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News

Two Blue Cross plans out of Obamacare, Obama wants taxpayer bailout for insurers

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Investors Business Daily reports on the latest big health insurer to drop out of Obamacare.:

Two Blue Cross plans made the stunning announcement in the past week that they were dropping out of ObamaCare markets. If even the Blues — the backbone of the individual insurance market for decades — can’t make it, ObamaCare is truly on the road to ruin.

[…]Despite getting approval on an eye-popping rate hike of nearly 60% for 2017, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee announced that it was quitting three of the largest ObamaCare markets in the state, which will leave 100,000 enrollees to scramble for an alternative coverage next year.

The state’s Blue Cross had lost half a billion dollars in ObamaCare’s first three years, and the company’s spokesman said “there are too many uncertainties to continue participating on a statewide level as we have before.”

That decision came shortly after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska’s announcement that it was pulling out of ObamaCare entirely in that state — stranding some 20,000 ObamaCare enrollees — after losing $140 million. “We can’t take another hit,” said CEO Steve Martin last Friday. The decision came after the company had won approval for a 42% premium increase.

These dropouts are on top of the June announcement that Minnesota’s Blue Cross was abandoning the states individual market entirely in the wake of $500 million in losses, which means more than 100,000 people in the state will be looking for a new insurer for next year.

That same month, Arizona’s Blue Cross announced that it was dropping out of two counties — Maricopa and Pinal. It later decided to get back into Pinal County after Aetna fled the state, which would have left Pinal with zero insurers in the ObamaCare exchange.

In North Carolina, Blue Cross was contemplating an exit until other insurers dropped out, leaving it the sole carrier in much of the state.

[…]Even before the latest pullbacks, 974 counties in the U.S. — which represent 31% of all counties — were down to one ObamaCare insurer after Aetna, UnitedHealth, Humana and others pulled out of various states, and after most of the ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops failed, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 31% of counties will be stuck with just two insurers.

Fewer choices means less competition means higher prices for consumers.

Bloomberg News explains:

Minnesota will let the health insurers in its Obamacare market raise rates by at least 50 percent next year, after the individual market there came to the brink of collapse, the state’s commerce commissioner said Friday.

The increases range from 50 percent to 67 percent, Commissioner Mike Rothman’s office said in a statement. Rothman, who regulates the state’s insurers, is an appointee under Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat. The rate hike follows increases for this year of 14 percent to 49 percent.

[…]On average, rates in the state will rise by about 60 percent, said Shane Delaney, a spokesman for MNSure, the state’s marketplace for Obamacare plans.

Wow, this is a lot different than what Obama promised in his campaign speeches, isn’t it?

A lot of young people believed Obama’s promises in 2008 and again in 2012:

And you can keep your doctor! And you can keep your health plan! Because Obama! Everything will be fine, don’t ask for evidence that he has ever achieved anything in his life. He’s handsome! He has a nice voice! He’s confident!

Should we pick a candidate based on our emotional response to his confidence?
Should we pick a candidate based on our emotional response to his confident words?

Yes, OK. But what about this problem of health insurance companies taking huge losses and pulling out of Obamacare? I don’t think that the program works as well, if all the health insurance providers stop selling health insurance.

Well, don’t worry! Because Obama has a plan to give all his insurance company friends a big bailout from his private stash of taxpayer dollars.

The Weekly Standard explains:

Obamacare’s “risk corridor” program was designed to redistribute money in the Obamacare exchanges from health insurers who made money to those who lost money. Profitable insurers would pay in; unprofitable insurers would get paid out. With so many insurers losing money under Obamacare, however, the program was positioned to become a bailout, as there was no guarantee in Obamacare’s text that the money paid out wouldn’t exceed the money paid in.

[…][I]n late 2014, congressional Republican leadership took action. Congress put an end to Obamacare’s insurer bailout, as it added language to the CRomnibus spending package stipulating that the risk corridors must be budget-neutral: No more could be paid out to insurers than was paid in by insurers. Taxpayers would no longer be on the hook for bailing out insurance companies. In December of 2014, Obama signed that legislation into law.

Congress had acted just in time. Whereas the Obama administration and the CBO both claimed the risk-corridor program would pay for itself, insurers paid $362 million into the program in 2014 and—if not for Congress’s having stopped the bailout—would have been paid out a cool $2.87 billion. For every $1 that was paid in, about $8 would have been paid out. Instead, insurers received only $362 million, and Congress saved taxpayers $2.5 billion.

Obama now seems determined to change that. He is reportedly planning another end-run around Congress—and the Constitution—by bailout out insurers with taxpayer money that Congress hasn’t appropriated. The Post reports, “Justice Department officials have privately told several health plans suing over the unpaid money that they are eager to negotiate a broad settlement, which could end up offering payments to about 175 health plans.” […]In other words, the administration is “eager” to settle with insurers and provide them the bailout that Congress, with Obama’s signature, expressly denied.

Oh, that’s fine then. Obama is going to give the big insurance companies the bailout they deserve. He is such a generous man!

Obama already doubled the national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in 8 years. We have another $1 trillion in student loan debt, thanks to his nationalization of the student loan administration. And another housing bubble of unknown value on the horizon. When will voters understand that they need to vote for competent people?

News

Society of Christian Philosophers shames invited speaker for expressing Biblical views

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Anti-marriage gay activists vandalize church
Anti-marriage gay activists vandalize church

Something interesting happened at a recent meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, which is a group of left-leaning philosophers who are (apparently) neither Christian, nor Philosophers.

How so?

Rightly Considered blog explains what happened:

[A]t the latest Midwest meeting of the SCP, Richard Swinburne presented a paper in which he argued for the view that homosexual acts are immoral and that homosexuality is a disability that should be cured. The response from some quarters was predictably hysterical and unremarkable. What is remarkable is that the President of the SCP, Michael Rea, shamefully acquiesced to the leftist hysteria by issuing an ingratiating public apology, accusing Swinburne of causing pain and undermining the SCP’s mission of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion:

I want to express my regret regarding the hurt caused by the recent Midwest meeting of the Society for Christian Philosophers. The views expressed in Professor Swinburne’s keynote are not those of the SCP itself. Though our membership is broadly united by way of religious faith, the views of our members are otherwise diverse. As President of the SCP, I am committed to promoting the intellectual life of our philosophical community. Consequently (among other reasons), I am committed to the values of diversity and inclusion. As an organization, we have fallen short of those ideals before, and surely we will again. Nonetheless, I will strive for them going forward. If you have thoughts or feedback you would like to share with me, I would welcome hearing from you via email or private message.

Ed Feser had an interesting point-by-point response to that the SCP did the Swinburne.

I thought this part was the most interesting:

[W]hat is this business about the “hurt” Swinburne’s views allegedly caused?  Philosophers discuss and defend all sorts of ideas that some people are bound to find offensive.  So what?  If, to take just one example, a philosopher defends the moral legitimacy of abortion, he may well offend those who regard abortion as a species of murder; whereas if he argues instead that abortion is a species of murder, he may well offend those who have had abortions.  Still, philosophers discuss and debate abortion all the time, and no one regards this as noteworthy or in need of some disclaimer.  So why are things different in the case of Swinburne’s chosen topic?

[…]If the arguments for the side you disagree with in the abortion debate are not good arguments, then that is what you should be trying to show.  Going on about hurt feelings doesn’t add anything at all to the philosophical critique.  On the other hand, if the arguments for the side you disagree with are good arguments, then you should stop disagreeing with them and stop being offended by them.  In either case, hurt feelings are neither here nor there.  And every philosopher knows this where other topics are concerned.  Why are things any different in Swinburne’s case?

Apparently, if you attach the word “Christian” to the name “Society of Christian Philosophers”, it seems to mean as much as attaching the word “Affordable” to the “Affordable Care Act”. Unlike the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the SCP has no requirement for a statement of faith, and boy, does it show.

More Feser:

Fifth, Rea speaks about the SCP having “fallen short” of the ideals of diversity and inclusion and of his resolve to “strive for them going forward.”  Well, what does that entail exactly?  Evidently he thinks that letting Swinburne say what he did amounts to having “fallen short.”  So is Rea saying that, “going forward,” he will work to make sure that views like Swinburne’s are no longer expressed at SCP meetings, or at least in SCP keynote addresses?  How would preventing views from being expressed amount to the furthering of “diversity and inclusion”?  And how would that square with the free and open debate that philosophy is supposed to be all about?

Philosophy USED to be about free and open debate, now it’s just a bunch of crybabies silencing those who don’t celebrate their views.

Feser:

Civil and reasonable discussion about questions of sexual morality is increasingly difficult today, and it is precisely those who are most prone loudly to express their “hurt” feelings who make it so.  Even the most polite, reasoned, and carefully qualified objections to homosexual acts, transgenderism, etc. are routinely dismissed a priorias “bigotry,” fit only to be ridiculed and shouted down rather than rationally engaged.  In extreme cases those who express such views face cyberbullying, loss of employment, and the like.  As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Windsor, such views are now widely treated as “beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement” and their proponents shunned as if they were “enemies of the human race.”

To pretend (as some Christian philosophers I know do) that this sort of thing is essentially just a regrettable but understandable overreaction on the part of wounded souls who have had some bad experiences with obnoxious religious people is naiveté.  It is often rather a calculated political tactic aimed at making public dissent from liberal conventional wisdom on sexuality practically difficult or impossible.

Feser actually quotes several gay activists to prove that their goal is to shame opposition to their agenda at a non-rational level.

And that non-rational level seems to be the level that most left-wing philosophers are at. Rod Dreher quotes the response of one of the Yale philosophers to Swinburne’s views. It’s just name-calling and vulgarity. But maybe that’s all that philosophy is now. Sad to see that this is the case even with the Society of “Christian” Philosophers.

Philosophy, which used to be as rigorous as my own discipline of computer science because of its roots in symbolic logic, now appears to be as rigorous as any other far-left politically correct indoctrination on the modern university campus.

I’m a software engineer, I work for a living in the competitive private sector, where results matter. If I acted like philosophers do when confronted with opposing views, I’d be fired on the spot. But in the modern secular university, apparently sub-rational thuggery is a viable career alternative. I didn’t think that my opinion of philosophers and philosophy could go any lower, but it just did. No one should be paying money for a philosophy degree, and not one dime of taxpayer money should be funding these adult children.

Commentary

Miriam Grossman explains what young people are taught about sex in the schools

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Lets take a closer look at a puzzle
Lets take a closer look at a puzzle

I wanted to post a lecture given by someone with experience counseling students about sexual health at a major university campus.

Here is the speaker’s bio:

Miriam Grossman, MD, has been a psychiatrist at UCLA Student Psychological Services for more than ten years and has worked with students for twenty years. She received her BA from Bryn Mawr College, her medical degree from New York University, and her psychiatric training through Cornell University Medical College. She is board certified in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry.

I found this lecture given by her to NZ Family First here:

Rather than try to summarize that lecture, I found a full transcript of a similar lecture that she delivered at the Heritage Foundation about what public schools teach young people about sex, and why. This is especially good for those who want to read rather than listen.

Here’s the abstract:

The principles of sexual health education are not based on the hard sciences. Sex education is animated by a specific vision of how society must change, and because of this, sex ed curricula omit critical biological truths and endorse high-risk behaviors. The priority for SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, and Advocates for Youth is not the health and well-being of young people. These federally funded organizations are fighting “repression” and “intolerance,” not herpes or syphilis. But when sexual freedom reigns, sexual health suffers. Our children are being taught that you can play with fire, and we are obligated to inform them of the risks they face and to teach them biological truths, even when they are politically incorrect.

And here’s a scary excerpt:

You’re all familiar with the epidemics of STIs, sexually transmitted infections, in this country, but there’s another one. It’s a man-made one. It’s an epidemic of ignorance, misinformation, and duplicity.

If you go to the medical library and browse through the journals, you will learn some amazing things, such as a girl’s cervix is more easily infected by sexually transmitted infections than a woman’s because it has yet to mature. Boys and men don’t have a corresponding area of vulnerability in their reproductive system. The neurobiology of teen girls is unique, and it makes a girl’s developing brain more vulnerable to stress, especially the stress of failed relationships.

You’d learn that the adolescent brain functions differently from an adult’s. The area responsible for reasoning, suppression of impulses, and weighing the pros and cons of one’s decisions is not fully developed. Furthermore, under conditions that are intense, novel, and stimulating, teens’ decisions are more likely to be shortsighted and driven by emotion. You would discover that oral sex is associated with cancer of the tonsils and throat. The human papilloma virus infects those areas just like it does the cervix.

You’d find loads of articles—in fact, entire books— about oxytocin, a hormone that tells the brain, “You’re with someone special now; time to turn caution off and trust on; time to create an emotional bond.” In both sexes, oxytocin is released during cuddling and kissing and sexual touching, but estrogen ramps up the effects of oxytocin, and testosterone dampens them.

[…]You’d learn also that the healthy vagina, due to its architecture and biology, is an unfriendly environment for HIV, while the rectum has cells that facilitate the entry of HIV directly into the lymphatic system. This and many, many more things have been known for years, but when you turn to sex ed curricula and, most disturbing, the Web sites that are suggested to young people and their parents, nothing: none of this information.

So there is a man-made epidemic of ignorance: ignorance of biological truths that should be central in any sex ed curriculum or parent education program. Awareness of these truths can save lives.

I put the responsibility for the epidemic of ignorance directly on those organizations that are at the helm of teaching sex education because, contrary to their claims and promises, their programs are not comprehensive; they are not science-based or medically accurate or up-to-date.

I’ll go even further: They are not about preventing disease. Sex ed is a social movement. Its goal is to change society. The primary goal of groups like SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, and Advocates for Youth is to promote sexual freedom and to rid society of its Judeo–Christian taboos and restrictions.

The rest of the lecture transcript contains specific examples of how sex educators put children at risk.

I read Dr. Grossman’s first book, and I bought her second book, and I really, really recommend these books to people who think that sex is harmless and that sex educators have no agenda that they are trying to push on children. I really can’t recommend these books more highly to parents who trust public schools to tell children the truth about important issues like sexuality. They have an agenda, and so you should be armed with the facts.