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The premise that selling health insurance across state lines is “the magical pill” to save the health insurance market is the biggest load of bullshit since Obama said “you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”. The GOP claims that cross-state selling will make insurance so affordable, and so terrific, that everyone will not be able to contain themselves from flooding the market to buy health insurance like its a goddamn new iPhone! There is NOTHING that gets people fired up, like paying monthly insurance premiums for services they hope they never have to use… Regardless, the underlying idea is that adding insurers and policies into markets will boost competition and reduce costs – which sounds great from a philosophical perspective, but is also a bunch a bullshit and completely impractical.

Funny enough, the issue with this philosophy isn’t overbearing federal restriction on selling insurance; it’s the individual laws within states. To be clear, there are currently ZERO federal restrictions on selling health insurance across state lines, so insurers could sell across lines today if they wanted (a few have actually tried and failed miserably). Like most state laws, they can vary widely from state to state depending on their individual population dynamics. For example, Nevada may have vastly different chiropractic requirements for insurance policies compared to Maryland. In aggregate, all of these specific state regulations can be major barriers for out of state insurers. In addition, insurers must set up doctors networks and competitive reimbursement rates within the expanded market. In addition, negotiating competitive rates is a major challenge without significant competition.  Lastly, health care costs vary across state lines, so a cheaper plan in Alabama will not bear the same costs in New York – insurers could take a loss charging a consumer in New York the same premium as a consumer in Alabama for the same coverage.

The Center on Health Insurance Reform conducted a study in Six States which all had legislation specifically aimed either to study or actively promote selling across state lines. Unfortunately, given the challenges mentioned above, NOT A SINGLE insurer sold a SINGLE product into a new market. I repeat, NOT A SINGLE INSURER SOLD A SINGLE PRODUCT INTO A NEW MARKET.

Here are the summary of the findings:

• To date, although all states have long had the authority to do so, only six have enacted across state lines legislation.
• Across state lines legislation was largely unsuccessful because of the localized nature of how health care is delivered
• Practical barriers and administrative obstacles also hinder success.
• Once enacted, these laws appear to lack any organized champion
• These cross-state proposals fail to address underlying differences in cost from state to state

In short, even a concerted effort by states to promote cross-state selling failed due to (1) burdensome STATE regulations and resources needed to expand into new markets and (2) the new policies were not well received in the market itself (which is the entire impetus behind the policy in the first place). Ironically, the only way to sell across state lines without dealing with burdensome state regulations, would be to establish federal plans that could be sold regardless of state regulations (which may be unconstitutional, I have no idea). So in order for Republicans to get this to work, they would have to supersede state’s rights, for “BIG government” federal oversight….. you would have a better shot at catching Paul Ryan taking a shit on the White House lawn than doing what I just outlined.

So why are Republicans claiming that selling across state lines is the magical pill we need to fix our healthcare system? Because they don’t have a real plan to actually fix healthcare, they just want to reduce government at all costs unless it has to do with national “defense” or homeland security.

MAGA!!!!

-El Chapo

I was going to spend this first blog of 2017 lambasting Trump, but considering how awful the Trump transition has been the last 6 weeks, we will have PLENTY of time for that over the next 4 years. Instead, I want to call out anyone who still says “NOT MY PRESIDENT”. I don’t care if you are a LGBT Hispanic Muslim immigrant who visits Planned Parenthood monthly, he is still your President. Sure he was elected on a platform of misinformation, xenophobia and downright incoherence, but he is still our President. Denying hes legitimacy doesn’t make you altruistic, it makes you an asshole. Let’s not act like the insufferable Mitch McConnell and the Republican party of the last 6 years whose sole focus was to bury Obama. Look, I detest Donald Trump as much as anyone, but for the sake of our country, I pray that he has a productive presidency. I hope that he can improve the lives of ALL our citizens like he has promised. Part of that means having a healthy dose of skepticism. Part of that means fighting the flat-earthers at every pass whether it has to do with climate change, health care, safety net, etc. That said, let’s not root for failure out of spite.

So next time you think about saying “Not My President”, just remember how angry this made you.

#makedonaldgreatagain

-El Chapo

Last week, Officer Betty Shelby of the Tulsa County Police Department, shot and and killed an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, as he was walking away from the officer with his hands up. See video below.

It really isn’t Officer Shelby’s fault though, this is an actual Tulsa County Police Department training video on the proper protocols to discharge your firearm.

Needless to say, their training protocols need to be updated!

-El Chapo

Hey America! Are you all like, “It doesn’t matter who is elected president, they are all the same,  I’m not even voting this election.”

You may be a grimy hipster for saying something like that, but you also may be on to something. Like I’ve previously laid out in Episode 1 and Episode 2, the President barely registers in your day to day life COMPARED to other collective bodies of Government in the United States. If you are one of the brave men and women who swore defend our country everyday this message isn’t for you. The President can absolutely fuck up your day. This message is to everyone else with their panties in a twist over our Presidential candidates.

The good news- the President doesn’t matter! The bad news- who you elect to Congress does matter and they are some of the most corrupt people in our government. Your Representative and Senators are the assholes writing and passing 20,000 page bills without even knowing whats in them until well after they are signed into law. They tend to mask their true intentions by naming it something overtly populist. For example, The Patriot Act should probably be called ‘Destroying the American principle of privacy and freedom to “stop terrorism” Act’.  The Freedom Act is really the ‘Its not as bad as the Patriot Act, but were still taking away your freedoms Act’ , No Child Left Behind is really the ‘Arbitrary Standards for Students in order to get Funding Act’. Most of the time, these congressmen typically don’t even read the bills. They push it on a 22 year old staffer who just graduated from American University to provide their “expert” analysis on whether its a good idea to store all of your person emails. God help us if they name something the AMERICAN PUPPY ACT – it would likely force us to kill all the puppies. We wouldn’t know until it was too late because that 300 word provision was buried in a 3 ft high stack of deception and legal jargon they call a bill.

Wait, so why would our patriotic Representatives do this? Because US Congressmen are not motivated to do whats best for the country, they are motivated to get re-elected which only happens through butt-loads of donations and toting the party line. Congress is essentially a group of professional money raisers who get re-elected 80-90 percent of the time despite approval ratings lower than that of cockroaches and traffic jams – no bullshit, it’s true.

Now back to why they really matter- money! This is the branch of Government responsible for setting budgets and approving debt. Sure, you hear pundits falsely blame presidents for National Debt , but the President doesn’t have shit to do with the budget except for signing the dotted line. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs are at stake every time Congress lines up for the partisan pissing contest that has become our annual budgeting process. They love to scream fiscal conservation OR funding for poor, but that’s only after these snakes have paid up their special interests groups of course.

Shithead Senator:“Hey Mitch, we need $459 million on more warplanes, Lockheed gave us a shit ton of money for the election this year”

Shithead Majority Leader: “No problem, we will just cut funding to Veterans Affairs and find a way to blame it on the other side.”

But hey, after a few trillion dollars who cares anyways, right? It’s all make believe money at this point. Sure the President can order the Marines to storm the beaches of Syria, but these jerkoffs have placed a little nuclear bomb into every one of our bank accounts.

-Boston George