Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

YGTBSM

Posted on by
Reply

The federal government cannot verify nearly $3 billion in subsidies distributed through Obamacare, putting significant taxpayer funding “at risk,” according to a new audit report.

HHS’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) said

[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made.

Three findings from the audit [emphasis added]:

  • did not have systems in place to ensure that financial assistance payments were made on be half of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts,
  • did not have systems in place for State marketplaces to submit enrollee eligibility data for financial assistance payments, and
  • did not always follow its guidance for calculating advance CSR payments and does not plan to perform a timely reconciliation of these payments.

That last is mindboggling.

This administration’s performance, both with Obamacare and with information security generally, just keeps on getting better and better. The audit can be seen here.

Federal Security and Privacy

Posted on by
Reply

A government data warehouse stores personal information forever on millions of people who seek coverage under President Obama’s health care law, including those who open an account on HealthCare.gov [ObamaMart] but don’t sign up for coverage.

The Feds are proud of that, too:

The health care system, known as MIDAS, is described on a federal website as the “perpetual central repository” for information that the Affordable Care Act authorizes federal agencies to collect.

“Data in MIDAS is maintained indefinitely at this time,” says another document, a government privacy assessment dated Jan 15.

Never mind that

Marilyn Tavenner, the Medicare administrator at the time, told a congressional hearing that the program’s technology infrastructure was designed “to minimize all possible security vulnerability.”

“And we especially focused on storing the minimum amount of personal data possible[.]”

Or that proper information security technique has data destroyed after a fixed period of time, not held in perpetuity, or for as long as convenient to the holder of those data.

And this gem:

The Obama administration says MIDAS is essential to the smooth operation of the health care law’s insurance markets and meets or exceeds federal security and privacy standards.

The Obama administration has shown us, with OPM, just how shockingly low those security and privacy standards are.

Hmm….

Trust and Integrity

Posted on by
Reply

Regarding the trade fast track authority bill that failed Friday’s House vote, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) had been negotiating with Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) regarding the structure of the Trade Adjustment Assistance sub-bill that was a part of the fast track bill.

Over the course of the week she had helped negotiate a deal…designed to assuage Democrats’ concerns over how the workers’ assistance program would be funded.

Then Pelosi went onto the floor of the House and said this:

I will be voting today to slow down the fast track [measure], to get a better deal for the American people….

And she voted against the TAA that she’d agreed with Boehner.

With that performance, how can Boehner ever trust any other agreement Pelosi might say she accepts? How can Boehner, or any Republican, ever trust any other Pelosi commitment?

Over-Regulation

Posted on by
Reply

…Texas style. An eight-year-old girl and her seven-year-old sister were selling lemonade and kettle corn at their homemade stand in front of their house in Overton, TX. You recognize the deal: kids selling cool drinks (with a snack added this time) on a hot summer day to give passersby some relief and to pick up some spending money.

However.

A police officer on Monday approached the stand, which offered lemonade for 50 cents and “kettle korn” for $1.

In patrol-car video, the officer can be heard asking the girls’ mother…for a permit. She says she wasn’t aware they needed one.

The stand was shut down for that lack of permit. When a family friend went to the town’s government to get the needed permit, the town offered to waive the $150 fee. $150 to be allowed to set up a lemonade stand that might make ten bucks over the three or four days it’s likely to be open.

In the end, it remained too hard for the little girls to do: the town said that health department officials needed to inspect the stand, too. Because of all the food poisoning that occurs at lemonade stands around the country. You remember the epidemics caused by the lemonade stands dotting the neighborhoods when we were growing up, don’t you?

Understand: my beef isn’t with the town or the cop—waiving $150 is no small thing for a metropolis with a population of 2,500, and the cop is doing his job (cops aren’t allowed discretion in these days of politically correct zero tolerance). My beef is with the regulations and with the foolishness of one-size-fits-all rules. Where’s the common sense? Why can’t little boys and girls set up a stand to earn some spending money sometimes without official interference?

In the event, the little girls have decided to stay open, more or less. They’ll give away their lemonade and kettle corn, accepting only donations. If you’re in Overton the next few days, or even if you’re only nearby, head on over to the stand and make a generous donation. And enjoy some cool lemonade and a snack on a hot Texas day.

Random Paranoid Thought on Future Tech

Posted on by
Reply

In just 15 years, [Ray, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google] Kurzweil believes, the human brain will become a hybrid of biology and technology, and we will “put gateways to the cloud in our brains.” And as the cloud becomes more and more advanced and is able to store increasing amounts of information, so too will our brains. By the late 2030’s or early 2040’s, Kurzweil said, the majority of brain function, at least in terms of information processing and thought processes, will be non-biological.

Our brains in the cloud. Hmm…. With the cloud’s notoriously poor security. Our brains get snooped on or hacked by anyone with a kiddy script or by any government with a wild bug up its….

Or peer pressure not just up close, but inside, as the denizens of that cloud decide they don’t like what you’re doing or thinking. So they think otherwise, en masse, from within your own brain.

Like I said, paranoid. Or not.