Politicians Say the Darndest Things...Unfortunately - September, 2014 Update

On a regular basis we like to review the quotes and silliness that comes out of our politicians’ mouths. If their words and actions were not so dangerous to our freedoms, liberty, economic well being, and general happiness, their ridiculous and inane quotes would be quite funny. As you read them, consider the following facts and observations:

- In a country with over three hundred million people, how sad is it that we cannot find five hundred people or so that are far better problem solvers than the current members of Congress and the White House, given the insane quotes and inabilities of the current Washington class?

- With the real unemployment rate over 10%, with the national debt due to excessive Washington spending at about $18 TRILLION, with a war on drugs still being lost, with public schools still failing to educate, with a leaky southern border that exposes everyone to potential terrorist attacks, with anemic economic growth, etc., after reading the following quotes and thoughts, do you really think that our current crop of politicians are capable of resolving these major issues facing Americans today?

- Past American politicians have given us great quotes, memorable quotes, inspirational quotes like:

• John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you…”
• Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago…”
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”

Instead of greatness, we are stuck with quotes from people like Nancy Pelosi who once said something to the effect that: “We have to pass the legislation [Obama Care] to see what is in it.” This is like saying we have to drive down a fog enshrouded, icy mountain road at night so we can see where the road turns. Pathetic.

Past posts in this bog that looked at silly and inept political quotes can be accessed by typing “politicians say the darndest things” in the search box above. The last time we reviewed quotes was at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-2013-politicians-say-darndest.html

Let’ see what our politicians have been saying recently:

1) Joe Biden is always a good source for inane comments. Recently he put his foot in his mouth again when he stated:
“My son as attorney general, the year in Iraq, came back and that’s one of the things that he finds is, was most in need, when he was over there in Iraq for a year, people would come to him and talk about what was happening at home, in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being, I mean these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas.”

The Shylock reference is from Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice,” where the bad guy, a Jewish moneylender, named Shylock, literally required a pound of flesh from someone who didn’t repay their loan. It has long been considered a vile and offensive term, a derogatory slander of any person of the Jewish faith. And here the Vice president is throwing it around casually in his very public remarks, remarks that can be seen at:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/09/178566-just-biden-biden-anti/

2) As most knowledgeable know, the ISIS terrorists have beheaded at least two American journalists over the past month or so, simply because they were Americans. There are no indications they were CIA operatives, contract killers, mean people, just two journalists trying to report the news on the ground in the Middle East.

I can think of no worse way to die or any act so heinous than the beheading of any person, never mind innocent people. But according to Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, it was the journalists fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is the real reason they were beheaded. 

The Congresswoman recent stated that the recent beheadings of American journalists does not justify air strikes by the U.S., even suggesting the journalists were committed because “we were on their [ISIS] ground” and Americans “need to be careful where they are.” So it’s their fault that they were reporting, doing their job and they deserve what they get, beheadings? Talk about lack of compassion. The interview of the Congresswoman when she showed such ignorance and dispassion can be accessed at:

http://www.headlinepolitics.com/unbelievable-democrat-congresswoman-suggests-beheaded-journalists-brought-upon/

3) Rather than try to explain a recent John Kerry appearance in front of a Senate committee, an appearance where he just rambles on incoherently trying to answer a Senator’s simple question, see for yourself on the following link how lost and incoherent he sounds and then ask yourself: does this man exude confidence, intelligence, leadership or any kind of positive attribute or does he come off as completely lost:

http://americanoverlook.com/video-watch-john-kerry-stumble-like-an-idiot-after-being-asked-one-simple-question-about-isis/26949

4) Let’s see, Joe Biden insults the entire Jewish religion, how much worse could it get? How about Senate majority Leader Harry Reid insulting an entire race of people, namely the Asians. Reid was giving a speech recently at the Asian Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas when he dropped not one, but two, insults on his Asian hosts:

“I don’t think you’re smarter than anybody else, but you’ve convinced a lot of us you are.” In other words, the stereotypical portrait of Asians as being really smart is not correct but you sure convinced us country hicks that you are.

“One problem that I’ve had today is keeping my Wongs straight.” In other words, you all look alike to us non-Asians.

How much more insulting can you get? Puts Biden to shame with his Shylock comment, something that I thought was hard to do.

5) Let’s see if Biden can make a comeback. He recently gave a speech at a Democratic Party forum dedicated to women’s issues when he stated:

“It’s Republicans who were involved, guys like Mac Mathias and [Bob] Packwood and so many others,” Biden said in remarks to the Democratic National Committee, saying today’s antagonistic Republican Party doesn’t resemble the GOP that used to work across the aisle.

Typical political speech…. except for one embarrassing fact, especially embarrassing since his words were delivered in the context of women’s issues: Packwood was forced to resign from the Senate in 1995 after the Senate Ethics Committee voted to expel him for sexual misconduct. His misconduct included having nearly 20 women accuse Packwood of sexual harassment.

Do these high paid, supposed leaders never think before they open their mouths or are they really that stupid and ignorant? A question for the ages.

6) Sometimes politicians say things that are not stupid or silly or inappropriate, they are just plain falsehoods. Consider the remarks of the President from a few years ago:

“Under our plan [Obama Care legislation], no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” 

But according to an analysis and report on Obama Care that was recently published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Obama Care legislation has indeed allowed women to use Federal dollars to have abortions. Obama made these comments while the fate of the legislation was still pending, trying to convince Democratic, ant-abortion Congressmen that abortion was off the table as far as public funding under Obama Care and that they should vote for approval of the legislation.

However, his claim of no abortion funding, like many, many other of his promises, proved to be just another plain deception and falsehood, a trademark of his administration and himself.

7) Let me say up front that I am totally against domestic violence and any coddling of those that assault their spouses, girl friends or significant others. It is a cowardly act, an act that should be punished to any extent necessary.

That is why we have police, prosecutors, trials, juries, and judges, to make sure that justice is done to domestic abuse instigators. There are processes in place to make sure these types of cowards pay for their violent acts.

In that context, let me repeat the state of the union that we discussed above: With the real unemployment rate over 10%, with the national debt due to excessive Washington spending at about $18 TRILLION, with a war on drugs still being lost, with public schools still failing to educate, with a leaky southern border that exposes everyone to potential terrorist attacks, with anemic economic growth, etc., after reading the following quotes and thoughts, do you really think that our current crop of politicians are capable of resolving these major issues facing Americans today?

Probably about half of that 10% unemployment are women. About half of that $18 TRILLION national debt is going to be paid by women. A lot of our citizens that are suffering as a result of the lost war on drugs are women. You get the idea. There are far greater issues for Washington to work on to resolve that will affect tens of millions of American women than to worry about how the NFL handles a few of its players accused of domestic abuse.

But that did not stop a bunch of women U.S. Senators from getting together to write a letter to the NFL rather than spend their time and their staffs’ time on the pressing issues above, a letter that included the following quote: “If you violently assault a woman, you shouldn’t get a second chance to play football in the NFL. It is long past time for the NFL to institute a real zero-tolerance policy and send a strong message that the league will not tolerate violence against women by its players, who are role models for children across America.”

I get it that you are pissed at the NFL. But let the justice system handle the prosecution, let the weight of public opinion and league sponsors force changes to how the league treats these types of players. You go to work and fix the major issues that affect far more women than a few bad and cowardly NFL players.

And anyway, if you try to resolve this issue like you have tried to resolve others issues facing Americans, you will probably make things worse than better. Besides, since you are all out on another extended vacation that will keep you out of Washington until November 12, what good can you do anyway?

That will do it for now. These are the people that are supposed to be leading the country. Instead, they are busy insulting Jews, Asians, beheaded journalists, and women, bumbling and stuttering in front of Congress, and sticking their noses in situations that they should stay out of. Their own words portray their insanity and idiocy. And as they insult, bumble, stutter, and intrude, the real issues of American just keep getting worse.

Seems like we need some different people in Washington via term limits, these quote machines are getting tiresome and insulting to all:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Sinkhole States vs. Sunshine States - You Decide

In a previous post, within our ongoing “by the numbers theme,” we explored a bunch of numbers as they applied to ten states. Five of those states were nicknamed “Sinkhole States” since they were being overcome with state government debt that was turning the states’ finances and the financial future of those state residents into sinkholes.

The second set of five states were nicknamed ‘Sunshine States” since their state government had either a budget surplus or a very small, manageable debt load that wouldn’t be a financial burden to future residents of those states. Thus, while the first five states were mostly likely to get lost in a sink hole of debt within the fifty states, the Sunshine States were mostly likely to be basking in sunshine, given their better fiscal skills.

We extended that distinction in that post to look at other numbers of those ten states including maximum state income tax rates, unemployment rates, and buying power of residents within each state. Our findings were often dramatic and indicative of what government should do and not do:

• Sinkhole states had much higher debt levels than Sunshine states.
• Tax rates in Sinkhole states were higher.
• Unemployment levels were higher in Sinkhole states.
• Consumer buying power was less in Sinkhole states.

Thus, Sunshine state residents enjoyed lower taxes, lower unemployment, more buying power and a financial future that was not weighted down with debt. In other words, most people, from a financial perspective, would likely chose to live in a Sunshine state than a Sinkhole state.

All of those numbers and analyses can be accessed at the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/09/september-2014-by-numbers-part-1.html

Since that post, we came across some more data that shows how much better it is to live in a state with lower taxes, lower debt, better purchasing power, and a brighter future. A recent Gallup poll asked state residents to rate whether their state was the worst state to live in and whether it was the best state to live in. The results were quite interesting and consistent:

Sinkhole States - home state is the worst state to live in:

1. Connecticut - 17% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 2)
2. Illinois - 25% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 1)
3. New Jersey - 10% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 7)
4. Massachusetts - 6% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 15)
5. Hawaii - 4% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 23)

Average - 16.8%, Rank Average - 9.6

Sunshine States - home state is the worst to live in:

1. Alaska - 4% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 22)
2. North Dakota - 2% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 42)
3. Wyoming - 1% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 46)
4. Utah - 2% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 40)
5. South Dakota - 3% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 29)

Average - 2.4%, Rank - 35.8

Comments:

• Sinkhole states on average were seven times more likely to rate their state as the worst state to live in vs. Sunshine states.
• Sinkhole states ranking as far as having the worst state to live in was about four times worst rank wise vs. Sunshine states.
• Four out of five Sunshine state residents were far more optimistic about their states than all of the Sinkhole states.
• The worst Sinkhole state, Illinois, had residents that were more than ten times more pessimistic about living in their state than the average of the Sunshine states.

You get idea. Sinkhole state residents are far more likely to hate living in their states than those people living in Sunshine states. Could it be that Sunshine states have lower taxes, lower debt levels, lower unemployment levels, and higher purchasing power? 

In that same poll, Gallup also reversed the question and asked state residents if their state was the best state to live in.

Sinkhole States - home state is the best state to live in:

1. Connecticut - 31% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 41)
2. Illinois - 19% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 49)
3. New Jersey - 28% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 44)
4. Massachusetts - 46% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 24)
5. Hawaii - 68% of state residents say it is the worst state to live in (rank = 6)

Average - 38.9%, Rank Average - 32.8

Sunshine States - home state is the best state to live in:

1. Alaska - 77.0% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 2)
2. North Dakota -66% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 8)
3. Wyoming - 69% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 4)
4. Utah - 70% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 3)
5. South Dakota - 57% of state residents say it is the best state to live in (rank = 14)

Average - 67.8%, Rank - 6.2

Comments:

• The Sunshine states were among the top states, among all states, where state residents feel their state is the best place to live, placing four of the five Sunshine states in the top eight best states to live in.
• The Sinkhole states were among the bottom states where state residents feel their state is the best place to live, placing three states in the bottom six best states to live in.
• Residents in Sunshine states were almost twice as likely to think their states were the best places to live vs. the Sinkhole states.

Different numbers, same result. People like living in Sunshine states much more than living in Sinkhole states. Could it be that having less of a state tax burden, less of a state income tax burden, better purchasing power, and lower unemployment is what makes for happy state residents?

And if that is true, why would politicians not strive to provide those conditions for their state residents since it is what apparently makes them happiest? And taking the analogy a step further, why wouldn’t Washington strive to do the same thing? Lower taxes, lower debt, lower unemployment, and better purchasing power? 

But that is the exact opposite of what Washington has done over the past few years:

• National debt, and the burden it places on all Americans today and in future generations, has skyrocketed as a result of out of control Washington spending.
• Taxes have gone up across a wide spectrum of taxes and rates, much of which has been driven by the many, many new taxes and increased tax rates caused by Obama care.
• Despite what the Federal government says, Americans purchasing power has dropped dramatically over the past few years with food prices going up substantially and the price of a gallon of gas up over 70% since 2009.
• And while the unemployment rate has come down somewhat from the depths of the Great Recession, there are still about 17 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed, indicating that high unemployment is still a large and persistent problem.

Thus, the numbers show that the Washington political class is utilizing the same political strategies and policies of Sinkhole states, higher debt, higher unemployment, higher taxes, lower consumer purchasing power, and applying it to the national levels. The numbers do not lie.

The question we face is whether we want to continue abiding by Sinkhole policies or make a fresh start and start looking at Sunshine policies. The numbers indicate the latter while we have allowed our politicians to pursue the former. One option to start down a Sunshine path is to impose term limits on all current Sinkhole era politicians. Until they are changed, the sunshine we will see is whatever gets to the bottom of the sinkhole that we find ourselves in today.

You can help us start climbing out of the sinkhole by joining the term limits effort at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, really how much worse could it get if we changed out every Washington politician. From the bottom of a sinkhole, the way only is up.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2014 Bonus Post The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: A Surprise Reason For Policy Cancellations, Losing Obama Crae Subsidies, and More

Note: we were hoping that yesterday’s post would be the last one needed for this month’s update on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. However, from the time we posted the first update last week until yesterday, so many more disasters have arisen that we need this bonus post today to capture all that has happened in just the past month relative to Obama Care.

Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers.
• It has generally increase the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate a successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

Let’s see what the latest fiascoes are and hopefully these will finish the update until next month:

1) According to reporting from The Hill, the Obama administration has recently announced that about 360,000 Americans may lost their Obama Care subsidies if those people cannot provide proof of their income level within the next two weeks.

Government offices will send final notices this week to these individuals who signed up for Obama Care with income levels that didn’t match government records. Failure to verify cuts off their subsidies, which in many cases is likely to cause these Obama Care insured people to also drop their insurance since it would have suddenly gotten much more expensive to carry it without the subsidies. Combine this information with the fact that Aetna has announced that 17% or so of its Obama Care customers have already dropped their insurance and other factors depressing Obama Care sign up totals and we see that this legislation’s successes are growing smaller and smaller.

2) A recent Forbes article written by a restaurant executive continues to verify what many experts have been saying about Obama Care from its inception: Obama Care is shifting restaurant workers, and workers in other industries, into part time jobs whether they want to or not.

Andrew Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, owner of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurant brands. The highlights of his Forbes article include the following points:

• A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll found support for the Obama care legislation languishing at 34% despite the millions and millions of dollars spent to hype its positive aspects, which turned out to be very few.
• Mr. Puzder, a seasoned restaurant operator stated in an October, 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “[t]he evidence that Obamacare is having a negative impact on hiring is unequivocal, abundant and consistent with common sense.”
• He claims that government data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 54% of the jobs the economy created from February to August of 2014 were part time
• For some perspective, for the comparable February through August period in 2012 (prior to the contemplated effective date for Obama Care’s one year look back), 100% of the net jobs the economy added were full time. The number of part time jobs actually declined during that time frame
• The government reporting acknowledged in their job analysis that there has been “a statistically significant increase” in involuntary part time work in 2014 and that involuntary part time work is what “should be affected if employers are reducing workers hours to avoid employer mandate [Obama Care] penalties.”

Nothing different than what we have been saying for the past few years, this time said by someone actually in the industry and trying to cope with Obama Care. He does a nice summary job of how Obama Care is killing the financial opportunities of millions of Americans by forcing them to become part time workers, both within the restaurant industry and elsewhere:

“Obama Care mandates that employers offer employees working 30 or more hours per week health insurance coverage thereby increasing the cost of employees who work 30 or more hours per week relative to those working under 30 hours per week. Businesses are rationally responding to this clear economic incentive by creating more part time jobs. Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. That was true with respect to the 40 hour work week and it’s true with respect to Obamacare’s 30 hour employer mandate cut off.

This is a problem Congress and the President can solve, reinvigorating full time job creation and economic growth. Passing the bipartisan Forty Hours is Full Time Act would do the job. However, Obama Care’s supporters must stop defending the law long enough to recognize there’s a problem.”

The fix is really that simple, go back to the traditional 40 hour work week definition, which means the Washington political class has no chance of implementing it.

3) The website, Bankrupting America, does a wonderful job tracking and describing the wasteful spending and incompetency of the Washington political class. According to the September 24, 2014 posting on their website, as reported by The Hill, “The government tracks its health care spending in an outdated records system that cannot easily respond to data requests such as salaries or public relations contracts in certain departments. Instead, officials rely on manually prepared spreadsheets that can take months to produce.”

“Manually prepared spreadsheets.” In these times of personal computers, networking, data base management, etc., the Federal government, which just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Obama Care systems, prepares data via manual spreadsheets. Unbelievable. What were the hundreds of millions of data systems dollars spent on if those same systems cannot produce simple reports electronically?

4) We have previously discussed a big problem next year around tax time when many Obama Care policy holders may be faced with penalties and fees due to the fact that their income may have been too high when their Obama Care subsides were computed. Now, according to a recent USA Today article, we are getting an idea of how high those tax time surprise costs might be relative to Obama Care policies.

On September 23, 2014, USA Today estimated that hundreds of thousands of Obama Care policy holders could be faced with surprise penalties of anywhere from $600 to over $2,500 for married couples. How many Obama Care policy holders will drop their polices when they realize that keeping them could cost them an additional $2,500 a year, or over $200 a month? 

Additionally, if they keep the newly expensive policy, how many fewer movies will they see, how many fewer restaurant meals will they eat, etc., in order to pay for higher insurance rates, further depressing economy activity and growth? 

5) As we have reported many times, reliable industry sources estimate that at least between five and six million Americans lost access to their current insurance policies directly as a result of Obama Care tenets. We had thought that the only reason that had happened was because some of those policies did not provide the required dozen or so health care services that Obama Care mandates.

For example, some policy holders may have had policies that did not cover maternity expenses since they were well past their child bearing age. Thus, they had a nice arrangement with their insurance company that got them out from under paying for insurance needs that they did not need. Those beneficial arrangements and policies were killed off by Obama Care.

However, we recently found out there is another reason why perfectly good insurance policies were needlessly terminated for 5-6 million Americans. The reason defies logical thinking and reasoning, it is that stupid. However, rather than have me try to explain this little factor in the cancellation of millions of policies, please access the following link from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/22/lost-plan-obamacare-explained-3-minutes/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRons6TPZKXonjHpfsX56uUlXqK0lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DSsNmI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

There is not logical reason or thought process why this incredibly idiotic requirement was put into the legislation. But again, not having logical reason or a logical thought process is pretty much on par with the Washington political class. It would all be so funny if it had not so negatively affected the millons of lives of Americans.

That will do it for today and this month. I am sure that we will address new disasters from Obama Care next month….especially since as this is being written we are seeing that another Federal government agency report has just been published which shows that the overall cost of Obama Care so far is actually orders of magnitude greater than any else this administration has admitted to. 

Let that be the teaser to being you back next month for this developing scandal and more.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2014, Part 7, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - This Months Wrap Up Fiascos

This is our seventh and hopefully last update to our continuing series that looks at the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. For years, and especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to dedicate many posts each month to cover the fiascoes and heartache that this insipid piece of legislation has generated. This law has increased health care costs, increased taxes, increased unemployment, depressed economic growth, created serious identify theft opportunities for criminals, and created other disasters that are too numerous to mention here.

All of these disasters have been incurred for very little upside to what ails the health care system in this country. The legislation never understood and thus, never attacked, the underlying root causes of our health care problems. Obama Care just made a bad situation even worse.

Let’s see if can wrap up this month’s disaster today and make the pain stop….at least until next month.

1) A new analysis and report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York proved that Obama Care is having a significant negative impact on employers' health care coverage, employment, and even on consumer prices. The report, entitled “August 2014 Empire State Manufacturing Survey and its Business Leaders Survey” states how "how the ACA [Obama Care] is affecting businesses and how businesses are responding to the new legislation.”

Other findings include:

• The manufacturing companies surveyed foresee a median increase of 10% in their health care coverage costs from 2013 to 2014, and the service firms reported a 9% increase. Both surveys predicted a 10% increase in 2015.
• Almost 40% of the manufacturing firms said Obama Care has increased their per-worker health benefit costs "a little" this year, and 34.9% said "a lot." 
• For service firms, 38.4% said "a little" and 20% said "a lot."
• Over 84% of manufacturing companies making modifications report that they are raising deductibles and almost 79% are increasing co-pays.
• Service firms that are making modifications found that 76.5% are raising deductibles, and 79.4% are increasing co-pays.
• Almost 22% of manufacturing firms said they are reducing the number of workers they employ, 19.3% are raising their proportion of part-time workers, 19.3% are increasing outsourcing, and 36.4% are raising the prices they charge customers.
• For service firms, 25% are raising prices, and 20.2% are increasing their proportion of part-time workers.
• A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed similar results, with many firms increasing their part-time workers and outsourcing, raising employee contributions to health care coverage, deductibles, and co-pays, and raising the prices they charge customers.

No surprises here, based on previous reporting we have done: fewer full time workers, higher prices, higher insurance premiums and deductibles, and the stifling of economic growth. Tough to argue what a lousy piece of legislation this is from an employment and economic perspective, at least in the eyes of the Federal Reserve Board.

2) Computer hackers infected a Healthcare.gov computer server this summer, again raising the specter of easy identity theft within the Obama Care computer systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is demanding a key Obama Care official testify before his committee after the Obama administration revealed hackers had successfully breached HealthCare.gov.

The entire open enrollment process starts up again in a month or so so having hackers getting into the same systems that will support the open enrollment so close to the new enrollment season has to make any American leery about giving up their personal information to a less than secure computer process.

3) One of the many false promises Obama put forth in support of the Obama Care disaster was that there would be little, if any, incremental increase in the Federal national debt burden as a result of Obama Care. However, a Washington Examiner article by Phillip Klein on September 3, 2014 puts lends some serious credence to the fact that his comment on the debt was another lie or false promise since by 2023, all levels of U.S. governments will be spending $2.5 trillion a year on the nation‘s health care. That will be a 78% increase from the $1.4 trillion that is spent today. 

It is very difficult/impossible to believe that adding over a trillion dollars a year to government budgets, just to cover health care costs, will not dramatically increase the national debt. Thus, another Obama and Obama Care promise exploded, the minimizing the impact on the national debt is pure fallacy.

4) The website, www.humanevents.com, recently ran an extensive summary of the many negative impacts and attributes of Obama Care. While it covers many of the disasters we have discussed in this series, I strongly recommend you go to the following link for another in-depth perspective on how bad this legislation really is:

http://humanevents.com/2014/09/17/obamacares-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-autumn/?utm_source=iacfbp&utm_medium=fbpage&utm_campaign=IAC

Their analysis pulls information from a wide and diverse set of sources. A sample of their sources include the following insights and warnings:

- From Watchdog.org: The Manhattan Institute, a think tank that studies health care issues among others, found that older men (around age 64) are the only general group benefiting from lower rates than before because of the ACA. Young men (around age 27) are suffering the most from higher premiums as a result of Obamacare — an average 67 percent monthly increase.

- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the top-selling insurance provider in Minnesota in the first year of Obama Care health exchanges is bailing completely out of the Obama Care market going forward: Golden Valley-based PreferredOne had set the lowest premium prices in the nation last year and signed up nearly 6 in 10 consumers who shopped on the MNsure exchange. But the insurer’s CEO, Marcus Merz, said this week in a letter to the exchange’s leaders that “continuing to provide this coverage through MNsure is not sustainable.

The move could portend higher health care premiums in the year ahead and is the latest setback for an exchange that suffered persistent technical problems in its debut year. “That’s a huge blow to MNsure,” said Allan Baumgarten, an independent Twin Cities health care analyst.

- From USA Today reports: Premiums for employer-paid insurance are up 3% this year, but deductibles are up nearly 50% since 2009, the report by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows. The average deductible this year is $1,217, up from $826 five years ago. Nearly 20% of workers overall have to pay at least $2,000 before their insurance kicks in, while workers at firms with 199 or fewer employees are feeling the pain of out-of-pocket costs even more: A third of these employees at small companies pay at least $2,000 deductibles.

From the Wall Street Journal: University of Chicago economist Casey B. Mulligan foresees an economic impact that will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and that’s just lost income and productivity incidentally wiped out by ObamaCare, on top of its explicit and hidden direct costs… The Affordable Care Act is weakening the economy. And for the large number of families and individuals who continue to pay for their own health care, health care is now less affordable.

More expert opinions, more bad news for America’s health, families, and health care.

5) Sarah Palin was ridiculed when she correctly predicted that Obama Care involved a death panel component that would tend to shut down or restrict medical treatment for older Americans. Was she crazy? 

We have already reported on the fact that the Federal government is going to pay doctors who counsel patients on the options of getting medical treatment at an advanced age. The Obama Care legislation included the creation of a panel to look at costly treatments, usually the type that apply to older, sicker Americans, to see if they were needed and cost effective.

And if those two developments were not creepy enough, consider what one of the main architects of the Obama care legislation recently said in an interview in The Atlantic: “I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop."

This quote came out of the mouth of Ezekiel Emanuel in The Atlantic, a primary developer and proponent of the legislation, a clear statement that age 75 is a good time to check out of life. He want on to say: “That’s how long I want to live: 75 years. This preference drives my daughters crazy. It drives my brothers crazy. My loving friends think I am crazy. They think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’t thought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do. To convince me of my errors, they enumerate the myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well.” And, at older ages, “We literally lose our creativity.”

If the creator of the legislation thinks we should all check out at age 75, does anyone still think that Sarah Palin was crazy?

6) Let’s wrap up this post and this month’s unfolding disaster review of Obama Care with a simple story of how the legislation has failed to rein in health care costs, the primary objective of the whole effort in the first place. NBC 4 New York television station in New York City recently reported that last August, Baer Hanusz-Rajkowski, of Bayonne, New Jersey accidentally cut his finger with the claw-end of a hammer. 

He waited a few days for the wound to heal but the cut didn’t seem to be closing. Thus, he went to the Bayonne Medical Center emergency room to see whether or not he should get stitches. The nurse practitioner determined no stitches were necessary, he says, and no other treatments such as X-rays were done besides a tetanus shot and a band aid.

As a result of this simple interaction, he was charged an obscene and amazing amount of over $8,800 for the whole encounter at the hospital. This included $180 for the tetanus shot, $242 for sterile supplies (i.e. a band aid), several hundred dollars for the nurse practitioner’s services (which likely lasted only a few minutes), $8 for antibacterial ointment, and a whopping $8,200 to cover the emergency room visit. Unbelievable.

This is what happens when you do not understand the underlying root causes of a problem: any solution you come up with is likely to fail since whatever you do, the underlying problems continue to fester. Obama Care never understood the root causes of our high health care costs and thus never resolved the problem of $242 for a band aid and $8,800 for a simple hospital visit for a simple problem. Those ridiculous and obscene costs continue to haunt the country today in spite of Obama Care, and in many cases, because of Obama Care.

That will do it for this month’s Obama Care disasters. I would like to hope that we will never visit this topic again, that all of the possible disasters have already been covered. The odds of that happening are as good as any Obama Care promise actually coming true. See you next month, same time, same disastrous legislation.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2014 Part 6 The Unfolding Disaster that is Obama Care: Illegally Funding Abortions, Disgruntled Doctors, and Higher Health Care Costs

Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers.
• It has generally increase the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate a successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

Let’s continue slogging through the latest disasters from Obama care with the following fiascoes:

1) Although no Republican in either house of Congress voted to enact Obama Care, the fate of the legislation was in doubt in the House of Representatives since some Democrats did not want to support any health care legislation that used Federal tax money to support abortions. Without the votes of these Democrats and the guarantee that nothing in the Obama Care law would allow public financing of abortions the legislation would not be enacted.

President Obama was on record to support this position and was quite adamant about this: “Under our plan [Obama Care], no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” He denounced those saying otherwise as merely trying “to kill reform at any cost.”

When the legislation finally did pass, one of those Congressman, former Congressman Bart Stupak, proudly declared on the House floor that Democrats had “stood up for the principle of no public funding of abortions.”

Another Democratic member of Congress, Steve Driehaus, was so sure that his voice against public financing of abortions via Obama Care was a success that he actually sued the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List PAC under Ohio's political false-statement law after group posted a billboard that equated his vote for Obama Care to a vote for government-funded abortion.

But alas, according to a recent, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, it looks like another Presidential lie and the duping of many members of Congress from his own party have occurred. The GAO report found that the Ohio billboard was indeed correct: Obama Care is subsidizing elective abortions, simply bypassing existing restrictions in the law, just as Obama Care's detractors predicted four years ago.

The GAO studied a sample of Obama Care providers and found that 83% of them are simply ignoring weak safeguards that were put in place against abortion funding in order to convince waffling House Democrats (like Driehaus and Stupak) to vote for legislation.

Obama Care would have passed if not for the false promise that if you like your current doctors you can keep your current doctors. 

Obama Care would not have passed if not for the false promise that Americans who liked their health care insurance plans could keep them. 

Obama Care would not have passed if not for the false promise that the law would lower premiums and health care costs. 

Obama Care would not have passed if not for the false promise that obtaining health insurance online would be a simple and pain free experience, with the threat of identity theft being an implied fantasy.

And Obama Care certainly would not have without the false promise that it would not help pay for abortions.

Obama Care passed not because it was needed and was a good plan, it was passed because of a pack of lies, with the abortion lie being just the latest duping of America and members of Congress.

2) A recent Washington Examiner article on September 17, 2014 by Phillip Klein examined the results of a survey of doctors done by the Physicians Foundation. Their results show that the whole doctor population in this country are not real happy about Obama Care either:

- 20,000 doctors responded to the survey so there is solid statistical validity to the findings.

- Forty-six percent of doctors surveyed gave he Obama care law a 'D' or an 'F'. 

- Only 25 percent of those surveyed gave the law an 'A' or a 'B.'

- Their written comments to the survey reveal the major problems they have with the legislation and how it is screwing up their lives:

• "Get government OUT of healthcare."
• "I'm a Canadian physician practicing in the United States. The politicians and policy makers need to understand that government involvement in healthcare never works."
• "Health reform would be better served by removing many thousands of pages of laws and bureaucrats rather than adding many thousands of pages of laws and bureaucrats."

- Some doctors said they were planning to leave the profession, though it wasn't clear that it was necessarily due to the law, a trend that will reduce supply of medical care and increase the cost of providing care by fewer resources, simple economics of supply and demand but the exact opposite effect that Obama care promised:

"The system is broken and I am out of here as soon as I can. I am tired of being used, abused and lied to. Has anyone here woken up to the fact that we are always the last ones to be considered in the equation of change?" 

Could Obama and Congress have screwed up any more relative to ineffective legislating? Higher costs, fewer doctors, disgruntled health care providers, I think not.

3) One last set of bad news for today. A new analysis from the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and a team of nonpartisan economists has concluded that the nation’s health care spending will rise faster than expected in the coming years. The report was published in the Journal Health Affairs and found that the combined effects of Obama Care expanding coverage, faster economic growth and aging of the population will lead to increased health care spending for this year and the growing decade.

But did not the supporters of Obama care promise that the nation’s health care costs would go down, not up, as a result of enactment? Didn’t the President promise to “bend the cost line” while not increasing the national debt? Could this be yet ANOTHER broken Presidential promise? 

Higher costs, fewer doctors, broken promises, and secretly funding abortions. Another dreary day on the Obama Care front. We will try to wrap up this update to Obama Care tomorrow, not because we have run out of disasters but because it gets so darn depressing talking about the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the most inept set of politicians ever to sit in Washington.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2014 Part 5 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - Enrollees Continue to Drop Out And Still A Drag On The Economy

Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers.
• It has generally increase the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate a successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

Let’s see what disasters we can find today.

1) Last month, we did a thorough analysis that showed that the Obama Care effort did not incrementally deliver health care insurance to 8 million Americans as the administration claimed. In reality, depending on what assumptions you use, at best only 800,000 to 1.8 million Americans incrementally got private health insurance as a result of the billions of dollars spent on Obama Care. Those numbers, analysis assumptions, and calculations can be accessed for review at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/08/august-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is.html

A recent blog post on Amy Ridenour's National Blog, written by David Hogberg, also took a look at how 8 million Obama Care signups is really not 8 million signups. His analysis goes as follows:

• Mr. Hogberg quotes reporting by The Hill that government figures show that enrollment has already dropped to 7.3 million, down from the announced 8.0 million.
• The main reason for this large 9% drop already is that the lower number reflects the fact that 700,000 or so people never followed through to pay for their Obama Care policy and thus, they never acquired Obama Care insurance. 
• Mr. Hogberg is skeptical that the 7.3 million number is legitimate since he cites the reality that last month, writer Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily reported that Aetna, the “nation’s third-largest health insurer had 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May 20, a spokesman confirmed to IBD. At the end of June, it had fewer than 600,000 paying customers.” 
• That would mean that 17% of the drop in the total number Obama care enrollees came from just a single company, Aetna, 120,000 (Aetna’s lost Obama Care customers) divided by 700,000 = 17%.
• Thus, it is highly likely that the 700,000 number drop is too optimistic since if Aetna lost 120,000 customers (almost 17% of all of its Obama care enrollees), than what did the hundreds of other insurance companies lose including health insurance giants like UnitedHealthcare. Cigna, and others, both large and small?
• And this 700,000 drop does not include the 115,000 or more enrollees that are going to lose their insurance coverage since they never should have received it in the first place, per a previous post.

What a mess. The 8 million number was in all likelihood the high water point for Obama Care enrollees. If the number was still at that level, you can be sure that the Obama administration would be bragging about it to support Democrats running for election in November. The fact that they are not bragging is a great indication that there is nothing to brag about and that that 8 million number has dropped like a rock over just the past few months.

2) Allen B. West used to be a Florida Congressman, he lost his reelection bid in 2012 and since then has been an active speaker and commentator on all things political, including Obama Care. A recent online post by him cited the feelings and pessimism of a number of people in the health care industry relative to the negative ramifications of Obama care:

• Health economist John Goodman recently stated that three Federal Reserve Banks, in Philadelphia, New York and Atlanta, have surveyed the businesses in their Fed area and roughly one fifth of the employers are saying they cut back on employment: “Roughly one fifth are saying they’re moving from full time to part time. More than one in ten are saying they’re doing more outsourcing – all this because of the new health care reform.”
• Goodman has gone on to say: “And so we see this everywhere that people are restricted, they’re pushed below 30 hours, they count as part time and when they’re part time, the employer doesn’t have to provide health insurance. Even among full-time workers, their take home pay is going to go down because one thing that almost all the employers are doing in response to Obamacare is raising the deductibles, raising the co-payments and making the employee pay more of the premium.”
• Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently stated: “For the smaller employers — those that have between 20 and 49 employees — you get a negative impact on jobs, you get a negative impact on wages in those jobs. What this means for small business as a whole is over $22 billion of earnings gone for their workers and 350,000 jobs.”
• Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation: “You have a kind of a natural cliff there, that keeping your employees under that magic number relieves employers of the mandate to provide insurance. The 30-hour cutoff is how the administration determines whether you’re full time or part time."
• Tevi Troy of the American Health Policy Institute: “Yes we are going to see increased cost to employers who are trying to provide health care for their employees, but employers don’t just take that lying down.”

So here you have the expert opinions of an economist who specializes in health care, a former government executive, a think tank executive, and an industry spokesperson who all come to the same conclusions: Obama Care is killing small businesses ability to grow, hire, and expand which is a primary driver of the nation’s anemic economic growth since the last recession.

As with the enrollment numbers above, if Obama Care was growing the economy or at least not stifling it, I am sure the Obama administration would be shouting at the top of their lungs that the legislation has been good for the economy as we approach the November elections. Their silence on the regarding the economy and Obama Care speaks volumes in this political season.

That will do it for today. Only two disasters but they are significant. More proof that the original Obama Care numbers were highly inflated relative to reality and the continuing reality, according to the economic numbers and subject matter experts in the field, the legislation is killing small business growth and overall economic growth.

More disasters to follow for the next few days.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2014 Part 4 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Temporary Workers, Failures of Single Payer Models, Chaotic Data Systems and More

Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers.
• It has generally increase the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate a successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

Let’ see what new disasters of Obama Care we can find today:

1) Amy Ridenours National Center Blog recently carried a story written by Project 21’s Kevin Martin. Many people, seeing the disaster that is Obama Care, are now clamoring for a so-called single payer system in this country, a system in which the government controls each and every aspect of health care delivery. 

A sane person, knowing the reality of government’s ineptness, would say that this is a very bad idea. And based on the disastrous health care the government has provided to our veterans in a pseudo-single payer system, that reality of government incompetence in the health care field became crystal clear. However, for those that still cling to the false utopia of a single payer system, consider the research and realities that Mr. Martin presents:

1) Canada has had a single payer government controlled health care system for a long time. Keeping that in mind, consider the fact Angela Johnson, president of Medical Confidence, Inc., has just written a new book entitled “Step by Step Guide to Navigating your way through Canada’s Health Care System and Minimizing Your Wait Time.” The book is billed as “a first of its kind and must read for Canadians, providing them with 14 valuable tips to overcome these issues and minimize their wait times.” If you have to read a book in order to understand and cope with medical wait times, maybe the single payer system is not the most efficient way to deliver health care.

2. Let’s stay with Canada’s single payer system. In Canada’s capital, Ottawa, Mr. Martin writes that “1,195 children and youth are waiting for mental health outpatient and outreach services at CHEO and the Royal, up 10 per cent from 1,082 a year ago,” according to an article in the Ottawa Citizen. The wait time for mental health treatment Canada could be up to a year. Not a good situation when our mental health needs might go a year before being addressed, never mind cured.

3. Great Britain also has a single payer system. It’s National Health Service (NHS) recommends that no cancer patient should wait more than 62 days to start treatment. That does not mean you will be treated within 62 days, the 62 days is just a recommendation.

However, the Daily Mail recently reported just over 9,900 British cancer patients waited longer than that in the first six months of 2014. Like the mental health patients in Canada, waiting for cancer treatments is never a good thing since according to a recent  article in the journal, Radiotherapy and Oncology, where the researchers assert that for breast cancer there is an “increase in the risk of recurrence of 1.0% per month of delay” and for head and neck cancer there is an “increase in the risk of recurrence of 3.7% per month of delay”.

4. Staying in Great Britain, the Daily Mail reported in August that the “number of patients languishing on NHS waiting lists for operations is at its highest for six years…There are 3.2 million people awaiting surgery – a rise of 700,000 compared with 2010.” Not only are their 3.2 million people on the wait list for surgery, 809,000 patients were waiting for a diagnostic test and 15,600 operations were cancelled at the last minute in the second quarter of 2014. And these numbers may be an under count due to errors and incomplete records. Delays, cancelled tests, sounds just like our own government’s mistreatment of our veterans.

The single payer model is not a solution to our nation’s ever escalating health care costs for the simple reason that the Obama Care model is a failure: both approaches fail to address and resolve the underlying root causes of high health care costs:

1. Americans eat too much.
2. Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
3. Americans do not exercise enough.
4. Americans smoke too much.
5. Americans are aging and being afflicted more and more with aging diseases, e.g. dementia, Parkinsons, etc., diseases that are not addressed by Obama care.
6. Government health care systems, e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, are infested with inefficiencies, waste, and outright criminal fraud, resulting in the wasting of upwards of $100 billion a year, $100 billion that could be spent on health care and cure research.
7. The American health care system is in need of significant and common sense tort reform.

Until you address and resolve these root causes, Obama Care, single payer systems, or any other government bureaucratic approach will fail miserably. Obama Care proves this point exquisitely.

2) Adding onto the root causes of our high health care costs, a recent article in the July 11, 2014 issue of The Week pointed out that one in ten U.S. deaths of working age Americans are due to alcoholism. More than half of these preventable deaths are due to binge drinking.

There is likely high medical costs involved in liver treatment and transplants and other alcohol induced medical conditions that add to our high health care costs. Thus, one of the nation’s and Obama's top priorities should have been a national public health effort to reduce the incidence of alcoholism, in addition to reducing the incident of smoking. Both public health efforts, if successful, would have had the major effect of reducing health care costs and the cost of health insurance. Unfortunately, Obama Care gives little attention and focus to both of these major root causes.

3) According to a recent New York Times article that was summarized in the September 12, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, the number of American workers employed through temp agencies has skyrocketed to a record 2.9 million workers. These workers now make up a record 2% of the nation’s workforce.

However, this should not come as surprise since this trend was predicted long before it came true, another ugly consequence of Obama Care. The law’s tenets often make it financially better for a small business to hire only temporary workers, given the law’s fines and penalties. This stresses out families and workers who desire full time work but who are stuck settling for part time and temporary work as businesses try to stay both in business and legal under Obama Care.

4) There is no disagreement that the roll out of Obama Care’s data systems programs, websites, and processes was an unqualified disaster. The Health and Human Services Inspector general has found a good reason why that was so: The entire effort was badly coordinated, with $800 million spent and spread out over 60 contracts with 33 different companies. 

You cannot possibly get something done efficiently and effectively when so many different entities are involved and the overall coordination, what little there was, is handled by an incompetent company, CGI Federal, a company that was relieved of its duties a few short months after the disastrous roll out. CGI was paid a quarter of a billion dollars just to be relieved of duties by Accenture Federal Systems who was paid an additional $45 million to clean up the CGI mess.

5) Everything about Obama Care was poorly thought out and executed even worse. Whether it was the online website headaches and failures, the negative impact on business hiring, employment and the negative impacts on the economy, the increased threat and reality of identity theft, the stress and heartache of cancelled policies, the complete missing of the underlying root causes of our high health care costs, etc., you probably could not have done a worse job at legislating in this area if you tried.

As a result, we are no closer to taming high health care costs than when the legislation was passed despite spending billions of dollars and screwing up millions of lives over the past four years or so. The entire disaster was nicely summed up in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial piece that touched on the many obvious and more salient points of the entire fiasco:

Whether the Affordable Care Act lives up to its name depends on how, or whether, you consider its consequences for the wider economy.

Millions of people pay a significant portion of their income for health insurance so they and their families can get good health care when they need it. The magnitude of their sacrifices demonstrates the importance that people ascribe to health care.

The Affordable Care Act attempts to help low- and middle-income families avoid some of the tough sacrifices that would be necessary to purchase health insurance without assistance. But no program can change the fundamental reality that society itself has to make sacrifices in order to deliver health care to more people. Workers and therefore production have to be taken away from other industries to beef up health care, or the workforce itself has to get bigger, or somehow people have to work more productively.

Although the ACA helps specific populations by giving them a bigger slice of the economic pie, the law diminishes the pie itself. It reduces the amount that Americans work, and it makes their work less productive. This slows growth in both personal income and gross domestic product.

In further expanding the frontiers of redistribution, the ACA reduces the benefits of employment for both employers and employees. Employers that don’t provide health insurance are either subject to large penalties based on the number and types of employees that they have, or are threatened with enormous penalties when they get the opportunity to expand their business. 

About a quarter of the nation’s employees, more than 35 million men and women, currently work for employers that don’t offer health insurance. These tend to be small and midsize businesses with employees who already make less than the average American worker. The result of penalizing businesses for hiring and expanding is going to be less hiring and expanding.

Another sixth of the nation’s employees—almost 25 million people—are in a full-time position that makes them ineligible for the law’s new and generous assistance with health-insurance premiums and cost sharing. They are ineligible for subsidies simply because they are working full time and thereby eligible for their employers’ coverage. Because the only ways for them to get the new assistance is to move to part-time status, find an employer that doesn’t offer coverage, or stop working, we can expect millions of workers to make one or more of those adjustments.

Most people wouldn’t give up working merely to qualify for a few thousand dollars in assistance. But it is a mistake to assume that nobody is affected by subsidies, because there are people who aren’t particularly happy with working, planning to leave their job anyway, or otherwise on the fence between working and not working. A new subsidy is enough to push them over the edge or to get them to stop working sooner than they would have otherwise.

So much stress, aggravation, and failure for so little upside. And the sad part is that this time next month we will be back with more disasters and no successes from the worst piece of legislation ever enacted, legislation that was enacted by the worst set of Washington politicians ever put in office.

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