Jeb Bush Discusses His Faith Journey with South Carolina Pastors
Over on the home page, word that Jeb Bush met with about 40 pastors in Greenville, South Carolina earlier this month and discussed his conversion to Catholicism with them. He didn't necessarily persuade them to sign on to his campaign, but "he did himself a lot of good." Al Phillips, the director of missions at the Greenville Baptist Association, said "[Bush] said he had made a commitment of his life to Christ. I have, too, so I understand what he meant by that," Phillips says. "I felt that the humility and authenticity I sensed from him came from his relationship with Christ. The fact that he practices his faith in the Catholic Church does not matter to me, as long as he has a faith relationship with Christ." Criminal Charges for GM. Can We Get Our $11.2 Billion Back? Hey, remember "Government Motors"? Federal prosecutors are likely to bring criminal charges against General Motors Co. over an ignition-switch defect linked to more than 100 deaths, but they still have to hash out key issues with GM including whether the auto maker will need to plead guilty and how big a fine it will have to pay, people familiar with the matter said. GM's cooperation with prosecutors could allow it to escape with a lighter fine that in any case is expected to top $1 billion. Yes, this is the same GM that cost taxpayers an $11.2 billion loss in the bailout. So we spent a lot of money to help save a company that was allegedly engaged in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the fact that they were selling unsafe cars. (When the government sold its first shares, President Obama boldly predicted, "American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM.") Back in April 2014, an unnamed source told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that GM didn't tell the task force anything about the defective switches. It's an unsurprising excuse, but not quite as exculpatory as that unnamed source may think. The task force's job was to get an accurate portrait of GM's assets, liabilities, and problems, and the source said GM's board and the task force did discuss product-liability claims. The Obama administration bragged about the thoroughness of its review. At this point, it is unclear whether the task force spoke with anyone in the engineering department. At the precise moment the president's task force was supposedly confronting GM about a dysfunctional corporate culture that had brought the company to the brink of ruin, it accepted everything GM's leaders told it at face value. GM CEO Mary Barra won't get invited to next year's State of the Union. Oh, Look, Those Big Insurance Premium Hikes That Weren't Supposed to Happen Hey, remember Obamacare? Remember this bold Obama promise that probably persuaded a lot of people to vote for him? "I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year." Surprise! It turns out that when a lot of people who didn't previously have health insurance are required to buy it (or join Medicaid), they end up using it. And that ends up with higher costs for the insurer . . . which they turn around and use to justify higher premiums. Major insurers in some states are proposing hefty rate boosts for plans sold under the federal health law, setting the stage for an intense debate this summer over the law's impact. In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products. Moda Health, the largest insurer on the Oregon health exchange, seeks an average boost of around 25%. All of them cite high medical costs incurred by people newly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act. Anthem Inc., in Virginia, wants an average increase of 13.2%. Blue Care Network, part of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, applied for a 10% average increase. In Washington state and Vermont, the market leaders have sought relatively modest average increases, akin to those proposed last year, of 9.6% and 8.4%, respectively. In Indiana and Connecticut, the leading plans want 3.8% and 2% boosts. So far, Maine is the only state where the market leader proposed keeping rates generally flat. Megan McArdle: . . . the proposed rates will not end up being the final rate. Regulators are going to push back on these rates as hard as they can, with some success. But in the case of the companies cited by the Wall Street Journal, I'd bet they're not going to go down to 4-8 percent. As it turns out, the insurer filings are public information, available on state websites. And in the three cases where I could see supporting data about premium revenue and losses, those losses appear to be large . . . Yes, some insurance companies are now lamenting that Obamacare is turning out to be a bad deal. (Where's the world's smallest violin?) Back to McCardle: Eyeing the Journal's list, the most obvious pattern is that states are converging on a price somewhere well north of $300 a month for a 40-year-old nonsmoker seeking a Silver plan; the states with the biggest rate hikes all had premiums under $250, and are asking to be allowed to go near or over $300, while the states that asked for low increases were already over $300, and in some cases well over. (Vermont is at $430 -- and asking to go to $476! "Only" an 8.4 percent increase, but wow.) It seems as if states where insurers initially underpriced are now trying to move toward a natural price somewhere between $3,600 and $5,000 a year for a single nonsmoker. If that's the price of providing basic benefits, regulators cannot command it away by fiat; the best they can do is to force insurers out of the market. Democrats continue to belatedly realize that a requirement to purchase health insurance is not the same as access to affordable health care: After paying premiums, many low- and middle-income patients still face high costs when trying to use their coverage. There's growing concern that the value of a health insurance card is being eaten away by rising deductibles, the amount of actual medical costs that patients pay each year before coverage kicks in. "I think it's going to be the next big problem," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a congressional leader on health care. "We've got some 17 million more people covered ... but they can't access the care they seem to be entitled to," McDermott said. "It costs too much to use the care. That's the deceptive part about it." . . . Obama's Affordable Care Act set annual limits on out-of-pocket costs for most insurance plans, currently $6,600 for an individual policy and $13,200 for a family plan. Man, is this helping anyone? Oh, a few: Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield's remarkable 42.6 percent surge in revenue in 2014 over the previous year is mainly a result of the Affordable Care Act . . . For 2015, ABCBS increased the premium for the ACA members by an average of 2 percent. ABCBS' net income for 2014 was $46 million. That's a 21.9 percent increase in profit, compared with the 42.6 percent increase in revenue, resulting in a slimmer margin. Of course, the law is still unpopular . . . Finally . . . Former NSA analyst and U.S. Naval War College professor John Schindler, on his Twitter feed: Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: "We'll probably be at war this summer. If we're lucky it won't be nuclear." Let that sink in. (GOFO is General Officer/Flag Officer.) Let's hope we're lucky! ADDENDA: Over the weekend, I finished the late Stuart Scott's memoir, Every Day I Fight. Scott, one of the preeminent faces of ESPN, began fighting cancer in 2007, beat it, was diagnosed again, beat it again, was diagnosed a third time, and passed away January 4. His memoir is precisely as you might expect -- a raw, honest read, funny and extremely sad and sometimes both. One section I loved, and found myself applauding: I was proud to travel with my kid. I had it down to a science. I was fumbling around like some amateur. I packed a bag; I had the carrier; I'd take the bottles out on the plane and ask the attendant to put them on ice for the flight. It was like clockwork. Still, people had a hard time wrapping their heads around the sight of the two of us, and it ticked me off. Whether we were in the security line at the airport, boarding a plane, or checking into a hotel, someone would inevitably say, "Oh, look. Mr. Mom." People were trying to be nice -- complimentary even. But I hated that. I'm not Mr. Mom. I'm Dad. Is Mom ever Mrs. Dad? Or how about this one? "Oh, that's so sweet. Dad's babysitting." Seriously? Babysitters get paid. I'm no babysitter. I'm Dad. That sense of surprise, that inability to process the fact of a dad who was as conscientious as a mom -- it's a sad commentary on what our culture expects from fathers. Finally . . . get ready for not nine, but eighteen new episodes of Twin Peaks, coming to Showtime in 2016. | 
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