Metacognition: Jane Eyre

I don't want to read this. This is so long! This is so boring!

Those were my main three thoughts I was thinking when reading Jane Eyre. I tended to put off reading it until the last minute, so I'd be suffering through it at 2 am telling myself it would all be worth it if there was a reading quiz. Hindsight being 20/20, this was probably not the best idea. I can look back and realize that the parts of the book I remember the most and enjoyed the most were those I read at more reasonable times of day. When I was actually awake to notice what was going on, it was a considerably more pleasurable experience than when I was torturing myself to read it. So I will focus on what I was thinking when I could comprehend what was happening.

I noticed I would try to relate Jane Eyre to people I know now. I think I did this because it is easier for me to understand things when I can relate to them. For example, chemistry is hard for me because I have no framework for understanding the concepts. However, debates come naturally to me because I understand how most of the arguments interact with each other. Relating Jane is just another way of creating a framework that I can use to visualize more clearly what is going on. The thing I relate it to will add new depth to the plot for me, and help bring the emotion's of the characters to life.

I noticed I tended to think of Jane as someone in her 40s. This probably has to do with sayings like "40 is the new 30," and things like that. A 20 year old then was probably considerably more mature than one now. Also, their way of speaking and mannerism made Jane seem particularly older than her age. Thinking of her as much older and visualizing her as much older made it easier to follow the flow of the book, even if it created a few awkward situations. For example, as a result of this, I thought of St. John as being in his 60s, even though it becomes abundantly clear that he is at least a little younger than that later in the novel.

I also noticed that my mind would tend to wander as I was reading. This has to do with the slow, long, drawn-out pace of the novel. Jane will go on for pages talking about the surroundings and her feelings. She could spend a chapter on a single scene and brush away years with just a few words. There is the point in the novel where Bronte makes it clear that the longer version is better. This is when Jane's story is recounted in a few paragraphs, and Jane becomes upset because it ignores every emotional aspect. Even though is a true argument, that did not stop my mind from thinking about other things while reading.

360 Degrees: Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration is a highly contentious issue.  Almost everyone has a deeply-held ideological belief on the issue.  Some say we need to allow the immigrants to come into the US because we need to keep up the American dream.  Others say that we should kick them all out and build a fence because they are stealing American jobs.  

The people who say we should allow illegal immigration say that those people deserve to be able to come to America.  America has been a land of hope for quite some time, there's zero reason to change that now.  The United States represent a unique opportunity to get a job and raise a family.  They are coming from terrible conditions, and are just trying to do something positive for the people they love.

The people who say we should not allow illegal immigrants to come to the US say that those illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs.  They come to the US and work for far less than the average American is willing to work for.  They say that Americans would be doing those jobs, but then when the immigrants come and take them, that uniquely hurts America.

I personally think there's no harm in smoothing up the citizenship process.  Legal immigrants will take jobs away just as quickly as illegal ones, the only difference is how long it takes the individual immigrants to become authentic citizens.  My dad has a friend who has had a team of professional lawyers trying to make him a citizen... for nearly a decade.  If they can't do it, it's completely unreasonable to expect your average immigrant to be able to do it.  There's zero harm in allowing them to become immigrants faster, except for they will now be paying taxes (which is a positive anyway).

An Inconvenient truth: ObamaCare

To start off, I am very democratic.  I believe deeply that there is something wrong with America's health care system.  Costs are spiraling out of control and if nothing is done to contain them it will hurt families, businesses of all sizes, and devastate the economy as a whole.  This is because health care is currently roughly 18% of our GDP, and costs are rising faster than wages and inflation.  People who really study health care costs predict that it is unsustainable.

ObamaCare does a whole lot to ensure that people get insurance.  It is undoubtedly a monumental piece of legislation.  However, I still find several faults with it.  

First, none of the actually good reforms come into effect until 2014.  The individual mandate, which I will discuss more in-depth later, begins in 4 years.  Insurance exchanges, a central component of common dreams's "public plan choice" doesn't take affect until 2014.  If you have a preexisting condition, private insurance industries will not have to give you insurance for another 4 years.  And I would be fine with all of that, if it weren't for the fact that the delay isn't based in common sense, it's motivated by politics.  

The 4 year delay is a desperate attempt to gain political clout because it creates a skewed estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  It does this because when the CBO does their 10 year estimate, it will be taking into account 10 years of taxes (the taxes start immediately), but only 6 years of actually giving out benefits.  That is it.  That is the sole reason.  The delay allows democrats to wave their arms and say "look!  We save money!"  When the reality is that they will be doing absolutely nothing to prevent a rise in healthcare costs and actually devastate the federal deficit over the long-term.  This bring me to my second point.

It does nothing to keep healthcare costs from rising at the rate they are now.  I consider myself relatively knowledgeable about this fiasco, and of all the provisions I know of, not one keeps the cost of premiums down.  They start taxing immediately, that's for sure.  Anyone who was hoping they could pay a 10 percent tax when they go to tanning salons has their wishes fulfilled.  But there are literally zero measures that attempt to contain costs.  Sure, there are shenanigans like the high-risk pools, employer mandate and the aforementioned individual mandate, but they won't do much.  I'd go through every provision I know of and disagree with it, but that would make this post unnecessarily long.  It will have to suffice that I take down the mantlepiece of the reform, the individual mandate.

The individual mandate has so many flaws it's almost humorous.  But before I discuss those, it's funny to point out that the idea originated with the ultra-conservative heritage foundation.  They also thought that Americans needed more choice in the health care market - but that was 10 years ago.  Now that Obama's president and actually trying to pass these things, almost all you can find on their website is reasons why his reforms fail.  However, there are specific reasons why the individual mandate, the glue that holds the reform together, will ultimately fail when it's enacted in four years.  Here are a couple of them:

Lack of compliance.  There is an excise tax that is the government's method of enforcing the mandate, which could ultimately be cheaper for individuals to pay than health insurance.  Any lack of compliance magnifies financial pressures because the private industry needs large numbers of healthy people to offset the costs incurred from sick people.  And the individual mandate on its own does nothing to control costs.  It is likely that people will say Massachusetts proves it will work, however the Massachusetts plan just proves the above argument because they currently allow 20% of sick people to go without insurance through exemptions.  There is zero reason to believe the same problem will not exist with the federal mandate.  The theory is that if everyone has health insurance, then the sick people will comprise a smaller percentage of healthcare costs because there are more healthy people in the system.  However, this falls prey to the fact that the government pays for 85% of uncompensated care right now.  This means that there will be a miniscule effect on private insurers, who are the ones that need cost reductions.  

It's impossible to define a minimum benefits package.  Like with auto insurance, the government will be forced to define how much health insurance people will have to buy.  This is another area of weakness.  Every single special interest group will want their type of care to be included in the minimum requirements.  And if the last year has taught us anything, it's that Washington is great at listening to special interests.

Now, I think a public option is a great way to solve these problems.  When there's a government run healthcare coverage program that can use taxpayer leverage and bargaining power to force reforms in the private industry, healthcare costs will go down.  This post is already too long, so I don't really have space to go into specifics, but I advocate an immediate public option as a solution to the problem.

All of the problems above bug me because Washington has spent over a year debating, thinking, and arguing about health care.  The best thing they can come up with is a politically motivated piece of garbage that will be worse than nothing.  And I'm certainly not the only one who thinks this reform will fail.