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Friday, September 9, 2011
ObamaCare Consultant Finds ObamaCare Makes Health Insurance More Expensive
From The Heritage Foundation:
InsiderOnline Blog: September 2011
Obamacare Consultant Finds Obamacare Makes Health Insurance More Expensive
Jonathon Gruber, a health policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped design the plan that we all know today as Obamacare. The state of Wisconsin recently employed Gruber to produce a report on how Obamacare will affect insurance coverage in the state. Reason’s Peter Suderman summarizes his findings, which are probably surprising only to those who asked Gruber to write the report:
Gruber projects that the average individual market health insurance premium will cost about 30 percent more than if ObamaCare had never passed. For most individual market enrollees, the average premium increase will be even higher: 87 percent of the individual market is projected to see a premium price increase of 41 percent.
Defenders of the law might note that more than half—about 57 percent—of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit from the law’s generous health insurance subsidies. But even discounting the enormous public cost of financing those subsidies (which account for roughly half of the law’s $950 billion price tag over the next decade), it’s still not much consolation for the majority of individual market enrollees.
That’s because more than half the individual market will still end up paying more: “After the application of tax subsidies,” the report projects, “59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”
One factor in the price increase is the addition of new coverage mandates that will make health insurance more expensive: An estimated 40 percent of the Wisconsin’s current individual market enrollees don’t carry coverage that meets ObamaCare’s minimum coverage standards. Thanks to the law, they’ll be required to purchase more expensive coverage.
Posted on 09/09/11 03:33 PM by Alex Adrianson
Blog Archive
InsiderOnline Blog: September 2011
Obamacare Consultant Finds Obamacare Makes Health Insurance More Expensive
Jonathon Gruber, a health policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped design the plan that we all know today as Obamacare. The state of Wisconsin recently employed Gruber to produce a report on how Obamacare will affect insurance coverage in the state. Reason’s Peter Suderman summarizes his findings, which are probably surprising only to those who asked Gruber to write the report:
Gruber projects that the average individual market health insurance premium will cost about 30 percent more than if ObamaCare had never passed. For most individual market enrollees, the average premium increase will be even higher: 87 percent of the individual market is projected to see a premium price increase of 41 percent.
Defenders of the law might note that more than half—about 57 percent—of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit from the law’s generous health insurance subsidies. But even discounting the enormous public cost of financing those subsidies (which account for roughly half of the law’s $950 billion price tag over the next decade), it’s still not much consolation for the majority of individual market enrollees.
That’s because more than half the individual market will still end up paying more: “After the application of tax subsidies,” the report projects, “59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”
One factor in the price increase is the addition of new coverage mandates that will make health insurance more expensive: An estimated 40 percent of the Wisconsin’s current individual market enrollees don’t carry coverage that meets ObamaCare’s minimum coverage standards. Thanks to the law, they’ll be required to purchase more expensive coverage.
Posted on 09/09/11 03:33 PM by Alex Adrianson
Blog Archive
Another Half A Million For "Environmental Justice"
From Judicial Watch:
Another Half A Mil For “Environmental Justice”
Last Updated: Tue, 09/06/2011 - 10:23am
Though it has raked in upwards of $10 million in just a few months, a program that works to bring “environmental justice” to poor and minority communities keeps receiving a steady flow of taxpayer dollars even as the federal debt sits at historically high levels.
It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s effort to help low-income populations obtain the same degree of protection from health and environmental hazards as wealthy communities. In less than a year the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has doled out millions of dollars to leftwing groups— including some dedicated to helping illegal immigrants—that teach black, Latino and indigenous folks how to recycle, reduce carbon emissions through “weatherization” and participate in “green jobs” training.
A few days ago the agency gave New Orleans-area groups $487,500 in “environmental justice, job training and education grants” to recruit and train candidates for “environmental jobs.” Candidates will learn how to “provide air quality sampling,” according to the EPA’s announcement. This shows the agency is committed to creating “green jobs and reaching out to low-income and minority communities that often bear the brunt of environmental degradation,” says the area’s regional administrator.
The allocation comes just weeks after the EPA dropped $6.2 million to train low-income residents for “green jobs” in Atlanta. That chunk of taxpayer money went to “community groups” that promised to “recruit, train and place unemployed, predominately low-income residents in polluted areas.” The Obama Administration promises that the investment will “create good, green jobs that protect the health of local families and residents…”
Shortly before that brilliant investment, the EPA financed a $7 million study to determine how pollution, combined with stress and other social factors, affects people in “poor and underserved communities.” The goal is to rid underserved communities of extensive pollution-based problems. EPA Chief Lisa Jackson launched the costly justice campaign because she claims poor and minority communities have little voice in environmental decisions while they suffer living in the shadow of the worst pollution.
In Jackson’s short tenure the EPA, which was created 40 years ago to protect the environment and human health, has become a bastion of costly leftwing programs and a symbol of Obama’s big government crusade. The agency’s budget has surged 34% (to $10.3 billion) since Jackson took over and nearly half of it goes to grants that fund state environmental programs, nonprofits and educational institutions that help promote Jackson’s agenda.
Earlier this year a House committee revealed that Jackson’s EPA has sent nearly $30 million to environmental causes overseas, including China, Russia and India. Among the “foreign handouts” were $1.2 million for the United Nations to promote clean fuels, $718,000 to help China comply with two initiatives and $700,000 for Thailand to recover methane gas at pig farms.
Another Half A Mil For “Environmental Justice”
Last Updated: Tue, 09/06/2011 - 10:23am
Though it has raked in upwards of $10 million in just a few months, a program that works to bring “environmental justice” to poor and minority communities keeps receiving a steady flow of taxpayer dollars even as the federal debt sits at historically high levels.
It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s effort to help low-income populations obtain the same degree of protection from health and environmental hazards as wealthy communities. In less than a year the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has doled out millions of dollars to leftwing groups— including some dedicated to helping illegal immigrants—that teach black, Latino and indigenous folks how to recycle, reduce carbon emissions through “weatherization” and participate in “green jobs” training.
A few days ago the agency gave New Orleans-area groups $487,500 in “environmental justice, job training and education grants” to recruit and train candidates for “environmental jobs.” Candidates will learn how to “provide air quality sampling,” according to the EPA’s announcement. This shows the agency is committed to creating “green jobs and reaching out to low-income and minority communities that often bear the brunt of environmental degradation,” says the area’s regional administrator.
The allocation comes just weeks after the EPA dropped $6.2 million to train low-income residents for “green jobs” in Atlanta. That chunk of taxpayer money went to “community groups” that promised to “recruit, train and place unemployed, predominately low-income residents in polluted areas.” The Obama Administration promises that the investment will “create good, green jobs that protect the health of local families and residents…”
Shortly before that brilliant investment, the EPA financed a $7 million study to determine how pollution, combined with stress and other social factors, affects people in “poor and underserved communities.” The goal is to rid underserved communities of extensive pollution-based problems. EPA Chief Lisa Jackson launched the costly justice campaign because she claims poor and minority communities have little voice in environmental decisions while they suffer living in the shadow of the worst pollution.
In Jackson’s short tenure the EPA, which was created 40 years ago to protect the environment and human health, has become a bastion of costly leftwing programs and a symbol of Obama’s big government crusade. The agency’s budget has surged 34% (to $10.3 billion) since Jackson took over and nearly half of it goes to grants that fund state environmental programs, nonprofits and educational institutions that help promote Jackson’s agenda.
Earlier this year a House committee revealed that Jackson’s EPA has sent nearly $30 million to environmental causes overseas, including China, Russia and India. Among the “foreign handouts” were $1.2 million for the United Nations to promote clean fuels, $718,000 to help China comply with two initiatives and $700,000 for Thailand to recover methane gas at pig farms.
Friday, August 12, 2011
In Lieu Of Well-Reasoned Arguments, The Left Relies On Intimidation
From Town Hall:
Alan Sears
In Lieu of Well-Reasoned Arguments, the Left Relies on Intimidation
8/12/2011
Email Alan Sears
Columnist's Archive
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Because the radical demands of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union run counter to common sense and the tenets of Western Civilization, they and their leftist allies and colleagues use fear, intimidation, and disinformation to accomplish their ends which generally mean a loss of liberty for everyone else. We see this in the way they rely on shame tactics, the court system, and behavior controls, like speech codes and “anti-bullying” regulations, to implement and protect their agenda.
Just think of how many times you’ve heard someone mention they wanted to say something about the blatant lawlessness and immorality in our culture, but they hesitated because they didn’t want to rock the boat—they didn’t want to disturb the status quo. All too often, this is because the totalitarians on the left have successfully levered sufficient shame to intimidate decent people into silence.
In other words, groups like NARAL and their media allies use shame to bring a strong man low enough to allow a weaker man to control him: shame takes the fight out of the dog.
For example, the left’s use of the court system is ubiquitous, and perhaps best exemplified through Roe v. Wade (1973), the case which made most state laws against abortion unenforceable.
Even now, the leftist American Atheists is suing to have a cross – a cross not made by human effort –removed from the National 9/11 Memorial in New York, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are suing to shut down a proposed school voucher system in D.C.: a system aimed at delivering some of the students from the cycle of poverty and ignorance by allowing them to attend private schools where both the curriculum and environment are better. Because the vouchers could be used to attend private, Christian schools, Americans United for Separation for Church and State complains, “Vouchers…compel taxpayers to subsidize religion.” (As if they don’t know that the other option is to have government compel taxpayers to subsidize the anti-Christian/Jewish curriculum now rampant in government schools.)
The great irony here is that many of the aforementioned groups are among those who claim to do everything in the name of the people, yet it is they who frequently use the court system to bypass the people – and even sue to prevent elections – because they know their ideas lack popular support when put to the test.
And for those who dare brush aside the shame tactics or fight fire with fire in the courtroom, the left has enacted speech and anti-bullying codes that serve as more stringent forms of behavior control. Promoted by those like GLSEN and the ACLU, the speech codes are prevalent on high school and university campuses where even certain student-sponsored statements and phrases are disallowed unless uttered in a designated “free speech” area. And on the same campuses, diversity campaigns, and the “anti-bullying” campaigns that usually accompany them, result in the implementation of policies that actually create a caste system for those whose sensitivities are not protected from insult and discrimination, and that usually means a Christian ministry that wants to spread the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One last point: these methods of intimidation are bolstered by the left’s use of cripplingly costly lawsuits, which go above and beyond their “normal” use of the court system to rid our landscape of crosses, references to Scripture, “In God We Trust” inscriptions, etc.
Frivolous lawsuit after lawsuit is filed against things like Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s call to voluntary prayer or any public mention of one’s faith by a political figure with the hope not simply of ending a day of prayer but of scaring small municipalities into scrubbing their speech free of any religious reference—or else. (For example, groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation maintain an Internet link which exists solely for the purpose of reporting any “violators.”)
Reality is thus twisted and turned upon its head in a world where the left ignores the metaphysical while waging war on logic and tradition. In the end, they have to intimidate people into playing along or being silent because they lack arguments sufficient to convince us that their way is better.
Tags: Faith and Family , Christianity , ACLU , The Left
Alan Sears
Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
Alan Sears
In Lieu of Well-Reasoned Arguments, the Left Relies on Intimidation
8/12/2011
Email Alan Sears
Columnist's Archive
Sign-Up
Because the radical demands of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union run counter to common sense and the tenets of Western Civilization, they and their leftist allies and colleagues use fear, intimidation, and disinformation to accomplish their ends which generally mean a loss of liberty for everyone else. We see this in the way they rely on shame tactics, the court system, and behavior controls, like speech codes and “anti-bullying” regulations, to implement and protect their agenda.
Just think of how many times you’ve heard someone mention they wanted to say something about the blatant lawlessness and immorality in our culture, but they hesitated because they didn’t want to rock the boat—they didn’t want to disturb the status quo. All too often, this is because the totalitarians on the left have successfully levered sufficient shame to intimidate decent people into silence.
In other words, groups like NARAL and their media allies use shame to bring a strong man low enough to allow a weaker man to control him: shame takes the fight out of the dog.
For example, the left’s use of the court system is ubiquitous, and perhaps best exemplified through Roe v. Wade (1973), the case which made most state laws against abortion unenforceable.
Even now, the leftist American Atheists is suing to have a cross – a cross not made by human effort –removed from the National 9/11 Memorial in New York, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are suing to shut down a proposed school voucher system in D.C.: a system aimed at delivering some of the students from the cycle of poverty and ignorance by allowing them to attend private schools where both the curriculum and environment are better. Because the vouchers could be used to attend private, Christian schools, Americans United for Separation for Church and State complains, “Vouchers…compel taxpayers to subsidize religion.” (As if they don’t know that the other option is to have government compel taxpayers to subsidize the anti-Christian/Jewish curriculum now rampant in government schools.)
The great irony here is that many of the aforementioned groups are among those who claim to do everything in the name of the people, yet it is they who frequently use the court system to bypass the people – and even sue to prevent elections – because they know their ideas lack popular support when put to the test.
And for those who dare brush aside the shame tactics or fight fire with fire in the courtroom, the left has enacted speech and anti-bullying codes that serve as more stringent forms of behavior control. Promoted by those like GLSEN and the ACLU, the speech codes are prevalent on high school and university campuses where even certain student-sponsored statements and phrases are disallowed unless uttered in a designated “free speech” area. And on the same campuses, diversity campaigns, and the “anti-bullying” campaigns that usually accompany them, result in the implementation of policies that actually create a caste system for those whose sensitivities are not protected from insult and discrimination, and that usually means a Christian ministry that wants to spread the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One last point: these methods of intimidation are bolstered by the left’s use of cripplingly costly lawsuits, which go above and beyond their “normal” use of the court system to rid our landscape of crosses, references to Scripture, “In God We Trust” inscriptions, etc.
Frivolous lawsuit after lawsuit is filed against things like Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s call to voluntary prayer or any public mention of one’s faith by a political figure with the hope not simply of ending a day of prayer but of scaring small municipalities into scrubbing their speech free of any religious reference—or else. (For example, groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation maintain an Internet link which exists solely for the purpose of reporting any “violators.”)
Reality is thus twisted and turned upon its head in a world where the left ignores the metaphysical while waging war on logic and tradition. In the end, they have to intimidate people into playing along or being silent because they lack arguments sufficient to convince us that their way is better.
Tags: Faith and Family , Christianity , ACLU , The Left
Alan Sears
Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
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