Bloomberg Warns: ‘Price To Pay’ For Lawmakers Who Ignore Popular Opinion And Oppose Background Checks

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday and warned lawmakers in Washington that there would be a political price to pay if they vote against popular gun regulation proposals like universal background checks and a new assault weapons ban:

GREGORY: You made it very clear this week you’re paying attention to the vote in the Senate, in Congress, and you’re taking names. Will you target people, Republicans and Democrats, who do not support a weapons ban, an assault weapons ban, who do not vote for background checks — will you spend money, lots of money, to target them in 2014, in a midterm race?

BLOOMBERG: Well let me phrase it this way. I think I have a responsibility, and I think you and all of your viewers have responsibilities, to try and make this country safer for our families and for each other. And if I can do that by spending some money and taking the NRA from being the only voice to being one of the voices, so the public can really understand the issues, then I think my money would be well spent and I think I have an obligation to do that…If 90 percent of the public wants something and their representatives vote against that, common sense says they are going to have a price to pay for that.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Bloomberg has plans to spend $12 million to finance ads from his pro-gun regulation group Mayors Against Illegal Guns in 13 key states whose senators are thought to be on the fence over new legislation on an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.

The ads will begin airing this week, Bloomberg told Gregory, and will crescendo over the Easter break when most legislators host events back in their home districts.

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Obamacare Regs Obama Plans to Ignore

There’s a widespread refrain that insurance premiums in the small group and individual market are set to spike this fall, once the full complement of Obamacare regulations hit that market. The insurers have been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, inside think tanks, and the White House, quietly previewing their new rates. The hikes are substantial. There’s even a term for it in Washington: “rate shock”.

So what’s the Obama Administration to do? Most likely, phase in some of the regulations that are the biggest culprit of the premium surge. That means, letting some of the historically based underwriting remain in place for a time.

The easiest target is the statutory limit on pricing health insurance premiums with respect to a beneficiary’s age. This Obamacare provision (also known as the “age rating”) bars insurers from varying premiums between old and young enrollees by more than 3:1. So if a 25-year-old’s premium cost $500, than a 60-year-old’s premium can’t cost more than $1,500. At the time Obamacare passed, critics held that these regulations would spike premiums. That day is about to arrive.

Some think that the Obama team can’t suspend these regulatory provisions since they are hardwired into the law. But there is ample precedent where the administration took its own discretion to largely ignore implementation deadlines and otherwise tweak or delay key aspects of the statute.

For instance, the Obama team unilaterally decided to phase-in the guaranteed issue requirements of child-only policies, even though the law required this provision to be fully implemented by the fall of 2010. The administration delayed and then limited the W-2 reporting provisions for employers. These are just two examples.

To the degree that delaying implementation of the insurance market regulations will help insurance companies secure profits and ease the burden on consumers, there is likely to be little political opposition standing in the Administration’s way. Even AARP is likely to step aside. While delay of the age rating provisions will keep costs higher for seniors, the old peoples’ lobby is likely to be more focused on its bigger political goal: making sure Obamacare gets implemented smoothly.

All of these regulations, and especially the caps on insurance company margins (AKA the Medical Loss Ratio) have a more pervasive and longstanding effect than the just these near term price increases, as painful as those hikes will be. The combined effect of these regulations will make it harder for new insurance plans to enter the market. That means limiting competition and thwarting innovation in the kinds of insurance products that people will have access to.

The regulations raise the costs to insurers, while at the same time limiting their profitability. Since most new insurance plans see their profitability erode over time, to the degree that their profit margins are capped at the outset, and their costs driven higher, these provisions will make it nearly impossible for new plans to enter the market. The net effect will be to lock in the legacy insurance plans, handing the market the existing players.

What does that mean for you? If you like your insurance plan you will indeed be able to keep it. Maybe not the benefit package, but at least the provider. Because there won’t be many new firms entering the market.

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Major Networks Ignore News of Increased Costs of ObamaCare

For two nights in a row, NBC, ABC, and CBS have ignored a story that would damage the liberal narrative they are helping the White House to push. Two days ago, the Congressional Budget Office reported that it has revised its projections of the cost of ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies. The CBO now estimates that the subsidies, which are to be offered through exchanges beginning in 2014, will cost 29 percent more than the CBO initially projected in 2010. The projected 10-year cost has increased by $233 billion.

In addition, the report estimates that 7 million workers will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance due to ObamaCare, almost twice as many as the CBO previously estimated. Monetary penalties on those who don’t buy insurance are now expected to be $36 billion higher from 2014 to 2019 than was originally thought.

Ominous news, to be sure. But the three major networks could not be bothered to mention it at all on the Tuesday or Wednesday editions of their evening news programs. NBC Nightly News had more important things to discuss, like Chris Christie’s weight, the new Monopoly game piece, and the 2014 Winter Olympics, which are still a year away, but will be telecast on the networks of NBC Universal. Of course, they also found time to talk about the continuing effort to coerce the Boy Scouts into accepting gay members.

ABC World News also covered Chris Christie’s weight, the new Monopoly piece, and the crusade to allow openly-gay Boy Scouts and scout leaders. In addition, they found time for an update on Barbara Walters’ recovery from chicken pox and a story on the youngest female billionaire in the U.S. (she owns In-N-Out Burger).

Why let the image of ObamaCare, hailed in the media as the president’s crowning achievement, be tarnished with critical news about its negative consequences?

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Mormons And Evangelicals To SCOTUS: Ignore Preponderance Of Science On Same-Sex Parenting

A group of religious organizations, including the Mormon Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and National Association of Evangelicals, have submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court arguing it should uphold both the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. The briefs, written by Mormon Church lawyer Von Keetch, make similar points to other anti-gay briefs about the inferiority of same-sex couples, but notably tries to brush aside the research that suggests otherwise (HT: Kathleen Perrin):

DOMA BRIEF: Whether the Nation retains the traditional definition of marriage or redefines marriage to include same-sex couples is a social issue with potentially wide-ranging consequences. By their nature, such policy questions cannot be definitively answered by science, professional opinion, or legal reasoning alone. Although we are certainly persuaded by scholarly opinion supporting traditional marriage, the truth is that social science scholars, for instance, disagree about the effects of gay parenting on children. Whatever the ultimate conclusions may be, “nothing in the Constitution requires [government] to accept as truth the most advanced and sophisticated [scientific] opinion.”

PROP 8 BRIEF: Admittedly, there is an active debate within the social sciences over whether some of these common sense judgments are empirically sound. But “nothing in the Constitution requires California to accept as truth the most advanced and sophisticated [scientific] opinion.” Lawmakers – including the people of California – are entitled to “act on various unprovable assumptions,” including those that in “the sum of [their] experience” lead them to conclude that traditional marriage and the family structure it supports deserve distinctive legal protection.

In the footnotes, Keetch cites the Mark Regnerus “family structures” study, as well as the simultaneously published meta-analysis by Loren Marks, as evidence of research with a negative conclusion on same-sex parenting. But an internal audit by the publishing journal found Regnerus’ conclusions about same-sex parenting to be “bullshit,” and Marks’ analysis to be “lowbrow” and unworthy of publication. Despite how conservative groups have championed Regnerus’ methods and results, Regnerus himself has admitted that his research was not about gay parenting.

Contrary to what these religious groups claim, there is no debate among social scientists about the capacity of same-sex couples to raise children. In fact, it has already been nine years since the American Psychological Association resolved to support same-sex adoption, and subsequent research continues to confirm that children raised in such households fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples. Researchers have objected that other briefs filed in these cases have cited their studies to draw conclusions about same-sex parenting that are not evident from the research.

The language in these particular briefs suggest that the religious groups don’t care what the research says anyway, hence their haste to dismiss it. Given their concern for protecting children, what is more telling is their refusal to acknowledge the two million children already being raised by same-sex couples. Even if the Court chooses to ignore the science that same-sex couples could make equally good parents, it cannot ignore that they already are doing so.

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