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The Mere Orthodoxy blog posts on the why the family matters in economics.
Nick Schulz is frustrated. He’s frustrated that economists talk about the role of institutions in the American economy, yet ignore the most fundamental one of them all: the family. With a career built on writing about the roots of economic growth, Schulz has realized that you can’t understand today’s economy—from the need for human capital to rising inequality— without considering the platoons of moms, dads, and children that form the backbone of American society. And the situation is not pretty. The American family is in a state of crisis, which in turn is having a profound impact on the economy.
Yet too many experts remain silent for fear of becoming collateral damage in America’s culture wars. Nick Schulz wrote Home Economics for these silent ones who have ignored the family’s role in the economy. He concludes as former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett did, finding that the “family is the original and best Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.” …
… American families now seem to follow two tracks: those of the upper-middle class, where family institutions remain relatively strong, and those of the lower-middle class, where family instability is distressingly common. Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, in particular, provides a detailed picture of this growing disconnect.
Many people can and do succeed in the midst of family brokenness, of course. Yet the risks of failing are far too high when kids are raised in the context of relational instability. Socioeconomic mobility and multigenerational poverty are empirically linked to family stability like never before.
Family is society writ small, where one builds basic human capital, social capital, and skills. In Schulz’s calculation, family is a basic, vital economic unit—the X factor. Family builds empathy and self-control, which in turn shapes character. Character fosters human capital (“knowledge, education, habits, willpower”) and social capital (assets “created and maintained by relationships of commitment and trust”), which ultimately generates economic growth. You could practically build a formula out of it. …
Of course, any government efforts to control college costs will end in disaster, but last week the president uttered the most amazing sentence. We have included the Wash Times article just so you could read it. He said, “At some point, the government’s going to run out of money.” What’s happened? He has never felt such constraints before.
Saying the rising costs of college are punishing students who have played by the rules, President Obama on Thursday announced that the federal government will take a broader role in pushing schools to lower costs by rating schools based on their educational value, and in trying to tie taxpayer money to school performance.
Mr. Obama, speaking at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said he would cap student loan repayments at 10 percent of future paychecks but also would take steps to discipline students who are attending school on federal grants by doling out the money in chunks to make sure they stay in school. …
Weekly Standard reports the Nevada AFL-CIO wants healthcare changes.
The Nevada AFL-CIO has released a resolution condemning Obamacare and demanding that the president and lawmakers change the law.
“[F]or two years we have sought from the Administration and Congress interpretations to the ACA that merely allows us keep the health plans we currently have: nothing more, nothing less. No special treatment. To date, the Administration has postured on proposals to address the problem, but no proposal to date will actually solve the problem. Our health plans only get worse,” the resolution in part reads. …
From UPS to UVA, American Interest says more employers are reacting to increased health care costs because of the ACA.
Even a well-designed law can have unintended effects that worsen the problems it was meant to solve—and a slipshod law like Obamacare threatens to cause serious damage. UPS, for instance, has decided to stop offering insurance to employee spouses who can get insurance from their own employer. The company cites the new costs imposed by Obamacare, including:
-Coverage for dependent children up to age; regardless of whether they are enrolled in school, are married, or (beginning 2014) have coverage available from their own employer;
-Removal of lifetime and annual benefit limits;
-Fees for comparative effectiveness research; and
-Fees to help fund the public exchanges.
UVA officials announced a similar policy yesterday, also referencing the costs Obamacare will add to the university’s health care budget. …
More on UPS changes from Andrew Malcolm.
Thousands of UPS workers have found out what’s actually in that ObamaCare package Democrats shipped out in 2010. Their company decided to drop coverage for spouses to avoid the law’s added costs.
President Obama has been claiming lately that most of his signature law is already in place, and that all the fuss about delays and premium hikes is over parts of the law that don’t go into effect until next year and are relevant only to the small share of uninsured.
“For the 85% to 90% of Americans who already have health insurance,” he says, “they don’t have to worry about anything else.”
Tell that to the 15,000 UPS workers who recently learned that the shipping giant is dropping coverage for husbands and wives who can get insurance from another employer.
A chief reason for the change? The added costs ObamaCare is imposing, including the mandate that plans cover children up to age 26, its ban on lifetime spending limits, and the $65 in ObamaCare fees that will be imposed on every enrollee starting next year.
Rising medical costs, “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS told its employees in a memo.
As Kaiser Health News reports, many of these spouses will end up on worse health plans. …
Noemie Emery sums up health care.
Forget demographics. Forget the re-branding. Forget the poll matchups, most of them involving newcomers who are still largely unknown to the general public.
Nothing will influence 2014 (and 2016) nearly as much as the implosion of Obamacare, which so far has been messy and will become even worse.
Demographic allegiances aren’t always stable, parties cannot re-brand themselves in a vacuum, and the current contenders will be judged, not for who they appear to be today but on who they become in the next three years.
Democrats may seem to have a strong coalition, but Republicans had one, too, in 2005, before events intruded. In Forbes, Avik Roy notes that the White House has missed 41 of 82 deadlines in the bill’s first three years of existence, while labor leaders say the bill is destroying full-time employment.
Last week, Obama announced the umpteenth delay in implementation; exempted congressional staffers from Obamacare costs; and said he will spend an additional $67 million to “educate” the public on the blessings to come with the law that survived the Supreme Court and the 2012 election (in part because it was planned NOT to kick in before then).
It may not survive its clash with reality, however, which was always its enemy and which seems to be closing in fast. …
WSJ OpEd tells the story of why and how a man saved 85% of an operation’s cost.
Every so often I have an extraordinary and surprising experience with a patient—the kind that makes us both say, “Wow, we’ve learned something from this.” One such moment occurred recently.
A gentleman in his early 60s came in with a rather routine hernia in his lower abdomen, one that is easily repaired with a simple outpatient surgical procedure. We scheduled the surgery at a nearby hospital.
My patient is self-employed and owns a low-cost “indemnity” type of health insurance policy. It has no provider-network requirements or preferred-hospital requirements. The patient can go anywhere. The policy pays up to a fixed amount for doctor and hospital bills based upon the diagnosis. This affordable health-insurance policy made a lot of sense to this man, based on his health and financial situation.
When the man arrived at the hospital for surgery, the admitting clerk reviewed the terms of his policy and estimated the amount of his bill that would be paid by insurance. She asked him to pay his estimated portion in advance. (More hospitals are doing that now because too often patients don’t pay their portions of the bills after insurance has paid.)
The insurance policy, the clerk said, would pay up to $2,500 for the surgeon—more than enough—and up to $2,500 for the hospital’s charges for the operating room, nursing, recovery room, etc. The estimated hospital charge was $23,000. She asked him to pay roughly $20,000 upfront to cover the estimated balance. …
Mark Steyn with a Corner Post on Chelsea Manning.
Private Bradley Manning, the strange semi-Welshman the four million US bureaucrats with security clearances let snaffle all their secrets, is now a female called Private Chelsea Manning. Same soldier, different privates*.
Jailing Manning and hounding Snowden is a complete waste of time unless you also do something about the system that allowed these guys access to everything. Manning appears to have been a lonely and troubled individual all his life, and obviously vulnerable to sympathetic pitches from wily opportunists like Assange. Why didn’t his superiors see that? That’s the real scandal. I wish young Chelsea well in his/her makeover; maybe the “intelligence community” could use one of its own.
(*Eventually.)