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Politics and Economics
Roemer's law states that "a hospital bed built is a bed filled." In essence, Roemer's Law argues that hospitals and physicians do what they can to take advantage of their available resources and if demand for services are less than capacity, hospitals and physicians will figure ways to induce more demand. The motivation here is to make as much money as capacity allows.
For the purposes of this post, I’m defining mandatory insurance coverage as 99% of the U.S.population with some form of public or private health insurance. As for the remaining 1%, there will always be a few conscientious objectors, especially in America.
So how do we do it? Mostly by following the example of Massachusetts, which has already achieved 98% coverage. So how does Massachusetts do it?
A universal healthcare system could be established in the U.S. by leveraging existing structures like Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance industry, using a range of provider and consumer incentives to control costs. Our current system already covers around 92% of the U.S. population under age 65 - only 8% to go!. That seems eminently doable, especially considering that over half the currently uninsured are actually eligible for healthcare coverage but simply have not enrolled in a government program. The rest are ineligible for government assistance, mostly due to immigration status or affordable alternatives given their income. Here’s the breakdown…
California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., already have insurance mandates. Residents in these areas must have qualifying health coverage or face tax penalties. Except for New Jersey, their uninsured populations are lower than the U.S. rate of 7.9%. For instance, the uninsured rate is just 2.8% in Massachusetts and 3% in Washington D.C. That’s not too far from universal coverage.
While I’m against medicalizing unpleasant personalities as “disorders”, this description does appear to fit Trump to a T - as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough these days. He’s more grandiose than ever and less connected to the real world. Which has got me to wondering if there’s something neurological going on.
But there’s a lot more to political differences than values or moral intuitions. For one thing, people have different understandings of how the world works: what is and what leads to what. And our intuitions are not independent of how we interpret situations. That is, how we feel about things requires some understanding of “what the hell is going on here”. In other words, emotion requires appraisal and appraisal includes a take on the causal dynamics of whatever we’re reacting to.
A universal healthcare system can be established in the U.S. by leveraging existing structures like Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance industry, using a range of provider and consumer incentives to control costs. The old and disabled would continue to receive Medicare and government support would be available for low-income households.
Here are components of the existing system that would be retained, expanded or tweaked in my proposed universal healthcare system…
Should the U.S. have a universal healthcare system? By all means! No American should be denied necessary care. Besides, according to the latest Pew survey, 66% of Americans want a universal system, the younger the stronger the support. Even Republicans are getting on the universal healthcare bandwagon - 41% in the latest poll, up from 32% in 2021 (Pew Research, 2025). The time has come to get serious about what such a system should look like in the U.S.
My debate club will be hosting a debate next week on the Trump administration’s recent actions in Venezuela. Speakers will argue for and against the capture of President Maduro as well as U.S. plans to “overhaul” the country post-Maduro. Here are some of the arguments for and against the administration’s actions and plans for Venezuela.
Over the multi-month exchange, this individual mocked and misrepresented counter-arguments and never budged from her original position. Nothing could penetrate her fortress of moral certainty or widen her perspective beyond a narrow moral reasoning. She repeatedly brushed off considerations such as evidence of culpability and constitutional protections as nothing but a smokescreen used by bad people to hide their bad values.
Between October 15 and 26, 2025, the Manhattan Institute surveyed 2295 Republicans and/or 2024 Trump voters (aka the “GOP coalition”), plus an additional 500 registered voters. The sample was reached primarily via online panel interviews.
Gallup and Pew Research also conducted 2025 surveys that included questions on immigrants and immigration. This post will compare Republican responses in those surveys with what the Manhattan Institute found for the GOP coalition.
Now, why would people be afraid of being thought a Republican? Because an awful lot of Democrats and others on the left see Republicans as morons, hysterics, racists, benighted fools, ignorant jerks, self-justifying assholes, callous, immigrant-hating, morally bankrupt, thick…
One would think if people truly cared about achieving a valued social good - say, the elimination of poverty - they would also sweat over the details as to how to achieve this social good without jeopardizing other social goods. Which means they and their shared-values fellows would be having robust and thoughtful arguments on policy, no consensus expected.
I am not quoting Paxton as the ultimate authority on fascism. No scholar is. Historians and political scientists (aka “experts”) differ in their definitions of fascism and opinions of Trump. However, I have noticed that definitions of fascism have morphed over time, perhaps repurposed to boost present-day relevance and create a tighter fit with current figures or political movements.
According the the College Board, first-time full-time students at public two-year colleges have been receiving enough grant aid to cover their tuition and fees since 2010, on average.
Based on statements submitted by 1,225 health insurers, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) reported the health insurance industry experienced a significant decline in both net income and profit margin in 2024. The net income dropped to $9 billion, a sharp decrease from $25 billion in 2023 and the profit margin fell to 0.8%, down from 2.2%.
It’s almost Thanksgiving! Time to celebrate! In my case, that means less writing and more charts.
So how bad are we doing? Not so bad…yet. For example, upward mobility is alive and well in America. By that I mean most Americans move up the economic ladder from young adulthood to the peak earning years of late middle age, especially those who have graduated from high school, obtained at least some post-secondary training or education and worked mostly full-time. Take a look…
But the fact the some types are strongly Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean that most Democrats or Republicans belong to those types. No type claims the majority of Democrats, Independents or Republicans. For example, less than half the Democrats in the NORC survey were Classical Liberals and less than half the Republicans were Mostly MAGAs.
Grouping people by types also runs the risk of seeing individuals as static, unchanging essences. People and patterns change. Within-group affinities and between-group differences may weaken over time, eventually rendering a whole typology obsolete. But the typologies keep coming, partly because humans love to categorize and partly because new typologies unsettle our certainties and assumptions and help us see the world with fresh eyes. Case in point: the Five Types of Americans, as developed by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.