Category Archives: regulation

Federal Solar Energy

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What do you do when you host an auction, and no one bids?

A short time ago, the BLM tried to auction 3,700 acres in three parcels of prime solar farm territory and got no bidders.  None.

Maryanne Kurtinaitis, BLM’s Colorado Division Renewable Energy Program Manager, said

We are going to have to regroup and figure out what didn’t work[.]

Well, NSS.

Here’s a clue, offered by Ken Johnson, Vice President of Communications for the Solar Energy Industries Association:

To date, BLM has yet to finalize any regional mitigation plans.  Frankly, it’s not smart business to commit to something until you’ve read the fine print.

The whole thing about government involvement is too uncertain.

Hmm….

Delay the Individual Mandate?

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Kate Rogers, of Fox Business, had some thoughts.

Delaying the sign-up deadline would give the government more time to work out the kinks on healthcare.gov and allow users to become more familiar with the site and find the best plan that fits their needs, experts say.

But would it give sufficient time for the rest of the problems with implementation data reporting to insurers, payments for claims, etc to be worked out?  Time to work out the “kinks” in the law itself?

On the don’t delay side, she has this:

“As an economist, I can assume that the people with the most expensive health-care needs: the oldest and sickest, would be spending thousands out of pocket on health care and are the ones with the most demand for the product,” [Devon Herrick, National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Analyst] says.  “Younger people, if they get a break or are told they can wait three months, they may do that.  You can’t run a risk pool with the sickest people jumping in on day one, and the healthiest on day 90.”

Why would the healthiest jump in at all, though?  This is a bad bet for them.  Further, under what moral system can a government compel them to jump in?

In the end, the Individual Mandate needs to be delayed, if only to balance the Employer Mandate delay—but both of those need to be delayed only as stepping stones to getting rid of Obamacare and replacing it with a proper, market- and patient/doctor-oriented reform.

Obamacare Sign-up Rates

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Despite HHS’ refusal to provide any figures about Obamacare policy purchase rates—they’re still routinely touting Healthcare.gov visit rates and account creation rates as though those numbers mean anything—some information is trickling out.  The Daily Caller has some of those data.

Here are some of the cancellation numbers:

  • Insurance carrier Florida Blue cancelled 300,000 policies—80% of Florida’s individual coverage policies
  • California’s Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans—half of its insurance plans in the state
  • Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone
  • Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh plan to cancel 20% of their total plans
  • Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 45% of their total plans
  • 800,000 plans in New Jersey will be cancelled by the start of 2014

This compares with Obamacare sign-ups—anecdotal data to be sure, since the Obamacare administration, as I noted above, refuses to provide any figures at all:

  • South Dakota reported that 23 people enrolled in the exchanges
  • North Dakota enrolled 20
  • Alaska has enrolled 7

The Daily Mail reported two weeks ago that, from its own sources, all of 51,000 Americans had signed up in the first week (since then, the government has really clamped down on leaks about its numbers).  If we optimistically double that rate as Healthcare.gov starts to get its software…kinks…worked out, we get an additional 250,000 actually signed up by now.  Even quadrupling that first week rate—to 460,000 by now—leaves the sign-ups far short of the cancellations, with more cancellations yet to come.

Hmm….

Obamacare and the Sequester

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Sequester—that invention of President Barack Obama, with which he intended to extort Republicans and Conservatives into acceding to his taxing, spending, and borrowing economic policy—is starting to cause trouble for Obamacare, now.  The sequester is blocking a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays under Obamacare.

Amy Payne, writing for The Foundry, quoted Chris Jacobs in The Wall Street Journal on impacts:

There are two possible outcomes.  The first is that individuals who have managed to enroll in subsidized health insurance will find they’ve been misled about their copays and deductibles.  Families who currently think their plan will charge a $20 copayment for doctor visits may instead face a $25 charge when the sequester kicks in.  Individuals who now believe they face maximum out-of-pocket costs of $2,000 may end up paying hundreds more.

Wonderful performance by a President who’s a better policy wonk than his policy staff.

Government and Personal Information Security

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Government snooping on the ObamaCare website certainly raises alarms.  But [TrustedSec President, David] Kennedy says even more concerning is that—according to his research—HealthCare.gov is riddled with holes in security.

“We can look at the code that’s behind it,” Kennedy told Fox News, “look at how things work.  And we can tell that there wasn’t even minimum standards bolted onto this application, even before its release.”

The Feds, of course, insist otherwise.  Health and Human Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testified before last week’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing:

They can trust that the information they’re providing is protected to the highest privacy standards.

Kennedy again:

If I was allowed to attack the website by myself and I had approval to go and do it, it would be very simple for me to break into it, steal all that information that’s in the database including all of your personal information that you used to register for the site, Social Security numbers—everything like that.

Which one has the greater vested interest in the claims?