Jindal on healthcare

American Enterprise Institute has weighed in on Bobby Jindal’s health care proposal, and, predictably, they hate it:

None of the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates has thought more about the Affordable Care Act than Jindal, and none of the others has come up with a plan as detailed as his. Jindal’s key provision is to eliminate the tax break for employer-provided health coverage and instead offer a deduction with which people could buy insurance in the individual market.

The great flaw in Jindal’s plan is that it would cause millions of people to lose their coverage.

Apparently it’s OK that Obamacare caused millions of people to lose their coverage, but not OK if someone else’s plan does the same thing.  Obama famously promised no change.  There’s no way for Jindal to deny that this plan will certainly cause at least some employers to cancel their plans.  So obviously this is a feature, not a bug.

Tying insurance to employment is bad, so eliminating employers’ incentive to provide health insurance is a good thing.  Change is scary, but if Obamacare showed us anything, it’s that forcing this particular change on a few million people is not going to take away lunch from anybody in Washington.

 

GDP 3Q2014

I’ve seen several analyses laying out these same complaints with the stratospheric third quarter 2014 GDP report (5% growth!!).  This one from Tony Sagami at Mauldin Economics is the best:

A stinky pile of economic manure came out of Washington, DC, last week and instead of the economic nirvana that it was touted to be, it was a smokescreen of half-truths and financial prestidigitation.

According to the newest version of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the US economy is smoking hot. The BEA reported that GDP grew at an astonishing 5.0% annualized rate in the third quarter.

5% is BIG number.

The New York Times couldn’t gush enough, given a rare chance to give President Obama an economic pat on the back. “The American economy grew last quarter at its fastest rate in over a decade, providing the strongest evidence to date that the recovery is finally gaining sustained power more than five years after it began.”

Moreover, this is the second revision to the third quarter GDP—1.1 percentage points higher than the first revision—and the strongest rate since the third quarter of 2003.

However, that 5% growth rate isn’t as impressive if you peek below the headline number.

Fun with Numbers #1: The biggest improvement was in the Net Exports category, which increased by 112 basis points. How did they manage that?  There was a downturn in Imports.

Fun with Numbers #2: Of the 5% GDP growth, 0.80% was from government spending, most of which was on national defense. I’m a big believer in a strong national defense, but building bombs, tanks, and jet fighters is not as productive to our economy as bridges, roads, and schools.

Fun with Numbers #3: Almost half of the gain came from Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and deserves extra scrutiny. Of that 221 bps of PCE spending:

• Services spending accounts for 115 bps. Of that 115, 15 bps was from nonprofits such as religious groups and charities. The other 100 bps was for household spending on “services.”
• Of that 100 bps, the two largest categories were Healthcare spending (52 bps) and Financial Services/Insurance (35 bps).

The end result is that 85% of the contribution to GDP from Household Spending on Services came from healthcare and insurance! In short… those are code words for Obamacare!

While the experts on Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street were overjoyed, I see just another pile of white-collar manure and nothing to shout about.

Fun with Numbers #4: Lastly, the spending on Goods—the backbone of a health, growing economy—declined by 27 bps.

In a related news, the November durable goods report showed a -0.7% drop in spending, quite the opposite of the positive number that Wall Street was expecting.

In addition to this information, add the data regarding revisions around Obamacare as reported by ZeroHedge:

Back in June, when we were looking at the final Q1 GDP print, we discovered something very surprising: after the BEA had first reported that absent for Obamacare, Q1 GDP would have been negative in its first Q1 GDP report, subsequent GDP prints imploded as a result of what is now believed to be the polar vortex. But the real surprise was that the Obamacare boost was, in the final print, revised massively lower to actually reduce GDP!

This is how the unprecedented trimming of Obamacare’s contribution to GDP looked like back then.

 

Of course, even back then we knew what this means: payback is coming, and all the BEA is looking for is the right quarter in which to insert the “GDP boost”. This is what we said verbatim:

Don’t worry thought: this is actually great news! Because the brilliant propaganda minds at the Dept of Commerce figured out something banks also realized with the stub “kitchen sink” quarter in November 2008. Namely, since Q1 is a total loss in GDP terms, let’s just remove Obamacare spending as a contributor to Q1 GDP and just shove it in Q2.

 

Stated otherwise, some $40 billion in PCE that was supposed to boost Q1 GDP will now be added to Q2-Q4.

 

And now, we all await as the US department of truth says, with a straight face, that in Q2 the US GDP “grew” by over 5% (no really: you’ll see).

Well, we were wrong: it wasn’t Q2. It was Q3, albeit precisely in the Q2-Q4 interval we expected.

Fast forward to today when as every pundit is happy to report, the final estimate of Q3 GDP indeed rose by 5% (no really, just as we predicted), with a surge in personal consumption being the main driver of US growth in the June-September quarter. As noted before, between the second revision of the Q3 GDP number and its final print, Personal Consumption increased from 2.2% to 3.2% Q/Q,  and ended up contributing 2.21% of the final 4.96% GDP amount, up from 1.51%.

So what did Americans supposedly spend so much more on compared to the previous revision released one month ago? Was it cars? Furnishings? Housing and Utilities? Recreational Goods and RVs? Or maybe nondurable goods and financial services?

Actually no. The answer, just as we predicted precisely 6 months ago is… well, just see for yourselves.

In short, two-thirds of the “boost” to final Q3 personal consumption came from, drumroll, the same Obamacare which initially was supposed to boost Q1 GDP until the “polar vortex” crashed the number so badly, the BEA decided to pull it completely and leave this “growth dry powder” for another quarter. That quarter was Q3.

 

Obamacare, Year 2

OK, I never did successfully find out anything useful last year about policies that I could have purchased through the federal exchange.

This year it’s more important, as my non-complying policy has been cancelled and I MUST purchase a new policy.  I am fortunate and will not be eligible for subsidies.  However, I still must purchase from the same places.  I have the option of the exchange, or finding a policy sold directly from the insurance companies, like I did it back before Obamacare.

My current policy is just under $300/month for me and the 2 boys, with a substantial deductible (I think it is $7000).  It was $265 in 2012.

The cheapest policy on the exchange is $365, with a $12,000 deductible.

I am interested in changing over to a HSA policy this time, and the cheapest policy is $395 with a $7,000 deductible.

So looking at at least a 30% increase.  With worse coverage.

And here is the part that is truly problematic.  There are 3 insurers:  Highmark, UPMC, and Coventry.  If I select Highmark, the physician list excludes my family doctor (for the last 15 years).  If I select UPMC, the physician list excludes my Ob-gyn (for the last 20 years).  Coventry includes both, but it is $427 for the $12,000 policy (HSA, and it’s cheapest plan).

I’m furious about this.  Not sure whether to blame the insurance companies, Obama, or the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Companies:  It seems so wrong that these companies can do this to our communities, AND be considered non-profits, with all attendant tax benefits.  We are subsidizing them.   Then they include a lot of false advertising – UPMC’s brochure states that they include 96% of doctors in the area and 98% of hospitals.  Erie only has 3 major hospitals, and it excludes one of them.  My little town has 5 doctors in 2 practices.  Highmark excludes the practice with 3 doctors.  The ads about how much both companies care about our health just make me fume.  So many ads!  Those aren’t free!  We know you are making money!!!

Obama:  “If you like your plan, you can keep it.  If you like your doctors, you can keep them.  Period.”  I bet he has his choice of doctors.  No, I will not let this go.  One of many, many times he has said one thing and done the POLAR OPPOSITE.

PA:  I have better protection against car insurance companies than for my health.  If I wreck my car, the insurance company has to pay whomever I take the car to for repair.   “In-network” is illegal for car insurance.  We are about to get a new governor, but I’m not optimistic that he will make any changes to this.  Insurers are big campaign donors.

I am all for market reforms of health care.  Costs go down or are at least always at the most competitive level when people are forced to pay out of pocket.  This is why taxes and health care can get out of control – they are unseen costs.

But the complex rules and systems put in place by the government do not encourage any kind of real health care market, only a quasi-market in insurance.  Most people still don’t see what anything costs for their actual care, they just pay the first $20, or $50, or whatever.  And even when they do see a bill, they have no way of knowing if they could have chosen someplace cheaper, or any quality metrics around health care.  This opacity has resulted in these “networks.”  It keeps the costs down for the insurance company, just like it would if you had to take your car to a Progressive owned repair shop when you wrecked it.  It is the opposite of market reform.

I would like to see a system where everyone has a high deductible HSA, subsidized for lower incomes, and there are regulations around cost and quality reporting for health care providers.  That way, everyone is actually spending the money and would get to keep money they don’t spend.  Remove the employer incentives so that it’s not connected to employment at all.

Mauldin on Jobs, GDP, Unintended Consequences, and Obamacare

This is the best John Mauldin piece I have seen in a while.  I’m a big fan of his, but this really pulls a lot of stuff together.  He starts with some information about the new CBO report on how Obamacare is estimated to affect employment going forward:

Where Will the Jobs Come From?

To me the economic and employment effects of Obamacare are another piece of the larger puzzle called Where Will the Jobs Come From? This may be the most important economic question of the next 30 years. Because this topic has been the focus of my thinking for the past few years, I could be reading more into the CBO’s report than I should, but indulge me as I make a few points and then see if I can tie them together in the end.

First let’s look at what the report actually said. The CBO stated that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will result in a “substantially larger” and “considerably higher” reduction in the labor force than the “mere” 800,000 the budget office estimated in 2010. The overall level of labor will fall by 1.5% to 2% over the decade, the CBO figures. The revision was evidently driven by economic work done by a professor at the University of Chicago by the name of Casey Mulligan. (When you do a little research on Professor Mulligan and look past the multitude of honors and awards, you find people calling him the antithesis of Paul Krugman. I must therefore state for the record that I already like him.) For you economics wonks, there is a very interesting interview with Professor Mulligan in the weekend Wall Street Journal. For those who don’t go there, I will summarize and quote a few salient points.

Let’s be clear. This report and Mulligan’s research do not say Obamacare destroys jobs. What they suggest is that Obamacare raises the marginal tax rates on income, and to such an extent that it reduces the rewards for working more hours for marginally higher pay at certain income levels. The chart below does not pertain to upper-income individuals but rather to those at the median income level.

What Mulligan’s work does demonstrate is that the loss of government benefits has the same effect on an individual as a tax increase. If you lose a government subsidy because you work more hours, then for all intents and purposes it is the same as if you were taxed at a higher rate. Quoting now from the WSJ piece:

Instead, liberals have turned to claiming that ObamaCare’s missing workers will be a gift to society. Since employers aren’t cutting jobs per se through layoffs or hourly take-backs, people are merely choosing rationally to supply less labor. Thanks to ObamaCare, we’re told, Americans can finally quit the salt mines and blacking factories and retire early, or spend more time with the children, or become artists.

Mr. Mulligan reserves particular scorn for the economists making this “eliminated from the drudgery of labor market” argument, which he views as a form of trahison des clercs [loosely translated, “the betrayal of academic economists” – JM]. “I don’t know what their intentions are,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “but it looks like they’re trying to leverage the lack of economic education in their audience by making these sorts of points.”

A job, Mr. Mulligan explains, “is a transaction between buyers and sellers. When a transaction doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. We know that it doesn’t matter on which side of the market you put the disincentives, the results are the same…. In this case you’re putting an implicit tax on work for households, and employers aren’t willing to compensate the households enough so they’ll still work.” Jobs can be destroyed by sellers (workers) as much as buyers (businesses).

He adds: “I can understand something like cigarettes and people believe that there’s too much smoking, so we put a tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that’s a good thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We’ve been complaining for six years now that there’s not enough work being done…. Even before the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a sudden we wake up and say we’re glad that people are working less? We’re pursuing our dreams?” The larger betrayal, Mr. Mulligan argues, is that the same economists now praising the great shrinking workforce used to claim that ObamaCare would expand the labor market.

Gary Alexander presented this amazing chart, showing how a single mother earning $29,000 really shouldn’t earn any more unless she can make over $69,000!!!  That’s a true disincentive to work.  I wonder how many of the pundits out there actually know anyone facing these kinds of choices.  I cannot imagine a more frustrating and helpless feeling than knowing that, in order to do what is best for your family, you must choose to take additional government subsidies and work less than you might be able to.  What would be even worse would be someone who really does not have a choice about the hours they work (mandatory overtime,) who then goes over the amount.  This is easy to imagine, and I know people who are in jobs where this situation is likely to occur.  What kind of choice have we left this person?  Find a crappier job?  Not a lot of people are in a position to move directly from a $29,000 job to a $69,000 job.  But lots of people could probably move from a $30,000 job to a $15,000 job.  What an awful choice that would be.

Back to Mauldin.  He then goes on to discuss how this voluntary reduction in hours worked affects GDP (more than you might guess).  So it’s harmful on both an individual and collective level.  Then he discusses one of his favorite topics, how wages have been stagnating, especially for those with lower education levels, and how the job picture will be changing in the future.  I think that the whole “stagnating wages” thing is a little overstated, because if you include all benefits, it’s just not as true (see an older article from the Minnesota Fed here).  But he is undoubtedly correct that the work available in the future will change.  Just as is has for every generation since the industrial revolution began.

But really the best part is his conclusion and how he ties this all together:

A Most Dangerous Era

Now, what does the shifting of jobs in a knowledge-based economy have to do with work incentives in the Affordable Care Act? If we structure a society in which people are incentivized not to work, we are going to create a society that not only produces less but that displays a growing disparity in the distribution of wealth. If we offer people economic reasons not to work, we should not be surprised when they take us up on the offer. We can disguise that offer as all sorts of necessary social reforms, but at the end of the day a smaller labor force will affect the size of the pie that we all want to see grow and to partake of. I refer you back to Bastiat, whom I quoted at the beginning of this letter: it is the unseen things in well-intentioned public policies that will have small, incremental, but finally significant effects upon the whole economic body.

I have struggled with allergies off and on over the years. What I have learned is that allergies are incremental. I can be around many things to which I only have a mild allergic reaction, and I have no symptoms. But when I’m around many of them all at once I have to start looking for my allergy medicine. One can argue, perhaps correctly, that the economic effects of a particular policy like the Affordable Care Act are only a minor problem. But it is the cumulative effect of numerous social policies, regulations, monetary policies, incentive structures, lack of educational reform (and the list goes on and on) that takes a toll on our economic body.

If government is small relative to the economy, then incremental changes in its policies have a lesser effect than when the government is large and its policies pervasive.

The coming Third Industrial Revolution requires a profound realignment and restructuring of the incentive systems built into our society. We are talking about a technological revolution that in its compound effects will accelerate change to such an extent that we will see as much change in the next 10 to 20 years as we saw all of last century. Suggesting that one employment- or growth-reducing policy or another only makes a small difference and is worth the price we’ll pay is a flippant dismissal of the dynamics of the situation we face. These things have consequences.

Jeremy Grantham in his recent quarterly letter looks at the incremental effect of a lower growth rate. He tells us that the remarkably steady 3.3% US growth rate from 1880 to 1980 multiplied income 26 times over that century, that the 2.8% average growth from 1980 to 2000 would compound income 16 times over a period of a century, but that the 1.4% rate experienced over the past 13 years would multiply income by just 4 times over a century.

How Do You Spell Assume?

In the same report mentioned at the beginning of this letter, the CBO gave us its economic and budget outlook for 2014 to 2024. They projected GDP growth of 3.1% this year and 3.4% in 2015 and 2016.

But growth, according to the CBO, will fall to 2.7% in 2017 and continue to slow “to a pace that is well below the average seen over the past several decades,” largely because of slower growth in the labor force due to the aging population and mild inflation (under 2.0%) for the next several years.

How significant is this slowing? The CBO estimates if the economy grows just one-tenth of a percentage point slower each year for 10 years, the cumulative deficit will be $311 billion greater than the $7.9 trillion it is now projecting. That 0.5% less GDP growth per year that Krugman expects would therefore translate into another $1.5 trillion added to the deficit that would have to be dealt with either through reduced spending or increased taxes. That amount is just slightly less than 10% of our current GDP. I think that is significant. But that’s just me, the deficit worrywart.

I agree with the conclusion of Ezra Klein (if not his general thesis), writing in Bloomberg on February 6:

Policies don’t exist in vacuums. By untying the link between employment and health care, the Affordable Care Act reduces the incentive to work. But there are ways to increase incentives to work without making people dependent on their jobs for health insurance. We can help people without taking away their health care.

It’s all connected: healthcare, financial regulation, technological transformation, energy policy, foreign policy, trade policy, immigration, tax reform (and the list goes on and on and on). Everything contributes to the environment for business and economic activity; and when the environment is good, that translates into jobs. It is becoming ever more vitally important to focus on how our policies across the board connect and to see them as parts of a whole rather than in a simplistic one-off manner. Does a policy not only allow us as a society to behave in a more responsible manner but also allow us to grow our economy and create jobs? If it doesn’t do both, then it’s back to the drawing board.

I’ll finish with one final chart (courtesy of my friend Philippa Dunne at The Liscio Report). This is a chart of new businesses being created. New businesses are the true engine of economic growth and job creation. Policy makers need to think about this chart with every decision they make. They need to determine why the trend is clearly down and how to reverse it.

Obamacare – for later reference

The purpose of this post is to record my experience of ACA as it occurs.

This letter indicates that 9 of 11 currently existing Highmark health insurance policies (including mine) in the state of PA are being cancelled as a result of Obamacare.  Mine is good through 2014.

ins

I called to find out what is the deal.  Abby told me that #1) I will be receiving ~10% increase in premium for existing plan starting Dec 1, #2) the plan replacing mine will cost significantly more, but she didn’t have a number, and #3) lots of plans are cancelled.

So, NO, you can’t keep your insurance if you like it.  There’s a lot of back-patting going on about the number of people who are looking at healthcare.gov (and not seeing anything but a crash screen), with the assumption that these are all uninsured people clamoring for a policy.  I wonder how many of them are checking because their plan has been cancelled, like me?  Why haven’t we heard a PEEP about this on the news?

I will update this post if I see anything about this anywhere, and also once I find out how much more the new insurance is going to cost.

update 10/3/13 12:30PM:  Got a login name and password.  But can’t log in yet.  It’s a start!

update 10/4/13 10AM:  Still can’t log in.  And now this from ZeroHedge.  I wonder if it is true that so few people are actually signing up.  Called for assistance.  The woman on the phone told me the system is probably overwhelmed and to try again when it wasn’t so overloaded.  That’s helpful.  1PM: Logged in.  Filled out “application” and digitally signed it.  It sent me back to the beginning of the “application” again.  You can’t check pricing without giving all the details on all the people who will be covered, including how they are all related and everyone’s SSN.

update 10/5/13: Logged in, completed application repeatedly and it finally took it.  Then the system asked for verification of my identity so I uploaded a copy of my driver’s license.

update 10/6/13:  Got a notice via email from the system (the email basically just said, you have a notice).  Did not have time to work on it today.

Update 10/7/13 9AM:  Now can’t log in again.  Still yet to see any plans or pricing.  One week and counting.  Maybe when the shutdown ends.  LOL!  Finally got logged in, looked at notice.  They are asking for me to upload my DL.  Which I already did.

Update 10/8/13 7:30AM:  System is down for scheduled maintenance.  It says try again at 10AM.  Tried a bunch more times yesterday and could not get past the screen that keeps saying I have a notice.  After I download the same notice again, it logs me out.  So when I log back in then it says I have a notice.  This has stopped being entertaining and is now moving into annoying.  11AM:  Gave them an extra hour.  Now getting the “we have a lot of visitors on this site right now” message again.  OK, logged in.  Same notice again.  Now it is making me start the application all over AGAIN.  OH, but it won’t save and continue now.  8PM:  never got back in all day.  Checked Highmark website and found some information.  Looks like premiums are going to be about double for me, but I will need to spend quite a bit of time on it to determine what the costs really are, for the premiums and deductibles.

Update 10/9/13 9AM:  First time that the site has opened properly, gone to login page on first try, logged in properly, and then to My profile page.  Still has the same notice.  Downloaded it again.  Clicked on continue application.  It made me start all over AGAIN.  This time it completed the application.  Uploaded DL again.  It says that it will send me a notice once my identity has been verified.  2PM:  No email but checked website anyway.  On my profile it shows identity verification pending.  Same notice shows up again dated 10/5/13 that I have opened at least 1/2 dozen times.

Update 10/10/13 2PM:  Logged in OK but have to keep refreshing screen and clicking on my name, my profile, etc to get anything to show up.  Under my profile it says identity not verified and shows a link for verify identity now!  So I clicked the link and get a blank page.  No email yet.  Maybe my identity won’t be verified until the shutdown is over.  And the other 2 million people’s identities are verified.  3PM:  This time it says identity under review.  Same notice again dated 10/5.

Update 10/11/13 11AM:  Can’t log in today.  No email yet.  I see on a blog where someone says there is now a window shopping option.  I found it (not very easy to find, btw,) answered a couple of questions, and BAM, it told me there were 0 plans for me.  Oh, and all plans may not be available at this time due to technical issues.  How is anyone enrolling?  Or is anyone enrolling?

Update 10/14/13 11AM:  Still no email.  Logged in.  Same notice dated 10/5.  Same red message in My Profile that says Identity Verification Pending.  Went through the questions again to see prices, again zero plans for me.

Update 10/23/13:  Still no email.  Logged in.  Same notice dated 10/5.  Red message now says, Identity wasn’t verified.  Clicked the link, and it went to Sorry, We Can’t Find That Page on Healthcare.gov, oh, and logged me out.  Logged back in.  Application now says that it is incomplete again.  Filled it all out AGAIN.  Went to upload verification.  Will not take the file.  They made it a little easier to see plans before buying, oh, no, I was wrong, not easier.  And, yep, still zero plans for me.

Update 10/24/13:  Check this out.  From Market Ticker.  Well, now we know the costs.  Ball park anyway.

Update 10/29/13:  People are starting to catch on about cancelled policies.  From ZeroHedge.  “Obama’s promises that individuals would be able to keep their existing healthcare plans following the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. The truth, as NBC reports, is they can’t but what’s worse is that Obama knew as early as July 2010 that 40 to 67 percent of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And that’s not all: since the 14 millions consumers who buy their insurance individually will be forced into comparable plans, they are all set to experience a “sticker shock” when “opting” for the mandatory alternatives.”

And now from Greg Mankiw:  President Obama is getting heat over his often repeated claim that, under his healthcare reform, “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”  It is clear now that for millions of Americans, particularly those who participated in the individual insurance market, that is simply not true.

And just now, a wonderful summary from Andrew Sullivan.  THANK YOU!

The opposing argument is summed up as, yes, your plan is cancelled, but the new one is better, even if it costs more, and all the reporting about cost is lazy and not accurate anyway.  These people always use stupid analogies, so here’s one right back at ya:  My 80 year old dad needed a new cell phone.  He had an old flip phone, call and text only.  They sold him an iPhone.  It costs a lot more and does a lot more.  He wants his old phone back.  He has learned how to use the iPhone, and he STILL wants his old phone back.  Who are we to judge?  Here’s one from Prospect.

11/1/13: Well it appears that there are a lot of bloggers out there quite happy to judge, and tell us that the insurance we had was not the insurance we liked and wanted to keep.  And there is a lot of denial, like this piece that basically states that large employer plans are (mostly) not required to change (right now).  What???  Warning, lots more qualifiers in there.  And what I really got out of that article was that 1) large employers have a looser standard, meaning the plans they can choose to buy will be cheaper, and 2) small employers are SOL just like us individual purchasers.  Screw the small guy.  I also have not seen any outrage over the waivers given to big businesses and unions so they can keep their plans that don’t meet the new standard.

11/4/13:  Obama promises the website will work by Thanksgiving.  I’ll try again after that.  In the meantime I am seeing articles popping up about the pitfalls built into this law.  Here’s one from Peter Schiff, who is a finance guy.  lambert has a whole page of his blog dedicated to it.

11/12/13:  Best article yet.  Data based.  Thank you, Michael Olenick.  Why do people still think this is a Repbulican vs. Democrat issue?  It is a humans vs. corporations issue.  Lori Gottleib is taking a beating for this article.  I totally sympathize with her.  And those bashing her appear (here, here to care more about defending their partisan position than seeking any kind of truth.  Her final result may be different than what she has found out so far, but the whole system is a disaster in a lot of ways.  How does screwing over people who are moderately successful lead to financial success?  How are these self employed types ever expected to maybe make a successful startup?  It was bad enough before.  But I think there are people out there who, like me, are not all that interested in the R said, D said game.  Like Rick Moran.

11/19/13:  I will try the site again in January or so.  Meantime, here’s how Obamacare will do to Obama what it is doing to America.  And here is another way that it is not really helping people, but only corporations.

11/20/13:  This post describes how health care is not, an cannot under Obamacare or even if it is just plain repealed, be anything approaching a free market.  Sorry for that horrible sentence.

Business Uncertainty

So this post tries to equate the uncertainty associated with Fed decisions to other types of business and economic uncertainty.

The reason the Fed has an announcement is because the decisions are uncertain.  It’s almost definitional.  Anyway, traders and others in the business who were upset with the seeming inconsistency should get over it, blogger is correct.

However, this is unrelated to other types of business uncertainty that are created by the government, and which should not occur.  For instance, when the government bailed out financial (and other) firms, it created an uneven playing field.  If you were a competitor to those companies, would you try to hold off on investments at that point?  I would.

Sorry to bring it up, but Obamacare is another really huge uncertainty.  No one really understands it, or what is required, or how much it will cost.  What employers do know is that if they add employees, it will end up costing a lot more than the current hourly rate.  For me personally, I don’t know if I will be able to keep my individually purchased plan, or if it will be cancelled, or if its price will change (i.e. double?).  And I will only have until “early 2014,” according to Highmark, to decide whether to keep my plan or move to one of the exchange plans.  Because then the enrollment period is over (for the year?  Until I have a “life event”?  who knows???).  And it may be that my plan is no longer allowed, because it is a catastrophic care, high deductible plan.

At any rate, in my opinion, there is unacceptable uncertainty, and it currently exists in the form of unequally applied or unfair and unbalanced, or unknown and unknowable rule of law.