The Obamacare Sign-Up Scam - Reason.com

Even if there are no data transmission bugs, however, an enrollment still isn’t complete until the first month’s premium has been paid. This is not a minor concern. As Jon Kingsdale, who ran the Massachusetts health exchange and served as a consultant on Obamacare, wrote in The Washington Post last month, the most difficult administrative task for the Bay State’s exchange was tracking and collecting premiums. Under Obamacare, Kingsdale wrote, “premium billing and tracking will be even tougher” than it was in Massachusetts—in part because enrollees will in many cases only be paying part of the bill. The federal government will be paying the rest to insurers through the law’s subsidy system. But guess what? The part of the exchange system that is supposed to pay subsidies to insurers hasn’t been built yet. (The administration is instead relying on a workaround in which insurers estimate the payments they are owed.)

Nor are people who have signed up rushing to send in payments, according to early reports. Insurance industry consultants told ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein this week that so far, health plans have only collected payments from five to 15 percent of enrollees. That figure will surely rise as the deadlines (which vary between states) for payment approach. But in combination with Kingsdale’s warnings about the headaches associated with bill collection, it suggests that enrollment is likely to be hampered by lack of payment.

So here’s where we’re at: 364,682 people had signed up for private plans by November 30, which is about 842,000 short of the administration’s end-of-November projection. Information about tens of thousands of those 364,682 sign-ups has either been transmitted inaccurately or not at all to insurers. And so far only a small fraction of the sign-ups which have been correctly transferred to insurers have actually completed the process and paid. (The administration also says that another 803,077 people have enrolled in Medicaid.)

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/12/the-obamacare-sign-up-scam

Editorial: Rising incomes matter more than disparity | percent, income, obama - Opinion - The Orange County Register

If President Obama is to be believed – and few conditional clauses give us more pause – the greatest economic challenge facing the nation is income inequality. He referred to it this month as "the defining challenge of our time," the sort of superlative that always makes us suspect that a politician is up to something.

In this case, the strategy seems to be attempting to distract the nation from two undeniable realities that have much more plausible claims as "defining challenges": an economy that has been lethargic for half a decade and a health care overhaul that may yet go down as the single-most conspicuous failure of big government in American history.

Political calculations aside, we'll take Mr. Obama at his word that he genuinely believes income inequality is a serious problem. Here's our question, asked in earnest: Why?

Mr. Obama errs when he emphasizes economic inequality because he socializes the analysis. Consider this hypothetical example: Two individuals, one of whom makes $40,000 a year and one of whom makes $1 million. If both were to realize a 50 percent increase in income, the former would make $60,000 a year, while the latter would make $1.5 million. The inequality between the two has grown, but both are better off.

This hypothetical underscores the key point: Individual wealth is a meaningful metric; wealth disparity is not.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/percent-594238-income-obama.html

Economic Reality and the Minimum Wage | RealClearPolitics

But supporters of a higher minimum wage would have us believe that low-wage workers are magically exempt from these phenomena. They claim companies will employ just as many employees at $10.10 an hour as they do at $7.25.

But they must doubt their own case. Otherwise, they would propose an even higher amount, confident it will be irrelevant to hiring decisions. If a minimum wage of $20 or $30 an hour would cause layoffs, though, why wouldn't $10.10? At what point on the wage scale does the law of supply and demand take effect?

Even liberal hero Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics and columnist for The New York Times, has grudgingly acknowledged this reality. In his 1998 textbook, he wrote that "the centrist view is probably that minimum wages 'do,' in fact, reduce employment, but that the effects are small."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/15/economic_reality_and_the_minimum_wage_120957.html

Inequality for Dummies - NYTimes.com

A widely praised 2012 book, "Why Nations Fail," argues that historically when the ruling elites have pulled up the ladder and kept newcomers from getting a foothold, their economies have suffocated and died. "The most pernicious fact of inequality is when it translates into political inequality," said Daron Acemoglu, a co-author of the book and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist. "That means our democracy ceases to function because some people have so much money they command greater power." The rich spend heavily on lobbyists and campaign donations to secure tax breaks and tariff advantages and bailouts that perpetuate their status. Not only does a dynamic economy stagnate, but the left-out citizenry becomes disillusioned and cynical. Sound familiar?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/inequality-for-dummies.html?_r=0

He's making a good case for limited government, from which the wealthy may not purchase influence.

What Do You Need from Your Religion?

"We're Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television," he explained. "You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off."

The odd thing is that many who have condemned Robertson would share his take on loving each other, and they'd cite it as a reason for condemning personal hostility based on someone's sexual preference. Thus did Wilson Cruz, a spokesman for the gay rights group GLAAD, declare that "Phil's lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe."

Yet when even the pope wonders aloud as to whether it's appropriate for him to judge, you begin to see the difficulty of deciding what "true Christians" ought to believe. This raises the question of whether the religiously based principles are merely cultural artifacts that we bend to our own immediate purposes.

The answer lies in embracing a humility about how imperfectly human beings understand the divine, which is quite different from rejecting God or faith. This humility defines the chasm between a living religious tradition and a dead traditionalism. We need to admit how tempted we are to deify whatever commitments we have at a given moment. And those of us who are Christian need to acknowledge that over the history of the faith, there have been occasions when "a supposedly changeless truth has changed," as the great church historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan put it.

Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/23/duck_dynasty_meet_pope_francis_121035.html#ixzz2oJ5Huq00
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Do you need a supposedly changeless truth, a spiritual stake in the ground?  Or do you need a framework to make a meaning out of the seemingly endless and possibly pointless struggle of life?  (or something else?).

Cialdini Identifies How to Influence

1. Reciprocation - the cult member leads with a flower, then asks for money
2. Scarcity - "produced only 2 or 3 times per decade"
3. Authority - "experts agree", celebrity endorsement
4. Commitment/consistency - get you to agree, keep you going that way.  "wouldn't you agree that .....", well, given your commitment to this cause, please support our efforts by ....
5. Liking - tupperware party; you are more likely to buy from someone you like
6. Consensus - going with the crowd; be an individual like all of us millions that like Dr. Pepper
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2010/01/7-of-the-most-powerful-persuasion-techniques/

The Obamacare Generation | RealClearPolitics

Among these unanswered questions, the most disturbing pertains to the demand that millions of so-called millennials under 30 must purchase health insurance -- estimated at about $1,700 a year -- that they will hardly use. Their premiums supposedly will subsidize older, in-need Americans who cannot pay the full costs of coverage that they will draw on frequently.

We forget that young people are already targeted for a number of government redistribution plans. Of America's age cohorts, the under-30 bunch is the least likely to be employed, and the most likely to work at low-wage or part-time jobs.

Millennials already pay high payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare coverage for the elderly. Yet most economists predict that both programs will soon prove insolvent and will not be able to extend the present level of benefits to young contributors when they retire.

Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/19/the_obamacare_generation_121007.html#ixzz2oDVQCLze