A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Aaron Carroll has a follow up post about Singapore’s health care system. Typically, Singapore’s health care system would be too obscure even for me to mention; but, as some may recall, Singapore (see, e.g., here) was a go-to example for opponents of Obamacare when asked to point to a market based health care system. But, it was never really all that market-based in the first place.

That’s how you get conservatives advocating for Singapore’s health care system without any real understanding of it. Singapore’s system has massive subsidies for nursing homes, rehabilitation care, and home-based care. It requires mandatory savings – 36% of wages spread over various accounts. The government also provides a basic level of care that’s heavily, heavily subsidized. And here’s the kicker – it relies on tons of government intervention in the market to keep costs down. They use centrally planned and fixed budgets, they control the acquisition of new technology, they regulate the number of students and physicians, they use purchasing power to buy drugs more cheaply, they have an employer mandate for foreign workers,and they have a national EHR. They’re also not the most open society in the world.

But, now, even that seems to be insufficient in Singapore. Carroll’s new post notes that Singapore is adjusting its system to include even more government involvement.

I understand being skeptical of Obamacare. I even have fears of my own that it won’t work very well. But the system we have is just awful – much, much more expensive for the same or worse results than the rest of the world. And health care is not some unique problem for the U.S. We’re all nations composed of deteriorating human bodies. So the refusal to educate ourselves about systems that work and don’t work in other places is maddening. Historically, we’ve been a nation of pragmatists. Our redesign of our health care system has been hobbled by ideologues. Although, I guess I have to wonder how much is ideology and how much of the ideology is just pretext camouflaging the interests of those getting wealthy off the inefficiencies of the current system.

History has always been among my favorite subjects. The stories are fascinating. The good, the bad, the complexity, and the simplicity of human nature are all on display. This has come at a cost of some cherished narratives, I suppose. Turns out Americans aren’t always the good guys, and like as not, we’re not exceptional.

For a guy like me, one book more isn’t going to make much difference. Another book will be yet another voice in the cacophony. But, when we are talking about the educational system, it’s a different story. A lot of the people consuming these texts are going to get maybe one or two passes at most periods in history. The narratives in those texts are going to be locked in. That’s why you have such political concern over history texts. Tom LoBianco has another installment in Gov. Daniels’ dabbling with the history curriculum. We know that he vehemently disapproved of Howard Zinn’s take on history. Now we learn that he was embracing the history stylings of Bill Bennett.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request show Bill Bennett had much more favor among Daniels and his advisers. In January 2010, when Daniels discovered the board of education had changed the state’s textbook rules to allow Bennett’s book, he quickly asked how soon his advisers could get copies of “The Last Best Hope” in classrooms.

“This is excellent to hear … now someone make my day and tell me that his book is becoming the textbook of choice in our state and I’ll buy beers for everyone,” he wrote in a Jan. 27, 2010, email to then-schools chief Tony Bennett, Bennett’s former chief of staff, Todd Huston, and David Shane, a longtime Daniels colleague, Republican donor and school board member.

I suppose, in addition to ideology, there is also more than a small element of directing public funds to favored recipients; but, in the case of history, the cherished narratives are more interesting to me. I sympathize with the desire to teach our kids a cartoon version of history where we are always the good guys and the good guys always win. But that potentially leads to some harsh disillusionment later. And for those who aren’t white guys, I imagine there is some confusion about the scope of “we.”

Somewhat related to this discussion, Dan Carlin’s most recent podcast, entitled The American Peril, looks at the late 19th / early 20th century as a way of examining a dichotomy in the American psyche. On one hand, you have the usual sort of venal impulse toward material goods and power; on the other hand, you have the impulse to honor the mythology surrounding the country’s Founding. This has created problems on a number of occasions; one of which was our experience in the Phillipines.

I don’t know about you, but my history classes mostly skipped directly over America’s involvement in the Philipines. I had never heard use of the term “Philippine-American War.” There was a passing reference to the U.S. destroying the Spanish presence there in conjunction with our invasion of Cuba following the explosion of the Maine. But, then, very little. Turns out, we had to use some very brutal tactics in service of the side of the American psyche that craved material goods and imperialism; tactics that did not comport well with our national mythology at all.

I don’t know, but I suspect that Zinn’s writings have a good bit more on this subject than do Bennett’s. And I further suspect that a kid with knowledge of this stuff who grows up to be an adult is less likely to want to engage in military adventures like the one in Iraq than a kid who only knows about the splendid little war in Cuba and Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill.

Kyle Stokes at Impact Indiana has a post reporting that Gov. Pence wants to keep issuing the A-F grades that former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett tampered with.

The problem is that these grades lack all credibility. There was always skepticism about the metrics behind those grades. Now that there is a history of rigging the system to make sure favored schools get good grades; that skepticism has proven justified. Before continuing with the charade of “accountability,” the State should announce just what it is they intend to measure, announce the metrics, and collect data for a period of time to determine whether the measurements, in fact, reliably reflect whatever it is they are supposed to reflect. You know, hypotheses, repeatability, peer review; all that good stuff.

A common complaint is how dysfunctional Congress is, unable to get things done. I was having a discussion about it the other day with a friend. (A real friend – not a Tom Friedman cab driver “friend”). He was marveling at how gridlocked Congress seemed to be. I didn’t disagree, but I figured this was just a cycle in the interlocking checks and balances of Congress.

Currently the balancing is as between Republicans and Democrats. But, this stalemate opens up a new avenue to exercise power. With Congress checking itself; the executive branch has free reign to a large extent. So, you see Bush II and Obama expanding the power of the executive branch. Power and Presidents being what they are, the executive will continue to expand its reach (to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individual occupying the office) until one of the other branches stops it. Congress has the power; it just has to develop the will to use it. I think we saw this during the end and after the Nixon presidency. Eventually, the executive branch will push into the sphere of the legislative branch just a little too far for the legislative branch to tolerate

At some point, and I don’t really know where that point is, the prerogatives of the institution will override the interests of partisanship; and we’ll see partisanship fade enough to allow the institution to push back.

The Journal & Courier ran a USA Today story about a study showing that humans have more sympathy for abused dogs than abused humans.

A new study has found abused dogs — both puppies and adults — elicit more sympathy than abused adult humans.

From the Scientific Journal, “Duh!” I presume. Perceived innocence and defenselessness are going to trigger a more sympathetic response.

I once had a buddy, a complete misanthrope, who said that, if he was driving down the road and had to choose between hitting a puppy and hitting a kid, he’d let the puppy live because he knew the kid, while innocent now, would almost certainly grow up to be a jerk in one fashion or another. Dogs remain innocent.

Niki, reporting for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that the teachers unions and 27 school corporations (or at least involving 27 school corporations – I’m not positive who all of the Plaintiffs are) have tentatively reached a $14 million settlement of a lawsuit alleging that the Indiana State Teachers Association and the National Education Association defrauded Indiana teachers.

[The Secretary of State’s office] filed the complaint in 2009, saying the state’s largest teachers union violated the Indiana Securities Act when it offered a health care plan for school districts.

A news release said ISTA offered teachers and other school employees a medical plan that allowed school corporations to invest their excess balances to offset future health care costs. In the complaint, the office alleged that ISTA didn’t invest the money but instead used the money to cover significant shortfalls in its long-term disability plan. ISTA continuously issued quarterly and annual statements to schools misrepresenting fund balances.

The settlement apparently represents about 50 cents on the dollar.

The Northwest Indiana Times has a column from the Associated Press (the author of which didn’t jump out at me if that information is displayed somewhere) entitled “Inner Workings of Indiana Government Rarely Disclosed.”

I’m sympathetic to the message, but ultimately it seems a little superficial. It’s true that there are policy decisions and deals that are either ill-advised or self-serving or both. The column gives this abbreviated list (in addition to the Tony Bennett grade changing scandal):

The chief of staff to Secretary of State Connie Lawson has spent the last five months negotiating a job with lobbying powerhouse The Corydon Group. An ongoing Indianapolis Star investigation uncovered that a contractor hired by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Elevate Ventures, had sent $800,000 in federal money meant for startup business to companies it had ties to. And the Indianapolis Business Journal uncovered a pay-to-play scandal at Indianapolis’ land bank program months before federal agents spent a day hauling records from the City-County Building and indictments were announced.

But then the column goes on to complain that lawmakers only issue press releases about the good stuff they do and don’t announce the bad stuff. Well, duh. But in a lot of these cases the information was available to a public or a press that was paying attention or was digging into the details.

As much or more than public malfeasance, this is an indictment of public apathy and the deterioration of journalism. I’m not sure what we can do about public apathy. I’m more of a public policy and state politics nerd than your average citizen, and I feel the apathy in myself. After a day of work, coaching soccer, getting in some exercise, washing the dishes, and reading to the kids at bedtime, my appetite for being a citizen watchdog is awfully low.

Which brings us to the journalists. There has been some excellent work – Tom LoBianco’s recent efforts in particular. But, do we even have a dozen journalists working the state government beat in this state? I can name maybe six off the top of my head (but I won’t for fear of inadvertently leaving out someone I should remember). Most of them are really good at what they do (there are one or two kiss-asses who seem to be primarily engaged in stenography), but they are simply outgunned. The State government is a billion dollar industry with thousands of employees. To effectively cover it simply requires more resources. But, long ago, newspapers seem to have made the decision that wire stories, opinion pieces, and fluff was a more cost-effective way to sell ad space than devoting resources to investigative journalism. But, that was like eating their seed corn, and that’s why (in my ever so humble opinion) the newspaper industry has been in such disarray in recent years.

So, I don’t disagree that State government has behaved badly in certain respects. But I can’t agree that the acts were hidden particularly well. We just weren’t paying much attention.

Maureen Groppe has an article about how the pending federal immigration bill would affect students in advanced degree programs. Current rules apparently let students study here and then pushes them out of the United States. So, on that end, the argument is that you are creating value and then throwing it out of the country to the detriment of the U.S. The proposed rules would make it easier for you to stay.

But, then you get into the murky business of guest worker programs and lowering the wages of Americans with these sorts of skills. The companies will tell you that there is insufficient supply. The workers will respond that the price needs to rise to attract the available talent.

All of this sounds fairly familiar; echoing the myth of the skills gap we see even in the non-immigration context. But, you also have a variation of the nativist sentiment in this country that really doesn’t care for immigration to start with. The talking points generally center on “illegal” immigration but proponents of these talking points are never particularly open to the idea of expanding legal immigration, thereby reducing the amount of illegality. (Always an option with these malum prohibitum crimes.) In this context, however, the nativist sentiments are muted a bit due to the high end skills of the potential immigrants in question. It’s hard to drum up specters of welfare moochers when you’re talking about people with Ph.Ds in astrophysics.