why can’t airlines apply their jet fuel savings toward streaming data? It’s not like they’re using the windfall to lower ticket prices.
— @DemFromCT
NY Times:
For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.
Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.
The faculty vote came too late to stop the cost increases from taking effect this month, and the anger on campus remains focused on questions that are agitating many workplaces: How should the burden of health costs be shared by employers and employees? If employees have to bear more of the cost, will they skimp on medically necessary care, curtail the use of less valuable services, or both?
Adrianna McIntyre:
Harvard’s enrollment guide offers a short laundry list of ACA provisions that supposedly contribute to their recent changes, but I think Megan McArdle was correct in naming the Cadillac tax as key culprit. Secular trends matter, but, for very generous plans, the tax is a decisive nudge toward more cost-sharing. The provision doesn’t kick in until 2018, but prudent employers will be looking ahead. Based on available evidence, it’s not a great leap to suppose that Harvard might find itself subject to the tax on the future—particularly if health spending growth ticks upward again in the next few years, a point Alan Garber makes in the NYT story.
Not for nothing, Avik Roy’s “Transcending Obamacare”—the most comprehensive and well-elaborated “replace” strategy to emerge from the right—preserves the Cadillac tax, actually accelerating implementation by a year. Abolishing the tax preference for employer coverage isn’t politically feasible, but the provision starts to grapple with it, in a way that no policy has for decades. It was a hard-won bit of policy and, given its unpopular reception, unlikely to be re-won anytime soon.
The central tension that governs every single decision about health insurance policy—at Harvard, in Congress, on either side of the aisle—was aptly summarized by Carnegie Mellon economist Martin Gaynor yesterday: “You can have lower costs or more generous health insurance coverage, but you can’t have both.”
The Gazette:
The FBI is looking for a man who may in connection with an explosion outside the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP on Tuesday.
According to FBI officials, a device was detonated against the wall of building at 603 South El Paso Street shortly before 11 a.m.
Why isn't this national news?
"Explosion outside @NAACP in Colorado deliberate, FBI says"
http://t.co/... My thoughts & prayers to all affected by #NAACPBombing
— @sfpelosi
More politics and policy below the fold.
NBC News:
But behind the pomp, circumstance and giddiness of the first day of the new session, the tone for the next two years was already being set. The White House started the ball rolling Tuesday with a threat to veto the XL Keystone pipeline bill, the first piece of legislation Republicans plan to send his way. And Republicans, jubilant after a midterm election victory, are now facing the difficult realities of governing.
Boehner was successfully re-elected as House speaker but not without tumult. Twenty-five of his fellow Republicans opposed him, which is twice as many who opposed him just two years ago. The opposition came even though Boehner worked to get Republicans elected and successfully expanded the Republican majority in the House to a lofty 246 members.
Sojourners:
Pope Francis reinforced his radical reshaping of the Catholic Church by naming 20 new cardinals from countries as far afield as Ethiopia, Tonga, Thailand, and Panama.
he clerics – who come from 18 different countries – include 15 who are eligible to vote for the pope’s successor in a future conclave, and five retired bishops and archbishops “distinguished for their pastoral charity” who are over age 80 and ineligible to select the next pontiff.
Dissatisfied with the slow pace of change in Rome, Francis’ appointments reflect his desire for “pastors on the front line of difficult situations,” one Vatican observer said, who can bring a new perspective from the often overlooked outposts of global Christianity.
See also:
Pope Francis Announces the Names of 20 New Cardinals, 15 of them Electors.Fact Checker:
Will Keystone XL pipeline create 42,000 ‘new’ jobs?
Yes, that 42,000 figure is in the report, but the number requires more context, especially if supporters want to pitch Keystone XL as an infrastructure project that will bring new jobs to the economy. Using the State Department math, it’s safe to say nearly 4,000 construction jobs will be created, at least temporarily. One could even say that 16,000 jobs would be or have been supported from direct spending on the project, such as those pipe makers in Arkansas.
But “42,000 new jobs” is going too far. Most of those jobs are far from the construction site, and it’s hard to argue they are new. Moreover, under State’s accounting, they only last for a year. For some workers, it would be a good but brief payday. In the context of the U.S. economy, the impact is barely a ripple.
Greg Sargent:
Almost a year ago, President Obama vowed to use his “pen” and “phone” wherever possible to “make a difference for middle class Americans,” effectively promising to aggressively employ executive action to lift struggling Americans’ economic prospects in the face of implacable Republican opposition.
But now some liberals are beginning to worry that Obama may fall short in this regard, on an issue where he could perhaps give more of an economic boost to the middle class through unilateral action than on any other front. And if that happens, it could form the basis for another argument among Democrats over the party’s economic direction.
The issue in question is how Obama will treat the issue of overtime pay, which is set to flare up next month. Senator Sherrod Brown, a leading member of the party’s increasingly emboldened populist wing, tells me: “As the party of the middle class and those seeking to join it, Democrats should stop the erosion of overtime pay.”
Kevin Drum:
I've guesstimated previously that around 6 million would be affected in 2016 if the Supreme Court kills subsidies on the federal exchange later this year. Charles Gaba figures it's somewhere around 5-6 million this year. That's a lot of people who would face one of two things: (a) an increase of maybe $2-5,000 in their health care premiums, or (b) an end to health care coverage completely because they flatly can't afford the unsubsidized premiums.
Will this affect the court's thinking? It's hard to think of a comparable case where a ruling would have had such an immediate, devastating effect on millions of ordinary people. If anything, that gives me hope. Will John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy really be willing to inflict that kind of real-world pain, regardless of their ideological convictions? Maybe not. At least, I hope not, because I've basically given up on the idea that the Supreme Court is anything other than crudely results-oriented these days. Especially on the conservative side of the aisle, they simply don't seem to care much about law or precedent or common sense anymore. They like what they like and they hate what they hate, and they shape their opinions to match.
Maybe that's just the despair of a liberal who's seen a lot of cases go against him over the past few years. Maybe. But I guess we're going to find out later this year.