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As a once
passionate supporter of the Common Core, Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal surprised many with his 180-degree reversal earlier this
year. Much of the commentary that followed viewed this flip-flop as
politically motivated, and an indication that Gov. Jindal was
planning to run for president.

As Reason’s Robby
Soave noted in June:

Common Core is especially unpopular among the conservative
grassroots, given that the federal government is vigorously pushing
it and has incentivized states to adopt it in exchange for grant
money. The controversy has made Common Core an important political
issue heading into the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, and it’s
going to be very difficult for Core-supportive candidates to
survive in the more competitive Republican primaries.

Given that, Jindal’s shifting perspective on Common Core is
probably an indicator that he is going to run.

However, in a speech given to the
Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Gov. Jindal provided another
possibility–that his sudden opposition may have been motivated, at
least in part, by his experience as a parent. Gov. Jindal told a
story about his son’s frustration with
the way math is taught under the Common Core. Despite providing
the correct answers, the governor’s son had to deal with explaining
the reasons for why his answers were correct (see Jindal’s speech
in the video below).

It’s impossible to know whether Jindal’s own experience with the
Common Core played a part in his change of position, or whether it
was merely a useful anecdote. But it raises the question of what
America would be like if politicians had to directly experience the
effects of the legislation they vote on.

The
Obama administration said this morning that about 7.3 million
people were paid and enrolled in insurance through Obamacare’s
exchanges as of August 15.

The figure represents a decline of about 700,000 from the 8
million the administration said were signed up for coverage at the
end of April. The decline stems from people signing up but not
paying, or from choosing drop coverage.

This is the first time the administration has provided a paid
enrollment figure. Previous estimates for Obamacare coverage have
relied on the number of people signed up, not the number of people
who finalized their enrollment by paying.  

The 7.3 million figure is not quite current; instead, it
represents a “snapshot” taken on a single day in August, Marilyn
Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, told members of Congress this morning. 

Even still, that figure is likely to decline at least somewhat
going forward. For one thing, it doesn’t account for the 115,000
people who could lose their coverage at the end of September as a
result of
failing to verify their citizenship. Nor does it account for
people who may choose to drop coverage after losing a subsidy
because they failed to verify their income.

The figure is also potentially complicated by the
90-day grace period for premium payment the law requires
insurers to abide by.

Tavenner’s statement this morning
said that, on August 15, “we have 7.3 million Americans
enrolled in Health Insurance Marketplace coverage and these are
individuals who paid their premiums.”

Presumably, then, these are all people who have made at least
one initial premium payment. But we don’t know for sure if they
kept paying; it’s possible that some of them paid once and then
failed to pay. Insurance industry consultant Bob Laszewski has said
that insurers
expect a monthly attrition rate of 2-5 percent even after
initial premiums are paid. 

That would mean that most people who signed up in the final
enrollment surge at the end of March and had coverage begin in May
would be in the window, as would
the 910,000 people who signed up in the special enrollment
period in April, many of whom didn’t have coverage go into effect
until
the beginning of June. 

An August 15 snapshot could be capturing people who paid the
first premium for May or June, and then missed later payments.
Without recurring report on sign-up and payment trends, however,
it’s somewhat difficult to tell. 

As Reason’s J.D. Tuccille noted earlier this
week, the grace period built into the law makes it possible for
someone to sign up for coverage, not pay premiums, and use the
coverage at a doctor’s office—eventually leaving the doctor on the
hook for the bill.

Still, the new figure suggests that the large declines in
enrollment
reported by Aetna, a health insurer which indicated that it
could see as much as a 30 percent drop in its Obamacare plans by
the end of the year, are probably not representative of any larger
trend. And they suggest that overall paid premiums are
at least somewhere in the range of the 7 million (perhaps a little
lower or a little higher) initially projected by the Congressional
Budget Office. 

The New York Times attempts to unravel
the tangled web of surrogacy laws and feels in the United
States: 

While surrogacy is far more accepted in the United States than
in most countries, and increasing rapidly (more than 2,000 babies
will be born through it here this year), it remains, like abortion,
a polarizing and charged issue. There is nothing resembling a
national consensus on how to handle it and no federal law, leaving
the states free to do as they wish.

Seventeen states have laws permitting surrogacy, but they vary
greatly in both breadth and restrictions. In 21 states, there is
neither a law nor a published case regarding surrogacy, according
to Diane Hinson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who specializes in
assisted reproduction. In five states, surrogacy contracts are void
and unenforceable, and in Washington, D.C., where new legislation
has been proposed, surrogacy carries criminal penalties. Seven
states have at least one court opinion upholding some form of
surrogacy.

California has the most permissive law, allowing anyone to hire
a woman to carry a baby and the birth certificate to carry the
names of the intended parents. As a result, California has a
booming surrogacy industry, attracting clients from around the
world.

Perhaps there’s room for reproductive-freedom advocates to
reform surrogacy laws at the state level, though it seems the bulk
of activism in this realm comes from surrogacy opponents—a gang
that includes social conservatives and Christians, especially
Catholics, who either see surrogacy as unnatural and immoral or a
gateway for gay parents, and some feminist groups, who see
surrogacy as exploitative. In the past few years, Louisiana,
Minnesota, and New Jersey all passed laws allowing surrogacy in
some situations that wound up vetoed by Republican governors,
sometimes with urging from women’s groups. 

Even the ostensibly pro-surrogacy crowd seems to favor making
surrogacy more complicated and less accessible, at least in
political circles. If this becomes a hot legislative issue,
Americans will almost certainly wind up with less freedom in this
area than we currently enjoy.

In the 21 states with no surrogacy laws, people can basically
become and hire surrogates on their own terms, without onerous and
arbitrary regulatory requirements. But Joanna L. Grossman, a family
law professor at Hofstra University, told the Times “the
big picture is that we’re moving toward laws like the one in
Illinois, which accepts that the demand for surrogacy isn’t going
away but recognizes the hazards and adds regulations and
protections.”

The surrogacy law that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed this
spring would have explicitly allowed surrogacy for some and
explicitly banned it for homosexual couples (by requiring the
embryo to use both sperm and egg from the intended parents). It
would have also banned surrogacy that’s not “altruistic,” meaning
surrogates couldn’t actually get paid beyond basic reimbursement
for pregnancy expenses. (Its ultimate demise was unrelated to
either of these major flaws and more based on objections from the
embryo-rights crowd.)

And the “model” Illinois law? It requires all parties involved
in the surrogacy contract to undergo medical and psychological
testing, says the intended parents must pay for an independent
lawyer for the surrogate, and stipulates that surrogates be at
least 21 years old and have given birth at least once before. It
also bans surrogacy in which the surrogate’s egg is fertilized by
the intended father; only surrogacy in which the embryo is created
in a petri dish using either sperm or egg from an intended parent
and gets implanted in the surrogate’s uterus (known as “gestational
surrogacy”) will be legally permitted.

Something to watch for with regard to emerging surrogacy
law—people pushing solutions as “pro surrogacy” because they don’t
outright forbid or criminalize the practice but which actually
create more categories of people who can’t participate and the
raise financial costs and privacy invasions for those who do.
 

It is clear to many people—even
many Congressmen—that President Obama’s decision not to seek
Congressional authorization for his plan to fight ISIS is blatantly
unconstitutional. So why is no one pressing the president about
that? Don’t national lawmakers possess, at the very least, some
basic desire to hold onto their legitimate powers?

It appears that they don’t—or rather, political considerations
trump all else.
According to BuzzFeed’s John Stanton, most legislators were
perfectly happy not voting on ISIS matters, for fear that a vote
could come back to haunt them in future election cycles:

“There are a lot of members who’d just rather just not vote on
this and let the president to shoulder the [political] weight of
taking us to war,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday. Schiff
is one of a handful of lawmakers who has pushed for a vote this
month on a new Authorized Use of Military Force legislation to
cover the administration’s campaign against ISIS. …

The perils of a vote for lawmakers are clear: Giving Obama
authority could be a major liability in future elections; Hilary
Clinton famously took major heat during the 2008 presidential
campaign for her support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If
Congress failed to pass authorization and a major attack were to
happen in the homeland, lawmakers could see an even more severe
backlash.

So even though legislators of both political parties remain
deeply skeptical that Obama’s policy of launching continuous
airstrikes against ISIS and arming the Syrian rebels will
accomplish any long-term goal, the president will basically always
get his way on contentious foreign policy matters, since voting
carries political risks.

(Keep in mind that the CIA has been
discreetly arming the Syrian rebels all along, even though the
vote to do that specific thing only took place yesterday. The CIA
now believes such a strategy is “doomed to failure.”)

Democracy: Good for a laugh, if nothing else.

It is clear to many people—even
many Congressmen—that President Obama’s decision not to seek
Congressional authorization for his plan to fight ISIS is blatantly
unconstitutional. So why is no one pressing the president about
that? Don’t national lawmakers possess, at the very least, some
basic desire to hold onto their legitimate powers?

It appears that they don’t—or rather, political considerations
trump all else.
According to BuzzFeed’s John Stanton, most legislators were
perfectly happy not voting on ISIS matters, for fear that a vote
could come back to haunt them in future election cycles:

“There are a lot of members who’d just rather just not vote on
this and let the president to shoulder the [political] weight of
taking us to war,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday. Schiff
is one of a handful of lawmakers who has pushed for a vote this
month on a new Authorized Use of Military Force legislation to
cover the administration’s campaign against ISIS. …

The perils of a vote for lawmakers are clear: Giving Obama
authority could be a major liability in future elections; Hilary
Clinton famously took major heat during the 2008 presidential
campaign for her support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If
Congress failed to pass authorization and a major attack were to
happen in the homeland, lawmakers could see an even more severe
backlash.

So even though legislators of both political parties remain
deeply skeptical that Obama’s policy of launching continuous
airstrikes against ISIS and arming the Syrian rebels will
accomplish any long-term goal, the president will basically always
get his way on contentious foreign policy matters, since voting
carries political risks.

(Keep in mind that the CIA has been
discreetly arming the Syrian rebels all along, even though the
vote to do that specific thing only took place yesterday. The CIA
now believes such a strategy is “doomed to failure.”)

Democracy: Good for a laugh, if nothing else.

Here’s an interesting result of America’s
economic sanctions on Russia: The demand for Kalashnikov rifles (of
AK-47 fame) has skyrocketed and average price for one has more than
doubled since an import ban on one major producer took effect
earlier this year.

The Moscow Times
reported earlier this week:

Kalashnikov Concern, the company that produces
the most popular line of civilian-use Kalashnikov rifles,
the Saiga, was blacklisted by the U.S. in July.
By September, U.S. distributors reported that their stocks
of genuine Russian-made Kalashnikovs had been cleared.

“As a result, an active resale market
for Kalashnikovs has arisen,” Russia’s new trade
representative to the U.S., Alexander Stadnik, said in an
interview published Tuesday by news agency TASS, Though there
are several non-Russian Kalashnikovs still available in the
U.S., American gun owners want the real thing, he added.

Stadnik said the average price of a Kalashnikov rifle
in the U.S. on the resale market has already hit $1,500,
compared to its previous off-the-shelf price of $600.

Even before the U.S. imposed sanctions against
the Kalashnikov Concern, the largest Russian manufacturer
of the iconic weapons, consumer demand in the U.S.
for Kalashnikov rifles exceeded supply by almost 200
percent.

Sales of civilian Kalashnikov rifles made up about 50
percent of Kalashnikov Concern’s sales before sanctions.

The ban, which took effect July 17, is part President Barack
Obama’s Executive
Order 13662, which was issued in response to Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine. Later in July, the U.S. and E.U.
shifted its policy from narrow, targeted sanctions against
Vladimir Putin’s cronies to broader, industry-wide ones after the
shooting down a passenger plane carrying nearly 300 civilians, a
crime Russian-backed forces are
believed to be responsible for. Obama continues to pile more
sanctions on Russia, and recently lauded his actions as the

“only reason” there’s a ceasefire in Ukraine.  

But, what are you to do if you want an authentic Russian weapon
these days? The Times notes that another Kalashnikov
manufacturer, Molot, has not been hit by sanctions, so their guns
are still available. And, the Kalashnikov Concern weapons already
in the U.S. before the ban are safe. Alternatively,
courtesy of none other than Mother Jones, you can
learn how to build your own legal, untraceable AK-47. 

PreferredOne
was the least expensive insurer in the Minnesota’s state-run
Obamacare exchange last year. It was also the most successful at
signing up customers, capturing 59 percent of the state’s market
for private plans,
according to CBS Minnesota. 

And now it’s leaving the exchange, and the 30,000 people who had
enrolled in its coverage. 

As Jed Graham from Investor’s Business Daily
explains, this was due to an unusual feature of Obamacare in
Minnesota—the existence of a “basic health program” option for
lower-income households. 

In 2015, well more than half of MNsure exchange subsidies won’t
go to insurers on the exchange, but to a public program serving
households that fall between the cut-off for Medicaid and 200% of
the poverty level.

To date, this MinnesotaCare
program for households above 138% of the poverty level has
signed up 72,000 people vs. just 55,000 for the subsidized
exchange.

The state was the first to embrace the Affordable Care Act’s
little-known basic health program option, allowing for subsidies to
be used in this way. New York state’s 2015 budget authorized the
creation of a basic health program, so it may be the second to take
the plunge.

Given PreferredOne’s dominant position on Minnesota’s exchange,
it stands to reason that the insurer sees no great opportunity to
be had.

The state’s embrace of the basic health program has not only
narrowed the potential exchange pool to households above 200% of
the poverty level, but it seems it may have skewed the demographics
somewhat older.

A statement from the company indicated that support costs for
the exchange plan were too high. “Continuing on MNsure [the state
exchange] was not sustainable,” the statement said. 

The basic health plans were supposed
to mitigate “churn” in the health insurance market, where income
changes throughout the year often mean that low-income individuals
end up switching back and forth between various forms of insurance
as their incomes move up and down across eligibility borders. But
they may end up turning off insurers from participating by limiting
the number of people who end up looking to buy private
insurance. 

PreferredOne
was the least expensive insurer in the Minnesota’s state-run
Obamacare exchange last year. It was also the most successful at
signing up customers, capturing 59 percent of the state’s market
for private plans,
according to CBS Minnesota. 

And now it’s leaving the exchange, and the 30,000 people who had
enrolled in its coverage. 

As Jed Graham from Investor’s Business Daily
explains, this was due to an unusual feature of Obamacare in
Minnesota—the existence of a “basic health program” option for
lower-income households. 

In 2015, well more than half of MNsure exchange subsidies won’t
go to insurers on the exchange, but to a public program serving
households that fall between the cut-off for Medicaid and 200% of
the poverty level.

To date, this MinnesotaCare
program for households above 138% of the poverty level has
signed up 72,000 people vs. just 55,000 for the subsidized
exchange.

The state was the first to embrace the Affordable Care Act’s
little-known basic health program option, allowing for subsidies to
be used in this way. New York state’s 2015 budget authorized the
creation of a basic health program, so it may be the second to take
the plunge.

Given PreferredOne’s dominant position on Minnesota’s exchange,
it stands to reason that the insurer sees no great opportunity to
be had.

The state’s embrace of the basic health program has not only
narrowed the potential exchange pool to households above 200% of
the poverty level, but it seems it may have skewed the demographics
somewhat older.

A statement from the company indicated that support costs for
the exchange plan were too high. “Continuing on MNsure [the state
exchange] was not sustainable,” the statement said. 

The basic health plans were supposed
to mitigate “churn” in the health insurance market, where income
changes throughout the year often mean that low-income individuals
end up switching back and forth between various forms of insurance
as their incomes move up and down across eligibility borders. But
they may end up turning off insurers from participating by limiting
the number of people who end up looking to buy private
insurance.