Where Are My Keys?

Obamacare causing massive rate hikes in California, or big savings?

A few days ago, the guy who is a big supporter of Obamacare came out and gushed about how much the law was going to drop rates in the Golden State:

As Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic correctly points out—

“One reason for the misplaced expectations may be that actuaries have been making worst-case assumptions, even as insurers—eyeing the prospects of so many new customers—have been calculating that it’s worth bidding low in order to gobble up market share. This would help explain why premium bids in several other states have proven similarly reasonable. “The premiums and participation in California, Oregon, Washingtonand other states show that insurers want to compete for the new enrollees in this market,” Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said via e-mail. “The premiums have not skyrocketed and the insurers that serve this market now are continuing.  The rates look like what we would expect for decent coverage offered to a standard population.”

Cohn is saying that, despite the political naysayers, the healthcare exchange concept appears to be working very well indeed in states like California, Oregon and Washington—the first states to publish the expected health exchange prices for purchasing coverage. These are also states that are actually committed to seeing the program work as opposed to those states whose leaders have a vested political interest in seeing the Affordable Care Act fail.

Keep in mind that the entire idea of the exchanges is to require health insurance companies to compete openly with one another by offering identical coverage programs in the three created classes—each offering insurance coverage that actually delivers meaningful protection to customers—and then openly disclosing the price each insurance company will charge for that policy.  Thus, shoppers can clearly see which company has the best price on an apples-to-apples basis.

Today, a different writer from the same magazine sees things a bit differently:

Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters. “Despite the political naysayers,” writes my Forbescolleague Rick Ungar, “the healthcare exchange concept appears to be working very well indeed in states like California.” A bit more analysis would have prevented Rick from falling for California’s sleight-of-hand.

Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange.

“The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” the state said in a press release, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”

That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” exulted Peter Lee.

Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical.

If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By “average,” I mean the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)

The next cheapest plan, the “bronze” comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.

In other words, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.

Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261.

But on eHealthInsurance, the median cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.

So which is it?  Are premiums for most going to rise significantly, or will they drop? 

I often try and point out that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  I'm guessing that people will interpret what they want to believe from these stories.  Those on the Left will say the first report is spot on, and those on the Right will gravitate towards the second article.

If I lived in California, regardless of political affiliation, I'd plan for the worst, and hope for the best.  Set aside a few extra bucks, just in case the second report is the correct one, and if that comes to pass, you are ready.  If not, hey, you have a few extra bucks to play with.

We'll see what happens, and I'm guessing the final outcome will look more like the second article.

Smells fishy, doesn't it?

Somewhat lost in the news cycle is the killing of the "other" guy somewhat associated with the Boston Bombing.  You'll recall it was initially reported that things got violent during questioning, he pulled a knife, and was shot.

Thinks are now coming out that are raising some eyebrows.

For example, he was shot seven times, including once in the back of the head.  The FBI is reviewing the incident.  The FBI has changed its story (again) on what happened, and then changed it once again. 

How does the FBI not know (post action), if it was a broomstick or a metal pole?  Isn't laying on the ground next to the dead guy?  Also strange, is that the guy charged (with something in his hand), takes a few shots at close range, stumbles back, somehow composes himself, rushes the FBI agent again, before being dropped.  All the while, the other guy in the room never takes his weapon out of the holster.

Lots of questions, and the answers keep changing.  Stay tuned.

 

Any wonder the USA is going broke?

Ridiculous.

 

People "deserve" these benefits?  Based on what?

Weekly IUC bumps up..

This week the roller coaster goes up:

Consensus was for 340,000, so it is somewhat of a significant "miss".

Isn't this forcing a suspect to self-incriminate?

Interesting events in a case involving an encrypted hard drive:

A federal magistrate is reversing course and ordering a Wisconsin man suspected of possessing child pornography to decrypt hard drives the authorities seized from his residence.

The development comes as a month after the same magistrate thwarted prosecutors’ demandsthat Jeffrey Feldman unlock drives they believe contain child pornography.

Decryption orders are rare, but are likely to become more commonplace as the public slowly embraces a technology that comes standard even on Apple computers. The orders have never squarely been addressed by the Supreme Court, despite varying opinions in the lower courts.

Just last month, U.S. Magistrate William Callahan Jr. said the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination protected even those suspected of unsavory crimes, but added that “this is a close call.”

But prosecutors convinced Callahan to change his mind. Among other reasons, the authorities were able, on their own, to decrypt one drive from Feldman’s “storage system” and discovered more than 700,000 files, some of “which constitute child pornography,” the magistrate said.

When he ruled against the government last month, the magistrate said the authorities did not have enough evidence linking Feldman to the data, and that forcing the computer scientist to unlock it would be tantamount to forcing him to confess that it was his. But that theory is now out the door, because the data on the decrypted drive contains pictures and financial information linking Feldman to the “storage system,” the magistrate said last week.

“Such being the case, the government has now persuaded me that it is a ‘foregone conclusion’ that Feldman has access to and control over the subject encrypted storage devices. Thus, under the current state of the law as more particularly discussed in the court’s April 19 Decision and Order, Fifth Amendment protection is no longer available to Feldman with respect to the contents of the encrypted storage devices.”

How is this any different than me having a locked super-secure safe in my house, after the Cops have shown up with a warrant?  They can't force me to open that safe, can they?  They can ask for the key/combination, I can tell them I lost it, and it's on them to find a way in.

The authorities know the hard drive is his, they know it is encrypted, how can he be compelled to "unlock" it for him, and not violate the Fifth Amendment?

The Press as a battered wife?

From the Daily Beast:

In Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, the lead character is struck with amnesia, unable to remember critical events even as he’s trying to save the world. Let’s borrow that useful plot device and imagine if American journalists woke up and couldn’t remember who was president. It would be interesting to ask them a few questions:

What would you think of a president under whom the IRS targeted his harshest political opponents, during his reelection campaign?

What would you think of a president whose obsession with leaks and secrecy was so great that he used the Justice Department to obtain phone records of reporters, in violation of Justice’s established procedure?

What would you think of a president whose head of the Department of Justice signed a criminal warrant against a leading journalist working for the news organization most critical of the president—and monitored the movements of the journalist and even went after his mother’s phone records?

What would you think of an administration that directed the president’s press secretary repeatedly to deliver false information concerning the death of an American ambassador?

These are not hypothetical questions—and yet there is an entire class of journalist so invested in a certain moral and ethical image of the president its members are unable to entertain facts that might tarnish that image. They are the pro-Obama equivalent of Birthers, never letting emerging facts cloud the conclusion they’ve already committed to hold.

In case you missed it..

Love him or hate him, LBJ is a beast:

 

That he was able to get back for a play on the ball at all is amazing.  That he got a chance at just altering the shot is pretty out there.  But to make the block, not draw a foul, and make it a four-point swing is just insane.  Look at the elevation he had on the block:

 

LeBron is just plain better than everyone else in the game today..

 

Not that this will change the minds of the hard-core MMGW folks, but..

Perhaps it will help some of the folks that actually have an open mind about the topic:

At first the current stall out of global warming was due to the ocean cycles turning back to cold. But something much more ominous has developed over this period. Sunspots run in 11 year short term cycles, with longer cyclical trends of 90 and even 200 years. The number of sunspots declined substantially in the last 11 year cycle, after flattening out over the previous 20 years. But in the current cycle, sunspot activity has collapsed. NASA’s Science News report for January 8, 2013 states,

“Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. Ongoing Solar Cycle 24 [the current short term 11 year cycle] is the weakest in more than 50 years. Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.”

That is even more significant because NASA’s climate science has been controlled for years by global warming hysteric James Hansen, who recently announced his retirement.

But this same concern is increasingly being echoed worldwide. The Voice of Russia reported on April 22, 2013,

“Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.”

That report quoted Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory saying, “Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.” In other words, another Little Ice Age.

Read the whole thing.

Good work, if you can get it..

It's an important job, right?

“He eats lunch when he arrives at work at 2 p.m. Then, like clockwork, he goes to sleep with a cup of soda on the table and the straw in it,” said Marvin Robbins, a union vice president.

“Then he wakes up, looks at his watch and says, ‘I have to get out before the traffic gets bad.’ He’s usually out by 4 p.m. after being at the office two hours.”

Rosenthal is a former Parks Department employee who rose to power campaigning to rid the union of corruption in the late 1990s.

He last made embarrassing headlines in 2009, when he inspired a City Council bill requiring jumbo-size ambulances for morbidly obese patients after he had a stroke at City Hall.

Since then, he hasn’t been making much of an effort to give the city’s ambulances a break and slim down. Union officials say he racks up $1,400 in monthly food bills on the union dime.

Much of the 5-foot-7, 400-plus-pound Rosenthal’s food tabs are for catered union events and meals he writes off as “union business,” board members claim.

They say he significantly overorders at eateries like Dallas BBQ, the Stage Door Deli and Pine Restaurant in The Bronx, a hangout for local politicians, and takes the extra food back to his Bronxdale apartment.

“He’s always walking off with a doggie bag or extra boxes of food,” said another executive board member.

Rosenthal, who earns $156,000 annually, yesterday denied being a free spender— and insisted he works “12-to-14-hour days.”

He says the allegations are “part of a smear campaign” by a faction trying to get another Local 983 vice president, Joseph Puleo, elected president in a June 5 showdown.

He said it’s normal for executives to take “power naps.”

He also blamed his meetings with the sandman on the effects of pain medication he takes for backaches he has suffered since he fell through a chair at a McDonald’s last year.

“The chair broke because I’m big,” Rosenthal said.