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Insurance companies generally have a loss ratio: a percentage of income from insurance policies they must pay out. In health insurance this percentage varies: it’s lower for individual plans, and higher for group plans. Most commonly it’s 80%.

If they pay out less, in many cases they have to return the difference to policy owners. (Not always though. Often with Medicaid, for example, this isn’t the case.)

This doesn’t mean that they have no reason to deny care, however. They want their health care costs as close to that bottom number as possible without going past it.  If they spend, say, 83% rather than 80%, that will cost them billions. Denial of care is meant to get the margin as close to to loss ratio as possible.

This isn’t complicated. A man is a man, a woman is a woman, and if we have any questions, we simply consult the highest governing body of a random sport.

As the saying goes, when in doubt, turn to the International Association of Amateur Heptathlon Competitors.

Scripture tells us that God made man in his image. Biology tells us that men and women are different. The International Cycling Union tells us that if a person’s natural testosterone is above 2.5 nanomoles per liter, well, there’s no way that’s a woman.

An athlete might look like a woman from a distance. Upon closer inspection, however, that person will test positive for conditions such as “being the best athlete on the field” and “capitalizing on natural ability with years of training.”

We must stay vigilant to ensure these troublemakers don’t slip through the cracks.

Yes, male athletes take a host of supplements and quasi-legal hormones, but that’s just what men do. Doubling a man’s testosterone level through chemical injections is perfectly natural.

Almost certainly not, but someone really ought to try while it’s still possible. Geography isn’t everything in international relations, but it does explain a lot. You can’t choose the neighbours. Having a border with Russia understandably leads to well-founded paranoia or shameless, self-serving attempts at ingratiation these days. The leaders of Canada and Mexico are Continue reading »

The Australian Uniparty— also known as the cosy ALP/LNP coalition of self-interest—is jockeying for electoral reform. Talks between Labor and the LNP have broken down so those reforms are not coming in any time soon but, as former New South Wales Labor premier Jack Lang was fond of saying, “Always back the horse named ‘self-interest’, Continue reading »

In the Name of Christ, Our Peace – The time has come for people of faith to hear the cries of the people of Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon and to do everything in our power towards the ending of the death and destruction they are suffering. A petition by Pax Christi We condemn the brutal Continue reading »

While Bob Menzies pumped the political scare campaign to the max, to help ensure his newly formed Liberal Party’s ongoing popularity between 1949-66, locals were often more relaxed about sharing community life with those they battled on election day. My parents were founding members of Menzies’ new party from 1949, and they recruited their three Continue reading »

I have a friend Julian King, who Duncan Graham reports has been subjected to a stun grenade as our Australian Federal Police burst through his door to seize his PhD research, phone and computers. Reportedly, the AFP are concerned about OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka _Free Papua Organisation), the indigenous independence movement in West Papua. I Continue reading »

Search behemoth Google is under pressure in the US after three anti-trust trials concluded, with one of the remedies proposed being a call for it to be forced to sell off its web browser, Chrome, an app that dominates the browser space. There has also been a call for a break-up of Google’s advertising business. Continue reading »

The Prime Minister's new target-driven 'Plan for Change' is based on a badly outdated view of how the modern world actually works, argues Neal Lawson

Oh, the stories behind these stories It’s getting noticed, that story I mentioned Tuesday about Judge Jefferson Griffin, the losing Republican N.C. Supreme Court candidate’, and his desperate attempt to cancel 60,000 votes in an effort to narrow the 734 vote gap between himself and sitting Justice Allison Riggs. Judd Legum’s Popular Information: The contest between Griffin and Riggs was very close. The initial count showed Riggs with a lead of 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast. Griffin then exercised his legal right to request a machine recount of all ballots. After that recount, Riggs was still ahead by the same margin. Griffin has now requested a second recount of the ballots, this time by hand. Under North Carolina’s procedures, there will first be a hand recount of 3% of the ballots cast. If the North Carolina Election Board determines that the partial hand recount revealed a sufficient number of discrepancies to suggest the outcome could change, a full hand recount will take place. There is nothing particularly unusual about requesting recounts in close elections.

With Kash Patel as FBI Director, Trump solidifies a cabinet poised to back Israel's dangerous military adventures with unparalleled fervor.

The post Trump’s Pro-Israel Dream Team: Patel Nomination Caps Hawkish Cabinet appeared first on MintPress News.

Here's the trailer for Showrunner Russell T. Davies' Ncuti Gatwa & Nicola Coughlan-starring Doctor Who Christmas Special, "Joy to the World."

I alla moderna människors liv behövs det tid för andhämtning och reflektion. Och ibland — när alla möjliga och omöjliga måsten och krav från omgivningen bara blir för många och högljudda — kan det vara skönt att dra sig undan lite grand och slå av på takten för en stund. Alla har vi väl olika […]

Of books and conferences past: A maker looks back on things well-made but no longer with us.

The post Of Books and Conferences Past appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

Shakespeare’s plays are full of suicides, some noble, others not very.

Count on one thing: the next four years are going to be tough. If you can muster the energy for political action while Donald Trump and his minions rule Washington, it will have to be channeled in two ways: first, resisting the worst excesses of him (and his party of billionaires); and second, keeping up the effort to make life truly better for everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us. Or wait. Should it be the other way around? Could a good offense be the best defense? At the moment, it’s a question that’s not getting much attention. It may seem all too obvious right now that resistance has to be the top priority. Who could have been surprised by... Read more

Source: Join the Resistance? Yes, But… appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Resistance could be fruitful Step back from the ledge. Take a break from news about the punishments the Jan. 20 Revolution plans to roll out against its enemies, and against friends who won’t publicly abase themselves before the king. “That wasn’t humiliating enough. Grovel lower!” Need a redoubt against Trumpism that doesn’t require a passport? Fifteen blue states, especially those in which Democrats control both executive and legislative branches, are preparing to hold the line against the incoming Trump administration’s predations. Their weapon of choice? Federalism. What a concept. Democrats and their lawyers have laid plans to defend reproductive rights and hold the line against mass deportations. But more than that, they’ve outlined “a new progressive vision of federalism—pugilistic and creative, audacious and idealistic.” They mean to “filch tactics” deployed to punishing effect by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who has perfected a form of “hegemonic federalism” to work his will and annoy Democratic state governments.

Peter Capaldi played the Ultimate Classic Doctor under Steven Moffat but he's making it clear (again) why he's not returning to Doctor Who.

With apologies to Raymond Carver.

My friend Kevin Maddox was talking. Kevin Maddox makes a fortune selling novelty pickleball T-shirts on Etsy, and sometimes that gives him the right.

“The kind of tariffs I’m talking about, the other country pays,” he said.

The four of us, my wife, Debra, and Kevin’s wife, Bridget, were sitting around his kitchen table drinking. On the table a case of Truly sat cooling on a bed of ice.

Debra lifted a can from the ice and cracked it open. “That’s not how tariffs work, though,” she said.

“My God,” Kevin said, a bit unsteady. “Don’t be silly.”

It would be night soon. I took a drink and held the can up to the dusky diluted sunlight seeping through the window: Wild Berry. My favorite flavor. The truth is, I thought Kevin was wrong. But by then our talk had grown old, and we were so young. What did the four of us, what did anyone know about taxes levied by governments?

“Who can say what a tariff is and what it isn’t?” I said.

Editors of academic journals have been reporting that they find it increasingly hard to secure referees for papers that have been submitted to their journals. When I’ve been discussing this issue over the years with colleagues, I’ve heard a few remarks that made me wonder what our considerations are to decide whether or not to […]