Saturday College Football Open Thread

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 08:07:55 AM EST
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The picks (2 units unless otherwise indicated): Kentucky +21, Competitor: South Carolina, Baylor -28, Competitor: West Virginia, Florida Atlantic +4, Competitor: Ala Birmingham, Notre Dame +6, Competitor: Arizona State, Fresno State -27½, Competitor: Idaho, Washington +8, Competitor: Stanford, Tulsa -3, Competitor: Rice, Ohio State -7, Competitor: Northwestern, Virginia Tech -7 (4 units), Competitor: North Carolina, Texas Tech -16, Competitor: Kansas, Georgia Tech +6, Competitor: Miami (Florida), Michigan State +1, Competitor: Iowa, Minnesota +19, Competitor: Michigan, Clemson -14, Competitor: Syracuse, Oklahoma State -14, Competitor: Kansas State, TCU +10, Competitor: Oklahoma, Maryland +17 (4 units) , Competitor: Florida State, Mississippi State +10, Competitor: LSU, Washington State -1½, Competitor: California, Georgia -11 (5 units), Competitor: Tennessee, Navy -12, Competitor: Air Force, Army +12 (3 units), Competitor: Boston College, Middle Tenn State +7½, Competitor: East Carolina, Illinois +9, Competitor: Nebraska.

For the season - 36-32-2 ATS, + 18 units.

UPDATE for the day - 15-9 ATS, +8 units. For the season - 51-40-2 ATS, +26 units.

Go Gators!

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Saturday College Football Open Thread | 45 comments (45 topical)

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On the eve of the shutdown ... (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 10:11:35 AM EST

Pentagon shopaholics awarded 94 contracts, dropping over $5 billion.

Almost half of it went to Pratt and Whitney for "various weapons systems and spare parts"?!?

What's the story there?

You can peruse all 94 contracts here.

: What's the story there? (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by Edger on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 11:56:10 AM EST

They doing it to keep you safe from terrists. Just like clapper and obama do by spying on you.
It's hard work you know. Some of they have to do by, to paraphrase cheney, going to the dark side, working in the shadows, as it were.
Pratt and Whitney are doing gawds work, or something.

Tell me how you really feel. (5.00 / 2) (#28)
by lentinel on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 09:50:43 PM EST

It seems that an enterprising reporter has noticed that the number given out for information about Obama care, 800 318 2596, spells out as F-CKYO.
(3(F) 8(U) 2(C) 5(K) 9(Y) 6(O).

Seems like a Freudian slip.

They meant to say they care, but told us to go fk ourselves instead.

Go DUCKS... (none / 0) (#1)
by fishcamp on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 08:20:02 AM EST

they're not even on TV here in the East...bummer.

Once again, BTD claims the odds (none / 0) (#19)
by Peter G on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 04:14:29 PM EST

are against Stanford. Let's just say, he has been wrong before when making such assessments.


Just sayin' (none / 0) (#33)
by Peter G on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 11:17:54 AM EST

Stanford 31, Washington 28.


BTD (none / 0) (#34)
by CoralGables on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 12:16:51 PM EST

cashed in on that bet against Stanford.


Please try again to explain it to me (none / 0) (#35)
by Peter G on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 03:04:23 PM EST

I'm obviously too dense to understand. "Washington +9 against Stanford." I thought that meant that BTD was "predicting" that Washington would beat Stanford by 9 points or more. Despite having tried to grasp this shorthand for a year now, I'm still a total failure at it.


I concluded one must first know (5.00 / 1) (#39)
by oculus on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 04:54:00 PM EST

what the oddsmakers post. Then BTD places his bet relative to those posts, which are anmystery to everyone here except BTD, coral gables, and bmax.


You have it backwards, Peter (none / 0) (#36)
by MO Blue on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 03:28:04 PM EST

Washington +8 in this case equals Washington 28 (actual score) +8 = 36 vs Stanford 31. BTD wins bets.


Sorry, that doesn't "explain" it to me (none / 0) (#38)
by Peter G on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 03:42:15 PM EST

at all. Please translate "Washington +8 against Stanford" into a declarative sentence in English. Possibly one that begins or runs something like, "I am figuring that Washington will [win/lose] its game against Stanford by [at least/no more than/exactly] points, so if [??] happens, then I win my bet/prediction." For a bonus prize, if there were a bet of $10 on this predicted outcome, who would win/lose how much money to whom under what circumstances?


Sorry, that explanation didn't (5.00 / 1) (#41)
by MO Blue on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 05:45:03 PM EST

clarify it for you. Bet: Washington +8 against Stanford

BTD figured that IF Stanford won its game against Washington it would not win by more than 8 points.

Winning scenarios:

Washington wins the game by any score.
Washington loses game by 7 points or less. (this is what happened this week Sanford 31 - Washington 28 = 3 point spread)

Tie:

Washington loses game by exactly 8 points.

Losing scenario:

Sanford wins game by more than 8 points.

If you bet $10 on Washington +8 this week, you would win $10. The +8 is a point spread and not odds.

If you are still confused, maybe CG can explain it to you. I'm sure CG can do a better job.


That was clear, MO-B, I guess (5.00 / 1) (#42)
by Peter G on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 07:32:54 PM EST

Nevertheless, I am sure that next week I won't know it anymore. This is fundamentally because I'm not interested in the slightest in betting. Seeing it as a vocabulary for expressing an expert measurement of the teams' relative strengths against one another, however, makes it slightly interesting.


: I had the same issue, Peter (none / 0) (#45)
by Yman on Tue Oct 08, 2013 at 07:52:38 AM EST

The way I remember it is similar to MO blue's first explanation. Just add the points to the appropriate team's score for an adjusted final score.
So, for example, Washington +8 means that I add 8 points to Washington's final score. If the actual score was Stanford 31, Washington 28, that would mean an adjusted scored of Stanford 31, Washington 36 - Washington wins. A tie would occur if Washington was 8 points behind Stanford. If Washington was 9 points or more behind Stanford, they lose.

Peter, here is CG's explanation to me of that (none / 0) (#40)
by caseyOR on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 05:19:28 PM EST

beting lingo using Arizona and Oregon as the teams for his example. See if this makes sense to you.

Arizona +23 would mean Arizona is winning the game 23-0 when they do the coin toss. Therefore if Oregon would win by 24 or more points BTD would lose the bet.
Notre Dame is -5. Therefore Notre Dame is losing the game 5-0 at kickoff. For BTD to cash he needs Notre Dame to win the game by 6 or more points.

Don't feel bad, Peter (none / 0) (#37)
by Zorba on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 03:36:10 PM EST

I've never understood it either, despite the number of times Son Zorba has tried to explain it all to me. ;-)


An instructive primer (none / 0) (#3)
by KeysDan on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 11:50:53 AM EST

on Obamacare, in the form of Q & A, by Tara Siegel Bernard, "Your Money" column, Saturday, October 5, 2013.

Additional information found (none / 0) (#5)
by MO Blue on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:23:58 PM EST

while following links provided in that article seem to back up TeresaInSnow2 on the scarcity of providers in exchange plans. According to this article, the the insurers are intentionally limiting the choices of doctors and hospitals on exchange policies to lower costs.

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials often say that health insurance will cost consumers less than expected under President Obama's health care law. But they rarely mention one big reason: many insurers are significantly limiting the choices of doctors and hospitals available to consumers.
From California to Illinois to New Hampshire, and in many states in between, insurers are driving down premiums by restricting the number of providers who will treat patients in their new health plans.
When insurance marketplaces open on Oct. 1, most of those shopping for coverage will be low- and moderate-income people for whom price is paramount. To hold down costs, insurers say, they have created smaller networks of doctors and hospitals than are typically found in commercial insurance. And those health care providers will, in many cases, be paid less than what they have been receiving from commercial insurers.
Some consumer advocates and health care providers are increasingly concerned. Decades of experience with Medicaid, the program for low-income people, show that having an insurance card does not guarantee access to specialists or other providers.
Consumers should be prepared for "much tighter, narrower networks" of doctors and hospitals, said Adam M. Linker, a health policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center, a statewide advocacy group. link

Seattle Children's Hospital (5.00 / 2) (#6)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:41:18 PM EST

Seattle Children's Hospital has filed a lawsuit because they've been excluded from the most of the Exchange Plan provider networks in our state (including the largest insurers in the state). Seattle Children's is the hospital that does the acute cancer care, such as bone marrow transplants, treatment of rare and serious disease, etc. Insurance companies have skirted the law's removal of lifetime caps by effectively not covering these services at all. And all the govt can talk about is "low premiums and copays."

As I've said about a zillion times, this is a huge problem. Treatment by out of network providers results in unlimited costs. The out of pocket maximums for these treatments have not been capped by the law, and are sometimes listed as unlimited by insurers. In addition, when provider networks are thin, the issue of balance billing rears its ugly head even more often. Balance billing means that even if the insurance caps costs for out of network providers (which I've said are typically capped at a very high rate and sometimes UNCAPPED), hospitals and doctors can come after patients for money that insurance companies didn't allow.

This is not some trivial thing, or something that can be adjusted for by seeing the right providers. What this new paradigm does is it eliminates insurance (if you're covered on these Exchange plans) as a way to consistently prevent financial ruin from catastrophic illness, disease or accident.


Activist that I'm NOT (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:46:13 PM EST

Activist that I'm NOT (I've never done anything like this before), I am considering personally suing our Insurance Commissioner on behalf of its citizens to get him to rate these plans according to relative richness of provider networks. Given how very unprecedentedly thin these provider networks on our Exchange plans are, people don't realize just how exposed they are being left. It is irresponsible that the Insurance Commissioner doesn't educate people about this -- they are supposed to be consumer advocates.

If anyone knows an attorney in Seattle who does pro-bono work on cases like this, email me privately and let me know.


: FYI (none / 0) (#16)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 02:35:45 PM EST

(my email address is in my profile).

This is (5.00 / 2) (#17)
by Ga6thDem on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 04:09:58 PM EST

what I said years ago. The insurance companies are going to try to weasel out of paying stuff anyway they can. Anytime you rely on insurance companies, this is going to happen.

And actually I would think this is not going to just be going on in the exchanges. I would think it is another way that insurance companies are going to try to do work arounds on everybody.


This is the way (5.00 / 5) (#23)
by Zorba on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 05:49:22 PM EST

insurance companies work, most especially the for-profits. It does not surprise me, nor should it surprise anyone. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits and minimize losses.
And "losses" include pay-outs for any medical care.
Anyone who ever thought that insurance companies were a great way to provide for health "care" was deluded. Health care is not like any other consumer product, despite what many people want us to think. Health care is a basic right and necessity.
Now, if anyone doesn't think so, and believes that it is your fault if you cannot afford health care, I would like to ask them what they would think if we are faced with the next global pandemic, where many infected people still cannot afford to get the medical care they need. And, instead, they are out there infecting everyone else. (And don't even get me started about the workers who do not get paid for sick days, so that they go to work even if they are infective; but that's a conversation for another time.)
And if anyone thinks that a global pandemic will not happen, Mr. Zorba (actually, "Dr." Zorba, the molecular biologist), says that this is only a matter of time.


: Precisely (5.00 / 3) (#31)
by Ga6thDem on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 06:08:02 AM EST

The insurance company business model is the problem. This is the problem for everybody whether they are in the exchanges or outside of the exchanges.

It does seem that ACA will be ... (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:44:02 PM EST

equal parts a poverty tax and an example of "separate but equal" coverage.

If it wasn't unconstitutional before it was enacted, it may well become so in implementation.


The worse thing (5.00 / 3) (#10)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:51:47 PM EST

is it creates an illusion of being covered. You think you have emergency coverage, even out of network. Where before as an uninsured person, you may have neglected the ER. Now, you don't hesitate to go to one of those hospitals in the event of emergency. But the hospital doesn't have a contract with your provider to accept their level of payment. If they couldn't balance bill, it would be like eliminating their rights in contract law.

And the rest of my previous post about unlimited liability then applies.

And balance billing has always been a problem, true. But when the networks are very thin, the chance of exposure to it is a zillion times higher.


: Yes, I pictured that worse bit ... (none / 0) (#13)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 01:12:21 PM EST

covered by my "separate but equal" comment.
The whole thing just stinks. With the distinct whiff of equal protection violations rising from its putrid stench.

You know what though? (none / 0) (#18)
by Ga6thDem on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 04:12:08 PM EST

If that was unconstitutional then the way it was before was unconstitutional because that was unequal coverage also.


: Equal protection issues ... (none / 0) (#25)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 07:24:22 PM EST

relate to the government. Not private enterprise. And the mandate itself gives rise to equal protection scrutiny.

A "salesman" for (none / 0) (#9)
by KeysDan on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 12:50:51 PM EST

Obamacare: Advisor Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's older brother, Faculty member, University of Pennsylvania with a joint appointment, Medical School and Wharton), on the Bill Maher show, Oct 4. Interesting responses on how Obamacare is paid for, as well as his reaction to Maher's suggestion that Obamacare is "a foot in the door" to single payer.


: No, it's a foot in the door for ... (5.00 / 3) (#12)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 01:00:46 PM EST

legions of insurance company salesmen.
And once they get that foot in they ain't going nowhere.

: Emanuel said it was not a foot in the door (5.00 / 1) (#22)
by MKS on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 05:18:28 PM EST

He was definitive...

: Anyone who really thought that (5.00 / 2) (#43)
by sj on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 11:25:01 PM EST

this was a foot in the door to single payer is seriously deluded. It absolutely entrenches the for-profit insurance model.
And yes, that response to cost saving was "interesting". Hospitals will be "incentivized" to deny readmittance to Medicare patients. No follow up discussion on how those patients will then get the needed care that brought them there in the first place.

The bottom line (none / 0) (#11)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 01:00:08 PM EST

is if you aren't eligible for subsidies or you're eligible for only a tiny subsidy you should buy a plan outside of the Exchange. Those plans typically offer a much richer provider network.

The plans on Exchanges help if the alternative is no insurance at all. Then you get something. And if you happen to not have insurance because you can't afford it, it sort of makes sense. But they leave you highly exposed to potential unlimited financial burden, so it makes no sense whatsoever to buy them if you have to pay full price.


Correct me if I'm wrong ... (none / 0) (#14)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 01:22:34 PM EST

but as I understand it, no one actually gets a subsidy. The government isn't cutting any checks to individuals.

You apply. And based on your income, net worth, and so on, your could be granted a lower rate with the government (supposedly) paying the balance to the insurance company.

But, as I understand it, the government isn't doing it case-by-case. But rather giving block grants to insurance companies based on the number of applicants they expect to take on.

Is this correct?


: I do not know (5.00 / 2) (#15)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 02:32:50 PM EST

I do not know the actual details of how the govt and insurance companies are handling their arrangement. No.
However, for citizens, they reconcile their subsidies when then do their taxes. If they have overpaid, yes, the government issues them a check on their return. If they UNDERPAID the subsidies, they will owe the government. I believe a family can be liable for up to $2500/yr in overpaid subsidy.
If you're wondering why subsidies are available only on the Exchange and were trying to consolidate that based on grants and things, I wondered that too. I also wondered why insurers were offering different provider networks on the Exchanges. I pored over the whole 2000 page ACA to try and find if the govt was restricting plans somehow. I found nothing about that.
Then I said, oh. People who need subsidies are going to typically be:
Newly insured
and/or Sick or with pre-existing conditions
and/or Poor
and/or Unemployed.
All of these people are going to use services more than the ones who don't need subsidies. So segregate them and minimize their access to the more expensive services.
And I'm sure you can formulate the rest.
It was genius of Congress and their friend Liz Fowler to write this segregation into the law. For once they did something smart -- anti-consumer -- but smart.

: You are (5.00 / 1) (#21)
by Ga6thDem on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 04:16:28 PM EST

correct that the individual is not getting a check and the money is going directly to the insurance company. However, i do not know whether that is going to be done in block grants or direct billing.

again (none / 0) (#20)
by Ga6thDem on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 04:14:51 PM EST

though wait and see. More providers may come on board. Like I told you in another thread, it is not all that uncommon for nobody to sign onto a new insurance plan.


It occurs to me (none / 0) (#24)
by lentinel on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 06:55:34 PM EST

that I can travel to Russia.

I can travel to China.

But I can't travel to Cuba.

Anybody know why?

: You can go to Cuba lentinel, (5.00 / 1) (#26)
by fishcamp on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 07:25:13 PM EST

but you can't spend any money because that's doing business with the enemy. I guess Communists are still the enemy.

: Because! (none / 0) (#27)
by Robot Porter on Sat Oct 05, 2013 at 07:26:11 PM EST

Neener! Neener!
And that's about the extent and maturity of the reason.

: Because (none / 0) (#44)
by sj on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 11:26:27 PM EST

shut up! That's why.

Now for something completely different... (none / 0) (#29)
by desertswine on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 01:08:51 AM EST

Check out the video map of WW2 day by day (among others)by Emperor Tigerstar. Mesmerizing.

: You always find the coolest videos (none / 0) (#30)
by shoephone on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 01:50:53 AM EST

And that one is no exception. And great original music too! Really dramatic to see all the red creeping over in 1941 and then all that blue taking over like a big paint brush in '44.

BTD how did your +17 for UMd work out (none / 0) (#32)
by ragebot on Sun Oct 06, 2013 at 09:59:12 AM EST

Can't wait till my 'noles play UF in the swamp.