Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are racist. Against somebody, somewhere:

Apparently, it’s because people in some cultures don’t eat sandwich bread. Verenice Gutierrez, principal of Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland explained to the Portland Tribune:

“Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year,” the Tribune said.

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” Gutierrez asked. “Another way would be to say: ”˜Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

”¦The Tribune noted that the school started the new year with “intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives,” to help educators understand their own “white privilege,” in order to “change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance.””Last Wednesday, the first day of the school year for staff, for example, the first item of business for teachers at Scott School was to have a Courageous Conversation ”” to examine a news article and discuss the ”˜white privilege’ it conveys,” the Tribune added.

I assume Gutierrez has never heard of the Cuban. Although I assume the Cuban is racist:

cuban

But whether PB&J sandwiches are racist or not, I think they’re mean. To me. Because I can’t eat peanut butter; it gives me migraines, even though I love it.

So when I’m queen I will ban all talk of them.

School discipline: affirmative inaction

The New Neo Posted on by

Somehow I missed this story when it first came out almost a year and a half ago, but let’s take a break for a moment from Obamacare and re-visit another travesty:

President Barack Obama is backing a controversial campaign by progressives to regulate schools’ disciplinary actions so that members of major racial and ethnic groups are penalized at equal rates, regardless of individuals’ behavior.

His July 26 executive order established a government panel to promote “a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.”…

The progressives campaign for race-based discipline policies also won a victory in Maryland July 24.

The state’s board of education established a policy demanding that each racial or ethnic group receive roughly proportional level of school penalties, regardless of the behavior by members of each group.

The board’s decision requires that “the state’s 24 school systems track data to ensure that minority and special education students are not unduly affected by suspensions, expulsions and other disciplinary measures,” said a July 25 Washington Post report.

“Disparities would have to be reduced within a year and eliminated within three years,” according to the Post.

The state’s new racial policy was welcomed by progressives, including Judith Browne Dianis, a director of the D.C.-based Advancement Project. “Maryland’s proposal is on the cutting edge,” she told the Post.

Dianis’ project is also a law firm that litigates race-related questions, and it gains from laws and regulations that spur race-related legal disputes.

Equality of outcome has become the new religion. I use the word “religion” ironically, of course. But I chose it because this particular movement rests on the belief (or the pretense) that, any time members of a race or group defined as disadvantaged exhibit lesser achievements or undesirable behavior in some area, it must by definition be due to bigotry and discrimination, and that the situation needs to be rectified not by changing the behavior but by changing how that behavior is measured or judged. The goal is to equalize the outcomes for the races in the statistical sense.

It hurts society as a whole. But perhaps the ones who are the most damaged by it are the members of the disadvantaged group themselves.

Speaking of which, here’s another phenomenon that is no surprise.

A Republican fix?

The New Neo Posted on by

Holman Jenkins has a suggestion for a Republican “fix” for Obamacare:

What can be done is Congress creating a new option in the form of a national health insurance charter under which insurers could design new low-cost policies free of mandated benefits imposed by ObamaCare and the 50 states that many of those losing their individual policies today surely would find attractive.

What’s the first thing the new nationally chartered insurers would do? Rush out cheap, high-deductible policies, allaying some of the resentment that the ObamaCare mandate provokes among the young, healthy and footloose affluent.

These folks could buy the minimalist coverage that (for various reasons) makes sense for them. They wouldn’t be forced to buy excessive coverage they don’t need to subsidize the old and sick…

Because such a move could be sold as expanding the options under ObamaCare and lessening the burden of an unpopular mandate, it always had potential to draw Democratic support…

And, yes, this would also blow up the disingenuous financial engine of ObamaCare. This is a feature not a bug.

The ObamaCare exchanges would devolve into refuges for those who are medically uninsurable. But this seems increasingly likely to happen anyway. The federal government, having assumed the job of subsidizing these people, should do so honestly and openly.

So, what Jenkins seems to be proposing is not to repeal Obamacare (which probably wouldn’t be politically feasible anyway—yet) but to add a catastrophic insurance option free of the mandatory coverages such as maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, pediatric oral and vision care, and a host of others, that have raised the cost of Obamacare and which many people don’t want or need. He realizes that a lot of people would gravitate towards that catastrophic option instead of the plans Obamacare now offers, and the exchanges would basically become subsidized high-risk pools—somewhat like the ones the vast majority of states had to begin with before Obamacare led to those pools’ cancellation.

There’s an excellent argument to be made, though, that the GOP should hold fast to a repeal rather than a fix. There’s also some doubt as to whether the Senate would pass anything the GOP proposed, even now that the political climate has become far more hostile to Obamacare. And of course one must always remember that Obama has veto power, and it’s hard to imagine him not using it on a bill like this one. But there’s something to be said for Republicans taking charge and actually designing and passing a remedy that could help people with the problems they are now facing in the health insurance markets.

Republicans have been demonized for a long time as not caring about those without health insurance, although some Republicans have been suggesting a number of solutions for years that have been ignored. Actually passing something concrete would go far towards getting the public to realize that conservatives do have solutions to these things; they are just different solutions than liberals have come up with.

However, I’m not sure that Jenkins’ suggestion would do anything to solve the problem connected with the mandatory coverage of those with pre-existing conditions combined with the weakness of the penalty for not buying insurance (or the penalty’s possible unconstitutionality, despite whatever Justice Roberts might think). That problem is inherent in Obamacare, or in any scheme that mandates coverage of pre-existing conditions. Either penalties are weak (or non-existent) and premiums rise, or penalties must be strong. The first wrecks havoc with the health insurance market premiums and the second with liberty, especially if instituted at the federal level.

Senate Democrats say: hey, right about now would be a good time…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for the nuclear option.

Do they have the votes? Who knows:

…[E]ven if Reid doesn’t have the votes. He can’t keep threatening the GOP with the move and not pull the trigger at some point. For Senate Republicans, the threat and the action are now pretty much the same thing, as Reid has used it to break filibusters anyway. It’s practically a moot point already…

Actually, the minority won’t be entirely without tools…[O]ne Senator can object to each motion for unanimous consent and tie up the chamber in endless bill readings and other non-essential business…[I]f applied universally. Reid might find himself out of the frying pan and into the fire after this stunt. Instead of speeding up the Senate, it might mire it for good in endless bickering.

We’ll see what happens, but if Reid does pass this, expect Republicans to retaliate ”” and expect them to end the rest of the filibuster as soon as they have the majority.

Carping about the use of the filibuster for judicial appointments is the height of political hypocrisy for both parties, since both have used it for just that purpose when in the minority. The first nominiee successfully blocked by that method was Bush’s Miguel Estrada.

And both parties have at least threatened the nuclear option: here’s the history of that.

Signing up those young, healthy guys on the Obamacare exchanges

The New Neo Posted on by

We keep hearing that in order to keep from going under because of ever-increasing premiums, the Obamacare exchanges must enroll a lot of healthy young people. We even hear it from the White House, according to Ezra Klein:

How many younger people are needed each year to hold down premiums depends on how many people sign up for the marketplaces. If the total this year is 7 million people, then about 2.7 million need to be in the 18-to-35 set.

This group is “overwhelmingly male…majority nonwhite…[and] [o]ne out of every three lives in California, Florida or Texas.”

Why male? Why nonwhite? My guess would be because women and whites that age are somewhat more likely to have employment-based insurance and therefore wouldn’t be going to the exchanges (as long as their employers continue to offer the alternative).

Given that this young male non-white demographic is the group Obamacare’s exchanges are especially seeking, it also appears that, although it might be a young and healthy bunch, it’s not an especially solvent one:

Young adults are the cheapest group to insure but the group most likely to go without insurance. The reason, put simply, is that young adults are likelier than any other group to be poor. Smith calculates that 19 million young adults between 18 and 34 lack health insurance. Under Obamacare, 8 million of them will qualify for free insurance through Medicaid. An additional 9 million will qualify for subsidized insurance in the exchanges.

In fact, the vast majority of the young adults expected to be in the marketplaces are expected to qualify for subsidies. Linda Blumberg, a health-policy analyst at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, has done extensive work modeling who is likely to sign up for insurance on the exchanges. She estimates that 96 percent of 21- to 27-year-olds will get some income subsidies

Wow. Let that sink in: the vast, vast majority of this “young and healthy” group they’re so very eager to get on the exchanges will be subsidized, and most will be pretty heavily subsidized at that (half will be on Medicaid, for example). So, why go after them? Signing them up would go far towards preventing the “death spiral” problem caused by the exchanges having too many old and sick people, but it certainly wouldn’t be likely to do much to reduce the amount Obamacare will cost the government, because of the high proportion of subsidies.

Therefore it’s hard not to conclude that the government is purchasing protection for the exchanges. Sign up for the free stuff, government says. We’ll pay you; it won’t cost you that much at all. And in turn, the government is counting on the fact that they won’t be making that many claims, which will balance out the other enrollees who’ll be making a lot of claims.

The insurance companies will get their money just the same; what do they care if it comes from the insured person him/herself or from the federal government? It’s the same money, and it keeps them from having to raise premiums if the whole scheme works as planned. Who loses? The taxpayer, because it’s difficult if not impossible to believe that this arrangement will be deficit neutral, and can be paid for by the existing tax structure that’s supposed to finance Obamacare.

Switched at birth

The New Neo Posted on by

Can anyone make sense of this story?

I know it’s about two babies switched at birth. I know there was a controversial court case and a custody battle. And I know everybody’s happy now, eighteen years later.

But the rest of it is just too Byzantine to follow. As one of the commenters to the article wrote:

In order for me to completely understand this story, I’m going to have to draw stick figures with little kids and moms and dads. And aunts. And someone who fell in love with someone else. Never mind.

I thought about diagrams and a chart, too. But then I just gave up.

And turned to this. Security has gotten a lot tighter at hospitals since I gave birth many moons ago. I had what was called “rooming in,” though, and only stayed in the hospital one night, so my baby was pretty much with me the whole time.

Stop me before I tell you my labor story.

The LA Times…

The New Neo Posted on by

…manages to write an entire article on how well Obamacare enrollments are going in California without ever once mentioning:

(1) what percentage of enrollees are subsidized

(2) what percentage have pre-existing conditions

(3) what percentage of enrollees are under 35

In other words: the Times fails to mention a single fact about the pool of people who have enrolled except the total number. Actually, they don’t even tell the total number, but I calculate from their little hints (“California ”” which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month ”” nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month”) that it’s close to 60,000.

Considering that about a million policies were cancelled in California alone, and that California had projected a need for exchange signups totaling 1.4 million in 2014, that’s not especially impressive.

Plus, 79,500 people also signed up for Medicaid in California (Medical) in October. So far, the Medicaid enrollments seem to be way outpacing the Obamacare ones.

Benificiary of Obamacare gets incredibly rude and complex awakening…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but still believes in Obama.

Here’s a textbook case of the liberal mindset. Jessica Sanford of western Washington state was so happy with the initial Obamacare premiums she was quoted by the state website that she sent off a grateful letter to President Obama which he featured in a speech three weeks ago. But since then, Sanford’s been informed—well, you have to read the Byzantine story for yourself, because it’s still not all that clear how much Sanford will be actually end up paying for herself and her 14-year-old son who has ADHD, because the news keeps changing.

The one constant is that the news is not good. First she was informed her subsidy would be less than she originally was told, but it was still something she thought she could swing. Next she was told no subsidy would be forthcoming at all, because her son had been enrolled in Medicaid and that meant her income level was figured as though she were a single person, which disqualified her for subsidies. Then she was told her son’s Medicaid enrollment could be rescinded if she liked. But that turns out to be difficult to actually accomplish, although one customer in the state of Washington has apparently been able to do it—so there’s hope, right?

Sanford is upset, but it’s clear who she doesn’t blame—President Obama:

I don’t want to be bashing the president. I don’t want to be bashing the ACA. I don’t want to come across as saying that. I’m a big Obama fan.

But to me there’s a big problem with the way the state is handling it. You put your stuff in there and once you do it, it is impossible to do anything…So you are stuck on this big treadmill of bureaucracy, and you know, if feels very out of control.

Yes, it’s the state’s fault, because of course—as everyone knows—the federal bureaucracy is so much homier and cozier, and what’s going on right now in the state of Washington re Obamacare has nothing to do with the feds, nothing at all.

Sanford is really a perfect example of the difficulty of changing a mind and a political affiliation. People often resist making the connections that would cause the feeling of discombobulation that would come from having to give up previous notions of the good and the bad, and the need to change political affiliations as a result.

I’m not surprised by the bureaucracy and the screw-ups she has encountered—or even by Sanford’s tendency to stand by her man and her party. But there’s another part of this story that did astound me, which is that a single woman making $50K a year and having one child would qualify for Medicaid for the child. Here are the rules (I’m not sure whether this is just the way the state of Washington does it, or if these are the rules for any state that has accepted the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare): at up to 200% of poverty level, children are automatically enrolled in Medicaid when the family signs up at the state exchange. From 200% to 250% of family poverty level, children are eligible to do so but enrollment is optional, and the parent must pay premiums of $20 a month per child (capped at $40 per month for total children). From 250% to 300% of poverty level, enrollment is also optional, and premiums are $30 a month per child.

That’s a lot of kids qualifying for Medicaid. Take a look at this chart for the poverty guidelines:

poverty2013

Notice, for example, that a family of four (a couple with two children, let’s say) would be forced to enroll its two children in Medicaid if the couple’s income was under $47,100, and the couple’s own premiums would now be figured as though they were a family of two, which would decrease their subsidies. Using this general calculator for Obamacare, and if the couple were Sanford’s age of 48, a family of four with that income would pay $2964 a year out-of-pocket for silver plan coverage, whereas a family of two with the same income would pay $4488 because their subsidies would be lower based on their higher percentage of poverty level. So by enrolling the children in Medicaid (which would be compulsory), the family loses $1524 a year, at least for premiums (which might be offset by reduced co-pays and deductibles, however; that’s a more complex calculation, because a family under 250% of poverty level gets a reduction in the usual co-pays and deductibles on the exchange plans, as well).

It also means that same family of 4 making up to $70650 a year (300% of poverty level) would be able to enroll its children in Medicaid for a small fee if they so chose. That sort of income for a couple with two children isn’t exactly wealthy, but Medicaid? Of course, Medicaid is such third-class insurance that not many people in the $70K category would willingly choose it—especially since, by taking the Medicaid option for their children, they’d be paying $8580 out-of-pocket for their own insurance (which would now be figured as a couple only) versus the $6708 they’d be paying as a family of four (after subsidies, which they would be eligible for as a family but not as a couple).

One of the many things wrong with Obamacare is that the subsidy structure contains a vast number of inequities such as this. Even if you agree with the basic idea—as Sanford seems to—the anomalies are legion in practice. Some may be intentional but some seem unintentional and random and even perverse. Plus, the complexity is immense, and the opportunities to game the system for those who master that complexity are immense as well. And this is true without even figuring in the similarly vast opportunities for fraud.

Bruce Barcott, who also lives in Washington state and also was a big Obama supporter, got a similarly rude awakening to Sanford’s. Although the details are somewhat different, and he never wrote a letter of thanks to the president that he now has to walk back, he’s unexpectedly much worse off after Obamacare than before.

Barcott has a friend in a similar fix who called a lawyer-accountant for advice and was told this:

I can’t ethically advise you, because honestly I don’t know the right thing to do. Nobody does. There are no answers. Right now it’s a complete clusterfuck.

Now, there’s an honest man.

But unlike Sanford, Barcott is angry at Obama. And he even understands the irony of it:

Once the sound of boiling blood dissipated, in my head I heard my Republican friends chuckling at the sight of a liberal Democrat hoisted ten stories high on his own petard. How’s the view up there, Obamacare Ollie?

One of the interesting things about what’s happening in the individual insurance market is that many of these people are self-employed self-starters, some of them (like Barcott) are freelance writers. They are articulate. And they write. I don’t know whether Barcott’s mugging by Obamacare reality will lead to deeper realizations and changes in his basic political beliefs, but I think with someone like him there’s a chance.

Health insurance, “discrimination,” and smokers

The New Neo Posted on by

The insurance business is impossible without some sort of “discrimination“—as in “the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment,” rather than ” bigotry or other arbitrary distinctions.”

But the Obama administration and liberals as a whole use the loaded word “discrimination” to mean something pejorative and/or unfair. They wouldn’t raise a hue and cry because life insurance discriminates against the elderly, or because flood insurance discriminates against those who live in flood plains. But that’s the way health insurance is commonly talked about: as unfairly discriminatory.

Compare and contrast: “Health insurance discriminates against people with pre-existing conditions!,” to “Health insurance discriminates against smokers!” Somehow, under Obamacare, the former is not okay but the latter is just fine.

Obamacare “discriminates” against the second but not the first. Smoking, of course, is considered an act of will, whereas being sick is not, although there are certainly other health habits (being a drug addict, for example) that are just as voluntary (or involuntary) as smoking and certainly very damaging to health, and yet people who engage in those activities are not penalized, and everyone is required to obtain insurance to pay for substance abuse treatment.

How much does Obamacare discriminate against smokers? A lot:

The ObamaCare smoker surcharge allows insurers to charge a “tobacco surcharge” which is calculated after subsidies received through the marketplace. Smokers may pay up to 50% more than non-smokers for the same health plans…

Smoking is not a pre-existing health condition under Obamacare. As part of the negotiations to get coverage for those with preexisting conditions, insurance companies got the right to impose on smokers premium costs that are as much as 50 percent higher than the same plan for non-smokers…

The Smoker Glitch is an anomaly in the government’s computer payment computer systems that won’t process the tobacco surcharge correctly and won’t be fixed until at least 2015. While the smoking surcharge can be up to three time the non-tobacco rate, programmers cannot get the system to make the calculations.

Because the smoker surcharge is calculated after subsidies, it also discriminates against the poorer, who might even be unable to afford insurance because of it, especially the older poor or lower middle class. And wouldn’t they be among the people most in need of health care, and whom you would think Obamacare was designed to help? What’s more, Obamacare discriminates far more than older insurance policies used to (I remember looking at charts with the rates for non-smokers vs. smokers, and although the latter paid more, it never seemed anywhere near 50% more). Six states have prohibited the surcharge (California among them) and two have lowered it, and most people don’t think companies will end up charging the whole 50% more, but it is allowed (although no one will see it till they get the glitch fixed, which may be never).

Let me just add that Obamacare must be racist, as well, because smoking rates are higher among blacks and native Americans than among whites. Oops!

Infighting over Egypt

The New Neo Posted on by

Susan Rice and John Kerry are reportedly at odds over Egypt:

The tension between the national security adviser and the secretary of state spilled over into public view in the past week, when Rice laid out her critical appraisal of the Egyptian government, which contradicted Kerry’s assessment that Egypt was “on the path to democracy.” The now public rift has been simmering behind the scenes for months and illustrates the strikingly divergent Egypt policies the White House and the State Department are pursuing.

As bad as Obama’s approach to Egypt has been, this (if true) seems even worse. I would guess that chaos and confusion is never a good message to send out. And this bears that out:

Nevertheless, officials and experts said the administration’s Egypt policy is hampered not only by internal tensions but also by being ad hoc and reactive, without a long-term strategy dictated by President Obama.

“What’s missing from any of the administration’s statements or actions is a clear vision of how they will preserve American interests in Egypt over the long term,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center and a former State Department official. “The president clearly made an analytical judgment that authoritarianism in the Middle East was not stable in the long term. If he still believes that, then he has to have some concerns about Egypt’s trajectory and American interests, and how to address those concerns is missing from American policy today.”

In Egypt, officials are receiving diverging messages from the U.S. government’s various parts, causing confusion as they try to decide how to react to recent U.S. actions. For example, the administration has not told the government of Egypt what exactly it must do to get the partial aid suspension lifted, said a source close to the Egyptian government.

“They are getting different messages from different people in Washington. There is confusion in Egypt as to what is actually U.S. policy,” the source said. “

Obamacare is not the only area of disarray in the Obama administration. They simply don’t know what they’re doing—unless, of course, the idea is to sow chaos, which is a distinct possibility.

It’s the old “fool or knave?” question. As I’ve said before, you can hardly go wrong assuming the answer is “both.”

The holidays are coming: order from Amazon through neo-neocon!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’ll be bumping this up to the top every now and then through the holidays, just as a reminder. I’ll probably be changing the musical selections as the season progresses.]

How’s that for shameless self-promotion?

I’ve realized that yes, once again it’s November. It’s almost Thanksgiving. And that means that Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your diverse fancy are all coming up sooner than you think.

So I’m encouraging you to feel their hot breaths on your neck and solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance.

And for those of you of a sarcastic bent about the length of the Christmas buying season, I offer you this musical expression of delight:

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]