The Facts Are in: Austerity Politics Doesn't Work

The Facts Are in: Austerity Politics Doesn't Work

Wednesday, 04 December 2013 09:20 By Sally Kohn, Yes! Magazine | Opinion 

(Photo: Austerity protesters march on Parliament in opposition to government spending cuts on March 26, 2011 in London, UK. An estimated 250,000 people took part in the rally. via Shutterstock) 
From England's double-dip recession to Portugal's spiking unemployment, there is now conclusive evidence of the complete failure of austerity.
The idea that rational thinking should govern political decision making in America dates back to our very founding. “Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams said, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Oh, John Adams, where are you when we need you? Facts have been buried in a political era in which partisan ideology overrides reason. And while the Republican Party has embraced fact-free governance as its personal brand, Democrats are not entirely innocent either.

Take the case of “austerity politics.” Persistent, despite the facts. There is now conclusive evidence, both practical and theoretical, of the complete failure of austerity politics.

First was the United Kingdom, the practical test case for austerity. In 2010, faced with a recession similar to those gripping most other industrialized nations, Britain’s conservative government instituted a series of austerity measures to dramatically cut spending and taxes. Parts of the U.K. government were slashed by upwards of 30 percent.
The result? Utter and unquestionable failure. The deficit remained high while the country suffered through a double-dip recession. Austerity shaved 6 percent from the country’s GDP over the last three years. Major credit agencies downgraded Britain’s AAA rating for the first time in generations. The Fitch ratings agency blamed weak growth performance, “partly due to … public sector deleveraging.”
In other words: austerity. The International Monetary Fund has been pressuring the United Kingdom to back off austerity for its own good and the good of the global economy—which is funny because it was the International Monetary Fund that pressed for austerity measures in the first place.
Take another example, Portugal—which was forced to slash spending drastically in order to qualify for an IMF and EU bailout. The result? The Portuguese economy worsened, with the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio going up not because its deficit increased but because the economy contracted. The nation’s already-painful 13 percent unemployment rate grew to more than 16 percent. And there are similar examples of austerity’s failures from Ireland to Italy to Spain.
Okay, mumble conservative economists, a few countries may have stumbled but the theory of austerity is still sound. Around the same time Britain launched its austerity experiment, two American professors—Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff—published a study arguing that economic growth suffers when a nation’s public debt level reaches 90 percent of GDP. Reinhart and Rogoff’s study became the calling card for pushing austerity politics in the United States and abroad. And then, in April 2013, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found a simple spreadsheet error that, when corrected, entirely ruined Reinhart and Rogoff’s theory.
Suddenly, the research used to back the case for austerity was 100 percent disproven.
And yet, conservatives—as well as a few too many spineless Democrats—continue to assert that austerity makes for good economics, in spite of the fact that real-world evidence and theoretical science now decisively prove otherwise. In Spain and Greece and beyond, citizens have been mounting protests against a backdrop of skyrocketing rates of suicide and devastating unemployment wrought by austerity measures. And yet these mass protests receive far less attention than the outmoded assertions by the monied elites. In their case, whether there’s evidentiary support for austerity or not is irrelevant—the powers that be simply seek convenient window dressing on their ideology that insists we should cut taxes and spending in good economic times and in bad, that basically there is never a case for anything other than severe austerity. And so while the facts behind austerity politics have collapsed, the ­ideology remains—as hollow and destructive as ever.

One Ridiculous Republican Quote that Sums Up Their Ignorance About Living in Poverty

December 2, 2013 By Allen Clifton
 
Sometimes I run across a quote that I literally have to read twice because it’s so absurd that my mind doesn’t believe what my eyes just saw.  And that’s what happened when I saw the story about Kevin Madden, a CNN contributor and former adviser to Mitt Romney, speaking about his opposition to a hike in our minimum wage.
Mr. Madden said that Congress should not raise the minimum wage because it denies Americans the “opportunity to grab that bottom rung of the economic ladder.”
The basic context of his comments were that raising the minimum wage might deny some workers the ability to “work their way up” from the bottom to the top.
I’ve always laughed at this argument.  It’s basically saying we should keep people poor because low-paying jobs won’t require many skills for workers who may lack them.  Which of course makes absolutely no sense.
A job is a job.  If it needs to be filled — especially for lower-skilled jobs — it’s going to be filled.  If anything, raising the minimum wage might entice millions of people to get off welfare, providing them with more spending money and creating greater consumer demand which will then create even more jobs.
You know—basic economics.  Demand creates jobs.
This fear-mongering notion that a minimum wage of $10 an hour will suddenly increase unemployment because many low-skilled workers don’t possess the skills to warrant such a wage is absurd.
First, $10 an hour is still a fairly low wage.  It isn’t as if you need a great deal of skills to make $10 an hour.  I once worked for Sam’s Club and started out as a cashier.  Cashiers at Sam’s start out around $9.50-10 per hour.  And trust me, they weren’t hiring “highly-skilled workers.”
Outside of cart attendant, it was about as “entry level/low-skilled” of a position at the club as you could get.
So it’s ridiculous for anyone to believe that a minimum wage of $10 per hour would suddenly leave millions unable to find work.
But comments like this show perfectly just how ignorant many Republicans are when it comes to living in poverty.  Their two sides to this ridiculous defense against our minimum wage perpetuate the need to keep tens of millions of people in poverty so they can “climb that economic ladder,” while also insinuating this absurd notion that $10 per hour is some “highly-skilled” wage.It’s pathetically misguided and absolutely ludicrous.
And as someone who grew up in poverty, struggling throughout much of my life, Republicans like Mr. Madden (and those who agree with him) simply don’t get it — and they never will.

About Allen Clifton
Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, and author of the popular Right Off A Cliff column. He is also the founder of the Right Off A Cliff facebook page, on which he routinely voices his opinions and stirs the pot for the Progressive movement. Follow Allen on Twitter as well, @Allen_Clifton.

Insurance Companies Caught Ripping Off Customers and Blaming Obamacare

posted by Salvatore Aversa November 14, 2013


Republicans are continuing their attack of President Obama for policy holders that are being faced with cancellation through their insurance companies.  Most of the cancellations are due to “junk insurance,” which are plans that provided bare basic benefits, and if ever needed to be used for a serious illness, would be canceled.  There are gaps in the sensational headlines however that, while not as sexy, tell the rest of the story.
The Affordable Care Act sets standards.  Starting January 1, 2013, all new policies must meet a certain criteria in order to be legal.  Consumer standards are nothing new to the world.  Just like pieces of glass in our food or a car made out of sugar would not be legal to sell in United States, our insurance companies are finally being regulated so they can no longer advantage of consumers.
The people hold “junk insurance” policies that are being canceled are finding they are able to receive better insurance coverage, with more benefits, at the same price.  What’s more, with the available subsidies, many are finding their premium lower or even free.  Time after time, those who went on shows like Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity to decry ObamaCare finally went to the Marketplace to view their options, they found they were wrong.
How insurance companies tried to pull one over on their policy holders was to inform them that their policies would no longer be valid “because of ObamaCare,” and their plan will turn into a higher priced one, sometimes 10 times their old rate.  They conveniently left out, however, that they had other options and would be able to find a comparable priced policy on healthcare.gov or a correspondent state exchange.
Even this is not the full story.
The way the insurance companies informed their policy holders of their canceled policy, was to tell them to do nothing, and their old plan would automatically transfer to the new plan.  This deceived many in to believing they had to stick with their insurance company.  Some governors, I’m looking at you Rick Scott, required insurance companies that were canceling their plans to blame ObamaCare, even if that was not the reason at all.
All of this has led to stick shock and confusion among many.  Humana insurance in Kentucky is being sued for sending out 6,500 misleading letters doing just that.
Humana is neither alone nor the worst of the bunch, though.  According to ThinkProgress.org:
“Blue Cross successfully enticed tens of thousands of its individual policyholders to switch out of their grandfathered health plans and forever lose their protected grandfathered status,” states the lawsuit. “Blue Cross concealed information about the consequences of switching plans and intentionally misled its policyholders to encourage the replacement of grandfathered policies.”

In California, 900,000 customers were canceled from grandfathered plans, and no, that isn’t a typo.  The canceled plans were “grandfathered” in, meaning that, while outdated, the plans were still legal and did not need to be canceled.  The insurance companies were doing this strictly to try and forced customers in to higher priced plans, thus keeping them away from the marketplace, while putting the blame on the ACA.  This is referred to as “twisting,” and under state law is illegal.  The Superior Court is pushing back on the cancellations, signaling pushback from consumers.

The plaintiffs, Paul Simon, 39, and Catherine Corker, 63, of California say that they are among the customers that Anthem Blue Cross pressured to drop their grandfathered policies in 2011 without giving them all the facts about new Obamacare requirements that could raise the price of their plans in an effort to cut its own costs. Simon and Corker would have preferred to remain on the grandfathered plans permitted by the law, and are now asking the courts to block Anthem from canceling any more policies unless the company allows consumers to switch back into their grandfathered plans.
“This is about an insurance company manipulating the situation and concealing the facts,” said William Shernoff, an attorney for both the plaintiffs, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We are asking the court to give our clients and everybody else in the same situation the option of going back to their grandfathered policies.”

The letters that are being sent out by insurance companies are not proof that ObamaCare is a failure.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  Insurance companies are going to be insurance companies, and these actions just prove the need for extensive insurance reform.  There are talks of allowing junk plans to still exist.  If this happens, who will pick up the tab when one of these policy holders develops cancer, gets in a car accident, or anything else life throws at us?
Behind all of the crying of the Right and muted frustration on the Left is the desire for a single payer system.  The case on the Left is quite simple, we take care of our own.  There is a reason no developed country is moving towards our system of making an industry out of people’s health.  For the Right, they love to claim they are for small business.  What would help businesses more than not having to provide insurance?  Under a single payer system, everybody would be covered from birth to death by Medicaid.  The only thing holding the country back is the extreme paranoia on the Right.
Conservatism, by definition, means resisting change, and it is the Right that is currently hold us back from taking care of every citizen in the country.  Sad, for a party that claims to love god and family so much.  Then again, when have we ever expected consistency from a Republican.
Video
California Department of Insurance announces that major insurance providers are delaying policy cancellations.

About Author

Salvatore

Salvatore Aversa attended Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in History in 2009. He currently resides in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Nicole and their Chocolate Labrador Godiva.

Another Health Insurer Caught Falsely Cancelling Thousands of Health Plans

Another Health Insurer Caught Falsely Cancelling Thousands of Health Plans

by Vyan

 

Following the report that Insurer Humana was fined $65,000 in Kentucky for sending out 6,500 misleading cancellation letters for low-premiums plans only to be automatic re-enrollment in high cost plans before these customers were given a chance to shop on the open exchange for a better and cheaper plan - we now have a new report that Anthem Blue Cross is being sued for tricking people into dropping their "grandfathered" plans.
Think that's bad, well this is even worse.
http://thinkprogress.org/...

“Blue Cross successfully enticed tens of thousands of its individual policyholders to switch out of their grandfathered health plans and forever lose their protected grandfathered status,” states the lawsuit. “Blue Cross concealed information about the consequences of switching plans and intentionally misled its policyholders to encourage the replacement of grandfathered policies.”

And more... http://www.ibtimes.com/...

The lawsuits, filed Monday in Superior Court, may signal an emerging customer pushback against the approximately 900,000 cancellations in California alone of individual health insurance policies that will take effect Dec. 31.

900,00 Cancellations.  False Cancellations of plans that, which under the Affordable Care Act are "Grandfathered" and Don't Need to be Cancelled.  The Insurance Companies are doing it to Scam their Customers into higher cost plans and away from the ACA Exchanges in a practice that violates State Law known as "Twisting".

The plaintiffs, Paul Simon, 39, and Catherine Corker, 63, of California say that they are among the customers that Anthem Blue Cross pressured to drop their grandfathered policies in 2011 without giving them all the facts about new Obamacare requirements that could raise the price of their plans in an effort to cut its own costs. Simon and Corker would have preferred to remain on the grandfathered plans permitted by the law, and are now asking the courts to block Anthem from canceling any more policies unless the company allows consumers to switch back into their grandfathered plans. “This is about an insurance company manipulating the situation and concealing the facts,” said William Shernoff, an attorney for both the plaintiffs, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We are asking the court to give our clients and everybody else in the same situation the option of going back to their grandfathered policies.”

These lawsuits may take some time to work their way through the court system, but what can work even more quickly is the CA State Insurance Commission and also the Court of public opinion.  Just like in Kentucky the CA Commission has the ability and power to Restore These Improperly Cancelled Plans and get customers back the "Plan they Prefer" if that's what they truly want. Perhaps if a few (thousand) of the customers who received letters claiming their "grandfathered" plan was cancelled were to contact that commissioners office, there might be some action on this faster rather than later.
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/...
California Department of Insurance
Consumer Services Division
300 South Spring Street, South Tower
Los Angeles, CA 90013
California Department of Insurance
Fraud Division
9342 Tech Center Drive, Suite 100
Sacramento, CA 95826
fraud@insurance.ca.gov
800-927-HELP (4357)
I'm just saying...perhaps the President isn't the one who should apologizing for these Cancellations, the Insurerers Should be.
Vyan

What makes U.S. health care so overpriced? It’s not what you think

Maggie Fox NBC News

21 hours ago

Ted S. Warren / AP

Chan Lai Ly has his feet examined as part of a regular check-up related to his diabetes, by Honghue Duong, a physician's assistant. Patients with chronic diseases account for a huge hunk of health spending, a new study shows.

U.S. medical care is getting ever pricier, but it’s not because so many old people are running up charges, experts reported Tuesday. Most of the money’s being spent on people under 65 with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
And even though the U.S. spends $2.7 trillion a year, nearly 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), on health care, it’s not keeping up with the rest of the developed world when it comes to improving people’s health.
“It does show pretty clearly that price is the culprit here,” Dr. Hamilton Moses of the Alerion Institute in Virginia and Johns Hopkins University told reporters.
“Based on this review…the U.S. ‘system’ has performed relatively poorly,” Moses and colleagues wrote in the report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Their findings echo what other experts have found – U.S. health care gives little value for the money.
One big problem is that people have no idea what they are paying for health care services, so traditional free market forces cannot act to keep costs down. “This is not a market. It’s far from a market. Few prices are known. They are not publicized,” Moses says.
The perception is that a bigger proportion of the population is getting old and sick, and using more and more services. But Moses and colleagues say their review didn’t show that.
“In 2011, chronic illnesses account for 84 percent of costs overall among the entire population, not only of the elderly. Chronic illness among individuals younger than 65 years accounts for 67 percent of spending,” they found.
“Price of professional services, drugs and devices, and administrative costs, not demand for services or aging of the population, produced 91 percent of cost increases since 2000.”
And while some opponents of health care reform have been saying the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, the statistics don’t support that.
U.S. life expectancy is getting longer, but it’s lagging behind the longer lifespans enjoyed by people in most of western Europe and Japan. And there are huge disparities across the country, with people in states like Mississippi considerably less healthy than people in Colorado or New York City.
Moses points to a very big culprit – the standard fee-for-service system that encourages doctors and other caregivers to give lots of tests, individual treatments and to prescribe drugs, instead of keeping patients well. It’s not a new idea, but Moses says his team’s study shows it very clearly.
“This is a very myopic country,” he said. “There are lessons to be learned from other countries. Chronic illness is where the misery is, it is where the money is and it is where the greatest opportunity lies.”
Moses and his team deliberately did not look at some of the changes outlined in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. Moses said some of the issues have become too politicized. But the law does try to encourage hospitals and caregivers to move away from a system that pays for individual procedures to one that rewards for keeping patients well.
More could and should be done, Moses says, to encourage better care of people with heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
“It’s the partisanship that’s perhaps standing in the way,” he said.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama administration health adviser who now heads a health policy center at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees that focusing on patients with chronic illnesses is the way to save money. “Preventing them from getting sicker is going to be the most important thing we can do to save costs,” he told the news conference.
That might include a system that encourages home visits, since hospital visits are so expensive, he added. “(Patients) like it better and it’s cheaper," Emanuel said.

Parker: Can the Republicans handle prosperity?

Parker: Can the Republicans handle prosperity?

By Kathleen Parker

| The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — In spite of everything — the GOP’s internal scrimmages, the government shutdown, the party’s transparent attempts to derail Obamacare — Republicans keep getting second chances.

The question is, can they handle prosperity? Do they even know what to do with it?

With the myriad problems besieging Obamacare, from the non-rollout to the minuscule number of enrollees in the health insurance exchanges, this is no time for gloating. Rather, it is time for Republicans to get very, very busy with their own ideas for across-the-board reforms.

The party of "no" must become the party of "we can, too!" This doesn’t mean sacrificing core principles, though some could use a little shelf time. It does mean picking battles Republicans can win and avoiding skirmishes that further alienate centrists and minorities.

Forget building a larger tent, which increasingly looks like a pup for two white guys and a flashlight. Ditch the tent and build a coliseum. Install Doric columns, if you like, and grab an obelisk on your way to redemption. At no extra cost, here’s an inscription for the keystone: Waste not, want less. Waste not this moment; want less than perfection and aim for the possible.

This was always House Speaker John Boehner’s battle plan, but he finally concluded that leading his conference where it wanted to go was preferable to inciting a civil war. In a recent interview, Boehner told me he thinks at least some of the better-death-than-compromise caucus had come around to understanding that attaching Obamacare to the continuing resolution, resulting in the government shutdown, was the wrong tactic.

Even so, "at least some" may not be enough. And who knows what Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has up his sleeve as new deadlines loom for budget and debt-ceiling negotiations early next year?

In the meantime, House and Senate Republicans have a small window, while Obamacare is hugging the shoals, to show why their ideas are best. Americans frustrated with Congress and disappointed by the president are primed for someone to pick up the bullhorn and say, "We hear you."

It’s too bad "compassionate conservatism" has become tarnished because compassion is what is needed in today’s GOP playbook: Compassion for the hungry whose food stamps House Republicans excised from the farm bill; compassion for 11 million immigrants who are prisoners in illegal limbo; compassion for gays, lesbians and others seeking protection against workplace discrimination.

These are not such difficult choices in the scheme of things. How to guarantee that Iran can’t weaponize its nuclear capability? That’s tough. Not so tough: Helping the poor feed their families, finding a path for citizenship along with other immigration reforms, extending equal protections to individuals whose sexual orientation should not be a firing offense.

The Senate also has passed a comprehensive immigration bill with the help of 14 Republicans that contains a relatively strenuous path to citizenship that includes paying back taxes and fines, and getting in line behind others seeking citizenship. Hardly a giveaway. Even so, some Republicans aren’t on board with the path to citizenship. Although Boehner told me he hopes to get an immigration bill to the House floor next year, others say 2014’s midterm elections make this unlikely.

Phooey.

What’s really not likely to happen is a Republican White House — ever — without Latino voters. There’s only so much Republicans can accomplish when they control only half of one-third of government. Consider that the biggest states with the largest concentrations of Hispanics — Florida, California, Texas and New York — also convey 151 of the 270 electoral votes needed to be elected president.

Appealing to Latinos doesn’t mean Republicans have to pander or bow to President Obama’s wishes. It means doing the right thing. Even though a slim majority of Americans (53 percent) think most immigrants here illegally should be deported, according to a Reuters/Ipsos online survey last February, a more recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 65 percent favor a path to citizenship if it requires essentially what the Senate bill proposes.

The draconian option of deportation would be an unlovely sight. Not only would families be torn asunder, but America’s crops would wither on the vine, as they did in Alabama after that state’s crackdown prompted a sudden, mass exodus. Yet again, unyielding principle prevailed over common sense and survival.

Time is of the essence if Republicans hope to refresh their image in the public square. Picking battles wisely, acting compassionately, creating rather than negating is the only way forward. Jar the hardwoods, campers, there’s daylight in the swamp.

Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.

Guys In Their 20s Fixed The Healthcare.gov Problem In A Matter Of Days

Guys In Their 20s Fixed The Healthcare.gov Problem In A Matter Of Days (VIDEO)

 Published On November 10, 2013 | By james | Founder | Chief Editor | The Everlasting GOP Stoppers


Three tech geeks in their 20s - George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang,  and Michael Wasser – didn’t like witnessing the abysmal rollout of the Affordable Care Act website that is Healthcare.gov, so they did what any self-respecting web gurus would do: Saw it as a challenge, and made their own version. On a few nights and weekends.
Said Liang;

“They’ve got it completely backwards in terms of what people want up front – they want prices… You come to our website, you put in your zip code… you hit ‘find plans,’ and you immediately see exchange plans that are available for that zip code.’

The result, which the trio built for free, is called HealthSherpa.com, and it’s working right now.
CBS News reports that;

“…using information buried in the government’s own website built by high-priced government contractors, they found a simpler way to present it to users.”

Watch via CBS News

 

 

The Next Time a Republican Says They Oppose a Hike to the Minimum Wage, Just Show Them This

November 10, 2013 By Allen Clifton  

“The minimum wage kills jobs!”  

I’m sure you’ve heard this rallying cry from many conservatives.  It’s a line that might sound like it makes sense to gullible Republican voters—except it doesn’t.

Make no mistake about it, our minimum wage and the amount of people on welfare at deeply intertwined.  Welfare, of course, being another issue Republicans endlessly attack, while opposing an increase in the minimum wage.
Let’s just think about that for a moment.  We have a minimum wage that’s so low, many people working full-time at the wage still qualify (and often require) assistance from the government to survive.  Therefore, our minimum wage being at such low levels is forcing millions of Americans to rely on help from the government just to get by.
Now enter the Republican nonsense that the minimum wage kills jobs and that we must make cuts to our welfare programs because there are too many people relying on the government instead of “taking personal responsibility for themselves.”
So basically Republicans oppose any hike in the minimum wage — a hike which would help millions of people no longer require help (or at least as much help) from the government — all while claiming that there are far too many Americans relying on help from the government.
What next?  Are they going to oppose sex education in our schools and access to contraceptives, then complain about the rate of abortions due to unplanned pregnancies?  Oh wait, never mind.
Their ignorant stance on the minimum wage just baffles me.  Sure, a hike would have a negative impact on some areas of our economy.  But here’s a news flash — nothing we ever pass will completely please everyone.  If we cured cancer, think of all the jobs that would be eliminated.  Does that mean curing cancer is a bad thing?
I just love their premise that if we eliminated the minimum wage, suddenly job growth would skyrocket.  How exactly?  By creating a bunch of jobs that pay even less than our current minimum wage?  How exactly is that going to help our economy or the American worker?  Do these conservatives really believe that by paying some lower skilled workers less, that businesses are going to pass these savings on to other workers?

Please.  They’ll do what they always do — keep it for themselves.
So how exactly does it make any sense to oppose a hike in minimum wage all while complaining about the amount of people relying on government assistance?  It’s our ridiculously low minimum wage that’s causing many Americans to rely on government assistance.
This is honestly one of the most ignorant arguments I deal with when talking to Republicans.  They literally will complain about people being on welfare while opposing a plan that would help millions of people get off welfare.
It makes absolutely no sense.
If we raised the minimum wage to a more respectable level, millions of people would make a decent enough living to where not only would they not require government assistance, they wouldn’t even qualify for it.
And don’t give me this nonsense that a raise in our minimum wage would be a “job killer.”  I’m so sick and tired of that damn phrase I could scream.  Everything is a “job killer” according to Republicans.
Tax hikes, “Obamacare,” raising our minimum wage—whenever Republicans need a “go to” talking point, they just throw out the term “job killer.”
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, demand creates jobs—period.  If there’s consumer demand for a product or service, there will be businesses fighting among themselves to provide it.  These businesses will then hire according to what demand dictates.
Sure, many businesses will initially fight against a hike in the minimum wage.  Heck, it might even temporarily cost our economy jobs.  But in the long run, demand will always win out.  These businesses might let go of a few people in a knee-jerk reaction to a raise in the minimum wage, but if they can’t keep up with demand, they’ll be forced to hire more employees.
“Oh, but then prices will go up!”  Excuse me, are prices going down?  Demand often dictates prices as well.  Nobody wants VHS tapes because it’s a dead technology, while Blu-ray and streaming services are the bigger ticket items right now.  How much are VHS tapes compared to Blu-ray or streaming?  Because demand for VHS tapes are next to nothing, prices for these items as a whole are next to nothing.  However, for Blu-ray or streaming services you’ll pay more considering demand for these products is greater.
Well, as long as their prices remain at a price point that consumers find acceptable.  This is just basic economics.  But it’s something Republicans simply seem unable to grasp.
Take a hypothetical VHS vendor.  Then let’s exempt them from “Obamacare,” give them a tax rate of zero and allow them to pay workers $1.00 an hour.  Know how much money they’re going to make?  Probably next to nothing.  Know how many jobs they’ll create?  Most likely zero. And if they did, it would be one job paying $1.00 an hour.
Consumer demand is the driving force behind our economy.  Consumer demand would also increase if we raised the minimum wage as more Americans would have more spending money.  Consumers with more money to spend create more demand, which then creates more profits for businesses which then creates more jobs.
Or we can do it the Republican way — cut taxes, cut benefits, reduce regulations and see all that savings go into the pockets of the rich executives (as they have for the last 30+ years).  Then as consumer spending falls due to the greed of these corporations trying to squeeze every last drop of revenue from every last worker, they’ll continue to eliminate jobs as consumer demand plummets due to low wages and fewer Americans having jobs.
Then, to “create jobs,” these businesses will lobby Washington for more tax cuts with the promise that this time, they’ll actually create jobs.  But what happens when their tax rates are reduced to zero?  How will they create jobs then?  That’s a question Republicans will never answer.
As this all goes on, and millions of Americans continue to rely on our government for help due to a minimum wage that’s simply too low for Americans to get by on, these same Republicans will stand there and push for cuts to those programs as well.
And that’s just how asinine many conservatives truly are.  They claim there are too many Americans overburdening our welfare system, costing taxpayers billions, yet they oppose a hike in the minimum wage which would help millions of Americans get off government programs and become fully self sufficient.
But then again, these are the people who claim their party represents “freedom” while trying to ban homosexuals from having the right to marry whomever they love.
So common sense obviously isn’t a quality most conservatives value.
Image via AP

Libertarians are pushing us over a cliff

Thom Hartmann: Libertarians are pushing us over a cliff

The author says we'll get sensible financial regulation, but not until conservative "predators" destroy the economy

Alex Halperin

Thom Hartmann (Credit: Ian Sbalcio)

Brace yourself. Thom Hartmann has bad news. His new book “The Crash of 2016” is self-explanatory but understated. The great recession? As he sees it that that that was a tremor before the big one. It’s coming and just one of the causes might be the unregulated derivatives market measured in hundreds of trillions of dollars, several times as much as the conventional global economy.
Thom Hartmann talked to Salon about how conservative “predators” got out of control, Enron’s ugly legacy and why he’s optimistic. Gluttons for punishment can find an excerpt from the book here.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
What is the plot to destroy America? There have been lots of them.

From the beginning of our republic there has been this debate. There have been these dueling visions of what America should be. In some ways it’s an analogue of what ended up being the Whig Federalist vs. the Democratic Republican debates, which is should we have a country that is governed by a wise few, because the masses can’t really be trusted or should we have a country that is governed from the bottom up. This debate has taken a lot of different forms and morphed into a variety of political positions, but that’s the essential battle.
That’s the plot, as it were, on the one hand a group of ideologues concerned that you can’t trust the masses and on the other hand you have the kind of Rooseveltian notion that society should be for all the people and all the people should be able to participate in the society whether it’s through a union or with the democratic process.
There’s two groups that are driving this thing that I describe as the plot. First is the [conservative] ideologues but then there’s also a group of predators who use that rhetoric and that ideology to set up a situation where they can enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. So the rhetoric has been used to deconstruct the protections for our economy and our middle class that kept our nation stable from the 40s through the 80s.

Then the predators stepped in and said lets take that a step further and blow up Glass – Steagall
and put in the Futures Modernization Act so we can have unregulated derivatives, create a 800 trillion dollar market when the whole world’s GDP is only 65 trillion dollars. It’s really the predators that have always brought down our country, but they’ve hid behind ideology that is actually a legitimate ideology.
You’re talking about conservative ideology?
One might call it conservative ideology but I’m not even sure Barry Goldwater would recognize it. Maybe libertarian ideology is a better word for it.
What enabled this ideology to reach what you’re arguing is a dangerous point? There have always been predators.
That’s the second major point of the book. You have to go back to a quote that has been attributed to various people, “When the last man that remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.” When we forget the history to paraphrase Sir Edmund Burke, we are doomed to repeat it. And it takes about 80 years for that to happen. Roughly 90 years ago we saw the election of Warren Harding on a platform, his slogan was “More business in government, less government in business.” He dropped the tax rate, deregulated banks, deregulated pretty much everything. It was this huge bubble in the 20s that crashed in 1929.
If you go back 80 years before that you see the big battles over regulation and deregulation of the 1840s and 1850s that led to the crash of 1857 that arguably led to the Civil War. And if you go back 80 years before that, you see there were somewhat similar economic debates.
Roughly every 80 years we kind of forget about economic bubbles, make the same mistakes, and those mistakes lead to economic disaster, which typically leads to a war. And I’m saying we’re 80 years out from the last one and we’re making the same mistakes.
We’ve just had a severely bad recession as well as quite a few wars, why aren’t those having any the effect you say crises have – a corrective effect?
Because we’ve been insulated from them. Because they haven’t been real for the average American. World War II, the Civil War, The Revolutionary War –everybody participated. There was no getting out of it. This war – the Afghan and Iraqi wars, which I would argue are not so much a result of this economic crisis, they were more strategic and oil wars – those wars were basically volunteer wars. We have a pauper army to an extent.
So the war hasn’t really affected America the way the Vietnam War did or World War II, the Civil War, the Revolution. And the recession – the stock market is back where it was, the recession the really bad part, the hemorrhaging jobs, that lasted for just six or seven months. Obama got his stimulus bill passed and kind of put a stop to it. What I’m suggesting in the book, and what I think I’m making a pretty strong argument for is that we’re still in that crash. The crash really started in 2006/2007 when the housing started to collapse, and arguably it started in 99/2000 when all the banking supports were pulled apart. That was the analogue of 1920 and the analogue of 1840.
Because we haven’t repaired the fundamentals, we haven’t regulated investment banks, we haven’t regulated derivatives and commodities trading; we haven’t protected the middle class and now they’re being eviscerated. The predators are like bandits and the economic fundamentals are not different in any meaningful way than they were in 2006. The crash was going to happen, and they had a whole bunch of bubble gum and wire holding it together.
That’s why I’m saying the [crash will come in] 2016. The crash really started in 2006, and the Bush administration saw it coming and did everything they could to hold it off until after November 2008. And they just were not able to. And now I think the Obama administration thinks they can old it off until after November 2016. But they can’t. I’m skeptical.
From the George Washington administration until the Franklin Roosevelt administration, we never went more than 15 years with out a major National bank panic, or stock crash. Never. It was just constantly happening. When things got so Roosevelt created the SEC, put in Glass – Steagall, put in really serious banking regulations, made unions legal, which is a mass stabilizer. He also raised the top income tax rates, another mass stabilizer since it keeps hot money out of the market place. He put all these protections into place and we went from 1935 until 2008 without a major bank panic and without a major stock market crash that lasted more than a day or two.
They had finally figured out how to build stabilizers into the economy. Well we’ve been deconstructing that aggressively9. Without all of the traditional stabilizers in our economy we’re not just vulnerable to a collapse, but I think a collapse is inevitable.
Consensus is that the crash in 2008 was due to the housing bubble and the mortgage bubble. What are some of the indicators that you’re looking at now that make you nervous?
I would say that the crash of 2008 wasn’t the housing bubble and the mortgage bubble, but it was the housing bubble and the mortgage bubble, which crashed the derivatives bubble, which is really what caused the crash of 2008. You had banks that had multi-trillion dollar liabilities, which we’d never seen before. In the late 90s we had a derivatives market that was less than $80 billion to in 2008 having an unregulated derivatives market was over $800 trillion, according to the bank of international settlements. The entire GDP of the planet is $65 trillion and the entire GDP of our entire country is $15 trillion dollars per year.
This is all funny money, and it dropped down to $400 trillion after the crash, but it’s back up to $700 or $800 trillion now. Nobody knows for sure because it’s unregulated. So I’d say that the crash really begins back in 99/2000 when Phil Gramm pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that allowed all that to happen. Of course he did that because [former Enron CEO] Ken Lay wanted it done.
There was an attempt to change [the law] with Dodd-Frank, but more than half of Dodd-Frank has not even been implemented. And I don’t think Dodd-Frank, even if it was fully implemented, would be strong enough to rein this stuff in. We need to go back to simple stuff like Glass – Steagall. Am I making sense?
You’re making sense. To most people, a derivatives bubble is invisible. Is there anything more tangible to look for?
We are starting to re-inflate the housing bubble. We’re starting to re-inflate the stock market bubble. I mean we’ve been doing it over the last couple of years. But the most tangible thing is that since roughly the beginning of the Reagan presidency, wages have been flat even as productivity has continued to increase. Productivity is what creates corporate profits.
Back in the 60s Time magazine did a thing on the coming leisure society and they predicted that by 2000 people would be working you know 20 – 30 hours a week and making the equivalent in today’s dollars of $80,000 a year. And if productivity and wages had tracked each other over the last 32 years that would be the case right now.
But instead wages have flattened out for the average working person and productivity has increased. All that wage money has gone to basically the ownership class, the CEOs and stockholders.
The consequence of that is that for the middle class to maintain their standard of living more women [went to work]. And then when women entering the [work place] wasn’t enough to maintain middle class stability, people started converting their homes in to ATMs.
Then when they ran out of equity on their house, they began to put stuff on their credit card, and when they ran out of that, they went back to school or sent their kids to school and now we have a trillion dollar debt bubble in student loans. So there’s this massive debt bubble and when that thing bursts it’s going to take everything down with it. People know this instinctively: people don’t buy cars anymore. They rent them, they lease them. People don’t buy houses, they borrow them from the bank. I’m old enough to have seen this cycle. I remember actually buying cars and owning houses back in the 70s 80s.
What can be done?
There are three things we need to do in a very straightforward fashion: Number one: We need to restore fundamental regulators to the game of economics. You wouldn’t play a game of football without referees, and rules and goal posts. And if you said, “Whichever team has the most money can just determine where the goal posts are,” everybody would think you’re crazy. And yet that’s what we’ve done to our economy. We need to change the fundamentals and go back to a set of rules that are good for everybody.
Number two: we need to unwind the debt bubble. I think frankly we need to deal with student loans. Abraham Lincoln gave us great schools. Thomas Jefferson started the first free school. That ended with the Reagan presidency. We should seriously consider debt [forgiveness] for student debt. We have an entire generation that is saddled with decades of paying off debt that none of their predecessors had.
Number three is to put policies into place that will cause wages to track productivity like they did from the George Washington administration to the Ronald Reagan administration. And that principally has to do with taxation at the high end, so that it’s just not worth it anymore to make a thousand times more than your workers. Go back to that 30 to one ratio that we historically had in America.
Are you optimistic?
I’m very optimistic because every time we’ve had one of these four generation, 80 year crashes, what has come out of it has been a very rapid and very substantial positive and forward motion for this country. The first time we went from being a colony of England to forming our own nation. The second time we ended slavery and moved into the Industrial Revolution. The third time in the 1930s we came out of the Great Depression and built the strongest middle class the world had ever seen. We became the world superpower.
Our country tends to move forward but the biggest motions always come after these crashes. We are sort of like in AA: We have to hit bottom before we seriously start talking about looking up and seeing what the possibilities are.
That’s an answer to why didn’t the crash of 2008 do it? Why didn’t the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do it? The average American didn’t have the experience of hitting bottom. And when we do, then there will be a serious discussion, serious conversation that goes beyond dueling sound bites between political parties, and partisan positions, about what kind of country this is, and what kind of country we want it to be.
You’re saying it is going to have to get really bad, but then you’re optimistic.
Absolutely. That’s what rebooting is, like rebooting your computer.

Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin.

A Business Owner’s First Brush With HealthCare.gov

By PAUL DOWNS

Staying Alive

The struggles of a business trying to survive.

A couple of years ago I wrote the following: “I would like to be able to go to my insurer’s Web site, and go to a page that generates an instant rate adjustment based on a brief description of a possible new hire. Let’s say I get to enter the age and sex (and maybe whether they smoke) of the prospective employee and any others in their family. Then I get a number right then and there that tells me what this will do to my insurance rates.”
Well, that day has arrived. The exchange established by the Affordable Care Act is intended to allow for one-stop shopping, with uniform underwriting standards based on age, location of residence, family structure and tobacco use. My insurance company used to jerk my rates up and down without explanation, although the clear implication was that it cost more to have older and sicker workers.
Under that system, it was very difficult to shop for competing quotes. I have been getting insurance from Independence Blue Cross for years, but on two occasions, I asked a sales representative from Aetna for a quote. Both times, the representative promised savings of 15 to 20 percent but then also demanded a complete roster of my employees and their dependents.
Not surprisingly, when the underwriters were done, the rates we were quoted were almost identical to what we were already paying. So I have stuck with Independence Blue Cross for the last 13 years, mostly to avoid the hassle of dealing with a different company.

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After receiving a shocking quote from my health insurance agent, I decided to go to HealthCare.gov to see whether I could price alternative policies. I was able to connect without difficulty, and my first impression was: Looks nice! I do a lot of government business and, in my experience, most federal sites that link to large databases have a certain naïve aesthetic — this invoicing site from the Defense Department being a good example. The insurance exchange site is considerably nicer. I would rate its overall look and feel as excellent.
This was not the first time I had been on the exchange. I had taken a quick look shortly after it opened, in early October, when I was curious to see whether specific plans with pricing were shown. Even in the first week of the exchange’s existence, I was able to navigate (starting here) to a pricing tool that lets you plug in your state and county and get generic sample quotes. The first page asks whether you are buying as an individual or a small-business owner. I tried both and found both options worked well. Either way, you are taken through a sequence of pages that explain how the plans work and how the individual subsidies work. And then you go on to pricing.
All of the information is clearly presented. When I tried the pricing tool, the prices I saw were for a single person and a family, but it was not entirely clear how old all of these theoretical people were, so the numbers were not all that useful because they varied widely with age.
After seeing the generic quotes in early October, I let the project sit for a while, having been assured by the media that the site was a disaster. It was not until after I got my renewal package, on Oct. 29, that I went back. This time I tried to get a specific quote — first going to the page to create an individual account, which did not work. There was no response after I clicked the link to start the application.
Thwarted, I went to the Independence Blue Cross site to see what it would be like if I tried to buy directly. It was not hard to find the page to start an application, but the actual shopping window would not load. Instead, I got a server-disconnected notice while using both Safari and Chrome browsers. Hmmm. The public and private sectors: tied in a race to the bottom.
I tried the Blue Cross site again the next morning and was able to get through. I answered a bunch of questions about the members of my family, and eventually got a tailored quote for Keystone Gold HMO: $1,379.65 per month. Interesting. My agent had quoted me $1,437.27 per month for Keystone Premier Gold, but I could not figure out what the differences were between the two plans.
I also tried the Aetna site, where I answered the same questions about the age of my family members, but here I was shown only plans in the silver and bronze categories. I could not figure out how to generate gold level quotes. I wanted to see what pricing was like for comparable coverage, and the Obamacare metal labels indicated that what I was being shown was not the same as what I had seen from my agent, so that did not help me.
I searched “health insurance” on Google and ended up at another site, United Healthcare’s, with an easy-to-use calculator. And then I noticed, after submitting my information, some very small print that briefly flashed, “Please note: Plans with requested effective dates of Jan. 1, 2014, or after have significantly different pricing and benefits.” Apparently the numbers shown on the next page were not for plans compliant with the Affordable Care Act. Utterly useless.
Late in the evening last Monday, I returned to HealthCare.gov and tried to create an account. This time I succeeded without difficulty. Logging in was straightforward — create a user name and submit personal information: name, address, Social Security number. I was tired, however, so I did not start the application immediately.
The next morning, I logged in, again without difficulty, and spent 30 minutes on an application for myself and my family, applying as self-employed buyers. I wanted to see if the costs offered to individuals differed from the costs I was quoted as part of a group buy. The first part of the application was a verification of my identity, very similar to what happens when I get a credit report online. I was asked some questions about former addresses and phone numbers that presumably only I would know. It worked flawlessly. Then I went through the usual questions about the ages and sex of my family members and our tobacco use. There were a few optional questions about our race and ethnicity, and then I got the quote.
I was shown pricing for 24 plans: two platinum, six gold, nine silver and seven bronze. In the mix was my old pal, Keystone Gold HMO, at $1,379.65 a month — same as on the Independence Blue Cross website and lower than the quote from my agent. (I have not spoken to her yet about this. I’m waiting for her to come back with the pricing she promised from Aetna.)
The next afternoon, while I was at work, I decided to look into getting pricing for my employees, using the SHOP part of the exchange, as HealthCare.gov is designed to service both individuals and small-business bosses. One of the first choices you make, on the home page, is whether to go through the site as an individual or as an employer. Having tried the individual quotes, I wanted to see what happened when I tried to get a quote for all of my workers, like the one we had received from my agent.
There is a different set of pages to navigate, with plenty of FAQs (easy to read and navigate), but in the end you do not get to see pricing online. Instead, you fill out a PDF, which is basically your business’s name and address, and a list of employees, and put it in the mail. Very 20th century. I presume that the paperwork is required because this part of the site is not functioning yet, but I do not know that for certain.
I did learn one detail about the paper application, and the individual application, that is important. The site does not emphasize this, but you must have the current version of Adobe Reader installed on your computer or you will not be able to read the PDFs. I had an older version, and when I first opened the document, it was nine pages of question marks. I installed Reader 11.04, and it was all good.
When I started shopping for my business, I set up another account at HealthCare.gov, this time using my business address. I try, in all of my financial dealings, to keep some distance between my personal life and my business life, so it seemed logical to set up another account. The application page does not distinguish between an account established for a business and an account established for an individual. You still enter your own name and Social Security number. Again, I went through the questions to verify my identity, and everything checked out. So I ended up with two accounts, with two user names: one a variation on my own name, the other a variation on my business name.
Having done that, I started on the mail-in business application. The first question asked for my “Marketplace User ID.” I was confused as to what this might be. When I completed my application as an individual, I was given a nine-digit application number. Was that what the program wanted? When I entered that number on my computer, a notice popped up saying it was incorrect. What to do? I called for help.
The application lists a phone number for a help center: 800-706-7893. I called at about 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. I pressed 1 for English and 0 for a representative, and to my surprise, the phone was answered on the first ring by Amy, who was pleasant and helpful. She told me that the Marketplace User ID was my login user name, not my application number.
I asked her what would happen after I mailed in the application, and she told me that I would be contacted by someone from HealthCare.gov to complete the process. How long would it be before I was contacted? She didn’t know. She said the representatives had not been given an answer to that question. I should mail in the application and hope for the best. I told her that I needed to renew by Jan. 1, and she assured me that it would be taken care of in time for that deadline.
That went so well — immediate service by a pleasant person who answered the questions she could — that I decided to do it again, just to see if the first time was a fluke. First, I worked on the application for a few more minutes. It asks for name, Social Security number, hire date and birth date for each eligible employee, which took a while. Then I called the help line again: same easy procedure, same instant pickup (this time from a different person), and same answers.
So I completed the application and put it in the mail on Thursday. And now I wait: both for HealthCare.gov to get back to me and for a quote from Aetna to be delivered by my agent, Maggie.
One more thing: I tried to log in to my personal account last night, and it was taking a long time to load. It could not pull up my application. Hmmm. Then this morning, I logged into my business account and found that the information from my personal application had appeared under the business login. Double hmmmm.
So here’s my conclusion. If you are using HealthCare.gov, do not make multiple accounts using the same name and Social Security number. You can apply both on the personal side (online) and business side (using the paper application) with the same login. That issue aside, the site seems to be working, and I found it to be well-designed and helpful.
As for the conclusion to my search for affordable health insurance, I cannot predict when I will be able to write it. I need to hear what my pricing will be for business plans, both from my agent and from the government. Then I will try to come up with a game plan in consultation with my employees. We will make a decision about what to do, and you will be able to read all about it here.
Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside Philadelphia.

Obama Gets Behind Democrats' $10.10 Minimum Wage Proposal

Obama Gets Behind Democrats' $10.10 Minimum Wage Proposal

Posted: 11/07/2013 6:16 pm EST  |  Updated: 11/07/2013 6:27 pm EST

Dave Jamieson Become a fan

dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is throwing his support behind congressional Democrats' proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 and peg it to inflation, more than a dollar higher than the $9 proposal he made in his State of the Union address in February.
A White House official confirmed to HuffPost Thursday that the administration backs the legislation introduced earlier this year by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The Hill reported Thursday that Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the White House was willing to get onboard with the measure.
"The President has long supported raising the minimum wage so hardworking Americans can have a decent wage for a day’s works to support their families and make ends meet, and he supports the Harkin/Miller bill that accomplishes this important goal," the White House official said in an email.
Harkin and Miller have said that a minimum wage hike to $9 would be insufficient. The president's support of the $10.10 proposal may help more Democrats rally around the bill as the Senate takes it up in coming weeks.
"We are very pleased President Obama endorsed a $10 an hour minimum wage bill," Aaron Albright, a spokesman for Miller, said in an email. "This action unites all Democrats and minimum wage advocates behind one proposal that addresses income inequality in a powerful way. Congress must move to raise the minimum wage now."
The White House's move was applauded by advocates for low-wage workers, who haven't seen the federal minimum wage raised since 2009, after a series of increases signed into law by President George W. Bush. In states that don't mandate a higher one, the wage floor remains $7.25 per hour.
"The White House got this ball rolling in a big way by putting this in the State of the Union," said Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator at the National Employment Law Project. "I think they've come to a point where they realize the economy deserves a robust minimum wage. The jobs we're creating are hourly jobs with low wages. We need to do everything we can to raise it."
The $10.10 figure in the Harkin-Miller proposal isn't arbitrary. Progressive economists like to point out that if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since its high in the late 1960s, it would now be above $10. Of course, it's possible the president's original $9 proposal could weaken Democrats' bargaining position with the House GOP. Republicans may seek a smaller minimum wage hike, if they agree to one at all. Republican leaders have already called it a job-killer.
During his State of the Union address, Obama argued that hiking the minimum wage would improve the lives of millions of workers and their families.
"Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong," Obama said. "Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty."
While the federal minimum wage has held steady, many states and municipalities have continued to raise or implement their own minimum wages. Just this week, New Jersey voters approved a minimum wage bump to $8.25 per hour. Last month, California lawmakers raised theirs to $10, making it the highest state minimum wage in the nation.
The congressional Democrats' proposal would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 through a series of increases, then it would be adjusted each year according to inflation. The minimum wage would also rise for restaurant servers and other tipped workers, whose employers can pay them as little as $2.13 before tips. The minimum wage for those workers would be set at 70 percent of the regular minimum wage.

Extending Obamacare Signup May Cut Insurer Profits

Bruce Japsen Contributor Forbes

Though most health plans are reporting robust profits partly due to new business coming from the Affordable Care Act, an extension of the enrollment period could “dent” the insurance industry by causing “pricing and logistical implications,” a new report said.

Extending the period to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act beyond March 31, 2014 could hurt health insurance industry profits, a new report by Fitch Ratings says. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new report by Fitch Ratings puts a cloud over an otherwise sunny financial picture for health insurance plans poised to reap millions of new paying customers who are required to buy insurance coverage under the health law. Millions of Americans who have no coverage will receive federal subsidies of up to $5,000 to help them buy from health insurance companies that sell individual and small group policies.

 

Doctor Shortage Could Ease As Obamacare Boosts Nurses, Physician Assistants  

 

 

Obamacare Applications Ahead Of Bush Medicare Drug Benefit Signups

 

Despite Glitches, Obamacare Profit Windfall To Insurers Well Underway

 

 Academic Medical Centers Move In On Urgent Care Boom 

But signup has been slow due to flaws in the healthcare.gov web site. The glitches have some in Congress from both parties pushing for an extension for signup beyond the end of March 2014, the current end of the six-month signup period. For those who sign up by Dec. 15 of this year, coverage can begin Jan. 1, 2014 under the existing enrollment rules.
“An extension would enable consumers to put off any decision about purchasing healthcare beyond the current deadline, potentially increasing the portion of those who wait until they need the insurance to buy it,” Fitch said in a report the New York-based firm issued Wednesday.
“Allowing more time would also result in a bevy of logistical issues regarding pricing and state participation that could raise short-term risk for insurers,” Fitch said. “To the extent that the enrollment period is lengthened, cost of care estimates could deviate more from the original estimates. Insurers would like to be able to price for this risk, but it is unclear as to whether they would be able to.”
The potential bad news for the health insurance industry comes in the wake of a flurry of positive third-quarter earnings reports from several health plans such as Wellpoint (WLP) and Cigna CI +0.57% (CI), which raised their profit guidance for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, other health insurers like UnitedHealth Group UNH +0.46% (UNH) and Humana HUM +0.44% (HUM) have said they expect an influx in new business from the health law and have seen their stock prices rise.
On Wednesday, Humana chief executive officer Bruce Broussard said during his company’s third-quarter earnings call that new government business and new customers purchasing coverage on the exchanges are “growth opportunities that are difficult to ignore.”
But Broussard cautioned analysts and investors about the technical issues saying there could be risks for Humana.
To blunt some risks to insurance companies and their customers, some state insurance regulators are considering lengthening existing policies for three months into 2014.
“Fitch views this as less problematic for health insurers than an extension of the current enrollment period as long as benefits and premiums on the extended policies are unchanged from current levels and the extension is effective for only a relatively short period,” Fitch said in its report.

"You didn't build that!"

"You didn't build that!" It was correct when he said it and its always going to be correct. pic.twitter.com/SpXeQFG8ts
— NO! GOP! NO! (@NoGOPNo) November 7, 2013

Radioactive Water From Fukushima Is Systematically Poisoning The Entire Pacific Ocean

Republicans have it backwards.

Republicans have it backwards. Retweet this now. #uniteblue #p2 #tpot #maddow #ctl #libcrib #liberal #cnn #msnbc pic.twitter.com/DoywRzIrMp
— Christopher Zullo (@ChrisJZullo) November 6, 2013

Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul Hope To Tack Right-To-Work Law Onto Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Posted: 11/05/2013 11:58 am EST  |  Updated: 11/05/2013 12:54 pm EST

Dave Jamieson 

dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have proposed an amendment to a workplace discrimination bill in the hopes of creating a national right-to-work law.
The measure -- which, as Roll Call reported Monday, would be tacked onto the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) -- would forbid contracts between companies and labor unions that require workers to pay the union for bargaining on their behalf. Prized by Republicans and business groups and loathed by unions, such laws have made it onto the books in 24 states, most recently in Michigan.
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell praised Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who signed the state law in December after it was fast-tracked through the Republican-controlled legislature. McConnell said he and Paul were following Snyder's lead.
"The truth is, over the years, 'Big Labor' had come to care more about its own perks and power than the workers it was charged with protecting," McConnell said. "Snyder knew that. And he knew it was time to tip the scales back in favor of workers. Well, he’s not alone."
Right-to-work laws diminish union membership and weaken the clout of organized labor. Unions like to refer to such legislation as "right-to-work-for-less" laws, pointing to studies finding the laws depress wages. Right-to-work's boosters, including McConnell, portray the laws as a matter of workplace choice and a necessary counterweight to "Big Labor," even though unionized workers now make up only 6.6 percent of the private sector.
The Senate cleared a major legislative hurdle Monday night by voting to move forward with debate on ENDA, which would bar discrimination in the workplace for large businesses on the basis of sexual orientation or identity. The measure introduced by McConnell and Paul will now become part of that discussion.
It's highly unlikely, however, that the Democratic-controlled chamber would ever send right-to-work legislation to the president's desk. Unions remain a strong base of the Democratic Party, and right-to-work has proven deeply divisive in states like Michigan.
Speaking after McConnell on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said a national right-to-work law would lead to more inequality in the U.S. economy.
"If you look at the state of unionism today, I think the facts speak for themselves," said Durbin, referencing the country's falling union density. "Those who want to eliminate the opportunity for collective bargaining and make it more difficult for workers to stand up and speak for themselves in the workplace, I think frankly are going to condemn us to a much slower-growing economy and much more injustice when it comes to compensation."
Correction: This post originally referred to ENDA as the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. It is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.