Tag Archives: political economy

Obamacare Fail

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The headline of this Wall Street Journal piece pretty much says it all: Average Cost of Employer Health Coverage Tops $18,000 for Family in 2016.

The sub-head, with careful reading, adds clarity: Pace of cost increase slowed by accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, new survey shows.

That cost of employer coverage, buy the way, refers to the premiums employees must pay: $18,142 for a 2016 typical employer-offered family plan, and employees have to pay 30% of that, typically, up from 29%.  Like a sergeant I once worked with liked to say, sort of, “Holy cats.”

Is that cost increase rate actually slowing, though, where it matters to the individual—the employee?  Not in the deductibles.  Shifting into high-deductible plans means the policy holder—the employee—has to pay lots more out of his own pocket just to get to the point where the coverage plan begins to pay its 50%, or 60%, or maybe as high as 80% of the medical costs.  For that year.  Then the deductible has to be paid anew.

Notice another part of that sub-head: accelerating shift into high-deductible plans.  That means that in that next year, the erstwhile high-deductible plan may not be available: the employee may be stuck with purchasing a different plan, perhaps with an even higher deductible, perhaps with higher yet premiums, perhaps with coverage not as useful to the employee.

This is what Obamacare, not the employers, has wrought.  This is what needs to be tossed in its entirety into the medical waste disposal and replaced with a more honest environment within which actual insurance can be had, and competitively so.

Of Course They Are

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President Obama and his Democratic allies are seizing on the exodus of private insurers from ObamaCare markets to renew their push for a so-called “public option[.]”

Never mind that the revival of this push is a direct result of the broad, expensive failure that is those same Know Betters’ Obamacare.  No, when government fails as miserably as it has done with Obamacare, the only right answer is the Progressive answer: more government.  A bigger hammer.

We can’t have competition and private enterprise do this.  We gotta have Know Betters in Government do this; us mere citizens can’t be trusted with such weighty matters.

Union Greed

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It isn’t enough that unions demand the “right” to raid honest citizens’ pocketbooks for union dues—demanding that non-union members pay up as a condition of being allowed to work.  Unions also are demanding the “right” to raid honest citizens’ pocketbooks for tax money with which to plus up union “pensions.”

See, for instance, the United Mine Workers of America and their pet Democratic Party Senator, Joe Manchin (whom we had thought was more honest than this).

The Miners Protection Act of 2015—sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and co-sponsored by eight Republicans—would bail out the underfunded pension plan of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

This potential for legalizing theft also has the unfortunate support of eight allegedly Republican Senators and the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Orrin Hatch (R, UT), who most assuredly should know better.

This bill would raid a mine reclamation fund to the tune of $490 million for the sole purpose of feeding the union maw.  Never mind that the unreclaimed mines would remain uncleaned up (which, by the way, Democrats, having successfully defunded mine reclamation, will rend and wail about those same unreclaimed mines for their personal political gain).

Manchin is disingenuously arguing that the Federal government has an obligation to bail out the union and its funds.  It’s a familiar refrain: Government has to do this, Government has to bail that out, because private enterprise—of which the UMWA is one, make no mistake about that—cannot be trusted to see to its own affairs.

Manchin is disingenuous in another way: as Diana Furchtgott-Roth (lately Labor Department Chief Economist and currently a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute) pointed out in her piece at the above link,

UMWA knows how to fund a pension plan.

The UNWA needs no government help in this.

And

Required filings with the Labor Department show that the pension plan for the officers of the UMWA—the president, vice presidents and treasurer—is solvent.

UMWA leadership has been careful to take care of themselves.  It’s on them—not honest American citizens—to take care of their membership, too.  Again, no government involvement is needed or appropriate here.

No, this whole sordid affair is just another Progressive effort to take money from honest Americans and redistribute it to their cronies.

Still Holding Hostages

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I wrote about this a bit ago.  Unfortunately, the Democrats in Congress still are at it.  The Senate once again failed to pass a bill funding a response to the Zika virus in Florida and elsewhere in the US, because Senate Democrats blocked it—the bill blocks funding for Planned Parenthood.

Yup.

Shamefully, Senate Democrats still are holding the lives of Americans hostage against their getting their way on an entirely separate issue.

Congress should stick the currently proposed Zika funding into the upcoming budget bill, and then pass that budget through reconciliation.  Force President Barack Obama (D) to sign it or to veto Zika treatment funding—and to veto funding the Federal government.

Some Lives Are More Equal Than Others

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Cornell University is looking for a Dean of Diversity.  OK, they’re looking for a Dean of Students, but an important part of his DOC is his ability to promote diversity.  But the new Dean mustn’t promote diverse diversity, only the diversity of school-favored groups of students.

…one top candidate, Vijay Pendakur…held a “diversity townhall” with students to persuade them to support his candidacy.

Then he let the cat out of the bag.

If I say, “The dean’s area of focus is diversity and inclusion,” the unspoken thought in response often is, “Oh, so he’s here for only the marginalized students.”  So we need to undo that, because that is a deeply problematic framework.  If we’re going to make progress, it needs to be everyone’s conversation.

Cornell’s Vice President for Diversity of Inclusion, Julia Montejo, chose to be offended by this truth.

I’d like to hear more on how that kind of approach and philosophy still puts the concerns of minority students, students of color, underrepresented students, LGBTQ-identifying students and students with disabilities at the forefront….

Because.

Cornell favors some diversity, but not complete diversity.  Some groups of students should just proceed to the back of the Cornell bus.