On February 22, President Obama suggested the federal government should be able to regulate health insurance premiums. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute claims that idea is hardly new, and hardly primed for success:

In 301 AD, the Roman emperor Diocletian imposed price controls on most commodities and professions in the empire. The penalty for raising prices was death. Yet the controls failed utterly, leading to shortages, more inflation and the near collapse of the imperial economy.

Now, nearly two millennia later, President Obama seems determined to demonstrate how little we’ve learned.

Yesterday, the president proposed giving the federal government the power to regulate insurance premiums. Undoubtedly, this will be politically popular — at least, in the short term. Insurance companies aren’t exactly America’s most loveable industry. Recent premium hikes will result in real hardship for many Americans.

There is, of course, a certain arrogance in the assumption that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and a bevy of government bureaucrats know exactly what something should cost. No doubt, as soon as they finish setting insurance prices, they’ll move on to negotiating Tracy McGrady’s contract renewal…

Insurers unable to charge more for an increasingly expensive product can be expected to trim costs in one of two ways:

• They can drop their most expensive customers — in this case, the sickest, who consume the most health care. Many companies are already doing this, a major source of dissatisfaction with the health-care system. In fact, the president wants to prohibit companies from doing this.

• They can cut back on their reimbursement rates to hospitals and physicians. But neither doctors nor hospitals, any more than insurance companies, are willing to operate at a loss. If payments fall below their costs, they’ll simply stop taking patients. One only has to look at government programs like Medicare and Medicaid to see how this works.

   

This health care situation is regretably complex. How do you think we should improve health care costs for Americans?

Sen. Evan Bayh’s surprising move last week to announce he was not running for re-election was stunning, even to many most familiar with Indiana politics. However, the timing of said move (just before the candidate filing deadline) struck some the wrong way, even in his own party. The Democrats’ inability to field a candidate via signatures leaves the ultimate decision to the party’s State Chair and Central Committee. Janette Surrisi, a Democrat in Culver, has started a Facebook group (which has 55 members as of this writing) to rally state Dems in demanding that convention delegates be the ultimate deciders. In an e-mail, she writes:

The people of Indiana deserve to choose the democratic candidate for Evan Bayh’s senate seat. Evan Bayh announced only a day before the deadline to get on the primary ballot that he would not be running for election in 2010. Many speculate that the timing was a political maneuver to make sure that the Indiana Democratic Chairperson and Central Committee could hand pick the candidate of choice for the senate seat and in doing so leave many primary voters in the cold.

To remedy this, we believe that the more than 2,000 Indiana Democratic State Convention Delegates should pick the candidate for Bayh’s seat. Delegates are elected in the primary to go to convention. If not enough candidates are elected to delegate spots, county party chairman can appoint citizens of the party to the position. Currently, democratic delegates pick their Secretary of State, State Auditor, and State Treasurer candidates at convention.

We petition that Dan Parker and the Indiana Democratic Party Central Committee allow the delegates to vote for the democratic senator candidate at convention in June. We believe that the candidate that earns the most votes from the delegates should be named by the Central Committee as the candidate on the ballot for the democrats in November.

This group is dedicated to giving Indiana voters a voice. All voters Democrat, Republican, or Independent deserve to pick their candidates.

IU grad and Dallas Mavericks owner/billionaire Mark Cuban recently took Sen. Al Franken (Minnesota) to task on his blog regarding Franken’s contention that if a pending $30 billion deal between NBC and Comcast goes through, then they must agree to post their TV shows online so everyone has access – and Franken seems to be pushing for caps on user bandwidth.

Some of this seems a little "inside baseball" (man, I loathe that phrase… how ’bout "inside ice dancing" in honor of the Winter Olympics?), but I’m sure our savvy readers will glean more from it than I. Anyway, it’s a relevant and interesting topic, and in his usual calm, sober way, Cuban drops the hammer on the former NBC employee. An excerpt:

According to the LA Times, “In written questions to Comcast and NBC Universal regarding their $30-billion proposed marriage, Sen. Franken — who has been one of the harshest critics of the deal — wants Comcast and NBC Universal to promise that it will put all its television shows online. He also wants assurances that shows that the companies put online be made available to every one and not just people who get their Internet service through Comcast.”

Also in the Times article: “As Franken notes in his questions to the two companies, “The Internet is the future of the media business.”"

Lets start with the first request that all NBC Universal/Comcast shows should be delivered over the internet.  Someone needs to explain to Sen. Franken that TV shows delivered over the internet consume bandwidth. A lot of bandwidth.  There are  reasons why Youtube limits the size of files that users can upload to it. The first is that video is the ultimate bandwidth pig.  The 2nd  reason is that bandwidth is not unlimited or elastic.  The more bandwidth that is consumed, the more bandwidth that must be added to maintain existing levels of service. That costs a lot of money.   Think that might push up internet rates to consumers ?

I get that no one really cares if Comcast has to spend money on capital improvements to add bandwidth to the home.  They should. Its pretty damn stupid to push consumption in a direction that will raise internet rates  to receive the same content for which there is already a phenomenal digital network in place to deliver that content.

Think about it for a minute Senator Franken. Comcast, and every large TV Provider has a digital network in place that can and does deliver gigabits of tv content perfectly,  every second of every day, to any TV set in any  home that is connected to their network. It works. Well.  What you are asking Sen Franken, is that Comcast duplicate the delivery of theirs and NBCUniversals shows on a network, the internet,  that is not, and has never been designed to handle the delivery of huge volumes of video and tv shows.

What you are forcing them to do is not only going to impact Comcast, its going to push ANY internet provider  on which NBCUniversal/Comcast owned shows are delivered to deal with the increased bandwidth needs your request requires. Increased bandwidth needs to the home means more money spent on infrastructure needed to support that delivery, which in turn is going to mean  HIGHER INTERNET RATES and/or caps on internet bandwidth consumption for consumers .   Did you even think through what would happen if NBCUniversal/Comcast was required to simulcast  the Olympics over the internet ?

What do you think? Who’s right here?

Discussion of President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget has focused on several numbers: $3.8 trillion in spending and $1.3 trillion as the deficit.

Much has changed, of course, over the last 40-plus years but look at the share of the total budget for some of the top programs in 2011 compared to 1968 (middle of the Vietnam War and just the beginning of the Medicare program).

Program: Fiscal 2011; Fiscal 1968

Defense: 19.6%; 46%

Social Security: 19.0%; 13.3%

Medicare: 13.0%; 2.6%

Medicaid: 7.8%; 1.1%

Food stamps: 2.0%; 0%

Housing subsidies: 1.7%; 0% 

Supp. Security Income: 1.3%; 0%

Low-income tax credit: 1.2%; 0%

Pick different years and you would undoubtedly find other interesting comparisons.

Think you have PR problems? At least you don’t have corrupt judges and a drunken skier on your hands.

Business Insider recently took a look at the worst Winter Olympics PR disasters of all time. Lowlights include the Harding/Kerrigan debacle, Denver refusing to host the games after being awarded them in the 1970s, and a couple are unfortunately from the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. A snippet:

NBC: The network that prevents you from watching the Olympics.

In the age of Twitter, 24/7 real-time online news coverage, and real-time everything, NBC still thinks it’s 1976, and that the best way to cover the Olympics is via tape delay.

Actually, that’s the worst way to cover the Olympics. For instance, by the time NBC got around to airing Bode Miller’s downhill run last night, everyone already knew that he came in third place.
 

For the record, despite my issues with NBC’s lack of live coverage, this has by far been the most enjoyable Olympiad for me. Discussing this with friends recently, we decided the Winter Olympics are so much fun because these are events we don’t see otherwise. While curling is enjoying unprecedented recognition, I’ve personally found a new love for downhill skiing, Snocross and even ice hockey. Most importantly, it’s been great to see Canada and its famously welcoming people garner some well-earned recognition for the nation’s gorgeous West Coast.

For Tom Snyder’s Economic Club of Indiana speech Tuesday, it was largely a story of numbers (along with some video clips of Ivy Tech graduates telling their personal success stories).

Before going into the details of Ivy Tech’s growth, Snyder shared one statistic that affects all Indiana taxpayers – you are paying half of Ivy Tech students’ tuition. For that reason, Hoosiers need to know what’s happening with the community college, Snyder notes.

The school has seen an enrollment increase of more than 40,000 students since 2008. No longer can high school students decide between college and a high-paying factory job. Employers are calling for everyone to have some postsecondary education – whether it’s a four-year or two-year degree, Snyder states.

He offered this profile of the Ivy Tech student body:

• Average age is 27
• 25% are single mothers
• 60% receive financial aid
• 10,000 students are on food stamps
• 25% transfer to a four-year school
• 25,000 are enrolled at the Indianapolis campus (that’s more students than at Ball State University, Snyder asserts.)

Noting the high number of students who need remediation in math and English, Snyder turned to the audience to prove his point. Through an interactive demonstration, audience members took a five-question quiz based on math placement tests.

The audience used small remote control buzzers to answer questions such as: What is the smallest prime number? (Answer: 2) On most questions, about 60% or less answered correctly.

Snyder reminded the audience that while half of the tuition at Ivy Tech is covered by taxpayers, all of it is covered at the K-12 level. He shared his five steps to success in educating Indiana:

1. Children are prepared for kindergarten
2. Third grade students are reading at third grade level
3. Students decide to go to college while in the eighth grade
4. Students take math during their senior year of high school (helping prevent the need for remediation)
5. Graduates continue on to earn a post K-12 credentials

Snyder concludes education is a shared responsibility; everyone is an educator.

After all, you’re footing the bill.

Indiana’s life sciences and health care technology companies are among those that may be eligible for recognition at the upcoming Mira Awards, presented by TechPoint:

TechPoint, the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership’s technology and entrepreneurship initiative, is now accepting nominations for its 2010 Mira Awards.

The annual Mira Awards put a well-deserved spotlight on the state’s most successful technology-driven companies, in industries like information technology, advanced manufacturing, the life sciences, and logistics. Mira Awards are also presented in categories like health care technology, new media innovation and corporate IT (recognizing the achievements of the internal technology departments of our leading companies). 

Mira is the largest and most prominent awards program of its kind in Indiana; finalists and winners receive significant publicity and valuable exposure to the high-tech and business communities at large.  Visit http://techpoint.org/Mira/ for more information – nominations are due March 8.