Month: August 2014

Obamacare is going to be an unexpected headache
for some people when tax time rolls around next year.

As the Associated Press
reported this week, income changes over the course of the year
could end up chewing into tax refunds without much warning for
people receiving subsidized coverage under the law:

If your income for 2014 is going to be higher than you estimated
when you applied for health insurance, then complex connections
between the health law and taxes can reduce or even eliminate your
tax refund next year….The danger is that as your income grows, you
don’t qualify for as much of a tax credit. Any difference will come
out of your tax refund, unless you have promptly reported the
changes.

Nearly 7 million households have gotten health insurance tax
credits, and major tax preparation companies say most of those
consumers appear to be unaware of the risk. 

Insurance subsidies under the law are a form of tax credit, and
the amount someone qualifies for is based on his or her expected
income. But when that income doesn’t meet expectations, then people
have essentially two choices: Report the difference as it happens
and immediately pay a higher premium as a result, or wait until tax
time and sort it out via the refund.

This year’s open enrollment period is going to bring other
complications as well, thanks to the administration’s automatic
renewal policy. The problem, again, is with the treatment of income
expectations and subsidy amounts. As an AP report from July

explained:

Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by
automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to
receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the
government, say industry officials, advocates and other
experts.

If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock
over their new premiums. Too high, and they’ll owe the tax man
later.

Automatic renewal was supposed to make the next open-enrollment
under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul smooth for
consumers.

But unless the administration changes its 2015 approach,
“they’re setting people up for large and avoidable premium
increases,” said researcher Caroline Pearson, who follows the
health law for the market analysis firm Avalere Health.

For a lot of people, then, automatic renewal will result in a
sort of stealth premium hike. That’s what larger insurers are
hoping for, anyway. As The Wall Street Journal
noted last month, some of the bigger players in Obamacare’s
exchanges underpriced their plans in the first year in order to
gain more customers—with the expectation of raising rates in later
years. Auto-renewal makes that process easier, and at the same time
makes it harder for smaller players to attract new customers.

The bigger picture here is that the frustrations people have
with the law now aren’t likely to end. You have an exceedingly
complex law that wasn’t explained very well and that a lot of
people don’t really understand, and that’s going to result in some
unpleasant surprises for a while.  

Ready to be outraged? Read this headline from
WKYT in Kentucky: ” Lexington woman accused of leaving kids in
running car.”

The gall!

According to WKYT:

 A Lexington woman is behind bars after police say she left
two children in a running car outside the Fayette County Detention
Center.

Police arrested Brandy Becksted outside the detention
center Tuesday afternoon.

She said she didn’t want to wake up the two and four-year-old
children in her car, so she left them inside while she entered the
facility to put money into an inmate’s account.

This woman kept her kids cool while she ran a short errand, and
that’s a crime? Should she have kept the windows rolled up with the
engine off and no air? Should she have dragged
them across the parking lot, which puts kids
in greater danger than just leaving them in the car?

Might as well lock up
the whole family and leave these children
parentless. Certainly any mom who doesn’t parent exactly the
way the cops want is in need of some hard time. And she’s in
luck—because thanks to absurd laws, these are indeed hard times to
be a parent.

For his faults, Philadelphia’s
police commissioner, Charles Ramsey, has not avoided trying to
firing and trying to fire problem cops. The problem is even though
he’s nominally in charge of the Philadelphia Police Department he
doesn’t have final say on employment decisions. Thus last week
Ramsey lamented that he could not rid his force of
Thomas Tolstoy, an alleged sexual predator, because neither a
federal nor local investigation produced a prosecution.  “The
odds are,” said Ramsey, “I’m stuck with a guy who shouldn’t be a
cop.” The statute of limitations on the allegations against Tolstoy
expire later this year and he’s likely to return to the streets of
Philly as a cop—he’s been drawing a paycheck without interruption
despite three separate women accusing him of similar sexual
assaults, including at least one who ended up in a hospital. Last
summer a cop Ramsey fired after he was caught on tape punching a
woman for no reason
got his job back thanks to an arbitration hearing.
Nevertheless, since 2008 Philadelphia
has fired 146 police officers, 88 of whom were arrested, and 48
who have been convicted so far, on charges like murder, rape, and
extortion.

Then there’s the group of Philadelphia cops from a now defunct
anti-narcotics group. Their misconduct has already forced the
district attorney to
throw away hundreds of drug-related cases because of tainted
testimony. And they could cost city taxpayers millions due to
lawsuits.
Philly.com reports:

Seven Philadelphia police narcotics officers at the center of a
federal corruption probe are also named in scores of civil lawsuits
that add more claims of thievery, intimidation and brutality to
those described in their criminal indictments, according to court
records.

The potential financial impact of these suits, along with any
others that may be filed, could expose the City of Philadelphia to
millions of dollars in damages or settlements.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s inability to respond
effectively to misconduct, in large part due to the strength of the

Fraternal Order of Police, has now exposed it to potentially
millions of dollars in liability for the actions of officers whose
jobs were treated as rights. Only one of the seven officers is no
longer with the department—he plead guilty to charges of corruption
and turned state’s evidence. The other six were “suspended
with intent to dismiss.” Ramsey can’t just fire an officer,
even if that officer his colleagues are under federal investigation
for serious crimes. It’s a similar situation for Tolstoy. If the
alleged sexual predator acts again and victimizes another woman,
can the city claim it’s not liable? It won’t be as easy for them to
get out of as it is for unions, which are rarely held liable for
actions that keep problem cops on the street.

The idea that “due process” should apply to the employment
status of government agents authorized to use violence against us
is horrific.

We’ve previously noted that the
Los Angeles Unified School District is trying to get students back
into the seats of their schools by the tried-and-true method of

not tossing them out in the first place and having them
arrested or cited by police for misbehavior and trying to scale
back on some outrageous “zero tolerance” responses.

The school district recently announced it was expanding its
discipline changes and will refer kids who are caught for minor
crimes to be
referred to counseling and discipline rather than arrest or
citations. The offenses that will be treated this way include
fighting, alcohol and tobacco possession, and low level petty theft
or vandalism. Oh, and also, possession of small amounts of
marijuana will no longer result in student arrest.

That news perked up the ears of the “Toke of the Town” blog at
LA Weekly, who
got in touch with Steve Abercrombie, California coordinator of
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). He was not pleased:

“Wow,” he tells Toke of the Town. “It seems we keep giving in
more and more to different crimes and criminal activity. When does
it stop? When do you finally say that you need to follow the
rules?”

As typical, we can ponder the circular logic of the drug war
argument. “We have declared this behavior to be illegal. If we
allow kids to do it, they’ll be breaking ‘the rules’ that we have
declared. Therefore they are criminals,” without ever questioning
whether or not the designation that the behavior is illegal was a
problem in the first place.

But then, DARE’s placement in the drug war has been dependent on
reinforcing the need for a police presence in school systems. And
schools have
been cutting DARE costs out of their budgets. So Abercrombie’s
complaining is coming from a place of decreasing influence on
school funds, not just education. He adds, “I’m surprised they
don’t hand [cannabis] out when they hand out their workbooks.”

That might be a good way to fight truancy. They should think
about it.