EPIC is not trying to stop the government from using this system -- they are trying to get information about the system, presumably so that they can decide whether to try to rein in the system (via political or judicial means) to protect civil rights. Why oppose that, indeed?
DoofusOfDeath and AHuxley make good points as well. Some modern advocacy groups (like the Cato Institute) claim that open immigration can coexist with a welfare state, but even the studies they write admit that low-skilled immigrants consume more social spending than they pay in taxes, that welfare spending does not go down due to higher levels of immigration[1], and that working-class citizens are the hardest hit due to open immigration policies.
[1]- Unsurprisingly, political leanings explain most of the differences in welfare spending between US states, and Cato's study this year did not try to control for that at all. Illegal immigrants and non-permanent aliens are barred from collecting almost any kind of welfare. Even permanent residents are barred from collecting most welfare for five years. Naturalized citizens, of course, can collect the same kinds of welfare that other citizens can collect -- but these are typically the most motivated and skilled immigrants, and have less need of wealth transfers.
With no borders, when you break the laws of the City of Entrope, the City of Entrope Police will hunt you down to the end of the earth if the mayor tells them to. There is no reason for them to stop short of that. Does that sound good to you?
With no political borders, the only possibly stable equilibria are anarchy and uniform world government, and I am deeply skeptical that either would actually be stable. Which one of those do you prefer?
Bless your heart, CaptainEuphemism: I know you are not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I will spell out why clueful people still call them illegal immigrants rather than "undocumented" immigrants and reserve "unaccompanied minor" for kids who fly on planes without their parents.
Entering the US other than in a time and place authorized by immigration officers is punishable by up to six months in jail under 8 USC 1325, as is using forged paperwork to enter. However, in most cases, it does not make sense to lock someone up -- and have US taxpayers pay their room and board -- for any longer than necessary, so we deport them quickly rather than sending them to prison and *then* deporting them.
Illegal immigrants (or unauthorized aliens, if you prefer the statutory term) get a "free ride" home if the executive branch thinks they are likely to break the law further by trying to stay after the final order of removal. The Immigration and Nationality Act is written as if Congress assumed illegal immigrants would -- for some unfathomable reason -- pay their own way out of the country after getting that final order of removal.
I'll cut you a deal, AC: Microsoft gets a new allotment of H-1B visa sponsorships if they promise to only use them to bring workers who have jobs with Microsoft subsidiaries (as of some fixed day in the past) to the US, and consent to meaningful oversight to ensure they keep that promise. If they don't want to make that promise, I will infer they mostly want to fire people with decent-paying jobs (which I hear is the usual case in Finland, especially for tech workers) in favor of low-paid, almost captive labor.
On the flip side, if/when those college-educated people decide to have kids, they will find that having family nearby is a huge help. Roughly half of the college-educated parents in my generation (out of those I know well) moved to be near their parents specifically to make childcare easier. This often means a bit of career back-tracking, as they come up to speed in a different area of their field, or change to a significantly different industry.
My questions are pertinent because they show that health insurance, like the buildings you mention, are chosen and paid for by the employer, and that the employer does and should have correspondingly broad freedom to choose the parameters of what they pay for. wickerprints made the frivolous argument that when health insurance is part of the employee's compensation package, the employer should have no say in what the insurance covers, and my questions were meant to rebut that. If I wanted to argue here against government meddling, I would take a quite different tack.
Thanks for the correction -- what I had learned (and said) applies to biologically inert IUDs, which are no longer used in the US or Canada. I stopped going to church 20-some years ago, so I am not entirely up to date on these things.
If you don't want religious views to influence society, move to China or somewhere else that effectively outlaws religious practice. Otherwise, expect others to think you are a loon for comparing an adult's religious beliefs to a two-year-old's security blanket, and an outright nutcase for calling that comparison "a very accurate view of a theological view on religion". (I say this as a non-evangelical atheist -- I am no fan of religion, but I respect people who make sacrifices[1] for their religious beliefs and try to judge/criticize each belief and practice on its own merits, rather than dismissing the whole edifice as unworthy of human belief.)
[1]- To be clear, I mean forgone benefits, extra effort, and the like, not ritual sacrifices. I think most people would take my meaning, but sometimes it is better to say these things directly.
Your exception swallows your rule. Insurance companies do not decide what to offer in many cases -- they may only decide what to cover for high-end, elective or other (usually less-used) categories of treatments. If you look at what is required by your state's EHB benchmark, you will probably be surprised how much insurers are required to cover. For example, in Virginia, I cannot opt out of coverage for "Over the counter drugs; drugs used mainly for cosmetic purposes; Drugs for weight loss; Stop smoking aids, Nutritional and/or dietary supplements", or even limit that coverage to generics -- every QHP in the state must cover even specialty drugs in those categories, with no limit. If I think chiropractic (chiropractice? chiropraxis?) is a crock, that does not matter -- my insurance must cover up to 30 visits a year.
On the other end, once the PPACA's tax on "Cadillac plans" kicks in, you can expect more expansive plans to start dropping off the market.
Who picks the health insurance company? Who selects which of the many plan options offered by that company are available to employees? Who writes the check to the insurer? Can you pay the same amount for the same plan if you buy it on your own? Have you ever heard of self-insuring companies?
The boat sailed long ago on employer-provided health insurance. Your tilting at windmills over semantics will not change that.
Health insurance companies have actuarial evidence just as strong as auto insurance companies do. The only real difference is that governments haven't (yet) told auto insurance companies that they must provide subsidies from some specific groups to others.
The only way you get a 9% per annum failure rate for oral contraceptives is if you don't take them. If taken correctly, they are more than 99% effective over a year. (Don't believe me? Ask these people.)
But hey, if laws are okay just because they make good policy, let us continue. A well-regulated Militia, being essential to the security of a free State, every adult citizen should be required to buy a pistol, a long gun, and keep in practice with both; if they do not pass an annual marksmanship test, they owe a shared responsibility tax. You agree that this is well within the federal government's power, right?
As a matter of fact, HHS (the Federal Department of Health and Human Services) *has* issued regulations specifying which medicines (and other forms of treatment) insurers must cover through standard individual, exchange and small group health plans: every "Qualified Health Plan" must cover what PPACA calls "Essential Health Benefits". The mandate for larger employers to cover these has famously been delayed a few times, but might be enforced at some point, if the government can figure out how to implement and pay for a verification or enforcement system. If an individual does not have a qualified health plan, and does not meet the statutory exemptions, that individual owes the individual shared penalty mandate responsibility payment, or whatever it is being called this month.
That "may" account for about half of private sector employment in the US, and "maybe" 90% of private sector employees will get fired when they show up for work tomorrow, because they work in an at-will state or don't have a long-term employment contract. But just as most employers will not do that, most small employers do not have strongly held religious convictions about abortifacients being included in a comprehensive health insurance plan that the company pays for (in all or part) to cover its employees. The potential effect is not nearly as large as you make it out to be.
Which details proved it incorrect? According to standard pro-life religious doctrine, an IUD induces abortion by preventing the implantation of an embryo. You might disagree with that doctrine, but your disagreement is irrelevant to the applicable statutory test.
Congress also chose not to exempt the PPACA -- or the regulations carrying it into effect, which is the specific status of the contraceptive mandate in this case -- from the RFRA, which they could have tried to do. (They probably would have lost the votes to make it law if they did try that, or perhaps they consciously chose to protect the rights of religious objectors. Whatever the reason, because Congress did not include such an exemption, the RFRA binds the PPACA and the regulations that implement it.)
You failed Econ 101, didn't you? There is an awful lot of hydrocarbon fuel in the ground, but it still costs more than $100/barrel to buy it. Abundant does not mean cheap, and that $100/barrel doesn't cover negative externalities (which are addressed by, say, European-style gasoline/petrol taxes that account for the difference in end-user cost relative to the US).
In what way is "energy payback time" a useful measure by itself? If you argued that it was somehow useful, maybe I could respect your argument, but instead you take it for granted as worth talking about without rebutting my earlier point that it ignores both financial and other very real costs.
Such a focus on one small portion of the whole-lifecycle cost (in the general sense of "cost", including things like opportunity cost as well as chopped-up birds and kilo-backyards made ugly, rather than just "electricity in versus electricity out") is fundamentally dishonest -- it ignores the very real costs of everything else that goes into using a thing. If considering those other costs makes me a skeptic, I am glad to be one. I certainly would not want to promote a technology based on such a blinkered view of its cost/benefit tradeoffs.
Or maybe we just applied a sensible reading of "energy payback time" -- to wit, the time it takes for the energy output to pay off the total investment in the equipment -- rather than the stupidly narrow jargon that some people use, which pretends that human labor, raw materials, operational risks, and everything except electricity have negligible cost.
If the analysis was in terms of "environmental resources used", how many months does it take before the wind turbine produces enough steel, rare earths, and other raw materials to let us produce an identical turbine?
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And I wish you luck in learning to read more than the first sentence of a comment before you fire off an utterly wrong response to it, you moron.
EPIC is not trying to stop the government from using this system -- they are trying to get information about the system, presumably so that they can decide whether to try to rein in the system (via political or judicial means) to protect civil rights. Why oppose that, indeed?
DoofusOfDeath and AHuxley make good points as well. Some modern advocacy groups (like the Cato Institute) claim that open immigration can coexist with a welfare state, but even the studies they write admit that low-skilled immigrants consume more social spending than they pay in taxes, that welfare spending does not go down due to higher levels of immigration[1], and that working-class citizens are the hardest hit due to open immigration policies.
[1]- Unsurprisingly, political leanings explain most of the differences in welfare spending between US states, and Cato's study this year did not try to control for that at all. Illegal immigrants and non-permanent aliens are barred from collecting almost any kind of welfare. Even permanent residents are barred from collecting most welfare for five years. Naturalized citizens, of course, can collect the same kinds of welfare that other citizens can collect -- but these are typically the most motivated and skilled immigrants, and have less need of wealth transfers.
With no borders, when you break the laws of the City of Entrope, the City of Entrope Police will hunt you down to the end of the earth if the mayor tells them to. There is no reason for them to stop short of that. Does that sound good to you?
With no political borders, the only possibly stable equilibria are anarchy and uniform world government, and I am deeply skeptical that either would actually be stable. Which one of those do you prefer?
Bless your heart, CaptainEuphemism: I know you are not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I will spell out why clueful people still call them illegal immigrants rather than "undocumented" immigrants and reserve "unaccompanied minor" for kids who fly on planes without their parents.
Entering the US other than in a time and place authorized by immigration officers is punishable by up to six months in jail under 8 USC 1325, as is using forged paperwork to enter. However, in most cases, it does not make sense to lock someone up -- and have US taxpayers pay their room and board -- for any longer than necessary, so we deport them quickly rather than sending them to prison and *then* deporting them.
Illegal immigrants (or unauthorized aliens, if you prefer the statutory term) get a "free ride" home if the executive branch thinks they are likely to break the law further by trying to stay after the final order of removal. The Immigration and Nationality Act is written as if Congress assumed illegal immigrants would -- for some unfathomable reason -- pay their own way out of the country after getting that final order of removal.
I'll cut you a deal, AC: Microsoft gets a new allotment of H-1B visa sponsorships if they promise to only use them to bring workers who have jobs with Microsoft subsidiaries (as of some fixed day in the past) to the US, and consent to meaningful oversight to ensure they keep that promise. If they don't want to make that promise, I will infer they mostly want to fire people with decent-paying jobs (which I hear is the usual case in Finland, especially for tech workers) in favor of low-paid, almost captive labor.
On the flip side, if/when those college-educated people decide to have kids, they will find that having family nearby is a huge help. Roughly half of the college-educated parents in my generation (out of those I know well) moved to be near their parents specifically to make childcare easier. This often means a bit of career back-tracking, as they come up to speed in a different area of their field, or change to a significantly different industry.
It's called humor, but you're apparently too square to have heard of that either.
It's called the Dormant Minting Clause. But you probably haven't heard of it...
My questions are pertinent because they show that health insurance, like the buildings you mention, are chosen and paid for by the employer, and that the employer does and should have correspondingly broad freedom to choose the parameters of what they pay for. wickerprints made the frivolous argument that when health insurance is part of the employee's compensation package, the employer should have no say in what the insurance covers, and my questions were meant to rebut that. If I wanted to argue here against government meddling, I would take a quite different tack.
Thanks for the correction -- what I had learned (and said) applies to biologically inert IUDs, which are no longer used in the US or Canada. I stopped going to church 20-some years ago, so I am not entirely up to date on these things.
If you don't want religious views to influence society, move to China or somewhere else that effectively outlaws religious practice. Otherwise, expect others to think you are a loon for comparing an adult's religious beliefs to a two-year-old's security blanket, and an outright nutcase for calling that comparison "a very accurate view of a theological view on religion". (I say this as a non-evangelical atheist -- I am no fan of religion, but I respect people who make sacrifices[1] for their religious beliefs and try to judge/criticize each belief and practice on its own merits, rather than dismissing the whole edifice as unworthy of human belief.)
[1]- To be clear, I mean forgone benefits, extra effort, and the like, not ritual sacrifices. I think most people would take my meaning, but sometimes it is better to say these things directly.
Your exception swallows your rule. Insurance companies do not decide what to offer in many cases -- they may only decide what to cover for high-end, elective or other (usually less-used) categories of treatments. If you look at what is required by your state's EHB benchmark, you will probably be surprised how much insurers are required to cover. For example, in Virginia, I cannot opt out of coverage for "Over the counter drugs; drugs used mainly for cosmetic purposes; Drugs for weight loss; Stop smoking aids, Nutritional and/or dietary supplements", or even limit that coverage to generics -- every QHP in the state must cover even specialty drugs in those categories, with no limit. If I think chiropractic (chiropractice? chiropraxis?) is a crock, that does not matter -- my insurance must cover up to 30 visits a year.
On the other end, once the PPACA's tax on "Cadillac plans" kicks in, you can expect more expansive plans to start dropping off the market.
Who picks the health insurance company? Who selects which of the many plan options offered by that company are available to employees? Who writes the check to the insurer? Can you pay the same amount for the same plan if you buy it on your own? Have you ever heard of self-insuring companies?
The boat sailed long ago on employer-provided health insurance. Your tilting at windmills over semantics will not change that.
Health insurance companies have actuarial evidence just as strong as auto insurance companies do. The only real difference is that governments haven't (yet) told auto insurance companies that they must provide subsidies from some specific groups to others.
The only way you get a 9% per annum failure rate for oral contraceptives is if you don't take them. If taken correctly, they are more than 99% effective over a year. (Don't believe me? Ask these people.)
But hey, if laws are okay just because they make good policy, let us continue. A well-regulated Militia, being essential to the security of a free State, every adult citizen should be required to buy a pistol, a long gun, and keep in practice with both; if they do not pass an annual marksmanship test, they owe a shared responsibility tax. You agree that this is well within the federal government's power, right?
As a matter of fact, HHS (the Federal Department of Health and Human Services) *has* issued regulations specifying which medicines (and other forms of treatment) insurers must cover through standard individual, exchange and small group health plans: every "Qualified Health Plan" must cover what PPACA calls "Essential Health Benefits". The mandate for larger employers to cover these has famously been delayed a few times, but might be enforced at some point, if the government can figure out how to implement and pay for a verification or enforcement system. If an individual does not have a qualified health plan, and does not meet the statutory exemptions, that individual owes the individual shared penalty mandate responsibility payment, or whatever it is being called this month.
That "may" account for about half of private sector employment in the US, and "maybe" 90% of private sector employees will get fired when they show up for work tomorrow, because they work in an at-will state or don't have a long-term employment contract. But just as most employers will not do that, most small employers do not have strongly held religious convictions about abortifacients being included in a comprehensive health insurance plan that the company pays for (in all or part) to cover its employees. The potential effect is not nearly as large as you make it out to be.
Which details proved it incorrect? According to standard pro-life religious doctrine, an IUD induces abortion by preventing the implantation of an embryo. You might disagree with that doctrine, but your disagreement is irrelevant to the applicable statutory test.
Congress also chose not to exempt the PPACA -- or the regulations carrying it into effect, which is the specific status of the contraceptive mandate in this case -- from the RFRA, which they could have tried to do. (They probably would have lost the votes to make it law if they did try that, or perhaps they consciously chose to protect the rights of religious objectors. Whatever the reason, because Congress did not include such an exemption, the RFRA binds the PPACA and the regulations that implement it.)
You failed Econ 101, didn't you? There is an awful lot of hydrocarbon fuel in the ground, but it still costs more than $100/barrel to buy it. Abundant does not mean cheap, and that $100/barrel doesn't cover negative externalities (which are addressed by, say, European-style gasoline/petrol taxes that account for the difference in end-user cost relative to the US).
In what way is "energy payback time" a useful measure by itself? If you argued that it was somehow useful, maybe I could respect your argument, but instead you take it for granted as worth talking about without rebutting my earlier point that it ignores both financial and other very real costs.
Note to self: Assuming that thaylin means what s/he types is a bad idea.
Note to thaylin: Don't blame others when they make that assumption.
Such a focus on one small portion of the whole-lifecycle cost (in the general sense of "cost", including things like opportunity cost as well as chopped-up birds and kilo-backyards made ugly, rather than just "electricity in versus electricity out") is fundamentally dishonest -- it ignores the very real costs of everything else that goes into using a thing. If considering those other costs makes me a skeptic, I am glad to be one. I certainly would not want to promote a technology based on such a blinkered view of its cost/benefit tradeoffs.
Or maybe we just applied a sensible reading of "energy payback time" -- to wit, the time it takes for the energy output to pay off the total investment in the equipment -- rather than the stupidly narrow jargon that some people use, which pretends that human labor, raw materials, operational risks, and everything except electricity have negligible cost.
If the analysis was in terms of "environmental resources used", how many months does it take before the wind turbine produces enough steel, rare earths, and other raw materials to let us produce an identical turbine?