Monthly Archives: March 2016

Error in Judgment

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A CVS store in Beltsville, MD, was robbed earlier in the week, and the manager, an Army veteran, intervened in the attempt. CVS fired him for the effort.

It seems two men jumped the pharmacy counter and forced the pharmacists to open their safe so the two thugs could steal the controlled drugs inside. Our army vet had his cashiers call the police, and he locked the doors so the thugs couldn’t leave.

In the end, the thugs got away, anyway. When the vet’s boss arrived afterward, he fired the vet—for intervening. The vet, a bigger man than some, said this about his firing:

My boss, when he came in to deliver the news, he was sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t have a choice.

Actually, the boss did. Misguided CVS policy, or not, the boss didn’t have to fire the man; he could have stood as tall as his employee.

Remember these errors in judgment, by both the boss and by CVS, as you contemplate doing business with CVS.

Trump’s Plan for Replacing Obamacare

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Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump finally has made public his plan for eliminating and replacing Obamacare. His plan consists of the following seven points:

  1. Completely repeal Obamacare. Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.
  2. Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines. As long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements, any vendor ought to be able to offer insurance in any state. By allowing full competition in this market, insurance costs will go down and consumer satisfaction will go up.
  3. Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns under the current tax system. Businesses are allowed to take these deductions so why wouldn’t Congress allow individuals the same exemptions? As we allow the free market to provide insurance coverage opportunities to companies and individuals, we must also make sure that no one slips through the cracks simply because they cannot afford insurance. We must review basic options for Medicaid and work with states to ensure that those who want healthcare coverage can have it.
  4. Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Contributions into HSAs should be tax-free and should be allowed to accumulate. These accounts would become part of the estate of the individual and could be passed on to heirs without fear of any death penalty. These plans should be particularly attractive to young people who are healthy and can afford high-deductible insurance plans. These funds can be used by any member of a family without penalty. The flexibility and security provided by HSAs will be of great benefit to all who participate.
  5. Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals. Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other medical-related procedure.
  6. Block-grant Medicaid to the states. Nearly every state already offers benefits beyond what is required in the current Medicaid structure. The state governments know their people best and can manage the administration of Medicaid far better without federal overhead. States will have the incentives to seek out and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse to preserve our precious resources.
  7. Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products. Congress will need the courage to step away from the special interests and do what is right for America. Though the pharmaceutical industry is in the private sector, drug companies provide a public service. Allowing consumers access to imported, safe and dependable drugs from overseas will bring more options to consumers.

The first point seems confusing. Repealing Obamacare would include elimination of the Individual Mandate. However, would simply repealing the IM satisfy this candidate on this point? The rest of Obamacare is damaging enough separately from the IM.

The second point seems internally inconsistent. A plan that complies with one state’s requirements won’t necessarily comply with another state’s requirements, and so that plan could not be sold in both states. This failure, though, does not prevent a vendor from offering insurance in any state; there are a plethora of vendors—UnitedHealth, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna, for instance—already sell health coverage plans in any state; they just don’t sell the same plan across state lines.

Regarding his sixth point, I’d add the requirement that those block grants be reduced by 10% of the first year’s grant (which would be taken as the baseline grant for a given state) every year until the grants reach zero. Simply block granting is a good start, though.

On the whole, the plan is based on free market principles, as Trump claims on his Web site. Subject to clarifying the two points of confusion, this outline looks like a good start to a candidate debate on competing health care reform plans. Marco Rubio has a somewhat less specific, but generally market-oriented plan, and John Kasich has one that’s centered on the health care and health cost coverage providers. The three plans should be explored in detail in the coming debates. The outcome then would form the core of a useful Congressional debate in the coming term about how to reform and salvage the health provision and health cost coverage industries that have been so heavily damaged by the Democratic Party and its Obamacare.

The Fox Investigating the Hen House Leak, Revisited

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I mentioned Fox Business News‘ reporting on the FAA’s carefully biased “outreach” plan for increasing “diversity” in its air traffic controller employee base nearly a year ago, and I concluded that brief mention with the seemingly cynical remark, “Stand by for another whitewash.”

Now, it seems the whitewash is well in hand. DoT conducted its investigation, and there’s no word on its outcome. The FAA conducted its investigation; it

concluded an internal investigation which cleared the NBCFAE and Snow of doing anything wrong. In a statement sent to members of Congress last month the FAA claimed its Office of Security and Hazardous Materials Safety (ASH) had conducted an investigation into the allegations of cheating and favoritism. The FAA claims it was a thorough investigation which reviewed relevant audio recordings and documents. The statement says, “ASH found no specific information or evidence supporting claims that Human Resources employees improperly provided an advantage to ATCS applicants affiliated with the NBCFAE….”

The NBCFAE, recall, is the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, one of whose members, Moranda Reilly (among others),

received emails in December 2013 and a recorded message from NBCFAE officer and air traffic controller Shelton Snow.   Reilly says the emails included buzzwords that, “…would help identify us. Key words the system would pick up. It was a kind of a way for our resumes to be picked and chosen. We were told not to share this information with anybody outside NBCFAE.”

Now, in an attempted final response to a FOIA request for those and related emails pursuant to a related law suit, the FAA has filed a motion with the Federal court presiding claiming it is

unable to recover missing and “corrupted” emails….

The FAA reached its conclusion of no wrong-doing, no carefully constructed bias in its air traffic controller applicant selection, by the FAA knowing these critical data weren’t being used in its investigation.

The “missing and unrecoverable” status of that evidence seems awfully convenient.

Orenstein’s Ruling

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…on the Apple case in New York. The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog has some notes on Orenstein’s ruling.

In a discussion of why the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (which in the context of this discussion authorized things like pen registers in telecommunications companies’ landline telephone switching centers to be attached to specific telephone circuits in response to a search warrant) wasn’t applicable to the New York case, Orenstein wrote

The absence from that comprehensive scheme of any requirement that Apple provide the assistance sought here implies a legislative decision to prohibit the imposition of such a duty. Thus, even under the government’s reading of the [All Writs Act], I would conclude that while the matter is a close call, the Application seeks an order that is not “agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”

And (here as summarized by the Law Blog) in answering a hypothetical in which the President proposed a bill requiring [Apple] to submit to the government in similar cases and the Congress unanimously rejected it:

Under the government’s reading of the All Writs Act, he says, the Justice Department could still seek an order compelling Apple’s assistance “because Congress had merely rejected the bill—however emphatically, and however clear its reasons for doing so—rather than affirmatively passing legislation to prohibit the executive branch’s proposal.” He describes that reading of the All Writs Act as “absurd.”

“Absurd” understates the case. Here’s what the Constitution says about what the government is permitted [sic] to do:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If it’s not a specifically named capacity of the government to do, it is expressly forbidden the government. Full stop.

Misusing the Judicial System

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Here’s another cynical decision to bypass the legislative branch of our republican government design, this time by DoJ. Given the behavior of the Obama administration, though, this attitude is unsurprising.

A Federal judge in a New York drug case has ruled that Apple cannot be forced by the government to help crack a cell phone held by prosecutors and claimed by those prosecutors to have critical, if encrypted, information.

The judge wrote, in part,

How best to balance those interests [between privacy and security] is a matter of critical importance to our society, and the need for an answer becomes more pressing daily, as the tide of technological advance flows ever farther past the boundaries of what seemed possible even a few decades ago. But that debate must happen today, and it must take place among legislators who are equipped to consider the technological and cultural realities of a world their predecessors could not begin to conceive.

Indeed. That balance, where to draw the line, and how is a political decision, to be determined solely by us citizens through our elected representatives in Congress. Political decisions cannot be reached by judges; their role is strictly limited by our Constitution to determining the constitutionality of a law and if constitutional to applying it as written. Judges can not, may not, adjust a law to suit the government’s wishes.

Nevertheless, Justice will stay within the judicial system. A carefully unnamed (at least by the AP, whose article is at the link above) insisted on this:

We are disappointed in the Magistrate’s ruling and plan to ask the District Judge to review the matter in the coming days…. This phone may contain evidence that will assist us in an active criminal investigation and we will continue to use the judicial system in our attempt to obtain it.

We will continue to use the judicial system…. DoJ will continue deliberately to bypass Congress. DoJ will continue to seek to impose its own political will on us.