A new brief from Pioneer Institute, The Impact of the Federal Health Law’s “Cadillac Insurance Tax” in Massachusetts, estimates additional costs associated with the ACA’s so-called “Cadillac tax,” will affect well over 50% of workers in Massachusetts.
Thousands of $$$ in New Taxes for Middle-Class Workers by Josh Archambault Publish Date: October 5, 2012 Impact of the Federal Health Law’s “Cadillac Insurance Tax” in Massachusetts Thousands of $$$ in New Taxes for Middle-Class Workers by Josh Archambault Conventional wisdom is that healthcare in Massachusetts will not change significantly under the federal Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA), known as ObamaCare. However, a careful review of the law reveals that many big changes are ahead for the Commonwealth. This brief will examine the impact of the so-called “Cadillac tax” included in ObamaCare. Under the PPACA, sponsors of self-funded group health insurance plans and all health insurance issuers themselves will be assessed an excise tax on any benefits provided […]
Pioneer announces Umut Dur, University of Texas Doctoral Candidate, is recipient of first annual Ruth and Lovett Peters Fellowship to support school choice initiatives
State and local education policy makers in the 46 states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards should emphasize the literary-historical content that already exists in the standards and add an additional literature-based standard to address Common Core’s lack of literary content.
The Guide to Sound Fiscal Management for Municipalities is intended as a resource for citizens, especially those serving on municipal finance committees, to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of their community’s spending. Pioneer has distributed over 3,000 copies to city and town finance committee members throughout Massachusetts.
ichael Barone, best-selling author and respected political commentator, will deliver the keynote address, “Election 2012 and the American Experiment,” at Pioneer Institute’s 2012 Better Government Competition Awards ceremony.
Featuring keynote speaker Jeff Riley, Superintendent-receiver of the Lawrence Public school district.
Longtime Director of Pioneer Institute’s Centers for Better Government and Economic Opportunity, Steve Poftak, will become Executive Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/panel-convenes-to-discuss-common-core-in-utah/ A panel was convened at Utah’s Salt Lake Community College Miller Campus to discuss the downsides of adopting the Common Core State Standards this week. The Standards, which are a set of benchmarks in mathematics and English, were developed over the last two years. Although the adoption of the Common Core is entirely voluntary, panel members still characterized them as an intrusion by the federal government into an area that should be left entirely under the state control. As one of the states intimately involved with the drafting of the standards, Utah had already made a commitment to adopt them once they are finalized. Recently, however, this decision has attracted increasingly stiff criticism. The panel participants voices some of […]
http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2012/07/mass-health-reform-as-pig-in-a-poke I had to look up this expression to make sure I was using it correctly, but yes, indeed, the opinion piece in the Boston Herald today from The Pioneer Institute’s Josh Archambault argues that the legislature is buying a pig in a poke when it comes to the cost-cutting health reform measures soon up for passage. (Why we love Wikipedia: The expression means “that something is sold or bought without the buyer knowing its true nature or value, especially when buying without inspecting the item beforehand,” and “A poke is a sack or bag. It has a French origin as ‘poque.’”) But I digress. Josh warns: The fact that a bill which overhauls our complex health care system was […]
http://www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x736421379/GUEST-OPINION-Dont-buy-new-content-light-Mass-ICCR-standards?zc_p=1 The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 2008 Task Force on 21st Century Skills called for refocusing public school curricula on fuzzy concepts like “cultural competence” and “global awareness.” But Massachusetts citizens were less than excited about trading in the success that flowed from the commonwealth’s liberal arts-rich academic standards. Four years later, the board is back pushing essentially the same ideas in the guise of recommendations from another task force, this one on “Integrating College and Career Readiness” (ICCR). Massachusetts’ laser-like focus on academics has produced historic results. In 2005, Bay State students became the first ever to lead in all four categories on tests known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” Since then, they have repeated the […]
http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/07/are_teachers_changing_their_un.html The recent deal brokered by Stand for Children with the Massachusetts Teachers Association (and at the end supported by the AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts chapter of the American Federation for Teachers) made some progress in making student performance a larger consideration in evaluating teachers and lessened the role of seniority. The Globe editorial board put it this way: Stand for Children was plowing ahead with a tough ballot initiative that would have eliminated nearly all aspects of teacher seniority in the state’s public school systems. It went so far as to put non-tenured teachers with three years or less experience — so-called provisionals — on par with the most senior teachers during layoffs. With the 107,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association […]
http://www.governing.com/blogs/politics/gov-massachusetts-tackles-health-care-reform-again.html Now that the Supreme Court has closed the book on the first phase of health-care reform with its decision to uphold President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), Massachusetts is poised to kick off phase 2 — and like the first time, this could have implications for other states. Before the Massachusetts Legislature adjourns on July 31, chances are good that lawmakers will pass a bill to enact cost controls on health care in the state, according to a series of interviews in Boston’s Beacon Hill. The measure — which Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick is expected to sign — would be the long-awaited follow-up to the health-care overhaul approved in 2006 by the Democratic-dominated Legislature and signed […]
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865558845/Full-house-hears-panels-criticisms-of-Common-Core.html SANDY — Concerned residents filled the auditorium of the Salt Lake Community College Miller Campus Tuesday for a panel discussion on the failures of the Common Core State Standards. The standards are a set of achievement benchmarks in mathematics and English language arts that were developed by states and are voluntarily adopted. Utah has been involved with a consortium of states in developing the benchmarks for more than two years, but the issue has gained notoriety in recent months as many Utahns view the program as a federal intrusion into state sovereignty. One-third to one-fourth of Tuesday’s crowd of approximately 300 self-identified as home schoolers, but frequently joined their public education peers in applauding the remarks by panel members […]
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0710/Health-care-reform-How-has-the-individual-mandate-worked-in-Massachusetts There was a moment some 5-1/2 years ago when Peter Kastner looked at his monthly health-insurance bills and wondered whether breaking the law might make more sense. He and his wife were using a high-deductible plan with a $400 monthly premium, but it didn’t comply with the landmark 2006 law that transformed health insurance in Massachusetts. Paying the tax penalty for not complying was almost more economical than the policies he found through the state-run insurance exchange program. After three months, the Kastners decided that the risks associated with catastrophic insurance were too much, and they opted for coverage through his former employer at $800 a month. When that coverage ran out, monthly premiums under a new, state-approved policy […]
Published in CommonWealth Magazine Boston cardinal seán o’malley condemns the Obama administration’s requirement that all employers, even religious ones, offer insurance covering the cost of birth control, even after the president backtracked and offered a compromise. “It is important that Catholics not be deceived into thinking that this issue is simply another battle in the ‘culture wars,’” O’Malley wrote on his blog in February. “Rather, it is an attack on the right of all people of faith to live their faith in freedom.” Yet O’Malley appears to have no First Amendment qualms about a legally questionable real estate practice by the Boston Archdiocese that seeks to impose the church’s religious mores and anticompetitive mandates on those who buy surplus church […]
http://ceo.ulitzer.com/node/2309642 WHAT: “Common Core State Standards” (CCSS) Forum WHEN: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 Media interviews: 6:00-7:00 p.m. Panel Discussion: 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. WHERE: Larry Miller Auditorium, SLCC Campus 9750 South 300 West Sandy, Utah 84070 WHO: Utah Education Coalition Utah State Representative Keith Grover, Chairman Alisa Ellis, Event Chairman Panelists to include: Dr. Bill Evers, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; member, Mitt Romney’s Education Policy Advisory Group; former United States Assistant Secretary of Education under George W. Bush Kent D. Talbert, co-founder, Talbert & Eitel, PLLC; former General Counsel, United States Department of Education under George W. Bush Emmett McGroarty, Esq., Director of Education Policy, American Principles Project; author, ALEC anti-common core legislation; founder, www.truthinamericaneducation.org network James Gass, Director, Center […]
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/09/obamacare-more-taxing-than-romneycare-two-laws-differences-debated/ President Obama’s camp chafes at the notion the health care law’s individual insurance mandate packs the threat of a tax. One way Democrats have been responding to to such criticisms is to point the finger at Mitt Romney and the health care law he signed as governor of Massachusetts. “Let’s get down to the bottom line here: Mitt Romney is the ObamaCare daddy,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “He gave birth to this baby up in Massachusetts, and now he doesn’t recognize it.” President Obama made the same argument while on a bus tour last week, saying, “when you hear all these folks saying, oh, no, no, this is a tax, this is a […]
Future archeologists who stumble upon the annals of local government, circa 2012, may find this era remarkable for the things we tried to get rid of: enormous sodas, small plastic water bottles, public swearing, fatty food, loud leaf blowers. Chelsea, Lynn, and Brookline have joined Cambridge and made the news, with the coverage sometimes favorable and sometimes mocking, for passing bans that tried to make their residents healthier, quieter, more environmental. But the expanding list of potentially prohibited food, drink, and noise has spawned its own debate: Do the bans work? And are they necessary? “The best thing you can say for them is that they are inefficient and amount to little more than symbolic actions,” said Jim Stergios, executive […]
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2012/07/07/hollywood_arrives_in_small_massachusetts_towns_cash_in_hand_and_stars_on_location/?page=2 When the state started doling out tax breaks to attract big-name films in 2006, it seemed natural that Boston would take a star turn in the flurry of movies that followed, including “The Town” and “Gone Baby Gone.” The city has the cachet, dramatic locations, and technical talent needed to support such large productions. But this summer, Hollywood crews are also deployed across the suburbs, with three major projects currently filming in smaller Massachusetts communities. For businesses and residents in those towns, playing host to a movie production offers more than the chance to glimpse a star or two – it can also provide an economic boost on a hyperlocal level. “It’s like a little green shamrock,” said Nancy […]
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2012/07/06/boston-neighborhood-borders-crowdsource/ For a select group of Boston residents, there’s nothing more important than their neighborhood and its identity. And there are many places, where you are absolutely, positively in a specific neighborhood — Broadway in South Boston, Blue Hill Ave in Mattapan Square, Adams Park in Roslindale. But head out from those places and you run into lots of a grey areas — probably in one neighborhood, but possibly in another. And the definitions may shift depending on whom you talk to — the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Boston Transportation Department, realtors, long-time residents, or newcomers. Some places even get to shift neighborhoods. One particular area moved from Roslindale to West Roxbury after the West Roxbury post office got the […]
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/06/gop-pushes-carrot-approach-to-insuring-americas-over-obamacare-mandate-stick/ Part of the the effort to repeal and replace the President Obama’s health care law, as Republicans see it, is to find a way to entice the uninsured to buy insurance rather than force them to do so. The existing law that the Supreme Court recently upheld relies on the proverbial stick — the individual mandate, which requires people to buy insurance or face a fine. Republicans argue for a carrot approach, to help more people voluntarily buy insurance, including by offering broader tax incentives. “I think that many on the other side see that there is an alternative,” Nina Owcharenko of the Heritage Foundation said. “If we actually use carrots and provide the right incentives for people who […]
http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/spinning_the_supreme_courts_he.php?page=all In the days before and after the Supreme Court’s decision, spin doctors were hard at work peddling their experts, positions, and takes on what might happen, and then what did happen and what might happen next. This is all to be expected, but the scope and the volume of the spin was extraordinary. “I have never seen so many lawyers and experts ready to comment,” said Allan Ripp, whose company, Allan Ripp Public Relations Inc., represents law firms and other healthcare stakeholders. “I’ve never seen a piece of news generate this much media responsive messaging. Anyone, aside from entertainment lawyers, had something to say. It was a quotable or teachable moment.” One of Ripp’s clients, the Washington-based law firm […]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/07/06/44000_uninsured_massachusetts_residents_paid_penalty_in_2010/?page=2 Francisco Machado of Lowell had long gone without health insurance. Strong and healthy, he preferred to save the money or send it to family in Brazil, until pain and buzzing in his ear sent him to the emergency room. The $600 bill persuaded him to enroll in a plan offered by his employer, a cleaning company. Having coverage meant that the 45-year-old would no longer be hit with a state fine — he paid $406 in 2011 — for being uninsured. But this spring Machado moved to a part-time job and became uninsured again. Massachusetts had the nation’s highest rate of health coverage even before passage of a pioneering 2006 law requiring most residents to have insurance. Yet tens […]
http://www.telegram.com/article/20120703/NEWS/120709902/1052/newsrewind BOSTON — Massachusetts has the nation’s highest rate of residents with health insurance. Visits to emergency rooms are beginning to ease. More residents are getting cancer screenings and more women are making prenatal doctors’ visits. Still, one of the biggest challenges for the state lies ahead: reining in spiraling costs. Six years after Gov. Mitt Romney signed the nation’s most ambitious health care law — one that would lay the groundwork for his presidential opponent’s national version — supporters say the Massachusetts law holds promise for the long-term success of Barack Obama’s plan. Like the federal law it inspired, the Massachusetts law has multiple goals, among them expanding the number of insured residents, reducing emergency room visits, penalizing those […]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2902104/posts -According to the Beacon Hill Institute the RomneyCare plan has increased total health insurance costs by $4.3 Billion. -The Kiaser Family Foundation recently found that Massachusetts health insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation. This has come about since the passage of RomneyCare. -Since the passage of RomneyCare, healthcare costs paid by the state have risen until they now account for 40% of the state budget. -According to current projections, the average median-income family will be expected to pay nearly a third of its income toward health insurance premiums by 2016. -According to the Pioneer Institute, total spending on Uncompensated Care and Commonwealth Care has increased by 38% since the passage of RomneyCare. -Since 2004, the average […]
http://www.eagletribune.com/opinion/x1483813422/Column-Supreme-Court-issues-another-head-scratching-decision In a nutshell (literally): In Kelo v. City of New London, five nutty justices ruled that government can take property from private owners who resist selling their homes and small businesses, and give it to private developers as part of a redevelopment plan that would achieve higher property tax revenues for the city. New London, Conn., paid some compensation to the owners, took the property, couldn’t get financing for the project, and abandoned it; the stolen land is now a dump. Three of those nutty judges — Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — are still on the Court, deciding on our health care. Two sane dissenting judges from 2005 – Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — […]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/07/01/court_approval_of_health_law_sets_national_stage_for_the_cost_limits_that_massachusetts_is_seeking/?page=3 Just as the health care overhaul in Massachusetts is widely accepted as the model for the national bill upheld as constitutional Thursday by the US Supreme Court, it is also seen by many as a model and a caution for the necessary sequel to much broader insurance coverage: cost control. Bringing almost everyone under the umbrella of health insurance is considered by advocates of the 2006 Massachusetts law, and of President Obama’s 2010 plan, as the essential precondition for reining in medical expenses. All consumers, employers, hospitals, and insurers now abruptly, with the law’s implementation, have a major stake in that goal. But nothing about the journey is easy — as six years’ experience in Massachusetts shows. Consumers should […]
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/local/ci_20971016/hospital-leaders-see-little-impact-mass-from-high While much of the country held its breath as the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health-care law was handed down Thursday, hospital leaders in Massachusetts said the ruling would have little impact here. Massachusetts Democrats praised the decision, while Republicans criticized it. The heart of the law — an individual insurance mandate requiring nearly all residents to have insurance or face tax penalties — already exists in Massachusetts due to the state’s 2006 health care initiative. Massachusetts is currently the only state with an individual mandate. HealthAlliance Hospital President and CEO Patrick Muldoon said he was not surprised the law was upheld, although he thought the ruling on the individual mandate could have gone either […]
http://www.politico.com/politicopulse/0612/politicopulse775.html IT’S HERE – Today is THE day. No more waiting, no more “what ifs?” to ponder. Two years, three months and five days after the first lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act were filed — the same day it became law — the Supreme Court will meet at 10 a.m. today to render its verdict on President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement. –The justices still have two more cases to decide in addition to the ACA. Those will likely go first. And the ACA decision could come in multiple parts, so patience could be an especially important virtue this morning. But it should all be over by around 10:30 a.m. And then let the spinning begin. Happy Thursday and […]