Category Archives: Healthcare

But I Thought This Was The [Secret] Plan?

Healthcare, Socialism

Sometimes this gets tiring. I’m getting a bit sick of showing that bad consequences, entirely foreseeable (and possibly planned) and predicted, are coming to fruition — and the power-brokers in Washington have the gall to actually act appaled?

The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we’re getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

Of course, the pols in Washington didn’t want this to come to light too quickly:

In the days after President Obama signed the bill on March 24, a number of companies announced big write downs due to some fiscal changes it ushered in. The legislation eliminated a company’s right to deduct the federal retiree drug-benefit subsidy from their corporate taxes. That reduced projected revenue. As a result, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) took well-publicized charges of around $1 billion.

…

The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings. On April 14, the Committee’s majority staff issued a memo stating that the write downs were “proper and in accordance with SEC rules.” The committee also stated that the memos took a generally sunny view of the new legislation. The documents, said the Democrats’ memo, show that “the overall impact of health reform on large employers could be beneficial.”

Nowhere in the five-page report did the majority staff mention that not one, but all four companies, were weighing the costs and benefits of dropping their coverage.

An optimist — or a rube — would suggest that this is an unintended consequence of the legislation. That, after all, all of their cost estimates were based on employers largely keeping their employees on their own plans. And, after all, this bill was but a small move to cover those who were uncovered, not an attempt to overtake the American health care system in toto. That’s what they said, right?

Many said that the goal of the legislators was to get employers to toss their employees onto the exchanges, but it was denied. So why is it that rather than string these employers up in front of Congress, vilifying them for being uncaring profit-whores who would throw their employees on the hands of the government exchanges, Waxman swept this under the rug and canceled the hearings?

Could it be that these discussions weren’t the unplanned, unintended consequences of the legislation? That maybe this really was the intent?

H/T: David Henderson @ EconLog

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Prosecutors Ask If Congress Duped CBO To Obtain Favorable Score

Credit Crisis, Economics, Fiscal Policy, Government Incompetence, Government Transparency, Healthcare, Politics, Theory and Ideas

Okay, that’s not true. But it’s no different than this:

Prosecutors Ask if 8 Banks Duped Rating Agencies

Wall Street played a crucial role in the mortgage market’s path to collapse. Investment banks bundled mortgage loans into securities and then often rebundled those securities one or two more times. Those securities were given high ratings and sold to investors, who have since lost billions of dollars on them.

…

At Goldman, there was even a phrase for the way bankers put together mortgage securities. The practice was known as “ratings arbitrage,” according to former workers. The idea was to find ways to put the very worst bonds into a deal for a given rating. The cheaper the bonds, the greater the profit to the bank.

The rating agencies may have facilitated the banks’ actions by publishing their rating models on their corporate Web sites. The agencies argued that being open about their models offered transparency to investors.

But several former agency workers said the practice put too much power in the bankers’ hands. “The models were posted for bankers who develop C.D.O.’s to be able to reverse engineer C.D.O.’s to a certain rating,” one former rating agency employee said in an interview, referring to collateralized debt obligations.

I just finished reading Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, and it’s pretty clear that the banks knew enough about the rating agencies’ models to pretty successfully turn shit into shinola. In fact, the agencies made enough of their ratings models public to make it absolutely certain that the banks would game the system. Not *dupe* the rating agencies, mind you, because the ratings agencies were willing partners.

But I thought about it a little bit more, and I was struck by another thought.

The Democratic house leadership wanted to cost projection of the healthcare bill to come in within a certain number. So what did they do? They duped gamed the CBO rating system to ensure that the bill they wrote would have the price tag they wanted it to have. The CBO is a respected and non-partisan office, but they’re asked only to score what legislators give them, NOT what they think the legislators will do in other bills immediately or a few years down the line.

Essentially both the Wall Street banks and Congressional leadership did the same thing: they were teaching to the test. They knew specifically what was needed in order to generate a favorable outcome from the “test”, and they made sure they did exactly what they wanted, but in such a way that got the right score.

So who’s going to prosecute the Democratic leadership when this healthcare bill inevitably costs the American people more than they advertised?

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

A New Introduction

Democrats, General, Healthcare, Human Rights, Immigration, Libertarians, Liberty, Monetary Issues, Republicans, Strategies For Advancing Liberty, The Contributors

I am honored to join The Liberty Papers.

Brad Warbiany and Doug Mataconis have been very welcoming, and my new realm into libertarian thought should be fulfilling and rich.

I’ve been at United Liberty for two years, starting with the 2008 election and running all the way up to coverage of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law. My work goes back even further, back to the San Francisco Examiner and the neighborhood newspapers North Seattle Herald Outlook and Madison Park Times in Seattle, Washington.

In the times we live in, there seems to be a political shift going on. The United States is becoming more ethnically diverse, the economy continues to stagnate, and government is making short term maneuvers without foreseeing long-term effects. On the other side of the coin, the Right, who talk a lot of jive about freedom, are parading their own twisted form of nationalism. In these times, it’s important to try to solidify and distinguish the libertarian movement as a separate alternative to the forms of authoritarianism so far proposed to us. I hope my work at The Liberty Papers will help to do that.

I am also currently working on a book on the future of race in politics. It should be finished within the year and published subsequently.

TomStrong

NIMBY, Granny!

Culture, Government Regulation, Healthcare, Property Rights, Zoning and Land-Use

Oh dear.

“Stonemill Farms will be the scene of many memorable days with family and friends alike,” according to marketing materials. The development, with its $300,000 to $500,000 homes, is “the perfect place to raise a family,” the website boasts.

Sounds like a nice place. At least until the influx of the brain-devouring proto-zombie hordes (Alzheimer’s patients).

But maybe not if your family is like that of Woodbury resident Marilyn Nehring, whose husband, Jerry, has few memorable days now because he has Alzheimer’s disease.

Residents at Stonemill are opposing an attempt to turn an empty retail site into housing for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

…

Another man opposed it if there were “one-tenth of one percent chance that anything could happen to a kid.”

A woman holding a baby fretted that potential clients with brain damage probably led lives of daring and danger, which might return. They don’t have “the fear, the healthy fear, that the rest of us have,” she said.

…

Nearly everyone who spoke against the facility had concerns that their children might be attacked or see an elderly adult do something inappropriate.

Depressing. Just depressing. Now, I’ve had more experience with Alzheimer’s patients than many. Prior to college, I worked a summer in maintenance at a nursing home. The Alzheimer’s ward was easily the most depressing* of the entire complex, as some of these folks just didn’t have a handle on reality. For example, one particularly depressing patient constantly asked the nurses what time her (the patient’s) daughter would be arriving, since she was scheduled to come that day. Every day this woman was “waiting for her daughter”, and every day her wait was fruitless; I’m not sure she even had a daughter. Almost more heartbreaking were the families who would show up to see their loved one, only to not be recognized at all. I can’t imagine anything worse than having to go see a loved one in the hospital and dealing with the hurt of him/her not even knowing me.

As much as some of these people may need to be in nursing homes so that they have the necessary care around them, this doesn’t eliminate the potential for caregivers to abuse their positions. For example, sepsis caused by neglect in a nursing home is a real problem that creates all kinds of worries for the loved ones of the neglected individual. Often, legal counsel is sought in such situations. Thankfully, this is not a problem emblematic of all caregivers, but families should still be on the lookout for signs of abuse.

Even though a nursing home that specializes in this type of care is the best place for these people to be, I can’t help but feel that some of them may benefit from being somewhere else. Now I’m not saying that they can live anywhere they like, it’s just that I’ve heard that places similar to La Posada offer memory care for people who suffer from the various types of dementia, including all the care that they may need, as well as providing them with lots of different activities that can help them to remain active and sociable. Maybe this is what some of these patients need to keep them distracted from wondering whether their children will come and visit them.

That being said, there was no danger there.

The Alzheimer’s ward was locked down. Keycodes were required for entry and exit, doors were alarmed, and everyone in the place (including lowly maintenance workers like me) were well-trained on the security procedures. As well as that, many of the patients on the Alzheimer’s ward were reliant on wheelchairs. Nowadays, more often that not people use high-tech electric wheelchairs which means that the person using it is free to go wherever they like (learn more here), but back then these were less common and so the patients usually had to be pushed everywhere. Obviously, this meant it was easier to keep tabs on them, but I still very much doubt that any of the patients would have been able to leave the ward unattended even if they did have an electric wheelchair. Staffing was far heavier in this ward than most (as the patients needed much more individual care), but even those who were fully ambulatory weren’t exactly threats to the community.

The summer I worked at that home (the summer of my 18th birthday) was definitely one of the better learning experiences of my life. As depressing as some of the areas of the home were, exposure to reality is part of life. At the very least, having that experience made me thankful for what I do have in life. Now, as a parent it is my responsibility to control what access my kids have to that reality, and at some ages I wouldn’t subject a child to some of these things. But I would do so out of respect for my own child’s ability, at a certain age, to fully comprehend a situation, not out of fear for his well-being. Even though there are locks on the doors, this is a hospital facility, not a prison.

Often these types of misconceptions about people are only heightened by insulating society from their very existence. These parents are merely inculcating the same misconceptions and paranoia into their own kids**. How sad.

Hat Tip: Free Range Kids
» Read more

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Congress Begs For Intervention Due To Spending Addiction

Government Incompetence, Healthcare

Congress has a problem. They have a tough time cutting unpopular spending, but cutting popular spending is just impossible. They talk about their ability to be elected, go to Washington, and make the tough decisions, but when push comes to shove, they want to shove responsibility off to a third party. I believe it’s called “plausible deniability”:

The IPAB is a 15-person, full-time board composed of health-care experts and stakeholders. Members need to be confirmed by the Senate and will serve six-year terms, with one possible reappointment. But the important thing isn’t who serves. It’s how they vote. Or, as the case may be, don’t vote.

If Congress approves the board’s recommendations and the president signs them, they go into effect. If Congress does not vote on the board’s recommendations, they still go into effect. If Congress votes against the board’s recommendations but the president vetoes and Congress can’t find the two-thirds necessary to overturn the veto, the recommendations go into effect. It’s only if Congress votes them down and the president agrees that the recommendations die. “I believe this commission is the largest yielding of sovereignty from the Congress since the creation of the Federal Reserve,” says Peter Orszag, who’s been one of the idea’s most enthusiastic supporters.

Only if a recommendation is so onerous that public ire is raised to the point where Congress can override a presidential veto will that recommendation be killed.

As legislation goes, this has some advantages, as it may have some credible cost-cutting ability. Granted, I don’t think “cost cutting” should be the same thing as “price fixing”, but rather as a result of market forces. Imagine the reduction in cost if 80% of the nation was on an HDHP/HSA plan rather than traditional comprehensive insurance, and those individuals were in constant negotiation through the market to set prices. But while I’m opposed to some unaccountable government panel setting payment rates for medical procedures, I’m somewhat comforted that it may cost me less money than letting Congress do it.

But how much of this sounds like an addict trying to control his fix? This is the alcoholic with such little self-control that he knows he can’t even be in the vicinity of booze because he’ll start binging again. Congress trusts themselves so little that they refuse to even take responsibility for VOTING on these cuts.

If they’re going to abdicate this responsibility, isn’t that just an indication that Congress never should have been allowed the responsibility in the first place?

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/
1 … 12 13 14 15 16 … 46