Southern Illinois Limits Graduate Students' Hours Due to ObamaCare

Southern Illinois University is the latest institution to limit graduate assistants' workloads ahead of the Affordable Care Act's so-called "employer mandate" taking effect. In an e-mail sent earlier this week to Southern Illinois' Graduate School deans, chairs and graduate directors, Susan M. Ford, interim dean, said that starting in January the school will no longer approve graduate assistant contracts over a 50 percent assignment  -- what typically equates to a 20-hour workweek. Under the Affordable Care Act, large employers such as colleges and universities will have to provide employees working 30 hours or more weekly with health insurance, or face fines, beginning in January 2015.

"This restriction relates to the university's current understanding of the Affordable Care Act and its impact on the way [graduate assistant] benefits will be determined," reads the email, obtained by Inside Higher Ed. "This restriction is consistent with practice being enacted at universities across the country and put in place after consultation with the various offices involved with [graduate assistant] benefits on campus."

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how many students the new policy could affect.

Earlier this summer, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa announced it was limiting graduate students' workloads universitywide ahead of the Affordable Care Act. Adjunct instructors at dozens of institutions across the country also have seen their workloads limited for the same reasons.

Via: Inside Higher Ed

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CA State Assembly: 10 Highest Paid Staff All Men

The ten highest-paid employees of the state Assembly are all men. According to state payroll records for the period ending on May 31, 2013,  the highest-paid employees of the lower house, along with their titles and monthly salaries, are as follows:

• Christopher Woods, Chief Consultant, $16,123.00
• Greg Campbell, Speaker’s Chief of Staff, $15,834.00
• Jon Waldie, Chief Administrative Officer, $15,100.00
• Gus Demas, Fiscal Officer, $14,895.00
• Richard Simpson, Chief Consultant, $14,734.00
• Arnold Sowell, Chief Consultant, $14,734.00 Christian Griffith, $14,676.00
• Geoffrey Long, Chief Consultant, $14,634.00
• Edward “Dotson” Wilson, Chief Clerk, $14,414.00
• James Deboo, Director of Majority Consultants, $13,750.00

Source: California State Assembly Payroll Records, 5/31/2013

Fredericka McGee, the speaker’s legal counsel, is the highest-paid woman on the Assembly’s payroll at #11 overall. She earns $28,752 less per year than the Assembly’s highest-paid man. That equates to roughly 85 cents for every dollar earned by Christopher Woods.

The legislature’s pay inequity at the top comes one day after Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg  urged the Capitol to  “talk about gender, talk about the biases we all hold,” according to the LA Times.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, who leads the California Women’s Legislative Caucus, believes the legislature has failed to deliver pay equity.

“We need to hire more women on our staffs, we need to bring in young women as interns. We don’t have equality here in the Capitol,” she told the Times.

In November 2011, the Assembly began increasing staff salaries after a three-year pay freeze, according to the Sacramento Bee’s Jim Sanders. However, the legislature has failed to use those raises to deliver pay equity.

Via: johnhrabe,com

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ObamaCare Means Whatever Obama Wants It To Mean By MARK STEYN

On his radio show the other day, Hugh Hewitt caught me by surprise and asked me about running for the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire. My various consultants, pollsters, PACs and exploratory committees haven't fine tuned every detail of my platform just yet, but I can say this without a doubt:

I will not vote for any "comprehensive" bill, whether on immigration, health care or anything else.

"Comprehensive" today is a euphemism for interminably long, poorly drafted, and entirely unread — not just by the peoples' representatives but by our robed rulers, too (how many of those Supreme Court justices actually plowed through every page of ObamaCare when its "constitutionality" came before them?).

The 1862 Homestead Act, which is genuinely comprehensive, is two handwritten pages in clear English. "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" is 500 times as long, is not about patients or care, and neither protects the former nor makes the latter affordable.

So what is it about? On Wednesday, the Nevada AFL-CIO passed a resolution declaring that "the unintended consequences of the ACA will lead to the destruction of the 40-hour work week." That's quite an accomplishment for a "health" "care" "reform" law. But the poor old union heavies who so supported ObamaCare are now reduced to bleating that they should be entitled to the same opt-outs secured by big business and congressional staffers. It's a very strange law whose only defining characteristic is that no one who favors it wants to be bound by it.

Via: IBD

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ObamaCare Will Lead to Insurance “Death Spiral,” Study Says

Is the health insurance market headed for a “death spiral” of increasing premiums, fewer beneficiaries, and less competition under ObamaCare? A recent study from the National Center for Public Policy Research answers that question in the affirmative.

The study, by healthcare policy analyst David Hogberg, finds that the individual mandate’s carrots and sticks will probably be insufficient to induce large numbers of currently uninsured “young invincibles” — healthy, childless 18- to 34-year-olds — to buy coverage. Yet these people are the ones who must enter the market en masseif the healthcare law’s mandates on insurers are not to overwhelm them with older, more sickly — and therefore much more costly — beneficiaries.

Under ObamaCare, beginning next year insurers must accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions and must charge them the same rates for the same coverage. Everyone — including proponents of the law — knows that under such conditions, most of the people who have heretofore been unable to obtain insurance because of pre-existing conditions will immediately purchase policies. This will result in a sudden, steep increase in the benefits that insurers must pay without a corresponding increase in premiums, and that can only be bad news for the insurance industry.

What the industry needs, therefore, is a large pool of healthy individuals also to enter the market. These people will pay premiums but rarely draw benefits, thereby subsidizing the benefits of the newly insured sick.

But healthy people already often balk at paying the relatively low rates insurers would charge them. “Indeed,” Hogberg pointed out in a blog post, “the age group with the highest rate of uninsured is 18-34-year-olds. About 19.1 million are uninsured at any given time, according to the Census Bureau, and somewhere in the ballpark of about 11 million are uninsured for at least one year.”

While others might chide these folks for taking such a risk, given that young adults have very few healthcare expenses, they are hardly being unreasonable in choosing to forgo health insurance in favor of saving money, particularly since many of them also have low incomes. As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein put it, “Purchasing health insurance, in aggregate, is a bad deal for younger Americans.”

Via: The New American

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Obama touts states providing quality higher ed, all led by Republican governors

President Barack Obama rolled out a new plan to address the rising cost of higher education and student loan debt on Thursday, touting the successes of several states all led by Republican governors.

While speaking at the University of Buffalo — the first stop on his bus tour through New York and Pennsylvania — President Obama praised the efforts of GOP-led states for the work they are doing to help students. During his speech, Obama referenced Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana for implementing policies that allocate more funding to colleges better preparing students for their post-graduate career.

In Ohio, Republican Gov. John Kasich’s budget for 2014-2015 bases even more state funding for colleges on how many students they graduate, not how many they enroll, increasing that section of a school’s state funding from the current 20 percent to 50 percent.

Obama also highlighted Michigan, which rewards schools that keep tuition costs down. That program was designed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, and as a result, all Michigan public colleges kept their tuition increases under 4 percent for the 2012-2013 school year.

And the President wants these Republican-driven programs to spread to other states as well.

“I’m challenging all states to come up with new and innovative ways to fund their colleges in a way that drives better results,” he said on Thursday.

He then went on to tout programs at Southern New Hampshire University, University of Wisconsin, Central Missouri University, Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State and Georgia Tech for experimenting with new ways to keep tuition low for students.

“A lot of other schools are experimenting with these ideas to keep tuition down. They’ve got other ways to help students graduate in less time, at less costs, while still maintaining high quality,” Obama said. “The point is it’s possible.”

Of the 10 states Obama mentioned, either directly or by referencing a school in the state, eight are led by Republican governors with the exception of Missouri and New Hampshire, where Central Missouri University and Southern New Hampshire University are located, respectively.

Via: Red State

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