President Addresses NSA | Obamacare Serial Failures Leading to Lost Jobs

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Today In Washington, D.C. - Jan. 17, 2014
The President delivered a speech at 11 AM on the "Review of Signal Intelligence" which addressed the purported actions of the NSA.  You may read his prepared speech here. Of noted importance was President Obama call for ending the National Security Agency's ability to store phone data from millions of Americans, and asked Congress, the Justice Department and the intelligence community to help decide who should hold these records. Also, he declared that "the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security," and "we take their privacy concerns into account." In summary, the president's speech does not resolve the issue> May be some his flock whose feathers have been ruffled are temporarily calmed. As for conservatives and liberty minded activists, his speech is just another in a long list of speeches. The debate over National Security, spying, wiretaps, and collection of information continues.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) response to President Obama’s speech: “Our national security programs exist to root out terrorist threats and save American lives – and they have. Because the president has failed to adequately explain the necessity of these programs, the privacy concerns of some Americans are understandable. When considering any reforms, however, keeping Americans safe must remain our top priority. When lives are stake, the president must not allow politics to cloud his judgment. I look forward to learning more about how the new procedure for accessing data will not put Americans at greater risk. And the House will review any legislative reforms proposed by the administration, but we will not erode the operational integrity of critical programs that have helped keep America safe."

The Senate reconvened at 11:15 AM today for a pro-forma session. Pro-forma sessions will also be held January 21 and 10:30 AM and January 24 at 9:30 AM. The Senate will reconvene on January 27, when it will consider the motion to proceed to S. 1926, the flood insurance bill.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 72-26 to invoke cloture on the House message to accompany H.R. 3547, the vehicle for the omnibus Fiscal Year 2014 appropriations bill and then voted 72-26 to concur to the House message, sending the bill to the president for his signature.

The House reconvened for 1 minute and then adjourned until Tuesday Jan 21 at 1 PM.

While the focus of recent stories about Obamacare has been on the serial failures of the exchanges and the hardships the law is causing for families through cancelled coverage and higher premiums, it’s worth recalling that another consequence of this poorly conceived legislation is lost jobs in many parts of the country.

WOOD TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, reported, “A new report out Thursday by Grand Valley State University found that there are at least 1,000 fewer jobs in West Michigan as a result of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as Obamacare. The report was conducted by GVSU economics professors Leslie Muller and Paul Isely in collaboration with Priority Heath. A survey was sent to local businesses with more than 50 employers in Allegan, Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties. ‘Firms are actually holding off on hiring or their reducing their hiring that they were thinking they were going to be doing because of the ACA,’ said Muller. The 1,000 jobs lost does not include the number of workers in West Michigan that have lost hours to ensure that they are kept as part-time employees. Nearly one-third of companies said they have cut employees' hours. ‘We're talking about a thousand jobs in West Michigan that would have been here absent the ACA,’ Muller said. The study found lower-skilled jobs tend to be suffering the most. ‘When you look at those firms that are decreasing hours and putting off hiring, it was mainly the lower-skilled firms, the smaller and lower-skilled firms,’ Muller said. Firms are also making changes to the health insurance programs they offer employees by increasing the share cost with employees, using a high-deductible plan and changing prescription drug coverage. . . . Muller and Isely also found that the ACA is also affecting the economic growth of West Michigan. According to the report growth will be 0.1 to 0.2 percentages points lower in Allegan, Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties over the next year because of the ACA. ‘I think everyone has to be concerned about the high heath care costs,’ Muller said. Muller said the report is reflective of the ACA's affects on businesses nationwide.”

Meanwhile, other small businesses aren’t finding Obamacare’s plans for them attractive for many of the same reasons families are struggling in the wake of the law: higher costs, fewer choices, and more regulations. Bloomberg News writes, “Enrollment in Obamacare health plans for small businesses is off to a slow start, leaving in doubt whether the U.S. program can attract enough customers to satisfy insurers. Greeted by higher premiums, less generous coverage and more paperwork, small businesses that offer health coverage to employees are choosing to renew existing plans rather than buy them through President Barack Obama’s program. Complicating matters is the government’s failure to complete the online exchange for small businesses; in 36 states, there will be no website offering ready information on the plans until November. The program is supposed to help insure the 31 million people who work at companies with fewer than 50 employees. In Kentucky, just 14 companies signed up for Obamacare’s small business plans as of Jan. 1, while Colorado enrolled 101, and Connecticut 106. . . . A core part of the U.S. health-care overhaul is the employer mandate that requires companies with 50 or more workers to offer affordable health insurance by 2015 or face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee. While smaller businesses aren’t required to offer medical coverage, if they do, the plans must meet Obamacare standards starting this year. . . . Part of the lag can also be blamed on SHOP plans that are too expensive, with premiums as much as 90 percent higher than what some firms paid last year, according to John Humkey, the owner of Employee Benefit Associates Inc., a Lexington, Kentucky-based insurance broker. . . . ‘The small-business owners, while they are out there working hard to manage their business, their focus is not on trying to understand the health-care law in order to put together a benefit package,’ Humkey said.”

Of course, these are just today’s Obamacare problems. The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein writes an important reminder about other consequences likely to come. “As the major provisions of the health care law go into effect in 2014, several elements threaten to limit Americans’ access to care,” he points out. “Obama's health care program boosts the number of Americans with insurance by offering subsidies to individuals to purchase policies on government-run exchanges and by expanding the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid. But Medicaid pays doctors significantly less than private insurance or even Medicare, making doctors less likely to accept beneficiaries as patients. A study by the National Center for Health Statistics, published in 2012 by Health Affairs, found that 31 percent of doctors were not accepting Medicaid patients in 2011, though the numbers varied by state. In California, for instance, 43 percent of doctors weren't accepting new Medicaid patients, and in New Jersey, the number was a staggering 60 percent.” Further, he notes, “[M]illions of Americans who saw their existing plans canceled as a result of changes stemming from the health care law will be forced to seek coverage that offers fewer choices. Additionally, one of the ways in which the health care law plans to offset the $1.8 trillion cost of expanding coverage is to extract savings from Medicare. But in a May 2013 report, Paul Spitalnic, the acting chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, warned that as a result of the cuts, ‘Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below the levels paid by private health insurance. Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result.’”

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Look: the folks each of us were sent here to represent – not the government – should be the ones choosing plans that make the most sense for their families. And when our colleagues on the other side go around referring to insurance being lost as ‘junk’ that’s just beyond offensive to the people we represent. . . . Because we were sent here to solve problems, not to make them worse as Obamacare does. So let’s erase that mistake and start over with real reform.”

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