How Fewer Obamacare Options Hurt a 4-Year-Old

The Washington Post recently published a heart-wrenching story of two Virginia families caught up with the consequences of a damaged, declining, and increasingly noncompetitive health insurance market.

Little Collette Briggs, 4, suffers from an aggressive case of leukemia, and the Briggs family for two years has depended upon the medical professionals at a hospital that specializes in pediatric cancer care.

The family’s insurer has withdrawn from the market, and the remaining insurer has no contract with that hospital. Narrow networks of doctors and hospitals have been a common feature of health insurance offerings in the declining and increasingly noncompetitive Obamacare insurance exchanges.

The Briggs family misfortune is hardly an isolated phenomenon. As the Post reported, “It is not uncommon for insurers to cut larger research-based hospitals from its plans on the exchanges as a way to cut costs. By narrowing their networks, carriers avoid paying the higher rates that academic medical centers charge.”

By virtue of its flawed design and inflexible regulations, the evolution of narrow health insurance networks—restricted insurance contracts with doctors and hospitals—was, among other big bugs, baked into Obamacare from its inception.

The historical record is clear. Examining the initial data in 2014, the first full year of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the plans in the health insurance exchanges nationwide had “narrower networks” than CBO analysts had anticipated, and the plans in the exchanges were also imposing “tighter management” on the use of medical services, compared with employer-sponsored health insurance.

In 2015, Avalere, a prominent research organization, reported that Obamacare plans included 34 percent fewer medical providers than the average for commercial private health insurance.

Likewise, researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported that among the “silver plans”—the benchmark plans, or the most popular plans on the Obamacare exchanges—41 percent of them had small or “extra small” networks of medical professionals.

Restricting the availability of medical providers or services is just one way for insurers to stay in these so-called Obamacare “markets.” These “markets” are the way they are, however—beset by soaring costs and declining competition—because of Washington’s deliberate political decisions.

Obamacare transfers vast regulatory authority from the states to the federal government. The federal government is mandating the kind and level of health benefits Americans must get, the levels of coverage Americans must have, and the array of insurance rules that govern “private” health plans in the Obamacare “markets,” including the rating rules for insurance.

This complex set of federal regulations drove up the costs of health insurance coverage for millions of Americans in the individual and small group markets.

Once again, the historical record on costs is clear: Compared with 2013, insurance premiums for 27-year-olds in 11 states more than doubled, and in 13 states, premiums for 50-year-olds increased by more than 50 percent.

In 2015, premium increases slowed, but in 2016, they climbed again. For 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services projected an average national premium increase of 25 percent in the exchanges.

The result: Younger and healthier persons are staying away from coverage in the exchanges in droves. With an older and sicker insurance pool, costs soar.

For next year, by the way, Health and Human Services is projecting that the average increase for the “silver plans” will be 37 percent.

On choice and competition, the historical record is also indisputable. In 2014, Kaiser Family Foundation analysts declared, “The long-term success of the exchanges and other [Affordable Care Act] provisions governing market rules will be measured in part by how well they facilitate market competition, providing consumers with a diversity of choices and, hopefully, lower prices for insurance than would have otherwise been the case.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation analysts were dead right on that one.

Today, being able to pick among a broad choice of health plans and providers is, for millions of Americans, rapidly becoming a rarity—and not just for the beleaguered Briggs family in Virginia. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of insurers offering coverage in the nation’s individual markets declined by 29 percent.

By 2017, consumers in 70 percent of U.S. counties had only one or two insurers offering coverage in the exchanges. By 2018, it is likely to be worse.

The verdict is in. President Barack Obama and his allies in Congress created this mess—from the very beginning. The soaring costs, crazy deductibles, declining choice and competition, along with the increasingly narrow networks, are a direct result of bad policy.

That’s why the Senate needs to get back to work and quickly undo Obamacare’s damage, allow the growth of functional insurance markets, and provide millions of Americans with more choice, a broader range of health care options, and lower costs.

SOURCE

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The Billionaire Socialists

Earlier this week, I alerted you about a confab of billionaire socialists who gathered last weekend for a secret meeting at the posh La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, California.

While it may seem that "billionaire socialists" is an oxymoron, it's really not. The fact is, politically and financially, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg — the big four antagonists of Liberty — share an insatiable narcissistic quest for power — including centralized government power.

The event, "Beyond #Resistance: Reclaiming our Progressive Future," had an attendance price tag of at least $200,000, though the big four are devoting billions toward their quest for statist power. Recall that just last month Soros transferred $18 billon — "the bulk of his wealth" — into his Open Society Foundation. He may get a tax deduction but there is nothing charitable about his objectives in opposition to Liberty.

SOURCE

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Big government, too big to fail banks, and big oil are coming together once again to stick it to the little guy

Isaac Newton’s third law states, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Sir Isaac must have never been in government, because a little-known rule in the Environmental Protection Agency is having a ripple effect across the nation, and is likely to hit consumers in their pocketbook. The EPA must now act to save thousands of jobs across the country and billions in consumer costs.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is a program requiring fuel sold in the U.S. to contain a minimum amount of renewable fuels, such as ethanol. The program was originated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and expanded under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. To track the renewable fuel mandate a renewable identification number (RIN) is assigned to each batch of biofuel. The RINs go towards the Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO), which are the targets for each refiner or importer of petroleum-based gasoline or diesel fuel.

The problem is the rules were written for refiners that have the capability to blend renewable fuels with regular fuel, like gas, diesel, and jet fuel. Every time a renewable fuel is mixed with nonrenewable, or fuel is imported already blended with renewables; the company gets a RINs credit from the government.

Unfortunately, many refiners do not have the capability to blend. These refiners must purchase separated RINs. Enter the Wall Street speculators.

The speculators are buying the RINs from the blending companies and driving up the price. In 2013, a 20-fold price increase in RINs was attributed to speculators stockpiling the phony currency. This was never the intent of the rule. The rule was designed to make sure renewable fuels were blended with nonrenewable fuels, but as usual Wall Street speculators started manipulating the market, after all, they did a great job with the housing market.

RINs have become a multibillion-dollar burden on refiners and a tax on U.S. consumers. The Oil and Gas Journal estimated U.S. refiners paid $2.2 billion for RIN credits in 2016.

The RINs scam has already forced the only refinery in Delaware to close its doors in 2009, sending hundreds of workers to the unemployment line. Jeff Warmann, president of Monroe Energy, warned his refinery might be next. Monroe Energy is an independent energy company with a refinery outside Philadelphia. His company spent more than $200 million last year on RINs, “That’s more than we paid for the refinery,” he says.

Another Pennsylvania refiner being slammed by the RINs scam is Philadelphia Energy Solutions. The company runs the largest refinery on the US Atlantic coast, refining 310,000 barrels per day. The company now spends more on RINs than its total payroll.

Contrary to popular belief, refineries operate on razor-thin margins. Many refiners are on the verge of bankruptcy and laying off hundreds of workers because of the simultaneous burden of the RINs scam and thin margins.

The fight has brought together strange bedfellows. Some of the most conservative Senators are on the same side as northeastern union workers and liberal politicians. If Governor John Carney of Delaware, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, the United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard, and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) can all get on the same page about an issue, you know the problem is important.

The refineries are not fighting the biofuel mandate; they are fighting the way in which the program is administered. Changing the EPA regulations that require the big fuel blenders and global energy companies that create the credits are also responsible for using the credits is the right thing to do. The EPA established a competitive advantage for some while disadvantaging others. It is time for the EPA to rectify the situation for the sake of good paying blue collar jobs and the consumer’s pocketbook.

SOURCE

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Nearly half of white American poll respondents living in the South feel like they’re under attack, a new Winthrop University poll found

Maybe because they are

Forty-six percent of white Southerners polled said they agree or strongly agree that white people are under attack in the U.S. More than three-fourths of black respondents said they believe racial minorities are under attack.

And 30 percent of all respondents in the poll agreed when asked if America needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage. More than half of respondents disagreed with the statement.

Forty percent of respondents said they believed that Confederate statues should remain as is, while nearly a quarter said a plaque should be added to contextualize the statue.

Twenty-seven percent of respondents said the statues should be moved to a museum. Nearly half of black respondents said the statues should be in museums, and a quarter said they should be completely removed.

Southerners overall said that racism is the most important issue facing the U.S., and black respondents were twice as likely to say it is the most important issue.

SOURCE

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