what precisely does he mean by "largely"?

(Of course, a hypothetical "President McCain" would face a not-at-all hypothetical "Democratic Congress," so this is all academic anyway.)

More thoughts from Cato's Michael Tanner, Reason's Jacob Sullum, Rolling Doughnut.

---

Meanwhile, still no one discusses the modest first step of scrapping the absurd "use it or lose it rule" for flexible spending accounts. Oh well...

---

Also meanwhile:

We need to adopt new treatment programs and financial incentives to adopt "health habits" for those with the most common conditions such as diabetes and obesity that will improve their quality of life and reduce the costs of their treatment.

Watch your diet, walk thirty or so minutes a day, and take a few other simple precautions, and you won't have to worry about these afflictions.

Dr. McCain's Miracle Elixir: Just walk thirty minutes a day and you'll live happily forever after!

What is it about politicians that makes it impossible for them to give a speech without making at least one asinine remark? In any case, it's rather sad to see a supposed "conservative" capitulate so abjectly on the question of anti-liberty nanny statism meant to "nudge" people into the "correct" decisions. File that under "M for Maverick" I suppose.