“Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate health committee, said he hopes to release a bill this week, in collaboration with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the senior Democrat on the committee, to fund the cost-sharing reduction payments and give states more leeway on insurance rules.”

Not sure why Senator Murray feels the need to go down this avenue when the preceding Executive Order already wandered into greater flexibility for states, states rights, and who decides what. As has been explained by the CBO, Drum, other pundits, and myself; the loss in out-of-pocket subsidies will result in increased premiums which are “still” paid for by the ACA between 138% and 250% FPL. In some cases, Bronze plans can be had for free, Silver plans become cheaper, and Gold plans offering better care and lower deductibles attainable.

Senator Murray is giving away the store if what Senator Alexander says is true. “Alexander said Murray agreed to a deal giving states ‘meaningful’ flexibility on coverage rules. Asked what the stumbling blocks to the deal are, Alexander replied: ‘The definition of meaningful.'”

We have already seen what the word meaningful means with regard to the expansion of Medicaid in some states . . . it never happened. I am hoping Senator Murray has second thoughts and decides not to go farther with her thoughts on negotiating with the Republicans as she is off base and we will be better off by not altering what is law already and it is the ACA.

Premiums will go up in 2018 as no one is going to trust Trump regardless of any deal reached with the Republicans.

Tags: run75441 Comments (7) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

The Incidence of the Obamacare Subsidies

Comments (1) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

Trump Fails To Certify JCPOA Iran Nuclear Deal

Comments (10) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

They are monsters

Comments (4) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

Trump’s Healthcare Executive Order

Trump Signs Executive Order relaxing ACA health insurance rules. About a week or so ago, I had read this elsewhere, mentioned it, and was told there was no way this would happen. Similar to the three attempts to defund the ACA, Trump is doing what he says the Senate could not do and that is to take healthcare insurance away from the citizenry.

More of Trump’s Executive Order down the page.

Children’s Health Insurance Program

Also if you did not know this, the Children’s Health Insurance Program is being held hostage by the House. Rather than pass a clean bill, the House Republicans added provisions to the passage of new funding. 2017 CHIP Program funding was used up during the time period when Republicans were spending inordinate amounts of time trying to defund the ACA rather than attending to other needs of the country. Some states such as Minnesota have already run out of funds to pay for the 9 million children in the US who are dependent on this program; however, nothing appears to get in the way of the House working on a Tax Reform Budget Resolution giving $billions to 1% of the households making >$500,000 annually.

One provision put in place by Michigan Congressman Fred Upton is nonsensical and strictly for show. Mind you, Fred Upton was one of two Congressmen who tampered with the Risk Corridor Program causing premiums to rise for those in the individuals market place with incomes > 400%, Coops to go bankrupt, insurance companies to lose money, and insurance companies to withdraw from the exchanges. Today Mr. Upton proposes to increase Medicare payments for those making >$500,000 annually saying it will help offset the cost of CHIPs, these oldsters can afford it, and if they do not like it . . . do not sign up for Medicare.

Upton’s statement is cold hearted and mean except for the extra $135/ month means testing the “few” would endure. In the US there is ~1 million household with incomes in excess of $1 million annually. Few of them are old enough for Medicare and the return from the Republican proposed tax reform would more than outweigh the additional $135/month.

The Impact of Trump’s Healthcare Executive Order

President Trump’s Executive Order “directs the departments of Treasury, Labor and HHS to consider expanding healthcare coverage through low-cost, short-term health plans that are exempt from Affordable Care Act insurance market rules.” The plans would:

• Be Short Term and up to 364 days as opposed to the ACA’s 90 day limit.

• Would not have to comply with the 10 categories of minimum essential benefits or accept all applicants at the same rates without regard to pre-existing medical conditions.

• Expand access to so-called association health plans allowing employers to band together in healthcare plans and cross state lines.

• Allow the expanded association plans to market to individuals across state lines.

More than likely, the impact of the Executive Order will drive up premiums for those left in the ACA, increase premiums for those with pre-existing conditions, and increase premium costs for older citizens. Much of the increase could be covered by ACA premium subsidies; but, those with incomes > 400% FPL (~10 million) in the individuals market would bear the full cost increase.

Kaiser’s Larry Levitt said; “ Association plans exempt from the ACA can cherrypick healthy people and make coverage unaffordable for those with pre-existing conditions. Insurers will leave the ACA marketplaces as soon as they can or hike premiums a lot.”

The only thing standing in the way of Trump’s Executive Order “easing the ACA’s statutory insurance market rules” from taking place is the legal challenges. As one legal expert posited; “I do not believe you can solve this problem without changing the law. It has to be done by statute, not regulation.”

Tags: run75441 Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

According to Modern Healthcare:

“In a brash move likely to roil insurance markets, President Donald Trump will ‘immediately’ halt payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act.

Before sunrise Friday morning, Trump went on Twitter to urge Democrats to make a deal:

‘The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding, massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!’

The Department of Health and Human Services had made the announcement in a statement late Thursday. ‘We will discontinue these payments immediately’ said acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan and Medicare administrator Seema Verma. Sign-up season for subsidized private insurance starts Nov. 1, in less than three weeks, with about 9 million people currently covered.”

This could be devastating to those with incomes less than 250% of the Federal Poverty Limit. It is a direct attack on US citizens by a president who can not get his way politically and is meant to punish citizens and politicians alike for not following his dictates. Let me assure you, the ACA was not imploding and most of the cost issues with it were caused by Republicans such as former Alabama Senator Sessions and Michigan and Colorado Representatives Upton and Kingston tampering with the Risk Corridor Program.

However, what will happen is the differences will be picked up by increases in premium subsidies as I have said previously for those in this category of 138% to 250%. Indeed as the CBO has pointed out, it becomes cheaper in some cases to bump up to a Gold plan for some. See Tables 1 and 2. Net cost of the ACA increases by $31 billion over 10 years.

Trump asserted: “Obamacare is a broken mess. Piece by piece we will now begin the process of giving America the great HealthCare it deserves.”

The only thing broken today is the Presidency as it is occupied by a madman. One has to wonder if this is Trump’s last hurrah before indicted.

At this time, I have no polite words I can print on AB.

Tags: run75441 Comments (10) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

On Richard Thaler Receiving The Nobel Prize

This is a Sveriges Bank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel that I should approve of unequivocally, and I do approve of it. Dick Thaler has long been known to be on the list of likely recipients since at least when Daniel Kahneman shared it with Vernon Smith back in 2002, although I sort of thought the award just a few years ago for Robert Shiller would put Thaler’s off a bit. Nevertheless, I approve of behavioral economics, so I was mistaken not see another award being given for it this soon, and with Thaler clearly a deserving and top candidate for it.

Indeed, I am the founding editor-in-chief of a journal called the Review of Behavioral Economics (ROBE), and back between 2001-2010 I edited the Journal of Behavioral Economics and Organization (JEBO). One of Thaler’s most important papers back in 1980, his fourth most cited, “The Pure Theory of Consumer Choice,” in which he introduced the concept of mental accounting, the first item cited by the Nobel committee in announcing his award, and the paper that I know he long considered the one that would get him the prize (which he long expected to receive), was the second paper every published in JEBO, which should make me even more pleased. Indeed, I recognize that there is an important element of justice in his prize given that he “wandered in the wilderness” for many years, publishing in oddball journals such as JEBO in its beginning and Marketing Science and other such, until much later when his ideas became more accepted, and he finally began hitting the top journals. So, he deserves credit for struggling with ideas that were not accepted and helping to make them become accepted, such as through his column in the Journal of Economic Perspectives on “economic anomalies” from 1987-1990, with some people saying he is the first person to get a Nobel for having a column in the JEP, not entirely false that observation.

So why am I not jumping up and down as much as I probably should be and might be? Maybe for me this is like the prize for Paul Krugman, which I also think was deserved, but which I thought should have been shared with others. I think that is kind of what I am thinking, although I recognize that there is a fairly long list of people who might be the others sharing, with such figures as Camerer, Rabin, Loewenstein, Fehr, Gintis, List, and more as possibilities. It is not obvious which of these should be pushed forward to share it with him now. Indeed, if one looks at Google Scholar citations, one finds him somewhat ahead of all those, with over 110,000, while several of those have around 80,000 and none of them more than that. So, they are not far behind, but they are behind, and it is not obvious again, which of them should be pushed ahead of the others.

Comments (0) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak)

Social Justice: Debt, Solidarity or Care?

Mozi: scholar and activist

 

How do we think about the obligation of social justice?  The dominant American political culture is based on individualist values: you have a right to do whatever you want, and the main problem is how to prevent you and other rights-bearing individuals from getting in each other’s way.  Without extra considerations, social justice in such a universe is a matter of taste and inclination, which is to say charity.  You offer help to others when you feel like it.

But there is an important extra consideration, debt: our freedom in an individualist world is constrained by obligations to repay the debts we have incurred.  This may result from a purely financial transaction like a mortgage or a student loan, but we also recognize what might be called social or moral debts, where one person has benefitted at the expense of someone else and therefore owes compensation in return.  This might not be recognized in a court of law, but it makes an ethical claim that can cause people to feel a sense of obligation.

The you-owe-it-to-them argument is used on behalf of coffee-growers, for instance.  Those on the sipping end of the industry, when they hear stories about how hard these growers work and how little they get for it, rightfully feel obligated to go out of their way to make amends.  They buy fair-traded beans and patronize cafes that share, or seem to share, these same values.  If you benefit by drinking, you are indebted.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I discussed in an earlier post, strongly pushes this framing of racial justice in America.  White people benefitted from centuries of un- and underpaid black labor, and from racial domination in general, and in this way they have accrued an immense debt.  Justice will not be achieved until the debt is acknowledged and paid back.

In fact, the “white privilege” language used to analyze racial inequality implicitly draws on this same notion of debt obligation.  Inequalities are assumed to all take the form of zero-sum relationships, where some (whites) have more because others (blacks) have less.  Thus the difference in outcomes can be understood as a debt that the better-off owe to the worse-off.  It’s politically effective insofar as it appeals to this deep theme in our culture, justice as the retiring of debts.

Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

by ProGrowthLiberal  (originally published at Econospeak)

Trump’s Inadequate Response to Hurricane Maria and the Posse Comitatus Act

Comments (4) | Digg Facebook Twitter |

Oxfam is a global organization working to end poverty. Its goal is to help people build better futures for themselves, hold those responsible accountable for the failures of people in power and/or government, and work in disaster areas. Their mission as stated is: “ To create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and social injustice.”

Earlier in the week Oxfam acknowledged the ongoing tragedy in Puerto Rico. Oxfam President Abby Maxman said:

“Oxfam has monitored the response in Puerto Rico closely, and we are outraged at the slow and inadequate response the US Government has mounted in Puerto Rico. Clean water, food, fuel, electricity, and health care are in desperately short supply and quickly dwindling, and we are hearing excuses and criticism from the administration instead of a cohesive and compassionate response. The US has more than enough resources to mobilize an emergency response; but, it has failed to do so in a swift and robust manner. Oxfam rarely responds to humanitarian emergencies in the US and other wealthy countries; but as the situation in Puerto Rico worsens and the federal government’s response continues to falter, Oxfam has decided to step in to lend our expertise in dealing with some of the world’s most catastrophic disasters.”

And still what Trump thinks about during a visit to the island is the debt owed Wall Street. “They owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street and we’re going to have to wipe that out. You’re going to say goodbye to that, I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs but whoever it is you can wave goodbye to that”. Trump was and is holding Puerto Rico hostage to getting aid on behalf of Wall Street.

Abby Maxman continues:

“Oxfam will join forces with Puerto Rican leaders to appeal to Congress and other federal agencies in Washington to dedicate resources to the response and remove barriers that are keeping aid out, and to commit to long-term support to help Puerto Rico build back better. We’ll also engage policy makers about the roles inequality and climate change are playing.

In addition, Oxfam has sent a team to San Juan to assess a targeted and effective response. We are currently determining how best this response could benefit from our expertise, such as meeting the needs of rural communities who face increasing risks of disease like cholera without clean water, providing shelter and meeting other immediate needs.”

Where are our Congresspersons and Senators? The population of Puerto Rico are US Citizens. I would urge people to write your representatives and senators pushing them to pressure the President to move quicker and forget the banking and financial sector Main Street bailed out. If this were a white population, no one would stand for this type of treatment.

Tags: run75441 Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |