The Sebelius Solution

On Monday, 7 October 2013, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Obama administration cabinet member endorsed the idea of Americans skipping out on buying health insurance in 2014 in favor of paying the "penalty" tax instead in an interview with the nation's most-trusted news anchor, Jon Stewart:

Real Clear Politics describes the interview:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius defended Obamacare in a very contentious interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart on Monday night.

Stewart pressed Sebelius on why businesses get a one-year delay on Obamacare but individuals do not. After several attempts for an answer, Sebelius eventually said individuals could delay Obamacare for a year -- by paying the penalty.

JON STEWART: So this is what some would consider the first mall that's been created [for purchasing health care insurance].

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: You bet. The first -- new rules for companies.

STEWART: So why is it that individuals, though, couldn't say that they didn't want to do it just for a year, like business?

SEBELIUS: Well, they can.

STEWART: Oh, they --

SEBELIUS: They'd pay a fine. They'd pay a fine at the end of the year, but they don't have to -- I mean, they can say I didn't want to do it. The theory is they can't pick and choose if they're going to get hit by a bus or diagnosed with a illness. For a lot of young folks, there is one fall on the basketball court, one auto accident from a lifetime of hospital bills they can't pay.

Now, unlike the nation's politically-connected businesses, who won't have to pay the penalty tax they otherwise would have to pay thanks to President Obama's arbitrary choice to disregard the legal provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act for one year on their behalf, the Obama administration wants individual Americans to choose between paying hundreds, if not thousands for health insurance, or lose the subsidy tax credit for buying health insurance when they file their income taxes, which would mean a slightly higher income tax bill.

But, maybe that's something that's worth doing. It all depends on how much extra taxes you would have to pay if you chose to delay your personal implementation of the Obamacare law compared to how much you would have to pay for health insurance coverage. Fortunately for you, we have an app to help you decide if you should pursue the Sebelius solution!

You'll need to go to the government's health insurance marketplace portal to track down the relevant data that you'll need to enter in the tool below, which is needed to either determine how much your health insurance subsidy tax credit would be or your tax (good luck with that!), or you can take advantage of the plan premium data for 34 states that Hugh Chou extracted from that site while it actually worked during a brief portion of its existence.

Your Household Data
Input Data	Values
Your Total Household Income, or Modified Adjusted Gross Income (If Known)
Number of Household Members
Number of Children in Household
Your State's Health Insurance Exchange Data
Select Your State (Select "United States" If Your Territory Isn't Listed)	United States Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming District of Columbia
Monthly Premium for the Second Lowest-Cost "Silver" Plan Available To You
Monthly Premium for the Lowest-Cost "Bronze" Plan Available To You
Monthly Premium for the Health Insurance Plan You're Considering Purchasing

Your Annual Health Insurance Results
Calculated Results	Values
Annual Premium (Full Price) of the Health Insurance Plan You're Considering Purchasing
Annual Subsidy Tax Credit You'll Receive For Buying This Health Insurance
Your Annual Out-of-Pocket Costs
For Health Insurance (Premium Only, No Co-Pays or Deductibles)
For the Alternative Tax If You Don't Purchase Health Insurance (And Not Provided by Your Employer)
Potential Savings or Costs If You Choose to Pay the Tax Instead of the Premium
Your Potential Savings (or Costs, if Negative)
The Bottom Line

The default data in our tool above is designed to consider the case of a single mother who is a part-time Trader Joe's employee in California, and who is being forced out of their equivalent "Gold"-level employer-provided plan into a more "affordable", but lower quality "Silver"-level plan through Obamacare.

Oh, and while we're at it, the table below shows the odds of either a man or woman of the indicated ages requiring the kind of hospital care that Kathleen Sebelius described in her interview with Stewart:

Chance of Going to Hospital
Age Group	Female	Male
Less than 1	1 in 3	1 in 2
1 - 10	1 in 10	1 in 8
10 - 20	1 in 9	1 in 10
20 - 30	1 in 4	1 in 8
30 - 40	1 in 3	1 in 6
40 - 50	1 in 4	1 in 4
50 - 60	1 in 3	1 in 3
60 - 70	1 in 2	1 in 2
70 and Older	4 in 5 (1 in 1.25)	4 in 5 (1 in 1.25)

In case you're wondering why the odds of a woman being admitted to a hospital is double that for a man between the ages of 20 and 40, it largely has to do with a medical condition called "pregnancy", which is something that most people can very easily plan around. Speaking of which, if one plans their due date properly, they could hold out until the next enrollment period to get covered, paying the tax instead, if much cheaper, until their new coverage kicks in to cover the medical expenses associated with having a child. Then perhaps dropping it again after their and their child's odds of needing medical care drops to much lower levels.

Let's call that the family plan version of the Sebelius Solution!

But then, what if getting low income people to accept their income tax increase is the whole point of Obamacare? In that light, since it would cost the federal government more in subsidies to actually support people buying health insurance through its exchanges, and since it stands to gain higher tax revenue if it can get them to choose not to, or as it is working out, because they can't because the exchanges are dysfunctional (perhaps because they were never intended to work), it would make sense for the tax hungry members of the Obama administration to push this very reasonable alternative....

Will Your Baby Be Obese?

What is the risk that your baby will become overweight or obese at some point during their childhood?

Today, we're going to help you find out using new research developed by a number of international researchers to determine the likelihood that an infant will be overweight or obese as they grow older, based only upon a handful of risk factors that are evident when they are infants.

Just enter the indicated data in our tool below, and we'll do the researchers' math for you!

Factors Affecting Childhood Obesity
Input Data	Values
Mother's Height [in]
Mother's Weight [pounds]
Father's Height [in]
Father's Weight [pounds]
Did the mother smoke during pregnancy?	No Yes
How much weight did the mother gain during pregnancy? [pounds]
Child's Race or Ethnicity	Black White Hispanic Asian

Risk of Childhood Obesity
Calculated Results	Values
Risk for Childhood Obesity

If you're accessing this content on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click through to our site to access a functional version of this tool!

In the tool above, perhaps the most difficult input value to consider is your child's race or ethnicity, where you can only select one option. In case those individual options don't apply for your child's race or ethnicity, you should select the option that would correspond to a greater risk of obesity for your child, as determined by statistical health studies of each group in the U.S. population, which have found the black or African American population to be the most at risk, followed by Hispanics, then the white population and finally the Asian population.

Reference

Morandi A, Meyre D, Lobbens S, Kleinman K, Kaakinen M, et al. (2012) Estimation of Newborn Risk for Child or Adolescent Obesity: Lessons from Longitudinal Birth Cohorts. PLoS ONE 7(11): e49919. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049919.

Estimating Your Age Like a Tree

Barbara Walters once asked an aging Katharine Hepburn "if you were a tree, what kind would you be?"

The question has often been derided ever since, but we can't help thinking of that situation because it combines the concepts of a person's age and trees. What if we could determine your age the same way we might estimate the age of a live tree?

Here's how that works. There are parts of the human body that grow in size each year, much like the trunk of a tree does, which can then be measured and the person's age estimated from the result. And no, despite what you might think, we're not talking about measuring your waistline....

Instead, we're talking about your ears! Thanks to a 1997 study published by U.S. Veterans Administration researchers, we have the means to estimate how old a person is from a measurement of the circumference of their ears, and vice versa:

It is generally observed that older people have bigger ears and noses. Cartilage is known to alter in structure with age. We conducted a cross sectional study to verify the trend between age and the size of two cartilaginous structures, ear and nose. A total of 100 young individuals were compared to older individuals with respect to their ear and nose sizes. We found that the greatest correlation coefficient of age was with ear circumference, and the linear regression equation being: Ear circumference = 88.1 + (0.51 x subject's age). Except for the ear tragus, which correlated insignificantly with age, anatomical variables of the ear had higher correlation with age than anatomical variables of the nose. This study supports the view that as people age, their ears get larger, particularly the ear circumference, which increases on average 0.51 mm per year. This enlargement is likely associated with aging changes of collagen. The knowledge from this study allows us to calculate the age of an individual based on ear size: Subject's age = 1.96 x (Ear circumference in millimeters - 88.1).

That second equation is the exact math we've built into the tool below! Just enter the value of your or your subject's ear circumference (the distance you measure around the outside edge of the ears) in either inches or millimeters (we'll sort out which is which, although the default value is given in inches) and our tool will do the math for you!

Ear Dimensions
Input Data	Values
Ear Circumference [inches or millimeters]

Estimated Age
Calculated Results	Values
Estimated Age [years]

It's a bit like CSI if you think about it! You can almost imagine yourself as the lead detective investigating a murder ("We didn't find any ID, but we estimated the vic was 25 years old from the size of their ears!..." Ed. You're no Caruso....)

Of course, this is really bad news for people who lie about their age, because now they will be less likely to get away with it. ("38? Ha! Let's measure those ears of yours!..." Ed. No means no.)

We suspect that the hardest hit will be Hollywood actresses, who in addition to doing things like growing out their hair to cover their ears and going to all sorts of other extremes in a vain effort to hide their ages, probably haven't realized that those things attached to the sides of their heads are giving them away.

Really, the only remaining question is which aging Hollywood actress do you suppose will be first in line for some otoplasty after they read this post? Quite possibly, the next hot new trend in cosmetic surgery will be the "ear job"!

References

Tan, R., Osman, V. and Tan, G. Ear size as a predictor of chronological age. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics. 1997 Sep-Oct; 25(2): 187-91.

Walking It Off

Did you just eat something you really shouldn't have? Especially if you're trying to lose some weight?

Well, there's a pretty straightforward way to avoid taking the calorie hit to your waistline - you can boost your activity level to burn off the extra food you just took in. But how much do you need to boost it? And how?

Sure, you can go for a run, swim, bike, do aerobics, or some other fitness oriented activity, but what if you can't? Not because you literally can't, but rather, because you're somewhere where you can't dress for those activities - like work, school or just out and about during the middle of your day with hours to go before you might get home.

So you're limited. You need an activity that won't get you all sweaty, but that will help you burn more calories today than you would have had to if you hadn't decided to treat yourself to that treat. Something that you won't look too out of place doing wearing what you're wearing.

If you haven't figured it out long before now, we're talking about walking. And now, since that's really the only healthy and not out-of-place option for your situation, we need to talk about how much extra walking you're going to have to do to wash out that treat you chose to eat.

How Many Calories Were In That Treat?
Input Data	Values
Calories

How Long Will It Take You To Walk Those Calories Off?
Calculated Results	Values
Approximate Time

Fortunately for you, we have an app for that! Just enter the amount of extra calories you consumed, and we'll give you a good ballpark estimate of how much extra walking you're going to have to do to keep them from being a permanent addition to your waistline!

Our tool is based on back of the envelope math done by fitness expert Craig Harper, who translated the amount of time and calories consumed by various treats into the amount of time it would take a 160 pound person to walk them off at a speed of three miles per hour.

As it happens, 160 pounds is the average self-reported weight for a woman in the United States, at least as reported by Gallup, which makes this a pretty useful weight to use as a rule-of-thumb benchmark. If you weigh more than that amount, it will take you a little less time to walk off the extra calories you ate, and it will take longer if you weigh less, but the total amount of time you need to spend walking should be be pretty close.

But really, perhaps the best way to use this tool is as a guide for deciding whether you should eat those extra calories in the first place!

Image Source: National Institute of Health

Will You Ever Be 100?

What are the odds that you might ever reach your 100th birthday?

Personal Data
Input Data	Values
Your Current Age
Your Gender	Male Female

The Odds Of Being 100 Years Old
Calculated Results	Values
Percentage Chance of Reaching Age 100

Today we're presenting a tool that can help you find out what your percentage chances are of ever making it to the century mark! Our tool is based upon data published by The Guardian's Datablog and although it specifically applies for the population of the United Kingdom, it should give you a pretty good idea of your own longevity, assuming you have a similar demographic heritage.

And all we need to project the percentage chance of whether you'll be 100 years old someday is your current age and your gender....

One interesting aspect of the data is that either the younger you are, or the older you are, the better your chances of being 100 years old someday. For example, an individual born today, at Age 0, has a nearly a 30% probability of reaching Age 100 without taking their gender into account. Only those Age 96 or older have a better shot at making it to that age!

Meanwhile, the ages at which people are most unlikely to ever see their 100th birthday is Age 83 and Age 84. Here, the non-gender specific odds of reaching their 100th birthday is just 7.2%.

But the people with the best odds of being 100 years old are the people who are already 99 years old!

HT: Marginal Revololution

Data Source

Gibbs, Freya. How Likely Are You to Live to 100? Get the Full Data. The Guardian: Datablog. 4 August 2011.

How Many Calories Are You Really Eating?

How many calories does your body need to maintain its current weight? Or rather, if we were to take your current weight level and assume that you're consuming enough Calories to maintain it, how many Calories is that per day?

Your Personal Data
Input Data	Values
Age [years]
Weight [lb]
Height [in]
Gender	Male Female
Your Daily Activity Level
Sedentary [Little to No Exercise] Light Activity [Light Exercise/Sports 1-3 days/week] Moderate Activity [Moderate Exercise/Sports 3-5 days/week] Very Active [Hard Exercise/Sports 6-7 days/week] Extra Active [Very Hard Exercise/Sports and Physical Job]

Approximate Daily Calorie Requirements
Calculated Results	Values
Basal "Resting" Metabolic Rate [Calories]
Estimated Total Calories Consumed per Day

Math is a wonderful thing and yes, we can use it to work out approximately how many Calories you're eating every day! Our tool below uses the math developed by M.D. Mifflin, S.T. St. Jeor, L.A. Hill, B.J. Scott, S.A. Daugherty and Y.O. Koh in their 1990 paper "A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals" to estimate your basal metabolic rate, or rather, the number of Calories your body would consume when it's "resting", which we then mashed with the old Harris-Benedict approximations for taking your daily level of physical activity into account.

All you need to do is to enter your age, gender, weight and your approximate level of daily physical activity into our tool below. Unless you're a true athlete, with lots of lean muscle mass that burns even more Calories, or perhaps have a thyroid condition that directly affects your metabolic rate, you can expect the results to be pretty close to the actual ballpark in which your body burns Calories to maintain your current weight!

Best of all, if you're getting set to do something about your weight or fitness level, you now have some idea of how many Calories you're really consuming every day!

And really, that might be the most surprising result you'll find out from our tool!

Your Maximum and Target Heart Rate

How many times per minute should your heart beat while you're exercising?

Age and Gender Data
Input Data	Values
Your Age
Your Gender	Male Female

Your Maximum and Target Heart Rates
Calculated Results	Beats per Minute
Your Maximum Heart Rate
Your Target Heart Rate Range

It used to be really easy to calculate what your maximum and target heart rate for working out should be - you just took your age, subtracted it from 220 and that gave you your maximum heart rate. You would then try to keep your heart rate between 50% to 80% of that number to get the best cardiac workout that medical professionals could recommend.

But then, while that math works for men, it turns out that math doesn't work for women!

Fortunately, a new math formula for finding the maximum and target heart rates for women has been developed: all a woman needs to do is to subtract 88% of their age from 206 to find their maximum heart rate number, then keep their pulse rate between 50% and 80% of that result while exercising!

Since that really isn't the kind of math that people can do in their heads, our latest tool is designed to take your head out of the picture, so you can focus on that workout of yours, regardless of whether you're a man or a woman!

Just enter the indicated data into the tool, and we'll tell you just how fast you need to get your blood pumping while you're working out on that new-fangled treadmill....

So there you go - now give us 20!

Image Credit: NASA's G-Trainer. Why, it's our tax dollars at work!