Healthcare Facts and Myths

It's been just over 100 days since the Dems passed Obamacare. Though many progressives opposed the final healthcare reform law as insufficiently radical, the President hailed it as "Another stone. . . laid in the foundation of the American dream."

How is it affecting the rest of us? Not good, according to a study by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY), both physicians. Among the documented and hyperlinked findings:

• Promise: Barack Obama repeatedly assured Americans that they could keep their health plan if they like it.
  
  Reality: The Departments of Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services estimate "that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013." 75 Fed. Reg. No. 116, page 34552 (June 17, 2010), cited in Coburn/Barrasso at 2. See also ABC News.



• Promise: President Obama assured voters that Obamacare would not fund health care for illegal immigrants (though he cited that fact to support immigration reform that would legitimize illegals).
  
  Reality: Illegal aliens are bared from receiving the health insurance subsidies Obamacare establishes. But, concomitantly, the approximately 9 million illegals in America (see pages 5-6) cannot be penalized for non-compliance with the mandate to purchase insurance (page 26)--but still qualify for uncompensated care in hospitals, paid, ultimately, by taxpayers. And, in any event, about half of all illegal aliens are in the workplace with fraudulent documents, suggesting that some will qualify for insurance subsidies.



• Promise: The President vowed to cover the uninsured.
  
  Reality: Obamacare does so by forcing millions onto Medicaid, at a cost of nearly $400 billion in the first decade. That's not reform--because Medicare spending is out-of-control and its performance often is appalling, cited in Coburn/Barrasso at 12-16. The net result is to shift costs to those covered by private insurance. Which means higher taxes.

Conclusion: Expect to pay much more than advertised. The good news: Much of Obamacare hasn't yet taken effect. So there's still time to repeal it.

Chart of the Day

Global warming partisans defend the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) despite its errors. So the recent review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency is more of the same. The Economist magazine -- which still favors carbon cuts -- describes and charts the Dutch results:

For everyone else it was the glaciers: for the Dutch it was the flooding. Last January errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hit the headlines. The chapter on Asia in the report by the IPC's second working group, charged with looking at the impact of climate change and adapting to it, mistakenly claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. This contradicted some reasonably basic physics, had not been predicted by the glacier specialists in the first working group (which deals with the natural science of past and future climate change) and was unsupported by any evidence. There was a report from the 1990s which said something similar about all the world's non-polar glaciers, but it gave the date as 2350. Then there was a crucial typo and some shoddy referencing. Nevertheless the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, had lashed out at people bringing the criticism up, accusing them of "voodoo science". He then had to eat his words, and set up, with Ban Ki-moon, a panel to look into ways the IPCC might be improved.

Inspired by this to look for other errors, a journalist for a Dutch newspaper spotted that the chapter on Europe gave a figure for the area of the Netherlands below sea level that was much too large. The area at risk of flooding by the sea had been conflated with that at risk of flooding by the Rhine and the Meuse rivers. . .

The auditors found one new error which they deemed major: a statement about the frequency of turbulence in South African fishing waters which had been translated directly into a statement about the productivity of the fisheries. The IPCC has indicated it will produce an erratum for this, and for a number of other errors all concerned deemed minor. But the PBL also identified seven statements, which, while not errors, it thought were deserving of comment (for which read criticism).



Perhaps the most striking relates to Africa. The table in the summary for policymakers reads: "By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%." The evidence on which this is based says only that yields during years in which there are droughts could be reduced by 50%. Furthermore, the relevant reference applies only for Morocco--and it cites as its source an earlier paper that the PBL says no one, including the IPCC authors, now seems able to find.

Other criticisms turn on a tendency to generalise. Research showing decreased yields of millet, groundnuts and cowpeas in Niger becomes a claim that crop yields are decreasing in the Sahel, the strip that separates the Sahara from the savannah in Africa, rather than that the yields of some crops are decreasing in some parts of the Sahel. The results of research on cattle in Argentina are applied to livestock (which would include pigs, chickens, llamas and the rest) throughout South America. The expert authors do not provide a compelling reason for their claim that fresh water availability will decline overall in south, east and southeast Asia, or that the balance of climate-related effects on the health of Europeans will be negative.

A report from a British panel prompted the New York Times to declare that climate alarmist scientists had been "cleared," despite the fact that it "was the University of East Anglia that commissioned a paid investigation to uncover corruption and (un)scientific malfeasance at -- wait for it! -- the University of East Anglia's own Climate Research Unit!"

Which shows the degree (hah!) to which lefties remain wedded to warming.

Legislation of the Day

UPDATE: below

The Dems are about to pass the Financial Reform legislation (HR 4173)--the House passed the amended conference version on June 30th. It's supposed to reduce the risks of future credit crunches--though it does nothing to fix Fannie and Freddie, which were at the core of the melt-down. Instead, it adds a bunch of costly new requirements, overseen mainly by the same regulators that failed last time--which will hurt both banks and job growth--paid for by at least $11 billion of TARP funds, i.e., taxpayers.

Even worse, along the way, Congressional Democrats tossed in provisions to please their progressive constituency, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth on RealClearMarkets:

I was searching the bill for a provision about derivatives. What did I find but Section 342, which declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry.

In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. . .all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors. . .

Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress's intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." . . .

With the new financial regulation law, the federal government is moving from outlawing discrimination to setting up a system of quotas. Ultimately, the only way that financial firms doing business with the government would be able to comply with the law is by showing that a certain percentage of their workforce is female or minority.

The new Offices of Women and Minorities represent a major change in employment law by imposing gender and racial quotas on the financial industry. The issue deserves careful debate -- rather than a few pages slipped into the financial regulation bill.

So, the about-to-pass Financial Reform legislation's not just a bad law about banking. It's a quota bill. Courtesy of our community-organizer-in-chief.

MORE:

Carl Horowitz at Townhall:

If the Senate approves the measure -- it is set to begin debate shortly -- Congress once more will have made clear that it views institutional safety and soundness as a lesser priority than achievement of demographic "diversity" among borrowers.

(via reader Doug)

JOTD

A fly falls into a cup of coffee and. . . The Italian -- throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage. The German -- carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee. The Frenchman -- takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee. The Chinese -- eats the fly and throws away the coffee. The Russian -- drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge. The Israeli -- sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee. The Palestinian Arab -- blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian Arab.

(via reader Raul)

Charts of the Day

President Obama wants the rich to pay more taxes. So does Obama supporter Warren Buffett, arguing that the wealthy are undertaxed.

I've repeatedly disagreed. So here's the latest update from the Congressional Budget Office, with 2007 data:

The federal tax system is progressive--that is, average tax rates generally rise with income. Households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution paid 4.0 percent of their income in federal taxes, the middle quintile paid 14.3 percent, and the highest quintile paid 25.1 percent. Average rates continued to rise within the top quintile: The top 1 percent faced an average rate of 29.5 percent.


source: CBO Graphics

Higher-income groups earn a disproportionate share of pretax income and pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes. In 2007, the highest quintile earned 55.9 percent of pretax income and paid 68.9 percent of federal taxes; the top 1 percent of households earned 19.4 percent of income and paid 28.1 percent of taxes. The share of taxes paid by high-income groups exceeded their share of income because average tax rates rise with income. In all other quintiles, the share of federal taxes was less than the income share. The bottom quintile earned 4.0 percent of income and paid 0.8 percent of taxes, and the middle quintile earned 13.1 percent of income and paid 9.2 percent of taxes.



source: CBO Graphics

I'm not saying this proves my point -- "undertaxed" is opinion. But the data don't make the Dems' case either.

(via Tax Prof Blog)

Program Notes

I haven't caught up yet--so posting will be light this week.

Pair of Kings Beats A Full (White) House

• Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, when meeting with French Defense Minister Hervé Morin on June 5th, as reported in a Le Figaro blog (automatic translation):

  There are two countries in the world that do not deserve to exist: Iran and Israel.

• Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, when meeting with President Obama on June 29th, as reported in a White House "Readout":

  President Obama and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud met today and . . . expressed their hope that proximity talks between Israelis and Palestinians will lead to the resumption of direct talks with the aim of two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

• Note: this isn't the first time President Obama bowed to King Abdullah then denied it. But lefties give this President a pass for policies and postures pilloried under Bush.

(via reader Marc via Foreign Policy Passport)

Program Notes

Independence day--two days of independence from blogging. Check back on Tuesday.