Never demand.
Matt Bruenig already wrote about this (now deleted) tweet from Paul Waldman, which was a response to one from Bernie Sanders… …and before typing any more, I must confess to feeling guilty about writing a second blog post (god knows there are probably more) about a tweet. But, onwards. As Bruenig writes, “The difference between Obamacare and AHCA is 24 million uninsured people while the difference between single-payer and Obamacare is 28 million uninsured people.” Obamacare, with all its omissions and cost-shifting, isn’t innocent of monstrousness. There’s a point about political strategy… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just posted to my radio archive, with minimal delay! June 18, 2015 Trudy Lieberman, author of this article (behind a paywall, but subscribe to Harper’s, it’s excellent & cheap), on the pitfalls of Obamacare • Leah Gordon, author of From Power to Prejudice, on the transformation of the study of race in the U.S. from the structural/systemic to the individual/psychological
Fresh audio product, in quantity
Catching up on a major backlog of fresh audio product, just posted to my radio archives: September 18, 2014 Gilbert Achcar on the Middle Eastern landscape September 25, 2014 Mark Blyth on the Scottish independence referendum • Laleh Khalili on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency. October 23, 2014 [back after fundraising hiatus] Ryan Grim (author of this article) on Gary Webb, crack, and the CIA • Jake Blumgart (author of this article) on a mini-Detroit on the outskirts of Philadelphia October 30, 2014 Kevin Alexander Gray, co-editor of Killing Trayvons, on racist police and vigilante violence • Trudy Lieberman on the snares of Obamacare November… Read More
More companies dropping health coverage, thanks to Obamacare
Back in 2011, I argued that Obamacare would lead employers to drop existing health insurance coverage and throw employees onto the mercies of the exchanges. (See this post and links therein.) Liberals, including no less than Paul Krugman, denied this. But it’s looking like it’s happening. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart, that paragon of the modern employer, is dropping coverage for 30,000 part-time employees. It joins Target, Home Depot, and UPS, who’ve already cut coverage. And, at the high end, the so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous insurance plans is also leading to… Read More
Some unions complain about Obamacare, discreetly
A friend of LBO’s sent this along—a letter from three unions to the Democratic Congressional leadership complaining about Obamacare. It was not meant to be public, though it got leaked and is making the rounds—though not vigorously enough. In an effort to speed up the circulation, I’m posting it here. The unions are worried that their multiemployer plans are going to take a hit, a fact that the Obama administration seems not to care about despite all that unions did for them, and that employers are going to cut back on full-time… Read More
Workers with crappy health coverage now facing none at all
My Facebook friend Lara Shepard-Blue, a union organizer in Western Massachusetts, just posted this grim bit of news: The contract covering 42,000 Stop & Shop workers in MA, CT and RI expired last night with no agreement. The problem is the company’s Obamacare-prompted proposal to eliminate medical insurance and prescription coverage for part-timers. Because caps on coverage aren’t allowed under Obamacare and the current plan for PTers has a $20K cap, they say the cost of coverage for part-timers will increase to the same cost as for full-timers when this part of… Read More
Yeah, lots of employers are going to evade health coverage
Back in the summer of 2011, McKinsey released results of a survey they’d done of employers showing that many would not offer health insurance coverage when Obamacare* takes full effect. The liberal establishment united in loud criticism of the consulting firm’s report—but it’s looking like they were right. I wrote up the original report (“Bye-bye employer health insurance”) and experienced some of the loud criticisms, prompting a follow-up (“McKinsey: more right than wrong”) based on reading the full survey, something that some of the critics, including apparently Paul Krugman, hadn’t done. Ah,… Read More
Heritage Foundation: severely truth-challenged
I usually shy away from mocking the right—it’s too easy, it’s overdone by liberals, and it’s often a gateway to apologetics for the Democrats. But this is a doozy. In an effort to prove that Obamacare is responsible for the recent weakening in the economic recovery, James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation presents this graph: Seems odd, doesn’t it, that the average of the first segment, January 2009–March 2010, is +67,600 a month when the graph is below 0 for almost the whole time? Well, yes it is. The actual average change in… Read More
McKinsey was mostly right (cont.)
When McKinsey released its survey showing that many employers were likely to drop coverage rather than comply with the mandates of Obamacare, there was a round of criticism from administration apologists saying the consultancy had gotten it all wrong. Even this august blog was hammered for credulously circulating corporate propaganda, or something like that, by reporting the study (Bye-bye employer health insurance) and declaring its findings “more right than wrong.” Paul Krugman, who is often critical of the Obama administration, nonetheless got into the act, criticizing McKinsey using some second-hand sources— thereby making it clear… Read More
McKinsey: more right than wrong
Administration apologists, from the White House official blog to Paul Krugman (“McKinseyGate”), have all lined up to denounce the McKinsey survey I wrote up here the other day (“Bye-bye employer health insurance”). McKinsey found that a large share of employers who now offer health insurance benefits will drop them once ObamaCare comes into effect in 2014. At first, McKinsey didn’t release the questions or the methodology, prompting reactions like Krugman’s: It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the study was embarrassingly bad — maybe it was a skewed sample, maybe the questions… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 