Things I am not writing about . . .

Last updated on: March 7, 2014 at 3:54 pm by Jane the Actuary

Things I am not writing about . . . 2014-03-07T15:54:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Things I am not writing about:

1) The lawsuit in which a girl is demanding parental support even past the age of 18. (From Inside Higher Ed, linked to by instapundit.com a couple days.) Some of it is flaky, like demanding they pay her living expenses, but other parts are actually not unreasonable: mom and dad have stopped paying her high school tuition (which I would expect they’re contractually obliged to pay, unless the high school has a flaky payment policy, and in any case, they’re ethically obliged to: the high school has based their budget on a full year’s tuition), and the girl is trying to access a college fund (that is, money that mom and dad have already set aside, persumably in a tax-advantaged fund). But the original article, to which Insider Higher Ed links, discussed New Jersey’s laws on emancipation and says that an individual is not necessarily emancipated simply by reaching age 18. This seemed peculiar to me, but also then demanded a fair amount of research, or a lawyer’s expert knowledge.

2) The breastfeeding study which purports to show that breastfeeding didn’t make any difference in later-in-life (ages 4 – 14) outcomes. (From Slate, also old by now.) Apparently, these statistics are based on a small sample, and are only preliminary data, and don’t really address questions such as whether breast-fed infants are healthier in infancy, but presumably only the claim that breastfed infants are smarter. And that’s where everything is politicized, with some women using “breast is best” to demand political accomodation, in the form of nursing rooms or, more likely, state-paid maternity leave or the deferral of work requirements for welfare moms until the kid is older, and others rejecting it because they want to remove anything which hints of a mother being most suited to being her child’s primary caregiver. Personally, I think it’s selfish and stubborn to refuse to even attempt breastfeeding, though my personal experiences also mean that I know that there are many reasons why women don’t, or discontinue — yet this is a stupid debate.

3) Ukraine (I always thought it was “the Ukraine” like “the Netherlands”?) and Crimea. (Sorry, no link.) Let’s just have a referendum, have them vote to be part of Russia, and be done with this. There’s nothing anyone can really do about it except have their eyes opened if they truly were so naïve as to believe that Russia is an ally or a peace partner, rather than persuing their own interests. The bigger issue is fixing Ukraine, if indeed it is fixable rather than still filled with kleptocrats who are playing the EU and the US for suckers.

4) The upcoming Illinois primary. In short, we’re screwed. (My prior thoughts here.) Rauner is indeed succeeding in buying the election, which completely creeps me out, as is Oberweis, the equally-rich Senate hopeful.

5) The Obama Presidental Library. Well, OK, yes, I did write about it yesterday, but I then wanted to spend some more time figuring out if, indeed, Obama was constructing a bidding war the ultimate goal of which was to get the sponsors of the location itself to cough up the cash, as the Tribune article implied, but I couldn’t find out more. The official website doesn’t say anything, but just promise more details will be forthcoming. When Chicago was bidding for the Olympics, I was rather relieved that they lost, and this prospect fills me with dread, too. Even disregarding the prospect of puffing up Obama, I am so tired of imagining that big “build it and they will come” projects will make a difference for a struggling neighborhood; Detroit tries this strategy over and over again.

6) The deferral of the elimination of non-Obamacare-compliant plans until after the election. (Megan McArdle’s comments here.) What is there to say? Obama will defer anything painful until after the election. We’ve got one test ahead of us: when the open enrollment period ends on March 31st, will he extend it unilaterally? Prior to that point, there’s nothing new under the sun, just many ways of retelling the same story: exchange incompetence and extensive efforts to get the young men with overpriced, subsidizing permiums into the system, combined with the “happy endings” in the mainstream media of people newly eligible for Medicaid or subsidies.

7) The decision by the University of Illinois trustees to include sex change surgery in the student health insurance, at a premium increase of $4 – $6 per year. (Tribune story here.) Yes, it’s disconcerting to think that the trustees have made the decision that each student with the university health insurance is now obliged to pay into the fund to provide this benefit — and, with respect to the prospective sex-changers this also doesn’t sit right: you’ve left high school and are on your own for the first time; would having this benefit push you to making irrevokable decisions before graduation? But, then again, having the trustees in the position of making these decisions is no different than when employers do so, and quite a few of them have already done so to preserve their 100% rating on GLBTQXYZ issues anyway. The bigger surprise was how inexpensive the insurance was in the first place ($582 a year for undergraduates and $752 for graduate students), and yet how much the cited year-over-year increase was — 15% — until I remembered that the student healthcare clinic on campus is generally paid for through tuition money, and these plans require treatment at the clinic first, with referrals only afterwards; which also means that for good or for ill, it’s probably not really possible to provide students with a choice of insurers. Now, whether it’s appropriate to require students to pay for healthcare through their tuition money is another question. . .

Happy Friday, everyone!

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