I Call BS!

By Tami Luhby

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Troubled insurer American International Group - recipient of a more than $100 billion U.S. government bailout - agreed Wednesday to freeze $19 million in payments to former chief executive Martin Sullivan.

Under the agreement with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, AIG also said it would block distributions from a $600 million deferred compensation and bonus pool intended for the company’s financial products subsidiary. Joseph Cassano, the division’s former head, has an approximately $69 million stake in the pool.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is touting a health care reform plan that sounds very familiar. It includes:

The 2006 Massachusetts health care reform plan “expanded the state’s Medicaid program, offered qualified residents financial assistance to purchase insurance, created a new state agency to connect residents with affordable plans and - perhaps the most talked-about change - required all residents with access to affordable coverage to enroll in a plan or incur financial penalties. For employers with more than 10 employees, the law requires that those who do not make a “fair and reasonable” contribution toward worker health coverage, pay up to $295 per employee per year into a state fund.”

And how is that plan working out for Massachusetts?

Well, strictly in terms of coercing encouraging people to get insurance it has been a great success.

Among adults with incomes below 300 percent of the poverty level, the study found uninsurance dropped by almost 11 percentage points, and among adults at less than 100 percent of the poverty level - those eligible for fully subsidized coverage - uninsurance rates dropped by more than two-thirds.

That’s pretty impressive. At least until you compare it to the problems the plan is facing:

And the future is looking a little scary:

The only REAL solution to the health care crisis is to allow the free market to work freely.

Get employers out of the equation - there is NO reason why we should be limited to whatever few (often inferior) healthcare plans are offered by our employers. There is NO reason why our employers should be held responsible for our health insurance (think of it this way…would it make sense for your only affordable option for car insurance to be whatever two or three plans your employer signs up for? Giving you NO choices regarding the amount of your deductible, the amount of coverage, or the areas of coverage, and therefore NO choice regarding the amount of the premium or the reputation of the insurance company?)

Under the current system doctors and patients alike are held hostage by the insurance company, who really calls all the shots. Under universal health care doctors and patients are held hostage by the government, who would really call all the shots. Only in a truly free relationship, where patients can choose their own medical plans, their own doctors, their own course of care, and how much they are willing to pay for it, and where doctors make their medical choices based on what is best for their patients, where they can choose how many patients to care for and what to charge for their services, can the market truly work as it’s supposed to.

Certainly there should be regulations to protect patients from unscrupulous doctors, standards for medical care, and safety nets for the needy. But those objectives can be achieved without creating another government behemoth that will inevitably go the same route as Social Security and Medicare into an unaffordable and unwieldy money pit that is the epitome of inefficiency.

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Insurance

Local herb farmer Rose Loveall-Sale says that if her health insurance premiums continue rising she’ll have to consider a career change. It’s a plight shared by farmers and ranchers statewide, a new survey shows.

Okay, rising health care costs, including the premiums, are hurting a lot of people and certainly farmers are a necessary part of our nation’s economy. But, as usual, the devil is in the details.

A new The Access Project report that surveyed more than 1,700 California family farmers and ranchers, found about one third have no access to group health coverage and must buy expensive individual insurance.

Maybe I’m just ignorant, but why don’t those 1,700 form a group and buy group health insurance?

The person featured in this article - and understand, I’m not criticizing her in any way, I’m criticizing the reporter’s choice of her to be featured in this article - does not even represent what she should represent based upon the topic of this article - a farmer without group insurance. She has group insurance through her husband’s employment.

Loveall-Sale said she and her husband pay $300 in monthly health insurance premiums, and it’s already a stretch.

“When you’re working with a narrow profit margin, another few hundred dollars a month for health care costs is huge,” she said.

$300 a month is pretty average for those with group insurance. And yes, when money is tight a few hundred dollars can make a huge dent in the monthly budget (and when is the last time our Congresspeople - who essentially control the insurance and health industries through heavy regulation - experienced THAT?) But that narrow profit margin is a fact of life for many of the country’s small business owners. Why did this reporter focus on farmers and ignore all other small business owners? To be fair, all such articles are better assimilated when a personal face is put on them, and maybe this is even part of a series, although the article makes no mention of such. But to imply that health care costs ALONE are the cause of grief for small farmers is disingenuous. There are many more issues threatening our nation’s small businesses, and many more problems in our health care system than just the rising cost of insurance premiums.

I note that this article mentions not at all whether these farmers are providing health care coverage for the 1.1 million jobs they support. Calls for more health care coverage to be provided by small employers routinely ignore this critical factor - that small business owners who can barely pay for their own insurance will lose their businesses if required to insure others.

Why do we even expect employers to foot the bills for health insurance? This whole scheme was started by - you guessed it! - Congress: “The history of health insurance is that people began receiving coverage as a “non-cash” benefit during World War II because of wage controls. A few years later Congress confirmed that health insurance was exempt from taxable wages. The effect of this regulation meant that coverage received in lieu of wages was more affordable than using after-tax wages to purchase health insurance. The same was true of funds used to pay for incidental medical needs. Thus began the trend of purchasing health coverage through your employer and paying third parties to manage all your health care spending — including data-to-day medical needs.” Testimony before the House Select Committee on State Health Care Expenditures, March 24, 2004.

“Paying third parties to manage all your health care spending — including data-to-day medical needs”…such as dictating the co-pay for medications? choosing which medications are covered at all? Deciding which medical procedures are necessary, and therefore covered, and which are not?

All efforts both by government and as called for by grass-roots movements focus almost exclusively on providing health insurance to the uninsured. If anything, this article amply demonstrates why providing health insurance coverage alone isn’t the answer.

Isn’t it about time we end this way of managing health care?

The City Council is putting South Los Angeles on a diet.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.

The action is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.

“If you suppose that good intentions justify intruding on the lives and properties of your fellow citizens:
Do you appreciate being the target of somebody else’s good intentions, or haven’t you had that particular dubious pleasure yet?” Cat Farmer

Sacramento businesses are being told to get greener - or else.

The Sacramento County Environmental Management Department has begun issuing enforcement orders to businesses not complying with a new recycling ordinance.

Violators face fines of up to $1,000 per day for each violation, although lower amounts are being assessed, according to a county news release…

…Under the ordinance, all businesses and non-residential properties that subscribe to garbage service of four cubic yards or more each week are required to have a recycling program, the department’s Web site states.

According to Dennis Green, the department’s hazardous materials division chief, his agency is the first jurisdiction in the western states to issue mandatory business recycling requirements, the release states.

More than 2,000 inspections and 38,000 educational documents in support of the program have been distributed since August.

Finally, someone grows a pair and smacks down the union mafia:

A labor-backed California law that barred companies from using funds from the state to campaign against union organizing drives violates federal labor law by limiting employers’ free expression, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday. [That's not quite what the law did - see the bold print in paragraph 5. -ed.]

The same federal law that protects workers’ right to join a union also favors “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate in labor disputes,” the court said in a 7-2 ruling.

Employers are entitled to speak against unionization as long as they don’t use threats or coercion, said Justice John Paul Stevens in the majority opinion. He also said employees have a right to receive information opposing unions.

Dissenting justices said the California law left employers free to use their own funds to oppose union organizing.

The state law, signed in 2000 by then-Gov. Gray Davis, was the first of its kind in the nation. It barred state contractors and other companies that receive at least $10,000 from the state in a year from using any of that money to support or oppose union organizing.

Or in other words, the law said that, if any company wanted to do business with the state, they had to bow down to the unions - amounting to government sponsorship of unions! What right does the government have to tell anyone, be it an individual or a business, how to spend their hard earned money? What right does the government have to keep strings attached to the money it pays for a job done?

Smacking down this law doesn’t level the playing field, but at least it ensures employers their First Amendment rights.

Okay, its probably not Earth-shaking… not even window-rattling, get right down to it…

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