Tag: news

Tomorrow will mark the 75th
anniversary of the pogrom against Jews that took place across Nazi
Germany as well as parts of Austria known as
Kristallnacht. 

Ahead of the anniversary, the European Union’s
Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has released
a survey on anti-semitism, which shows that Jews in Europe
feel that there has been an increase in anti-semitism in the past
five years.

From the FRA Survey:            
                 

Two thirds of the survey respondents (66 %) consider
antisemitism to be a problem across the eight EU Member States
surveyed, while on average three quarters of the respondents (76 %)
also believe that the situation has become more acute and that
antisemitism has increased in the country where they live over the
past five years. In the 12 months following the survey, close to
half of the respondents (46 %) worry about being verbally insulted
or harassed in a public place because they are Jewish, and one
third (33 %) worry about being physically attacked in the country
where they live because they are Jewish. Furthermore, 66 % of
parents or grandparents of school-aged children worry that their
children could be subjected to antisemitic verbal insults or
harassment at school or en route, and 52 % worry that they would be
physically attacked with an antisemitic motive while at school or
en route. In the past 12 months, over half of all survey
respondents (57 %) heard or saw someone claim that the Holocaust
was a myth or that it has been exaggerated.

According to the survey, almost a third of Jews in the eight
countries examined in the survey (where more than 90 percent of
European Jews live) have considered emigrating in the last five
years. The figure is especially high in Hungary, where almost half
of the Jews surveyed said that they have considered leaving.
Jobbik, Hungary’s anti-semitic and anti-Roma party, is the third most
popular party in the country.

While much of Europe’s anti-semitism continues to be based in
sort of nationalism and prejudices seen before the beginning of the
Second World War,
The New York Times’ reporting on the survey
points out that some of Europe’s more recent anti-semitism is
rooted in the political left and the comparatively recent
Muslim communities in Europe:

In other countries, however, hostility to Jews is now rooted
more on the left and in Muslim immigrant communities, the survey’s
findings indicate. More than three-quarters of respondents in
France and Belgium, both of which have large populations of Muslim
immigrants, identified anti-Semitism as a problem. Eighty percent
of respondents in these same two countries described immigration as
a problem, too, suggesting tense relations between Jewish
communities and recently arrived immigrants.

About 90 percent of respondents in Belgium and France reported
that the Arab-Israeli conflict had had a “notable impact” on the
safety of Jews. Only 40 percent reported the same in Hungary, which
has few Muslim immigrants, while a majority of respondents in most
other countries surveyed said tensions in the Middle East had
affected their feelings of safety either a “great deal” or a “fair
amount.”

Read the full report below:

TIME Executive Editor Michael Duffy
has defended the magazine’s recent cover, which includes a
silhouetted photo of Christie (who was re-elected as New Jersey’s
governor on Tuesday) and the caption “Elephant in the Room.”

From NJ.com:

Time Magazine Executive Editor Michael Duffy took to the
airwaves last night to defend his magazine’s most recent cover,
which has sparked outrage this week for its thinly veiled shot at
Gov. Chris Christie’s weight.

The cover features a silhouetted photo of the governor
beside the caption “Elephant in the Room.” After the cover was
revealed yesterday, the Twittersphere erupted with condemnation for
the magazine.

“Whether or not one likes Christie, these cheap shots–like
Time’s new cover–about his weight are decidedly uncool,” tweeted
New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse.

Follow this story and more at Reason
24/7.

Spice up your blog or Website with Reason 24/7 news and
Reason articles. You can get the widgets
here. If you have a story that would be of
interest to Reason’s readers please let us know by emailing the
24/7 crew at 24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories
at @reason247.

Stanford economist Edward Lazear, who chaired
George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006 to 2009,

explains why one man’s “substandard” health plan is another’s
optimal coverage:

Plans that exclude the president’s “core” benefits may be
exactly what is desired for those in good health with the means to
cover their limited every-day and predictable medical
expenses….

Just as it would be a bad idea to require that all cars come
with power windows, power locks, and automatic transmissions, it is
also unwise to order citizens to buy health care that includes
maternity benefits or other care. 

Some may have no intention of having children.  

Others may not want to devote the time required to take
advantage of the preventive care that is covered.

Still others may be skeptical of the effectiveness of mental
health care….

The fact that a health care plan does not include all the
benefits of other plans does not imply that it is “substandard.”
Instead, the [Affordable Care Act] replaces plans that cater to
needs of a particular consumer with those cluttered with bells and
whistles that may be of little value.  

Lazear also notes that generous coverage contributes to health
care inflation by encouraging overconsumption: When someone else is
picking up the tab, consumers do not worry much about the price. In
fact, because the health care market is dominated by third-party
payments, patients typically do not even know the price before they
decide whether to “purchase” a particular medical service. The
other day The New York Times published an op-ed piece
in which Peter Ubel, a professor of medicine at Duke University,

proposed a radical idea: What if doctors deigned to tell
patients, before asking them to approve a procedure or course of
treatment, how much it will cost them? Ubel argues that doctors
should “discuss out-of-pocket costs with patients just as they
discuss any side effects.”

That is eminently sensible, except that doctors may have no idea
how much the services they offer will cost the patient or his
insurer, because the answer depends on carrier-specific
negotiations, the details of the patient’s policy, and his prior
covered expenses. Patients may not find out how much a treatment
costs until months after they buy it, when they get an “explanation
of benefits” in the mail. Even then the answser may not be final,
because there is room for dispute about exactly what is covered.
Furthermore, out-of-pocket costs may be negotiable, since hospitals
are accustomed to receiving only partial payment of the bills they
issue (and presumably inflate them with that in mind). The upshot
is price signals that are late and faint, if not utterly obscured.

The major exceptions are medical services, such as dental care,
vision correction, and plastic surgery, that consumers typically
buy with their own money. You can easily get a price quote for a
tooth implant, Lasik surgery, or a nose job. It is almost
impossible to get a clear idea of how much an MRI or a
tonsillectomy will cost. In my experience, such questions usually
elicit blank stares, as if they’ve never been asked before. Imagine
how well the car repair market would function if customers had no
way of knowing how much a new transmission would cost until months
after agreeing to buy one.

Obamacare, Lazear notes, compounds this problem by requiring
people to buy more coverage than they would otherwise choose:

Health economists, notably Daniel Kessler at Stanford, have
demonstrated that the failure by the consumer to pay for health
care on the margin induces high and in many cases over
usage.  

Plans that have low co-pays, first-dollar coverage, and insure
routine predictable health care events induce high and excessive
use of care.

By contrast, those like catastrophic care plans that do not
insure the routine and cover only unpredictable high cost events
induce consumers to behave more efficiently. 

Banning such “substandard” plans makes no sense from a
cost-control perspective. Last month I
compared Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements to the
federal ban on incandescent light bulbs, which likewise overrides
consumers’ assessments of their own interests. But while the light
bulb requirement was defended in the name of efficiency, Obamacare
mandates inefficiency. 

Stanford economist Edward Lazear, who chaired
George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006 to 2009,

explains why one man’s “substandard” health plan is another’s
optimal coverage:

Plans that exclude the president’s “core” benefits may be
exactly what is desired for those in good health with the means to
cover their limited every-day and predictable medical
expenses….

Just as it would be a bad idea to require that all cars come
with power windows, power locks, and automatic transmissions, it is
also unwise to order citizens to buy health care that includes
maternity benefits or other care. 

Some may have no intention of having children.  

Others may not want to devote the time required to take
advantage of the preventive care that is covered.

Still others may be skeptical of the effectiveness of mental
health care….

The fact that a health care plan does not include all the
benefits of other plans does not imply that it is “substandard.”
Instead, the [Affordable Care Act] replaces plans that cater to
needs of a particular consumer with those cluttered with bells and
whistles that may be of little value.  

Lazear also notes that generous coverage contributes to health
care inflation by encouraging overconsumption: When someone else is
picking up the tab, consumers do not worry much about the price. In
fact, because the health care market is dominated by third-party
payments, patients typically do not even know the price before they
decide whether to “purchase” a particular medical service. The
other day The New York Times published an op-ed piece
in which Peter Ubel, a professor of medicine at Duke University,

proposed a radical idea: What if doctors deigned to tell
patients, before asking them to approve a procedure or course of
treatment, how much it will cost them? Ubel argues that doctors
should “discuss out-of-pocket costs with patients just as they
discuss any side effects.”

That is eminently sensible, except that doctors may have no idea
how much the services they offer will cost the patient or his
insurer, because the answer depends on carrier-specific
negotiations, the details of the patient’s policy, and his prior
covered expenses. Patients may not find out how much a treatment
costs until months after they buy it, when they get an “explanation
of benefits” in the mail. Even then the answser may not be final,
because there is room for dispute about exactly what is covered.
Furthermore, out-of-pocket costs may be negotiable, since hospitals
are accustomed to receiving only partial payment of the bills they
issue (and presumably inflate them with that in mind). The upshot
is price signals that are late and faint, if not utterly obscured.

The major exceptions are medical services, such as dental care,
vision correction, and plastic surgery, that consumers typically
buy with their own money. You can easily get a price quote for a
tooth implant, Lasik surgery, or a nose job. It is almost
impossible to get a clear idea of how much an MRI or a
tonsillectomy will cost. In my experience, such questions usually
elicit blank stares, as if they’ve never been asked before. Imagine
how well the car repair market would function if customers had no
way of knowing how much a new transmission would cost until months
after agreeing to buy one.

Obamacare, Lazear notes, compounds this problem by requiring
people to buy more coverage than they would otherwise choose:

Health economists, notably Daniel Kessler at Stanford, have
demonstrated that the failure by the consumer to pay for health
care on the margin induces high and in many cases over
usage.  

Plans that have low co-pays, first-dollar coverage, and insure
routine predictable health care events induce high and excessive
use of care.

By contrast, those like catastrophic care plans that do not
insure the routine and cover only unpredictable high cost events
induce consumers to behave more efficiently. 

Banning such “substandard” plans makes no sense from a
cost-control perspective. Last month I
compared Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements to the
federal ban on incandescent light bulbs, which likewise overrides
consumers’ assessments of their own interests. But while the light
bulb requirement was defended in the name of efficiency, Obamacare
mandates inefficiency.