You Can't Do That

When I was a kid and someone told me I couldn't do this or that, I was more determined than ever to prove them wrong.

Apparently some Democrats never learned that lesson.

Except for those living under a rock, everyone should know that Obamacare is collapsing and carriers are dropping out of the market on a weekly basis. Unlike the federal government (that has no idea what a balance sheet is), private industry continues to operate until they can no longer stand to lose money.

Health insurance carriers have been taking it in the shorts since Obamacare became law and lately most of them have had enough and are leaving the market in droves.

Enter the extreme left wing of the Democrat party, wagging their fingers, and saying "You can't do that".

Senators Sanders, Warren, Markey, Brown and Nelson are demanding an explanation for Aetna's planned withdrawal from several Obamacare markets.

“We are particularly troubled that Aetna’s decision to leave the ACA exchanges appears to have been motivated by the Justice Department’s decision to challenge Aetna’s proposed $37 billion merger with Humana — a deal that the Justice Department and many experts predicted would harm competition in the health insurance market and negatively impact the cost and quality of health care. Aetna could not have been surprised at the concerns raised by regulators about this merger.” - Benefits Pro

For those who need a translation ..........

Aetna was willing to play in the Obamacare pool earlier in the year when they thought they would broaden their base and have access to Humana policyholders. In May of this year Aetna (and other carriers) were still assessing the cost of Obamacare and thought the markets would be robust with other carriers sharing the weight of Obamacare losses.

Since then, the red ink has grown more red and some carriers have said enough is enough and are going home.

But idiots in DC that have never had a job in the real world and have no idea how commerce and risk management really work are demanding Aetna to justify a perfectly logical business decision.

Somewhere a village is missing their idiot.

You can find them in DC.

Read all about it at this week's Health Wonk Review

This week's Health Wonk Review is hosted by David Williams at Health Business Blog.  

Do check it out, no library card required!!  You'll be glad you did.   

Don't Bogart That Vape My Friend

If smoking could ever be considered sexy, no one did it better than Bogey. The white dinner jacket. Punctuating his lines in Casablanca with a drag on his cigarette.

The movie just would not have been the same with an e-cig in his hand.

E-cigarettes appeared on the market a few years ago as a "safe" alternative to regular cigarettes. The pitch was, you are just inhaling and exhaling water vapor, not smoke. The smoke was what damaged your lungs.

Some of us are old enough to remember commercials on TV where doctors in white coats extolled the virtue of menthol cigarettes that are good for your lungs.

Are e-cigs and water pipes a safe alternative for those who want to inhale?

The FDA doesn't think so.

What does the FDA deeming rule cover?

So glad you asked. In addition to tobacco, products derived from tobacco, and devices used with tobacco the FDA now has dominion over the following.

• E-liquids
• A glass or plastic vial container of e-liquid
• Cartridges
• Atomizers
• Certain batteries
• Cartomizers and clearomizers
• Digital display or lights to adjust settings
• Tank systems
• Drip tips
• Flavorings for ENDS
• Programmable software

Programmable software?

What are ENDS?

The government must use acronyms. It's in their DNA.

ENDS are Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems.

Aren't you glad you asked? 

And the FDA has given themselves permission to oversee all phases of production and distribution.

If you make, modify, mix, manufacture, fabricate, assemble, process, label, repack, relabel, or import ENDS, you must comply with these requirements for manufacturers.

And small businesses catch a break.

They still have to comply with all this bullshit, but they can take a little longer to implement.

If you really want to get into the weeds on this, take a look at the 150+ page report on Deeming Rules.

Two years ago it was only 84 pages.

All of this makes me want to have a drink. Better do it soon before that is outlawed as well.

Where would the Grateful Dead be today with lyrics that say "Don't Bogart that vape, my friend. Pass it over to me"?

Don't Get Too Excited Pinal County

News broke of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona remaining in the marketplace in Pinal County, Arizona late on Wednesday. Obamacare supporters will rejoice with a thunderous round of applause to the insurance company and positive vibes about how tax credits will keep costs low. But the folks in Pinal County have little to get excited about.

In 2016 residents of Pinal County had two insurers to choose from. The previously mentioned BCBS and United Health Care. UHC offered ten insurance options including Gold, Silver, and Bronze plans. All ten were PPO plans that included a more robust provider directory. With UHC exiting the market those are gone.

BCBS offered five plans. Two Silver plans and three Bronze plans. The lowest deductible with their plans is $2750 for single coverage. The two Silver plans were the highest and 3rd highest cost silver options available which should make them less appealing to shoppers. But the limited number of plans isn't the worst of Pinal County's concerns.

Cost is the number one driver for purchasers of insurance, which makes the accompanying statement from BCBS even more concerning. In their announcement to remain in the marketplace, their Senior VP of  sales, strategy and marketing, Jeff Stelnik, said premiums will increase by 51%. 

Obamacare is working for you Pinal County residents. You have an option. You have choices in that option. Be grateful for what you have. Because unless we eliminate this train wreck of a law the next time government talks about "health care reform" it will be for single payer.

Are You Special?

Only special people can buy Obamacare health insurance outside of open enrollment. So if you think you are special, you are now going to have to prove it.

Scamming the Obamacare system could soon get even harder.

Federal health regulators on Tuesday said they plan to screen at least some people who apply for Obamacare health insurance coverage on HealthCare.gov during so-called special enrollment periods in 2017 to verify their eligibility first. - CNBC

In the past you could sneak in without challenge. Game the system in hopes you did not get caught.

Now you will have to prove you are legally entitled to health insurance.

What a novel idea. Why didn't we think of that before?

Cigars, Cigarettes, Tiparillo's

In the early 1600's American Indians introduced early European settlers to a local crop called tobacco.  The product soon became popular as a trade item and tobacco shops sprang up over Europe. Because the general population was illiterate stores used wooden Indians, generally placed outside the shops, to attract customers.

Early forms of tobacco were too harsh to smoke directly so they were smoked in a pipe or bong (water pipe). Later strains of Virginia and burley tobacco were light enough to be enjoyed directly when rolled into a cigar or cigarette.

In the 1970s, Brown & Williamson cross-bred a strain of tobacco to produce Y1. This strain of tobacco contained an unusually high amount of nicotine, nearly doubling its content from 3.2-3.5% to 6.5%. In the 1990s, this prompted the Food and Drug Administration to use this strain as evidence that tobacco companies were intentionally manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes. - Wikipedia

Since the year 2000 the FDA has increased its' stranglehold on the tobacco industry, by issuing one new regulation after another in an attempt to cripple the industry.

In May of 2016 the FDA issued regulations under its' "deeming" rule which is a broad way of saying anything they deem to be a tobacco product now comes under their jurisdiction.

If you wish, you may view this in the same vein as the Obamacare medical device tax. Under the guise of making health care affordable the Obamacare laws assess a 2.3% tax on medical devices. The tax is levied at the wholesale level which is then passed on to consumers in the form of higher health care costs. Higher health care costs means higher insurance premiums so the consumer has a double dose of taxes.

The deeming rule is all encompassing, impacting almost every form of tobacco, products used to consume tobacco, people who manufacture tobacco products, those who sell tobacco products .........

This 500 page law threatens the premium cigar industry in much the same way as the 1991 luxury tax on expensive boats that essentially killed the yacht industry in Florida.

Now, instead of boats the FDA wants to drive small "premium" cigar makers and retailers out of business.

“By their own appraisal, their new regulations would wipe out somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of these products as it will not be cost effective to put many of the products through review,” writes the Tax Foundation’s Scott Drenkard.

“The premium cigar industry is composed of some big players, but also many smaller businesses and boutique brands, many of which will likely go by the wayside,” Drenkard added. 

I think there is some likelihood that the dearth of options in the new regulated American cigar market turns more consumers over to black market sales on the internet, specifically international sales of smuggled Cuban cigars. The irony of American consumers turning to a communist country for more market choices is, of course, hard to miss.- Daily Caller

In much the same way that Florida was once home to a thriving luxury boat industry, the Everglade state is also home to some of the best premium cigars produced in this country.

There are those who still debate whether or not Obamacare was designed to crush the health insurance industry into oblivion. That same argument will now be made concerning the FDA and the cigar industry.

As Emille Mustafa puffed a plume of smoke into the air and it disappeared, she worried her family cigar business may soon fade away, too.

Costly new federal rules for cigars, electronic cigarettes and other smoking products that had been relatively unregulated could snuff out small cigar makers such as Córdoba & Morales, a Casselberry operation owned by Mustafa and her Cuban-born husband, Azarias Mustafa Córdoba.

If the rules go into effect, "it would put us out of business," she said of their company, launched five years ago. - Orlando Sentinel

If you like what Obamacare has done to your ability to keep your doctor and lower your health insurance premiums, you are going to love the new and improved FDA deeming rules on tobacco products.

Should a gentleman offer a lady a Tiparillo?

Only if the FDA doesn't object.

Is anything beyond the reach of the FDA? What about those e-cigarettes?

Stay tuned.

#FDAdeemingrules  #Cigars

Smoke Them If You Can Get Them

Premium cigars, and the people who make them, may be going the way of the health insurance agent. DC has decided to extend regulatory oversight of the tobacco industry in a way that will significantly impact many aspects and effectively drive many small business owners to close their doors.

Under the guise of paternalism, the federal government claims they are looking after the welfare of the citizenry.

The true goal is an attempt to raise taxes incognito and create another windfall for the bureaucracy. It is quite possible the opposite will occur and tax collections will be negatively impacted or neutral.

Let me say this post is not a personal vendetta. I don't use tobacco of any kind and have no horses in this race. While this is a non-insurance post on an insurance website, this venue has also covered topics relating to government overreach, especially when it comes to Obamacare.

First, a bit of history for background purposes.

In 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown & Williamson's suit against the FDA. The decision handed down by the high court essentially said the FDA did not have regulatory authority over tobacco.

Within weeks of this ruling, FDA revokes its final rule, issued in 1996, that restricted the sale and distribution of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to children and adolescents, and that determined that cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products are combination products consisting of a drug (nicotine) and device components intended to deliver nicotine to the body. - FDA

I am not a lawyer but it seems as if the FDA thumbed their nose at SCOTUS and used a fallback position to circumvent the ruling and do what they wanted anyway.

And more overreach was to follow.

President Obama signs the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law.  The Tobacco Control Act gives FDA authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products to protect public health.

FDA Center for Tobacco Products established.

FDA announced a ban on cigarettes with flavors characterizing fruit, candy, or clove.

As far as we know the president never gave up his promise to quit smoking.

He also promised to make health care affordable for everyone.

In May of 2016 the nicotine police took steps to expand their territory per this article from Reason.

Although yesterday's announcement that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will start regulating e-cigarettes is getting the most attention—Reason’s Jacob Sullum explains why this is awful news for vapers—the agency’s new deeming regulations also have huge implications for the cigar industry.

The threat of FDA restrictions have loomed over the cigar business ever since the FDA took control over cigarettes; yesterday morning, the other shoe finally dropped.

The worst fear of cigar manufacturers and smokers alike has been that the FDA will impose the same onerous pre-market review requirements on cigars that it currently places on cigarettes.

The progression so far has been to regulate and restrict the sale of tobacco products in any form but has also opted to tell the tobacco industry how they can and cannot design their product. By banning flavored tobacco DC has shown the same disregard for industry that Obamacare did by deciding the type of product the health insurance industry can and cannot offer their customers.

Candy flavors in tobacco are restricted but menthol is apparently not a flavor. Apparently rum flavored cigars as well as "sweet" flavored tobacco used in pipes (Cherry Blend) and cigars (Swisher Sweets) are allowed as long as children are not around.

One of my uncles was a pipe smoker and I loved to be around him when he enjoyed his evening puffs of Cherry Blend tobacco.

Of course I also rode in cars that didn't have seat belts and fearlessly rode my bike without a helmet.

More on the march of the tobacco Nazi's in a later post.


#TobaccoRegulation #Obamacare #FDA