Moses knows his business
Amen, indeed.
I've wondered this for awhile and James Capretta wonders too.
ObamaCare’s architects were always ambivalent about the mandate. They knew compulsion was necessary to make their system work — but, fearing a backlash, opted for a fairly weak penalty for those who didn’t obey. Oops: They wound up with a mandate that still provokes resentment, yet probably won’t work.
The US Supreme Court weakened the mandate even as it was saving ObamaCare. The law’s authors hoped that the mandate would create the perception that insurance enrollment is now obligatory, but the high court made it clear that Congress has no authority to institute such a requirement. The justices ruled that the mandate could stand only as an optional tax, not as a fine for noncompliance.
So you’re not breaking the law by not buying (overpriced) ObamaCare-compliant insurance; you’re just making the legal choice to pay the tax instead.
So, for instance, a 31-year-old single man making $30,000 in Columbus, Ohio faces a tax of $198.50, more than $2,000 less than the cheapest option in Ohio’s ObamaCare exchange, even including his taxpayer-funded subsidy. For a 36-year-old San Diego woman making $40,000, the tax is $298.50, or nearly $2,400 less than the cheapest policy on the California exchange. She’s not eligible for a subsidy.
ObamaCare can’t work if the young and healthy don’t sign up in large numbers — yet the law creates a clear incentive for them to opt out.
There’s more: The law also guarantees that you can always choose to buy during the next annual enrollment period — so if you fall seriously ill and find that ObamaCare has become a better investment, you can buy it then.
The ObamaCare law thus made insurance a less valuable product for most people, even as it pushed up the cost of buying it.
Posted by Pauli at 1/23/2014 05:26:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Democratcare, James Capretta, obamacare, Obamanomics, stupidity
Here's something from Dante for you greedy bastards.
I actually found this on a search for Boethius, strangely enough. Fruits and nuts are good for you, by the way.
Posted by Pauli at 1/22/2014 10:07:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Boethius, Dante, greed, Pluto, scholarship
Recently, in concert with promoting a possible future book deal on the subject, Rod Dreher has been treating us to the myriad benefits of all things Dante, including his miraculous healing in mysterious ways not yet specified from a persistent, medically diagnosed case of viral mononucleosis, the "kissing disease".
This is heady news, so following this revelation the EQE laboratories have been working night and day to uncover other benefits of reading Dante that Mr. Dreher in his current ecstatic state might understandably neglect to blog himself:
Posted by Keith at 1/20/2014 09:12:00 PM 34 comments
Labels: cure-alls, Dante, Danteland, obsessions, Rod Dreher
Here's the funniest thing I read today. The title says everything: Landmark 'Add Health' Sexuality Survey May Have Been Foiled by Teens Joking About Being Gay. Excerpt:
A likelier scenario is the "immature jokes" hypothesis, Savin-Williams argues: Namely, that the teens thought it would be funny if they told researchers they were homosexual or bisexual.
Other signs suggest the teens were having a joke at the expense of the surveyors.
"We should have known something was amiss," Savin-Williams said. "One clue was that most of the kids who first claimed to have artificial limbs (in the physical-health assessment) miraculously regrew arms and legs when researchers came back to interview them."
Posted by Pauli at 1/20/2014 11:48:00 AM 3 comments
Labels: critical thinking, funny but serious, homosexuality, humor
Thirty somethings worth of some kind of rifle gun bullets....
My kids say this kind of stuff all the time. "I got a nuclear bomb missile gun with infinity firepower and a force field." But it doesn't bother me since none of them are 12 years old yet, let alone senators.
Was he trying to get a viral video? Spewing this kind of nonsense is one way.