Enough Is Enough -- MInot

The Minot Daily News is reporting:

2013 was a record-setting year for annual precipitation in the Minot area. In many years that would be welcome news for cropland, hayfields, rivers and sloughs. But a year of unprecedented precipitation throughout the region certainly has grabbed the attention of forecasters and weary residents still struggling to recover from devastating flooding in 2011.

Evidence of the effect of 2013's heavy precipitation can be seen throughout the Minot area. Water tables rose during the year. In places such as Rice Lake southwest of Minot, there was visible proof of aquifers reaching levels of saturation that exceeds recorded history. Many sloughs were full to overflowing at freeze-up. Excess water is seemingly everywhere, but what does it mean?

The reaction of most people who live in wetter than normal areas is that enough is enough. While it is much too early to tell what spring runoff will bring, each snowfall between now and the spring melt will be watched carefully and its moisture content closely evaluated. What is known is that whatever amount of snow that falls in the weeks and months ahead will land on saturated ground.

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ObamaCare: Too Little Too Late

Finally, the mainstream media is reporting what bloggers have been reporting since the beginning. I remember ObamaCare was "sold" on the concern that 30 million Americans did not have health insurance. Now we learn that a lot of those 30 million wouldn't qualify for ObamaCare anyway. To qualify for ObamaCare one has to have "income" and many of the 30 million uninsured were uninsured for exactly that reason: no income.

It appears another 8 million who have lost their insurance due to ObamaCare will be added to the original 30 million uninsured, minus the 1.1 million who "might" be insured through the federal website and another 500,000 who "might" be insured through state exchanges. 30 + 8 - 2 = 36 million uninsured.

It would be "nice" if that was the extent of the debacle. Fiscal Times via The Week exposes how badly ObamaCare really is. We had to pass the bill to see what was in it.

Mandatory birth control for Catholic nuns is as good a soundbite as any for the craziness of ObamaCare. It took an Obama-appointed Supreme Court judge to "temporarily" stop that craziness. The White House has until Friday, this week to respond. It will be interesting to see how they spin this. Catholic nuns requiring birth control coverage.

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For the archives. Fiscal Times, again:

Now, younger consumers who will largely only see a doctor for an annual wellness check and perhaps an acute-issue clinic visit have to pay higher premiums for comprehensive coverage they don’t need, and won’t use. Most of them will have to accept high deductibles just to keep those skyrocketing premium costs within reach – which means they will have to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket anyway before they see any new benefit from comprehensive coverage.  It’s a bad deal for younger and healthier consumers, but the flood of cash is needed by insurers to cover the expenses of older and sicker Americans who will flood into the risk pools.

Based on enrollment figures already released from federal and state exchanges, the age distribution for enrollees in private-insurer plans skews too old, at least so far. Kentucky, where Obamacare advocates have claimed their greatest success, only has 24 percent of enrollments among those under 35 years of age compared to 39 percent above 55. In order to keep premiums from spiking again in 2015, the percentage for younger enrollees has to be close to 40 percent to ensure enough funds coming into the risk pools.

Needless to say, the White House is desperate to get younger Americans to provide that rather regressive wealth transfer.  Only 25 percent of the respondents [in a recent poll] are planning or leaning toward enrolling in private insurance plans, despite the fine that will be imposed for non-compliance. They can do math well enough to know that spending thousands of dollars on premiums and then more thousands on out-of-pocket deductibles for benefits they’re unlikely to access makes less sense than paying a few hundred dollars in fines and a cash price for the occasional clinic visit.

By the way, young, healthy millennials are not going to pay out-of-pocket for annual check-ups. Remember, the annual deductible must be met before insurance starts to kick in.