PETA often employs controversy to get its point across to adults, but that usually takes the form of naked celebrities endorsing their message. With children, PETA uses a different strategy altogether — and that has parents in a Woodland Hills, California school district angry enough to consider a lawsuit. PETA distributed comic books with horrifyingly graphic images of butchery in order to terrify children into their ideology:
Claire Borsheim and many other parents at the Woodland Hills campus were outraged after PETA handed out the pamphlets to their children the same day a baby cow was on campus for a lesson about dairy farming.
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Showing posts with label Video:. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video:. Show all posts
Monday, February 10, 2014
AOL CEO says ObamaCare adding $7 million to costs
Remember when Democrats sold ObamaCare as a system that “bends the cost curve downward”? Tell that to employers, who face a make or break decision point this year when the employer mandate comes into full force for 2015. Do companies dump health insurance in order to control their costs, or pay the higher costs and pass them along to employees as reductions in compensation? Tim Armstrong explains to CNBC that employers — even one as large as AOL — can’t avoid what is a $7 million question to him (via Daniel Halper):
“We have to look at our benefits programs very seriously,” said Armstrong. “In the CEO chair, let me give you an example of the decisions we have to make as a company: Obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company. So we have to decide whether or not to pass that expense to employees or whether to cut other benefits.”
Speaking of bending cost curves, a lot of people have noticed that their new and supposedly oh-so-much-better insurance has a lot fewer choices when it comes to providers. In Covered California, some have found that they have nearly no choice, for example. The Obama administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill are threatening insurers to restore provider networks, but the insurers say they have no choice if they want to keep premiums low:
Insurers are facing pressure from regulators and lawmakers about plans that offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals, a tactic the industry said is vital to keep down coverage prices in the new health law’s marketplaces.
This week, federal regulators proposed a tougher review process for the doctors and hospitals in plans to be sold next year through HealthCare.gov, a shift that could force insurers to expand those networks. …
A spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main trade group, said narrower provider networks are “one way health plans can help to preserve benefits and mitigate cost increases for consumers” as health-law changes take effect.
Narrower networks can help keep down costs partly because providers agree to lower their fee in exchange for the volume of business they expect with fewer competitors.
Some 70% of new plans under the health law offer relatively narrow networks compared with many current plans, according to a recent report by McKinsey & Co. The consulting firm found that plans with smaller choices of hospitals had significantly lower premiums than similar plans offering a broader choice.
The narrow networks have drawn protests, lobbying and some legal challenges from doctors and hospitals.
Insurer networks are providers who agree to a reimbursement schedule from the insurer. The tighter those reimbursements, the narrower the provider network will become as providers decline to join on those price schedules. In order to make a network broader, insurers would have to offer better reimbursements — which would force premiums to go up. This is nothing more than Risk Pool 101, or even more basically, the law of supply and demand.
It’s also a demonstration of the difference between price and cost. One can easily bend price curves downward, but not without serious distortions to product/service and delivery, and to the larger market overall. And even then, consumers will see very quickly through the illusion of price manipulation, especially since those manipulations are unsustainable.
So far, these disasters have been confined to the individual-plan markets. When they hit the employer-provided group markets, the disaster will amplify exponentially. Either employees are going to get hit with massive increases in insurance costs, or will get kicked out of their group plans altogether. AOL won’t just eat that $7 million, and neither will anyone else’s employers.
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“We have to look at our benefits programs very seriously,” said Armstrong. “In the CEO chair, let me give you an example of the decisions we have to make as a company: Obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company. So we have to decide whether or not to pass that expense to employees or whether to cut other benefits.”
Speaking of bending cost curves, a lot of people have noticed that their new and supposedly oh-so-much-better insurance has a lot fewer choices when it comes to providers. In Covered California, some have found that they have nearly no choice, for example. The Obama administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill are threatening insurers to restore provider networks, but the insurers say they have no choice if they want to keep premiums low:
Insurers are facing pressure from regulators and lawmakers about plans that offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals, a tactic the industry said is vital to keep down coverage prices in the new health law’s marketplaces.
This week, federal regulators proposed a tougher review process for the doctors and hospitals in plans to be sold next year through HealthCare.gov, a shift that could force insurers to expand those networks. …
A spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main trade group, said narrower provider networks are “one way health plans can help to preserve benefits and mitigate cost increases for consumers” as health-law changes take effect.
Narrower networks can help keep down costs partly because providers agree to lower their fee in exchange for the volume of business they expect with fewer competitors.
Some 70% of new plans under the health law offer relatively narrow networks compared with many current plans, according to a recent report by McKinsey & Co. The consulting firm found that plans with smaller choices of hospitals had significantly lower premiums than similar plans offering a broader choice.
The narrow networks have drawn protests, lobbying and some legal challenges from doctors and hospitals.
Insurer networks are providers who agree to a reimbursement schedule from the insurer. The tighter those reimbursements, the narrower the provider network will become as providers decline to join on those price schedules. In order to make a network broader, insurers would have to offer better reimbursements — which would force premiums to go up. This is nothing more than Risk Pool 101, or even more basically, the law of supply and demand.
It’s also a demonstration of the difference between price and cost. One can easily bend price curves downward, but not without serious distortions to product/service and delivery, and to the larger market overall. And even then, consumers will see very quickly through the illusion of price manipulation, especially since those manipulations are unsustainable.
So far, these disasters have been confined to the individual-plan markets. When they hit the employer-provided group markets, the disaster will amplify exponentially. Either employees are going to get hit with massive increases in insurance costs, or will get kicked out of their group plans altogether. AOL won’t just eat that $7 million, and neither will anyone else’s employers.
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Did Lerner and Treasury attempt to secretly change rules to target conservatives?
Barack Obama’s insistence that the IRS scandal of targeting conservative political groups contained “not even a smidgen” of corruption may get tested this week, as new information comes out about why Lois Lerner may have taken the Fifth in a Congressional hearing. According to a memo released by the House Ways and Means Committee, Lerner worked secretly with Treasury to create new 501(c)(4) rules that would have made such targeting even easier — without letting the public know about it. Fox News reported this morning that the committee plans to take this matter up pronto, while the panel’s Democrats object to the line of inquiry:
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
The Daily Caller had the story late yesterday:
The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules.
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Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
The Daily Caller had the story late yesterday:
The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
The Treasury Department and Lerner started devising the new rules.
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Sunday, February 9, 2014
Another great moment in nominating Obama donors as ambassadors
HomeArchivesGreen RoomEd Morrissey Show posted at 9:01 pm on February 6, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham
Granted, it’s not as if this is a new practice or solely the practice of Democratic administrations, not by a long shot. But I don’t recall seeing so many grossly ignorant nominees put their gross ignorance on display so readily.
First, there was Norway.
Then Sen. Max Baucus, who is not a donor per se, but certainly benefits from a sort of chummy patronage in his nomination to the China ambassadorship (and should know better than to drop the ball in a Senate hearing).
Now, Argentina. This is nothing a backpacking trip or a perusal of Wikipedia, at the very least, couldn’t solve. These guys are super-rich! Take an educational tour before you take questions in front of the Senate:
But, really, who’s going to stop them? What price is there to pay? The Secretary of Defense gave one of the most woeful confirmation performances in the history of confirmation performances and the entire press corps decided it was the height of obstructionism to suggest that meant anything about whether he was fit for the position and took to the fainting couch when he had to wait a week to be confirmed.
So, who’s worrying about an ambassador to a Latin American country of emerging importance? I hope the ambassador enjoys his first visit.
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Granted, it’s not as if this is a new practice or solely the practice of Democratic administrations, not by a long shot. But I don’t recall seeing so many grossly ignorant nominees put their gross ignorance on display so readily.
First, there was Norway.
Then Sen. Max Baucus, who is not a donor per se, but certainly benefits from a sort of chummy patronage in his nomination to the China ambassadorship (and should know better than to drop the ball in a Senate hearing).
Now, Argentina. This is nothing a backpacking trip or a perusal of Wikipedia, at the very least, couldn’t solve. These guys are super-rich! Take an educational tour before you take questions in front of the Senate:
But, really, who’s going to stop them? What price is there to pay? The Secretary of Defense gave one of the most woeful confirmation performances in the history of confirmation performances and the entire press corps decided it was the height of obstructionism to suggest that meant anything about whether he was fit for the position and took to the fainting couch when he had to wait a week to be confirmed.
So, who’s worrying about an ambassador to a Latin American country of emerging importance? I hope the ambassador enjoys his first visit.
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