If you’re wondering why it’s so hard to get anything done politically– and who isn’t these day–one reason may be found in the data provided by an analysis of 210 million public profiles on Facebook. Earlier in the week we did a post on an interactive map that resulted from that project, and which draws connecting lines between areas that share a lot of Facebook friends.

One interesting facet of the tool is that it also lists the top “Likes” by individual city. (If for some reason you have been reading a book for the last couple of years instead of spending time on Facebook, the site’s users can click a “Like” button to show appreciation of a particular post.)

Looking at the top “likes” aggregated by cities from different regions of the country, you can see that while certain celebrities, brands, and concepts cut across geographic lines, much popular culture is still determined locally.

So if Barack Obama, say, wants to really sell health care reform, maybe he should make use of some of the cultural likes that appear on a majority of these regional lists. Like, if he wants to drive home a point about Medicare savings, he could have Megan Fox talk about it while eating a Freeze Pop in a local Starbucks…

Here are the top Facebook likes for some U.S. cities:

Atlanta

1. God
2. Starbucks
3. Michael Jackson
4. Chick-fil-a
5. RIP Michael Jackson (We Miss You)

Boston

1. Boston Red Sox
2. Dislike Button
3. Megan Fox
4. Freeze Pops
5. Dunkin Donuts

Chicago

1. Chicago Bears
2. Freeze Pops
3. Starbucks
4. Megan Fox
5. Dislike Button

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Two interesting posts from the blog Managed Care Matters on Anthem Wellpoint, the company that became the recent poster child for health care reform after it raised premiums by as much as 39% for 800,000 Californians.

The first post tries to separare fact from spin coming from both the company and its critics. The second is about insurers’ inability to control costs.

The Anthem rate increase – the reality behind the politicking

Anthem Wellpoint’s announcement that it was raising premiums up to 39% for members covered by their California individual insurance product hit at a really bad time – for Anthem.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius reaction was immediate and blunt, as she ordered a federal probe into the rate hike.

“It remains difficult to understand how a company that made $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone can justify massive increases that will leave consumers with nothing but bad options: pay more for coverage, cut back on benefits or join the ranks of the uninsured.”

She’s right, as far as it goes. And things heated up even more last week, with the release of a report on insurance rate increases around the country.

To justify the increase, Wellpoint claimed

• healthy customers are dropping coverage to save money while sicker ones retain it and run up medical bills
• healthy customers also are switching to cheaper insurance options, further dinging revenue
• some customers are moving into a higher age category that carries higher premiums
• deductibles and co-payments haven’t gone up with inflation
• prices for medical care are rising
• people are using more health care, again, age is a factor

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Following the health care summit on Twitter is as good a way as any…

One Tweet puts its finger on one potential problem of an event like this:

Ted McCagg is a former advertising creative director that posts daily drawings on the Web. This one cracked me up.

The blog Girl on the Brink chronicles the day-to-day existence of “a professional, divorced urban mom,” laid off and “panicked, desperate and going-for-broke.” From last October 11, or Day 189 of her unemployment.

Manifesto of the Idle Workers of the World

We are more than 15 million individuals in the prime of our lives who have lost our place in the world of work…

We declare ourselves too big to fail. But we are being pushed by circumstance from the comfortable middle-class to the terrified middle-class, and from the working poor to the hopeless poor. We have lost our savings, retirement, and, in many cases, our monthly income to sustain our lives. We fear homelessness and a loss of stability as we struggle with rebuilding our assets.

We can and will help ourselves. We take jobs for which we are over-qualified. We work longer hours. We work odd jobs. We downgrade our lifestyles. We deny our children their birthday gifts and vacations. We try to educate ourselves to the options for cure and take positive steps every day.

But still our financial standing degrades, and we feel the journey of recovery will be long, and we will cry and stumble.

Despite the names chosen by officialdom to describe us, we are not displaced, dislocated, discouraged, disadvantaged, disaffected or disgruntled.

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Some healthcare-related content from around the Web:

Do We Need Federal Antitrust Law for Health Insurance? (John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog)

With the so-called health “reform” on life-support, Speaker Pelosi has suggested she might attempt to declare victory by crafting a bill focused on one narrow objective: eliminating health insurers’ so-called “exemption” from antitrust laws. This is already incorporated in the House’s legislation (H.R. 3962 § 262) and could easily be re-introduced as a small bill.

Although this would be a crowd-pleasing bill, ready for sound bites on the campaign trail, it would achieve nothing to control costs or raise the quality of care. Claiming that health insurers are uniquely “exempt” from antitrust laws is misleading in more than one way. In fact, federal law ensures that state antitrust and other consumer-protection laws dominate the field of insurance regulation. And this goes for all lines of insurance, not just health insurance.

The law that limits the federal government from pre-empting state antitrust laws is known as the McCarran-Ferguson Act (15 U.S.C. § § 1011-1015), which Congress passed soon after a surprising decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944, which overturned precedent and determined that insurance was interstate commerce. McCarran-Ferguson immediately restored insurance to state regulation, as it had always been.

Furthermore, market concentration in health insurance is not significantly different than it is in other lines of insurance. Nor have states failed to regulate insurers’ solvency. States enthusiastically regulate — even over regulate — all aspects of insurance. A federal intrusion into insurance regulation would be redundant, adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already heavily regulated activity.

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Found recently on Barking Up the Wrong Tree: “Do the poor pay more for things than the average American?”

Answer, according to a 2008 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research: Yes.

Abstract:

This research undertakes a carefully designed and detailed empirical study to gain insights into (1) the extent of price differentials between wealthy and poor neighborhoods; (2) what induces such differentials, especially the nature and intensity of competitive environments, including mass merchandisers like Wal‐Mart; and (3) their relative impacts. It finds a price differential of about 10%–15% for everyday items. Even after controlling for store size and competition, prices are found to be 2%–5% higher in poor areas. It also finds that it is not the poverty level per se but access to cars that acts as a key determinant of consumers’ price search patterns.

From the National Center for Policy Analysis, a summary of the research:

Even though poor inner-city residents have access to more locally owned stores than do inhabitants of wealthier big-box suburbs, they have to pay more for the same groceries, says researcher Debabrata Talukdar.

His study thoroughly cataloged prices — and surveyed customers — at stores selling grocery items in various neighborhoods around Buffalo. Talukdar found that prices for the same items were about 10 to 15 percent higher in poor neighborhoods relative to affluent neighborhoods. The cause? Competition:

* Prices at the independent corner stores that dot city streets run about 7 percent higher than those at chain supermarkets — effectively levying a “ghetto tax.”
* In wealthier neighborhoods, there are more chain stores, and customers are more likely to have cars, making it easier to price shop; thus, driving down prices.
* Moving the nearest chain store closer by 1 mile to a particular neighborhood store being the neighborhood store’s prices down by 1-3 percent.

However, even after controlling for store size and competition, prices were found to be 2-5 percent higher in poor areas. Yet, it is not the poverty level, per se, but access to cars that acts as a key determinant of consumers’ price search patterns, says Talukdar.

The Rude Pundit suggests two pro-healthcare reform ads:

Where Are the Pro-Health Care Reform Ads When We Need Them?:
F***, the Rude Pundit will just do the work for you, DNC and other groups:

Ad #1: We’re in a grocery store. POV of being behind a shopping cart, rolling down an aisle. Camera turns to a loaf of bread. Close-up on a sign: the price “$2.99″ has been crossed out with a black marker. A new price, “$4.15,” is written in. As the cart moves up aisles filled with similar signs, all with prices that have been raised, a voice says, “This past month, Anthem Blue Cross sent out notices to 800,000 individual health insurance policy holders informing them that their premiums were going to rise as much as 39%.” A woman’s hand picks up a carton of milk, and we see a sign indicating the price has gone from $3.49 to $4.85. “Anthem’s parent corporation, Wellpoint, made $2.9 billion in profit last year.” The hand puts the carton of milk back. We see that the cart is empty. It is left behind as the camera heads for the sliding doors. “And for people with pre-existing conditions, there’s nowhere else to go.” The doors open and the camera pulls back to reveal that the grocery store is in the middle of a deserted wasteland. There is, indeed, nowhere else to shop. End it with a tagline about telling Congress to pass health care reform. Or, even better, “Ask Senator (fill in your favorite Republican) why he/she stands with profit-making corporations and against reform.”

There? Is that so hard?

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Just a little FYI: Here are the external links included in EconomyBeat posts that have been clicked on the most.

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A guest blogger on MomLogic discusses Joe Stack’s suicidal, murderous airplane crash into an IRS building in relation to her own problems with the IRS.

After Joe Stack crashed his plane into an IRS building in Austin — killing himself and another person — his daughter, Samantha Bell, said he acted as a “hero” who was trying to call attention to an unjust government.

Bell acknowledged that Stack’s actions were “inappropriate,” but said that at least now, “people will listen.”

I doubt anyone will.

I was audited last year by the IRS. I know what it is like to be considered a criminal by your own government when you feel you did nothing wrong.

When you encounter a shady auditor (like I did), you feel more like you’re dealing with the Mob than with a government employee. But you know you can’t complain or they will just go after you harder next year.

That said, I would never even consider an act of violence or anything like Joe Stack did. I just took my lumps and moved on. But when I read Stack’s suicide note, I could relate with some of his feelings of frustration at the IRS.

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