...especially when you go 0-2

0-1
According to the Supreme Court, managed care corporations are free to refuse to provide benefits for non-covered treatments even if the patient's physician has deemed it medically necessary.

The case actually revolved around the ability of a state to give patients the right to sue for damages if the denial of coverage amounted to a failure of a "duty of ordinary care" as defined in the state's law. Ten states currently have some variation of such a law.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) bans suits for damages arising from the denial of care by managed care corporations. But in 2002, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Congress had not intended to ban damage suits of the kind involved here.

No so, the Supremes declared in a unanimous decision. If it ain't covered, it ain't covered, the corporations have no duty to any standard beyond the letter of the contract, not even medical necessity, and if you get screwed as a result, you can't do squat.

Any state law that "duplicates, supplements or supplants" the remedy available under the federal law "conflicts with the clear Congressional intent to make the Erisa remedy exclusive," Justice [Uncle] Thomas said,

writing for the court. It's worth noting that the "remedy" available under ERISA is suing for the value of the benefit, not the treatment required by its denial. Compared to the cost of treatment, such a "remedy" is a sick joke.

Another sick joke is that the case arose from a suit under a 1999 Texas law, passed with the support of then-Governor Shrub, who pointed to it during his 2000 campaign as an example of his "nonpartisan leadership." But when the case came before the Supreme Court, the White House opposed the law, preferring to side with two insurance companies looking to protect their bottom line against all comers.


0-2
The Supreme Court, again displaying an astonishing lack of comprehension of the technological realities of the real world around them,

ruled Monday that people who refuse to give their names to police can be arrested, even if they've done nothing wrong.

The court previously had said police may briefly detain people they suspect of wrongdoing, without any proof. But until now, the justices had never held that during those encounters a person must reveal their identity.

The case was that of Larry Hiibel, a Nevada rancher arrested in 1998 for refusing to reveal his name to a state trooper, as I wrote on March 24. He argued that such a requirement was a violation of his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. But in a sharply divided 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court found otherwise with an astonishingly convoluted - and asinine - argument.

"One's identity is, by definition, unique; yet it is, in another sense, a universal characteristic. Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

If your reaction to that is the natural one of "huh?" let me rephrase it: Because everyone has a name, Kennedy is saying, being forced to reveal yours is not an invasion of your privacy. If you still say "huh?" it means you understand.

I'm also - I started to say I'm also surprised, but then again, I'm not, it's just another baloney slice, so let's just say I note with interest - that apparently it's now okay for the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination to be violated as long as it's "unusual."

The one good thing is that the decision stopped short of allowing police to demand people show ID rather than simply give a name, but Justice John Paul Stevens still nailed it:

"A name can provide the key to a broad array of information about the person, particularly in the hands of a police officer with access to a range of law enforcement databases," he wrote in a dissent. Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer also disagreed with the ruling.

A name is no longer an isolated piece of information. The majority's failure - I daresay refusal - to recognize that most basic fact of the so-called Information Age serves only to further enhance police power and the sway of those who actually argued in the case (as I'm sure you'll not be surprised) that "the constant danger of renewed terrorist activity" justifies the law.

That hopelessly paranoid, slippery-slope argument was raised by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which proudly calls itself the "only public interest organization in America working full time to assure that our courts respect the rights of crime victims." It also argued, in true "only the guilty have something to hide" fashion, "that the demands of modern society minimize an individual's interest in the privacy of his or her identity."

Frankly, I'd say exactly the opposite: The demands and conditions of modern society maximize an individual's interest in their privacy to protect what little remains from being stripped away in the name of the power of the state. Because now, as Tim Lynch, an attorney with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said, the court "ruled that the government can turn a person's silence into a criminal offense."

Some years ago, William O. Douglas wrote that the most fundamental right of all was the right to be left alone. No more.