Ethereal; Ephemeral: August 2013

Thursday, August 29, 2013

“The rate-shock concerns were overblown,” said Christine Eibner, a senior economist at Rand Corp., a California-based nonprofit research group that is releasing a report Thursday that examines insurance premiums for workers at small firms. “It’s likely the effect will be small.” Nationally, the report said, average premiums for equal plans would cost $5,837 with Obamacare in effect and $6,192 without it — a $355 savings under the Affordable Care Act. Premiums at large companies weren’t examined in the report. But Rand’s report only examined companies with fewer than 100 workers. Large companies have been providing health coverage to their employees for years but they are always looking to cut costs.

Last week, for example, United Parcel Service Inc told non-union employees that their spouses would no longer qualify for company-sponsored health insurance if they could get coverage through their own jobs. Blaming the new healthcare law, UPS told white-collar workers two months ago that 15,000 working spouses eligible for coverage from their own employers would be excluded from the UPS plan in 2014. According to USA Today, company officials also said the move, which applies only to non-union U.S. workers, should save $60 million a year. Many analysts note that such moves are part of a long-term trend of shrinking corporate benefits, but UPS repeatedly cites Obamacare in explaining its decision. According to a survey released in March by consultant Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, 4 percent of large employers excluded spouses from their health plan in 2013 if they could buy coverage where they work, and 8 percent more planned to do so for 2014.

In an article in Forbes, Avik Roy former healthcare consultant for Mitt Romney states, with all the ‘objective’ might of the partisan he is: “We know that Obamacare will significantly increase the cost of individually-purchased health insurance in nearly every part of the country. But we’ve generally assumed that disruptions in the market for employer-sponsored health insurance will be less severe. In particular, large employers who self-insure should be exempt from most of Obamacare’s most onerous regulations. It turns out, however, that even America’s largest companies face higher costs due to the health law. A recently-leaked letter from Delta Air Lines to the Obama administration states that the ‘cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year,’ much of it due to Obamacare.”

Suffice it to say, Delta’s numbers are convoluted and misleading. Delta speaks of additional costs for coverage of adult children up to age 26 at a cost of more than $14 million. They speak of reinsurance fees that will cost an additional $10 million. Delta estimates that it will cost them another $14 million for employees that will now elect to take insurance that have been declining because of the individual mandate in the new law. Even if true, and no doubt highly exaggerated, it only totals $38 million.

Roy concludes that “President Obama keeps insisting that, “for the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance,” life will be even better than it is today. But that’s patently untrue. The so-called “Affordable Care Act” will make health care less, not more, affordable.” But even Roy is forced to first admit “It’s not clear exactly how much of that sum is due specifically to Obamacare, and how much is due to health inflation and the end of Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, a $5 billion fund used to encourage employers to continue providing health benefits to early retirees in the near-term.” And Roy also acknowledges, “Delta doesn’t like Obamacare’s “Cadillac tax” on high value insurance plans. But that’s because the tax is doing exactly what it should do: motivating employers to pare down on costly plans that drive premiums upward.”

On the other side of the coin is Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks, “I don’t believe that…the health care law should be a reason or a motivation to cut benefits for either the employee or spouses,” Schultz said. “An investment in your people is an investment in shareholder value.” “Other companies have announced that they won’t provide coverage for spouses; others are lobbying for the cut-off to be at 40 hours. But Starbucks will continue maintaining benefits for partners and won’t use the new law as an excuse to cut benefits or lower benefits for its workers,” Schultz said in a telephone interview.

Tami Luhby for CNN Money tries to explain why, in some states, premiums will rise dramatically and not in others. Premiums in states like New York and California have dropped dramatically, while there are concerns about cost increase in states like Ohio, Florida, and South Carolina. But these red states have opposed ObamaCare and their projected increases do not take into account federal subsidies. There are other contributing factors such as age, deductible, benefits and quality of the plan. According to Joan Peters spokeswoman for the Department of Health Human Services, “When the marketplaces open on Oct. 1, plans will have to compete side by side, and consumers will be able to choose the one that best fits their budget and needs.” And even if rates do rise a bit “A lot of people will get more for their money,” said Sarah Lueck, senior policy analyst for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Editorial Board commentary by the St. Louis Post Dispatch “Desperately flailing at Obamacare as it saves lives and money” concludes The Affordable Care Act is not perfect and may never be. Inevitably, economics will force it to give way to a single-payer national health care system. But in the meantime, it’s saving lives, saving money and making health care available to those who, as in parable of the Good Samaritan, were left to suffer at the side of the road.

Jon Favreau, the president’s former top speechwriter, argues that the uptick in the anti-Obamacare crusade is a result of Republicans’ being “terrified that Obamacare could actually work.” In a July 11 article in thedailybeast.com, Mr. Favreau asked, “If Republicans are so confident Obamacare will end badly, why not just shut up about it?”

As the Dispatch says: “The fact remains that even though some big insurance companies have refused to sign up, states that have created insurance exchanges have seen the ‘magic of the marketplace’ — once a favorite phrase of Republicans — drive down the cost of individual health insurance policies. In New York, Oregon and California, rates have fallen as much as 50 percent.”

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Global Warming: Science — the Republicans and God

Perhaps the most polarizing contemporary policy debate between Democrats and Republicans; between Progressives and Conservatives is the conflict over the existence of manmade Climate Change (Global Warming).

The argument over Global Warming is a debate between Progressives and Democrats (Liberals) on the one hand, and two allied foes-- what I will refer to as Conservatives (skeptics) and Evangelical Republicans, on the other. The skeptical debate is loosely about whom or what is causing Global Warming, and the scientific explanation of that cause. Importantly, both sides agree on the meaning of Global Warming, but skeptics deny the significance of the science, as we will see, they talk right past the science. Evangelical Republicans, on the other hand, not only deny the existence of Global Warming, but they deny science as possible explanation of natural phenomena in a World created by God (more on this to follow).

As I mentioned, secular skeptics do not deny Global Warming, but they are of two minds. In the first example below, Rep. Crawford questions some of the validity of the scientific data, and then jumps to calling into question the existence of Global Warming, writing it off to politics. In the second denial, Senator Boozman acknowledges climate change, writing off contemporary scientific concerns to the historical and expected natural changes in our climate. In both cases, since there is no evidence of anthropogenic climate change, we have no basis for concern, and the issue is not really about the science.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR-01): “There’s not sound science to support some of the initiatives that the President, I think, is committed to. We know that some of the research was faulty and it drove a lot of the agenda for a long time. and then it turned out there were some questions about the validity of that research,” said Crawford. “I don’t see a lot of the green initiatives that are being talked about being supported by scientific data, but more supported by political agendas.” - See more

Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas: “Well I think that we’ve got perhaps climate change going on. The question is what’s causing it. Is man causing it, or, you know, is this a cycle that happens throughout the years, throughout the ages. And you can look back some of the previous times when there was no industrialization, you had these different ages, ice ages, and things warming and things. That’s the question.” He also once compared the scientists who believe in man-made climate change to those who warned about Y2K.

The overwhelming preponderance of the scientific community believes that Global Warming is anthropogenic in origin, and becoming a crisis. This leaves one to wonder why there would be skepticism about the phenomenon of Global Warming given the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community. Human beings are now more than 7 billion strong, increasing like the national debt under President Bush. The world is more industrialized than ever, and we produce waste at rates unrecorded in the Earth’s history. In fact, in the 40 years or since manmade climate change has been a political football, the Earth’s population has nearly doubled. So it seems a simple matter of common sense, whether or not you think some of the scientific data is skewed, with the rapid increase in humanity and the by-products of life, there must be some impact on the environment.

Behavioral scientists, Dana R. Fisher, Joseph Waggle and Philip Leifeld, Within the U.S. Climate Change Debate: Where Does Political Polarization Come From? Locating Polarization, American Behavioral Scientist 2013 57: 70 originally published online 2 November 2012, take an rigorous look at what they believe are the sources of the polarization over the debate.

What I take from their paper is that Conservative think tanks have challenged the science of Climate Change on, ethical, economic and political, and nationalistic grounds. They question the intent and independence of the researchers, the impact on the economy, and the political motivations of those supporting the idea of climate change, while arguing that it is not in the U.S’s best interest to acknowledge environmental issues when the rest of the world pollutes. Not surprisingly, we have a major disagreement because the parties talk past each other. Liberals are concerned about the impact on Earth and Conservatives are worried about economic issues and our national self-interest, ‘here at home’. Liberals argue that if we do not act there will be no ‘here at home’, and skeptics argue that’s a politically motivated claim. There is no conversation when people talk past each others.

The skeptics conveniently throw the science out of the argument, and they are allied by the other protagonist in the debate, Republican Evangelicals. We have seen the coverage of the Biblical literalists, and it has been hard to take them seriously, but now they have come into prominence as nationally elected officials. These folks deny the validity of science, and appeal to the Bible for explanations for naturally occurring events. .

Rush Limbaugh spouted this the other day on his radio show:

“See, in my humble opinion, folks, if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming.”

“You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create,” he continued. “The vanity! These people — on the one hand, ‘We’re no different than a mouse or a rat.’….But how can we destroy it when we’re no different from the lowest life forms?”

“And then on the other end, ‘We are so powerful. And we are so impotent — omnipotent that we can destroy — we can’t even stop a rain shower, but we can destroy the climate.’ And how? With barbecue pits and automobiles, particularly SUVs. It’s absurd.” See more

This is an attempt at offering a ‘rational argument’ that is less sensational then invoking the Bible as the answer to science. He states: “If you believe in God…you cannot believe in manmade global warming.” Many on the Left believe in God; consequently, they should not believe in global warming. As evidence of the soundness of his argument, Limbaugh effectively states that ‘If God created the Earth, how can we, his creations, destroy His creation’. This is obviously fallacious reasoning, even if we give him that both the Earth and human beings are God’s creations, it does not logically follow that humans cannot destroy the Earth. I don’t think anyone rational person believes that if all the nuclear weapons in the world were exploded that the Earth will survive, at least not in any important way.

Congress has done little except to exacerbate the conflict. One side has managed to turn science and scientific research into the Anti-Christ both figuratively and literally. While the other is seeing a siege on the acceptance of science as the mutually agreed upon systematic tool to find testable objective explanations for natural phenomena, by which we can make intelligent and rational decisions about our social, political, and economic interests.

Positions on significant problems become very polarizing when you cannot agree on common vocabulary by which to discuss them—in fact resolution of the issue becomes intractable—but the danger does not go away.