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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/7/2016 4:01:33 AM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224704

The Affordable Care Act’s Elephant in the Room Investor's Business Daily by TERRY JONES The debate over the Affordable Care Act has focused almost exclusively on the roughly 12.7 million health insurance policies obtained through the law’s online exchanges. But what about the elephant in the room: how it’s also affecting employer-sponsored plans — and the 151 million Americans who are covered by them? I just completed a new study that answers this question. Here’s the short version: Premiums for millions of employer-sponsored health insurance plans will nearly double over the next decade. Unable to afford added costs, many employers will be forced to stop offering health care coverage at all. Employees will then be left with two options: Purchase even more expensive coverage on the law’s exchanges, or pay thousands of dollars in tax penalties. In other words, the Affordable Care Act’s harms extend far beyond federal and state exchanges. It’s important to understand how big this problem is. According to my analysis — which relies on the federal Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, among other government data sources — the employer-sponsored health insurance market covers nearly 12 times as many people as are enrolled in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, as of the Jan. 31 cutoff for 2016 plans. Premiums for employer-sponsored plans are shared by employers and employees. Employers generally pay around 80% of the total costs, while employees pay the remaining 20%. Both will see their costs escalate dramatically over the next decade. Start with the share paid by employees. Of the eight plan types available in 2016, the most common is a midlevel PPO, covering roughly 90 million people today. Over the next 10 years, I estimate individual employee premiums for these plans will increase by 78%, from $900 annually in 2016 to $1,600 by 2025. Family premiums will grow by a slightly lower 71%, and will cost $4,800 per year by 2025 — roughly $2,000 more than today. The second most popular plan — a high-option PPO plan, which covers around 26 million people today — will increase even more. Individual employee premiums will jump by 83%, from $1,200 per year in 2016 to $2,200 in 2025. Meanwhile, family premiums will nearly double, from $3,700 this year to $7,000 a decade from now. But it doesn’t stop there. Of the six remaining plan types — covering 36 million Americans — every single one will increase by a minimum of 23%. Combined with the two most common options, 95% of today’s employer-sponsored plans will increase by at least 50% through 2025. That amounts to thousands of dollars in additional out-of-pocket costs. And that’s just the cost to employees. The 80% share paid by employers is far worse. That 78% increase for midlevel PPO plans will cost employers an additional $2,800 per individual plan, and $8,000 more per family by 2025. The high-option PPO will cost employers an extra $4,000 per individual by 2025, while family plans will cost an additional $13,200 apiece. Even for small businesses, this could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in higher health care costs every year. Those are costs many employers cannot afford. They’ll be forced to choose between offering plans with fewer choices, or not offering health plans at all. Using a projection model funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I estimate both will occur. While more than 22 million employees have high-option PPO plans today, that number will fall to less than 6 million by 2025. Many of those will be replaced by low-option PPO plans and Health Savings Accounts, which typically have fewer choices available to patients. Meanwhile, 11 million fewer Americans will receive health insurance through their employers by 2025. These families and individuals will then have to choose between purchasing insurance on state or federal exchanges — where premiums for comparable plans may be three to four times more expensive, according to a similar study I conducted — or pay a penalty equal to 2.5% of their taxable income. These higher costs and penalties will crush low- and middle-income families already living paycheck to paycheck. All of this is the inevitable result of the Affordable Care Act’s design. It was never intended to manage costs for employer-sponsored plans. Rather, it merely applied more mandates to an already labyrinthine bureaucracy, dictating what type of coverage patients are allowed to have. Higher costs are the natural consequence of a law that prioritizes government mandates over individual choice. Which gets to the heart of rising costs under the Affordable Care Act: When the government imposes more mandates and takes choices away from patients, costs will rise. It’s really that simple. The law’s supporters may try to avoid this reality all they like, but there’s an elephant in the room they can’t ignore for much longer. Parente, a professor of health finance, is an associate dean at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/7/2016 7:17:42 AM
From: tonto	Respond to of 224704

Groan...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/7/2016 9:39:48 AM
From: FJB	2 Recommendations Recommended By locogringo TideGlider Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224704

OLD DRUNK CRIMINAL MONSTER

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/7/2016 9:45:26 AM
From: tonto	6 Recommendations Recommended By dave rose FJB Investor Clouseau locogringo TideGlider and 1 more member Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224704

In Fort McMurray, it seems like history is repeating itself. In 2011, another city in northern Alberta, called Slave Lake, also had a massive fire tear through town, also in May, the dry season. A massive evacuation. Damage totaled $800 million. So 18 months later, the province produced a report. Their very first recommendation to prevent another fire like that was that municipalities cut down trees near buildings, roads and hospitals. And the report was ignored, by the PCs, then the NDP. So they’re partly to blame. But so are environmental extremists. You see, they think cutting down a single tree is a shameful act. In Fort McMurray, they didn’t cut down trees next to highways and buildings. Under pressure from eco-extremists, they planted more of them, in the name of “eco-tourism.” The town also adopted a “green plan,” ensuring “that natural features of development sites (trees, vegetation, wetlands, etc.) are not removed or filled.” Then of course, when the fire did come, the NDP government had cut the firefighting budget by 80 per cent, and Notley literally laughed at any “fear mongers” who dared question that. What happened in Fort McMurray was a natural disaster. Lots of politicians bear the blame. But it also happened, in part, because environmental extremism came ahead of evidence-based forest fire policy — and people’s property and lives...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/9/2016 10:46:24 AM
From: weatherguru	4 Recommendations Recommended By FJB isopatch lightshipsailor TideGlider Respond to of 224704

Droughts and fires were worse in the past. Read this, which is a "Review and Update of the 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy". nifc.gov A screen-shot from the report is below. At CO2 < 300-ppm and the Earth 2F cooler, 145 million acres burned annually, where "fire has been a frequent and major ecological factor in North America." Read the report, you could learn something outside of empty rhetoric.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (191223)	5/9/2016 11:02:34 AM
From: weatherguru	4 Recommendations Recommended By FJB isopatch lightshipsailor Sedohr Nod Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224704

NASA Study Finds 1934 Had Worst Drought of Last Thousand Years "A new study using a reconstruction of North American drought history over the last 1,000 years found that the drought of 1934 was the driest and most widespread of the last millennium. Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists from NASA and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America. For comparison, the average extent of the 2012 drought was 59.7 percent." nasa.gov Drought in the U.S. is almost non-existent with CO2 and global temps at all-time highs. What does CO2 have to do with droughts? Oh I see, cherry pick a horrible fire in Canada in a region strongly influenced by El Nino.