The ongoing debate about the constitutionality of the health care legislation the President signed into law and its long-term ramifications continues to ramp up discussions on the Internet and in print.
Here’s a glance at just a few of the issues impacting the health care industry that are going to monopolize the headlines for years to come.
From the Wall Street Journal
… Why would anyone think it possible in 2010—as politics, economics or mere practical feasibility—to reorder 16% of a $14 trillion economy of 300 million people living in 50 separate states whose geography is 16 times larger than France?
The Obama reformers are driven by the idea that their bill would fulfill a dream running back 70 years to 1939, when FDR failed to win passage of a universal health-care bill.
But this isn’t 1939. It’s not even 1994. American health care, whatever its defects, is today unimaginably complex. What the Democrats are trying to do isn’t just difficult. It’s impossible.
According to data compiled by Hoover’s business research from the U.S. Census, the health-care industry consists of 340,650 separate establishments employing 5,508,926 people. I leave it to a mathematician to calculate the number of possible economic relationships this would produce every day, much less annually.
We have 512,000 physicians and surgeons, 2.2 million registered nurses and a galaxy of different jobs orbiting around them. Some 36% of these are in individual physicians’ offices. …
There are 8,616 separate medical-device companies in the U.S., employing 359,065 people. Within the device industry, its two largest categories are electronic and precision equipment and surgical appliances. These are the wizards of American medicine.
The president says the special interests oppose his bill. But to pay for the bill, Congress would levy a $2 billion annual tax on the medical-device industry, which ardently opposes the legislation. …
The president and his health-care advisers are giving philosopher kings a bad name. Only people who have reduced American health care to rows and columns of data in academic studies would think it possible to remake this incredibly sophisticated organism as easily as rebooting a spreadsheet.
From the Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/01/robbing-peter-to-pay-pauls-health-care/
… One costly provision buried in the lengthy reconciliation bill at the last minute has taxpayers covering long-term at-home care for the elderly. Through the so-called Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act (CLASS Act), Americans will find between $150 and $250 taken out of their paychecks each month to cover this program nobody knew about. …
Even some Democrats warned about the financial impact of the home-care program. Before the idea was dropped last year because of stiff opposition, Sen. Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the program a Ponzi scheme that would produce massive deficits in the future. A letter released at that time by Mr. Conrad and Democratic Sens. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Warner of Virginia warned: “While the goals of the CLASS Act are laudable − finding a way to provide long-term care insurance to individuals − the effects of including this legislation in the merged Senate bill would not be fiscally responsible for several reasons.”
The senators were particularly concerned that the Congressional Budget Office numbers missed the real costs of the program. The CBO is instructed only to consider the fiscal impact over the next 10 years, but the way the scheme is set up, people must pay the additional taxes for at least five years to become eligible. So for the first five years we only see revenue. After that, the taxpayers are eligible only gradually. They must then become old enough to require home health care, so expenditures will occur in the distant future. In other words, we see taxes with no expenditures upfront, but huge expenditures picking up after the CBO’s 10-year evaluation window passes.
The budget concerns of a handful of Democratic senators kept the program out of the earlier version of the health care bill, which passed the Senate before Christmas. If the provision hadn’t been removed, Democrats wouldn’t have obtained the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Only by jamming it into the Senate reconciliation bill in March were they able to get it passed with the bare minimum 51 votes.
Ironically, the reconciliation procedure, requiring only a simple majority, was originally designed to help reduce the deficit. It certainly was not meant for circumventing normal procedures and throwing in last-minute budgetary land mines.
Democrats might not consider $109 billion in taxes over the program’s first 10 years to be controversial. But taking $150 to $250 out of each monthly paycheck will cause problems for millions of Americans. This is yet another example of Mr. Obama breaking his promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 per year. …
From Politico www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35335.html
Attorneys General Richard Cordray (D-Ohio) and Tom Miller (D-Iowa) explain why they denied their governors’ requests to join other states in a lawsuit that claims that the individual insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590) is unconstitutional.
… As attorneys general for our respective heartland states, we take issue with the constitutional arguments being made against this new legislation. Under long-settled Supreme Court precedents, Congress has ample power under the commerce clause of the Constitution to legislate on health care.
Congress has the authority to regulate anything that affects interstate commerce “among the several States.” This is bolstered by the supremacy clause, which explicitly makes the Constitution and the laws of the United States “the supreme Law of the Land” for all Americans.
For Congress to have the power to pass this legislation, therefore, the health care problem need only affect interstate commerce. It clearly does. …
From C-SPAN www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2010/04/04/HP/A/31401/Jonathan+Strong+Daily+Caller+Reporter.aspx
When a caller from Texas asked Jonathan Strong, a reporter for the Daily Caller, what the constitutional basis is for making everybody buy health care, Strong replied:
“Traditionally people say that under the Commerce Clause, which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce, health care is tied enough into the economy that it would suffice constitutional muster under that.”
Strong added that some constitutional lawyers in Washington, D.C. believe that since the IRS is going to enforce some of the provisions [in the health care legislation] it may allow lawyers to justify the bill under the Taxing and Spending Clause of the Constitution, “which has much broader range of authorities than just the Commerce Clause.”
From Politico www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35496.html
… [Gov.] Pawlenty [R-Minn.] and other Republicans say the mandates [requiring citizens to buy health care insurance or pay a penalty] constitute an “unprecedented overreach by the federal government into the lives of individual citizens.”
The Republicans are employing different tactics to get around their states’ top lawyers.
In order to get her state in on the lawsuit, [Gov.] Brewer [R-Ariz.] got a law passed granting her the authority to go around Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard, who is running against Brewer for governor. …
“I reached out to my attorney general, requesting him to look and see if he would look into the legalities of the bill that was being proposed in Congress, and he refused to look into it,” Brewer explained. “So we started moving forward. And then, certainly, after it was passed by Congress, I reached out to him again to ask him to represent the state of Arizona against this very overreaching mandate by Congress, and he refused to do so.” …
From the Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/05/eyes-closed-on-health-care/print/
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, describes the impact the health care legislation will have on seniors who use Medicare Advantage.
… On Sept. 21, 2009, the Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) imposed a gag order on all Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans, prohibiting them from communicating with seniors about the proposed Medicare cuts in health care reform.
The order was in response to a mailer sent out by Medicare Advantage provider Humana Inc. It seems the company had the audacity to tell its customers that the $123 billion in proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage contained in the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health care reform would likely result in lower benefits and about 2.7 million people losing their Medicare Advantage coverage − for the record, the actual cuts made to Medicare Advantage by Obamacare came in closer to $205 billion. CMS deemed the information to be “misleading” and “inaccurate.” However, after an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Committee confirmed Humana’s facts, CMS was forced to rescind its inappropriate and unconstitutional gag order. Inexplicably, Rep. Waxman [D-Calif., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee] has never seen fit to haul anyone from the administration before his committee to answer for what happened. …
From Politico www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35421.html
Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), the chief executive officer of the American Action Network, provides commentary about the increasing costs of health care reform and its effects on employment for the middle class and Medicare coverage for seniors.
… Beacon Hill Institute, the fiscally conservative economic research group of Boston’s Suffolk University, estimates 700,000 jobs will be lost, as small and medium-sized businesses try to provide health care for their employees.
The law does not allow seniors to keep the insurance they have. By 2019, 4.8 million seniors will be squeezed out of Medicare Advantage.
The law does not help states with the high cost of health care. It makes the states’ budget situations worse. By 2014, states will be required to pay 50 percent of the administrative costs that come with expanding Medicaid.
This law will not let the middle class keep its plans. The CBO projects that by 2016, the basic plan, covering only 70 percent of a family’s medical expenses, will cost $14,100 a year. Families making $88,000 or more won’t qualify for the government subsidies.
This means a family making $100,000 could spend as much as one-fifth of annual income to keep private insurance. …
Melissa Barnhart is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy and Academia.
“The unemployment rate is 10 percent but businesses are struggling to fill 2.6 million jobs because applicants lack required skills” observed a December 12th Politico article.
In an effort to remedy this disconnect, the Business Roundtable recently launched The Springboard Project, an effort by a group of education and business leaders to develop policy recommendations to improve U.S. education and work training. According to their December report, “the United States ranks second-to-last among developed nations in postsecondary completion rates.”
William D. Green, chairman of The Springboard Project said that: “Improving education is essential to building a better trained and skilled workforce” and that the gap between available jobs and qualified applicants will increase unless “the nation’s educational system isn’t changed to reflect the type of skills employees will need in the future and the impediments that are driving graduation rates down.” Among the Board’s recommendations are to
- “[i]ncrease postsecondary education and training attainment rates,”
- “[e]mpower students and workers by creating nationally portable workforce skill credentials,” and
- “[b]uild on the untapped potential of community colleges and two-year institutions.”
The Roundtable also released a report last year on “Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative,” a proposal to double the annual number of U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates by 2015. For the many Americans suffering from unemployment or for college aspirants worried that they will graduate without any job prospects, this statistic from The Bureau of Labor Statistics could serve as friendly advice: the Bureau predicts that employment in science and engineering fields will grow approximately 70 percent faster than overall growth in other sectors.
More Americans choosing to pursue a technical degree could also give the economy just the boost it needs. The TAP report explained that “highly educated technical professionals constitute the key differentiator in global economic competition.”
Sarah Carlsruh is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy and Academia.
Washington University in St. Louis is charging conservative students over $800 for vandalism they did not commit.
Several red hammer-and-sickle images were found spray-chalked onto the campus sidewalks. Campus Gulag reports:
The university, failing to find out exactly who is responsible for the spray-chalking, is holding the [Young Americans for Liberty] students responsible for it. The Campus cops have repeatedly used words like felonious property damage (because the ‘damage’ is in excess of $750, which is a Class D felony in Missouri) in order to intimidate the students and are holding that over the heads of the students like the Sword of Damacles if the students refuse to pay up.
Essentially–someone defaced school property. The school doesn’t know who to blame, so they’ve blamed the easy target: students who don’t follow the university line.
Also from Campus Gulag:
There are several important points to keep in mind here, I think.
1) The students had nothing to do with the spray-chalking.
2) The students are ENTIRELY INNOCENT.
3) The university has ZERO evidence that the students sprayed anything. From what the students have said to me, the campus cops have a video of someone spraying, but they have checked it out and it is NOT any of the YAL students.
4) Spray-chalk is water soluable. And with the 5 straight days of heavy rains that came just days after the 9th, the images would have been naturally washed away. So, it was totally unnecessary for the university to wash them away.
5) The invoice is total CRAP. The workers who washed away the images with GARDEN HOSES were paid at best $8 an hour. For the bill to be in excess of $800 means that the university is claiming that the subs who washed it away took 100 man hours to wash the images away. 100 man hours is the equivalent of 2 and a half WEEKS of work for ONE man!!! Washing away some chalk takes SECONDS!
6) The university, in claiming such bogus damages is committing fraud. This behavior against powerless students is absolutely shameful.
7) The UNIVERSITY IS ENGAGING IN MALICIOUS, RETALIATORY ACTION AGAINST THE STUDENTS for their GULAG demonstration. The main lesson other students are to take away from this is that speech on campus which is contrary to the pleasure of the administration will be met with severe prejudice. This certainly will have a CHILLING EFFECT on student speech.
The university didn’t even bother to give a line item invoice. You can check it out at Gateway Pundit.
If you’d like to get involved with Campus Gulag, please email campusgulag @ gmail . com.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. *Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
“I’m as happy to be here as Roman Polanski at a Hannah Montana concert” began Jonah Goldberg at Accuracy in Media’s 40th Anniversary Conference on October 23rd.
Goldberg, Editor-at-large for the National Review Online, attacked the gloom among conservatives, arguing that desperate liberal attacks on conservativism are actually a hopeful sign. “Cheer up,” he chaffed, “for the worst is yet to come.”
On the loss of civility in the media:
- “I think that rudeness for its own sake is one of the hallmarks of asininity.”
On liberal attacks of conservatives:
- “It seem to me that, you know, screaming racist, when someone is talking about the deficit, is a sign of intellectual weakness.”
- “If I’m talking about why you can’t have universal coverage and cut costs, and you call me a bigot, it doesn’t seem to me that’s the most incredible indictment of my actuarial argument.”
- “…the best definition of a fascist today is simply a conservative who’s winning an argument”
On Walter Cronkite’s “and that’s the way it is”:
- “…this omniscient, godlike, divine proclamation of the epistemological and ontological state of affairs for that day.”
On the economy:
- “right now the auto industry is owned by… the labor unions, the federal government and essentially the democratic party. Who here doubts that that’s not going to create really awesome cars?”
Sarah Carlsruh is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy and Academia.
At a time when schools often struggle for funding, sometimes private institutions step up to fill the perceived need for more money.
From the LA Times:
The Ford Foundation pledged $100 million Wednesday to “transform” urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including Los Angeles.
The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and, as described, could both complement and challenge aspects of the Obama administration’s education reform efforts. It will fund research and reform in four areas: teacher quality, student assessment, a longer school day and year, and school funding.
The Ford Foundation is throwing its money at schools in Los Angeles, New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Denver.
Clearly, this is a good thing–no one can complain over private institutions donating money to educate youth. However, is money really the answer here? Even if it is going to “teacher quality” and “school funding?”
The sad fact is that compared to students from a hundred years ago, our high schoolers are pathetic. Students in the 1800′s were taught to balance checkbooks; they were taught state and American history; they often learned languages such as Latin and Greek. And this was all in schools with no heating, no air conditioning, no separate classrooms, and no computers. One teacher would teach many grade levels simultaneously–and I doubt that class size at that point was a concern, given the situation. Students back then, though, did benefit from discipline–and from a lack of truancy laws. Only students who wanted to be in school ended up there, which meant that teachers only had to deal with students who cared about the material.
I applaud the Ford Foundation’s efforts, but maybe lack of money here isn’t the problem. Something to think about.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. *Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
From The LA Times:
Declaring there should be “no excuse for mediocrity” in public schools, President Obama on Wednesday pledged to push for recruitment of better teachers, better pay for those who succeed and dismissal of those who let their students down.
…
Obama called for the abolition of “firewall” rules, which prevent many schools from judging teacher performance based on student performance.
This is a fairly bizarre remark coming from a man who at least formerly was idolized by the teachers’ union.
It appears that teachers’ unions will oppose Obama as they once did Bush.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. *Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
Apparently a Denver elementary school secretary taped a student last week. And we’re not talking videotape, we’re taking duct tape. From CBS:
Palmer Elementary first grader, Joshua, was allegedly duct taped by Carter on Wednesday after being sent to the principal’s office.
Joshua,6, told CBS Affiliate CBS4 he was sent to the principal’s office on Wednesday when a substitute teacher said he was disrupting his first grade class.
“The secretary taped my mouth shut and taped my wrists together,” he said, referring to the principal’s secretary.
The secretary was arrested on Monday.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
Underperforming schools have been closing in Chicago. The results are still open to discussion, but one writer at NBC Chicago reports:
Just six percent of kids at schools that were shut down were re-assigned to significantly better schools, the study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research says. Those students did improve academically, suggesting that perhaps the city’s best schools should be reserved for students who need them most instead of those with the most clout.
Which reminds me–why don’t we start giving laptops to people who “need them most”? Or those expensive graphing calculators? Why not just redistribute the best of everything to those who need them most?
Just a thought.
Nothing like spreading the wealth, education-style.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
No one can deny that drug use is a problem in schools today. And because drug use is so prevalent in schools, many schools have been trying to fight it. Like this school in Muskogee:
Today, students and teachers are encouraged to wear red, to signify that they are saying no to drugs.
The rest of the week’s activities are as follows:
Thursday, Oct. 29: Shade out Drugs! Students may wear sunglasses. Friday, Oct. 30: Scare away Drugs! Students may wear a Halloween mask.
This whole anti-drug spirit week raises two questions:
1. Do they seriously think that encouraging students to wear the color red, or a pair of sunglasses, will actually keep them from doing drugs?
2. Is it in the job description of educators to stop student drug use? I thought educators were supposed to be educating, not making kids wear different colors to signify their stances on drugs.
Don’t get me wrong; I think drug use is always a problem, whether it happens in or out of school, and I would love it if students and people generally would wake up to the perils of drug use. But, the last time I checked, schools were supposed to be about education; I was not aware that they were supposed to monitor or take stances in any way on what students do with their bodies. Parents are the ones who are supposed to teach children the rights and wrongs of drug use, not educators.
That being said, I wish the Muskogee school the best. I’m sure that after wearing red and being allowed to wear a Halloween mask in school, many students will voluntarily give up drug use as a result.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
In London, people are beginning to ask: are Jewish schools racist?
The question stems from a recent case where a child was turned away from a Jewish school because he was not deemed to be Orthodox:
JFS is oversubscribed and gives priority to children who are deemed by the Chief Rabbi to be Orthodox Jewish. The 2,000-pupil school rejected a 12-year-old boy, known only as M, because his mother had not converted to Judaism in an Orthodox synagogue.
In June, the Court of Appeal said such a decision was “a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act”. But the school argues that it is central to whether a child is seen as Jewish. The case goes to the heart of whether being Jewish is a religious or a racial matter.
Mr Balls said the ruling hits admissions policies of 38 Jewish schools. “It is also likely that the admissions arrangements of approximately 60 Jewish independent schools are unlawful,” he added.
The Appeal Court ruling suggested JFS’s admissions policy indirectly discriminated on racial grounds as most people defined as Jewish by religion were also Jewish in ethnic origin. This was wrong and may have “wide ramifications”, Mr Balls said.
The fight against discrimination in schools may not have its originally intended effect. Religious schools should have the right to select their students based on religion–and it is a known fact that Jewish heritage is just as much racial as it is religious. The Jewish legacy is passed from mother to child; this is why you can have “secular Jews” in the first place.
Those who support the existence of religious schools must watch the debate in London–with our Supreme Court now apparently recognizing international law, it is not safe to assume that the decision in the UK will not affect religious schools in America.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy in Academia.
