New York

Seen in the New York Daily News:

Gov. Paterson, as part of a $121 billion budget to be unveiled Tuesday, will propose an "obesity tax" of about 15% on nondiet [sodas….]

The so-called obesity tax would generate an estimated $404 million a year. Milk, juice, diet soda and bottled water would be exempt from the tax.

The article casts this proposed tax as part of Paterson’s way of addressing an expected a $15 billion deficit in the New York State budget.  It’s an interesting evolution of the sin taxes we’ve become used to, such as the perpetual competition among states to see who can pay the highest taxes on cigarettes.

It also caught my eye because of my continuing fear that a transition to more government funding of health care creates incentives for government to step in and attempt to regulate or tax our guilty pleasures out of existence.

I don’t mind this particular tax – I don’t live in New York, and I don’t normally drink sugared drinks.  However, I do mind the slippery slope it lies upon.

From the New York Daily News:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.[…[

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was knocked to the floor during the mad rush. She was hospitalized for observation, police said. […]

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk’s life.

Seen in a wire service story:

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said New York’s law — the first of its kind in the country — interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier.

The law was passed after thousands of passengers were stranded aboard airplanes for up to 10 hours on several JetBlue Airways flights at Kennedy International Airport on Valentine’s Day last year. They complained they were deprived of food and water and that toilets overflowed. A month later, hundreds more passengers of other airlines were stranded aboard planes at JFK after a daylong ice storm.[...]

The court said that while the goals of the law were “laudable” and the circumstances prompting its adoption “deplorable,” only the federal government has the authority to pass such regulations.

“If New York’s view regarding the scope of its regulatory authority carried the day, another state could be free to enact a law prohibiting the service of soda on flights departing from its airports, while another could require allergen-free food options on its outbound flights, unraveling the centralized federal framework for air travel,” the court wrote.

I agree with the ruling. For concerns that span multiple states, regulatory authority rests with the federal government.

While I’m definitely not a fan of excessive regulation, I also think that in many respects the federal government has in the past few years shirked its responsibility of providing even the bare bones protection against the worst excesses of big business I’d reluctantly tolerate. Imprisoning folks on a grounded jet for hours falls in the category of “worst excesses”.

What has to be my favorite comment to reports of Spitzer’s misdeeds comes from the mother of John Cole at Balloon Juice:

Good Lord!

Good Lord!

He was obviously paying too much. What can you possibly do for $5,000 an hour? Surgery. Life-saving surgery performed on me is worth $5,000 an hour.

Good Lord

You know, health care issues are considered to be at the top of the priority list, based on public interest in politicians’ talking points. I’ve commented previously that the cost of care, inflated in part due to inefficiencies in the system, is where I believe the core of the problem is.

So, let’s say that we were to move to a government funded program and, by some miracle, got costs under control.

I can only speculate on how the politicians could use the excess funds to celebrate….

My goodness….what is it about these mighty foes of business being brought low by suspicions of bribery…or where those suspicions might lead?

From ABC’s Blotter:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club.[...]

The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.

“We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.

Of course, now that that’s cleared up, I’m sure that the financial faux pas is what the media will focus on, right?

In case you’ve been in a cave for the past few hours, New York Governor and former A.G. Elliot Spitzer is having a rough day, thanks to word emerging of his apparent under-the-covers support for an institution of the world’s oldest profession.

One wonders if Dickie Scruggs is breathing a sigh of relief over the likelihood that the heat of media attention will be shifted to a different foe of the insurance industry for a while.

Seen in Insurance Journal:

Under legislation signed this week by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Empire State homeowners will get an annually mailed reminder of this fact, as well as information on how to obtain flood coverage from the National Flood Insurance Program.[...]

“An annual notice will give our members’ clients a repeated opportunity to consider the risks posed to their property by flooding,” said Martin Koles, president of the Professional Insurance Agents of New York State, which supported the bill. The single flood insurance notice customers currently get “can be overlooked easily among all the documents they get when purchasing a new policy,” Koles said.

Like there aren’t already a lot of documents that most consumers tend to ignore at renewal, especially if their premiums are paid through a mortgage escrow account?

Seen in the New York Times:

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

There are no allegations of election manipulation shenanigans, and the NYT notes that there are also precincts in which the reverse happened—Obama got votes, but Clinton did not in the preliminary primary night tally. The conventional wisdom is that this appears to be the result of scattered human error.

And, more importantly, they’re capturing and fixing the errors. There’s even a chance that Obama might pick up a few more delegates through the process.

This would be an example of why it’s important to have an open, auditable election.

Of course, it’s still disturbing that we still haven’t learned how to count after all these years.

This would be the week of bad press for health insurers. Seen in the Los Angeles Times:

The nation’s largest health insurers—including UnitedHealth Group, Health Net, Aetna and Cigna—have been cheating patients by rigging the rates companies pay physicians and forcing consumers to pay higher medical bills, New York law enforcement authorities said today.[...]

The investigation began six months ago and found that Ingenix operates an allegedly defective and manipulated database that most major health insurance companies use to set reimbursement rates for out-of-network medical expenses, New York state officials said.

New York officials said 70% of people with health insurance are on plans that require them to pay a higher fee for the right to use physicians who are not under contract with their carrier. Such out-of-network arrangements often require the patient to pay 80% of “reasonable and customary” rates for physician services.

The investigation found that poor and distorted data from Ingenix allowed insurers to keep their reimbursements down by lowballing local market rates for various types of physician services, investigators said.

For example, the investigators said, insurers knew that most physicians charged $200 for a routine visit. But the insurers, using Ingenix data, claimed to their members that the typical rate was $77. Applying the 80% reimbursement rate, they covered only $62, leaving the patient to pay $132 out of pocket.

You know, if that energy could be spent on deciphering the economics of the medical care system’s billing practices, rather than focusing on the utilization of one particular industry database, we’d be a few steps closer to having useful information in addressing the questions of health care costs and medical cost inflation in the country.

In a post yesterday, I speculated on potential NIMBYism from Connecticut’s attorney general if there were any thought of moving the northern portal into Connecticut, to avoid complaints from Westchester County powers-that-be.

It seems that Nutmegger Nimbyism is in force even with the tunnel proposal currently being internal to New York.  An op-ed piece at the Courant opines:

Arguing that another highway will cut air pollution is a little like saying that a drink is the answer to an alcoholic’s craving. Even if it’s true for the short term, the long-term consequences are likely to be a disaster. 

If the last half-century of highway building has taught us anything, it’s that new highways mean more traffic — and pollution.

That’s written like someone who hasn’t had to spend time sitting in traffic trying to get around the Sound (or through New York City).

Yes, there is something to be said for public transportation, as the op-ed advocates.  However, they’re slamming a major feat of civil engineering which taxpayers apparently won’t be asked to fund, and which would ease the strain on a malfunctioning infrastructure.

If anything, doesn’t that arguably free resources to at least maintain, if not expand, existing transit systems in the face of worsening energy costs?