Less-costly Alternative to Obamacare Insurance

"A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral," reports Fox News.

The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans grapple with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can sign up for ObamaCare during open-enrollment periods if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

These short term plans, which have a typical premium of $100 per month, are less costly than Obamacare plans with an average cost of $271 per month, and they allow the patient to choose any doctor or hospital.

Health Insurance Innovations estimates that the short-term insurance industry as a whole has grown at 20-30 percent over the last year since ObamaCare was implemented. McLean, of eHealthInsurance.com, said the plans appeal to young people.

“They're particularly popular with young adults," she said. "Forty-six percent of our short term policy holders are between the ages of 25 and 34.”

One conservative youth advocacy group, Generation Opportunity, specifically endorses buying short-term plans as a way to get around ObamaCare.

“We think it is an excellent option for young people,” the group’s president, Evan Feinberg, said, though he added that it isn’t perfect.

“We don’t think this is an ideal way to do health insurance in general. People should be free to insure themselves both against short-term catastrophic costs and the long term need for permanent medical care,” he said. “Unfortunately there are people who take away that choice from us based on a misguided idea that they can run a healthcare system from Washington that meets the needs of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Physicians Opting Out of Obamacare Plans

An estimated 214,524 American physicians will not be participating in ACA (Obamacare) health plans, according to a large 2014 survey of multi-physician medical practices by the Medical Group Management Association (survey summarized here).  Why?

• ACA's payment rates for services rendered are "financially unsustainable" for physicians.  "[W]here private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and [Obamacare] plans are now paying about $0.60."
  
• ACA's high deductibles can leave patients owing thousands of dollars to physicians and hospitals for services rendered—money that doctors need to keep their doors open, but may not be able to collect from patients.
  
• ACA's premiums aren't cheap either, and if a patient stops paying the premiums, Obamacare rules give patients a 90-day grace period to get premiums caught up. If the patient doesn't pay up, Obamacare forces the insurance company to pay physicians and hospitals for any services provided day 1 through 30, but not for services provided from day 31 through 90. Doctors and hospitals are simply left holding the bag. 

With the deck stacked against them, doctors are simply avoiding Obamacare plans. As of January 2014, a estimated 70% of California's 104,000 physicians had already said no to participating in Covered California plans.

Another Legislative Response to Campus Sexual Assault

The SOS Campus Act has already been introduced in Congress, but one anti-domestic violence group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), has drafted legislation it believes will better serve victims of campus assault while ensuring basic confidentiality and privacy protections to those accused—and, particularly, acquitted—of campus assault. Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner writes:

The bulk of SAVE’s bill, titled the “Safety of Our Students Act,” requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to leave sexual assault investigations to the professionals. The draft requires universities to encourage students who report a rape or sexual assault to go to the police themselves. It also requires administrators to report the matter to the police and share all evidence or information they have, whether the accuser follows up or not.

“All allegations of campus criminal sexual assault that are brought to the attention of campus security or the campus disciplinary committee shall be immediately reported and referred by the personnel or committee to local law enforcement officials,” the draft says. “Exclusive jurisdiction for investigation and adjudication of the complaint shall reside with local criminal justice authorities.”

The SOS Act — not to be confused with the SOS Campus Act, which has already been introduced — also requires universities to treat acquitted students with respect and provide confidentiality.

“Absent a criminal plea agreement or verdict of guilt, colleges and universities shall respect and maintain the presumption of innocence with regards to the accused,” the draft says. “The accused shall enjoy the same confidentiality and privacy protections as the identified victim.”

Barone: Information-Age Millennials

Social historian and political trend analyst Michael Barone writes:

The Harvard Institute of Politics has just released its latest survey of Millennials, and reports that among those who say they would definitely vote this year, 51 percent would prefer a Republican-run Congress and 47 percent a Democratic-run Congress. In contrast, in 2010, the IOP poll of Millennials showed that 43 percent favored a Republican-run Congress and 55 percent a Democratic-run Congress. [snip]

This is an information-age generation that wants to customize its own world, that seeks ways to earn success by drawing on their own particular interests and talents. The Obama Democrats have advanced industrial-age policies that have centralized experts making decisions for large masses of people who are treated as identical and very small cogs in a very large machine. That has seemed to me a bad fit. Evidently many Millennials are starting to feel the same way.

Feds Tax Collections Highest Ever

"The federal government collected a record amount of taxes in fiscal year 2014, topping $3 trillion in revenue for the first time in its history, according to Treasury Department numbers released Wednesday ..."

The federal government took in $3.020 trillion in FY 2014 (ending September 30) from individual taxes (which rose 6 percent) and corporate-income taxes (which jumped 17 percent).

Building a Better Social Security System

The New York Times started the discussion by "accidentally admitting" that the Netherland's privatized pension system is a more secure, reliable system than the American government-run system, and Dan Mitchell @ thefederalist.com carries it forward.

Under the Dutch system:

• each generation pays its own retirement costs through private savings and private investments in diversified, professionally-run pension funds (unlike the US, which is based on inter-generational redistribution);
• annual worker savings are government-mandated, typically about 18% of workers' pay (the American Social Security system is roughly 16.4%);
• government doesn't control—and can't access—any of those pension funds (unlike the American system which is wholly controlled and owned by the federal government);
• workers' incomes used to build retirement accounts are taxed only once (similar to American Individual Retirement Accounts):  no tax is levied on pension contributions, and pension funds' investment performance isn't taxed; pension benefits are taxed only when their owners receive them; and
• Dutch retirement plans are intended to amount to about 70 percent of workers' lifetime pay (compared to just 40 percent of American worker's income in retirement).

Mitchell argues, that while there are some things about the Dutch market-based system that could be improved,

I would gladly trade the U.S. Social Security system for the Dutch mandatory pension System. An imperfect system based on private savings is always a better bet than a perfectly terrible tax-and-transfer scheme. For more information, here's the video I narrated explaining why personal retirement accounts are far superior to government-run schemes such as Social Security.

Mitchell adds that, in his estimation, the best role model is Australia's pension system.

Are Women Hurting Women in the Workplace?

Women, not men, may be holding women back from achieving upper levels of management. A Gallup survey released this week finds that 39% of women — and only 26% of men — preferred to be led by a man.  This preference for males has held for the past 60 years of polling, says Gallup.

In reporting the survey, BusinessWeek adds that "a growing pile of evidence suggests that women mistrust, and can undermine, one another at work."

• "95% of working women felt they were undercut by another woman at least once during their professional life," according to a 2011 survey.
• A 2010 survey of legal secretaries found that not one preferred to work for a woman partner, although 47% had no preference.
• A 2008 study found that women working for female supervisors experienced more stress than those who had male supervisors.

The data suggest that even the millennial generation "would rather not have a woman in charge:"

Growing Number of Single Moms Really Victims of Patriarchy?

Despite readily available birth control, more single women are getting pregnant—but choosing not to marry to the biological father—than ever before, in part because the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood no longer exists and in part due to the lack of availability of economically-stable male spouses.

Two researchers claim that, while this coupled with the ranks of divorced mothers, is a mark of women's new-found independence, these single mothers are now even worse victims of the old male patriarchy. Why? According to the authors,

• College-educated men still have the greatest access to "the most influential and highest paying jobs" in large part because "women are still much more likely than men to drop out of the labor market when children come."
• The patriarchal system continues to extend to males "political power—the ability to secure laws reflecting male preferences and perspectives over female ones."
• The patriarchal system has made alimony and child support for women less common (especially to mothers who earn more than fathers), while at the same time awarding more shared custody to fathers.

The authors' conclusion is that there is no "new matriarchy" to celebrate:

The word “matriarchy” suggests power, and it is hard to see what power today’s struggling single mothers exercise. Their hard-won independence, in a world where they do not have the power to create better relationships or stronger communities, is under assault. They might be better off unmarried than married to unemployed boyfriends who still live at home with their mothers. But with children to raise, bills to pay and multiple jobs to go to, do they really have any other choice?

Americans Still Believe in Individualism, Capitalism

Breaking down the results from the latest Pew Research survey of global opinion, James Pethokoukis writes:

Let’s start with the US: 70% of Americans still think most people are better off under a free-market system, even if some people are rich and some are poor. That compares to 63% for the average advanced economy. What’s more, 73%  and 62% think working hard and getting a good education, respectively, are very important to getting ahead in life vs. 40% and 39% for the average advanced economy. (For France, by the way, it’s 25% and 24%.) Finally, just 40% think success is determined by forces outside out control vs. 51% for the average advanced economy.

No Gender Gap This Election?

Today's ABC News/Washington Post poll brings more bad news for the party of liberalism. "Even with the [economic] recovery to date, 77% are worried about the economy's future, and 57% say the country has been experiencing a long-term decline in living standards ..."

Barack Obama and his political party are heading into the midterm elections in trouble. The president's 40 percent job approval rating in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is the lowest of his career — and the Democratic Party's popularity is its weakest in polling back 30 years, with more than half of Americans seeing the party unfavorably for the first time.

The Republican Party is even more unpopular. But benefiting from their supporters' greater likelihood of voting, GOP candidates nonetheless hold a 50-43 percent lead among likely voters for U.S. House seats in the Nov. 4 election. 

Women, who have long been counted on to lift liberals' fortunes, have lost confidence as well.  Among likely voters, "women divide evenly between Democratic and Republican House candidates," reports the poll. The gender gap this cycle is all male:

Ebola Travel Restrictions

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday, 67% of Americans support restricting the entry into the US of those arriving from Ebola-outbreak nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, reports Newsmax.com. Only 29% oppose travel restrictions.

Ninety-one percent of adults in the survey said they want "stricter screening of people entering the United States who have been in African countries affected by the outbreak."

The results mirror an NBC News poll (October 7) that found "58% of Americans favored banning flights from countries hardest hit by the virus."

Some of the nation's leaders are listening; others are not, reports Newsmax in a related article.

Despite calls from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other Republicans, the Obama administration has repeatedly said there will be no travel ban from West African countries stricken by the Ebola virus outbreak.

'War on Women' Over: Women Won

Women aren't responding well to the oft-repeated liberal claim that conservatives are waging a 'war on women', according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, and Genevieve Wood cites these examples to explain why that may be:

• For every 100 higher ed degrees men got last year, women earned 140.
• The wage gap between men and women is now almost non-existent in apple-to-apple comparisons of males and females in similar jobs with similar education, experience, years in the work force and hours worked.
• Millennial women with no children who live in metro areas earned 8 percent more on average than men.
• Women control over 50% of private wealth in the US today and they make about 80% of all household spending decisions.
• Over 40% of the 3 million Americans making off $500,000 a year are women.

Lake says women find the term 'war on women' "divisive, political [and] they don't like it."  Wood suggests another reason: "more women now recognize that it's simply not true:"

In a recent Rasmussen poll, 52% of likely U.S. female voters said they believed the "war on women" slogan is primarily used for political purposes. And in Colorado, where one of the most closely watched Senate races is happening, a Magellan Strategies poll of female swing voters found 77% of respondents said they saw through the "war on women" messaging strategy.

Looks like the Left's "war on women" is over, and women won.

Reynolds: CDC and the Ebola Fight

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost sight of its mission, argues Glenn Reynolds in a USAToday editorial. Created to prevent malaria and other dangerous communicable diseases, the CDC has gotten into all sorts of 'side jobs', from playground safety to calisthentics to second hand smoke.

These other tasks may or may not be important, but they're certainly a distraction from what's supposed to be the CDC's "one job" — protecting America from a deadly epidemic. And to the extent that the CDC's leadership has allowed itself to be distracted, it has paid less attention to the core mission.

In an era where new disease threats look to be growing, the CDC needs to drop the side jobs and focus on its real reason for existence. But, alas, the problem isn't just the CDC. It's everywhere.

It seems that as government has gotten bigger, and accumulated more and more of its own ancillary responsibilities, it has gotten worse at its primary tasks. It can supervise snacks at elementary schools, but not defend the borders; it can tax people to subsidize others' health-care plans but not build roads or bridges; and it can go after football team names but can't seem to deal with the Islamic State terror group.

Multitasking results in poorer performance for individuals. It also hurts the performance of government agencies, and of government itself. You have one job. Try doing it.

Judge: IRS Obamacare Rules 'Abuse of Discretion'

"U.S. District Judge Ronald White concluded Tuesday that the IRS rule altering the Obamacare law and providing billions [of dollars] in subsidies is 'arbitrary, capricious and abuse of discretion'," writes Craig Bannister @ CNSnews.com.

"The court holds that the IRS rule is arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.706(2)(A), in excess of summary jurisdiction, authority or limitation, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalidation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act], and is hereby vacated. The court's order of vacatur is stayed, however, pending resolution of any appeal from this order."

Oklahoma was the first of several states to challenge the IRS rule "that caused billions in subsidies to be paid out, despite Congress having never authorized those payments."

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt hailed the state's victory in its lawsuit challenging the implementation of the Affordable Care Act:

"Today's ruling is a consequential victory for the rule of law. The administration and its bureaucrats in the IRS handed out billions in illegal tax credits and subsidies and vastly expanded the reach of the health care law because they didn't like the way Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act. That's not how our system of government works."

Liberal Ideas of Economic Success

"Obama claims his economy is a success" reads the headline of a Daily Caller article about Obama's economic speech yesterday. Here's what Obama's idea of "economic success" means for the rest of us, courtesy John Hinderaker at powerlineblog.com.

Median Family Income is still below 2005 levels:

Part-time employment (red line) still outpaces full-time employment (blue line):

The economic recovery under Obama's policies (blue line) versus the 1981 economic recovery under President Reagan's policies (red line):