Category Archives: regulation

Obamacare Rates

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So much (to pound the dead horse) for rates going down $2,500 per, courtesy of Obamacare.

The research team at investment bank Morgan Stanley surveyed 131 brokers, finding that December 2013 rates are rising in excess of 6% in the small group market, and 9% in the individual market.

But that’s just chump change, so far (except for the victims of the rise).

More:

[H]ealth plans are also predicting higher cost trends in 2014, after years of stabilization (much of it attributable to the economic downturn [and its long-term non-recovery, say I], which reduced medical utilization rates).

And:

Among the states seeing the highest annualized rate hikes (for the full 2013 year) in the individual market are Connecticut, which is averaging a 37% increase; Florida (42%); Illinois (33%); Michigan (39%); and Minnesota (35%).

Among the states with the biggest annualized spike in the small group rates are Delaware, which is averaging a 35% increase; Michigan (30%); and Minnesota (50%).

It’s interesting, too, to note that these are some of the most tightly regulated states; their regulations (now superseded by Obamacare regulations) greatly suppressed health “insurance” rates.

More Fear of Competition

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..in the arena for ideas, again by Progressives.  This time as they attack children in New York for having a different idea.

A 13-year-old at Orange-Ulster BOCES in New York was suspended for two days last week for the heinous crime of telling her classmates and friends that they did not have to sit for Common Core examinations.  Never mind that she was telling the truth—the exams are entirely voluntary.  Never mind that the word had to come from her because the school administration, in their transparency, had withheld this information from parents.

These Progressives are so terrified of opposing speech that the school’s principle hadn’t even found the courage to talk with the girl’s parents at the time this story broke.

What is it with Progressives that they’re so terrified of contesting their ideas against those of others?  Again, I ask: might it be because they know their own principles are so inadequate?

On Denying Market Forces vis-à-vis Supply and Demand

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Here’s an interesting graph from AEIDeas:

What this illustrates is the outcome of the lack of a market for organs to be transplanted, in this graph, specifically kidneys.

As Mark Perry put it in his article [emphasis his],

While the annual number of kidney transplant operations has remained relatively flat since 2005 in a range between about 16,500 and 17,000, the number of registered patients on the waiting list continues to increase.  From about 65,000 registered patients in 2005, the waiting list for a kidney transplant has increased by more than 50% over the last eight years, and by 35,000 patients, to the 100,019 patients who are currently on the kidney waiting list.

And

We know from basic economic principles that congestion, shortages, and surpluses are always caused by a failure to apply market pricing.

Perry’s conclusion should be an obvious one:

The only realistic, long-term and truly compassionate solution to address America’s worsening kidney shortage is to legalize some form of donor compensation.  That would require Congress to amend the outdated National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 so that people who give kidneys could receive a benefit, perhaps a tax credit, tuition voucher, lifetime health coverage, or a contribution to a retirement plan.

Reasonable men can argue about the nature of the price to be offered, but the fact remains that a market is necessary—with a price to be offered for the good desired.  Indeed, with the price needing to vary with fluctuations in demand and supply, a government mandated “benefit” would seem still too suboptimal.  Let the market determine the price, in dollars.

Certainly such a market would be fraught with danger and need careful controls.  But the danger for those patients in the excess represented by the present 6:1 ratio of patients needing a kidney to patients getting a kidney—2013’s 83,000 more Waiting List patients than transplant patients—is greater.  And with an actual market, the risk of unauthorized organ harvesting—in the US, a small problem currently, but not insignificant to the victims—will go down markedly.

And there will be a sharp decrease in the number of excess patients.

Sounds Like A Reason

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…to continue shedding light on this man, and on Progressivism and the Democratic Party generally.

Nevada’s Democrat Secretary of State [Ross Miller] says he’ll do all in his power to crush a conservative organization that ran ads against him in his campaign to become the state’s attorney general.

As Secretary of State, he’s also the one who oversees elections—including the one in which he’s running.

And he’s doing his “Stifle, Edith” act because he doesn’t like a political ad being run by the State Government Leadership Foundation.  If you’re curious, the ad is here, but the content isn’t particularly important.

What’s important is that this man is so terrified of a contest of ideas in the town square that he’ll do everything he can to evict from that arena any speaker saying things of which he personally disapproves.  What’s important is that this man is so terrified of a contest of ideas in the town square that he’ll do everything he can to make sure that folks in that arena can hear only the speech he deems fit for their tender ears—he won’t allow them to decide for themselves what they’ll listen to.

And this is typical of Progressives/Democrats.  See Brendan Eich and Mozilla, see Condoleezza Rice and Dropbox, see the Obama administration’s IRS.  The list is endless.

It makes me think that Progressives/Democrats know only too well that their ideas can’t survive the disinfecting sunlight of open competition.

More Failed Government

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This example isn’t a demonstration of dishonesty, and it isn’t unique to this administration.

Market-sensitive information vitally important to health-insurance companies has once again reached Wall Street before the public, and this time it appears to have come from the government itself.

On Dec 3, an official with the agency in charge of Medicare spending held a conference call for industry officials.  During the call, he provided data suggesting that federal funding for private Medicare plans would likely fall more than expected.

Word soon reached Wall Street, prompting a selloff in insurance shares.  In the subsequent 10 trading days, shares of several major health insurance firms lost between 3% and 9% of their value.  Over that same period, the S&P 500 was down 0.5%.

There’s this to color that failure:

Government departments are struggling with a fundamental tension between their duty to keep the public informed and a need to keep market-moving information from reaching investors.  The tendency toward openness has helped fuel a burgeoning business of government insiders who mine Washington for information that could affect stock prices.

There’s no need for the tension to exist, though, especially in a 21st century of online investing and trading, discount brokering, and Common Man doing much of that.  There’s also no need for the tension to exist given the falseness of the premise that market-moving information should be prevented from reaching investors.

Keep us informed.  Release all the data, to all of us simultaneously.  How to do so isn’t rocket science.  It isn’t even Internet science.  And it would eliminate a class of government insiders.