Thank you, ACA
Minnesotans who purchase individual health insurance know the bad news now. The insurance companies released their 2016 insurance premium rates. Policyholders now know that their currently barely affordable health insurance premium is going up 14 percent to 49 percent. The 49 percent comes from the state’s largest individual health insurance company.
This is the perfect storm. Unaffordable health insurance premiums combined with quite high deductibles and very high out-of-pocket expenses — that’s the new normal. Thank you, Affordable Care Act.
Amazingly, Gov. Dayton found reason to find hope in this horrible news. Solace, he asserts, is in the tens of billions of dollars taxpayers will spend to buy down the unaffordable premiums for folks that qualify for help at MNsure. Thus, the taxpayers’ bail out folks so that their unaffordable health insurance premiums will be at least somewhat less unaffordable.
What’s not to like?
Dave Racer, St. Paul
Cutting taxes in a vacuum
Regarding “Competing for jobs growth” (Oct. 1): Your editorial relays the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce view that “Chamber priorities include business property tax relief, conformance of Minnesota’s estate tax to federal standards and an increase in research and development tax credits.”
As usual, the chamber’s goal is tax reduction in a vacuum, that is, unaccompanied by mention of where money will come from for infrastructure, education, environment and the like. But put that aside for the moment and think again about that middle comment — conformance of Minnesota’s estate tax to federal standards.
At the federal level, the GOP is doing all it can to reduce the estate tax, and who does this benefit? Less than 1 percent of Minnesotans — only the rich 1 percent.
Here’s a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker and historian best known for his work “Democracy in America,” in 1833:
“What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.”
He was pointing out that a low estate tax portends most earned wealth passing on to prodigy. Apparently your editorial board favors creating the resultant “rich class.”
Bill Hohn, St. Paul
The City Council you deserve
We have another election for City Council coming up, and the usual suspects will be elected. DFL of course, as no Republican would even think of running in this city. And once again, the council members will promise you they will listen to your concerns and act on your behalf. As they are doing on the issue of parking meters on Grand Avenue? They listened to 200-plus of you Sept. 29, and with not a single voice in favor of meters, said they will put them in anyway (“Metered parking on Grand Avenue prompts pushback,” Sept. 30).
What will happen come May is this: Rather than pay a meter, visitors will troll the residential streets that border Grand Avenue and park there. Never mind that some of that is “permit” or “restricted.” I can tell you now that most people do not understand the signage and park wherever they please. This is what happens even now. Personally, I never park on Grand Avenue; I walk there. I frequent the businesses there often, and because it is part of my neighborhood, I will continue to do so. But how many times will visitors pay a $33 ticket before they decide that it is cheaper and easier to go to a shopping center instead of Grand Avenue? Think about this before you vote — because I guarantee you will get the City Council you deserve.
Pam Ernst, St. Paul
The world as it is
Pioneer Press sports reporter Mike Berardino analyzed the record of a talented pitcher who was elevated from the minor leagues recently by the Minnesota Twins. Berardino said if we were to ignore that player’s nightmare debut game, he would have had a superlative earned-run average during his first major league season.
Using Berardino’s approach, we could imagine that if Florida had voting machines that worked, George W. Bush would not have been elected as president of the United States. Or, we could imagine that if frogs had wings, they would not bump their rear ends on a log when jumping into a pond. The possibilities are endless.
Pope Francis spoke earnestly to a Congress that instinctively distrusts the active role of government in society. The common good may be an elusive goal, but the process by which we may seek it is not a mystery. A core message from Pope Francis while he was on U.S. soil is that politics is meant to be pragmatic, not ideological. Thereby, what we agree upon should outshine what divides us.
After listening to Pope Francis, John Boehner was inspired to rebuke his own caucus in the U.S. House for reveling in divisiveness. We should face the world as it is, not as we imagine it through the filter of our instincts. In other words, frogs do not have wings. They have blemishes and warts, just as we do. Deal with it.
Gerry Del Fiacco, West St. Paul
