A group of 10 black youths—one of them a 12-year-old girl—surrounded a white couple’s car in Brooklyn, viciously beating the husband and yanking the wife to the pavement by her hair as they peppered the two with racial slurs, authorities said.
Get those crackers!” some of them screamed, according to court papers. “Get that white whore!”
And so on.
I wonder: if President Barack Obama had a son and daughter-in-law, would they look like this couple?
Senator Tim Scott (R, SC), whose business experience is in the insurance industry, thinks so.
After 15 years in the insurance industry I will tell you that the reality of it is this: if it’s hard on the front end, it’s going to be really painful when we get to paying, having to take care of claims, having to take care of people. This is a real challenge and if it’s this bad now, I fear the worst is still to come.
Indeed. If the system is unable to convey accurate information about an applicant for an insurance policy to the company actually handling the insurance, how can it be expected to convey accurate information about an insuree when he files a claim? Or when his doctor files the claim for him? Or make payments to the doctor or hospital based on that (potentially inaccurate) claim from that (potentially inaccurate) policy?
Keep in mind that, at the time the insuree files his claim, he’s just undergone an expensive procedure, and he needs the money. Or the doctor/hospital who’s fronting the patient needs the reimbursement.
The filing to payment/reimbursement process usually was long and dragged-out, even before the advent of Obamacare. How many of you have had an expensive trip to the hospital, or an expensive procedure done in your doctor’s or dentist’s office, and seen the bills come trickling in over the ensuing weeks or months—the initial bill, then what the insurance company covered, and a subsequent bill? Then a final settling-up? But at least then, it was accurate.
This government-generated software that fronts for Obamacare is a disaster now. This same government-generated software also does that backend system of claim process and payment for Obamacare.
Heads up.
Health and Human Services is claiming—carefully buried in one of their blogs, rather than on the Web site’s front page—that among the fixes they have in place is the ability for potential health insurance buyers to check out the policies and premiums on offer before they’re required to create an account (to register) and start giving up personal information.
Sure enough, they’ve got a cool new SEE PLANS NOW button on the front page of HealthCare.gov. Along with the warning that, as of today (24 Oct 13), I only have 158 days to figure out a way past this…software…and get enrolled.
So, how’d that button work? Not very well, as this attempt (24 Oct, still) demonstrates:
There’s a button added, and the problem has been passed along.
The old “a problem passed is a problem solved” meme.
Notice in passing, too: that’s a 37-character “Reference ID” that I’m supposed to read over the phone to someone in HHS’ call center for HealthCare.gov. Yeah.
We have the Obama administration’s decision not to bother with serious background checks on its…navigators…who will be collecting all of our personal financial and medical data as they “help” us choose an Obamacare “insurance” policy.
Now we have another outcome of that administration decision. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s home was trespassed against by one of these attackers and a crowd of her cronies.
Veronica Miranda…appeared with “four busloads of her friends” at [Kobach’s] home near Kansas City in June.
“She was more than trespassing,” [Kobach] said. “She was attempting to intimidate a public official.”
It has been claimed—Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is the most famous proponent of the theory—that unemployment payments to the unemployed are inherently stimulative: the recipients promptly spend the money. The stimulus is assumed to come from what’s called the velocity of money.
The velocity of money is a concept in economics that looks at how many times a dollar gets turned over in a local economy: a man buys groceries and pays rent, the grocer pays his clerk, who buys…, and the landlord hires maintenance workers, who then spend on…. The velocity aspect comes from measures of how many times that dollar gets turned over before it disappears from—has been consumed by—the local economy.
There are holes in the premise that unemployment payments are stimulative; here are some.
Unemployment payments are from tax money taken out of the private sector—which means it’s money not turning over in the private sector until it’s returned as those unemployment payments. Moreover, those unemployment payments are less than what was originally collected for the purpose—the difference is lost to the friction of government. The amount of money that can be turned over is lessened.
Further, the unemployed don’t buy the more expensive things with their unemployment payments; they buy the low cost items in the grocery store. These are low-margin items for the grocer, though, and so they lower, a little, the overall margins of the store. The grocer thus has a little less money with which to do his own purchasing (and perhaps hiring). Turnover is slowed.
On the other hand, money (left) in the private sector gets spent on a variety of things (60%-70% of our economy is consumer spending), including on more expensive items in that grocery store—which helps expand, a little, that store’s overall margin. Turnover is greater.
Money left in the private sector, rather than returned to it as unemployment payments, also gets saved, to an extent (a large part of the remaining 40%-30% after consumer spending), or used to pay down existing debt (another significant fraction of those 40%-30%). Saved, or returned to a financial institution as debt payment, these funds improve the credit-supporting aspect of our economy: they’re funds financial institutions can lend out to support credit card-supported purchases or to support the purchase of big ticket items like cars and houses. More money is available to be turned over.
Savings and debt repayments also are funds financial institutions can lend to businesses for capital improvement and/or expansion and to startups to support their gutsing up or subsequent growth. Here are jobs in the making, and an expansion of the money in the private sector—in the hands of individuals. Here, also, is a reduction in unemployment and so of the need for unemployment payments. More money is available to be turned over.
This is not to say that unemployment payments must never be made under any circumstances. However, a more accurate understanding their real effect on our economy will enable us to make more efficient use of such payments.