Well, we got ours today, so to speak. Our health insurance plan is coming up for renewal and we got our rate increase notification.

It’s only a 15% hike. Only 15%. Only about five times consumer inflation.

Sigh.

A lot of people have gotten it a lot worse, obviously, as the private health insurers that we may shortly be forced to patronize gouge the end consumer to line their pockets.

Still, as we all know by now, under the Obama-Senate health plan, costs aren’t going down. No matter how much free market economagic Ezra Klein believes in, or how many chickens Jonathon Gruber sacrifices to the great Gods of Capitalism, hard data tells us the truth: they’re only going up.

The Exchange will not bring down costs, nor your premiums, at least not for long. They will continue to go up. Period.

Oh, and that plan that Obama rolled out for an Insurance Rate Overseer? The Devil’s definitely in the details on that one:

The legislation would call on the secretary of health and human services to work with state regulators to develop an annual review of rate increases, and if increases are deemed “unjustified” the secretary or the state could block the increase, order the insurer to change it, or even issue a rebate to beneficiaries.

The new rate board would be composed of seven members, including consumer representatives, an insurance industry representative, a physician and other experts like health economists and actuaries, the White House said. The board’s annual report would offer guidance to the public and states on whether rate increases should be approved.

That’s right. An unelected board composed of people like Jonathon Gruber, insurance execs and actuaries, along with some token ‘consumer representatives’, will be charged with overseeing future rate increases.

Their carefully considered advice can then be summarily ignored by the Secretary, but hey. I’m sure everything will just work out. Unelected and unaccountable boards always do such a good job; I’m just overflowing with confidence.

It’s not like our government is in the business of cutting secret backroom deals with powerful players in the health industry. Surely they will be good partners, err, stewards, of the insurance industry.

(Warning: this post contains minor spoilers for a movie still in theatres. However, this movie is a fairly straightforward remake of a movie from the 70s, and, well, there’s a statute of limitations on this shit, man.)

I got a chance to catch ‘The Crazies’ last weekend, and it got me to thinking about water safety, our crumbling infrastructure, and the lunatic way that Americans prioritize, not to mention fund, the necessary machinery of our civilization.

A little background might help. The Crazies (2010) is a remake of a George Romero movie from 1973 of the same name. (Yes, the Zombie guy). It concerns the accidental release of an experimental bioweapon that the Pentagon had developed, no doubt with the intention of spiking the Kremlin, into a small Midwestern town’s water supply. The disease sets in, and gradually the townsfolk are driven violently insane. In the remake, the town’s mayor is even warned of the potential contamination and refuses to shut off the water, claiming that it would cost the townspeople too much money.

Sounds, well, crazy, right? Sending poisonous water into people’s homes to save a few bucks?

Whether it’s crazy or not, that is just what we’ve been doing, all across America, as the NYT revealed last December.

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

Instead of movie-worthy contaminants like a sanity-shattering plague, we get carcinogens, bacteria, human sewage, right in our drinking water. However, much like in the movie, your risk of drinking toxic tap water goes up dramatically if you live in a small town:

The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

As the NYT notes, since the 2008 election, the EPA has made at least a PR effort at improving the safety of our drinking water, contrasting themselves with the previous Bush administration. Likewise, there is a growing movement nationally to stop deferring our essential maintenance and actually fix our water supply. Good thing too, as we’re reaching a critical stage and our ancient pipes are constantly bursting:

Such questions are becoming common across the nation as water and sewer systems break down. Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

In Washington alone there is a pipe break every day, on average, and this weekend’s intense rains overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.

Just one hitch: it’s going to cost money to fix these problems, and nobody wants to pay.

But in many cities, residents have protested loudly when asked to pay more for water and sewer services. In Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Sacramento — and before Mr. Hawkins arrived, Washington — proposed rate increases have been scaled back or canceled after virulent ratepayer dissent.

…

Mr. Hawkins — who at 49 has the bubbling energy of a toddler and the physique of an aging professor — told the crowd that the average age of the city’s water pipes was 76, nearly four times that of the oldest city bus. With a smile, he described how old pipes have spilled untreated sewage into rivers near homes.

“I don’t care why these pipes aren’t working!” one of the residents yelled. “I pay $60 a month for water! I just want my toilet to flush! Why do I need to know how it works?”

That sad individual making the case for Ignorance equalling Bliss got me to thinking about America. What is it about us that makes us so short-sighted? Why are so many of us so angry at the thought of paying a bit more in taxes, even if the alternative is toxic water from our kitchen faucets? What’s wrong with us?

All of which was on my mind when I read a post by Digby on Monday, summarizing a new study on psychopathy:

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals…

The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.

Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack—fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new research, however, examines what they have in abundance—impulsivity, heightened attraction to rewards and risk taking. Importantly, it is these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and criminal aspects of psychopathy.

The larger article has some additional fascinating details. Psychopathy appears to mirror changes found in brain chemistry when taking amphetamines, only with far greater intensity, and psychopathic traits, which exist on a broad continuum and are found in many individuals to varying degrees, can be activated when considering even quite small financial rewards.

In other words, money can make you nuts. I think in our particular case, it definitely has.

As an atheist, I can be a bit prickly on the issue of religion. That’s not terribly uncommon; most atheists I know have a bit of a short fuse on the subject.

One distinct advantage of being without religion, however, is that it makes it very easy to see a new one coming; we’re the canaries in the coal mine for irrational belief systems. So as the health care debate began to change from an argument on merits to an argument from faith, I got nervous.

The signs are everywhere.

Supporters of the bill fervently believe that the “Cadillac” Excise tax will ‘bend the cost curve’ without making existing insurance worse.

That is obviously false. Yet still, they believe.

Other true believers feel that, even if it does make your insurance worse, your employer will give you all the money they save on your premiums. Somehow, even though that money is taxed (and your benefits today aren’t), you will be better off, after healthcare dollars are turned into wages.

Only they won’t be.

So to review:
30% in the Towers-Perrin survey said if health reform increases employer costs, they would reduce employment
86% in the Towers-Perrin survey said if health reform increases employee costs for health care, they would pass those costs on to employees
9% in the Towers-Perrin survey and 16% in the Mercer survey say they would pass on any savings to employees in the form of wage increases

So employers are saying that the fundamental assumption that went into CBO’s and JCT’s calculations on the Cadillac tax are wrong. If the employers are right, it means that employees will get crappier health care–with more out of pocket expenses–but for the most part get no corresponding raise to help pay for those costs. Worse still, this means the revenue calculations will be wrong, because, while the government should be able to tax employers more (if the employers don’t find some other tax loophole), they won’t get any more taxes out of the workers.

Even the chief prophet of the Excise Tax himself, the very well-compensated defender of the faith Jonathon Gruber, admitted that his belief in the Holy Plan was based on the same quality empirical research you used to find in the Weekly World News:

Earlier in the day, I’d been talking to MIT economist Jon Gruber about this issue. “There are a few things economists believe in our souls so strongly that we have a hard time actually explaining them,” he said. “One is that free trade is good and another is that health-care costs come out of wages.”

Yes, it’s true because one man believes it. Also now determined to be true? The Loch Ness Monster, leprechauns, and Iraqi WMD.

Not to worry though; Jonathon Chait still has his ‘ardent’ faith in the excise tax… the fact that it conflicts with the real world doesn’t matter; with faith, the facts never do.

I guess if employers fail to turn the health care benefits they slash into wages, they’ll be transubstantiated into cold hard cash.

Yet other kool-aid guzzlers believe that the divine magic of the free market will bring down costs in a wholly private system. Yea, verily, the Exchange will deliver us from wandering in the health care desert lo these forty long years? Can I get an amen?

‘Amen!’ say the true believers. ‘Amen!’ says Ezra Klein.

Even as the data proving that the Exchange won’t help stares him right in the face.

For people, like, well, me, who think that the health insurance exchanges have a real shot at lowering health-care costs throughout the system, the graph above is difficult. For conservatives who believe that the key to constraining health-care costs is to encourage competition between insurers and give individuals the opportunity to choose, the graph above is difficult. Because what the graph above shows is that neither of those strategies has worked terribly well, at least as of yet.

Oh Most Benevolent and Powerful God of the Exchange, please, please forgive your humble servant for believing the data he can see with his own eyes, and not Your Wisdom, as revealed in the books of AHIP!

Finally, there are the saddest and most pathetic wretches of all, those who believe that if they pass this awful bill, then President Obama will come down from the mountain with his tablets of the Public Option, which he always supported anyway (except when it mattered).

Proven liar Lynn Woolsey (who really ought to practice a new signature, now that her original is worthless) swears to introduce a public option as soon as she votes for a bill without one.

Piecemeal tweaking of the health insurance system will not address this growing problem. We need to reform our health care system, and the public option must be included.

I will fight to include the public option in the final version of the health care reform legislation.

If it is not included, however, it will rise from the dead once again.

The day after the health care legislation is passed, I will introduce a bill calling for the public option.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Her original promise can be redeemed for less than a grocery store coupon. But not to worry; the public option, like any good mythic figure, will rise from the dead. In fact, thanks to Woolsey, we won’t even have to wait three days for it to shamble out of the tomb she’s digging.

How generous.

This morning, Nancy Pelosi, sounding like a true cult acolyte with stars in her eyes, stated that the bill is the most important thing anyone in Congress will do ‘in their legislative lifetimes’. She knows it will pass, not because of the vicious, slimy White House whip campaign, but because she has, you guessed it, faith:

I have no intention of not passing this bill. I have faith in my members that we’ll be passing this.

Hallelujah! Now let’s pass out the snakes!

Brother.

So here we are. The House of Representatives has been traded to the Senate for a pack of cigarettes, and our mighty so-called Progressive Caucus (excepting Kucinich of course) has been reduced to a worthless pack of gibbering fanatics, scourging themselves until the elections in the fall. If only they have faith. If only WE have faith.

Faith in the Senate, which has done so much to earn our trust.

Faith in the health care bill, which as I’ve shown is a pile of myths and lies.

Faith in President Obama, who will go right back to believing in the Public Option, as soon as he signs a bill that turns Americans into the chattel of the Insurance Lobby.

I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or vomit.