Iowans who buy health insurance through Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield won’t be getting premium rebates anytime soon. Wellmark has a near-monopoly on Iowa’s individual and employer health insurance market. After the company announced last summer that it would not participate in the state’s health insurance exchange during its first year of operation, Democratic State Senators Jack Hatch and Matt McCoy questioned why the company was holding about $1.3 billion in reserves. The senators argued that the Iowa Insurance Division had previously justified Wellmark’s large cash reserves on the grounds that the company would be selling policies through the health exchange created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Hatch and McCoy asked Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart to study the issue, and in November, Gerhart retained Risk and Regulatory Consulting to investigate Wellmark’s reserve levels.

The consultants’ report, made public yesterday, concluded that Wellmark’s cash reserves are “reasonable and prudent.” Click through to read the full six-page report at the end of the article by Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register.

I’ve enclosed below a few excerpts from Leys’ report, Hatch’s letter to Gerhart last July, which provides background on the issue, and the joint statement Hatch and McCoy released yesterday. They noted that Wellmark “will be using its current reserves to protect them from risks that do not exist for them; namely, the Insurance Marketplace Exchange.” Hatch and McCoy added that the report “puts to rest the notion that the ACA could ever be the basis for a future premium increase by the company, at least in the next three years.”

After many years of double-digit percent increases in health insurance premiums, Wellmark did not raise premiums for many of its individual customers this year, presumably to deter them from shopping for a better deal on Iowa’s exchange. I predict Wellmark will cite the 2010 health care reform law as an excuse for raising premiums again before too long. Iowa individuals and families can purchase policies on the exchange from either Coventry or Co-Oportunity Health. Only Co-Oportunity is selling employer health insurance plans through Iowa’s exchange.

Here’s an open thread for discussing anything on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers. Most Iowans I’ve run into lately are a little down about the seemingly endless cold winter. (Single-digit highs in the Des Moines area today, and the 10-day forecast shows only one day that might reach the 30s.) How about some good news?

Dominoes continue to fall in the march toward equal rights for LGBT Americans. Yesterday Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have allowed private businesses to discriminate against gay customers because of their religious beliefs. I posted an excerpt from her veto statement below. Before Brewer announced her decision, both of Arizona’s Republican U.S. senators, Jeff Flake and John McCain, spoke out against the legislation. Even a few years ago I would not have expected conservative Republicans to take a stand against this kind of discrimination.  

Meanwhile, last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a key provision of the Defense Against Marriage Act is influencing other judicial rulings. Yesterday a federal judge struck down the Texas ban on same-sex marriage, only two weeks after a similar ruling came down in Virginia. Federal judges struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban in December and Oklahoma’s in January. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court will need to weigh in on a question it ducked last summer: whether state constitutional amendments on marriage violate equal protection rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

And now for something completely different: “74,476 Reasons You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza.” Granted, the author doesn’t take into account any lingering New Year’s resolutions.

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey suggests that Governor Terry Branstad will have little trouble dispatching his primary challenger and goes into the general election as a favorite, despite an approval rating below 50 percent. This pdf file contains full results from PPP’s poll of 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20 and 23. Respondents approved of Branstad’s job performance by a 45 margin to 40 percent margin; only 15 percent of respondents were unsure. The leading Democratic candidate for governor, State Senator Jack Hatch, is less well-known, with 16 percent approval, 15 percent disapproval, and 69 percent of respondents not sure. Branstad led Hatch by 48 percent to 36 percent, the same margin PPP found when it last polled Iowa in July 2013.

Anything below 50 percent approval is sometimes considered a “danger zone” for an incumbent. Paradoxically, Branstad may be comforted to know that among the Republican subsample in PPP’s survey, his approval was just 72 percent with 16 percent disapproving of his job performance and 12 percent unsure. A chart further down shows that 21 percent of “somewhat conservative” and 11 percent of “very conservative” respondents disapprove of Branstad. These voters may not be happy with the incumbent, but they are also not likely to gravitate toward a Democratic candidate for governor. A more worrying sign for Branstad would be that his approval is underwater with self-identified moderates in the poll (35 percent/43 percent).

Tom Hoefling, a former third-party presidential candidate who is challenging Branstad in the GOP primary, had extremely low name recognition among Republican respondents: 3 percent favorable, 9 percent unfavorable, 88 percent not sure. In a ballot test, 70 percent of Republicans picked Branstad and 11 percent Hoefling. Discontent among conservatives suggests that Hoefling can go higher, but I would be surprised if the protest vote in the June primary exceeded 25 percent.

Any comments about the governor’s race are welcome in this thread.  

Public Policy Polling’s latest Iowa survey shows Mark Jacobs with a small lead over the rest of the Republican field in the U.S. Senate race. Democrat Bruce Braley leads all the major Republican contenders, but by a smaller margin than he did last July. Click here for complete results, including question wordings and cross-tabs. PPP surveyed surveyed 869 Iowa voters, including 283 Republican primary voters, between February 20th to 23rd, producing a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent for the statewide poll and 5.8 percent for the Republican primary findings.

The GOP Senate candidates are still largely unknown, even to Republican voters, but Jacobs has the highest name recognition, thanks to radio and television commercials his campaign has been running since early December. Among PPP’s Republican respondents, 42 percent were undecided, followed by 20 percent for Jacobs, 13 percent for State Senator Joni Ernst, 11 percent for former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, 8 percent for Sam Clovis, and 3 percent each for Paul Lunde and Scott Schaben.

Among the full sample, Braley has the highest name recognition but is still unknown to nearly half the respondents. He leads Whitaker by 40 percent to 34 percent, Ernst and Jacobs by 41-35, and Clovis by 42-34. In PPP’s July 2013 survey, Braley’s lead averaged 11 points. The polling firm’s Tom Jensen argued that the “pretty clear reason” for the tightening in the Senate race is that “Barack Obama’s approval rating in the state has dropped a net 10 points compared to the summer.”

Earlier this month, Jacobs’ campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing Jacobs leading the Republican field for the primary, with 22 percent support compared to 11 percent for Ernst, 8 percent for Whitaker and 6 percent for Clovis. Jacobs’ poll, conducted by Hill Research Consultants, found Jacobs and Braley essentially tied (Jacobs 42 percent, Braley 41 percent), with more upside than for Jacobs because of the Democrat’s higher name recognition.

I agree with the Republicans who claimed that Jacobs’ higher name recognition and GOP support is merely a function of his heavy spending on paid advertising. He should be polling better after two months of radio and television while his opponents’ campaigns are dark. On the other hand, who’s going to stop him if his GOP rivals lack the resources to get their message out before June?

Last year voters in Linn County and Greene County approved proposals for new casinos for Cedar Rapids and Jefferson. But backers of those projects won’t welcome the new report commissioned by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission.

By some measures, the race for the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s first Congressional district looks wide open. All five candidates have raised enough money to run credible campaigns. None are rookie candidates: four have been elected multiple times to either local government or the state legislature, and the fifth has prior experience running for Congress.  

For various reasons, I’ve long felt that former Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy was best positioned to win the Democratic nomination, whether it’s decided in the June 3 primary or at an IA-01 district convention (if no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the primary votes).

Last week Murphy’s campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing a “commanding lead” against his four Democratic rivals. I’ve enclosed the polling memo below, along with a few thoughts on its findings and the dynamic in this race going forward.

We liberals have been fighting the wrong battle with the Minimum Wage.  I am not sure whether liberals understand the economics of the minimum wage and choose to ignore them, or whether we just don’t understand basic principles of economics.  I can’t do much about the former, but I can at least shed some light on what actually happens when we raise the minimum wage.

We liberals all share a fundamental belief that government has the power and the resources to improve the standard of living of the poor and the middle class in this country.  Because we have the power and the resources, we have an obligation to take action to do so.  But we should also do no harm in the process, especially to those whose lives we are trying to improve.  The Earned Income Tax Credit is a more efficient way to accomplish our objectives, at a lower cost to society as a whole, with fewer unintended consequences that end up hurting poor people.

Via Radio Iowa I learned that Tom Hoefling is collecting signatures to run for Iowa governor as a Republican. Looking on his campaign’s website, I see he announced his candidacy in early December. I’ve posted some background on Hoefling after the jump. This guy seems drawn to hopeless causes; he is a former supporter of Alan Keyes for president, but he appears to have become disenchanted with the Republican Party sometime during the last decade. In 2008 Hoefling and “many stalwart Reagan conservatives from across the country” founded the “America’s Party.” He ran for president in 2012 as the America’s Party nominee.

It’s anyone’s guess whether Hoefling will manage to qualify for the GOP primary ballot. He needs to submit nominating petitions with at least 3,654 valid signatures, spread across at least ten Iowa counties, by the end of business on March 14.

If Hoefling becomes a candidate for governor, we all know he has no chance of beating Terry Branstad. Even he acknowledges that. I will be interested to see how much traction he can gain from bashing what he calls “crony capitalism” and “economic ‘happy talk’ coming from the governor” that doesn’t reflect “the real world for the people that I know.”

Hoefling highlights some other issues that are important to many social conservatives, on which the Branstad administration and elected Iowa Republicans are perceived to be lacking. He wants GOP leaders to fight against the “Common Core” curriculum for Iowa schools and take action to reverse “the abortion holocaust” and “the homosexual agenda which is destroying marriage and the natural family.”

Republican turnout statewide should be higher than average on June 3 because of the crowded U.S. Senate primary and the competitive races for the GOP nomination in Iowa’s first, second and third Congressional districts. How large is the potential protest vote against Branstad? Spin your own scenarios in this thread.

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks finally made it official: she is running for Congress a third time in Iowa’s second district. Her campaign is on Facebook here and on Twitter here. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from her announcement and details on the campaign launch tour Miller-Meeks has planned for February 26 and 27. She will hit twelve of the 24 counties in IA-02, as well as attending a West Des Moines meeting of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She plans to focus on her “real world experience” as a doctor, as well as her work with Governor Terry Branstad over the past three years.

Although Miller-Meeks just filed papers with the Federal Election Commission within the last two weeks, she has been unofficially campaigning for some time. She has been meeting with GOP county officials around the district since at least the middle of last year, and she stepped down from her job in state government last month.

I think Miller-Meeks has a good chance to win the GOP primary. Although it may be challenging to convince some Republicans to give her a third chance at this seat, her competition looks weak. The only other announced candidate, State Representative Mark Lofgren, has raised very little money and doesn’t have a reputation as a great communicator on the stump. Beating four-term Democratic Representative Dave Loebsack will be a taller order. Besides aligning herself with Branstad, Miller-Meeks will hope that the new Iowa map improves her prospects. During the 2010 midterm election, she lost to Loebsack by about 11,500 votes in a district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 48,000 on election day. The current district contained 166,022 registered Democrats, 135,770 Republicans, and 181,463 no-party voters as of February 2014.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

If you’re among the roughly half a million Iowans whose household water comes from the Des Moines Water Works, you may have noticed a stronger chlorine smell lately. After the jump I’ve posted a statement explaining why the recent snow melt led to elevated ammonia levels in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, the sources for most drinking water in central Iowa. I also enclosed background on the most common causes of higher ammonia levels in surface water systems. Those can differ from watershed to watershed, but in Iowa conventional agriculture is a common source.

The Raccoon River Watershed Association is organizing an “Aldo Leopold Weekend Event” at the Hotel Pattee in Perry this Friday night and Saturday. I’ve enclosed the program below. On Saturday afternoon people will be reading from the Sand County Almanac before a showing of the documentary “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time.” That movie is well worth watching for anyone who cares about the environment.

This week marks the Iowa legislature’s first “funnel” deadline of the 2014 session. With the exception of appropriations bills, most legislation that has not cleared at least one committee in at least one chamber is dead for the year. Only occasionally do House or Senate leaders revive bills that didn’t get through the funnel.

Rod Boshart published a comprehensive list of bills that are still pending in either the Iowa House or Senate, as well as proposals that didn’t make it this year. Notably, the ideas Governor Terry Branstad outlined in his Condition of the State speech last month are still alive, as are the top priorities House and Senate leaders mentioned on the opening day of this year’s session.

Any comments about the legislature’s work is welcome in this thread. Reading Boshart’s lists, I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. So many bad ideas died in the funnel, but so did a lot of proposals I would strongly support.

My dismay is probably nothing compared to what socially conservative Republicans are feeling. For the second year in a row, no bills aimed at “protecting” traditional marriage made it through the funnel. Every proposed anti-abortion bill died too, except for the ban on “telemedicine” abortions (which failed to move last year but passed the Iowa House last week). You would think that with a 53-47 Republican majority, the Iowa House would move more of these abortion bills through committee at least.

Small but important victory: White House officials revealed yesterday that President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not include Social Security cuts he proposed last year. The president had hoped Congressional Republicans would agree to small tax increases in exchange for using the “chained Consumer Price Index” to calculate annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients. It’s a terrible idea that never should have emerged from a Democratic administration.

Maybe Obama recognized that in an election year, he was never going to get any real Republican concession in exchange for cuts that would inflict real pain on seniors who rely on Social Security. Democrats may need to fight this battle again before the end of Obama’s presidency, though.

[White House] Spokesman Josh Earnest said the decision to move away from chained CPI was motivated partially by the “substantial progress in reducing the deficit.” […]

Earnest repeatedly insisted that Obama would still consider chained CPI as part of a grand bargain on the debt, and that the move “does not reflect any reduction in the president’s willingness to try to meet Republicans in the middle.”

For now, Congressional Democrats are celebrating. Senators including Iowa’s Tom Harkin had strongly urged the president to abandon the “chained CPI” proposal. More than 100 House Democrats, including Iowa’s Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02), sent a similar letter to Obama this week. After the jump I’ve posted press releases from Harkin and Braley about the issue. UPDATE: Added a comment from Loebsack below.

It’s been nearly ten months since former State Representative Rod Roberts confirmed that he was considering a campaign for U.S. Senate. I’ve long been a skeptic that Roberts has any niche or large constituency in a statewide Republican primary. In fact, I’d forgotten he was still thinking about the race. This week Carroll-based journalist Douglas Burns got the scoop in an interview: Roberts will not run for Senate, or Congress in the open third district, or for Iowa secretary of state in 2014. He cited family reasons and said he plans to continue his work as director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. In late 2010, then Governor-elect Terry Branstad offered Roberts that position without considering any other candidates, even though Roberts had not applied for the job.

Burns has long been high on Roberts as a possible Senate candidate, but for once I agree with Steve Deace: “Rod didn’t offer a reason other than, ‘I’m Rod Roberts and I’m a nice guy.’ What’s your plan? […] Offer people something.” In his latest column, Burns floats the scenario of Roberts emerging as a compromise Senate nominee at a statewide convention if none of the current candidates receives 35 percent of the vote in the June primary.

Not bloody likely.

I do largely agree with Burns’ assessment of Mark Jacobs, though. Many Iowa Republicans will be skeptical of a candidate who only recently moved back to the state. Nor will they cut Jacobs slack for giving money to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Corzine in 2000, on the grounds that Corzine was CEO of Goldman Sachs, where Jacobs worked at the time.

I have a post in progress with more news on the Jacobs campaign. Meanwhile, any comments about the U.S. Senate race are welcome in this thread.

Former Republican Party of Iowa co-chair David Fischer announced on Facebook February 18 that he has decided not to run for the Iowa Senate this year. Just a few weeks ago, Fischer sounded committed to the race, but he told his Facebook friends, “Much to my surprise, a great opportunity has just presented itself that I owe it to my family to explore.” He promised to return all campaign contributions and to keep working to promote principles of “freedom, prosperity, and peace.”

I had considered Fischer’s campaign a “game-changer” in that it pointed to a strong Republican effort to beat entrenched Democratic incumbent Dennis Black in Senate district 15.

Two other Republicans have announced plans to run against Black: Patrick Payton and Crystal Bruntz. But since neither has Fischer’s connections to the “Liberty” movement that dominates the current state GOP’s leadership, I’m not convinced Senate district 15 will rise to the top tier of competitive Iowa Senate races. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal doesn’t seem worried about holding this seat either.

After the jump I’ve posted a map of the district and the latest voter registration totals.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? Here’s an open thread: all topics welcome.

Monday marked the fifth anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the federal stimulus) into law. Bleeding Heartland has long held that the stimulus mitigated the impact of the “Great Recession,” in part because the package saved Iowa and other states from enacting deep cuts in public services and . The stimulus had flaws, stemming primarily from the president aiming too low on the size of the package and concessions made to win a handful of conservative votes in Congress.

After the jump I’ve posted more links on the recovery act’s impact.

P.S. – The dumbest thing I’ve read this week was Kevin Hall’s comment for The Iowa Republican blog about former State Senator Swati Dandekar, a candidate for Congress in the first district. “Swati Dandekar is obviously an intelligent and accomplished woman. However, she speaks in broken English and I don’t think that translates very well to a wide electorate.” Reality: Dandekar’s English is very fluent. Having a noticeable accent is different from not speaking a language well. I would like to hear Hall try to talk in a non-native language.  

Last week Jennifer Jacobs wrote a strange feature for the Des Moines Register exploring why the “No Labels” movement is not gaining more traction in Iowa.

A better question: why would smart guys like State Senator Jeff Danielson or U.S. Representatives Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack hitch their wagons to this useless group? Leaders of No Labels express grand ambitions to “make government work again,” but the organization looks more like make-work for political consultants who are between campaign jobs. Resting on false premises, No Labels promotes the wrong “fix” for what’s broken in public policy. It’s also a classic example of a Washington-based astroturf (that is, fake grassroots) movement.  

Sam Clovis dodged what could have been a fatal blow to his U.S. Senate campaign when Bob Vander Plaats decided not to run. But to have any hope of winning the GOP primary, the Sioux City-based college professor and former radio host needs to raise real money and consolidate social conservative support quickly.  

The working of Iowa’s state legislature is transparent in many ways. The official legislative website provides thorough, timely and permanently accessible information about bills, legislators, committees, votes, and other events. Most Iowa House and Senate members are accessible to interested constituents, even listing their home and/or cell phone numbers on the web. When the legislature is in session, members of the public can come to the Capitol during working hours and often speak to key lawmakers about the issues they care about.

Nevertheless, it can be hard for those on the outside to figure out what is really going on at the statehouse. So it was last week when the Iowa House approved House File 2109, “An Act relating to vapor products and alternative nicotine products, and providing penalties.” Following the lead of the bill’s sponsor, news headlines made this legislation sound like a step toward protecting children’s health: “Iowa House approves ban on sale of e-cigarettes to minors”; “Iowa House passes ban on e-cigarettes for minors”; “House votes to ban e-cigarette sales to minors.”

The lobbyist declarations told a different story.  

Friends of Iowa Midwives has worked with legislators to present companion bills in the House and Senate that would allow for safe and legal access to Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in Iowa.  For 15 years Friends of Iowa Midwives has worked toward licensure for CPMs. In 1999 the Iowa Legislature conducted a scope of practice review, the result of which was a recommendation to the legislature that the CPMs should be licensed through the Iowa Department of Public Health.  The bills propose that a license be created for the already trained and nationally certified midwives who seek to provide quality and safe care to Iowa women.

Every year in Iowa, more than 500 women choose to give birth outside of the hospital.  This number is on the rise both in Iowa and nationally.  A study published last month in the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health again demonstrated that for low-risk women out-of-hospital birth with skilled providers is a safe option.  This study found that almost 94% of the nearly 17,000 participants had a spontaneous vaginal birth.  The cesarean rate for this study was 5.2%.  The national average cesarean rate is 33%.  The in-labor transfer rate for this study was between 8-23%.  The most common reason for a transfer of care was prolonged labor or what is commonly called failure to progress. This study was one of among several that have demonstrated that out-of-hospital birth is a safe option for low-risk women. 

Catching up on news from last week, Mariannette Miller-Meeks filed a formal statement of candidacy in Iowa’s second district with the Federal Election Commission (hat tip to Greg Hauenstein). An ophthalmologist based in Ottumwa, Miller-Meeks was the Republican nominee against Representative Dave Loebsack in both 2008 and 2010. She served as director of the Iowa Department of Public Health from early 2011 until resigning last month.

I have not seen any formal campaign announcement yet from Miller-Meeks, but she has been attending central committee meetings and other Republican events around the 24 counties in IA-02 for some time. During the past month, she has met with GOP central committee members in Johnson County, Marion County, and Mahaska County. She attended an off-year caucus in the Quad Cities (Scott County). Last week Miller-Meeks tweeted a photo of her campaign co-chairs in Muscatine County–the home base for State Representative Mark Lofgren, who announced his campaign in IA-02 last summer. Lofgren has a lot of support in the GOP establishment but has not raised much money for his Congressional bid.