Stop the Bailout — Now
Republicans can end Obamacare by stopping the impending bailout of insurance companies.
By Charles Krauthammer....But of course there’s a Plan B. It’s a government bailout.
Administration officials can’t say it for political reasons. And they don’t have to say it because it’s already in the Affordable Care Act, buried deep.
First, Section 1341, the “reinsurance” fund collected from insurers and self-insuring employers at a nifty $63 a head. (Who do you think the cost is passed on to?) This yields about $20 billion over three years to cover losses.
Then there is Section 1342, the “risk corridor” provision that mandates a major taxpayer payout covering up to 80 percent of insurance-company losses.
Never heard of these? That’s the beauty of passing a bill of such monstrous length. You can insert a chicken-soup recipe and no one will notice.
...The insurers were stunned. Told to give free coverage. Deprived of their best customers. Forced to offer stripped-down “catastrophic” plans to over-30 clients (contrary to the law). These dictates, complained their spokesman, could “destabilize” the insurance market.Translation: How are we going to survive this? Shrinking revenues and rising costs could bring on the “death spiral” — an unbalanced patient pool forcing huge premium increases (to restore revenue) that would further unbalance the patient pool as the young and healthy drop out.
End result? Insolvency — before which the insurance companies will pull out of Obamacare.
Solution? A huge government bailout. It’s Obamacare’s escape hatch. And — surprise, surprise — it’s already baked into the law.
Which is why the GOP needs to act. Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg machine with hundreds of moving parts. Without viable insurance companies doing the work, it falls apart. No bailout, no Obamacare.
Such a bill would be overwhelmingly popular because Americans hate fat-cat bailouts of any kind. Why should their tax dollars be spent not only saving giant insurers but also rescuing this unworkable, unbalanced, unstable, unpopular money pit of a health-care scheme?
The GOP House should pass it and send it to Harry Reid’s Democratic Senate. Democrats know it could be fatal for Obamacare. The only alternative would be single-payer. And try selling that to the country after the spectacularly incompetent launch of — and subsequent widespread disaffection with — mere semi-nationalization.
The government’s botched handling of veteran’s health care is an unwelcome preview of what to expect from Obamacare, Capt. Pete Hegseth of “Concerned Veterans for America” told Fox News Friday.
Pouring money into healthcare.gov, just as the government did with Veterans Affairs, trying to bring it up to speed, has offered similarly poor results.
“When the government does technology, it does it poorly,” Hegseth said. “Nowhere near what the private sector can do. You also can’t choose your doctor. In VA, it’s single payer. It’s not the exact same as Obamacare. VA is single-payer, no choice. Well we’ve seen plenty of people who thought they could keep their insurance or keep their doctor under Obamacare not be able to do that. A lot of the same attributes.”
The Contraception Mandate and the Constitution
The administration and its allies have profoundly twisted the meaning of the Constitution.
By Charles C W Cooke... From the outset, both the Obama administration and its enablers have steadfastly and deliberately cast their preferences in inappropriate and misleading language — and they have stuck to this language through thick and thin. First, we were told that nothing should “get between a woman and her doctor” — a frankly hilarious line coming from the people who brought us Obamacare. Then, it was contended that by opposing regulations that force businesses to provide their employees with contraception, conservatives were somehow banning the pill. Then they shouted: “War on Women!”
That all of these contentions are deeply dishonest and quickly refutable has made no difference to the enthusiasm with which they have been repeated. Are we truly expected to believe that by not buying me an AR-15, National Review is violating my right to bear arms or restricting my constitutionally guaranteed “access” to guns? Of course not. And yet if you make the argument that to refuse to provide insurance that covers contraception is to “take it away from women,” then you must presumably believe that I am being treated terribly, too. Likewise, by refusing to contribute to my car payments, is my employer coming between me and the salesman? Nah.
Another ObamaCare screw-up
By Thomas Lifson
Who could have predicted that people would have babies and want to add them to their health insurance? Not the geniuses who are so smart that they could take over and redesign one sixth of the American economy. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP reports:
But rest assured, they will make the right decisions on what health care you are eligible to receive, because they are so very, very smart. Just ask them.
Who could have predicted that people would have babies and want to add them to their health insurance? Not the geniuses who are so smart that they could take over and redesign one sixth of the American economy. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP reports:
There's another quirk in the Obama administration's new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.
With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on.
Right now the HealthCare.gov website can't handle such updates.
It's a reminder that the new coverage for many uninsured Americans comes with a third party in the mix: the feds. And the system's wiring for some vital federal functions isn't yet fully connected.
But rest assured, they will make the right decisions on what health care you are eligible to receive, because they are so very, very smart. Just ask them.
Contract allows ‘unlimited access’ to all 250 million users
The Justice Department is spending more than $500,000 to “enhance” its company profile on LinkedIn and increase its “brand awareness.”
The contract, awarded on Christmas Eve, gives the government “unlimited access” to each of the networking site’s 250 million users through LinkedIn’s “Recruiter” service.
The DOJ’s Criminal Division, which enforces federal criminal laws, will use LinkedIn Recruiter to post job advertisements and seek out potential employees. Carahsoft Technology Corporation, a government IT company, will receive $544,338 to administer the service, according to the award.
The contract will allow the division to “reach a large-scale professional network of existing and potential Criminal Division audiences,” the agency said.
“This will include an enhanced company profile within a large-scale, professional networking platform, and targeted online job advertising to attract highly-qualified Criminal Division employees and intern applicants as well as use the already existing Criminal Division presence,” the document said.
The DOJ’s procurement office stated that the contract will allow unfettered access to every user on LinkedIn, the “world’s largest professional network.”
The Fed’s 100th Anniversary – Part 2: Does Janet Yellen Know What She Is Doing?
By Hunter Lewis...Economic writer Gene Callahan gets to the heart of the matter when he writes that the chairman of the Federal Reserve “is the head price fixer of a price fixing agency.”
Why would anyone say this about the Fed? Because the Fed fixes some interest rates and manipulates others, and interest rates are among the most important prices of the economy.
Ironically, retiring Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has acknowledged that: “Prices are the thermostat of an economy. They are the mechanisms by which an economy functions.”
Most economists agree that price controls destroy an economy. But, like Bernanke and Yellen, they often wear blinders which prevent them from seeing that everything the Fed does is a price control.
The Fed claims to set interest rates and make other decisions based on careful inspection of factual economic data. But there is a paradox here as well. The more the Fed intervenes, the more it muddies the data it is watching.
For example, during the housing bubble, reported inflation fell as house prices rose. Why? Because reported inflation measures rents, not house prices, and the more people bought houses, the fewer rented, and the more rents fell.
The Fed then claimed that there could not possibly be a bubble in the economy because reported inflation was falling.
It should be obvious that the more the Fed fixes prices and otherwise tampers with markets, the less it can learn from market data, the more it becomes like the Soviet Gosplan, groping in the dark, but nobody at the Fed is willing to admit this.
The Fed record of failure for a century speaks for itself, but the prognostications of Fed leaders are not any more reassuring. Ben Bernanke has an almost unbroken record of being wrong.
The American Studies Association (ASA) has received criticism from over 100 universities for its Israel academic boycott.
Israel Hayom reported:
The schools include some of the leading academic institutions in the U.S., including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Boston University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Connecticut, and University of Texas, among others. The schools are joined by the American Association of University Professors, comprising some 48,000 professors, and the Association of American Universities in their opposition to the boycott.The ASA called for a boycott of Israeli universities and academic institutions in December.
Four universities — Brandeis University, Indiana University, Kenyon College and Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg — announced they planned to withdraw altogether from the ASA as a result of the boycott decision.
How Craven Art Thou, Professor
By Eileen F Toplansky...This constant refrain about occupied land has been refuted time and again because it is "demonstrably false:"
Fact: In 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded or destroyed to make way for the establishment of Israel.
Fact: In 1993 the Oslo peace declaration "provided for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed five years [.]"
Fact: By May 1994, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip... and the Jericho area of the West Bank.
Fact: On January 20, 1996, elections to the Palestinian Council were held and Israeli civil administration and military government were dissolved. Thus, since 1997, "some 99 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have not lived under Israeli occupation."
Fact: Concerning Israeli settlements, "international law makes it clear that agrarian settlements for military purposes, settlements of Jews that were occupied by Jews prior to 1948, expanding suburbs of Israeli cities on or near the 'Green Line' and missionary settlements were, indeed 'entirely legal.'" Furthermore, until the West Bank was turned over to the Palestinian Authority, these "settlements were extremely beneficial to the Arabs in the region. By 2003, the West Bank's Gross Domestic Product had shrunk by 90% since the Palestinian Authority's ascent to power."
Thus, as Avinoam Sharon explains in his article entitled "Why is Israel's Presence in the Territories Still Called 'Occupation?' "...the withdrawal of all Israeli military personnel and any Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip, and the subsequent ouster of the Palestinian Authority and the takeover of the area by a Hamas government surely would constitute a clear end of the Israeli occupation of Gaza."
Yet, as Khaled Abu Toameh has reported in "How Hamas Is Trying to Fool Everyone" it is clear that Hamas will never change its charter which states that "the Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is an Individual Obligation" and "it [Hamas] will only be of help to all associations and organizations which act against the Zionist enemy and those who revolve in its orbit."
Consequently, as Matthew Hausman explains, none of these academics is concerned with the fact that "the Palestinian Arabs have never seriously sought lasting peace with Israel" and have only a "cynical contempt for both concept and process" since the Palestinian Authority has violated the Oslo Accords while "in contrast, Israel has honored her commitments, even when doing so has threatened her security and national integrity."
If, these academics were so troubled by human rights, why nary a word about the Palestinian crimes against Christian Arabs? To add to the obvious double standard, one must ask "Why is This Occupation Different From all other Occupations?" For example, "a new fishing deal, signed between the European Union and Morocco will apply beyond Morocco's internationally recognized borders, taking in the territory of Western Sahara, even though Morocco invaded that area in 1975 and has occupied it ever since." Moreover, Turkey occupies Northern Cyprus. Why don't the same conditions placed on Israel work in different regions of the world? The EU's response is: 'With regards to the allegation of using double standards for Israel and Morocco, our analysis is that the two cases are different and cannot be compared.' No further explanation was given."
Daniel Greenfield deconstructs the Israel settlement myth by explaining that "Israel is not an occupying power and did not seize any land from another state. Indeed much of the land that Israel is accused of occupying is actually land that was seized from it by invading Arab armies during its 1948 War of Independence." Moreover, Palestinians deny the biblical Jewish archaeological connection to Israel by systematically destroying evidence of this connection. In fact, "the repeated attacks on Israel's territorial integrity are not only dishonest; they carry the implicit and explicit threat of ethnic cleansing."
More New Taxes and Fees: How You’ll Pay for Obamacare in 2014
By Alyene SengerObamacare contains 18 specific tax hikes, mandates, or penalties that cost Americans money, and three new ones take effect in 2014. This is only the beginning—watch how two of these taxes get worse in the years to come.
1. Individual Mandate Tax. The individual mandate is designed to strong-arm individuals into purchasing government-approved health insurance or facing a tax penalty. In 2014, the penalty for not purchasing insurance will be either $95 or 1 percent of annual income (whichever is greater). Very few, if any, people will end up paying just $95, because individuals with an annual income of only $9,500 or less would likely qualify for Medicaid or a hardship exemption from the mandate. The mandate increases drastically in coming years, rising to $325 or 2 percent of income in 2015, and $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016—whichever is greater.
2. Health Insurer Tax. One of the largest tax increases in the law is an annual fee imposed on health insurers based on their share of the market. It is estimated to raise $8 billion in 2014 alone. The tax will more than likely be passed on to consumers through premium increases. An actuarial analysis by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman projects that in 2014, this tax will increase premiums by 1.9 percent to 2.3 percent. And the impact will be greater in later years as the tax increases.
3. Reinsurance Fee. This fee isn’t included in the list of 18 tax hikes, but it’s another one that will impact the cost of insurance. Health insurers will have to pay the temporary fee on group health plans to help spread the cost of the covering those in the individual market, inside and outside Obamacare’s exchanges. The fee begins in 2014, costing $63 per covered person and decreasing in 2015 and 2016. Like most taxes and fees, the result will likely be higher insurance premiums.
Sneak Peek at 2015: Employer Mandate. By law, the employer mandate was supposed to begin in 2014, but the Obama Administration delayed enforcing it until 2015. The employer mandate forces employers with 50 or more full-time employees (defined as those working 30 hours per week) to offer government-approved health coverage or pay a penalty. The penalty varies—either $2,000 per employee after the first 30 workers, or $3,000 per employee receiving subsidized coverage in the exchange, whichever is less.
Regardless of the delay, many businesses have already adapted by reducing hours for their employees—falling under the threshold to avoid both the cost of coverage and the penalty.
We need health reform that works for Americans—not against them.
Regulatory fights loom large in 2014
ByJulian Hattem and Ben GoadBattles lines are being drawn for a series of upcoming clashes over new regulations on the horizon in 2014.
The year promises to be chock full of contentious fights over scores of new rules stemming from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and a host of other laws.
Many of the provisions have already drawn fire, and opposition to high profile measures on the environment and healthcare is sure to increase ahead of the midterm elections. Republicans will point to the efforts as “job killing” overreach from President Obama, and some Democrats have already begun to distance themselves from controversial regulatory efforts.
Some lawmakers and public interest advocates, meanwhile, have launched another attack against the executive branch, claiming that delays or weakened new rules have harmed the public.
Here’s a glance at ten of the biggest regulatory fights expected in 2014:
- Emissions standards for existing power plants
- Regulation coming to e-cigarettes, cigars
- ObamaCare’s birth control mandate heads to court
- Turbulence for plan to allow phones on planes
- EPA to assert power over streams and ponds
- Smog rule on the way
- SEC to force executives to disclose pay
- Calorie counts coming to restaurant menus
- Delays to rearview camera rule under attack
- OSHA to rekindle combustible dust debate
Obama's Afghanistan Mess
By Michelle MalkinIs President Obama sleeping well on his Hawaiian holiday? I can think of many families of American soldiers who might not be enjoying the same bliss right now. That's because 2014 opens with alarming news that the Afghan government will free an estimated 650 prisoners from a Bagram detention facility -- including scores involved in deadly attacks on our men and women in uniform. The White House handed over control of the jihadi-clogged prison to the Afghan government last spring. Some 3,000 notorious Taliban and al Qaeda killers call the jail home. Surprise, surprise: After the Obama administration supposedly secured "private assurances" that no dangerous criminal operatives would be released, U.S. officials are now balking that the agreement has been broken. Everyone, put on your shocked faces.
...Who knows how many others will be freed to kill American soldiers again? President Hamid Karzai is busy pandering to Taliban forces in advance of the country's spring election season. He is also stalling approval of a bilateral security deal with the U.S. and U.K. It's a recipe for bloody recidivism. The new batch of freed jihadists will join a burgeoning population of other freed Taliban commanders who promptly returned to the battlefield. Last fall, Karzai freed senior Taliban leader Maulawi Ghulam Mohammad -- who now commands some 400 insurgents and immediately launched several deadly attacks on security forces' check-posts in the Badghis province.
Mohammad joins Mullah Zakir, the Taliban's top "surge commander," who was released from Gitmo to Afghanistan custody and let loose by the Afghanistan government in 2007. He's back at work, killing in the name of Allah without skipping a beat. Former Gitmo detainee Abu Sufian bin Qumu, also released in 2007, has been named a possible lead plotter in the Benghazi attack. Karzai's jail-emptying scheme comes as the Obama administration continues to widen the Gitmo revolving door for even more potential recidivists-to-be. In December alone, the White House returned Guantanamo detainees to Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and dispatched three Uighur detainees to Slovakia.
Time to Call Climate Change for What It Is: The Weather
By John Ransom
The New Year brings us back to the number one reason liberals give regarding their war on America’s energy industry.
Why does it take us there? Because this is more than a new year-- it’s an election year, and there are two different visions of the country that need to be contrasted for voters this year.
...Just to recap, the fossil energy industry, thanks to hydraulic fracturing, is situated to deliver us from the worst fiscal crisis since the Civil War, when greenback were printed to make up for the lack of investor interest in American debt. And a report last year confirmed what I’ve been saying for three years now: There’s enough fossil energy available domestically for the United States to not just be energy independent, but for the U.S. to be the great exporter of energy for the world.
“Shale oil (light tight oil) is rapidly emerging as a significant and relatively low cost new unconventional resource in the US,” writes PWC in its February, 2013 report Shale oil: the next energy revolution. “There is potential for shale oil production to spread globally over the next couple of decades. If it does, it would revolutionise global energy markets, providing greater long term energy security at lower cost for many countries.”
The big winner in all this would be the United States because it has large reserves of this type of energy.
So, along the way to energy independence, the U.S. can add ten million jobs and $20 trillion in additional GDP over ten years at a time our GDP stands at $16.5 trillion.
That is, it can happen if we don’t screw it up.
Big “if” I know, given the little heads in Washington.
But 2014 ought to be the year we liberate the American people from the small minds and lesser courage that makes America a follower in the world rather than a leader; that makes Washington pass and then keep foolish legislation like Sarbanes Oxley, Dodd-Frank and Obamacare.
Let solar energy continue to be the energy of the future.
I’m talking about the energy of the present.
So for 2014, I’m also talking about global warming, er, climate change.
Or what us common folks still call it… the weather.
That’s because the weather is the excuse that liberals use for preventing us from enjoying energy security.
The great thing about the weather is that it happens every day and, as Mark Twain said, everyone talks about it, but nobody ever does anything about it.
That’s because, as Twain’s deadpan implies, you can’t actually do much about the weather.
Weather’s a pretty big topic, a pretty complex system and works pretty well without improvement from liberals. But of course that won’t stop liberals from trying to improve it.
In fact, it guarantees that they’ll try their hand at a solution, probabilities or not.
Impervious to Evidence, Liberals Ride Again
By Mona Charen...In his second inaugural (compared to Abraham Lincoln's second by Chris Matthews), Obama proposed a vast new program ($150 billion in combined federal and state funds) for universal preschool serving 4-year-olds. "Every dollar we invest in high-quality early childhood education can save more than $7 later on -- by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime ... We know this works."
...Before getting to science, let's talk politics. The federal government already runs a preschool program called Head Start. Democrats love it because they can claim to be doing something beneficial for poor children. Republicans decline to oppose it because they fear ads saying "Rep. X wants to deny education to poor children ... "
Now, let's talk science. Head Start, a product of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, has been carefully evaluated by the Administration for Children and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services. The study examined 4,667 3- and 4-year-olds across 23 states. It compared children who had applied for but not been accepted into Head Start to those who had participated in it. The children were evaluated by their teachers, parents and outside examiners both before and after. As David Armor and Sonia Sousa relate in the winter issue of National Affairs, the Head Start Impact Study found almost no positive effects of the program.
While children in the program showed some positive results on measures of cognitive skills and social/behavioral ratings while in the program, those results lasted only so long as the children were enrolled and did not carry through to kindergarten or early elementary school. The principle positive effect noted in the HSIS was in social skills for 3-year-olds, but these results were reported only by parents and not replicated by outside examiners. Teachers, by contrast, noted a negative effect on social/emotional skills for the 4-year-old cohort.
The point of Head Start is the promise that it offers poor children a leg up and prepares them for school. It would be nice if it worked, but it doesn't. It does provide jobs for teachers and federally subsidized day care. But taxpayers have spent $180 billion since 1965 for a program that fails to achieve its objectives.
Other studies have examined the effect of preschool more generally on school performance and have found effects ranging from very small to none.
What then was Obama referring to when he insisted that "high-quality" preschool "boosts graduation rates," "reduces teen pregnancy" and so forth? In a post titled "Obama's Preschool Proposal Is Not Based on Sound Research" on the center/left Brookings Institution website, Russ Whitehurst explains that the studies the president and other advocates of universal pre-K rely on are flawed. They do not involve randomized controls (as the HSIS did) but instead employ something called "age-cutoff regression discontinuity."
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