Category Archives: regulation

Republican Non-Ideas for Health Insurance

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Here are some of those ideas put forward by Evil Republicans that President Barack Obama insists don’t exist.

  • Senators Tom Coburn (R, OK) and Mike Enzi (R, WY) have long advocated making health insurance completely portable so workers can take their plans with them from job to job.  Enzi first introduced a comprehensive bill including GOP reform proposals in 2007 and has updated it regularly.
  • Congressmen Sam Johnson (R, TX) and Charles Boustany (R, LA, and a cardiovascular surgeon) want to allow smaller companies to pool their risk to get the same discounts from insurance carriers that bigger companies do.
  • Congressmen Marsha Blackburn (R, TN) and Paul Ryan (R, WI) want to spark increased competition by allowing health-insurance policies to be sold across state lines, as are auto insurance policies.
  • Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX) has championed medical liability reform at the federal level to rein in junk lawsuits, despite qualms that the issue should be left to the states.
  • Congressmen Mike Burgess (who practiced obstetrics and gynecology) and Joe Barton (both R, TX) have introduced bills to establish transparency in pricing and medical outcomes so patients can compare the costs for procedures at area hospitals and their relative success in performing them.
  • Congressman Bill Cassidy (R, LA), also a physician, has introduced a bill that would allow Medicaid patients to convert the value of their government benefit to pay for private coverage.
  • Congressman Tom Price (R, GA), an orthopedic surgeon, has introduced a comprehensive alternative to ObamaCare that includes many of the GOP’s reforms.
  • Congressman Phil Roe, (R, TN), a retired OB/GYN, will introduce a new ObamaCare replacement package next month when Congress returns.
  • The House Republican Study Committee wants to restore (even increase) amount families can save tax free for medical expenses; ObamaCare reduces that amount. Paired with health-savings accounts, such a move can put quality health care within the reach of many more families.  At competitive (read: lower) rates.

Notice all the actual doctors in that mix.  Possibly, they’re more worth listening to than a bunch of politicians whose only imperative is their personal political gain.

What are Republicans doing about these ideas?  Introducing, as noted above—and when they’ve controlled the House, passing—legislation.  But the obstructionist, Democrat “Just say no” Senate won’t even allow debate, much less voting on the bills.

Instead, these worthies, and President Barack Obama, oppose any reform that’s patient/doctor-centric, that omits government involvement, and that has actual competitive market forces—competition that strengthens the markets for health insurance and for health services—in play.  Indeed,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) recently called ObamaCare “a step in the right direction,” but noted that his goal is “absolutely” a single-payer system in which government delivers all health care.  When he was running for president in 2008, Mr. Obama admitted he “would probably go ahead with a single-payer system” if he was “designing a system from scratch.”

Truly, a paucity of ideas.  However, it’s the Democrats who are lacking.  All they’ve got is the crashing train of Obamacare—as Obama himself has admitted with his extra-constitutional decision not to enforce critical components of that law, and thereby cutting those cars loose, only to crash into the wreckage after a short delay.

Again, Progress

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EEOC v Freeman concerned an events company that used [criminal and credit] background checks in employment decisions between July 2006 and August 2011. The company had experienced problems with employee drug use, embezzlement, and workplace violence, and saw background checks as a legitimate way to screen applicants.

US District Judge Roger Titus scored the agency for…putting employers “in the ‘Hobson’s choice’ of ignoring criminal history and credit background, thus exposing themselves to potential liability for criminal and fraudulent acts committed by employees, on the one hand, or incurring the wrath of the EEOC for having utilized information deemed fundamental by most employers.”

And if that wasn’t a clear enough message, he continued: “Something more, far more, than what is relied upon by the EEOC in this case must be utilized to justify a disparate impact claim based upon criminal history and credit checks.  To require less, would be to condemn the use of common sense, and this is simply not what the discrimination laws of this country require.”

There’s more to this:

[T]he [EEOC] didn’t show that Freeman Co discriminated against black applicants by using criminal-background checks or credit checks in its hiring process.

Well, duh.  The judge went on:

The story of the present action has been that of a theory in search of facts to support it.  But there are simply no facts here to support [the EEOC’s claim that black applicants were improperly discriminated against].

Freeman has 4,100 full-time and 25,000 to 30,000 part-time employees; that part-time to full-time ratio is a potful of turnover—which puts a premium on those background checks.

Progress, indeed.

Objections to Cancelling Fannie, Freddie

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Are coming out; here are two.  The existence of these objections demonstrates the disaster that government involvement in the market, together with the resulting dependence on government, generate.

Kelly Powers, Vice President for Advocacy at the Arizona Mortgage Lenders Association:

[She insists that] there isn’t enough private capital to step in and take over, and the results on lending could be damaging.

“It would make it much more difficult for people to borrow.  There would be less liquidity and less players in the game.  The requirements would go up and people won’t be able to qualify for loans.”

She added that she “doesn’t want to operate without a government safety net.”

Of course there isn’t enough private capital today: Uncle Sugar has been providing taxpayer money, either directly, or indirectly through “guaranties.”  Liquidity will develop as the market develops and wants it, based on actual demand and supply, not on the availability of the public trough funded by private tax money—which is our money, not government’s and not yours.

With regard to loan “requirements” and “borrowing difficulty,” once the liquidity aspect is sorted out through the transition period (both President Barack Obama and a bipartisan bill in progress—that also excludes future government participation—posit five-six years for getting rid of Fannie and Freddie) lending and borrowing…difficulty…will more closely be based on actual credit worthiness.  See a nearby post.

In the end, a business whose leadership is unable to function without its collective hand in the taxpayer’s pocket isn’t ready for prime time.  No, if you’re unable to take a risk and suffer the consequences without assurance of government bailout, then you’re a failure as a businessman already.

Independent Bankers of America President and CEO Cam Fine also wants his association’s hands in our pockets, and he added a different objection.

It is extremely complex and it would be a delicate venture to get all of the moving parts in place.  It would take a great deal of coordination and cooperation among private investors, mortgage producers, properly funded and established and all of that would have to be done simultaneously.

Again, this is malarkey.  If it’s hard to do, that just emphasizes the importance of getting started.  More importantly, over the posited transition period, a free market will evolve the needed “moving parts” just fine.  If a business(man) is unable to develop in an evolving market place, if a business(man) is unable to take the first step on a business path without the last step—which never arrives in a human endeavor; the last step is itself constantly changing—being planned out to a gnat’s patootie, if a business(man) is unable to function except in a centrally planned economy, there’s no place for that business(man) here.

In Which I Agree with President Obama

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…mostly.

In a speech Tuesday in Phoenix, Obama call[ed] for transitioning the business model of Fannie and Freddie into a system where “private capital must be wiped out before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee,” a senior administration official said.

If he really wants to, this is mostly good.  Those taking the risks should be the ones to reap the rewards—and the only ones to suffer the loss.  Taxpayers should not be dragged into a failure at all.

And that’s the “mostly” part: “before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee” should not be a player at all.  This is what private insurance in a free market is for.

Obama will also renew his calls for sweeping mortgage refinancing legislation when he travels to Phoenix Tuesday.

Here, not so much.  The only sweeping legislation necessary is the repeal of the Community Reinvestment Act, a high-minded sounding idea that in the realization has been used only to browbeat lenders into making bad loans to poor credit risks.

…a call for expanding refinancing eligibility for homeowners who do not have government-backed mortgages.

In particular, there’s no need for a government determination of “refinancing eligibility.”  The market will determine that, just fine.  Government distortions from the market do no good at all; they only destroy the pricing information extant.

Car Pooling

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…but only the union way.

In the past month, San Francisco International Airport officials have been citing and arresting drivers from mobile-app enabled rideshare companies that pick up and drop off passengers, an airport spokesman said.  Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said there have been seven citizen arrests issued to “various offenders” since July 10.  The airport had issued cease and desist letters to several rideshare companies, including Lyft, Sidecarv and Uber, in April.

Notice that these are not “professional” drivers—not union cabbies—that are being harassed.  CBS San Francisco points out that the harasses are “drivers participating in a mobile app arrangement typified by Sidecar.”

Naturally, a union—a taxi union in this case—objects to rideshare at “their” airport.  The competition might save the customers money (good for them, bad for the protected class), and it might save gas (good for the environment, bad for—well, not much of anyone).

But there’s a solution afoot:

The state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates and licenses passenger carriers, has been looking into how to regulate these new types of companies.

Of course.  Because we Americans are just too stupid to be trusted to do anything on our own, without a Know Better Government’s regulation to tell us what to do, how to do it, and when we should do it.