"Wouldn't Kaukauna's money problems have been solved if Walker had just accepted those concessions and not demanded cutbacks in collective bargaining powers?"

We've been discussing the news that the Kaukauna school district here in Wisconsin has gone from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated $1.5 million surplus as a result of the the new collective bargaining laws, and that question — raised here by Byron York — came up in the comments. It is the key question. From York's answer:

In the past, Kaukauna's agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust -- a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. "It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them," says [Kaukauna school board President Todd] Arnoldussen. "Well, you know what happens when you can only negotiate with one vendor." This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.

Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.

The changes mean Kaukauna can reduce the size of its classes -- from 31 students to 26 students in high school and from 26 students to 23 students in elementary school. In addition, there will be more teacher time for one-on-one sessions with troubled students.

"Gilbert Gottfried's jokes about Japan just cost him his job as the Aflac Duck."

Okay... and... are we allowed to make jokes about that?

Judge Vinson's utterly mundane opinion striking down the health-care law.

Here's the text of Judge Vinson's opinion in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. It's 78 pages long but quite clearly written, and much of it summarizes the Supreme Court case law. If you don't know the cases, I think you'll find that part readable. If you do know the cases, I think you'll find that part easily skimmable. The meat of the opinion begins at the bottom of page 37, and it follows arguments that should be familiar if you've been reading about the litigation.

Applying the case law to the facts, Vinson focuses on the problem that the individual mandate to buy health insurance reaches individuals who are not engaged in any economic activity. The Supreme Court case law doesn't answer the question whether Congress can require action of those whose inactivity can be characterized — when you take all the inactive people in the aggregate — as having a substantial effect on interstate commerce. I think when the case reaches the Supreme Court (assuming it does), there will and should be more creative arguments about fine-tuning the doctrine, but the district judge has no option other than to apply the case law to the new situation: "I am required to interpret this law as the Supreme Court presently defines it."

Vinson decides that Congress cannot reach inactivity, basically making the simple and straightforward point that we have a system of enumerated powers, and if Congress could reach inactivity because of its economic effect, then it would seem that Congress could regulate everything. There has to be some limit, so the line should be here. I don't think the line does need to be there, since one could stress the extreme degree of the effect on interstate commerce and the great value of designing a coherent system of paying for health care by taking account of the entire, interrelated system of health care services, including the potential future demands on it that everyone represents, even if they happen to be nonconsumers right now. Why not say that is within Congress's power, yet other things remain beyond its power? That too would preserve the structure of enumerated powers. I don't think, in the end, the Supreme Court will be at a loss to articulate a line that includes regulation of the entire enterprise of paying for health care, including health care for people who resist buying it, hoping for continued good health, enough savings to cover future expenses, or free care financed by the rest of us. Distinguish other kinds of inactivity, and it would preserve the idea that something must be outside of Congress's power.

Vinson does engage with this idea, but he's limited by the need to abide by the Supreme Court's case law. Under that constraint, he talks about whether the "uniqueness" of the health care market somehow transforms inactivity into activity. (This discussion begins at page 45.) He refutes uniqueness by coming up with additional examples of markets the individual can't choose to opt out of — housing and food. But housing and food aren't much like health care. They do depend on our all having bodies, but we always need housing and food. Health care is the one thing that you're tempted to think you can get by without, but you might get hit with a huge expense that you can't possibly cover. If you don't buy insurance, you're gaming the system, and some of the people who game the system will take advantage of the rest of us who participated. It really is different from housing and food. You've got constant pressure on you to provide for those things.

Finally, there's the Necessary and Proper Clause, which was key to Justice Scalia's joining the liberal members of the Court in approving of Congress's power to ban possession of marijuana (even in the home-grown, state-approved-medical-use situation). And there's the issue of severability. I'm going to save those topics for separate posts.

My point here is that Judge Vinson has produced a workmanlike application of the Supreme Court case law devoid of flights of creativity, as befits a district court judge.  Politicos who froth about what an extreme activist he is are trying to cow the judiciary into approving of the law because it's a big fucking deal.

"Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions." That's what Obama said.

But it's the text of the law that matters, and:

The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.

If they screwed up something that important, what else did they screw up? Or do you think they deliberately gave the insurance companies that loophole, in which case, the question is what other surprises are tucked away in the 1000s of pages of fine print?

ADDED: This suggests an answer to mystery — discussed yesterday — of why the insurance companies didn't barrage us with "Harry and Louise"-type ads this time. They lobbied behind the scenes and got the language they wanted in the bill. Who put that language in? Who wrote the statute? We know the members of Congress who voted for it probably didn't even read much of it. They went on assurances and assertions about what was in it. And there was that outrageous idea — said with a straight-face by Nancy Pelosi — that they had to pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Now, maybe the idea was to set up the insurance companies. They'd read the text and see they could do something and shock the people by saying no to the extremely sympathetic people who have sick children and who were so trusting and happy when they saw the bill pass.

Whether that was planned or not, it is the spin now. From the first link, above:

Congressional Democrats were furious when they learned that some insurers disagreed with their interpretation of the law.

“The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate commerce committee, said: “The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”

Oh! Bad corporations! Evil, greedy, selfish corporations! We'll hear that old refrain once again, with melodramatic new feeling. What a great opportunity to soften everyone up for the next big reform, when the government takes over everything. Down with the child-killing insurance companies! 

Who will get subsidized under the new health care reform?

I think a lot of people are assuming they will get subsidized, but do they really know where the line will be drawn and the extent of the subsidy?

The cutoff level would be an income of four times the federal poverty level. For one person, that’s about $44,000 a year. For a family of four, the comparable figure is about $88,000.

Subsidies would be figured on a sliding scale, with those who make less getting a bigger boost and those nearer the top getting a smaller one.

The formula is pretty complicated. Basically, though, people who make three or four times the poverty level would get enough federal money so that they would not have to pay more than about 10 percent of their income for a decent health insurance package.

So, if you make $88,000 and have a family of 4, you may have to fork out $8,800 a year ($733 a month).

People who make less would have to pay a smaller slice of their income for coverage. For instance, individuals who make about $14,000, and four-person families with incomes of about $29,000, would not have to pay more than 3 to 4 percent of their incomes for insurance.

If you make only $29,000 and have a family of 4, you are already on a terribly tight budget, and yet you will be required, perhaps, to spend $1,160 a year. I'd really like to see a chart that shows how much people are going to need to pay.

The federal subsidy would go straight to the insurer. It would look like a discount on the policy to the customer.

I think there's going to be a sliding scale of freaking out over the new requirements. Just understanding them and absorbing what is required will be stressful. And then you have to come up with the money, or face the penalty:

If you ignore this mandate and don’t get health insurance, you’ll have to pay a tax penalty to the federal government, beginning in 2014. This fine starts fairly small, but by the time it is fully phased in, in 2016, it is substantial.

An insurance-less person would have to pony up whichever is greater: $695 for each uninsured family member, up to a maximum of $2,085; or 2.5 percent of household income.

There are exceptions. Certain people with religious objections would not have to get health insurance. Nor would American Indians, illegal immigrants, or people in prison.

Well, you could always join the right religion.

Sorry, but I can't help thinking that millions of people are going to freak out.

Want to take advantage of the proposed buy-in to the federal health care plan? Got $9,900?

But you think you're getting a government subsidy? Oh, but you are. The buy-in will cost $20,000 — according to a CBO estimate — and — assuming you make only $54,000, on which you are attempting to raise a family of 4 — you will get a government subsidy of $10,100.

Or are you over 55 and thinking you'll get to buy into Medicare? That's estimated to cost $7,600 a year per person — $15,200 for a couple. No subsidies until 2014.

Do people who support what the Democrats are trying to do really understand how much money they will be required to come up with to comply?

PLUS: Here comes the VAT!

Some thoughts on seeing "Capitalism: A Love Story."

Here's the scene in the lobby at the Sundance Theater as we arrived for the 4:35 showing of Michael Moore's new movie:



"Dump ¢apitali$m/Join the Socialists." And, indeed, the movie was a big promotion of socialism. Capitalism is "evil" — Capitalism is a "sin" — we were told over and over. And if only all the downtrodden masses would see this truth and join together we could have socialism.

***

Amusingly, Barack Obama is presented — outright — as a socialist. We see a roomful of people exulting over the election night announcement that Obama has won and, in context, we're made to think that it's the downtrodden people celebrating that socialism has arrived. I don't think Obama really wants Michael Moore's help.

***

My biggest problem with the movie was that it was such an incoherent mishmash, and it wasn't edgy and funny enough to make up for that. There were whole segments that had nothing to do with problems with capitalism and that Moore seemed to use because he had footage with sympathetic talking heads.

There were some teenagers in Wilkes Barre, PA who had suffered a terrible abuse of their due process rights, and the fact that a for-profit detention institution was involved didn't transform what was a criminal scheme into a broader indictment of our economic system.

And there were the life insurance policies that companies take out on their [low level] employees. Maybe these shouldn't be permitted — and calling them "Dead Peasant" policies was kind of outrageous — but if they are wrong, we can make legislation banning them. We have plenty of regulation in this country that keeps us away from a completely free market, and we can procure that legislation if that's what we want. I was disgusted by the camera trained on the face of a boy who cried over the death of his young mother. The real villain there was asthma. It said nothing significant about capitalism, which made it grotesque exploitation to use that boy in the movie.

***

My favorite thing in the movie was the trashing of young math and science graduates who, instead of applying their talents to the benefit of humanity, went to Wall Street to design the complicated derivative securities that almost destroyed the economy. The closeup on an incomprehensible math equation was, for me, the most shocking image in the movie.

***

Moore shamelessly and repeatedly advocated the violent overthrow of the economic system. It was somewhat humorously or moderately presented — such as through the mouth of a cranky old man who was being evicted from his home — but it came across that Moore wants a revolution. He kept advising the workers — and the evictees — of the world to unite and shake off their chains.

***

The most striking thing in the movie was the religion. I think Moore is seriously motivated by Christianity. He says he is (and has been since he was a boy). And he presented various priests, Biblical quotations, and movie footage from "Jesus of Nazareth" to make the argument that Christianity requires socialism. With this theme, I found it unsettling that in attacking the banking system, Moore presented quite a parade of Jewish names and faces. He never says the word "Jewish," but I think the anti-Semitic theme is there. We receive long lectures about how capitalism is inconsistent with Christianity, followed a heavy-handed array of — it's up to you to see that they are — Jewish villains.

Am I wrong to see Moore as an anti-Semite? I don't know, but the movie worked as anti-Semitic propaganda. I had to struggle to fight off the idea the movie seemed to want to plant in my head.

When Axelrod starts yammering inapt polysyllabic "e" words, you know he's lying.

"That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we are proposing... We're not into symbolic expedition here."

That really jumped out at me, from an interview with Wolf Blitzer, who asked Axelrod to explain why health care reform can't permit private insurers to sell their policies across state lines:

AXELROD: Because we are trying to do this in a way that advances the interests of consumers without creating such disruption that it makes it difficult to --

BLITZER: Why would that be disruptive if Blue Cross and Blue Shield or United Health Care or all these big insurance companies, they don't have to worry about just working in a state, they could just have the opportunity to compete in all 50 states.

AXELROD: But insurance is regulated at this time --

BLITZER: But you could change that --

AXELROD: State by state.

BLITZER: The president could propose a law changing that.

AXELROD: That is not endemic to the kind of reforms that we are proposing or that --

BLITZER: Why not, why not?

AXELROD: We're proposing a package that we believe will bring that stability and security to people, will help people get insurance, and will lower the cost impact and pass the Congress. And that has to be the test. We're not into symbolic expedition here.

What a strange way to talk. And what a good question from Blitzer.

A cold look at the text of Obama's speech.

I watched the big speech last night, but didn't live-blog. But now that the text is available, let me locate the few things that I felt at the time I would have live-blogged if I'd been live-blogging and see how they strike me in the cool light of day:

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. 

Why? This is just a raw pronouncement, and he's tried to call time before, including back when the hot debate was only beginning. What I hear is: Shut up. It irks me. It makes me want to make trouble for him. He never encouraged debate. But the debate grew in spite of that. He keeps looking back on what he didn't want at all and says now, that's enough of that.

[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

I get it. Nothing will require anything of me if I have what I like (and I do). But if you change the structure of the insurance market, my insurance company may not survive or it may be forced to change. Then how do I keep what I have? What I have now may not exist in the future. This is why I do not feel secure.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. 

But I like my plan now. You admit you're going to change it.

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. 

Not just me, but anybody. The health insurance business will have to change.  I understand the good of helping people with medical conditions, but I wonder what it will do to the private business to suddenly change this.

As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most.

And that will change the economics of insurance. Why will that work? What if companies go out of business when you deprive them of the ways they've come up with to be profitable? I'm afraid making the insurance business unprofitable is completely acceptable to you, because you don't mind if in the end government takes over everything. It's what you would do now if you could, isn't it?

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

It will cost less? I just don't believe that prevention and early detection will perform the necessary magic. And who will provide all this extra care?

That's what Americans who have health insurance can expect from this plan – more security and stability.

Security and stability? That sounds nice, but I don't feel... secure about it.

Obama goes on to describe the insurance exchange that will improve the market for people who don't now have health insurance and the tax credits that will help "individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford" insurance. I don't know who qualifies for these credits, but that is a loss of tax revenue, and the burden must fall on the rest of us, some of whom are going to be forced to buy something we haven't been buying yet. There is some kind of a squeeze on people in the middle. But presumably, we are already paying for these people when they do go to emergency rooms, and getting everyone covered, even if some don't pay, will spread the costs more widely.

[The] exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right.

And him time to get re-elected.

Next, Obama explains why everyone will be required to buy health insurance. It's "irresponsible" not to. So all-encompassing care is recast as personal responsibility. But the real point is economic: The new system — requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and not to charge different rates even for those who begin with very expensive medical needs — won't work unless all the healthy people are forced to join and pay in much more than they are taking out. They can't be allowed to game the system, keep all their money, and then opt in to cheap insurance when they start needing reimbursements.

Where will all these people get the money to buy insurance? We're told that some people and businesses will get "a hardship waiver," but we aren't told where the cut-off point is.

While there remain some significant details to be ironed out... 

This got a huge laugh at the time. It was the biggest laugh of the night,  I think.

... I believe a broad consensus exists for the aspects of the plan I just outlined: consumer protections for those with insurance, an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses to purchase affordable coverage, and a requirement that people who can afford insurance get insurance.

And I have no doubt that these reforms would greatly benefit Americans from all walks of life, as well as the economy as a whole. 

At this point, last night, I felt some hope, but not knowing what the details are going to be, I was also pretty suspicious. The next part of the speech, however, attacked his critics and felt like nasty attack on ordinary people who have legitimate doubts and whose criticisms were what pushed him into the more moderate position that was giving me hope.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

Ugh. He says nothing more about the genuine concern that there will need to be rationing, that lines will be drawn, and that he himself has said things that suggest that someone will be deciding when older and disabled persons will get "the blue pill" instead of vigorous treatment.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. 

An important promise.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

But insurers will have cover abortions, and people will have to do business with insurers.

My health care proposal has also been attacked by some who oppose reform as a "government takeover" of the entire health care system.... Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business... But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. 

Why is something more needed to keep them "honest"? You're imposing new regulations on them. Enforce those regulations. Why is more competition needed to make them "honest"? I'm saying "more competition," because Obama is clear that the public option will be a separate entity that must operate solely on the premiums it collects and free of any taxpayer subsidy. Won't that coverage be expensive too, then? He claims that "by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers." But private companies try to control costs to compete, and government entities tend to get bloated too. It's hard to see what this is for.

... I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize.

How will this promise be enforced?

This is the plan I'm proposing. It's a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight – Democrats and Republicans. And I will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead. If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.

Am I allowed to shout "You lie" at the TV?

Now comes the sentimental, inspirational stuff that I don't need to spend time on.

... Ted Kennedy....

Zzzzz.... Then my ears perk up:

One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and sometimes angry debate.

Words for conservatives. Obama then concedes that Teddy seemed to be the opposite off all of that to conservatives. But somehow he really wasn't. Why? I scan the text for a reason. He had conservative allies in some of his political ventures? There's a list of friends — John McCain, etc. Eh. Not enough. Obama goes on about problems Teddy saw, kids with cancer, and it seems as if the idea is just to make us forget about the questions he'd just raised.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. 

That's the kind of moderation I like, so that worked on me, but I'm sure it's a disappointment to those who got really excited by those words for conservatives.

Finally, he bemoans the lack of civil conversation again. I hear echoes of the "shut up" I heard at the beginning of the speech. He says we need to act now, not be timid. We need to do "great things" and "meet history's test." We need to do it because it's "our calling." He's entitled to end his speech with a call to action.

I'd say he did pretty well with what he had, but some of us still have questions and don't appreciate being called louts and liars.

The argument that Congress doesn't have the power to force citizens to buy health insurance.

First, I wonder how many of the uninsured realize that the health care plan is going to require them to buy insurance. Anyway, the issue here is about the scope of Congress's commerce power. Lawyers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey point out that the uninsured are not currently doing anything in the commercial/economic sphere. They are basically doing nothing — failing to provide for themselves. How can Congress regulate this nonaction?

The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there. Significantly, in two key cases, United States v. Lopez (1995) and United States v. Morrison (2000), the Supreme Court specifically rejected the proposition that the commerce clause allowed Congress to regulate noneconomic activities merely because, through a chain of causal effects, they might have an economic impact....

Do you know what's annoying about the health care issue?

The subject is insurance. People hate to talk about insurance.

When robots attack.

Good luck suing in Sweden.

In 2007, a muscular robot programmed to lift heavy stones malfunctioned in a factory near Stockholm, Sweden, and some poor devil—who thought he'd turned off the power—nearly got himself killed when the robot grabbed his head and shook him around. He ended up with four broken ribs, but managed to "defend himself" and live. The judge awarded the guy 25,000 Swedish kronor, which sounds nice except that it's only about $3,000. The judge also reprimanded the guy for being at least partially at fault, if I'm reading the Swedish translation correctly.

Get robot insurance:

"If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives -- your family's lives -- and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service."

And so it begins:

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."

[British moral philosopher Lady Warnock] went on: "If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die.

"I think that's the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."

She would like you to sign a document that says you want to be killed if you develop Alzheimer's Syndrome and can no longer care for yourself. And she wants it to be legal to off you if the circumstances arise.

Much outrage is being expressed, but I have no doubt that many people calculating the economics of government-provided health care think about how terribly useful this option would be and look forward to the day when people will no longer be outraged and will, in fact, feel guilty if they do not sign up for the program. Quite aside from guilt and a sense of duty, it would be easy to wrest consent out of people by offering high quality health care to those who agree in advance to be murdered if they get too expensive.

ADDED: The Anchoress sees value in long, drawn out dying.