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How Will We Know If Obamacare Is a Success?

by ChandraPrado Posted on April 18, 2014

Mother Jones

Will Obamacare be a success? Ross Douthat thinks we should all lay down some firm guidelines and hold ourselves to them. Here are his:

For my own part, I’ll lay down this marker for the future: If, in 2023, the uninsured rate is where the C.B.O. currently projects or lower, health inflation’s five-year average is running below the post-World War II norm, and the trend in the age-adjusted mortality rate shows a positive alteration starting right about now, I will write a post (or send out a Singularity-wide transmission, maybe) entitled “I Was Wrong About Obamacare” — or, if he prefers, just “Ezra Klein Was Right.”

Let’s take these one by one. I’d say a reduction in the uninsured of 25 million is a pretty good metric. If, by 2023, the number is substantially below that, it would be a big hit to the law’s success. Getting people covered, after all, has always been the law’s primary goal. What’s more, I’d be surprised if more states don’t expand Medicaid and get more aggressive about setting up their own exchanges by 2023. At some point, after all, Republican hysteria about Obamacare just has to burn out. (Doesn’t it?)

On health inflation, I think running below the post-WWII average is a pretty aggressive standard. That would require health care inflation of about 1 percent above overall inflation. If we manage to keep it to around 2 percent, I’d call that a reasonable result.

But my biggest issue is with the age-adjusted mortality rate. I know this is a widely popular metric to point to on both left and right, but I think it’s a terrible one. Obamacare exclusively affects those under 65, and mortality just isn’t that high in this age group. Reduced mortality is a tiny signal buried in a huge amount of noise, and I very much doubt that we’ll see any kind of clear inflection point over the next few years.

So what to replace it with? I’m less sure about that. Maybe the TIE guys would like to weigh in. But this is a longtime hobbyhorse of mine. Medical care does people a ton of good even if it doesn’t save their lives. Being able to afford your asthma inhaler, or getting a hip replacement, or finding an antidepressant that works—these all make a huge difference in people’s lives. And that’s not even accounting for reduced financial strain (and bankruptcies) and lower stress levels that come from the mere knowledge that a doctor is available if you need one—even if you don’t have a life-threatening emergency that requires a trip to the ER.

In addition, I’d probably add a few things. Douthat doesn’t include any negative metrics, but critics have put forward a whole bunch of disaster scenarios they think Obamacare will be responsible for. It will get harder to see doctors. Pharmaceutical companies will stop innovating. Insurance companies will drop out of the exchanges. Premiums will skyrocket. Etc. Without diving into the weeds on all these possible apocalypses, they count as predictions. If, in 2023, we all have to wait months for a routine appointment, or we can’t get the meds we need because drug companies have gone out of business, then Obamacare is a failure regardless of what else it does. I don’t think these things will happen, but they’re surely on my list of metrics for judging the law’s success.

UPDATE: Whoops. It turns out that one of the TIE guys, Austin Frakt, has already weighed in on this. You can read his comments here.

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How Will We Know If Obamacare Is a Success?

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March Jobs Report Shows a Spring Pick-Up

by Ernest Ricafort Posted on April 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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The US economy added 192,000 jobs in March, according to new numbers released Friday by the Department of Labor (DoL). The unemployment rate remained steady at 6.7 percent.

The number of jobs created last month was an improvement on the more moderate job gains seen in recent months—113,000 in January, and 175,000 in February. And even those numbers were revised upwards in March by a total of 37,000 jobs.

There’s more good news. Six years after the financial crisis, private employers have finally regained all the jobs lost during the recession, and then some. The private sector lost 8.8 million jobs during the economic slump, and has since hired 8.9 million.

The portion of Americans who either had jobs or were looking for jobs—this is called the labor force participation rate—ticked up to 63.2 percent after a half-million Americans began looking for work again last month. And the number of long-term unemployed—those Americans who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more—has fallen by 837,000 since last year.

Economists predict that the positive March jobs numbers mean that the Federal Reserve, the US central bank that sets monetary policy, will likely continue to pull back on the massive economic stimulus measures it put into effect in September 2012.

Now for the sour news. The number of jobs added to the economy last month was still fewer than many economists had expected. “Everybody who said ‘ah we finally turned the corner, we’re going to be booming like crazy’—I think they’re going to have to hold off for a few months,” Austan Goolsbee, President Barack Obama’s former top economic adviser, said on CNBC Friday.

And the jobs gained last month are not necessarily good middle-class jobs. The professional services sector posted the largest gains in March, but of the 57,000 new jobs added, most were in temp work. Food services added 30,000 jobs. The healthcare sector took on 19,000 jobs, and construction added 19,000.

The disparities in unemployment by race changed little in March. The jobless rate was 5.8 percent for whites, 12.4 percent for blacks, 7.9 percent for Hispanics, and 5.4 percent for Asians.

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March Jobs Report Shows a Spring Pick-Up

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Are Corporations Hoarding Cash? It’s Complicated.

by ArdenCulbert Posted on March 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the newly launched—or relaunched—FiveThirtyEight.com, Ben Casselman updates us on the enormous mountains of cash that have been piling up in company treasuries ever since the recession ended:

One of the early narratives of the economic recovery was that companies were “hoarding” cash….The data backed up the story: The Federal Reserve in 2011 reported that American companies had more than $2 trillion stashed away in overflowing vaults.

Then the Fed revised its data. New figures released in early 2012, based on more complete tax filings, showed that American companies actually had close to half a trillion dollars less cash than previously thought….The revision didn’t just change the numbers—it undermined the whole narrative.

….It’s understandable that so many experts bought into the “cash on the sidelines” narrative. What’s less understandable is that they’re still buying into it. Despite the big revision, the corporate-cash narrative remains very much alive.

Hmmm. I think there’s a little more to it. It’s true that two years ago the Fed revised down its corporate cash estimate1 for the first quarter of 2012 from $2.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion. But even taking that into account, corporations have been increasing their cash holdings about 15 percent per year since 2008. In 2013 corporate cash increased another 12 percent. That’s a pretty steep increase.

Beyond that, David Cay Johnston estimates that when you count cash worldwide, not just domestically, American corporations are holding something like $7.9 trillion in liquid assets. He calculates that this number has grown six times faster than corporate revenues since 1994. “When liquid assets grow six times faster than revenues, it tells you that companies are hoarding cash, not investing or spending.”

Now, it’s true that the huge spike initially reported in 2011-12 was mostly illusory. But it’s not clear to me that this undermines the entire “cash hoarding” narrative. Even without that spike, corporate cash holdings have been growing strongly over the past decade. What’s more, corporate profits have been booming ever since the recession ended—without a correspondingly dramatic increase in capital expenditures.

There are plenty of other arguments floating around. If you remove the tech sector, the whole phenomenon looks less dramatic. Corporate debt has been increasing too thanks to ultra-low interest rates, which suggests that companies are simply making a rational decision to borrow rather than spend their own cash. Cash overseas is piling up because companies don’t want to repatriate it and pay the taxes that would be due. Etc.

In other words, it’s complicated. I think Casselman has a point that the Fed’s revision wasn’t very widely reported or acknowledged, but I’m not sure that’s quite as damning as he suggests. The corporate cash pile-up, though less startling than we thought in 2012, is still real. Probably.

1Actually, this is an estimate of “liquid assets.” We’re just using cash here as shorthand.

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Are Corporations Hoarding Cash? It’s Complicated.

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Paris bans cars, makes transit free to fight air pollution

by DominiqueSturdi Posted on March 17, 2014

Paris bans cars, makes transit free to fight air pollution

By

Evan Bench

Air pollution is about as romantic as wilted flowers, chapped lips, and corked wine, so the record-setting smog that has settled over the City of Love in the past few days is definitely dampening the mood.

Unseasonably warm weather has triggered unprecedented air pollution levels in Paris. Over the weekend, the city responded by offering free public transportation and bike sharing. (Similar measures were taken throughout nearby Belguim, which also reduced speed limits.) But that wasn’t enough to fix the problem, so Paris and 22 surrounding areas are taking more extreme steps, banning nearly half of vehicles from their roads.

Private cars and motorcycles with even registration numbers will be barred from the streets on Monday. Unless the air quality improves quickly and dramatically, odd registration numbers will be banned from the roads on Tuesday. Electric vehicles and hybrids will be exempted, as will any cars carrying at least three people. About 700 police officers will be stationed at checkpoints, handing out $31 (€22) fines to violators.

Agence France-Presse reports that Paris has tried the approach before:

Ecology Minister Philippe Martin said he understood the “difficulties, the irritation and even anger” over the move, adding: “But we just had to take this decision.”

Martin said similar measures in 1997 “had yielded results”, adding that he hoped that the number of vehicles on the roads would be “significantly lower” on Monday, without giving a figure.

Trains and buses will remain free while the car restrictions are in place, giving Parisians yet more public places where they can nuzzle and talk excitedly about government policies until the ugly smog burns off.


Source
Polluted Paris prepares for partial car ban, Agence France-Presse
Paris offers free public transport to reduce severe smog, BBC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Paris bans cars, makes transit free to fight air pollution

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The Latest Obamacare Extension Won’t Have Much of an Impact

by yiszkj53 Posted on March 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Adrianna McIntyre agrees that the optics and legality of allowing consumers to extend old health care policies is dodgy. However, she also thinks that its practical impact is pretty slight:

Senior officials reported that some 1.5 million people might be eligible for the latest administrative tweak to the Affordable Care Act, an extension of the “like it/keep it” fix that would permit individuals to maintain plans that don’t meet new coverage requirements through October 2017. The move has already been roundly criticized, but I’m inclined to believe the substantive policy impact will be small.

The thing about the individual market is that it’s volatile. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that about a third of those enrolled in nongroup plans exit within six months. Fewer than half remain after two years. This coverage is transitory for many, a bridge between employer-sponsored plans or other forms of insurance. Since the “fix” only applies to people maintaining these plans, the population eligible for the extension will dwindle over time.

There’s a fear that individuals who cling to old, less generous plans are healthier than those who already jumped to the exchanges. That might be true, but it also probably doesn’t matter much. CBO estimates that the exchange population will swell to 22 million by 2016 as people become more aware of coverage options and the penalty becomes more severe. The specter of adverse selection fades pretty fast when you set 1.5 million—a number that will erode over the life of the administrative fix—in that context.

Actually, according to research published in Health Affairs, only 17 percent of those with individual coverage keep it for more than 24 months. In other words, by the end of 2015, the number of people affected by this extension will be down to about 250,000 at most. That’s not enough to affect the overall operation of Obamacare very much, and it’s also a small enough number that pushback will be pretty slight by the time those remaining few folks are forced to switch to different plans. This is obviously what makes it politically attractive to the Obama administration.

Bottom line: it’s legally a little dodgy but practically of little consequence. Probably not something to get too worked up about.

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The Latest Obamacare Extension Won’t Have Much of an Impact

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Dave Camp’s Tax Reform Plan May Be DOA, But It Should Be Fun Anyway

by MonserrateDLZ Posted on February 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Speaking of Dave Camp’s tax reform plan, it’s out now. It may be DOA, but it’s out. In a nutshell, it reduces rates, reduces the number of tax brackets, and increases both the standard deduction and the child tax credit. As a result, many fewer people would have to file 1040 long forms. To make up for this, Camp proposes limiting or eliminating a raft of deductions and tax breaks. Here’s my favorite:

Preventing makers of violent video games from qualifying for the R&D tax credit.

Boo-yah! That’s the way to play culture war politics in a boring tax reform proposal. There are also references to “Wall Street tycoons”—not a phrase you normally hear from a Republican—and a proposal to end tax breaks that allow university presidents to live in mansions tax free. Populism!

Joking aside, I’ll give Camp credit for going after a long laundry list of very specific deductions. On the other hand, he also appears to finance his plan partly through an effective cut in the Earned Income Tax Credit. I can’t say that for sure without more details, but it sure looks that way on first inspection. The plan also “consolidates” higher education tax breaks, which might be a good idea, though it’s hard to tell without more details. If it’s just an excuse to reduce financial aid, it’s not so good.

There’s also a proposal for a small change to the mortgage interest deduction—a brave act even if it’s fairly paltry—and a proposal to partially end the carried interest loophole. Camp also proposes a 0.035 percent tax on big banks, which is probably a good idea. Camp repeals the AMT, which is a great idea, and funds it by eliminating the tax deduction for state and local taxes. This is a longtime favorite of conservatives because, as Camp says, “This deduction redistributes wealth to big-government, high-tax states from small-government, low-tax states.” In other words, it benefits blue states more than red states, so why not get rid of it?

He also wants to get rid of the NFL’s tax exemption. Sounds good to me.

Camp’s plan is long and includes upwards of a hundred specific tax deductions that he wants to reform or eliminate. There are enough caveats that it’s hard to tell exactly how far his proposals go, but again, kudos to him for making specific proposals at all. His plan may be DOA precisely because he was so specific, but kudos anyway. I’ll be interested in following the reaction as everyone figures out just whose ox would be gored by his various bullet points. Should be fun.

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Dave Camp’s Tax Reform Plan May Be DOA, But It Should Be Fun Anyway

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Is "House of Cards’" Most Principled New Character Also a War Criminal?

by FranD81tce Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Democratic congresswoman and war vet Jacqueline Sharp (played by Molly Parker) is one of the most sympathetic characters on the Netflix political drama House of Cards. In a series populated by dark, purely self-interested, and/or corrupt characters, Sharp is something of a refreshing outlier. She is smart and strong, particularly when in a room of cynical, powerful old men. She is generally a kind and upfront person. She demonstrates an aversion to unethical deal-making. And she isn’t a heartless mass-manipulator on the scale of Vice President Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey).

“I don’t think that this character is a sociopath. I think that she has a conscience,” Parker said of her character. “I think that she’s a principled woman in terms of her point of view, her perspective as a soldier.”

However likeable or principled she may be, could she also be the show’s first war criminal?

In the first episode of season two, Underwood informs Sharp that he wishes to have her succeed him as House Majority Whip. When she asks why he is so adamant, the morally bankrupt Underwood reveals that he picked her because of her “ruthless pragmatism” in wartime. He asks her about the number of missile strikes she ordered during the war, and how she ordered them knowing many innocent women and children would perish in the attacks. “I had orders to eliminate the enemy,” she says, rationalizing the civilian casualties. “I watched apartment buildings, entire villages, gone, like they were never there.”

Her actions clearly haunt her. In a subsequent episode, when she is in bed with her lover, she confesses in sorrow that she “killed a lot of people,” before she tells him to continue bringing her to climax.

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Wednesday Was Full of Good News for Obamacare. Here Are the Charts That Prove It.

by IngeborgTeague Posted on February 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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More Americans enrolled in Obamacare plans in January than expected, according to data released Wednesday by the Obama administration. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had expected to sign up 1,059,900 people last month. Instead, about 1.14 million people purchased health plans through the federal and state health insurance exchanges.

This is the first time since the uninsured started buying insurance on the exchanges in October that the administration has beaten a monthly enrollment goal. Here’s what that looks like, via Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post:

The January sign-up number is down from the 1.8 million people who enrolled in December, but that was expected, because many Americans wanted to sign up before the start of the new year. Since enrollment began, a total of 3.3 million Americans have signed up for health insurance through the exchanges.

There was also a slight uptick in the number of young adults signing up for coverage in January. A quarter of the Americans who have enrolled so far are young people, who tend to be healthier, and who the Obama administration needs to hold down insurance costs. That’s below the 40 percent target, but the trend is moving in the right direction.

The percentage of Americans who are uninsured hit a five-year low this month, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Sixteen percent of adults do not have health insurance, the lowest uninsured rate since 2009.

Take a look (via Gallup):

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Wednesday Was Full of Good News for Obamacare. Here Are the Charts That Prove It.

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Monarch Butterflies Can Survive the World’s Most Amazing Migration—But GMOs Are Wiping Them Out

by Michalak876 Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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The monarch butterfly is a magnificent and unique beast—the globe’s only butterfly species that embarks on an annual round-trip migration spanning thousands of miles, from the northern US and Canada to central Mexico. And monarchs aren’t just a gorgeous bug; they’re also pollinators, meaning they help keep land-based ecosystems humming. Their populations have been plunging for years, and the number of them hibernating in Mexico last year hit an all-time low, reports University of Minnesota ecologist Karen Oberhauser. Why? Here’s Oberhauser:

Tragically, much of their breeding habitat in this region the US and Canada has been lost to changing agricultural practices, primarily the exploding adoption of genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant crops in the late 20th and early 21st centuries … These crops allow post-emergence treatment with herbicides, and have resulted in the extermination of milkweed from agricultural habitats.

In a 2012 post, I teased out how crops engineered for herbicide tolerance wipe out milkweed, the monarch’s main source of food, and lead to the charismatic specie’s decline. And here’s the peer-reviewed paper, co-authored by Oberhauser, that documents the trend.

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Monarch Butterflies Can Survive the World’s Most Amazing Migration—But GMOs Are Wiping Them Out

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President Obama Finally Releases His Surveillance Reform Plan, and It’s Pretty Weak Tea

by DemetriusGallag Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama gave his big surveillance speech today, and it was pretty limited. Aside from some fairly vague promises about new oversight and greater transparency, here were his most important concrete proposals:

  1. The Director of National Intelligence will conduct an annual review of FISA court opinions with the aim of declassifying opinions that have “broad privacy concerns.”
  2. Obama will ask Congress to create a “panel of advocates” that will represent the public’s privacy interests in FISA cases.
  3. New restrictions will be placed on the use of “incidental” collection of surveillance of US persons in criminal cases.
  4. National Security Letters will remain secret, but secrecy won’t be indefinite unless the government demonstrates a “real need” to a judge. Companies receiving NSLs will be allowed to release broad reports about the number of requests they get.
  5. Bulk telephone records will continue to be collected. However, in the future the database can be queried only after getting FISA approval. The NSA will be allowed to perform only 2-hop chaining rather than the current 3-hop standard. A new group will investigate alternative approaches to the government itself holding the telephone database.
  6. Within some unspecified limits, there will be no more bugging of foreign leaders.

This is fairly weak tea. Nonetheless, I’m pretty certain that we wouldn’t have gotten even this much if it weren’t for Edward Snowden. This is why I support Snowden’s disclosures despite the fact that I’m not happy about every last thing he’s disclosed. Obama’s attempt to suggest that he would have done all this stuff even without Snowden’s disclosures strikes me as laughable.

You can read a full copy of the presidential directive accompanying Obama’s speech here.

UPDATE: I should be a little clearer about why I think this is weak tea. Of these items, only the first five concern domestic surveillance. #1 and #2 are pretty hazy, with the DNI apparently having full control over this new declassification regime and the public being represented in FISA cases only by a “panel of advocates,” a phrase that somehow strikes me as a bit weaselly. But we’ll see.

#3 is very important if the new restrictions are pretty tight. But that’s not clear yet.

#4 is nice, but doesn’t go very far. At a minimum, I’d like to see much tighter standards for issuing secret NSLs in the first place.

#5, if it’s implemented well, could be a genuine improvement. Records retention per se is something the government often mandates, and as long as the records are truly kept away from the intelligence community, accessible only via court order with an advocate aggressively arguing the public’s case, this is a useful reform.

Julian Sanchez tweets: “Initial verdict: A decent start, better than I expected, but we really need legislation to cement this, & the details will matter a lot.” That’s a little more optimistic than my initial verdict, but it’s probably fair. We really won’t be able to fully evaluate all this until we see what the detailed rules look like. Good intentions aren’t enough.

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President Obama Finally Releases His Surveillance Reform Plan, and It’s Pretty Weak Tea

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