Congress Has 12 Days

There are 12 days left after their 5 September return from vacation, driven by the Obamacare requirement for health plan providers to commit by 17 September to selling their health plans for the next year or withdrawing, for Congress to pass a potful of legislation.

Two proposals regarding Obamacare are in the offing.  One would shore up the funds transfer of Federal dollars to those providers who are losing money in ObamaMart, and the other instead would send that money as grants to the States to help them generate their own health coverage plan programs.  This one also would eliminate the Individual Mandate.

Also looming is the debt funding deadline that necessitates raising the debt ceiling to pay currently committed-to bills.

Also: an immigration bill that rationalizes our immigration policy is in conference.  It severely restricts green card issuance (which is foolish IMNSHO), but it has the beneficial effect of that rationalization.

Also: an infrastructure restoral bill is under construction.

Also: bills to withdraw counterproductive, if not outright mendacious, Federal rules and rulings in the EPA, DoEd, Labor, etc that were intended to destroy whole industries (can you say, “coal,” boys and girls?), cancel rule of law on campuses, much too excessively favor unions over management (NLRB), and on and on.

Twelve days of Christmas?  Or is the Grinch coming? [/snark]  Not all of those necessaries have that 12-day deadline, but all of them need to be done quickly, since Congressmen—of both parties and in both houses of Congress—are too (how to put this delicately) chicken to do anything substantive in an election year.  Even were they around in DC doing their jobs instead of hiding out on their various campaign trails.

Obamacare and Drug Abuse

From a Wall Street Journal op-ed, come a couple of very telling statistics regarding the opioid addiction epidemic.

…overdose deaths per million residents rose twice as fast in the 29 Medicaid expansion states—those that increased eligibility to 138% from 100% of the poverty line—than in the 21 non-expansion states between 2013 and 2015.

And

There were also marked disparities between neighboring states based on whether they opted into ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion. Deaths increased twice as much in New Hampshire (108%) and Maryland (44%)—expansion states—than in Maine (55%) and Virginia (22%). Drug fatalities shot up by 41% in Ohio while climbing 3% in non-expansion Wisconsin.

This also reflects…interestingly…on those Republican Representatives and Senators who chose to vote against rolling back the Medicaid expansion part of Obamacare.

We’ll See

In an unprecedented move against North Korea, China on Monday issued an order to carry out the United Nations sanctions imposed on the rogue regime earlier this month.

Of course, in the days immediately following the first meeting between President Donald Trump and the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping, just after Trump’s inauguration, the PRC acted like it was going to start honoring then-existing sanctions against northern Korea.

That turned out to be just an act.  Is the present “order” serious, or is it just another empty gesture?

We’ll see, indeed.

Collapsing Obamacare

These data are from the Kaiser Family Foundation.  There was such hope by the health care coverage providers at the start; then the realities of the “market” place hit, and hit hard.  Following the early expansion of coverage providers into ObamaMart, the drop-off in companies between 2016 and 2017, and the resulting collapse of choice—in too many counties, even of any availability at all—is stark.  It’s expected to get worse in 2018 and 2019, too.

The State-by-State drop off is presented in the table below, constructed from KFF‘s table at the link.  The average drop-off across all States is nearly 23%.

Obamacare must be eliminated, and a free market set of parameters that would facilitate actual health insurance must be set in place.  Republicans need to get on the stick, and promptly.

Location Number of Issuers in 2014 Number of Issuers in 2015 Number of Issuers in 2016 Number of Issuers in 2017 Per Cent Drop-off
Alabama 2 3 3 1 66.7%
Alaska 2 2 2 1 50.0%
Arizona 8 11 8 2 75.0%
Arkansas 3 3 4 3 25.0%
California 11 10 12 11 8.3%
Colorado 10 10 8 7 12.5%
Connecticut 3 4 4 2 50.0%
Delaware 2 2 2 2 0.0%
District of Columbia 3 3 2 2 0.0%
Florida 8 10 7 5 28.6%
Georgia 5 9 8 5 37.5%
Hawaii 2 2 2 2 0.0%
Idaho 4 5 5 5 0.0%
Illinois 5 8 7 5 28.6%
Indiana 4 8 7 4 42.9%
Iowa 4 4 4 4 0.0%
Kansas 3 3 3 3 0.0%
Kentucky 3 5 7 3 57.1%
Louisiana 4 5 4 3 25.0%
Maine 2 3 3 3 0.0%
Maryland 4 5 5 3 40.0%
Massachusetts 10 10 10 9 10.0%
Michigan 9 13 11 9 18.2%
Minnesota 5 4 4 4 0.0%
Mississippi 2 3 3 2 33.3%
Missouri 3 6 6 4 33.3%
Montana 3 4 3 3 0.0%
Nebraska 4 4 4 2 50.0%
Nevada 4 5 3 3 0.0%
New Hampshire 1 5 5 4 20.0%
New Jersey 3 5 5 2 60.0%
New Mexico 4 5 4 4 0.0%
New York 16 16 15 14 6.7%
North Carolina 2 3 3 2 33.3%
North Dakota 3 3 3 3 0.0%
Ohio 12 15 14 10 28.6%
Oklahoma 4 4 2 1 50.0%
Oregon 11 10 10 6 40.0%
Pennsylvania 7 8 7 5 28.6%
Rhode Island 2 3 3 2 33.3%
South Carolina 3 4 3 1 66.7%
South Dakota 3 3 2 2 0.0%
Tennessee 4 5 4 3 25.0%
Texas 11 14 16 10 37.5%
Utah 6 6 4 3 25.0%
Vermont 2 2 2 2 0.0%
Virginia 5 6 7 8 -14.3%
Washington 7 9 8 6 25.0%
West Virginia 1 1 2 2 0.0%
Wisconsin 13 15 16 15 6.3%
Wyoming 2 2 1 1 0.0%

Rule of Law

The DC Circuit Court stacked by President Barack Obama (D) seems to be iffy on the thing.  In an appeal concerning whether the monies the Federal government pays to health care plan providers as subsidies so the plan providers will hold down premiums and deductibles can actually be paid—the funds never were appropriated by Congress, so the payments aren’t legitimate, ruled the trial court—the Circuit Court ruled in part:

The States have shown a substantial risk that an injunction requiring termination of the payments at issue here…would lead directly and imminently to an increase in insurance prices, which in turn will increase the number of uninsured individuals for whom the States will have to provide health care[.]

That may well be true, and if true, it would be unfortunate.

However.

The law is clear: monies not actually appropriated by Congress cannot be spent by the Federal government—the money, in a very real legal sense, does not exist.  It’s also illegal to take funds from other, actually extant, appropriations to spend on non-appropriated-for activities.

The decisions whether to appropriate, and then to spend, are solely political decisions, and judges cannot—may not under our Constitution—decide in any way other than what the law actually says; in particular, they don’t get to rule in accordance with what they wish the law to say.  Doing the latter is nothing other than judge-made law.

In this case, the appellate court plainly has chosen rule by men—via judge-made law, here—over rule of law.