iftttwall

How anxious is the Obama
administration about the health care law’s effects on insurance
coverage? For the last few days, speculation has increased about
the possibility that the law could actually result in a net loss of
coverage at the beginning of next year—with more people losing
existing insurance as a result of cancelations than have signed up
for new insurance plans under the law. An announcement this
afternoon strongly suggests that the administration is more than a
little bit concerned about this possibility as well.

The Department of Health and Human Services said this afternoon
that it will
extend coverage options for individuals currently enrolled in
the law’s temporary high-risk pool program through the end of
January, instead of allowing the program to end on December 31 as
originally planned.  It will also require private insurers
selling policies in the law’s insurance exchanges to accept payment
up until December 31 of this year for coverage than begins January
1. 

In addition, HHS said it would “strongly encourage” insurers to
take other “transitional” steps over the next month as well—steps
like accepting partial pre-payment for coverage that begins on
January 1 as a “down payment” in lieu of full payment prior to the
start of coverage and allowing people who sign up after the
December 23 deadline to begin coverage on January 1. HHS also said
it hoped insurers would accept out of network providers as
in-network for “acute episodes” or in cases in which a provider was
listed in an insurer’s enrollment directory but dropped out after
an individual’s enrollment date.

On an afternoon conference call about the changes, the
administration even suggested that insurers should consider
accepting as enrolled anyone who has signed up for a plan by
December 23—even if the person in question has not paid the first
month’s premium at all. Payments could be made after January 1, and
after coverage kicked in. 

What does it mean to “strongly encourage” insurers to take these
steps? It’s difficult to say for sure. But probably it means that
the administration is worried about what’s coming, and plans to
blame insurers who don’t take the administration’s encouragement
when the bad news arrives.

It’s clear from the announcement that federal officials are
worried, even panicked, about what comes next. Asked on the
conference call whether the administration was confident that more
people will gain coverage than lose it come the beginning of next
year, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services dodged the question—responding that it’s important to
remember that there are still three more months in the open
enrollment period, and that the real goal is to ensure a viable
demographic mix of enrollees on a market by market basis. In other
words, the administration isn’t saying that more people will lose
coverage than gain it comes January 1. But they’re not saying that
won’t happen either.

HHS Secretary began today;s call by calmly asserting that for
millions of people, the “security of health coverage is finally
within reach,” which in the upside-down world of the administration
is as telling a sign as any that it isn’t. The administration is
trying to put a happy face on its desperation, but the lack of
confidence implied by today’s announcement is not what anyone would
call strongly encouraging.   

• Fifteen people in a
  wedding party in Yemen were accidentally killed in an airstrike
  (reportedly a drone) because they were mistaken for an al Qaeda
  convoy. No doubt somebody will get a stern talking to about this
  somewhere.
• The Hawaiian health official who
  validated President Barack Obama’s birth certificate has died
  in a plane crash. Or did she?
• Apparently California wants riots in the streets. Regulators
  have
  halted shipments of Sriracha until January. What next? Banning
  avocados and cilantro?
• The United States is
  threatening to impose sanctions on Ukraine because of its use
  of riot police to crack down on protesters. Despite citizens’
  apparent desires to build ties to the European Union, Vladimir
  Putin is still trying to
  woo Ukraine to Russia’s side.
• Rep. John Boehner says that conservative groups criticizing the
  budget compromise have
  “lost all credibility.” He would certainly know from lost
  credibility, am I right, folks?
• The
  6-year-old Colorado boy suspended and accused of “sexual
  harassment” for kissing a girl at school has had his “crime”
  downgraded to misconduct in his school records.  

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This year may have provided the
Obama administration with plenty of lessons on website building and
fiscal fiscos, but 2013 has also highlighted trends, developments,
and lessons that will impact America’s foreign policy for the rest
of Obama’s presidency and beyond. Reason’s Matthew Feeney outlines
how the past year has brought attention to the different sort of
interventions undertaken to address Islamism, the moral hypocrisy
of the United States’ foreign aid policy, the growth of the drone
club, Africa’s role in the War on Terror, and the effect American
snooping can have on relations abroad.  

View this article.

At
a congressional hearing yesterday, National Security Agency Director
Gen. Keith Alexander offered his views about the role of massive
domestic surveillance in a free society. Unsurprisingly, he voiced
support for keeping up with the controversial and
rights-compromising work conducted by his agency.

The four-star general came before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, which was discussing the
USA FREEDOM Act. The bill aims to end bulk meta-data collection
and establish checks on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
(FISA) court. Alexander issued grave warnings about the dangers
such a law would pose to America, and even attempted to elicit some
sympathy for the NSA’s methods. USA Today
reports:

“There is no other way to connect the dots,” Alexander told the
Senate Judiciary Committee in a renewed defense of NSA surveillance
programs whose details were disclosed this year by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden. “We cannot go back to a pre-9/11
moment.”

Alexander said the national security threat has been mounting in
recent months, and the “crisis in the Middle East is growing.”

“Taking these programs off the table is not the thing to do,”
Alexander said.

It isn’t Alexander’s first time defending the agency’s domestic
spying. But it is interesting, because for
years he made many public claims (some of which have been

called into question) to
give the impression that no such surveillance of American
citizens happened on his watch. 

Deputy Attorney General James Cole also testified. He expressed
doubt about whether the bill would have any impact. Significantly,
The Guardian
points out that this “was the first time the NSA or its allies
have suggested that its dragnets on American phone data might not
be stopped even if Leahy’s bill… passes through Congress.”

Several senators criticized the NSA’s action during the hearing.
Judiciary Committee Chairman and sponsor of the USA FREEDOM Act,
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),
questioned, “Do we really need to collect so much data on
Americans? Just simply because you can do something, does it make
sense to do it?”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said recent disclosures about the
scope of the NSA’s data collection “call into serious question
whether the law and other safeguards currently in place strike the
right balance between protecting our civil liberties and our
national security.”

Legislators aren’t the only ones pushing for greater constraint
on the NSA. As Reason‘s Ronald Bailey
highlights, major internet companies recently wrote an open
letter to President Obama calling for reforms.  

The German state of Bavaria, which owns the
rights to Adolph Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, plans to
continue to ban the book after copyright expires in 2015.

According to the BBC,
officials in Bavaria will not be releasing an edited version of the
book as planned.

Of course, anyone is Bavaria can read Hitler’s drivel online,
and Bavaria’s prohibition is unlikely to stop anyone interested in
reading Mein Kampf from doing so.

Although the decision from Bavarian officials is unlikely to
stop Hitler’s work from being read, it does highlight Europe’s far
from ideal relationship with free speech.

In Germany, the Nazi Party is banned and denying the Holocaust
is a punishable offense.
Other countries, such as Austria, Poland, and Hungary
also have legislation that punishes denial of the Holocaust.

Unsurprisingly, memories of the persecution of the Jews in
Europe under the Nazi’s still has the power to influence policy.
The Bavarian Science Minister, Ludwig Spaenle,
said, “Many conversations with Holocaust victims and their
families have shown us that any sort of reprint of the disgraceful
writings would cause enormous pain.”

As Reason’s Jacob Sullum
noted last year when writing about Germany’s relationship with
Scientology, similar legislation banning Holocaust denial or the
publication of books like Mein Kampf would be
considered “unambiguously unconstitutional in the United
States”:

The same government that has targeted Scientology because of its
alleged threat to “pluralistic democracy” also uses that rationale
to justify bans on hate speech, Holocaust denial, symbols and books
associated with the Nazi regime, and ethnically divisive political
groups. All those policies would be unambiguously unconstitutional
in the United States, where the government is not allowed to
suppress opinions, religious or not, based on the harm that might
flow from them.

Laws against Holocaust denial and bans on books are illiberal
and should not be enacted. That said, it is worth remembering that
although the Second World War may have ended decades ago many Jews
in Europe recently reported a rise in
anti-semitism.