Rubio's provision to kill ObamaCare risk corridors stirs debate

The Affordable Care Act promised participating insurance companies and cooperatives payments in the first three years if they lost too much money.  Thanks to a provision successfully pushed last year by Senator Marco Rubio, insurers are only getting about 13 cents for every dollar they say they are owed.
“Insurance companies are willing to be a part of the exchanges, only if the federal government promised them that when they lost money they would get bailed out; bailed out with taxpayer money,” said Rubio, in an interview with Fox News.  “We've taken that away.  We should not be bailing out private insurance companies who hire great lobbyists.”
ObamaCare includes risk corridors. They require some profitable insurance companies to pay into a pool to subsidize those with deep losses.  If the amount insurers need surpasses the total that profitable companies have paid in, the federal government makes up the difference. This year, that amount is about $2.5 billion.
Rubio’s provision bans that government payment.  Because of it, health insurers will only receive about 13 cents for every dollar ObamaCare promised them.
"There is a growing recognition about the instability facing consumers in the market,” said Clare Krusing, the press secretary for America's Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry group, in a statement.  “Nearly 800,000 Americans have faced coverage disruptions as a result of the significant and unexpected shortfall with the risk corridors program.  Congress and the Administration must act to make sure consumers are protected."
Rubio supporters claim the senator’s provision is the most significant legislative setback for the Affordable Care Act since President Obama signed it into law in March 2010.  Some failing health-care cooperatives blamed Rubio’s provision for their insolvency.  Health insurance analysts said insurance companies will likely raise premiums as a result.
One analyst said Rubio’s measure has disrupted the insurance market, though these missed government payments are unlikely to force large, private insurance companies from the ObamaCare exchanges.
“I don’t think you will have large sustainable companies drop out, for this reason,” said Gail R. Wilensky, an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE who also led Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush.  “What you will have companies drop out, if when they look in the future, they don’t see a way that this can be a self-sustaining business.”
Supporters of the risk corridor payments point out the government used a similar scheme previously, during the administration of President George W. Bush, when administering the Medicare prescription drug benefit in its formative years.
“The whole idea of risk corridors was that insurance companies were diving into a new market. By definition, they were reaching for people who hadn’t had insurance before under different rules, and they were taking a risk,” said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and budget official in the administration of President Bill Clinton.
“There’s always an exploration process in a new market. People have to learn, both the buyers and the sellers have to learn what’s possible.  The Rubio provision is simply undermining the process of learning. It’s destabilizing the market.”
Rubio is pushing the ban on these federal payments for next year as well. 

Univ. of Texas panel OKs guns in classrooms ahead of 'mock shooting' protest

Days before a planned 'mock shooting' demonstration just outside the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, a panel on Thursday recommended policies that would allow concealed handguns in classrooms. 
UT President Greg Fenves will review the recommendations before a final vote of approval by university regents. Concealed weapons would be mostly barred from university dormitories.
Texas state lawmakers are requiring public universities to allow concealed handgun license holders to bring weapons on campus starting Aug. 1, 2016. Universities were told to draw campus gun-zone maps, with the provision they not try to ban weapons from most of campus.
Texas students and faculty have vigorously protested allowing guns in classrooms. The panel that developed the recommendations says its members don't want guns in classrooms, but a ban would violate Texas law.
The groups Come and Take It Texas and Dontcomply.com announced plans for the Saturday demonstration that would include cardboard guns and fake blood, in an effort to support gun rights.
The Austin campus is the site of one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history: sniper Charles Whitman killed 16 people in 1966, shooting dozens of victims from a perch atop the central clock tower.

Syria's Assad buying 'a great deal' of ISIS oil, US official says

The ISIS terror group and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad have engaged in "millions and millions of dollars of trade" despite being at war with each other, a top U.S. Treasury official said Thursday. 
Adam Szubin, the Treasury's acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that while some of the oil produced in ISIS-held areas was able to make its way to Kurdish-held areas and Turkey, the "far greater amount" ended up in areas under Assad's control.
Szubin did not estimate the monetary value of the oil trade between ISIS and Assad. However, in remarks prepared for delivery at the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London, Szubin noted that ISIS was selling as much as $40 million in oil per month and had made more than $500 million in black market sales.
"Our sense is that ISIL is taking its profits basically at the wellhead," Szubin said, using another acronym for the terror group, "and so while you do have ISIL oil ending up in a variety of different places that's not really the pressure we want when it comes to stemming the flow of funding - it really comes down to taking down their infrastructure."
Szubin also said ISIS has seized between $500 million and $1 million from bank vaults captured during its spread across Iraq and Syria last year.
The official's remarks came days after Turkey and Russia had traded accusations over the acquisition of oil from the terror group after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last month.
Earlier this month, Russia's deputy defense minister accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from the oil trade with ISIS militants. The allegations were rejected by Erdogan, who vowed to resign if Moscow could prove its accusations, and the U.S. government.
"We never said oil smuggling from ISIL is not a problem," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at the time. "[But] there is no Turkish government complicity in some operation to buy illegal oil from ISIL. We just don't believe that to be true in any way, shape or form."
Russia has been carrying out its air campaign in Syria since Sept. 30, using warplanes at an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, as well as navy ships and long-range bombers flying from their bases in Russia. While Moscow said its action has been focused on ISIS, the U.S. and its allies have criticized Moscow for also striking moderate rebel groups opposed to Assad, whom Russia staunchly supports.

Tom Brokaw Cartoon

Federal judge rejects Texas effort to block resettlement of Syrian refugees

U.S. District Judge David Godbey

AUSTIN, Texas –  A federal judge knocked Texas for offering "largely speculative hearsay" about extremists possibly infiltrating Syrian refugees seeking to resettle in the state, rejecting another attempt by Republican leaders to keep out families fleeing the war-torn country.

U.S. District Judge David Godbey's Wednesday ruling cleared the way for the last of 21 Syrian refugees, many of whom are children under the age of 15, to resettle in Houston on Thursday.

The first dozen arrived earlier this week despite Texas mounting the most aggressive campaign of nearly 30 states that have vowed to ban Syrian refugees following the Paris attacks. Texas is the only state that has taken the U.S. government to court in an effort to block resettlements, but Godbey signaled skepticism about the lawsuit filed last week.

"The fact that this Court is required to assess the risk posed by a group of Syrian refugees illustrates one of the problems with this case," Godbey wrote in a three-page order. "The Court has no institutional competency in assessing the risk posed by refugees."
Godbey, who was appointed to the Dallas court by former President George W. Bush, added that such questions are generally left to the discretion of the federal government.

The Obama administration says refugee vetting is rigorous and can take up to two years. The Justice Department first responded to the lawsuit by telling the court that states can't block resettlements, after which Texas abruptly dropped a request to halt the first wave of refugees from coming to Dallas.

But the second try from Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed Wednesday, said there was new "evidence" that refugees pose potential danger. He cited public comments this week from Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who said federal counterterrorism officials have indicated that individuals with terrorist ties have attempted infiltrating the U.S. refugee program. McCaul did not go into detail.

Paxton also argued that Texas law enforcement officials have concerns about refugee vetting. Godbey said that although the court recognizes the risks of terrorism, the state had failed to show "competent evidence" that the latest arrivals have intent to cause harm.

Texas "argues that terrorists could have infiltrated the Syrian refugees and could commit acts of terrorism in Texas. The court finds that the evidence before it is largely speculative hearsay," Godbey wrote.

Paxton spokeswoman Cynthia Meyer said the "safety and security of Texans is our utmost priority" and that the office will continue seeking information about arriving refugees.

Despite the ruling, Texas' lawsuit over refugee resettlements is not over. A hearing is likely to come in January, said ACLU attorney Rebecca Robertson, who is representing a resettlement nonprofit that Texas also sued.

Even as governors in some states say Syrian refugees aren't welcome, resettlement agencies and volunteer groups with refugees continue welcoming them. In Indiana, a couple and their two young children arrived at the invitation of the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Indianapolis, which went on with plans to resettle them despite calls from Gov. Mike Pence not to do so.

Pence and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott were among more than two dozen Republican governors who said they would refuse any new Syrian refugees following the deadly Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which have been linked to the Islamic State group operating in Syria.

From Brokaw to Buzzfeed, the media's war on Trump goes nuclear

Donald Trump is throwing out all the rules in this presidential campaign. But some journalists are doing the same thing.
Leave aside the volume of Trump coverage, which drowns out most of the other candidates. Leave aside the pundits on the right and left who regularly pound Trump and spent months mocking and minimizing his chances.
What’s remarkable is the way that self-described straight journalists have concluded that Trump is such a menace to society that they must abandon their ordinary practices and call him out.
Now I understand that emotions are running high in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. And that Trump ratcheted things up by proposing to bar all Muslims from entering the country for some unspecified period of time. And that this has been a political earthquake, uniting Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton in harsh criticism of the Republican front-runner and even drawing condemnation from some European leaders.
But when we have Tom Brokaw stepping out of his anchor emeritus role to rip Trump, something has changed.
On “NBC Nightly News,” Brokaw compared Trump to such demagogues of the past as Joe McCarthy—precisely as a New York Times news story did in analyzing Trump’s “dark” language about terrorism.
“Trump’s statement, even in this season of extremes, is a dangerous proposal that overrides history, the law and the foundation of America itself,” Brokaw said. He added that “defeating ISIS will be long, hard and expensive, perhaps even more so now because ISIS is likely to use Donald Trump’s statements as a recruiting tool.”
Brokaw is entitled to say what he wants at this point in his career—but he must have really felt that he was taking on a mission by stepping out of his nonpartisan role.
The same goes for NBC’s Richard Engel, whose Middle East expertise is such that George W. Bush once privately sought his advice on Iraq. And yet Engel, talking to liberal host Rachel Maddow, called Trump’s proposal “a black spot on our collective foreign policy and our conscience” that “just feeds into the ISIS narrative.” He called it “demagoguery” and “really not the country that I know.”
Now comes Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, with a memo to his staff about Trump. Smith is a former Politico reporter and not a partisan guy.
He told his staff in a memo that the popular website’s policy is to ask staffers not to be “political partisans” in social media.
But when it comes to Trump, Smith said, it is “entirely fair to call him a mendacious racist, as the politics team and others here have reported clearly and aggressively: He’s out there saying things that are false, and running an overtly anti-Muslim campaign. BuzzFeed News’s reporting is rooted in facts, not opinion; these are facts.”
Trump’s a racist: that’s a fact. Not that people have accused him of being racist, not that his comments about Muslims appear racist. That is the mindset of much of today’s media.
Smith did add that it’s not fair to tar all Republicans with the same brush, as some have disagreed with Trump.
His memo reminded me of the Daily Beast’s executive editor, who tweeted that Trump is a racist and neo-fascist and called on people to boycott his businesses for that reason. His boss had no problem with that.
In the opinionated precincts of the media, Trump is Public Enemy No. 1. We see this in the New York Daily News cover depicting him as chopping off the Statue of Liberty’s head.
The Washington Post opinion pages have launched a multi-pronged attack. Columnist Ruth Marcus:
“Donald Trump has crossed an uncrossable line of bigotry and xenophobia. The Republican front-runner presents a clearer, more present danger to U.S. interests than the supposedly threatening Muslims he seeks to exclude.”
Columnist Dana Milbank compared Trump to Mussolini.
From the right, columnist Kathleen Parker called Trump “the most dangerous person to emerge on the U.S. political scene in decades. As president, he would be the most dangerous man on the planet.”
And the Post’s editorial page said he “gains traction by spewing hatred, bigotry and rage. Criticizing Mr. Trump is no longer sufficient. It is time to say clearly he is anathema to the Republican Party, and to the nation.”
These are people paid for their views, and Trump isn’t reticent about hitting back against media outlets that slam him. Still, I would say the media’s war on Trump has now gone nuclear. His detractors would undoubtedly say that he went nuclear first.
But if even some of its straightforward practitioners are trying to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination, the news business could also wind up as collateral damage.

Trump says vow to bar Muslims 'is about security...not religion'

Donald Trump refused to back down Wednesday on his calls to place a temporary ban on Muslims from entering the United States telling Fox News “maybe it’s not politically correct…but somebody had to bring it up.”
Trump told Bill O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor” that his plan, which has sparked a political firestorm, “is about security, it’s not about religion.”
“It’s a temporary ban on not everybody, but many,” the GOP presidential frontrunner said. “I would set up a system to see who qualifies to come in, who doesn’t.”
When O’Reilly asked Trump whether he thinks the U.S. needs Muslim nations to fight jihad, the billionaire businessman said, “No I don’t, but I do think it’d be very helpful.”
“I have many good friends who are Muslim, they’re terrific people and they’re…thanking me for bringing up this point,” Trump told O’Reilly.
Trump’s remarks come a week after a radical Muslim couple killed 14 people and injured 21 at a holiday office party in San Bernardino, Calif., and as President Obama is seeking to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees in the U.S. Critics have questioned whether the refugees can be effectively screened, but none have gone so far as to call for a ban on all Muslims.
Obama, in a televised address to the nation Sunday night, called on Americans to reject discrimination, saying, "Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes."
“It was a total disgrace,” Trump said. “We have a president that doesn’t have a clue, he doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Trump received criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over his plan, including Former Vice President Dick Cheney who called Trump an "extremist."
“I am not an extremist, I’m the opposite. I’m someone who understands what’s going on.”
Despite his provacitive remarks, Trump continues to be the GOP frontrunner.
“What’s important is that we get the word out, that we make America great again and that we have security for our country.”

ObamaCare to reduce workforce by 2 million jobs' worth of hours, CBO says

How ObamaCare is hurting the economy

ObamaCare will reduce work hours equivalent to 2 million jobs in the next decade amid a host of incentives not to work or to work less, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report says -- the latest blow to President Obama’s signature health insurance plan.
The report estimates the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, will make the labor supply shrink by 0.86 percent in 2025. This amounts to a shrinkage equivalent to approximately 2 million full-time workers.
The nonpartisan CBO estimates that the decline will come primarily due to workers responding to changes made by the law to federal programs and tax policy. The agency points to the introduction of health care subsidies tied to income as a key factor -- which in turn raises effective tax rates as someone’s earnings rise, therefore reducing the amount of work Americans choose to do.
“Subsidies decline as income increases, reducing the return on earning additional income,” the report says. “That decline is effectively an increase in recipients’ effective marginal tax rate, so it generally reduces their work incentives through the substitution effect.”
Since the subsidies also reduce the burdens attached to unemployment, the CBO predicts that the law will create additional “work disincentives” for those who are unemployed for part of the year. It concludes that the exchange subsidies will contribute to half of the overall reduction of the labor supply.
The report also points to direct taxes, such as ACA’s hike of the payroll tax on high earners for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Program, as a reason for discouraging some from working. Another pressure on wages will come from the employer mandate, which imposes a penalty on employers if they have more than 50 employees and do not provide insurance. The CBO predicts that within a few years this charge will be passed on to employees in the form of lower wages.
In what will be seen as a positive by ObamaCare’s supporters, the CBO predicts that a contributing factor to the shrinkage in the labor force will be the consequence of insurance subsidies that will make it easier for some people to stop working, or work less, without losing health insurance.
“Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would,” the report says.
Republicans hailed the report as yet more proof the controversial law is not working.
“When the President’s health law hurts the labor force at the same time it increases health care premiums and taxes, it’s clear the law is not working for the American people,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement.
“The CBO’s latest report confirms yet another broken promise and negative consequence stemming from ObamaCare,” Hatch said. Unfortunately, until Democrats and the president are willing to address these failures, the American people will be left to stomach the devastating side effects of this ill-advised health law.”
The report comes at an awkward time for the Obama administration: just days after the Senate passed a bill that would repeal key parts of the law. The White House has said that President Obama will veto the legislation.