The New Spin: No Death Spiral, Just Higher Premiums and Higher Costs to Taxpayers!

Today on NRO

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature. The Idol of Equality.

THE EDITORS: Bailouts are written into Obamacare; repeal them. Insurance-Company Bailouts.

ANDREW STILES: The Senate majority leader's hostility toward amendments is finally catching up to him. Harry Reid's Obstructionism.

DEROY MURDOCK: Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom has the U.S. slipping for the seventh straight year. In Economic Freedom, Now We're No. 12!

TOM ROGAN: SIS and al-Qaeda must be confronted in Syria, but allying with Iran isn't the way to do it. Iran and the Wrong Allies in Syria.

JACK JOLIS: In foreign policy as in our personal lives, we may be blamed for doing the right thing. Preemption: Thankless Wisdom.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

January 14, 2014

Good morning! New Jersey Governor Chris Christie delivers his State of the State address today, which means it will be treated by the national media as the MOST IMPORTANT STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS EVER. In other news . . .

The New Spin: No Death Spiral, Just Higher Premiums and Higher Costs to Taxpayers!

So . . . the folks who have signed up for Obamacare are mostly old and sick. Megan McCardle spotlights a terrific statistic: "62 percent of the people eligible for subsidies selected a plan, but only 8.5 percent of those who weren't eligible for subsidies actually purchased one." Man, sure is easier to hit "purchase" when Uncle Sam is covering part of the bill, huh?

But we're being told it's NOT a formula for the death spiral. Just higher premiums next year.

But even if the age mix remains tilted toward older adults, "it's nothing of the sort that would trigger instability in the system," said Larry Levitt, an insurance expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums would go up next year for the overhaul, along with taxpayer costs per enrollee, but not enough to push the system into a "death spiral" in which rising premiums discourage healthy people from signing up.

Oh, just higher premiums and higher costs to taxpayers; that's all! Avik Roy, what does that mean?

…the bottom line is that insurers will still lose money on these plans. And there are other aspects of adverse selection. For example: are we seeing sicker participants within a given age group, regardless of age? Are the healthy people in the exchanges skewing towards high-deductible bronze plans, while sicker people buy more generous silver and gold plans?

Taxpayers will be on the hook for any increased costs. Most importantly, many Americans will choose to go without insurance because it's even less affordable than it was before.

So, this giant legislative monstrosity that was passed to reduce the number of uninsured is steadily increasing the number of uninsured. We would have been better off doing nothing.

Are you ready for a massive wave of staff turnover on Capitol Hill?

A survey of senior managers in Congress indicates that cuts in congressional office budgets and transitioning staff to a new healthcare benefit structure could lead to a significant number of staff departures. Also, nearly four in ten senior staff said they plan to look for a job in the next 12 months, according to research conducted by the Congressional Management Foundation.

Senior managers also reported staff concerns about the transition to healthcare exchanges: 91% reported their staff was "worried about possible changes in health benefits" 87% reported their staff was "worried about the cost of health insurance" 82% reported their staff was "worried about the ability to access local health care providers."

You know Obamacare is bad when it can persuade public sector employees to look at their options in the dog-eat-dog, no-guarantees private sector.

Finally, USA Today's editorial board practically begs the Obama administration to get out of its legal fight with the Little Sisters of the Poor, as the government tends to look like a bunch of jerks when it takes a bunch of nuns to court, demanding the nuns pay for birth control:

Federal law has several constitutionally vetted religious exemptions. The administration should adopt the most expansive, such as the one that exempts employers who share "religious bonds and convictions with a church." One of Obama's most prominent Catholic supporters, John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, urged the administration to do just that in 2011 when it was formulating its policy.

If the president offered a more meaningful compromise, other religious leaders would have a hard time saying no. The public health impact would be minimal. And religious freedom would be granted the wide berth it deserves.

The folks on the USA Today editorial board are fine folks, but their argument presumes the Obama administration sees a value in the way the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Catholic Church as a whole practice their religious freedom. The Obama team's decision to have this fight is pretty revealing, isn't it?

Mike Bloomberg Is Very Disappointed in You, Mr. Mayor!

Meanwhile, in southeastern Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia . . .

Despite impassioned pleas to the judge from family and friends, former Marcus Hook Mayor James Schiliro is going to jail.

Schiliro was sentenced in Delaware County Court to 10 to 20 months for an alcohol-fueled episode last February in which he had a police car bring a former neighbor to his home - a 20-year-old to whom he said he was attracted - compelled him to drink wine, and refused to let him leave for 3½ hours.

During the encounter, Schiliro threatened to kill himself and fired a gun into a stack of papers. The man eventually left the home and later called police.

Rusty Weiss reminds us that while mayor, Schiliro was a member of . . . you guessed it! Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Maybe the mayor thought that because he was far too reckless, irresponsible, and volatile to own a gun, everyone else was, too.

TV Executives Find Innovative, Groundbreaking Way to Ruin Popular Character

Indulge me for a moment as I rant about how terrible an idea this is:

Fox chairman Kevin Reilly… at the network's Television Critics Association press tour panel in Pasadena on Monday. The network's licensing deal with Warner Bros. includes the rights to ALL the classic Batman characters — The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin and Batman himself. They will all be young versions of the characters and the show will tell how each became the psychologically damaged character we love today.

"This is all of the classic Batman characters," Reilly said during the panel. "It follows the arc of how they all became what they were. I've read the script its really good. It's going to be this operatic soap that has a slightly larger-than-life quality."

Batman will be followed from the time he's a child to "the final episode of the series when he puts on the cape."

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

You know what I'd really like to see in a Batman television series? Friggin' Batman, that's what! Not teen-angsty, brooding loner Bruce Wayne. Not class-clown Joker. Not sassy cute chick Selina Kyle. Not picked-on nerd Edward Nygma.

Arrrrgh! It's as if the creators asked, "what kind of Batman stories would people be least interested in watching?"

Sure, there's some interesting drama potential with young Bruce Wayne, trying to figure out how to deal with his parents' death and figure out what to do with his life, but that was explored pretty thoroughly in the first half of "Batman Begins." Yes, "Smallville" explored young Clark Kent and went on for a lot of seasons, but it A) utilized just about every other superhero in the DC Comics universe except for Batman and Wonder Woman and B) clearly was carried along by the CW teen-drama demographic and C) was very hit-and-miss at best.

How do you make a television series that you hope will go on for years and years when you are constantly putting off the moment the audience is itching to see –--i.e, when he becomes Batman?

You may recall from a Jolt last year my reference to the History Channel special, "The Psychology of Batman." While it's discussing a comic book and movie series, the psychologists interviewed discussed some big concepts, and argued that the heroes and villains of page and screen are ultimately having a philosophical argument. Benjamin Karney, a professor of psychology at UCLA, summarizes the Joker as declaring, "The presence of random injustice means that there is no justice; the fact that innocents can be destroyed means there is no innocence. So your life is a joke. When someone says your life is a joke, that's a moral challenge, it's an intellectual challenge."

All of Batman's villains are wildly exaggerated versions of the criminals and villains we see in real life -- those who say, through their actions, that we're fools for obeying the law and trying to do the right thing, who assert that the only limit to life is what you can get away with. If you feel like stealing something, take it. If you feel like killing someone, go ahead. Terrorize everybody. Anybody who does differently is weak or naïve. This is why so many of them are compelling, even though they're the villains. Many people secretly wish they could be a tricky mastermind like the Riddler or a sexy, wily jewel thief like Catwoman.

And then there's the hero -- who looks menacing with his dark costume, cape, cowl, and mask, but who fights to set things right. He's who most of the fans wish they could be -- powerful and smart and maybe a little bit ruthless in the way he dispatches evildoers, almost always one step ahead of everyone from the villains to Commissioner Gordon. He goes out into the night and finds the people who frighten us -- the footsteps behind us when we're walking alone in a parking garage late -- and frightens the hell out of them.

But hey, why do a television series about that when you can do teen angst over whether Selina will go out with Bruce to the prom?

Arrrrrrrgh.

ADDENDA: The boys watched Disney's Peter Pan last night, a movie I hadn't seen in ages. Towards the end there's a big musical number that looks pretty ironic, horrible, or hilarious in light of today's sensibilities. Let me put it this way:

If you're a critic of the Washington Redskins' team nickname, the following will make your head explode:

The lyrics:

Why does he ask you, "How?"
Why does he ask you, "How?"
Once the Injun didn't know
All the things that he know now
But the Injun, he sure learn a lot
And it's all from asking, "How?"

Hana Mana Ganda
Hana Mana Ganda
We translate for you
Hana means what mana means
And ganda means that too

When did he first say, "Ugh!"
When did he first say, "Ugh!"
In the Injun book it say
When the first brave married squaw
He gave out with a big ugh
When he saw his Mother-in-Law

What made the red man red?
What made the red man red?
Let's go back a million years
To the very first Injun prince
He kissed a maid and start to blush
And we've all been blushin' since

You've got it from the headman
The real true story of the red man
No matter what's been written or said
Now you know why the red man's red!

Really, sensitive advocates of Native American rights, is Daniel Snyder that much worse?

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