Tag Archives: ACA

News

Michigan House and Senate Republicans pass Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act

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Good news from Michigan, delivered by Live Action.

Excerpt:

[On Wednesday,] Michigan won an important pro-life victory.

It started this summer when over 315,000 registered voters, representing every county in Michigan, signed the NO Taxes for Abortion Insurance Petition, making it clear that the people of Michigan do not believe abortion is health care and we do not want to pay for it.

On December 11th, both the Michigan House and Senate passed this petition as the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act, with the House voting 62-47 and the Senate voting 27-11. According to this act, elective abortion will no longer be a standard benefit in health plans. Abortion coverage will only be available by purchasing a separate rider. This act also ensures that our tax dollars and insurance premiums will not go toward funding abortions.

Because the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act was initiated by citizens, as allowed by the Michigan Constitution, it does not require the governor’s signature to become law.

[…]The Affordable Care Act requires all the states to have health care exchanges (also called marketplaces) available by 2014. The ACA allows states to exclude abortion as a covered benefit in these insurance exchanges through legislation like the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act. Michigan is the 24th state to exclude abortion coverage from its insurance plans through this provision.

But not everyone was pleased. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was not pleased. And when questioned by Republicans about whether they could see the list of plans that do not support abortion, she declined to provide that list.’

CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

Although Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Oct. 30 that she would provide Congress with a list of the Obamacare plans in the federal health exchange that do not cover abortion, she has yet to do so and, testifying on Dec. 11, backed away from that pledge and urged consumers to just look at the plan benefits on the exchange website.

At the Oct. 30 hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce , Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked Seblius, “Can you provide for the committee the list of insurers in the federal exchange who do not offer, as part of their package, abortion coverage?”

During a somewhat heated back-and-forth, Sebelis said, “I think we can do that, sir,” and added, “I know that is the plan, I will get that information to you.”

Yet during a Dec. 11 House subcommittee hearing, Sebelius declined to say whether she would provide the list requested and instead urged lawmakers and consumers to just look at the benefits package for each plan on the Obamacare exchange websites.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Shimkus said,  “Madam Secretary, you promised last time you were here that you would provide me a national list of those who cover and those who do not cover abortion and abortion services. We have yet to receive that list.”

[…]In an earlier, fractious exchange with Sebelius, Rep. Shimkus expressed frustration, saying, “This is why we’re frustrated, because we just don’t get the truth out of you.”

Oh those Democrats. Always trying to make us pay for abortions even if we are pro-life.

News

Why is the unemployment rate for young people so high?

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A few of the policies that are causing the problem are explained in this article from the American Enterprise Institute. I have highlighted the policies that discourage employers in the snippet I excerpted below.

Excerpt:

If Washington is serious about helping this vulnerable population, it should focus on increasing workers’ take home pay and lowering the business employment costs. Conventional wisdom preaches increasing minimum wages. But a far more effective policy would be to simply exempt younger workers and their employers from paying taxes related to their employment.

People in the workforce typically get their start when they are young – beginning with some entry level job where they learn basic job skills, develop effective work habits, and earn a modest wage. This important first step gives them a chance at earning wages and achieving a level of success that facilitates advance up the economic ladder. Work habits and skills are generally learned early in life or unfortunately for too many, not learned at all.

The long term damage caused by this lack of employment is very large. Income mobility has declined. The sad fact is the probability of people at the bottom moving up the income ladder is lower than it was 20 and 30 years ago. Many studies have demonstrated that three factors determine most of the difference between those who start in poverty and stay there and those who don’t – finishing high school; avoiding becoming a teenage parent, and getting a full-time job. Those who do all three have only a 2 percent chance of living in poverty and a 75 percent chance of joining the middle class.

Many economists and social scientists have suggested both demand and supply reasons why youth unemployment is so high. On the demand side, the national safety net – Food Stamps, Earned Income Tax, welfare and subsidy programs of all kinds – substantially reduce the relative benefit of working. In other words, the wage premium for working versus taking advantage of benefit programs on an after-tax basis is simply too small to encourage many people to work.

If a young person enters the work force at the minimum wage, he grosses $7.25 per hour. From this, in a place like Los Angeles, he pays federal and state income taxes and Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes which total $1.11. So, out of the $7.25 earned, he keeps just over $6. If he is single and without children, he won’t qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or food stamps.

On the supply side, the cost of employing young people is high relative to their economic contribution to potential employers. An entry-level employee costs his employer much more than $7.25. In addition to his wages, the employer also pays Social Security and Medicare taxes, plus unemployment insurance, that add on an average of 92 cents. So today, the new employee costs the business $8.13 per hour, of which the young employee keeps only three-quarters.

This cost will increase further when the Affordable Care Act kicks in. Beginning in 2015, if the employer has more than 50 employees, he will have to provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a $2,000 fine – which comes to $.96 per hour. That will make an abysmal employment situation even worse.

Overall, public policy ought to be aimed at encouraging businesses to create entry level jobs. Perversely, attempts to increase the minimum wage and institute so-called living wages would do the exact opposite. If government wanted to help create a permanent economic underclass, it would implement exactly the policies that are in place. All of us who want people to enjoy earned success ought to be outraged at these government policies.

This is important, because very often the policies proposed by people on the left are not designed to solve the problem. Thomas Sowell argues that the real purpose of leftist policies is for leftist leaders to feel self-important by getting applause from those who are economically ignorant. They push policies that sound good but that don’t actually work.

The good news is that young people are waking up. According to a Harvard University survey, 57% of young adults now disapprove of Obamacare. Even they are starting to think about what is happening to them. Maybe they can avoid the slavery that awaits them under the Democrat’s massive program of intergenerational theft, but I’m not optimistic. They have really short attention spans, and you don’t learn the fundamentals of economics on Instagram and Pinterest.

News

How the Obama administration made sure people would lose their health insurance plans

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Patrick Brennan writes about the NBC News bombshell from yesterday in National Review.

Excerpt:

Much derision has been heaped on White House consigliere Valerie Jarrett’s tweet last night claiming that “nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans” (this is a “FACT,” she noted). There’s actually a little truth to this: Technically, individual-market plans that qualify as grandfathered under the ACA are exempt from some of the law’s mandates — but not all of them. As long as a grandfathered plan doesn’t undergo any “material changes” after 2010, it maintains its grandfathered status, so it doesn’t have to comply with all of the law’s strictures as other plans do on January 1. But those material changes are almost inevitable, in large part because of the ACA — meaning the plan will almost certainly be cancelled and replaced with a more expensive, more comprehensive plan, as millions of Americans have learned and continued to learn.

[…][I]nsurers lose their grandfathered status if the plan has a “material change,” defined as “(1) eliminating or significantly reducing benefits; (2) raising co-insurance or co-payments; (3) raising deductibles; (4) reducing employer contributions; or, (5) adding or increasing an annual limit”…

That sounds benign. It sounds as if the plans are only going to be changed if insurance companies change them voluntarily. But actually insurance companies must change the plans because Obamacare requires the plans to cover a whole bunch of new treatments, which will necessarily cause the plans to go up in price, as well.

Look:

[E]ven these grandfathered plans have to comply with a number of new Obamacare mandates — most important, they have to accept applicants regardless of preexisting conditions and charge them the same premiums, they have to eliminate lifetime-spending caps, and they have to cover dependents under 26 for free (there are other rules that also apply to grandfathered group plans). How, exactly, were health insurers supposed to comply with these new mandates (and other ways the ACA is raising costs) without raising customers’ contributions in the way the law says means losing grandfathered status? Obviously, they could have chosen to raise premiums alone — but then customers who don’t expect to use a lot of health care would switch to plans with higher cost-sharing, which ruins an insurance pool.

In other words, the ACA did make it incredibly hard for insurers to continue plans for the millions of Americans who don’t want comprehensive insurance — financially, insurers almost certainly had to adjust them in such a way that they would lose grandfathered status. This isn’t “normal turnover in the insurance market” (though there is plenty of that in the individual market); there’s a reason why an exceptionally large number of Americans are getting cancellation notices this fall.

The bottom line is that you can’t keep the vast majority of the plans that Obama said you could keep. He lied.

Newsbusters notes that the major news networks are not even talking about the NBC News revelation that the Obama administration knew that their law would cause people to lose their health care. I think the lesson here is that Democrats lie, and the media, being an extension of the Democrat Party, covers up for them. That’s why the Democrats win elections.