The Dodgers are giving away a second Shohei Ohtani bobblehead doll on Wednesday, this one with Ohtani holding his dog Decoy. In May, when the Dodgers staged their first Ohtani bobblehead night, fans lined up outside Dodger Stadium hours before game time, with the gates to the parking lot still closed.

The demand for all things Ohtani has sent season-ticket prices soaring, just like one of his majestic home runs. As of Monday afternoon, the Dodgers were selling tickets to Wednesday’s game for a minimum of $131 and to Thursday’s game — against the same opponent, the Baltimore Orioles — for a minimum of $36.

It takes a lot of money to get that free bobblehead. However, in an illustration of a policy embraced by the Dodgers and most other major league teams, you could pay all that money and still not get that free bobblehead.

The Dodgers say they have 40,000 bobbleheads to give away. They sold 53,527 tickets to the first Ohtani bobblehead night.

“Why do that,” asked Andy Dolich, a marketing expert and formerly a top executive for the Oakland Athletics, San Francisco 49ers, Memphis Grizzlies and Washington Capitals, “when the promotional concept is to put a smile on someone’s face?”

The San Diego Padres, like the Dodgers, limit most giveaways to the first 40,000 fans. The Angels generally provide giveaways to the first 25,000 fans. The Arizona Diamondbacks adjust their limit depending on the promotion, but most commonly distribute giveaways to the first 20,000 fans.

“I get it,” Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall said. “When I was a kid and I went to Dodger Stadium, I definitely had to get the batting glove every year, but I never feared not getting one.”

What has changed, Hall said, is that the increase in the number of giveaway dates has made the total cost of giveaways more prohibitive.

“It’s really just a budget issue,” Hall said. “That’s all it is. Teams have so many more promotions than they used to.”

For one, Dodgers president Stan Kasten said, the corporate sponsors that cover the cost of most giveaways may not have the budget for 53,000 promotional items.

“And, when you get there early, you have the opportunity to do other kinds of shopping, whether it’s food or merchandise,” Kasten said. “It also helps with traffic and things like that.

“We try to make all our fans happy. Most fans, when there is a limit and they come late, I think they understand.”

The Angels declined to make an executive available for comment, but a spokesman said the team tries to ensure every fan that arrives by first pitch can get that game’s giveaway item.

The Shohei Ohtani and Decoy bobblehead doll that will be given to fans attending Wednesday’s game between the Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles at Dodger Stadium.

(Los Angeles Dodgers)

The Padres list seating capacity at 40,222, not including a grass and turf park behind center field that can accommodate another 6,000 fans. The Padres’ giveaway limit: 40,000.

“That number covers our fixed seating capacity and estimated turnstile attendance for nearly every giveaway game,” Chief Executive Erik Greupner said, “ensuring that all ticket holders will receive a promo item.”

Hall said the Diamondbacks make adjustments for the most popular items. A replica National League championship ring was supposed to be limited to the first 30,000 fans, but the team actually distributed almost 40,000.

“We wanted to make sure we had a surplus so, if someone didn’t get one, we could take care of them,” he said.

Kasten said the Dodgers and other teams try to accommodate fans with extenuating circumstances.

The challenge on nights like an Ohtani bobblehead night is to take care of the actual fans rather than the speculators that buy the ticket in order to make money selling the item on eBay.

On Monday, the bobbleheads given away in May were selling in the range of $500 and up, with the ones scheduled for Wednesday already available for around $200.

Still, given that ticket prices are so high because of the bobblehead giveaway, Dolich said the Dodgers would be wise to take care of every customer — not just the one who lines up hours in advance and resells the bobblehead before first pitch, but the one with kids who might not be able to arrive before the bobblehead supply runs out.

“You absolutely cannot alienate that last person,” Dolich said, “the family that comes from Encino just for that night, with 8-year-old twins, and it’s, ‘Sorry, we’re done.’ ”

It’s rare — miraculously rare — that a drug can have such a pronounced effect that its immediate benefits translate into healthcare savings for years, even decades. To the wonder drugs Harvoni and Sovaldi, which wipe out hepatitis C, we can now add the weight-loss medicine Ozempic and its cousins Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound.

These drugs have shown remarkable effectiveness in reducing obesity. That points to long-term reductions in users’ vulnerability to the whole spectrum of obesity-related medical conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, bad knees and sleep apnea.

They appear to work on other unhealthful dependencies such as narcotic and alcohol addiction, and possibly even on Alzheimer’s.

Yet millions of Americans are unable to access these drugs, thanks to the two big, interrelated flaws in our healthcare system: unrestrained pricing by drug companies and the economics of health insurance.

We’ll explore how these factors work to deny access to drugs that address America’s No. 1 health malady. But first, a look at the seriousness of the obesity epidemic.

Weight is typically measured by the body mass index, or BMI, which correlates weight with height. Roughly speaking (and not accounting for differences between males and females), a “healthy” weight for a 5-foot-10-inch person is reckoned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be 128 to 173 pounds, which translates to a BMI of between 18.4 and 24.9.

Between 173 and 208 pounds places that person in the “overweight” category and heavier than that is judged to be “obese,” defined as a BMI of 30 or higher. Those with a BMI of 40 or higher, or 278 pounds for a 5-foot-10 adult, are “severely obese.”

America has been getting more obese over time, according to the CDC. In 1960, about 31.5% of U.S. adults were overweight; in 2017, the latest period tracked by the agency, the figure was 30.3%. In 1960, however, 13.4% of adults were obese and 0.9% severely obese; by 2017, about 42.8% of adults were obese and 9.6% severely obese.

The rate of obesity among children — about 20% — is especially worrisome. Obese children are more likely than those with healthy weights to have high blood pressure and diabetes, and more likely to be obese in adulthood.

The toll this epidemic takes on the economy is horrific. Obesity and its consequences cost the U.S. healthcare system nearly $173 billion a year, the CDC estimates.

Experience with the weight-loss medicines thus far shows that they can cut the rates of obesity-related conditions materially. A five-year study of more than 24,000 nondiabetic but obese subjects published earlier this month by a team of Taiwanese researchers found significant reductions not only in heart disease, hypertension, stroke and kidney failure but in mortality from all causes as well. Those in the control group (not receiving the drug) had a 3.5% annual mortality rate; for those given the drug, it was only 0.75%.

So why would stakeholders in our healthcare system not be beating down the doors to make these drugs more widely available?

The answer, of course, boils down to money.

The estimated cost of Wegovy and similar drugs for insurers, net of bulk discounts provided by manufacturers (Denmark-based Novo Nordisk for Wegovy and Ozempic and Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly for Mounjaro and Zepbound) runs from about $8,600 to $9,100 a year. That’s a big lift for insurers contemplating coverage of drugs for which the public demand can be in the millions.

That might work if insurers could be sure that the long-term savings from their enrollees’ health improvements would save them as much or more. In our fragmented healthcare system, however, they can’t be sure that they’ll still be covering those enrollees in the cost-avoidance period. Customers can move to other insurers or leave the employers who were providing the insurance.

“Insurers routinely don’t see people for more than a few years at a time,” observes David Anderson, an expert in health policy at the University of South Carolina. “This limits the length of time that health gains can be internalized as reduced claims.”

As a result, insurers have been placing obstacles in the way of customers seeking coverage. Some require advance authorization before they’ll pay or limit coverage only to patients with a high BMI. Some insurance plans will cover them only for employees already diagnosed with diabetes, the condition for which these medicines were first developed, but not for weight loss alone.

Insurers administering plans for self-insured employers — large companies and institutions — are probably responding to their clients’ directives.

Some big employers that originally covered the weight-loss drugs have pulled back. The Mayo Clinic has imposed a $20,000 lifetime limit on the coverage for its employees. Purdue University will cover the drugs for employees with BMIs over 30, but requires employees to have lost at least 5% of their body weight after three months to continue coverage.

Others have simply dropped the option altogether. That leaves employees or the uninsured on the hook for the cost of $1,000 or more a month.

The insurer best positioned to pay for the weight-loss drugs and to reap the long-term benefits is Medicare, in which enrollees typically remain for life. Moreover, insurers are generally required to cover drugs considered the standard of care for known conditions.

Unfortunately, Medicare is prohibited by law to cover drugs prescribed specifically for weight loss. It can pay for them only if they’re prescribed for a related condition, such as heart disease or diabetes. For example, Wegovy was added to the standard formulary for Medicare’s Part D prescription benefit after it received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in March for the treatment of heart attack risk.

The popularity and efficacy of the drugs prompted legislators in June to update a measure unsuccessfully introduced in 2014 legalizing Medicare coverage for weight loss alone. The new version would cover mostly those who had been taking a drug for at least a year before joining Medicare, however.

Some experts estimate that expanding coverage of the weight-loss drugs would cost Medicare up to $6.1 billion a year, assuming that 10% of patients eligible for the coverage actually receive prescriptions. That would increase the $120-billion annual cost of Medicare prescriptions (net of enrollee premiums and contributions from state programs) by a little over 5%.

Whether that cost would be fully offset by subsequent healthcare savings for Medicare is unclear. Not every patient prescribed the weight-loss drugs tolerates them well enough to stay on them for even a year, and not all will escape a major health crisis that could have been averted by weight loss alone.

But it seems now that our healthcare system will have to deal with the new class of weight-loss drugs in one way or another. Wegovy and Ozempic are expected to be selected for the next round of Medicare price negotiations, due to take place next year with price reductions effective starting in 2027. Drug industry analysts don’t expect the drugs’ popularity to wane. The market for them reached $6 billion last year, according to Goldman Sachs, which projected that it would grow to $100 billion by 2030.

The weight-loss drugs are by no means the most expensive on the market — that trophy belongs to certain cancer drugs and gene therapies, some of which clock in at several million dollars per treatment. But none of those serve a market anywhere near the potential size of weight-loss treatments.

Unless the U.S. moves toward a single-payer healthcare system and starts to place limits on drug prices, it’s the manufacturers of the weight-loss drugs that will reap most of the benefits. Sales of Wegovy and Ozempic made Novo Nordisk the most valuable European company last year and helped drive an increase in profit at Lilly for the second quarter that ended June 30 by nearly 69% over the year-earlier period.

To put it another way, America’s 20th century healthcare system is coming face to face with a spate of 21st century drugs. Something will have to give.

A funny thing happened after July 21, when President Biden ended his campaign for reelection. It’s not merely that Kamala Harris emerged to take his place; it’s that her campaign had overcome the polarization of American politics.

At least, that’s the reading provided by not a few political pundits. But it’s not quite true. The reality is that Harris’ rise as a leading political figure demonstrates that America was never as polarized as our commentators claimed.

I made this point nearly three years ago, in the wake of the failed recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom. The recall failed by a 2-to-1 vote. As i observed at the time, the commentariat persisted in viewing the result through the prism of the “polarization” theme, even though it demonstrated conclusively that in California, at least, there was broad agreement, not disagreement, about Newsom’s policies on fighting COVID, abortion and gun control.

Harris has (so far) finessed the polarization meme by making an explicit appeal to voters based on issues likely to find widespread conformity across the partisan spectrum. These include abortion rights (despite the issue’s appearance as a wedge driving Americans apart) and economic policies aimed at the middle class.

The harvest appears to be a surge in cross-party support for the Harris campaign. On Monday, more than 200 former Republican aides to presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush and Sens. Mitt Romney and John McCain endorsed Harris in an open letter, stating that “another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.”

A dozen lawyers who served Ronald Reagan and both Bushes in the White House issued their own joint endorsement, stating, “We believe that returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country.”

The Harris campaign, emboldened by positive polls, is seeking to expand its presence into Sun Belt states that were either judged out of reach or leaning Republican, such as Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina.

Yet it may be more accurate to view these developments not as Harris overcoming polarization, but as her exposing the shallowness of the polarization impression. Political scientists have increasingly come to the conclusion that the apparent polarization of debate in the U.S. is an artifact of where that debate has been conducted — chiefly on social media.

“At first blush, the American political landscape can seem quite bleak, in part because of heightened political polarization,” observed researchers from UC Berkeley and Columbia University in March. But they found that “the landscape of debate is distorted by social media and the salience of negativity present in high-profile spats.”

The misimpression among Americans, they wrote, fosters “a false reality about the landscape of debate which can unnecessarily undermine their hope about the future.”

The methods used by social media platforms to grab and hold users’ attention deserves much of the blame for this distortion, they asserted. “There is evidence that negative information spreads more quickly on social media and is often amplified by social media algorithms that promote or push content to the forefront of users’ pages,” they wrote.

“This negativity is exacerbated by non-human actors or ‘bots’ that often inflame online conflicts …. These factors combined suggest that negative, conflict-laden debates will flow to the top of people’s timelines.”

A similar conclusion was reached by political scientists James Druckman of the University of Rochester, Matthew Levendusky of the University of Pennsylvania and their colleagues, who found in a 2020 paper that the “hyper-partisan polarization” that defined current American politics in the 21st century was “affective polarization” — meaning that when people were asked in surveys about the party whose policies they opposed, was based on “stereotypes and media exemplars of ideologically extreme and politically engaged partisans.”

What was happening, they wrote, was that people incorrectly assumed that those extremists “comprise the majority of the other party.”

Another factor is Trump, who “is also a polarizer: he takes existing trends and pours gasoline on them,” Levendusky told me.

Still, the image of a hopelessly polarized America is belied by opinion polls and ballot results on individual issues. Nearly two-thirds of Americans feel that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a survey issued in May by the Pew Research Center. That’s higher than it was in 1995.

More evidence comes from abortion-related ballot initiatives in seven states in 2022 and 2023, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade: The pro-abortion rights position prevailed in every one, including in the red states Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. Abortion rights measures will be on the ballot in 10 states this November, including Florida, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Sizable majorities also are seen in opinion polls in favor of stricter gun laws and antipandemic measures such as masking and social distancing. COVID vaccines may be the target of obstreperous antivaccination fanatics, but most Americans have voted with their feet by walking into vaccine clinics: 81% of Americans have received at least one shot and 70% are considered fully vaccinated with multiple doses.

That includes states in which antivaccination politics reign, such as Florida, where the Republican-appointed surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, has issued antivax recommendations so misleading that he was publicly rebuked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Despite Ladapo’s antivax propaganda, 81.4% of Floridians have received at least one shot and 68.6% are considered fully vaccinated.

As for the homogenizing of the major parties’ opposing positions on matters of public concern — liberals becoming Democrats and conservatives becoming Republicans — that’s not polarization so much as what Levendusky described as “the partisan sort” in his 2009 book of the same name. Voters take their cues from the leaders of their favored party, he noted, “looking to elites who share their values to figure out where they stand on the issues.”

“People have gotten a bit more divided over time, but much less than people think,” Levendusky says. “People have sorted themselves so that Democrats are now mostly one side of the issue, and Republicans on the other. A generation ago, you had lots of pro-environment Republicans, pro-choice Republicans (and pro-life Democrats!), Democrats who were strong gun rights supporters, and so on. Now, that’s much less true.”

What is true is that the platforms of the two major parties have moved further apart; more precisely, while the Democratic Party stayed where it had been, slightly left of center, the Republican Party moved distinctly toward the extreme right.

The reason, Levendusky argued in his book, was the flow of evangelicals and other fundamentalist Christians into the Republican Party starting in the 1970s. Party leaders — the “elite,” in Levendusky’s term — moved rightward to accommodate this new, outspoken bloc; some nonfundamentalist party members followed along, but most remained centrist on economic issues and abortion rights.

This process is relatively new in American politics. During the New Deal, the most obdurate critics of Franklin Roosevelt’s policies were Democrats — Southern Democrats, to be sure, but his party members nonetheless — while among his most loyal supporters were liberal Republicans. One of the two aides who served in FDR’s Cabinet for all 12 of his years in office, Harold Ickes, was a Republican. (The other was Frances Perkins, a Democrat.) Lyndon Johnson had to trample over opposition by the Southerners in his party to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed in the 1960s.

Just as the Republicans had a progressive wing, the Democrats had a conservative wing comprising Wall Street bankers and corporate executives such as Alfred P. Sloan, the chairman and chief executive of General Motors. Sloan and his fellow rich reactionaries established a rump anti-New Deal bloc, the American Liberty League, to lobby against FDR’s policies from inside the Democratic Party.

FDR rhetorically drummed them out of the party — their “two particular tenets,” he said, are that “you should love God and then forget your neighbor” — but they remained part of the party until the league disbanded in 1940.

In recent years, Levendusky observed, there has been a shift in both parties toward the extremes. But it’s not as pronounced as social media posters and political commentators would have it. “The majority of the electorate remain closer to the center than to the poles.”

That’s where Harris is right now, which may be the key to her placing the “polarization” ogre in its grave for good.