ObamaCare Will Drive Taxes Higher - Employment Down

 With just 17 States willing to throw them selves under the bus by accepting ObamaCare being controlled from Washington, and the feds not having a plan to either have all the states take the plan or have the policy of 'single payer' health care split between to where the feds will control some of the states and a plan on how to control those states that have opt out.

What this shows is the Obama Administration, the progressive liberal socialists Democrats, is out of control - they have no idea what they are doing and worse, they really don't care. As always, it's about the money, the control and the power.

ObamaCare Update - National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org/
Only 17 states opted to set up their own health exchanges as of last Friday, the deadline for states to inform the Federal Government of their plans to comply with Obamacare. Of course, this isn't the only major challenge to Obamacare, as NCPA's President John Goodman explains here and here. The public remains largely unaware of the subsidies and requirements imposed by Obamacare. States still need to fit the new Obamacare programs into their existing programs. Employers need to find a way to pay for all the new requirements. The list goes on.

High Speed Rail in California Over the Cliff

This is would be insane in any other state, but California is forging ahead with it rail system that no one will use and will drive the state further into debt. This can only happen in a state that is controlled by progressive liberal Democrats as California is and has been for the past 60 years.

 Little wonder then the mess they are in, and they are looking for all of us to bail them out.  Yikes!!

High Speed Rail's Fiscal Cliff
Source: Wendell Cox, "High-Speed Rail's Fiscal Cliff," Orange County Register, December 10, 2012.
December 18, 2012

A high-speed rail line has been proposed in California that would run from Anaheim to San Francisco. However, a report released by the Government Accountability Office cited a failure to conduct risk and uncertainty analyses with respect to cost estimates, and failure to document substantial cost elements, such as stations and operating costs, says Wendell Cox, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

• The California High Speed Rail Authority has spent about $600 million.
• However, all this money has been spent without laying a single railroad tie or buying any property.
• On average, high-speed rail construction costs 45 percent more than promised by consultants and authorities.
• The costs as envisioned in 2008 increased by 90 percent to 115 percent to about $98 billion and $117 billion.
• Now, the California High Speed Rail Authority is between $55 billion and $65 billion short of the necessary funding.

The reason these costs became inflated is because the initial projections included very optimistic numbers so that the project could be approved. But the California High Speed Rail Authority scaled back the project and opted to make a blended system that would upgrade commuter rail lines instead.

• Under the blended plan, trains won't run as fast.
• But it was unlikely that the high-speed rail would deliver its promised 2:40 travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco, anyway.

On top of exaggerating the low-cost of the project, consultants and other authorities often claim high ridership projections, sometimes overestimating ridership by 40 percent. This is important because riders end up paying for a lot of the costs associated with project costs and maintenance.

California lawmakers have turned to calling the high-speed rail project an emissions reduction strategy so that it can use the cap-and-trade revenues that are set aside for greenhouse gas reduction strategies. However, because of the low fuel economy standard of high speed rail it is likely that the emissions reductions estimate was overstated by 130 percent to 190 percent.

California High Speed Rail Authority assumes it can obtain $40 billion or more from the federal government. However, that is unlikely considering the current concern over federal spending. For example, for the federal government to pay for its share of high-speed rail it would be equivalent to two years of savings from lowering Social Security cost-of-living increases, which is being debated in the fiscal cliff negotiations.
 

Payroll Tax Extension Bad for Economy

Why is it the solution to many of our problems is so clear to the Conservative, stop the spending of money we don't have, lower taxes so we can gain revenue by industrail expansion. But to the liberal progressive Democrat it's still the same tune that got us into the mess we are in now, more taxes, more control through regulation.

This patch work of tax break extensions is just another way to keep the public off base and frustrations high. The general public keeps wondering Washington can't fix the problem? The answer is simple, the controlling power in Washington doesn't want to as this would slow the agenda of dependency and a smaller voter base. Unacceptable.

Payroll Tax Holiday
Source: Lewis Warne, "The Payroll Tax Holiday" National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2012.

December 18, 2012
 With the winter holidays right around the corner, and the narrative surrounding the U.S. economy being cautious at best, both the public and private agents are debating the best balance to grow the economy. To attain this end, the dialogue, once more, returns to taxes, specifically, the payroll tax, says Lewis Warne, a research associate with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The payroll tax cut has now been extended twice and is set to last twice as long.

• In December 2011, Congress extend the payroll tax holiday for two months to prevent a tax increase during the winter recess.
• In February 2012 the holiday was extended through the end of the year.

The payroll tax cut has had a negative effect on the annual operations of Social Security. Since its inception it has:

• Reduced Social Security payroll revenues by 16 percent, and;
• Decreased revenue by $103 billion in 2011 and an estimated $112 billion in 2012.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the payroll tax cut and emergency unemployment benefits through 2013 will raise gross domestic product 0.7 percent higher in 2013, and lower unemployment 0.8 percent, compared to a scenario where they expire.

• The holiday stimulates the economy is the $100+ billion per year tax cut unaccompanied by any reduction in spending.
• In reality, the holiday was financed by debt, to be paid for by future generations, and is accumulating interest payments now.
• The resulting increase in long-term debt could potentially raise interest rates, crowd out private investment and make it harder to pay back the debt in the future by reducing the income (gross domestic product) from which the debt will have to be paid.

On balance, while a payroll tax holiday could provide temporary stimulus during an economic slump, it further erodes the relationship between Social Security's revenue, individual earnings and benefit payments while increasing debt. Instead of simply raising rates again this opportunity should be taken to reform Social Security.
 

Liberal Progressives Love Loop Holes : Who Knew?

 

Little wonder then it's really all about the narrative, the agenda of socialism. The more people the progressive can bring into dependency and poverty the larger will be their voter base. Look for the push from progressives in the next four years to establish a dependency class larger then then the working class. Also look for the end of America as we know it.

It's really then all about making sure the general public watches the right TV channel and who the liberal progressive Democrats are pointing at that's causing all the problems for our country. Those greedy Republicans - all they want to do is protect the rich. 'See, it's those guys over there. Not us, we just want what's best for all of you.' 

What's so sad is a lot of people do look and believe.

Of Liberals and Loopholes 

The current tax code favors high-tax states.

One post-election budget surprise has been President Obama's resistance to John Boehner's proposal to get $800 billion in new revenue by closing tax loopholes. Here's one likely reason: the high tax rates of his blue-state Democratic brethren.

One of Mr. Boehner's ideas, taking a cue from Mitt Romney, would impose a limit on annual deductions. During the campaign Mr. Romney suggested a range for a deduction cap, anywhere from $17,000 to $50,000 a year, and many liberal pundits praised the idea on equity grounds.

 

Revenue Collection - Higher Taxes - Slows the Economy

Lowering taxes has always worked to increase revenue, but it takes more time for lower taxes to work then increaseing taxes. With the progressive socialist Democrats at the controls of power, it's all about the money, nothing else means anything, including national security.

The entire world is coming appart like never before and I believe it is becasue of America has slipped it's anchor as being the one shining light for a world of deperate peoples scearching for feedome and as result of the new progressive socialist agenda of seeking total control of the our country, we are adrift.

The progressive socialist knows that money is power, and who controls the money in this country gets and keeps power and  they do it by 'any means necessary'. To believe any thing else will be fatal to our survival as a nation.

Higher Taxes Means Slower Economic Growth
Source: Edward C. Prescott and Lee E. Ohanian, "Taxes Are Much Higher Than You Think," Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2012.

December 17, 2012
 President Obama believes his reelection gave him a mandate to raise taxes on high earners. However, top earners already pay high taxes and a further increase could depress overall economic growth and production, say Edward C. Prescott, co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics and director of the Center for the Advanced Study in Economic Efficiency at Arizona State University, and Lee E. Ohanian, the associate director of the center and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

• U.S. growth is currently weak, with an overall output of 13.5 percent lower than what it would be had we continued on the pre-2008 trend.
• The average marginal effective tax rate is around 40 percent when all taxes on earnings and consumer spending, federal, state and local income taxes, and Social Security and payroll taxes are taken into account.
• The effect of tax increases would slightly increase revenues but reduce overall economic activity.
• This is because high tax rates on labor income and consumption reduce the incentive to work by making consumption more expensive relative to leisure.

Workers have less of an incentive to work and produce goods when they make less money for their work. The incentive to work is reduced even more when the government increases cash transfers that may not require work.
Other economies around the world provide an example of the negative effects that a higher tax rate would have on the U.S. economy.

• When tax rates were low in the 1950s, many Western Europeans worked more hours per capita.
• However, as tax rates increased over the decades, there has been a 30 percent decline in work hours.
• Furthermore, entrepreneurship is much lower in Europe because people are discouraged from business creation.

Higher marginal tax rates in the United States will have similar effects. On top of depressing the number of work hours, the increased revenue may prompt the government to continue policies such as Dodd-Frank, bailouts and subsidies to different sectors in the economy, which are fraught with economic inefficiency.

Instead, the government should make the economy more productive by lowering marginal tax rates and removing burdensome regulations. Furthermore, immigration policies need to be altered to attract the best and brightest from other countries to reinvigorate the entrepreneurial spirit that has kept the United States competitive for decades.
 

Medicaid Must be Changed/Fixed : In New York?

New York is a great test bed for changes in Medicaid as this state the most high profile state for progressives socialist Democrats that demanded ObamaCare and voted over whelmingly for Barack Obama.

New York is headed for bankruptcy as a result of progressive socialist demands on the population of that state, and to have this discussion on how to save the state from these very rules and regulations that brought on the financial collapse, of not only the government institutions, but the private enterprises as well should be a real eye opener for voters.

Of course, having these changes to fix bad results of a flawed philosophic agenda is probably asking too much from a population that seemly wants to be dependent and poverty stricken. 


The Patient Roll in Medicaid
Source: Russell Sykes, "Taking Ownership: The Patient Role in Medicaid," Empire Center, December 5, 2012.

December 17, 2012

New York is taking steps to reform its Medicaid program to target complex, high-cost populations. This includes nearly 1 million people in Medicaid that have chronic health problems or long-term disabilities, says Russell Sykes, a senior fellow at the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a project of the Manhattan Institute.

• New York's Medicaid program is the largest in the country, providing care to 5.1 million people.
• It costs $54 billion annually.
• This comes out to about $8,960 per patient per year.

Many of the Medicaid recipients are enrolled in managed care where their conditions are monitored and treatments are cost controlled. However, the majority are covered on a fee-for-service basis. New York's reform would coordinate and manage health care for this group of people and place more emphasis on health education and prevention.
However, these reforms miss the role of patients themselves. Indeed, many of the costlier treatments for chronic disease like obesity, diabetes and heart disease stem from poor habits and lifestyle.

• About 12 percent of all adults in the program are estimated to have diabetes.
• More than 31 percent smoke.
• Substance abuse affects more than 250,000 beneficiaries and constitutes about $1.7 billion in total expenditures per year.

Because of this, it is important that any reform ensures that there are appropriate incentives to induce healthy behaviors by individuals. The case of welfare reform provides an example of how offering the right mix of incentives can make the program more efficient.
Before the federal welfare reform of 1996, the programs had few expectations of what it could achieve. After the reform, people had the incentive and responsibility to work. The same can be true of the Medicaid program in New York. Some specific recommendation that New York can pursue are:

• Experiment with cash or cash-like incentives to encourage people to adopt healthy behaviors in the form conditional cash transfers.
• Remove barriers that limit private managed care plans from providing higher rewards for healthier behaviors to their Medicaid clients.
• Incorporate proven approaches from other states that have designed incentive programs and mechanisms to increase patient responsibility.
• Test multiple, small-scale approaches and study them to see which incentives and programs work.

 

Forced Diversity Falls Short of Diversity

This has been a topic of conversation for as long as I can remember and with little or no conclusions as to how to change outcomes.

Diversity in higher education really comes from the 'feel good' agenda of the progressive socialist. If  it feels good to admit a minority to an elite school or university then it must be the right thing to do. As a result many minorities have developed entrenched conclaves of like students that demand special  treatment and rewards and have the power to do so from the very fact of having a large organized self directed activist group.

The question remains, what have the schools accomplished by having created similar conditions that the students left behind when the came to these schools? Who wins by the 'dibversity'?

The Rise of Faux DiversityDecember 14, 2012

Legal challenges to the University of Texas' admissions policies involving diversity are underway in the Supreme Court. But even if the Supreme Court strikes down the use of race as a determining factor in admissions, the institutionalized racism and discrimination of university race-conscious admissions criteria will not necessarily be eliminated, says Bruce S. Thornton, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

• Promoting diversity as a justification for race-based admissions has been institutionalized into many schools with the 1978 Bakke v. University of California case.
• The 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case reaffirmed the Bakke ruling that there is a compelling state interest to obtain the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.
• In 80 percent of elite schools, racial preferences can give minority students an advantage equivalent to a 100 point increase in SAT scores.

Decades later, there is little empirical evidence about what educational benefits can be derived from promoting diversity. Moreover, there is no specific definition of what diversity is, which has allowed schools broad authority when using race for admission purposes.

Over the decades, school administrators and politicians have not kept pace with the complexities of diversity in America. For example, a poor, Catholic, Mexican-Indian immigrant would be considered Hispanic, as would a third generation Mexican-American, despite having little in common.

There are other things that schools need to consider such as economic class, ethnicity, regions, political views and religion. A poor child whose parents came from Russia would simply be lumped into the category "white."

Indeed, using the logic of advocates of race-based admissions, it may make sense to admit more religious believers because schools today are secular and could use the educational benefits that religious students bring to the school.

There are several reasons that making race a factor in admissions can be counterproductive:

• First, there is self-segregation between people on many campuses, which prevents students from interacting and learning from one another.
• Second, there is a stigma that students feel when admitted under less stringent criteria.
• Third, minority students have lower grades and often higher dropout rates.

Canadian Health Care Wait Time : Not Days, but Months

Exactly who are the people that continue to exalt the Canadian medical system of single payer? Wait time for service is beyond belief but understandable given the Canadian system is controlled by governement.

But hey, no need to guess who in our country wants single payer, it's obvious, it's the same people that shout and wave their collective arms about how great the Cuba medical system is, even though they know that in some cases the final solution to a problem is a 9mm. Cheap and effective, not to mention, relatively painless.

Who are these people that claim to be the smartest in the room, they are progressive socialists liberal Democrats. The same people that brought us ObamaCare even though 72% of the population didn't want it. Mr Obama said he wanted single payer and now we are about to feel the full force of that promise.

The next question that has to be asked is who voted in November to make ObamaCare a reality even thought so many stated they didn't want it? Who are these people? Why won't these people stand up for all to see and proclaim their allegiance to ObamaCare?

Waiting Your Turn
Source: Bacchus Barua and Nadeem Esmail, "Waiting Your Turn," Fraser Institute, December 2012.

December 14, 2012
The Fraser Institute has released the results of its survey of waiting times for elective medical treatments in Canada.

•Specialist physicians surveyed across 12 specialties and 10 Canadian provinces reported an average waiting time of 17.7 weeks between general practitioner referral and the elective treatment.
•Wait times for referral by general practitioner and consultation with a specialist fell to 8.5 weeks from 9.5 weeks one year ago.
•There was an estimated 870,462 people waiting for procedures across all 10 provinces.
•Assuming each person waits to have only one procedure done, that means 2.5 percent of Canadians were waiting for treatment.
•However, the report shows 10.3 percent of patients were on the waiting list because they chose to wait.

It should also be noted that there is substantial variation in wait times between provinces and the different specialties.

•Ontario, for example, report an average wait time of 14.9 weeks.
•However, New Brunswick reports an average of 35.1 weeks.
•As far as specialties, patients report the longest wait time between referral and orthopedic surgery, at 39.6 weeks.
•But those waiting for oncology treatment wait only about 4.1 weeks.

While the report does show that wait times are decreasing overall for Canadians, it still highlights that wait times are at a historic level. Many physicians agree that the wait times go far beyond what would be considered reasonable.

From an economic point of view, these wait times represent a large loss of economic output.

•The cost of waiting for treatments such as total joint replacement, cataract surgery, coronary artery bypass and MRI scans was an estimated $14.8 billion in 2007.
•In 2010, the cost of waiting per patient was an additional $1,144.
•As a result of dealing with long wait lines, 0.9 percent of patients opted to receive treatments in another country.

ObamaCare Overhaul Necessary

Excellent suggestions to fix ObamaCare which is a nightmare for us all. The billions that are here already in new taxes, and the new regulations that are on the way, now that the election is over and the progressives socialist won, will have a huge impact on our daily lives.

Clear thinking will result in common sense solutions, something that an agenda driven government will not understand or consider.

Repairing ObamaCare
Source: John C. Goodman, "Repairing ObamaCare," McClatchy, December 13, 2012.

December 14, 2012
After the recent election, virtually all commentators quickly concluded that the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is safe; Republicans are powerless to stop it. The trouble is: ObamaCare is a deeply flawed law. Here are five essential changes that could fix it, says John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, and a research fellow with the Independent Institute.

•First, subsidize all insurance the same way. The way government currently subsidizes health insurance is arbitrary and unfair. Employees with employer-provided insurance get that benefit tax free. There is almost no subsidy, however, for people who must purchase insurance on their own. Under ObamaCare the subsidies become even more arbitrary. All insurance should get the same tax relief, regardless of where it is obtained.

•Second, make the subsidy a fixed sum "tax credit" -- that is, a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your tax bill. For example, offer a $2,500 credit against the first $2,500 of health insurance premiums. For a family of four, the credit would be about $8,000. These credits would be "refundable," a technical term meaning people would get the subsidy even if they owe no income taxes.

•Third, create and fund a safety net option. If people turn down the offer of a tax credit, make that credit available to safety net institutions that provide care to people without insurance. If people can't pay their medical bills, these funds would be there as a backstop. Under this arrangement, money follows people.

•Fourth, don't let people "game" the system. Instead of a mandate to purchase health insurance, give people a one-time opportunity to obtain insurance on a guaranteed issue basis, regardless of their health conditions. If they turn down the offer and apply later, insurers would be able to consider their medical condition and charge them a higher premium that reflects the full expected cost of their care.

•Fifth, get rid of the mandate. With the first four fixes in place, there's no need for a mandate. Instead, there will be a strong financial incentive to obtain health insurance. Government offers everyone a generous subsidy to buy health insurance in the form of lower taxes. If they turn down the subsidy, they pay higher taxes.

That's not different in principle from the current system, except that the reforms suggested here would make that arrangement fairer and more rational.

Medicaid A losing Program : Private Insurance Works

This is another good example of how we can fix a very bad situation with common sense and intelligence when it comes to our health care decisions.

The free market will always fix our financial and health care problems as long as we stay awake and believe, we as individuals, have the God given right, as stated in our Constitution, to be anything we want to be in a free society. Block grants given to states is a great start to solving some of health care problems.

This means we, again as free individuals, take responsibility for our own actions and the results will tell whether or not we will succeed in our life ambitions or be an also ran. It will be entirely up to us to make these life changing decisions.

Being able to choose which insurance company will best suit our individual needs and financial capabilities is being responsible for our own well being. To have a select few in a far away city make these decisions for us is repugnant and Un-American. 

Exchanging Medicaid for Private Insurance
Source: Devon M. Herrick, "Exchanging Medicaid for Private Insurance," National Center for Policy Analysis, December 2012.

December 14, 2012
The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but not without striking down a provision that would refuse federal Medicaid funds to states that didn't expand their Medicaid programs. Other provisions of the ACA will give sliding-scale subsidies to low-to-middle income individuals for the purchase of private health coverage in a health insurance exchange that will be set up in each state beginning in 2014, says Devon M. Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The health insurance exchanges will be set up by either the state or the federal government. People that do not receive health plans through their employers or Medicaid are eligible for exchange subsidies.

•In states that don't expand Medicaid coverage to individuals with incomes of 100 percent to 133 percent of the federal poverty levels, those individuals will be eligible for subsidized coverage in the exchange.
•In every state, individuals earning 133 percent to 400 percent of poverty will be eligible for subsidized coverage through the exchange.
•However, not everyone will enroll in the exchanges.

Medicaid expansion will cost the state and federal governments a massive amount of money.

•The federal government will spend over $295 billion over the 10-year period to cover newly eligible individuals earning 100 percent to 133 percent of poverty.
•States would also bear an additional $19 billion in costs.
•However, letting private insurers pay market rates for medical care would increase medical spending by $233 billion, which is good for doctors and hospitals.
•Moreover, it would only cost the state about $9 billion over the next decade to pay its share of premiums to entice low-income population to sign up for coverage.
•This would leave the remaining $10 billion to be spent on the uninsured or on Medicaid enrollees earning below 100 percent of the poverty level.

Medicaid has several problems that make its expansion undesirable:

•Poor access to care.
•Overcrowded emergency rooms.
•Worse health outcomes.
•Low Medicaid provider payments.
•Crowd out of private insurance.

A better solution would be to convert Medicaid into block grants. This would allow the federal government to provide each state a fixed sum of money and allow states the flexibility in designing programs that fit their individual needs.