Recently, I said it was time to let the temporary ObamaCare subsidies expire, but the Biden administration is trying to make them permanent. (Making ObamaCare Temporary Subsidies Permanent) In typical fashion, Democrats always want to make temporary subsidies permanent.

Now, Brian Blasé, writing in Forbes, gives us an update with the latest information on these subsidies. According to a May 25, 2022 report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the expanded subsidies will cost a whopping $30 billion in 2022, an amount 50% above the amount CBO projected one year earlier. ObamaCare’s total subsidy cost will be about $90 billion in 2022 – $60 billion for the original and $30 billion for the expanded component. Blasé offers 14 reasons why these expanded subsidies should be allowed to expire:

1. The expanded subsidies were intended to be temporary Covid relief, not a permanent expansion of government. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) contained a host of temporary provisions – including enhance child tax credits, large payments to states, and expanded ObamaCare subsidies – which created excess demand and fueled inflation. Allowing them to expire at the end of the year would simply revert them back to the levels they were from 2014 to 2020.
2. Extending the expanded subsidies would crowd out private financing and be inflationary. The extra $30 billion spent in 2022 was entirely new deficit spending. CBO has calculated that nearly 75% of the spending for these subsidies was on behalf of individuals who already had health insurance. Giving these people “free money” only contributed to inflation by increasing aggregate demand without an increase in aggregate supply. Congress should be looking for ways to reduce inflation rather than pouring fuel on the fire.
3. Extending the expanded subsidies would lead to higher health care prices and higher premiums.ObamaCare’s original subsidies were only available to people below the age of 65 who were not enrolled in Medicaid and had income between the poverty line and four times the poverty line. The subsidies limit the amount households pay for a benchmark exchange plan premium to a percentage of their income. The rest is paid by the government – actually by future taxpayers since the new spending is entirely deficit-financed. This encourages insurers to raise their prices since most of the cost of the increases are paid by the government. The result is higher premiums and higher healthcare prices.
4. Extending the expanded subsidies would lead to large loss of employer coverage. ObamaCare subsidies are not available to households with an offer of affordable employer coverage. As subsidies increase, employers are incentivized to arrange compensation that takes advantage of the subsidies. Employers can pay employees higher wages instead of health benefits, with employees using a subsidy to purchase an exchange plan. This is often called the “family glitch fix.” The result will be taxpayers paying more of the share of insuring employees, rather than employers.
5. The budgetary cost will grow as employer drop coverage. According to CBO, the average budgetary cost of the tax exclusion for an individual with employer provided coverage is $2000. The average amount of the exchange subsidy is much higher. As more people replace private employer coverage with heavily subsidized exchange plans, the budgetary cost will grow.
6. Extending the expanded subsidies would be a very inefficient way to spend taxpayer dollars. Despite the large amount of ARP’s new subsidy spending, CBO originally projected that the number of newly insured individuals would increase by only 800,000 in 2021 and 1.3 million in 2022. This calculates to increased federal spending on subsidies by about $17,000 per person. The reason: nearly 75% of the new spending is for people who already have coverage and therefore replaces private spending with government spending. (This is another attempt by progressives to take us to socialized medicine – complete government control of healthcare.)
7. Government healthcare commitments are already unsustainable, and extending the expanded subsidies just worsens the already grim U.S. fiscal picture. The May 25, 2022, CBO report projects average federal deficits of $1.6 trillion over the next decade. This is largely due to healthcare spending already on Medicare, Medicaid, and ObamaCare. The current unsustainable path includes the expiration of the expanded subsidies. If these subsidies are extended, things will only be worse.
8. Extending the expanded subsidies provides unfair benefit for wealthy households. The largest financial benefit of the expanded ObamaCare subsidies accrues to households with income above 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. The benefit is also larger for older households and households in higher premium areas since the subsidy structure limits premiums to a certain amount based on household income, regardless of the age of the household members or the actual premium. (See the graphic below.)
9. Only about 1,000 West Virginians with income above 400% of the poverty line are enrolled in the exchanges. The media has tried to ratchet up pressure on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin due to his opposition to the Build Back Better Act, which would have extended the expanded subsidies through 2025. But few West Virginia enrollees have income above 400% of the FPL.
10. The loss of the expanded subsidies is much more limited than the media projects. Only 47% of individual market enrollees have continuous coverage for more than one year, and only 30% have continuous coverage for more than two years. Thus, the loss of the expanded subsidy will be less impactful for people who currently receive them than is currently being portrayed.
11. The expanded subsidies mostly benefit insurers, while consumers place a low value on the coverage.Since the subsidies are sent directly from the U.S. Treasury to the healthcare insurance companies, they benefit the most. People only receive these subsidies if they purchase federally-approved products on an insurance exchange. A recent economics study found consumers value the subsidies at less than half of their cost. The same study found the big winners are health insurers, confirming earlier studies that show that health insurer profits soared after ObamaCare took effect. But don’t expect to hear the White House complaining!
12. Extending the expanded subsidies would reduce work and economic output. There is an incentive built into the system that discourages full-time work. Because the subsidies are conditioned on having a job without affordable employer coverage, they incentivize workers to choose jobs where they are not offered coverage. (If the employer offers coverage, the employee likely pays a percentage of the cost.) CBO projected the original ObamaCare subsidies would reduce work by about 2 million full-time workers and reduce GDP by about 0.7%. The expanded subsidies make this situation even worse.
13. Extending the expanded subsidies discriminates against women. Don’t expect to hear this on the evening news! Blasé says the expanded subsidies benefit men more than women because the U.S. median income was about $10,000 higher for men than women ($56,264 v. $46,332) in 2020. Since men tend to make more than women do and the expanded subsidies provide greater benefit as incomes increase, they almost certainly benefit men more than women overall.
14. Extending the expanded subsidies papers over ObamaCare’s problems and reduces Congress’s appetite for actual reform. Enrollment in the exchanges has always been less than expectations (roughly 60% below.) Rather than lower premiums $2500 per year, as Obama promised, they doubled in just the first four years for coverage with high deductibles accepted by few doctors and hospitals. Premiums are so high that subsidies must also be very high to enable people to afford the premiums. ObamaCare is badly in need of restructuring in order to reduce premiums and improve healthcare. Blasé says, “Papering over ObamaCare’s problems with additional taxpayer dollars is exactly the wrong approach and reduces Congress’s appetite for actual reforms.”

The media got it wrong, again. The Wall Street Journal editorial board reports the big story the media avoided because it didn’t fit their narrative.

We’re talking about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, described as public-health enemy number one by the media for defying the left’s lockdown consensus early in the pandemic. When former state health department employee Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired for refusing to fudge state Covid data to support the state’s reopening in spring 2020, national and local media outlets reported her allegations as fact. They were only too happy to report anything negative about Governor DeSantis.

“Florida Dismisses a Scientist for Her Refusal to Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data” reported National Public Radio (NPR). After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant of her home, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “sent the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s Covid-19 Coverup” the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorialized. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

But according to the Governor’s office, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s Covid-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.” Police searched her home because of a data breach traced to her home IP address. She was charged with a felony for accessing and downloading confidential health department data, including personal information of employees. She has pleaded not guilty.

The big news now is that the Florida department of Health Office of Inspector General has exonerated Governor DeSantis. The IG interviewed more than a dozen people who worked with state Covid data, including Ms. Jones’ supervisors. None of these corroborated her claims. Some said she had told them she was pressured to alter Covid case and death counts, but her allegations didn’t make sense to them, not least because she didn’t have access to the raw data to do so. Furthermore, to refer to her as a “scientist”, as NPR did, is an exaggeration. She is a geographer by training who previously worked on hurricane tracking systems, and her job was merely to assist with the Covid data’s online dashboard.

“If the complainant or other DOH staff were to have falsified Covid-19 data on the dashboard, the dashboard would then not have matched the data in the corresponding final daily report,” the IG explained, adding that “such a discrepancy” would surely have been detected by Bureau of Epidemiology staff, researchers or the media. The IG found no truth to any of Ms. Jones’ accusations.

Governor DeSantis was hailed as the most informed of all governors by Scott W. Atlas, M.D. in his recent book, A Plague Upon Our House. In a chapter called “The Florida Success Story,” Atlas says, “Governor DeSantis stood out among governors, because he was one of the very few who actually knew the data. And when I say he knew the data, I mean he personally sought out, critically analyzed, and truly understood every important detail about the pandemic. It was all about attention to detail, critical thinking, and a willingness to question the prevailing narrative when it did not pass the test of common sense.”

Don’t look for this exoneration of DeSantis to appear on the nightly news or in your favorite newspaper, apart from The Wall Street Journal. The media is quick to take up the story of a conservative who doesn’t go along with their narrative, but slow to own up to their own amplification of misinformation and made-up scandals. Personally, I believe we need more politicians, like DeSantis, who are willing to question Washington when things don’t make sense.

Cultural attitudes toward marijuana are changing. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president, he was asked if he ever smoked marijuana and replied yes, “but I didn’t inhale.” More recently, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked during the 2020 presidential campaign about her use of pot in college and she replied marijuana “gives a lot of people joy” and “we need more joy in the world.”

But what if marijuana is leading many young people down a dark road toward mental illness and violence? Alysia Finley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says we need to take another look at the use of cannabis, the active ingredient in marijuana. Nineteen states have legalized cannabis for recreational use and politicians of both parties increasingly treat it as harmless. But this attitude is mistaken.

Alex Berenson, author of “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,” pointed out that the New York Times had curiously removed from an article about the Uvalde school shooting a former co-worker’s recollection that he complained about his grandmother not letting him smoke weed. (He shot his grandmother just minutes before he went on the school shooting rampage.) The Times didn’t append a correction to the story as it might be expected to do when fixing a factual inaccuracy.

Finley says a pattern is emerging. Mass shooters at Rep. Gabby Giffords’s constituent meeting in Tucson, Arizona (2011), a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado (2012), the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida (2016), the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017), and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (2018), were all reported to be marijuana users.  Is this a coincidence? Maybe not.

The use of marijuana today is different. This isn’t your grandfather’s pot he smoked during the 1960s. Youth today are consuming marijuana more frequently and in higher doses than their elders did when they were young. This is leading to increased addiction and antisocial behavior. THC, the chemical that causes a euphoric high, interacts with the brain’s neuron receptors involved with pleasure. Marijuana today is on average about four times as potent as in 1995 (let alone the 1960s). But dabs – portions of concentrated cannabis – can include 20 times as much THC as joints did in the 1960s.

That means it’s much easier for young people to get hooked. One in 6 people who start using pot while under 18 will develop an addiction, which doctors call “cannabis use disorder.” As they use the drug more frequently to satisfy cravings, they develop psychological and social problems.

We now know that’s what happened to Colorado teenager Johnny Stack. His mother, Laura, wrote a harrowing book describing his descent into cannabis addiction. He started smoking weed at 14, after Colorado legalized it, and progressed to using more-potent products such as dabs. He gradually withdrew from social activities and developed psychosis. Substance-abuse treatment and a stay at a mental hospital failed to cure him because chronic marijuana use permanently rewired his brain. Delusional, he jumped off a six-story building and killed himself.

“People who have taken large doses of the drug may experience an acute psychosis, which includes hallucinations, delusions, and a loss of the sense of personal identity,” reports the National Institutes of Health. Roneet Lev, an addiction specialist who previously led the Emergency Department at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, said in a recent interview with the American Council on Science and Health that California cannabis emergency-room visits climbed 53% in the three years after the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2016. Daily marijuana E.R. visits in San Diego nearly quadrupled between 2014 and 2019.

Cannabis-induced psychosis is fairly common, says Lev. Countless studies have also linked chronic cannabis use to schizophrenia. A meta-analysis in January examining 591 studies concluded that early marijuana use among adolescents was associated with a significant increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia. While a causal relationship has not yet been established, the weight of evidence is hard to dismiss.

Proponents of legalization claim other countries where marijuana is widely available have fewer mental-health problems than the U.S. This information is inaccurate. A study from Denmark last summer found that schizophrenia cases associated with pot addiction have increased three-to- fourfold over the past 20 years as marijuana potency rose 200 percent.

Clearly, use of marijuana is ruining the lives of many young people, but does it make them violent? A study last year found that young people with such mood disorders as depression who were also addicted to pot were 3.2 times as likely to commit self-harm and die of homicide – often after initiating violence – than those who weren’t. A meta-analysis found the risk of perpetrating violence than twice as high for young adults who use marijuana.

Finley says it’s possible that pot can trigger dangerous behavior in youths who may be predisposed to it for other reasons such as prenatal exposure to drugs. The use of pot in pregnant women is rising. About 20% of pregnant young women in California tested positive for marijuana in 2016. Since THC crosses the placenta and can impair neurological development, this is a serious finding.

There are legitimate reasons for doctors to prescribe marijuana for treatment of chronic pain in cancer patients and those with debilitating disease or injury. But recreational use of marijuana may be leading to mental illness and even violence in young people. That’s a prescription that society cannot tolerate.