When Do I Get my Obamacare Waiver?

Since it appears that 111 waivers have already been granted including a waiver for mini-med plans, I was wondering whether everyone who has a high deductible health insurance could be exempted? High deductible health care health insurance is the cornerstone of health savings account(HSA). For some people this is a very cost effective way to manage health care costs. I use the health re-imbursement account(HRA) I get at work to purchase a low cost, moderate deductible plan.  The cost of this plan is much lower than the HRA limit. This allows me some wiggle room if something unusual comes up that is not covered by the health insurance plan. The company I work for benefits since my family is healthy and I have been savvy about controlling our health care costs. Since this arrangement is beneficial for me and my company, it actually makes more sense that the government should waive my plan than it is to waive the high cost labor union or mini-med health care plans.

Michelle Malkin » The Obamacare Waiver-mania! movement builds

Leaders Take The Initiative, But Go-To People Get Things Done

 

To highlight how rare this breed is, a new CEO of a large company once said, "I have more than 1000 people in my head office organization, 900 can tell me something’s gone wrong, 90 can tell me what’s gone wrong, nine can tell me why it went wrong, and one can actually fix it!" Finding and nurturing that one is the challenge for every company.

Leaders Take The Initiative, But Go-To People Get Things Done

The Future of Federal Budget Cuts can be seen in California

Although I am modestly hopeful that Congress will embrace spending cuts through a civil debate, I suspect that it is more likely the process will look a lot like the “California budget debate”.  The saving grace for the American people is if the California situation gets uglier, Congress may be more willing to embrace a “real world” compromise to avoid more drastic cuts. So far the California government is stuck in an alternative reality due to fanciful estimates of government revenues and spending. Part of the problem is that our local, state, and federal governments  have been lying about their financial position for so long it is difficult to trust the current estimates. If a budget compromise cannot be reached, the de facto result is a “do nothing” strategy. When we have another financial crisis the de facto strategy results in flat cuts to every department. We can see the de facto strategy at work in the California budget debate. Due to the relative size of social services in the budget, these categories are getting the larger portion of the cuts. The same situation exists in the federal budget. A flat budget cut is a difficult political issue to demonize your opponents with. This is a lose-lose position for the progressive wing of the Democrat party.

California’s Budget Blues Get Deeper | KCET

In a little more than month, the state of California lost over $6 billion in ground on its latest budget. With the deficit now thought to be $25.4 billion, Gov. Schwarzenegger calls a special session of the legislature to start on December 6.

Some Assembly Democrats think this is a political gimmick–what’s changed in the 5 weeks since they last approved a budget that could make things better?–and their biggest priority is something that would make the deficit bigger, not smaller–reversing a Schwarzenegger line item veto of $256 million worth of day care.

Hey Barry, here is the specific spending cuts you were asking about!

Recently I went to Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget site, Budget Simulator | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and ran the budget simulator. The objective is stabilize the U.S. Debt at 60% of GDP by 2018. I think I came up with budget cuts and tax increases that amounted to 58% of the GDP. It is amazing how many of the programs listed in the simulator do not personally affect me, my extended family, or my friends. I kept the troop deployment amounts for Iraq and Afghanistan since these troop deployments are winding down but I let the Bush tax cuts expire. This simulation which appears to mimic the opinions of the voters in the last election is a particularly bad omen for our politicians trying to protect special interests like labor unions, education, farm subsidies, and advanced weapon programs. A roll back to spending levels we had in 2008 or earlier would work for me, too.

My Stabilize the debt results

Ideas for Bipartisan Health Care Reform

I am doubtful that Obamacare will be repealed in the next two years but I am slightly optimistic that it can undergo some significant improvements in controlling health care cost growth. Here are two key issues that I think we can get bipartisan support on.

  1. Embrace a a wider range of cost reduction strategies including HRA and HSA.
  2. Increase the transparency and honesty of how the Obamacare health system is supposed to reduce health care costs.

Although Democrats loath any health care other than universal health care it is probably an impossible task to convince the American people that universal health care will reduce health care costs. Since the experiments at controlling health care costs using universal health care failed in Tennessee and it looks like it will fail in Massachusetts, we need other health care options if we want to reduce costs.

One health care cost reduction option that has fallen through the cracks is Health Savings Accounts(HSA) and Health Reimbursement Accounts(HRA). I am an example of a person who has successfully used no health insurance, health reimbursement accounts, and health savings accounts for my family over the last ten years. The most recent employer provided health care costs that I could find are about $12,000 a year. My health care costs last year were $2,000. Beating the employer average for one year might be interesting but when you beat it for ten years you are looking at a viable health care alternative to universal health care and large employer health care plans. It may not be the right plan for everyone but it is the best investment I made over the last ten years. With the recent legislation my concern is that when the government develops a consensus that $12,000 for health insurance is normal, they will not be satisfied until everyone pays that amount. This is reflected in the recent health care reform which forces people to buy an insurance plan they may not need or want. The press coverage has indicated that the plans available in the health exchange will be modeled like those at large employers. For a person like me this amounts to a $10,000 a year tax. Even if I do not have to pay for the increase, I am grossly over-insured and my employer will bear the brunt of the cost increase.  When I read the description of how the health insurance exchange plan is supposed to work, it sure sounds like a governmental version of http://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ with social goals as the primary goals. This is a recipe for a cost control disaster. If our government really wants to lower health care costs, they need to have health care cost control as their number one priority. If controlling health care cost is our number one priority, than it follows that people need the option of low cost health insurance as an incentive for those people who are willing to become savvy about their health care options.

Things that make me go hmm… Ohio school levy results

The theme from our main stream media pundits is that the voters do not have the stomach to cut spending on key entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Yet the voters seem to have no problem voting against levies for school programs. By voting against these levies levies the school districts will be forced layoff more staff and cut popular school programs. Maybe its southwest Ohio voters being difficult but only 4 of the 15 levies passed.

Ohio voters went to the polls for more than candidates Tuesday: They went to decide on the fate of schools around the southwest region.

Some levies passed and others failed.

Ohio school levy results

RE:Clermont County (OH) Commissioner’s Race – Archie Wilson Stands Up To Cronyism

I was wondering what polices would Archie Wilson like to see implemented to control cronyism. Here are some of my ideas:

  1. Public notice of pending TIFs
  2. Public comment on pending TIFs
  3. Background material on pending TIFs displayed on county web site.

Recently I have been looking at the Jungle Jim’s agreement with Union Township, http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/article/20101015/NEWS/10150367/Union-Twp-defends-Jungle-Jim-s-agreement. It is close to where I work so I drove by. I was surprised to find that the property had a variety of small tenants including a movie theater and gas station. There are two things that bother me.

  1. When I looked up the tax records on this property, the owner paid $450,196 in 2009. This is a lot of money when you compare it to taxes paid by the Meijer down the street, $159,852. The Meijer property has a similar amount of acreage and square footage but the Jungle Jim building is considerably older and more expensive. So who is going to pay the property tax and at what rate? As a resident of Clermont County I would like to see the larger amount going into the county coffers so we can avoid layoffs. If I understand the concept of TIF correctly, the tax on the value added by the improvement is used to pay off the loan while the base amount goes to the county.
  2. There are two competitors to the proposed development within a mile, Walmart and Meijer. I wonder how they feel about the development? I cannot help but wonder whether this development will force one of those competitors to abandon their location unless they get the same deal. Jungle Jim’s is special but probably not special enough to increase spending in the area. It sure looks like we have three grocery stores fighting for the same grocery dollar.

Things that make me go hmm… Democrats for Fiscal Prudence

Recently I have been scouring the news in search of fiscally conservative Democrats campaign strategies or Democrats mentioning Pay-as-you-go budgeting as a budget deficit solution. I couple of months ago I thought that Ohio Governor Strickland was a likely choice to use a fiscally conservative Democrat strategy as part of his election campaign. Although it was unlikely that he would get my vote, this strategy might appeal to other independents. Instead the campaign opted to use a negative ad campaign strategy to woo independents. Unfortunately his campaign did not impress me so I am ready to mail in my ballot. Today I read a National Review article, A Democrat for Fiscal Prudence, that pointed out a Democrat following the fiscally conservative Democrat strategy. I think a political campaign more like the one being used by Julie Lassa would have been a more effective strategy of Strickland and the Democrats. The number one issue for the next couple of years will be how to reduce government spending and the Democratic party is largely ignoring the issue. The budget impasses in California, Illinois, and New York are good examples of governments controlled by Democrats that are ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away. I whimsically refer to this this issue as the Lord Voldemort of campaign issues. Here is the comment I made on pajamasmedia.com.

The Ohio governor’s race would be more interesting if the Strickland campaign adopted a stance closer to Democratic Wisconsin state senator Julie Lassa. Since I agree that Strickland’s campaign strategy is pretty dumb and not likely to improve enough by election time, I am ready to mail in my ballot.

Roku to the rescue!

A couple of weeks ago Amazon offered a very good price, $20 off, on the Roku HD Player. Since I live on a farm and our house is more than a quarter of a mile off the road, my options are limited. We have DSL but it is relatively slow and occasionally erratic. Recently our service has improved but YouTube videos still stutter. Recently my son figured out that NetFlix works just fine with our DSL connection. So I took the chance and bought the Roku player. I figured that this device is simple enough for my wife. It worked great. I watched two movies without a single stutter. The Roku channels that depend on podcasts or YouTube are still problems but Netflix and the audio channels work great. I am still working on the wife training.

Things that make me go hmm… HealthCare.gov Insurance Finder

I was looking at HeathCare.gov today. It is a pretty site. I was researching information about how the recent legislation impacted HRA and HSA accounts so I decided to give this site a try. It did not have anything. Their insurance finder looked intriguing so I decided to give it a test run. Since I used ehealthInsurance to get my last health insurance policy, I was hoping that they would provide something even better than eHealthInsurance. The worst case scenario I expected is that they would clone eHealthInsurance. However, they chose to provide me with several completely useless suggestions, like check into getting insurance at work. If you are looking for health insurance, HealthCare.gov insurance finder is a complete waste of time.