Tag Archives: regulation

ER Visits Up with the Advent of Obamacare

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Stephanie Armour and Louise Radnofsky pointed this out earlier in the week in The Wall Street Journal.

Among other things, they mentioned

The median ER charge was more than $1,200 for the most frequent outpatient diagnoses in a study of over 8,000 ER visits in 2006-08….

This is right before Obamacare was enacted.

Notice that ER charge. A significant fraction of the deductibles on Obamacare health coverage plans is larger than that—ranging from $2,000 to above $10,000, depending on family size, the specific plan selected, and so on.

Since the ER charge is less than the deductible, even if these ER patients had an Obamacare plan, where is their incentive to see a doctor in his office? He’s still paying those $1,200 out of his pocket. The proud possession of a health plan is irrelevant to that.

Another Administration Overreach

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A family built a stock pond on their private property in order to provide more reliable water for their cattle.

The Johnsons believed they had done everything necessary to get permission for the pond, where the tiny Six Mile Creek runs through their property south of Fort Bridger, WY. The Wyoming State Engineer’s Office provided the permit and even stated in an April 4, 2013 letter to the Johnsons: “All of the legal requirements of the State Engineer’s Office, that were your responsibility, have been satisfied for the Johnson Stock Reservoir.”

The pond not only improved the situation for their cattle, it improved the local environment. The Johnsons noted:

Before we didn’t have ducks and geese. … Now you can see bald eagles here, we have moose come down. We have blue herons that come in every evening. Before we did this…it was basically just a little irrigation canal.

But they didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” to the EPA. The EPA is up in arms about this effrontery, and they seem to have gone so far as to make stuff up in their assault on the Johnsons, their property rights, and the property rights of American citizens in general. The EPA is charging that the Johnsons’ pond is guilty of

“…the discharge of pollutants (i.e., dredged or fill material) into the waters of the United States….”

Never mind that the only tests done—not by the EPA, curiously, but done by the Johnsons, instead—demonstrate

…that the water leaving the pond is cleaner than the water entering it.

Meanwhile, the EPA also is continuing to ignore Congress as Congressmen ask for clarification of what the EPA thinks it’s doing on this matter.

In a follow-up letter to the EPA, [Senator David (R, LA), Ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee] Vitter and his colleagues have asked for, but so far not received, clarification of the potential fines involved.

Those fines run from $75,000 per day to $185,000 per day, depending on how the rule the EPA claims to be operating is interpreted. Hence this question, among others.

But this administration, and its EPA henchmen, are above the law. They say.

Whither our Technological Edge?

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USAF Colonel Dean Hullings, of AFSC’s Cyber Superiority Division told a National Space Symposium audience that the US is behind other countries in cyber defensive and offensive capabilities. The only other countries in the mix, it seems to me, are Russia, the PRC, Iran, and Israel. We don’t need to be leading from behind here.

It’s not only a lack of interest on the part of an administration bent on withdrawing the United States from the world and abrogating our leadership role, though. Bureaucracy—not unique to any particular administration, but an entity in itself—is having a major effect, also.

The agency responsible for cyber-related acquisitions—of any type—is the National Reconnaissance Office, a DoD agency separate from the AFSC. The NRO also is set up to do satellites, not networks or cyberspace—it lacks the expertise here to do equipment, software, or personnel acquisition.

This weakness is overlain by the DoD’s poor acquisition process.

Just getting through the budget system takes about two years. Add the requirements process and you’re talking another two years. That means you are about three years behind the latest technologies, thanks to Moore’s Law.

And, again, there’s that bit about understanding what it is that’s being acquired, whether by NRO or DoD generally:

[F]oreign suppliers might build code into chips or firmware to thwart or warp how a US weapon works….

But that’s not enough of a threat.  There’s this, too:

Militaries have been messing with each other’s radios and radars for generations, transmitting deceptive signals to spoof and jam them. But if the enemy’s radios and radars are run by computers—and most now are—you can also transmit signals to hack them. Then, if the enemy’s computers are linked together—and America’s certainly are—your virus can spread throughout their network.

Hmm….

Rule of Law

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Earlier I wrote about government and free speech regarding a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the FCC’s proposed interference with the business of the Internet.

Buried near the end of the op-ed, though, was a remark that needs greater notice than was present in the piece.

Mr Wheeler’s FCC claims “there are no rules on the books to prevent broadband providers from limiting Internet openness by blocking content or discriminating against consumers and entrepreneurs online.”

The WSJ denied the charge,

But this is false. …the Federal Trade Commission already has ample authority to go after businesses that mistreat customers, online or off[]

but that’s beside the point.

We’re not Europeans. Neither are we, generally, Progressives. We have no need of a government’s rule to tell us every jot or tittle of what we are permitted or not permitted to do. We are American citizens; we are fully capable of deciding for ourselves, in the absence of the “guidance” of our Betters, what we might do or not do.

Government and Free Speech

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This time in the milieu of the Internet. And it’s not good, if the FCC’s latest “rule” proposal is allowed to stand.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler went ahead with his proposal on Thursday to give his agency the power to decide whether the terms and prices of broadband Internet services are “reasonable.” That’s bad enough as political discretion, but according to dissenting Commissioner Ajit Pai, regulators from every state will also be able to get into the act.

Government, once again, is deciding that it’s better suited to determine what a proper business arrangement is than the participants in the business. Only this time, since it’s the Internet that’s at stake, and the Internet plays such an enormous role, not only in business per se, but in speech of all forms—political, business, communication of innovations, the list goes on—the FCC is plainly inserting itself into the business of government determiner of what appropriate speech is.

If this rule stands, government will be able to pass on the Internet-based “business arrangements” regarding, oh let’s say, a documentary called Hillary: The Movie. Worse, it’ll be able to do this, not overtly because it objects to the politics of the movie, but more sotto voce, under the guise of objecting to the appropriateness of the business arrangements surrounding its Internet distribution. And by allowing the States to get in on the censorship, the FCC is looking to broaden government…management…of permissible speech.

The Wall Street Journal‘s op-ed points out a myriad of other objections to this harebrained scheme of the FCC, but this will do for this post.