Because without it, some greedy, money-grubbing doctor might lie and claim to have removed your appendix when he really hasn’t.

Making customers pay for software that prevents them from texting while riding in a vehicle someone else is driving.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that notwithstanding dentist Kirk Alan Turner’s screwy, Dan-White-esque acquittal, his dead wife Jennifer’s alienation of affection lawsuit against his girlfriend will go forward. I think that if this case doesn’t prove once and for all what an absolutely idiotic law this is, nothing will. If you believe the prosecution, he murdered her in cold blood, gave himself a few “defensive” wounds with a spear, and conned a gullible jury into buying his self-defense theory. If you believe the defense, he killed her in lawful self defense while she was trying to bobbitize his pretty parts. Either way, what on earth kind of “affection” was there left between these two for any third person to have alienated?!

One of my Facebook “friends” called me a weirdo. Another told me I don’t belong here. Query where “here” is. California, where she lives now? No problem, don’t want to go back there, anyway. Carolina, where she used to live and knows I live now? That’s a problem. The US as a whole? Bigger problem. Earth? Real problem. All this after I opened my heart and soul to such friends by taking the bold and unprecedented step of admitting to not being special, as one might wish to be, but rather, a creep.

These cyberbullies are really getting me down. So how’s your day?

… and make room for the pretty parts defense.

The bad news is that in North Carolina, if your marriage goes south your ex can sue your next girlfriend or boyfriend. The “good” news is that if she/he does, you can legally kill her/him. So I guess it all balances out. Sort of.

“Dude, where’s my recovery?”

A few years back, in the days of the real estate boom, WaMu famously foreclosed a home over $50. Now, in the days of bust, they’ve lowered the price to $0.

While the Administration head fakes and declares the public option “dead” (meaning it either won’t come to life quite as soon as they had hoped, or perhaps that it will but will be “private” in the most technical sense imaginable), others in the dextrosphere and beyond advocate competing reforms of their own. Many good ideas there, but I think they can be distilled to three:

1. Remove the tax code provisions that favor employer-paid health care over health care paid for by the individual.
2. Don’t buy insurance to cover risks you can afford to bear yourself.
3. Don’t sell “insurance” to cover “risks” that are certain to happen.

The first issue is a tax problem so simple even Congress could fix it. That is to say, they could “fix” it if they were serious about “fixing” health care in the sense that you take your car to get it “fixed,” rather than their current interest in “fixing” it more in the sense of “I’ll fix that dirty, rotten so-and-so.” Currently, health insurance provided by your employer is tax-free from square one, while health insurance and health services paid for by you only become tax deductible above 7.5% of your AGI. I have yet to hear anyone articulate a sound (or even unsound) reason why that should be so. Remove that disparity, and now it’s just as cheap for you and your employer to negotiate whether you want it to provide more health benefits, or less health benefits and cash instead. If employers can negotiate group rates that make it worthwhile to get health benefits from work without today’s tax advantage, great. If they can’t, we’ll take the extra cash and use it to buy our own health insurance, thankyouverymuch.

The second issue is not limited to tax or public policy. People are risk-averse, and have a tendency to buy overpriced extended warranties on electronics that will become obsolete, and pay higher premiums to avoid deductibles on the insurance policies they legitimately need. Insurance, like gambling, is a losing bet in the long run; the casino always wins. Whatever insurance you buy, find out that company’s loss ratio. That’s how much you can expect to get back on your dollar, and trust me, it will be south of 100%.^* A losing bet makes sense if you’re buying peace of mind to protect you against those risks which, while remote, would utterly wipe you out of they materialized. But if you’re insuring against risks that would merely annoy you and/or set you back a bit, you’re a sucker. In a word, buy “stuff that would kill me insurance,” not “stuff that sucks insurance.” Lots of things suck. Deal with it.

As to the third point, let me start by saying that while the fact that a purported “insurance” contract covers services you are certain to need may strain the definition of “insurance,” that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad idea. The question is, does your “insurance” offer you some other, non-insurance reason to go through a health care insurer? If your HMO can negotiate a volume discount you’d never get on your own, or if it can negotiate other terms that are more favorable to its members than to the general public, that might be a reason to use a health insurer for routine medical care as well as catastrophic risks. But if these reasons aren’t there, you’re probably better off going it alone, and only insuring against catastrophic medical conditions that would otherwise wipe you out.

Which brings me to the subject line: health savings accounts. If your employer offers one, look into it. It’s the closest thing to free enterprise medicine there is … for now?

^*Interestingly, some insurers do have a combined ratio above 100%, which sounds like they should be losing money, but they aren’t because they make up the difference in investments. The expenses don’t help you as a consumer, though; only the loss component makes it back to you.

Because without it, thousands of necessary surgeries might be cut, and pregnant women may end up giving birth on the pavement.