Episode 58: A Solution Worse Than the Problem, Climate Models That Don’t Model, and a Late-Breaking Caveat to a Presidential Promise

Summary: Once again I'm back with a 10-minute-or-less romp through the events of the day. I tried to keep from dealing too much with ObamaCare in this episode, having said as much as I did last episode, but this issue is just sucking the oxygen out of the news cycle. First off, I consider what the problem was that ObamaCare was supposed to solve, and realize that the solution is worse than the problem. Global warming has "paused" for 17 years now, and a peer-reviewed study suggests it might be doing that for another 20 years or so. And it's all due to natural, ecological cycles. (Imagine that.) President Obama recently said that you can keep your policy if you like it, except if you can't. That was referring to the individual, private insurance market. Kathleen Sebelius has now added that caveat to another, much larger, insurance group. Mentioned links: Global warming “pause” may last for 20 more years Global warming 'pause' may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover Obama: "What We Said Was You Can Keep It If It Hasn't Changed Since The Law Passed" Sebelius Bombshell: Employer Based Plans Will Face Same Grandfathering Caveats as Lost Individual Plans You can listen to “Consider This!” on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes. Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser. The Stitcher Network is another possibility. Again, you can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis” to let them know where you heard about it. Of course, you can always subscribe via iTunes as well. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’! And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it. I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend "Consider This!" to your social media audience. Show transcript OK, so let me get this straight. The problem that ObamaCare was trying to fix was this: uninsured people got free healthcare at emergency rooms, but this cost was borne by taxpayers. So the solution is to subsidize their insurance. The subsidies come from their tax refund via the IRS. Where does the money come for these subsidies? The taxpayer. And for those not getting subsidies for their ObamaCare insurance, many are seeing rate increases to also offset these lower cost plans. And since the Supreme Court called this a tax, then again, the money is coming from the taxpayer. And since those subsidized plans don’t really get subsidized until folks get the credits on their tax refund, they have to front both the cost of the plan and the cost of the often huge deductibles, until tax time. How about that? The poor give Uncle Sam a no-interest loan. How compassionate. Here’s the bottom line: The problem was that taxpayers bore the cost of the poor getting free health care. The solution is that the taxpayers bear the cost of insurance for the poor, and the poor bear the full cost of the insurance and thousands of dollars of deductible until sometime the following year. Does that make sense to anyone? --- In October of 2012, I mentioned an article noting that global warming had essentially stopped since 1997. Well, it’s still stopped, and Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology is taking a closer look at it.