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Middle-Class Joe Expresses Middle-Class Angst

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As Vice President Joe Biden announced his decision last week not to run for President, he talked about dreams denied, possibilities foreclosed.

He wasn’t speaking of his own aspirations, though. He conveyed absolutely no bitterness about relinquishing the potential to serve as President.

Instead, he voiced deep concern about an America where too many believe, based on experience, that hard work does not pay, that dreams are delusions likely to be dashed.

For the next President, building the economy and protecting the homeland are vital, of course. But just as crucial is restoring the belief that America is a place where work is justly rewarded and everyone who works hard can attain – without back-breaking debt – a middle-class life that includes home ownership, health insurance, a reasonable retirement and higher education for the kids. 

*Vice President Joe Biden with union families at the 2015 Labor Day Parade in Pittsburgh *

When Joe Biden was a boy, Americans cherished the certainty that in the United States hard work paved the way to the middle class. Here’s what he said about it: “I’ve always believed that what sets America apart from every other nation is that we, ordinary Americans, believe in possibilities — unlimited possibilities. Possibilities for a kid growing up in a poor inner-city neighborhood, or a Spanish-speaking home, or a kid from Mayfield in Delaware, or Willow Grove in Pennsylvania – like Jill and I ­– to be able to be anything we wanted to be; to do anything – anything – that we want. That’s what we were both taught. That’s what the President was taught. It was real.”

Notice the past tense. He said it *was* real. Not it *is *real.

Biden made it clear that had he run for President, restoring equal opportunity for access to the middle class would have been his mission.

This is what he said:

“When I was growing up, my parents, in tough times, looked at me and would say to me and my brothers and sister, ‘Honey, it’s going to be O.K.’ And they meant it. They meant it. It was going to be O.K. But some of you who cover me, I say go back to your old neighborhoods. Talk to your contemporaries who aren’t as successful as you’ve been. There are too many people in America today, too many parents who don’t believe they can look their kid in the eye and say with certitude, ‘Honey, it’s going to be O.K.’ That’s what we need to change.”

For it to be O.K., the link between productivity and pay must be restored. Workers need a raise. They’ve deserved a raise for 30 years.

For three decades after the end of World War II, pay for the vast majority of American workers rose in tandem with productivity. This enabled the majority of families to live middle-class lives on the paycheck of one adult worker. It allowed families to send their children to trade school or college. It provided hope for a better future for everyone who worked hard and played by the rules.

But pay stopped rising in concert with productivity increases in the mid-1970s. Wages have virtually stagnated since then. Families retained a middle-class lifestyle only by sending two adults to work, borrowing against assets like homes and financing college with crippling amounts of debt. 

Families that worked very hard and played by every rule saw no progress. Some went backwards, losing jobs and homes in the great recession, which was a catastrophe for the middle class caused by the recklessness of 21^st century robber barons – Wall Streeters.

In the meantime, the already rich got richer as they took for themselves all the benefits of bailouts and all of the gains from increased productivity. Now, income inequality rivals that during the days just before the Great Depression. And now there’s deep-seated fear among the non-rich majority. Too many believe: “Honey, it’s not going to be O.K.”

They know that government has rigged the game in favor of the very rich, who use fractions of their fortunes to pay lobbyists and provide millions in strings-attached campaign contributions. Biden said that’s got to end: “We have to level the playing field for the American people.”

That happened during the Great Depression, and it can again.

Government achieved a major leveling with legislation in the 1930s. It established the 40-hour work week by requiring overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40, outlawed child labor, created the minimum wage, strictly regulated banks, created Social Security and encouraged workers to band together in labor unions to negotiate for better wages and working conditions.

Every hour of every day since then, however, Republicans have fought to reverse these gains. They’ve restricted workers’ ability to form unions and collectively bargain. They’ve blocked a raise in the federal minimum wage for six years, meaning that these workers toil 40 hours a week in jobs that don’t pay them enough to support themselves. They’ve tried to stop an increase in the number of people who qualify for overtime pay. They want to cut, gut and privatize Social Security.

All of this has gouged the confidence of the middle class. Workers wonder: Will it ever be O.K again?

That is a tragic loss for Americans. As Biden said, it’s the loss of something very special, the very soul of this country.

The measure of America’s success, Biden said, will be restoring the ability of every parent “to look at their kid in tough times and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be O.K.’ — and mean it.” America has done that before. It can be done again now by a government that focuses on the well-being of the vast majority. It should be the priority of every candidate for President, even though Middle-Class Joe will not be among them. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 39 minutes ago.

The best states for an early retirement

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Planning an early retirement? This ranking looks at taxes on retirement income, property taxes, health insurance costs and more Reported by CBS News 20 hours ago.

United States: Conflicting Court Decisions Put Legality Of ACA Subsidies In Doubt - Day Pitney LLP

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Two different U.S. Courts of Appeals issued conflicting decisions regarding the legality of the federal government's provision of subsidies to enrollees for coverage in "federally facilitated" health insurance exchanges. Reported by Mondaq 21 hours ago.

Financing Sustainable Development: Innovative Ideas for Action

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Three billion people, nearly half the world's population, is under the age of 25. Today's youth will be the people most affected by the outcomes of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2015. They will also be the ones responsible for implementing this global agenda as well as contributing to the solutions necessary to attain them.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), take a holistic approach to development and present a universal agenda to development. The goals encompass the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of development. In signing up to the goals and targets, the global community has agreed to a more ambitious development compact. Like their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs cover a broad range of interconnected issues, from ending poverty to addressing inequality, sustainable economic growth, to governance, to well-being, to global public goods, like climate change.

To realize this vision, a just-as-ambitious plan for financing and implementation is needed. In July 2015, a financing for development conference was held in Addis Ababa, which provided an outcome document outlining the financing for development framework to support the SDGs and the next 15 years of development.

Youth engagement throughout the design and implementation of the SDGs is critical for success. Ideas for Action (I4A), a youth development finance competition jointly organized by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Wharton School of Business, encourages young people around the world to develop and share their ideas for financing solutions to help implement the SDGs.

The innovative and fresh ideas to tackle the new challenges the world faces will need to come from the youth, in particular. The I4A competition values the ideas, inspiration, and leadership of those who will soon assume global and local responsibility for sustainable development.

I4A offers the winners something more attractive than a financial prize,-- access and opportunity. It provides opportunities for the next generation of leaders to contribute to the actions needed to attain the SDGs, narrative shaping the Post-2015 Development Agenda and its objectives, and as such take ownership over its implementation. It also provides access to some of the leading professionals in the global development industry and the private sector.

The I4A competition itself was driven by youth, which have been involved in every step of the process - from design to delivery. The first round of the competition drew global interest, reaching over 260 universities and organizations and 26,000 online users. The highest representation came from India, Nigeria, and Peru. Participants from 130 countries formed 330 teams to submit proposals to the inaugural Ideas for Action competition. The I4A winning teams and runners-up had practical approaches to their solutions, which included providing alternative workable scenarios or enhancing existing solutions through the utilization of new technologies.

I4A's winning team, a small diverse team from the University of Pennsylvania, spent more than four months developing their winning idea. The team proposes creating two micro-insurance products for families heavily dependent on remittances: one to insure the stream of remittance income in case, for example, a worker falls sick, and one to redirect a portion of the remittance as health insurance for the family.

The second-place team, coming from Nigeria, proposes the development of an automated warehousing receipt system for improving access to customized financing for smallholder farmers in rice value chains in Nigeria. Through an innovative PPP model, the proposal demonstrates the potential of private and public sector resources to improve smallholder farmers' access to financing. By using movable assets, such as inventory, as collateral to secure loans, smallholder farmers can get better access to agricultural inputs.

To ensure that communities can access the essential services they need, the third-placed team, from Peru, proposes a four-pronged approach to help local governments better prioritize community needs and engage local communities in how mining revenues are spent, namely to channel the investment of mining royalties into projects, designate an external agent of information and control as a mediator between the local government and communities, establish a project incubator and implement a system to enforce sanctions against violations.

One of the runner up teams proposes a dynamic online database of registered nonprofit organizations and selected social sector objectives that seeks to drive strategic philanthropy by making data transparent and accessible in the Philippines.

Another runner-up team, emphasizes that access to clean cookstove technology for citizens at the base of the economic pyramid can be directly improved through a participatory model of development impact bonds (DIBs). Their proposed bond model enhances the current structure of DIBs financially, while also building in an innovative component that supports local training, education, and knowledge sharing.

The final runner-up, looked into a crowdfunding marketplace as a potential avenue to raise money for development. This proposal outlines how the World Bank can test new funding mechanisms using Internet-based donation platforms.

The winning proposals included in a recently published book, as well as the 330 submissions received have demonstrated the innovative potential of the youth empowered by technology and sophisticated social media networks. Young professionals are clearly well equipped to think of creative solutions to tough development challenges.

It is with the hope that this initiative will provide additional space for the next generation of leaders and creative practitioners to break away from existing, approaches on development issues. The expectation is that it will help young professionals change the conversation about development in their own companies and organizations, and will lead to distinct, lasting, and substantial impact on development outcomes including the SDGs.

The second wave of the Ideas for Action competition was announced in Lima, Peru at the 2015 World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings and is already underway.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 21 hours ago.

Decreasing Number of Uninsured: Metric For Success of the Affordable Care Act?

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Many supporters of the ACA look to its record of reducing the numbers of uninsured over the last five years as solid evidence that it is working. Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics, has been in that group for years, recently touting the drop in uninsured numbers as sufficient evidence to declare the ACA a success. Much as I have admired his work in economics over many years, I remain surprised that he still gets it wrong on U. S. health care.

Krugman is still wedded to supporting some 1,300 private insurers, mostly for-profit, that continue to put their profits above serving patients in what has become an unsustainable system propped up by government subsidies. As a cheerleader for the ACA in his recent New York Times Op-Ed, he has this to say:

Obamacare has led to a rapid drop in the number of uninsured, especially in states that have fully implemented its provisions. . .meanwhile, the whole thing has come in well below projected costs; insurance premiums will rise in 2016, but after two years of remarkably small increases that still leaves things cheaper than expected. (1)

We need to drill deeper to see if we can declare the ACA a success: Yes, the numbers of uninsured have decreased, a welcome change and helpful to patients involved. What that metric misses, however, is the large number of Americans still uninsured, the growing epidemic of underinsured Americans, the continuing inflation of less affordable health care costs, the increasing numbers of people who forgo necessary care, the waste and profiteering that limit access and quality of care, and the lessons from most other advanced industrialized nations that have found ways to provide universal access to health care at much less cost and with better quality through one or another kind of public financing.

These examples, based on the latest available evidence, make the case that the ACA is not a success, that just looking at the drop in the number of uninsured is not an adequate measure, and that more fundamental reform will be required:
· About 16 million people have received new coverage under the ACA either through the health exchanges or expanded Medicaid, but there will be 29 million nonelderly people uninsured in 2016, with 26 million still uninsured in 2025, according to 2015 projections by the Congressional Budget Office. (2).· 31.7 million Americans are considered underinsured because they spend so much of their household income on medical bills (3).· Almost 30 percent of privately insured, working age Americans with deductibles of at least five percent of their annual income have a medical problem for which they don't go to a doctor because of costs. (4)· Private insurers still have many ways to discriminate against the sick, including benefit designs that limit access, restrictive drug formularies, inadequate provider networks, high cost-sharing, and deceptive marketing practices. (5)· Insurance premiums for many companies will go up big time in 2016--as examples, Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, market leaders in many states, are seeking rate increases of 54 percent in Minnesota, 51 percent in New Mexico, 37 percent in Kansas, 36 percent in Tennessee, 31 percent in Oklahoma, and 25 percent in North Carolina. (6)· The ACA has encouraged consolidation among insurers and hospitals, in both cases leading to less competition and higher prices through market dominance. (7)· This latest round of mergers will leave us with three insurance giants--Anthem/Cigna, with a combined membership of 53.2 million, United Health Group (with 45.8 million), and Aetna/Humana (with 33.5 million). (8).· According to the 2014 Milliman Medical Index (MMI), total health care costs, including insurance, for a typical family of four with employer-sponsored insurance came to23,215 (9), including payroll deductions and out-of-pocket costs, an impossible burden compared to the median household income in the U. S. that year of53,657. (10)· At least 22 states are facing budget shortfalls for the 2016 fiscal year, further threatening already underfunded Medicaid programs.· (11)· There are no significant price controls under the ACA, which, for example, still bans Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices, as the Veterans Administration has done so well for years.· Overbilling by hospitals is common, and up-coding of physician services is epidemic. (12)· According to recent projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),2.757 trillion will be spent for private health insurance overhead and administration of government health programs (mostly Medicare and Medicaid) between 2014 and 2022, including273.6 billion in new administrative costs for the ACA's expanded Medicaid program (which is 11 times the administrative overhead of traditional, non-privatized Medicare). (13)
While it is tempting to look at just one metric--the decline in numbers of the uninsured, this is a trap if used to deceive ourselves as to the success of the ACA. As the above examples indicate, we still have a long way to go before we can say that we have reformed U. S. health care in the public interest.*References:
*
1. Krugman, P. Delusions of failure. New York Times Op-Ed, October 24, 2015.
2. Insurance coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Budget Office, March 2015 Baseline.
3. Cohen, RA, Martinez, ME. Health insurance coverage: early release of estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January-March 2015. National Center for Health Statistics, August 2015.
4. Levine, D, Mulligan, J. Overutilization, overutilized. J Health Politics, Policy and Law, April 2015.
5. Ungar, L, O'Donnell, J. Dilemma over deductibles: costs crippling middle class. USA Today, January 1, 2015.
6. Patient advocacy groups. Letter to Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, July 28, 2014.
7. Goldstein, A. Price to jump for most popular health plan in Maryland insurance exchange. The Washington Post, September 4, 2015.
8. Mathews, AW. Health law speeds merger frenzy. Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2015.
9. Mattioli, D, Hoffman, L, Mathews, AW. Anthem nears $48 billion Cigna deal. Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2015.
10. Armour, S. Health costs hinge on Supreme Court's ruling. Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2015.
11. 2014 Census ACA Data. Department of Numbers. Washington, D.C. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/
12. Associated Press. Medicaid enrollment surges, stirs worry about state budgets. July 19, 2015.
13. Nader, R. In the Public Interest. The crime of overbilling health care. The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2014, p. 19.
14. Himmelstein, DU, Woolhandler, S. The post-launch problem: the Affordable Care Act's persistently high administrative costs. Health Affairs Blog, May 27, 2015.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 20 hours ago.

The Rise of Coworking

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The 2020 Intuit report starts with: "imagine a world where companies motivate and manage employees who never set foot in their corporate office." This is a distinct possibility in coming years. Technology is empowering an increasingly mobile workforce. It's not just employees who are mobile -- the makeup of workers in the U.S. (and beyond) is changing. Statistics today suggest that 33% of the workforce is currently independent or freelance, and as the infographic below suggests, this number is projected to be 40% by 2020.
Although many in the U.S. still have not heard of coworking, it will be a critical part of the evolving workforce. Starbucks coined the term "third space," which became an alternative to a home office, or a place to escape the office when you wanted to get work done. So if home is the "first space," work is the "second space," and coffee shops are the "third space," then perhaps coworking is the "fourth space" for the evolving workforce.

Although there is some argument about when coworking officially started, this timeline will give you details you didn't know you'd need. This map of Chicago provided by Jamie Russo of Enerspace Coworking shows that in the Chicago metro area alone over 40 spaces have opened in just the past three to four years. WeWork, the largest shared space provider in the US, states as their mission: "To create a world where people make a life, not just a living." This simple statement rings true, and many coworking spaces likely long to steal this mission statement as their own, as creating a place people love to work seems to be a common thread among these types of spaces. Clearly, WeWork is on to something: it was just valued at 10 billion dollars after less than five years in business, and valuations like this are bringing more visibility to this emerging category.

*Who is using these coworking facilities? *

*1. The Freelancer- *One of the main target audiences are the freelancers, again, projected to be 40% of the workforce by 2020. There are many unexpected challenges to going out on your own. Nicole Greene with NextSpace in Chicago explains, "Going freelance, workers lose their infrastructure, including social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, and health insurance. That [infrastructure] needs to be replaced. As society shifts and loses that infrastructure, we provide a net." Many of these spaces provide more than just social outlets; they offer other benefits such as group healthcare plans, payroll, benefits, legal, healthcare, web services, and even yoga. Benjamin Dyett with Grind in New York/Chicago describes it as, "Our job is to make their lives easier; to take away distractions so that they can focus on work. We are just the stage."

*2. The Startup-* Many startups or small businesses are beyond the point where they can work in their home, but are not ready to sign that lease yet. Coworking spaces offer them a professional office where they can work, meet with clients, and make connections to grow and run their business. Rahul Prakash, a partner of Hatch Today in San Francisco shares this example: "People from different backgrounds, who have different ideas, can cross-pollinate. A couple of years ago two people were sitting next to one another at our space. 18 months later they merged companies and raised 18M in financing. They wouldn't have known each other if they hadn't come to Hatch Today."

*3. The Corporation-* Although most would estimate corporate users to be less than 10% of users of Coworking spaces today, use by this group does seem to be growing. Liz Elam of Link Coworking in Austin says, "Corporate America has a problem. They have lots of corporate real estate and uninspired people. So, what do you do? Send them home. Now they are even less inspired." According to the above mentioned Intuit Report, more than 80% of corporations are planning to increase their use of the flexible workforce in coming years. Russo says, "Corporations are exploring coworking spaces to cut down commute times and explore innovations. Coke now has a coworking space. One of their objectives is to bring outside people in, so it is open to the public. Right now there are more tactical reasons for them to look at coworking spaces. Everyone is trying to figure out this serendipitous interaction piece. How does that work and how do you make sure that's actually happening?" Similarly, Verizon just announced a new development in partnership with Grind which they cite as a "center for new innovation and collaboration. "

*4. Niche audiences- *As the Coworking movement evolves, more niche explorations are popping up. Many of these facilities are solely focused on tech startups or some could be referred to as "entrepreneurial incubators" for a specific sector, but other niches are being explored as well. Prakash shared this example: Bespoke, a coworking facility inside the Westfield Mall in San Francisco, recently opened as a coworking and event space catering to retail. This allows brands to work, learn, and grow with exposure to 20 million annual shoppers.

But as anyone who has worked in a coworking space can tell you, it's so much more than a place. As Rebecca Brian Pan of Covo Coworking in San Francisco says, "You come for the space, but you stay for the community." Many of the founders of various coworking spaces around the country came from wildly different fields. There are many variations on stories like Pan's, "I got into coworking because I am the ideal user. I am not completely useless when I am by myself, but if I work at home for more than one day a week I lose all productivity. I realized that there are so many people just like me that think working from home and coffee shops will be awesome. They are leaving a traditional work environment, but upon actually trying it, after a few months, it's hard to be your most productive, happiest and most fulfilled self in that environment. Coworking solves all of that, it's almost magical."

Community was perhaps the most important -- and recurrent -- word in the interviews for this article. Dyett says, "In the future, coworking will become mainstream. New workers don't want to work for a company, they want to be a part of a community. I never got good business advice from my dog... that's why people pay the money to be part of a coworking community."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 20 hours ago.

Open Enrollment Brings New Health Insurance Options for Individuals and Small Businesses

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RICHARDSON, Texas, Oct. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In anticipation of the upcoming open enrollment season, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) introduces its 2016 individual and small group health insurance coverage. Beginning Nov. 1, 2015, Texas residents can choose... Reported by PR Newswire 19 hours ago.

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Candidate

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"End this notion that the enemy is the other party. End this notion that it is naïve to think we can speak well of the other party. What is naïve is to think it is remotely possible to govern this country unless we can."

The speaker was Joe Biden. Along with other Carter administration alumni, I was listening to him at a Washington gala, the finale of a day-long tribute last week to former vice president Walter Mondale (I was Mondale's chief speechwriter).

Biden was being exceptionally generous with his time. He kicked off the morning at George Washington University (GWU) in conversation with Mondale about the vice presidency. At the end of the afternoon, he and Dr. Jill Biden hosted us at the vice president's residence, where many of us had not been since Mondale left office. Jimmy Carter traveled from Plains, Ga., for the dinner, looking amazingly well for a 91-year-old in treatment for cancer.

Though none of us knew it, the next morning Biden would announce that he wouldn't run for president. But that night, I bet few of us doubted that his paean to speaking well of the other party was a zinger aimed at Hillary Clinton.

The week before, at the debate in Las Vegas, she was asked which enemies she was proudest of making. "Well," she said, "in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians ... probably the Republicans." Biden's reproof: "I don't think my chief enemy is the Republican Party. This is a matter of making things work." He later said on 60 Minutes that he was talking about all of Washington, not singling out Clinton. You decide.

As Biden appealed for bipartisanship, I thought about the journey taken by his boss, President Barack Obama. He came to national attention summoning us to transcend the red/blue divide. He built on Republican policies -- Romneycare and cap-and-trade -- to frame his own health care and climate change proposals. He gave Republicans leading roles in his cabinet and at his White House summit on health care, and he traveled to Baltimore to be grilled by the GOP House Issues Conference. He negotiated a grand bargain on entitlement cuts with John Boehner. And in return for extending an open hand across the partisan divide, he was played, betrayed, rolled, stiffed, stymied and stung.

At best, he was seen as a bad poker player; at worst, he was revealed as a political naïf singing Kumbaya to a nest of vipers. It is arguable that after the Democrats' stunning loss of the House in 2010, it was Obama's late realization that Republicans really were his enemy, and that anything he wanted to do would need to be done without them, that has accounted for virtually all his subsequent accomplishments.

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, there is a very slim chance that Democrats will win the Senate, but it would require a miracle to also take back the House. Don't get me wrong: I dream of a wave election, a national revulsion at what the Republican Party has become, a tide so decisive that it sweeps to majorities on both sides of the Hill. But gerrymandering, voter suppression, Citizens United and a supine media make it far more likely that the members of Congress with whom she will be urged to "work together" and "arrive at consensus" for the sake of the country, as Biden put it in the Rose Garden the day before she spent 11 hours being prosecuted by them during a hearing about what happened in Benghazi in 2012, will include Benghazi committee members Trey Gowdy, Susan Brooks, Jim Jordan, Mike Pompeo, Martha Roby, Peter Roskam and Lynn Westmoreland, not to mention the Freedom Caucus that Jordan chairs. They're not going away.

Nor are the currents that sent them there. The middle ground is all but gone, according to a Pew Research Center poll last year. Ninety-two percent of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94 percent of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican. Highly negative views of the opposing party have more than doubled since 1994, when the House and Senate were wrested from Bill Clinton's party.

Two-thirds of consistently Republican Americans, and half of consistently Democratic Americans, think that the other party's policies "are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being." Though half the country believes that elected Republicans and Democrats should compromise in the middle, that half is "off the edges of the playing field, distant and disengaged."

Active citizens -- primary voters, letter writers, volunteers, donors -- are the people least willing to see the parties meet halfway. More than half of consistent conservatives think Republican leaders should get two-thirds of what they want when they negotiate with Democrats, and nearly a quarter of them think Republicans should get 90 percent or more. Almost two-thirds of consistent liberals say Obama should get two-thirds of what he wants, and 16 percent of them think he should get 90 percent or more.

That's the message that will be ringing in the ears of the new Speaker of the House, and it will also be the message that the next president, of either party, will hear most loudly. I'm not sure that's so wrong.

Unlike half the country, I don't think there's any particular virtue in 50/50 compromises. What's the middle ground with Donald Trump on immigration -- deporting half of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants? Building half a wall? What's 50/50 with Ben Carson on banning abortion in all circumstances -- applying the rape and incest exceptions on alternate days?

I can see Biden's point about solving the nation's problems: If you're working toward solutions, why call an advocate of a policy you oppose your "enemy," when "my good friend across the aisle" will do? My reservation is that speaking well of the other party can drain genuinely moral disputes of authentic moral authority.

At that GWU conversation about the vice presidency last week, my jaw dropped, as did Mondale's, when Biden said this about his predecessor to illustrate his point about comity: "I actually like Dick Cheney, for real. I think he's a decent man."

"Decent men," as Esquire political blogger Charlie Pierce wrote in reply, "do not torture, nor do they encourage others to do so, nor do they defend the practice by lying about what it really is. Decent men do not oversee the outing of covert CIA agents. Decent men do not help deceive their country into a war and then walk away with the profits. Decent men do not shoot their friends in the face and go for the Scotch bottle before they go for the cops."

I say this with great respect and admiration for our vice president: Dick Cheney is indeed my enemy. And the enemy of my enemy is, I hope, my next president.

This is a crosspost of my column in the Jewish Journal, where you can reach me if you'd like at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.

Happy Halloween! 10 Tips to Treat Yourself to a More Secure Financial Future.

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Dear Reader,

If you're like most people, you've made a few hair-brained money decisions in your time. That's just being human. However, if you're striving to get yourself on track, I suggest that you review these ten smart money management tips. This Halloween, treat yourself to a more secure financial future!

*1) Stick to your budget -- no matter how large or small*
Living beyond your means is dangerous no matter how much money you make. So even if you're lucky enough to earn a big paycheck, it's important to create -- and stick to -- a realistic budget. Use an online budget tool and make a list of your essential expenses and another list of your nice-to-haves. If your income won't cover both, start crossing off the extras you can live without. And don't be tempted to pull out the credit cards to cover any excess. Keeping on top of debt is an important part of smart budgeting. While you're thinking about debt control, remember to stay on top of any student loans!

*2) Don't put off saving for retirement*
To me, the scariest thought of all is facing retirement without adequate resources. So put retirement savings first -- before saving for a house or a child's education. Start by contributing at least enough to your company retirement plan to capture the maximum match. Then contribute more if you can to either your 401(k) or an IRA, putting contributions on automatic. Remember, the earlier you start, the smaller the percentage of your salary you need to sock away.

*3) Expect the unexpected*
Unexpected expenses can land on your doorstep at any time. To protect yourself, set aside enough money to cover three to six months worth of essential expenses in an easily accessible savings or money market account or short-term CD. Retirees should try to increase this amount to cover a year's worth of expenses.

*4) Know where you stand*
Set up a personal net worth statement to get a clear view of your finances. List both your assets (what you own) and your liabilities (what you owe), then subtract liabilities from assets to find out if you're in the plus or the minus. This will give you a benchmark so you can measure your progress.

*5) Sharpen your investing skills*
With market volatility a fact of life, it's easy to get spooked. But don't hide from your portfolio. Instead, take a good look at your long-term goals and feelings about risk. Are your current investments still working for you? Are you diversified enough? Remember, if one stock represents more than 20 percent to 25 percent of your portfolio, that's probably too much -- and you run the risk of big losses. A diversified portfolio designed for the long-term is the best way to ride out howling market storms.

*6) Make sure you have the right amount of health insurance*
A single illness or accident could wipe out your savings unless you have adequate health insurance. If you don't have coverage through your employer, take the time to research your best options under the Affordable Care Act to avoid the potential horrors of having to handle healthcare costs on your own.

*7) Create an estate plan*
Not having a will that names a guardian for your minor children is a pretty frightening proposition, so make that your first estate planning step. Beyond a will, the complexity of your estate plan will depend on your financial situation. But if you don't put at least the basics in place -- including an Advance Health Care Directive -- you may be leaving your heirs with a web of difficulties.

*8) Maximize your Social Security benefits*
Jumping the gun on Social Security benefits could cost you big time. That's a chilling thought. On the bright side, every year you delay collecting between age 62 (the earliest you're eligible) and age 70, your monthly benefit goes up. If you're married, there are strategies for couples that could increase your combined benefits even more. Of course, the right time to take benefits is different for everyone -- but it's definitely worth it to look carefully at your options. Read my recent article for more on this.

*9) Ask for help*
The complexity of financial planning can be pretty unnerving, but no need to go it alone. Even if you usually bravely follow your own financial path, when it comes to planning -- especially retirement planning -- it's good to have a guide. Talking to a financial advisor, at least occasionally, can give you a more realistic picture of where you're headed. Even financial professionals turn to each other for a little guidance!

*10) Don't keep your family in the dark*
Things are always scariest in the dark so don't be afraid to shed some light on your finances with your family. Talk to your spouse openly about expenses, credit and debt, savings goals and retirement. And when it comes to estate planning, make sure your adult children know what to expect.

Halloween comes once a year, but smart money management means staying on top of things year-round. Start using these tips now -- and enjoy this holiday and all the holidays to come.

*For more updates, follow Carrie on LinkedIn and Twitter.*

Looking for answers to your retirement questions? Check out Carrie's new book, "The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty: Answers to Your Most Important Money Questions."

This article originally appeared on Schwab.com. You can e-mail Carrie at askcarrie@schwab.com, or click here for additional Ask Carrie columns. This column is no substitute for an individualized recommendation, tax, legal or personalized investment advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax advisor, CPA, financial planner or investment manager. Diversification cannot ensure a profit or eliminate the risk of investment losses.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC. (MEMBER SIPC.) (1015-6392)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 17 hours ago.

Lamar Odom Health Crisis: Hospital Workers Fired for Trying to Take Star’s Picture

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As former NBA star and reality TV personality Lamar Odom continues to recover after being found unconscious in a Nevada brothel, employees at a hospital where he received treatment have been fired for trying to take pictures of him, according to media reports.

Some of the fired employees also attempted to access Odom’s medical records, TMZ reported Monday.

A spokeswoman for Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas would not confirm the firings, saying that the hospital protects the privacy of its patients and employees alike.

“As a healthcare facility, Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center is committed to caring for all of our patients. We take all patient privacy very seriously and follow all HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] policies in compliance with federal regulations,” the hospital told TheWrap. “We have a stringent social media policy that helps us adhere to HIPAA compliance,” the statement reads. “We also protect the privacy of our employees and do not release information regarding our actions. Additionally, we educate our employees on our code of conduct, which addresses social media guidelines.”

*Also Read:* Chris Rock's Lamar Odom 'Coke and Hookers' Joke Sparks Laughter, Outrage

Odom was found unconscious on Oct. 13 at the Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada, after booking a $75,000, five-day stay including around-the-clock companionship with two women. He was initially rushed to a nearby hospital in Pahrump, Nevada, before being transferred to Sunrise.

The former NBA star has since been moved to Los Angeles for further treatment. Odom’s family has said that he has made “miraculous progress.”

According to 911 calls from brothel employees that were made public after Odom collapsed, the former Los Angeles Laker had admitted to taking cocaine prior to arriving at the brothel on Oct. 10, and had ingested “up to 10” herbal sexual enhancement supplements during his stay.

*Also Read:* Lamar Odom's $75,000 Brothel Binge: How He Racked Up That Massive Bill

However, court papers obtained by TheWrap last week indicated that Odom may have ingested cocaine during his stay, and had taken an “unidentified pill” during his stay. Reported by The Wrap 16 hours ago.

Feds say 2016 health plan premiums more affordable

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About 70% of those buying health insurance on the federal exchanges will pay less than $75 a month for their plan after they receive tax credits, a government analysis released Monday shows.

 
 
 
 
 
 
  Reported by USATODAY.com 16 hours ago.

Hillary Clinton Attacks Coal Company For Trying To 'Shirk Its Responsibilities' To Retirees

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WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Monday took aim at another coal company, saying Peabody Energy Corp is trying to "shirk its responsibilities" to pay the healthcare benefits of retired mine workers.

Clinton earlier this month said the restructuring plan suggested by Patriot Coal Corp, which is in the midst of its second bankruptcy in three years, should be stopped because it involved dramatically scaling back the money that would go to paying retiree benefits.Clinton, the front runner for the Democratic nomination, has shown in recent weeks she will not hesitate to go after companies by name. In addition to her remarks on Patriot and Peabody, Clinton has criticized pharmaceutical companies for "price gouging" and health insurance companies for proposed mergers that she said could be bad for consumers, sending industry stocks tumbling.

Following Clinton's remarks, Patriot withdrew its original plan and submitted a new one that won court approval.

Peabody, the world's largest private-sector coal producer, spun off Patriot into a separate entity in 2007. During Patriot's first bankruptcy in 2012, Peabody had agreed to cover the benefits of retirees. But last month, in a court filing in St. Louis, where it is headquartered, Peabody argued it does not have to make the benefits payments under the terms of Patriot's newly approved bankruptcy plan.

"These are people who put their own health and safety at risk for years so the rest of us could have the affordable, reliable electricity we take for granted," Clinton said in a statement commenting on the roughly 11,000 retirees who would be affected.

"They are entitled to the benefits they've earned, and which Peabody just two years ago committed to pay. I hope Peabody does the right thing," Clinton added.
Peabody could not be immediately reached for comment.

Under Patriot's 2012 bankruptcy, Peabody had agreed to pay $310 million to cover the benefits of retirees, of which $145 million is outstanding.

Patriot, based in Scott Depot, West Virginia, has now teamed up with the United Mine Workers of America union to demand that Peabody pay Patriot the $145 million.

Clinton has promised that if elected president in November 2016 she would not leave workers in coal-producing areas behind as the country transitions to renewable sources of energy. (Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Leslie Adler)

 

*Also on HuffPost:*

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.

Pushing Civic Tech Beyond Its Comfort Zone

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This article appears in the Fall 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine. *Subscribe here*.

 

You’re walking down the street in New Haven, Connecticut, texting on your smartphone. As you turn a corner, you notice a big pothole in the middle of the road. Skimming through your cell, you log into SeeClickFix, an app for citizens to report non-emergency issues to local government. Snapping a photo of the pothole and geo-coding the picture with your GPS coordinates, you submit the report and continue walking, confident the relevant agency will tend to the matter. Other SeeClickFix users can also see that a new pothole has been reported, and where.

Potholes have symbolized the everyday problems that citizens call upon local and even national politicians to address. Senator Al D’Amato of New York was nicknamed “Senator Pothole” because of his reputation for tending to his constituents’ needs. It was a compliment—it meant he was available, responsive, and got things done, at least the small, concrete things his constituents cared about. But when it comes to taking action on local civic problems, there are now options besides contacting a public official. Tools like SeeClickFix allow citizens to gather local information and organize collectively based on what they learn. “If you as an elected official have established your power on the sole exclusive rights to that information, then our app is not something you’re going to be in love with,” says Ben Berkowitz, SeeClickFix’s CEO and co-founder. 


SeeClickFix offers some interesting opportunities for citizens, such as allowing them to monitor whether the government has dealt with their concerns and “reopening” the complaint if they dislike how the government responded. “There’s an element of shifting power that’s baked into the code of SeeClickFix that makes it more of a service for people and less of a service for bureaucrats,” says Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Media, which focuses on intersections between politics and technology. SeeClickFix also provides useful services for governments—Jennifer Pugh, who works in the chief administrator’s office in the New Haven local government, said that her office’s adoption of SeeClickFix technology has allowed it to organize work orders more systematically. She hopes that in a few years, when a greater number of departments start to use SeeClickFix, they will be able to conduct new kinds of citywide analysis.

Moreover, in theory, SeeClickFix technology should one day allow journalists, political opponents, and independent groups to publish data comparing the responsiveness and performance of local governments, allowing citizens to see how well theirs stacks up in relation to others.

Some, perhaps hoping to stir up excitement, inflate the case for new technology—heralding it as the savior of government accountability and promoter of a more just democracy. “With these digital tools, citizens and their officials can revolutionize local government, making it more responsive, transparent, and cost-effective than it ever has been,” write Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford in their book, The Responsive City: Engaging Communities through Data-Smart Governance. That exaggerated rhetoric about “revolutionizing” government shouldn’t be taken seriously; it only sets up people for later disappointment. But, in a more modest but still significant way, tools like SeeClickFix can help improve the accountability and performance of government—local government in particular. Accountability, however, is ultimately a political matter, and civic tech cannot simply steer clear of politics in the belief that technology will solve problems on its own.

(Image: SeeClickFix.com)

This map of New Haven, Connecticut, is from the SeeClickFix website. The orange, green, and blue circles represent issues that have been opened, acknowledged, or closed.

-The Obama Tech Letdown-

Following his savvy 2008 campaign, Obama entered the White House with great expectations from the tech world. He was “the first Internet president,” as Omar Wasow, co-founder of BlackPlanet.com and now an assistant professor of politics at Princeton, called him. During George W. Bush’s second term, open-government advocates had begun to lay the groundwork for increasing transparency in the next administration, whichever party won the 2008 election. Their recommendations were just being finalized at the time of Obama’s victory. “We interacted quite a bit with the transition team and really conveyed to them that this was a bipartisan area the administration could take a lead on,” said Sean Moulton, the open government program manager at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

In his inaugural address, Obama declared that “those of us who manage the public’s dollars” will “do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.” A day later, he issued two memoranda, one calling for greater government compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and another that committed his administration to bring about “an unprecedented level of openness in government.”

These memos sent expectations soaring in the worlds of civic tech and open data. Silicon Valley perked up its ears. “When the president of the United States says something like that, it becomes a big deal and a big business,” says Tiago Peixoto, an applied political scientist who researches democracy’s relationship to technology. We’ve seen the rise of for-profit companies—like SeeClickFix—that focus on improving government service delivery. “Civic hackathons” began to crop up in cities across the country and even at the White House, encouraging coders, entrepreneurs, and others to figure out ways to use technology for civic ends.

“[Obama’s administration] was the first time we ever had a U.S. chief information officer, a U.S. chief technology officer, and a U.S. chief data officer,” says Gary Bass, founder of the Center for Effective Government (originally called OMB Watch), a nonprofit organization committed to public accountability, transparency, and citizen participation. Suddenly government leaders were discussing how they could recruit top tech talent. The culture of the federal government seemed to be shifting.

But several years later, public trust in government has declined to historic lows. Much of that decline reflects the general hostility of conservatives to the Obama administration, not to its information policies. But even for liberals, the promise of an “open government” seems elusive. A 2015 Pew survey found that just 5 percent of Americans say the federal government shares its data very effectively. The civic-tech community, which had hoped to facilitate a democratic revival, is also puzzling over its lack of success. “I think civic tech started getting trendy with Obama, and it’s still trendy, but we haven’t had as big of an impact as we expected,” said Dan O’Neil, the executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative and one of civic tech’s early pioneers.

 

-Local Experiments, New Tools-

Still, there are plenty of examples of local governments experimenting with technology over the past few years to help increase its responsiveness and reduce government costs. With improved data analysis, New York City was better able to anticipate which buildings were at risk of catching on fire. Boston was able to speed up the time it took to deliver new recycling bins on request. Many companies, organizations, and individuals have also started leveraging government data to develop their own civic tools, from Waze, a crowd-sourced traffic-data company that provides users with timely and accurate travel information, to Nextdoor, a tool that uses census data to create private social networks for local neighbors to interact.

Apps like SeeClickFix offer a greater degree of civic opportunity than apps that allow you to track your packages in the mail or those that notify you when the next bus is expected to arrive. SeeClickFix users can earn “civic points” for utilizing different features, such as commenting on other people’s reports. Through the app’s “thanks” feature, citizens can send messages of gratitude to the government agency that addressed their complaint. Ideally these types of features can help to increase trust between citizens and government, an important ingredient for democratic participation.

One of SeeClickFix’s most admired features allows users to “reopen” a report they’ve filed if they’re not satisfied with how the government responded to it. People have praised the technology for empowering citizens with the last word.

I asked Jennifer Pugh, of the New Haven government, if there have ever been times when citizens reopen requests that her colleagues have closed, and she told me that it happened all the time. In many cases, she explains, the government is not able to provide what citizens are expecting, or the government does not agree with what an individual complainant has asked for. “We don’t have a lot of resources; we’re limited on money,” says Pugh. So New Haven often closes out requests on SeeClickFix, and if people reopen them, officials usually just leave them there. “The downside is that it looks like there is a lot of open issues out there, but in fact they’ve been dealt with. We just can’t come to an agreement about how to address it,” she says.

When citizens file complaints through SeeClickFix, there’s no guarantee that the government will do what the citizen has requested. These tech tools do not eliminate some of the basic challenges facing governments, like determining how to spend a limited budget of resources. But what SeeClickFix does offer is an easier way to raise issues, and a means for the public to better understand which requests have been addressed. This in turn creates new opportunities for activists and journalists to press for details on the government’s decision-making process. Why didn’t residents in this part of town have their pothole fixed? Why did you decline to put in the speed bump I requested when I am upset by the fast traffic on my block? Why did so many people from all over the city report vandalism on the same day? Such questions have become easier for the public to ask in the age of SeeClickFix.

Peixoto, who has been studying the intersections of democracy and technology for the past 14 years, thinks that when newcomers flooded the civic-tech space at the start of Obama’s first term, “there was no way to ensure that the critical mass of people would absorb the lessons we had already learned by then.” This has led to what Peixoto sees as “some naïve assumptions” repeated inside new civic-tech circles. Specifically, he points out that many civic-tech leaders overestimate what technology can do on its own. Some have encouraged technologists to dismiss the government entirely, or just treat it as a platform from which to launch civic projects independently. But researchers have learned that civic technology generally carries a far greater impact when it works in conjunction with the government, like SeeClickFix, rather than on its own. SeeClickFix’s government partnership helps to explain its steady growth and impact.

 

-Why Civic Tech Isn’t Easy-

It’s understandable why some civic-tech leaders feel unenthusiastic about dealing with the government. In Silicon Valley, technologists are encouraged to “fail fast, fail often.” But within the public sector, taxpayers don’t necessarily want their leaders taking big costly risks, and politicians in turn fear the backlash if innovations fail. The cultures are different.

(Photo: The White House)

Civic hackathons, such as this one at the White House in June 2013, encourage coders, entrepreneurs, and others to figure out ways to use technology for civic ends.

There is also a talent pipeline problem—government simply does not have enough people coming to work for it who possess advanced technological skills. “You see so many agencies with so little knowledge and capacity around the technology, they don’t even know what they want or how to communicate with the contractors they hire,” said Moulton. The government bidding process itself is also notoriously difficult, precluding many smaller, and perhaps more talented, companies from competing for contracts.

Together, these issues create a government tech situation that is both expensive and dysfunctional. The best-known recent example was the disastrous rollout of the federal health insurance exchange website, Healthcare.gov. It not only went far over budget—originally estimated to cost $500 million, it hit $1.7 billion by its initial rollout in 2013, and exceeded $2 billion a year later—but the website also just didn’t work well at all. It continually crashed, stalled, and left customers unable to purchase health-care plans. Of course, once the website did start performing better later on, the news media had little interest in reporting on its successes.

In many ways, the embarrassing Healthcare.gov scandal served as a turning point for the Obama administration. “It was only after that that the alarm bell finally reached the Oval Office,” says Sifry. “This wasn’t working. You can’t just make good speeches. You also have to find good people who can deliver on those promises.” Since then, far more serious attention has been paid to federal information technology and government procurement.

In 2014, the administration created two new agencies in the executive branch—18F in the General Services Administration and the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) in the White House—both designed to improve the government’s technological capacity. The government has been trying to improve procurement issues for decades, but the tools and methods available today are different.

“From open-source tools to the refinement of methodologies like human-centered design and agile development, these are all things you wouldn’t have heard of two decades ago,” says Aaron Snow, the executive director of 18F. “These are all things that make it actually possible for us to accelerate the rate [at which] government improves its technological capacity.” While USDS technologists consult with agencies to figure out how to improve their work, the staff at 18F helps federal agencies become savvier about procurement. Speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum this past June—an annual conference for the civic-tech community—Haley Van Dyck, USDS’s co-founder, said her office has been deploying “hyper-networked teams across government” to disrupt and transform tech practices and agency cultures. And though 18F and USDS work specifically with federal agencies, they share their code freely online so that local governments can reuse and repurpose it for their own needs. At times, federal officials will use code first developed within local city agencies, too.

 

-From Open Data to Accountability-

In 2012, David Robinson and Harlan Yu, two technology consultants and open-government data theorists, published a law review article noting that the term “open government”—which was first used in the 1950s during debates that led to the passage of the Freedom of Information Act—has now blurred considerably and confusingly with the “open data” movement. “Today, a regime can call itself ‘open’ if it builds the right kind of website—even if it does not become more accountable,” they point out. Consequently, Yu and Robinson urge the public to distinguish more clearly between efforts to hold governments accountable and technology that enhances government services.

Tiago Peixoto built off of this analysis in an essay published one year later. For there to be government accountability, he argues, four things need to happen. First, government information must be disclosed—this is where open data would come in. Second, this disclosed information must reach members of its intended public. Third, citizens—not necessarily everyone, but a constituency large enough to influence government—must be able to understand the disclosed information and react to it. Fourth and finally, public officials need to respond to the public’s reactions or be sanctioned by the public through institutional means.

So with this in mind, can tools like SeeClickFix be used to create a more accountable government? In some cases, increased public transparency now exists within areas that were previously more opaque. That’s important. SeeClickFix users can compare how long they’ve been waiting for a streetlamp bulb to be replaced or for a pothole to be fixed. They can compare which parts of town had their requests answered more quickly. “It’s helpful to have a record of needs that are systematic and easy to measure,” says Robinson. News organizations can also launch investigations when reporters or watchdog groups notice that citizen complaints are going ignored.

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a watchdog organization that seeks to promote accountability for public programs subsidizing economic development, says he first understood how crucial transparency was for accountability back in the late 1970s, when he worked for National People’s Action (NPA), a grassroots social justice network. At the time, NPA pushed for the passage of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975) and the Community Reinvestment Act (1977). “There were allegations that banks were redlining communities of color, but there was no real evidence [before these laws were enacted] to prove it,” he said.

Technology on its own cannot get the government to disclose information, but it can prove extremely valuable for those who want to understand what is released. While LeRoy’s organization has been around since 1988, he says the rise of the Internet and data technology “has everything to do” with how his organization has changed over time. All states have their subsidy information in electronic form; they could share much or all of it online if they wanted to. The first state to do so, in small amounts, was Ohio in 1999. But governments have shown that without public pressure they will generally not disclose information or will release just small amounts of information to mollify critics. Good Jobs First has tried to overcome this resistance by conducting research, promoting public discussion, and encouraging activists to push for improved transparency laws. In 2007, they published their first national report card study—“The State of Disclosure.” By that time, 23 states had put some amount of subsidy information online. Three years later, when their next study was published, the number had increased to 37.

But “the data that states do put online,” LeRoy says, can amount to a “Tower of Babel.” States often hide information in obscure appendices, upload contracts in non-searchable PDFs, or publish audits that are impenetrable. As a result, Good Jobs First recognized that “transparency” could mean very little, in practice. But this is where new civic technology developed by third-party organizations has been invaluable. Good Jobs First was able to launch its comprehensive Subsidy Tracker tool in 2010 by compiling and organizing more than 100,000 records from across the country into one unified searchable database and getting additional subsidy program information through FOIA requests. “Technology has definitely been at the core of how we improve our data and make it more accessible for average citizens to understand,” LeRoy says.

The Center for Responsive Politics, another watchdog organization that focuses on money in politics, knows its ultimate objective is to move people into action—step three of Piexoto’s four-step process. “We use technology to provide information in lots of different ways,” explains Sheila Krumholz, the center’s executive director, because the group recognizes that presenting information in just one format won’t resonate with enough people. Krumholz thinks the organization has played a key role in educating citizens about the impact of money in politics, but says its challenge now is to figure out how to design the kind of “aha” moments that inspire people to act on what they learn, rather than simply tune out and disengage.

But inspiring people to act inevitably has political implications. Eric Liu, the CEO of Citizen University—a group that works with leaders, activists, and practitioners around issues of citizenship and organizing—says it’s not enough to make government more efficient. He encourages civic-tech leaders to reckon more with politics, power, and inequality. While it’s great to have an app that can help you find out when the next bus is coming, it would be even better, he argues, if you could activate the smarts and skills of people within civic tech to help push city leaders to develop a stronger public transportation system.

“Civic tech is excellent at transparency, civic tech is excellent at efficiency, civic tech is excellent at creating a sense of community,” said Liu in a speech at the Personal Democracy Forum this past June. “Civic tech is excellent at a lot of dimensions of what you might think of as customer service.”

The civic-tech community could help Americans create not only a more efficient government, but also a more politically accountable and fair one. Doing that would require the community to venture into political territory that it’s largely avoided up to this point. But if civic tech is going to make a big impact, there is no turning away from politics. It’s something investigative journalists have long understood: Making people with power uncomfortable is part of the job. It’s part of the job of civic tech, too. Reported by The American Prospect 15 minutes ago.

Health insurance prices up 7.5 percent for benchmark plans

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The federal government says the cost of a benchmark plan on HealthCare.gov will increase 7.5 percent for 2016 coverage, but most people will still be able to buy a plan for less than $100 a month, after tax credits. Monday was the first day people could see 2016 prices on the website established under President Barack Obama's health care law. Reported by SeattlePI.com 15 hours ago.

What Obamacare Opponents Get Wrong -- And Right -- About Insurance Premiums

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Donald Trump is attacking the Affordable Care Act again. He says health insurance premiums are rising by 35, 45 or even 55 percent in some places.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services tell a very different story. They say premiums for the standard insurance plans are rising by just 7.5 percent on average -- and that the vast majority of people buying coverage through the law's new marketplaces can find insurance for a relative pittance.

Trump is right, but so is HHS.

And therein lies a pretty good snapshot of how the health care law is working out, three years into implementation. Some of the scary-sounding reports are true. But they reveal only a small part of the picture.

Open enrollment through the Affordable Care Act begins Sunday, Nov. 1. That’s when people buying coverage on their own -- whether through the new federal or state-operated online marketplaces, or directly from insurers -- can begin purchasing coverage for calendar year 2016.

Some people who have insurance already know how much it will cost to keep their current policies, because they’ve received notices from their insurers or because they’ve checked the “window shopping” feature on healthcare.gov that went live on Sunday night. The rest will learn soon enough.

Plenty won’t be happy.

Premiums for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee will be 36 percent higher, on average, than they were last year. For policies by Moda Health, the largest insurer in Oregon, premiums will be 25.6 percent higher. And in Minnesota, the average monthly premiums for BlueCross BlueShield are rising between 45 and 49 percent, depending on the plan.

Those are some very big numbers, and they're already providing great political fodder for Republicans and their conservative allies who consider them proof that the Affordable Care Act is a failure. But, as is always the case with “Obamacare” stories, they take on different meaning with more context.

Remember, the health care law transformed the market for people buying coverage on their own. The law prohibits insurers from excluding key benefits like coverage for maternity care, rehabilitative services and prescription drugs. It also stops carriers from charging higher premiums, withholding certain benefits or denying coverage altogether from people with pre-existing conditions.

Before last year, insurers had no experience selling such policies, under such conditions, directly to individuals. When they initially set their premiums, they had to make some guesses. They also had to compete for market share. Insurers planning to stay in the new marketplaces for the long haul had incentive to price low, in order to grab customers, even if it meant running losses in the short term.

Now, with hard data on the customers they’re attracting, many insurers are discovering the population is less healthy than they had expected -- and more likely to run higher medical bills. At the same time, federal programs designed to cushion insurance company losses are subsiding, partly because the law’s architects intended them to be temporary and partly because Republicans -- led by presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) -- forced elimination of one key program in the spending deal Congress enacted last year.

So after two years of premiums that seemed surprisingly low, at least by the standards of private health insurance in the U.S., some insurers are raising prices to adjust. That’s the source of the big hikes that have the attention of Trump and other Affordable Care Act critics. And it's why, according to ACAsignups.net blogger Charles Gaba, premiums would rise between 12 and 13 percent on average if everybody who currently has insurance simply renewed the same plans for next year. 

But, as Gaba points out, the averages also mask a lot of variation. Some insurers are raising premiums more modestly and others are actually reducing rates. People faced with increases can, and frequently will, find cheaper alternatives. In addition, the vast majority of people buying coverage through healthcare.gov or one of the state marketplaces are eligible for tax credits that can reduce premiums by hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a year for lower- and middle-income buyers. 

For these reasons, many analysts think the best indicator of how premiums are changing is to compare the price of the second-cheapest "silver" plan in 2016 to the second-cheapest silver plan of 2015. According to HHS, the difference is just 7.5 percent -- and that’s before taking into account the tax credits that could wipe out some or all of the increase for many consumers. With those tax credits in hand, HHS says, most people buying coverage on the federal or state marketplaces can find insurance for less than $100 a month.

Monday's HHS analysis is roughly consistent with estimates by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, which has been following premiums in 11 key markets from around the country.

“Despite the overall growth in Marketplace premiums, the amount many people pay for their coverage could stay relatively flat after their tax credit, but they may have to switch to a different plan in order to take full advantage of that savings,” Cynthia Cox, associate director of Kaiser’s program on health reform and private insurance, told The Huffington Post. 

Not everybody gets the tax credits and switching plans is not always easy. Somebody who wants to keep seeing a particular physician might have to choose between keeping coverage for that doctor or going with a cheaper plan. But provider networks in this country have always been in flux, just like insurance premiums for people buying coverage on their own have always been volatile. In fact, before the Affordable Care Act, double-digit increases in premiums were the norm, according to studies by HHS and the Commonwealth Fund. 

That's the reality of health care reform: Today's headlines look very different in the context of yesterday's. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 13 hours ago.

Not Exactly Brain Surgery

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No matter what the eventual outcome, this year's Republican primary race is sure to go down in history as one of the most bizarre political contests ever. Well, considering what happened in 2012, perhaps I should amend that with "...until the next one happens." We currently have two frontrunners, with everyone else running so far back in the pack they're ecstatic if they ever post a double-digit number in the polls (which few of them can manage to do, even in state-level polling). The two GOP frontrunners have, between them, a total of zero days of political experience. One is a megalomaniac billionaire and one is a world-class surgeon who seems to be trying to prove the old canard that doctors all think they've been promoted to God.

Plenty of ink has been spilled desperately trying to explain why Donald Trump is doing so well. Even more ink has been wasted trying to prove "Trump will eventually disappear," without a shred of evidence in the argument's favor. But it's only recently that the pundit world has even paid the slightest attention to Ben Carson. Which is odd, because his rise in the polls is even harder to fathom than The Donald's. Trump has bluster going for him -- in a huge way, as he might put it. His bombast is second to none, which he routinely showcases in the debates (another of which is happening Wednesday night). The American people have always loved a good showman, all the way back to P.T. Barnum. Consider that Minnesota and California -- pretty liberal states, mind you -- elected Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger not all that long ago to see the proof of this.

But Carson's rise is harder to explain. He's now leading the polls in Iowa, and while he's still trailing Trump nationally, he is slowly catching up (a claim absolutely none of the other GOP candidates can make). Carson is, in some ways, the anti-Trump. He's soft-spoken. He radiates calm (to the point of somnolence). He doesn't sound crazy. He is very hesitant to attack his rivals (especially Trump, although that could change, seeing as how Trump has started directing some attacks at Carson).

The best thing Carson has going for him is that he is demonstrably an intelligent guy. He used to be, in fact, a prominent member of one of the two professions that we commonly cite as the ideal for "careers which require extraordinary intelligence." The epitome of jobs requiring a high I.Q. has for a long time been either "brain surgeon" or "rocket scientist." Indeed, it's hard to imagine using any other job in the sentences: "It doesn't take a..." or: "It ain't exactly...." Ben Carson was not just a brain surgeon, but an exceptionally talented and pioneering brain surgeon. That's pretty strong evidence that he possesses the ability to read lots of very dense writing, memorize an astounding amount of data, and then process that data and turn it into benevolent action. A physicist might argue that brain surgery ain't rocket science, but it sure as heck is a job requiring a high degree of intelligence.

However, this also appears to be Carson's biggest problem. So far, he has exhibited nothing short of an astounding lack of comprehension (or perhaps, to be charitable, just plain laziness) on pretty much every subject he's tackled. The problem, so far, is that the media hasn't noticed. They're much more interested in attempting to expose Carson's extremism, which is actually a valid goal (but also a different subject than this column). Carson seems to be a walking, talking personification of Godwin's Law. Carson has two go-to comparisons that he'll deploy on any number of unrelated current issues: either America is going the way of the Nazis, or we're headed back to slavery. Those are pretty extreme examples to use, but they're both favorites of Carson, used by him on a routine basis. So far, this has been what the media has chosen to focus on when dissecting Carson's campaign.

This is a shame, because Carson has a flaw which is even bigger. His over-the-top Nazi and slavery comparisons actually play pretty well with the Republican primary audience, no matter how many times the pundits raise their metaphorical eyebrows over them. But what is harder to explain is the absolute incoherence of pretty much all of Carson's policy positions. Not unlike Trump, Carson seems satisfied with vague ideas heavy on ideology and sloganeering, but very light on actual details. But unlike Trump, Carson gets pretty flustered whenever anyone asks him about the missing details. Trump just bulls his way through any doubts interviewers have, but Carson can't really pull off the same trick. What happens instead is that he melts down.

I've noticed this in many interviews Carson has given over the past few months, but the only story that made any sort of a splash in the media (even the liberal-leaning media) was Carson's apparent confusion about what, exactly, the debt ceiling is. It was a two-day story on the liberal websites, and then it receded. Sooner or later, however, somebody's got to notice the lack of visible clothing on this Emperor-wannabe.

Just last weekend, Carson appeared on some Sunday morning political chat shows. Once again, the big takeaway story was how NBC's Chuck Todd got Carson to say some outrageous things about slavery. What was missed was Carson's astoundingly inept appearance on Fox News Sunday, where he was interviewed by Chris Wallace. Wallace -- one of the best interviewers on Fox, when it comes to pressuring conservatives to answer their critics -- took a deep dive into Carson's new plan for health insurance.

This is Carson's second plan for replacing Obamacare, mind you. Carson told Wallace over and over again that his plan of a few months ago is no longer operative, because he had since talked to some people and refined it into a new plan. His old plan would have entirely killed off Medicare and Medicaid. His new plan -- using some fiscal magic that Carson was unable to explain -- does not do so. Now Carson would only propose his plan as a choice people would have, because he doesn't want to be all Obama-ish and force people into anything. His problem is that he wants to pay for his new plan using the money that now goes to Medicare and Medicaid.

Wallace, to his credit, tried multiple times to point out that medical savings accounts (Carson's grand answer to pretty much everything) are great things to have if you have the money for them. Rich people love medical savings accounts, because it is a big tax write-off for them. But Wallace pressed Carson on how they'd work for the indigent and the middle class, and Carson immediately got lost in the weeds and couldn't offer up a rational explanation of how his plan was supposed to work.

These weren't "gotcha" questions like who is the leader of some country Americans would be hard-pressed to find on a map. Wallace was questioning Carson on his own policy plan. Carson is a medical doctor -- this is supposed to be within his area of expertise. This plan has already been revised, so it should be safe to assume that Carson was instrumental in making changes to it. And yet Carson couldn't explain it -- to a conservative member of the media on Fox News (he can't exactly explain this away as some sort of liberal media trap).

Watch the video (or read the transcript) if you think I'm exaggerating the awfulness of Carson's floundering. This isn't the first time Carson has stumbled over any question that digs deeper than surface-level talking points. He's done so in many interviews, in fact, but so far most people haven't noticed. He reminds me of nothing more than a slightly-more-articulate version of Sarah Palin. He loves the word-salad approach to answering questions, and he's obviously got his lines down (better than Palin ever managed), at least on this level. But when asked to go any deeper, Carson soon lapses into incoherence. On pretty much any subject anyone asks him about.

If Ben Carson experiences a collapse in his support, it's not going to be for some Nazi or slavery comparison. The Republican base can pretty much absorb those, at least in states like Iowa. No, if Ben torpedoes his campaign by saying something shocking, it's likely going to be because he says something which exposes his absolute incompetence on some subject near and dear to Republican voters' hearts. The only way this is likely to happen is if it is pointed out by another conservative -- say, during a debate.

The third Republican presidential debate is scheduled for this Wednesday. So far, the candidates who have launched full-frontal attacks on Donald Trump haven't done so well. They've all seen their poll numbers fall immediately after such attacks, in fact. At least so far, it's been a losing game for Trump's attackers. So we might see a shift on Wednesday night to attacking Ben Carson, rather than Trump. If Trump ever does collapse, right now Ben Carson is poised to take the lead. And while Carson has risen, almost all the second-tier Republicans have fallen back. Regaining some voter support might be seen as easier to do by taking down Carson than taking on Trump. To say nothing of the fact that Trump himself seems slightly worried by Carson now, so Trump might actually lead the attacks against Ben this Wednesday.

If Republican candidates do decide to target Carson, they're not going to do so by calling him an extremist. After all, there are a whole bunch of extremist Republican voters out there, and attacking their own beliefs isn't exactly the way to build a candidate's base support (at least, not in today's Republican Party). What's left is attacking Carson's policy ideas. Which is actually pretty easy to do, even for a conservative. Take a look at pretty much any interview he's been in where he's had to defend his positions in a substantive way -- each time, he looks weak and flustered. So my guess is that a few Republican candidates will press Carson hard on his inconsistencies Wednesday night. After all, poking holes in Carson's arguments is not exactly brain surgery.

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.

In Latest Obamacare Fiasco, Most Low-Income Workers Can't Afford "Affordable Care Act"

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In Latest Obamacare Fiasco, Most Low-Income Workers Can't Afford Affordable Care Act Just ten days ago we described the latest unintended (we hope) consequence of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, when Colorado's largest nonprofit co-op health insurer and participant in that state's insurance exchange, Colorado HealthOP, announcing it was abruptly shutting down ahead of the November 1 start of enrollment for 2016, forcing 80,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016.

It wasn't the first: the Colorado co-op was at least the fifth in the nation to collapse. Similar nonprofit insurers have already failed in Louisiana, Iowa/Nebraska, Nevada and New York. A health insurance cooperative in Tennessee announced this week that it would stop offering new policies.

The insurer failed because it would fail to be profitable, in the process burning through $23 million in taxpayer-funded loss that would not be repaid.  "Taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars in loans given out to the CO-OP, money that will likely never be repaid," U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said in a statement after the announcement.

And while many had anticipated from the beginning that the Obamacare tax was merely a subsidy for the large insurance companies (or rather, their public shareholders), few had expected a far more sinister consequence of the "Affordable" care plan: namely that the employer mandate would turn out to be *un*affordable for a great number of low-income workers - the people who were supposed to benefit from it most of all.

But before we unveil this latest depressing, if also anticipated, outcome of socialized healthcare, let's remember that much of the U.S. has press has touted the success of Obamacare. To be sure, nationwide, the Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced the number of Americans without health insurance. Around 10.7% of the country’s under-65 population was uninsured in the first three months of this year, down from 17.5% five years earlier, according to the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running federal study. Some 14 million previously uninsured adults have gained coverage in the last two years, the Obama administration estimates.

However, what is left unsaid is that most of those gains have come from a vast expansion of Medicaid and from the subsidies that help lower-income people buy insurance through federal and state exchanges. *Workers who are offered affordable individual coverage through their employers — a group that the employer mandate was intended to expand — are not eligible for government-subsidized insurance through the exchanges, even if their income would otherwise have qualified them*.

It is the failing of Obamacare to address the needs of America's struggling lower-middle class, those women and men who work long, hard hours, often at minimum wage, scrambling to make ends meet. It is them, that the NYT writes about in its recent scathing critique of Obamacare (traditionally, it has been the WSJ that gives scathing reports on the disaster that is Obamacare, usually involving soaring monthly premiums for those who were dragged into the Scotus-enabled tax beyond their will).

Take the case of Billy Sewell who began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns. He wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford. His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

*“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.*

But isn't that against the stated primary objective of Obamacare: to make affordable health insurance more accessible and affordable to everyone? The answer, according to the NYT, is no.



The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.

 

But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, *many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer*. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, *like restaurants, retailing and hospitality*. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)



Hold on, aren't those some of the "best" performing job categories in the past year? Why yes they are, in fact, with 11.1 million workers, those employed by "food service and drinking places" are the single largest job subcategory tracked by the BLS. It is almost as if the bulk of the jobs growth went to fields that would be mostly disadvantaged by Obamacare.

Well, there may be million of waiters and bartenders in the US, but contrary to what Obamacare promised, the vast majority are uninsured:



“*Based on what we’ve seen in the marketplace, we’re advising some of our clients to expect single-digit take rates*,” said Michael A. Bodack, an insurance broker in Harrison, N.Y. “*One to 2 percent isn’t unusual*.”



The reason? What was supposed to be affordable remains painfully *un*affordable for the lowest rung of the employment pyramid.

Here is the actual math as experienced by both the abovementioned Mr. Sewell of Golden Corral restaurants, and his mostly minimum-wage employees.

He employs 1,800 people at the 26 Golden Corral franchises he owns in six Southern and Midwestern states, and previously offered insurance only to his salaried management staff. In January, when the employer mandate took effect, he made the same insurance plan, with a bigger employer contribution, available to all employees working an average of 30 or more hours a week.

*Running the math on his plan — a typical one for the restaurant industry — illustrates why a number of low-wage workers are falling through gaps in the Affordable Care Act.*

The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. Mr. Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.

The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee’s annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers’ relatives make, there are several “safe harbors” they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees’ wages.) *Mr. Sewell’s insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing — or able — to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.*

And this is where Obamacare's employee mandate fails for a vast majority of US workers.

Clarissa Morris, 47, has been a server at the Golden Corral here for five years, earning $2.13 an hour plus tips. On a typical day, she leaves the restaurant with about $70 in tips. Her husband makes $9 an hour at Walmart but has been offered only a part-time schedule there, without benefits. Their combined paychecks barely cover their rent and daily essentials.

*“It’s either buy insurance or put food in the house,” *she said. On the rare occasions that she gets sick, she visits a local clinic with sliding-scale fees. It costs her $25 for a visit, and $4 to fill prescriptions at Walmart.

Other business owners finds the same paradox: 



Brad Mete, the managing partner of Affinity Resources, a staffing agency in Dania Beach, Fla., began offering insurance this year to most of his workers only because the law required it. He said the alternative, paying a penalty of about $2,000 per full-time employee, was unthinkable, “That would put us out of business, in one swoop.”

 

*Trying to persuade his hourly workers to buy the insurance is “like pulling teeth,” he said. His company’s plan costs $120 a month, but workers making about $300 a week are reluctant to spend $30 of it on insurance*.



That's ok - if you beleive the Obama administration, wages are about to soar.

Or maybe not.

What is truly tragic, however, that just like in the case of "punishing work" when Earned Income Tax benefits for those living around the poverty line, see their after tax pay rise above what comparable workers who make up to $50k per year, Obamacare seems to have been designed only for those making above the median US wage and above:



A study by ADP, the payroll processing giant, found an income tipping point at which most employees who are eligible for health insurance will buy it: $45,000 a year.

 

*Workers making $15,000 to $20,000 a year buy employer-sponsored individual insurance when it is offered only 37 percent of the time.* That rate rises at every income increment ADP studied until $45,000, when it reaches 82 percent and levels off. Further income gains have virtually no effect on the rate, ADP found.



And so the wheels slowly fall off the socialized healthcare train:



Low-income, full-time workers like Ms. Morris may prove to be some of the hardest people to bring into the ranks of the insured, said Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts an annual study on employer health benefits.* *

 

“This is one of the outcomes of trying to keep employer-based coverage in place,” Mr. Claxton said. “These are folks that didn’t have coverage before, and they’re not being given much help to get coverage now.”



Then, now that the disastrous law has been observed in practice, the result is nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare, and everyone is scrambling to find loopholes:



Mario K. Castillo, a lawyer in Houston who has extensively studied the new law, said it was poorly understood in the industry, and a bureaucratic nightmare.

 

“They have to issue you a policy, but dropping it after one year is perfectly legal,” he said. “If you’re in this space, you essentially have to shop for insurance every year.”



But the biggest slap in Obama's care comes from those who were supposed to be the direct beneficiaries.



For employees, forgoing coverage can mean facing tax penalties. Ms. Morris said she was surprised by the $95 fee she had to pay this year for being uninsured in 2014. “I had kind of heard about it, but I didn’t think it was going to kick in until later,” she said.

 

*Around 7.5 million taxpayers paid the fine, according to a preliminary report by the Internal Revenue Service. That is significantly more than the three million to six million the government had forecast.*



Actually, considering central planning and government takeover of private industries always leads to disaster, it is more surprising that the number isn't far, far greater.

As for those tens of millions of minimum wage workers, who thought they had a right to "hope" for "change", and instead ended up even worse off - *as well as unisnured and paying a penalty* -  our apologies, especially since it is all downhill from here. What you *should *have done is buy the stock of health insurance companies: because their shareholders' gain (and your loss) is what the "Affordable" Care Act is truly all about.

  Reported by Zero Hedge 12 hours ago.

Revamped HealthCare.Gov Opens With New Tools for Gauging True Cost of Insurance

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Consumers on Monday began shopping online for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act on a newly remodeled version of HealthCare.gov that worked more or less as promised by the government. Reported by NYTimes.com 11 hours ago.

Big changes on tap for state health care exchange

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Some big changes on this year's health insurance exchange. Reported by Newsday 12 hours ago.

Health Insurance Premiums to Climb in 2016

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The Obama administration said many consumers will see noticeable premium increases when buying coverage on insurance exchanges in 2016, acknowledging what many health-care experts had predicted. Reported by Wall Street Journal 10 hours ago.
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