February, 2015, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and I A Believer In Science: Squirrels, Beavers, and Wood Burning Stoves Destroy The Climate...And China

On a periodic basis we take a look at the topic of global warming under the theme of “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” We started this series because we wanted to look at ALL of the available science, ALL of the available data and ALL of the scientific opinions on the topic to reach a science and reality based conclusion on what was likely really going on.

Which is not what people like Al Gore do. Gore and other zealots call those that dare to disagree with him any number of slurs including racists, homophobes, etc. Rather than engage in a science-based, adult conversation, his types would rather browbeat global warming doubters into submission by selectively looking at only a small amount of science and facts that support their premise.

Now, the fact that global warming stopped almost twenty years ago, forecasts and predictions of global warming alarmists have never come true or been close to accurate accurate, and the Gore-types have had to rebrand “global warming” to “climate change” are all strong indications that these folks have been wrong all along.

Additionally, we have shown dozens of times in dozens of posts that there may actually be more science that rebuts global warming and climate change than support it. To review these past posts and our proof that one can be a believer in science and a global warming doubter, enter the phrase, "I am a global warming doubter" or “I am a believer in science” in the search box above.

Then take a look at the latest information and realities that continue to show that man made global warming and climate change may not be real at all.

1) The President was quite proud of himself when he claimed that the U.S. and China had reached a breakthrough agreement late in 2014 to cut down their respective amounts of greenhouse gas creation, thus saving the world and mankind from death by global warming. According to a recent article on the Heritage Foundation website:

• China agreed to “target,” not attain, “target” a level of its energy consumption to 20% from renewable resources by 2030, fifteen years from now.
• Obama agreed that American families and businesses will try to reduce its carbon based emissions by at least 26% by 2025 relative to 2005 levels.
• Apparently, there are no repercussions if either promise or target is missed.
• Heritage and others correctly point out that this is not a balanced deal: “This is not a planet-saving climate-change pact. Rather, this plan represents unilateral economic disarmament by the United States as Beijing continues its quest to replace America as the globe’s economic superpower.”

What realities support their claims:

• Changing China’s energy energy mix and raising prices by going to highly inefficient forms of electricity production is in direct conflict with it’s long term vision of becoming the world's largest economic power.
• And this deal is really not likely to start in the short term at least, given the slowdown in the Chinese economy.
• But Obama is serious about the U.S. side of the deal since he and his control of the EPA are unilaterally, and probably un-Constitutionally, trying to force the U.S. economy and American families to switch to other forms of more expensive energy and pay more for electricity, which is currently at the highest level ever as an American household expense.
• Restricting U.S. energy production while China and the rest of the world do nothing is an economic disaster for us, raising energy prices and putting many thousands of American energy workers out of a job.
• China is bringing a new coal driven electric production plant online about once a week on average.
• They are building up a tremendous infrastructure to bring coal produced electricity from the western part of China to the eastern part of China, an infrastructure investment that will likely substantially increase, not decrease, their carbon footprint for the coming decades.
• The Chinese have set out a five year, $275 billion plan to learn how to get better at fracking, increasing their use of oil.
• China continues to import large amounts of coal from...the United States. Thus, we have Obama trying to kill the domestic U.S. coal industry while China burns more and more of our own coal.
• China just signed a $300 billion pipeline deal with Russia to bring Russian oil down to China for their domestic consumption.
• The Heritage article does not even talk about the large investments that India is making in its coal industry or the fact that much of Europe is turning back to the use of carbon intensive coal due to Germany’s shutdown of its nuclear energy capability and that sanctions against Russia have made their natural gas supply from Russia more fragile and dangerous.

The reality is that the world, and China in particular, have no real intentions of changing their carbon footprint, increasing the cost of energy to their economies and citizens. And it is not as if the U.S. has been a bad global citizen in this area. It has already reduced its carbon footprint by well over 10% over the past decade as fracking and other technologies have kicked in to produce less intensive natural gas energy usage. 

Promising to do more while the rest of the world makes vague promises many years out while investing hundreds of billions of dollars that will undermine those “targets” is just plain stupid. And all this for a problem that may actually not even exist.

2) A few months ago we discussed the fear of some global warming advocates that beavers building beaver dams were large contributors to global warming and climate change even though beavers had been building dams for eons. Yesterday, we discussed another fear of these same people that squirrels digging in the ground were large contributors to global warming because as they dig they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

We now add onto this nonsense of equating EVERY human activity with global warming via new EPA regulations that make owning a simple wood burning stove much more expensive. According to a recent article by the Daily Caller: “The EPA has finalized a 344-page rule to make wood stoves more environmentally friendly, meaning that millions of Americans will soon be forced to buy more expensive wood-fired stoves.”

This rule, if approved and put into force, would raise the cost of heating the homes and the lives of millions of Americans at the very time that electricity rates are at the highest levels ever. Republicans in Congress have opposed such a ruling: “The EPA’s shortsighted regulatory overreach is once again hitting hardworking Montanans in their pocketbooks,” said Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines.

The article points out that irony of such a ruling. It asserts that many of those in this country that use wood to heat their homes fall it the lower economic strata of this country, those that are least likely to afford a cost increase in their home heating needs. Meanwhile the wealthier in this world, many of whom are global warming advocates, flew over 1,700 private jets to a global warming conference in Switzerland recently, spewing large amounts of carbon into the air from their jet engines' tailpipes. Do as I say, not as I do.

Thus, beavers, squirrels, and lower income Americans need to change their lives while China, India, and the rest of the world spend trillions of dollars increasing the carbon emissions around the world. Insanity.

3) Anyone who lives in the eastern U.S. has been very cold over the past few weeks. In fact, the total ice cover on the Great Lakes recently got as high as 82.3%. On the same date last year, the Great Lakes had 81.6% total ice cover. Record freezing temps and frozen Great Lakes, not a strong indication of global warming.

Now, global warming advocates would say that “weather is not climate.” But weather is a large part of climate and the weather has been trending colder not warmer, at least the past few winters.




4) Several years ago, as a result of hackers getting access to confidential emails that had been exchanged by global warming scientists, it was found that many of those scientists were at least inferring that raw data needed to be changed or adjusted to conform better to the failing global warming forecasts models. In other words, they were doing what Al Gore was accusing global warming doubters of doing, not believing in the scientific method. It becomes difficult to believe any scientist that tries to make reality conform to their preconceived notions of what reality is even if it means changing the actual numbers of reality.

Well, there are accusation now being made that the Federal government may also be fudging raw data to make the case that global warming is happening when it may actually not be happening, according to raw data readings NASA has been recording. Consider the following accusations that were recently laid out in the Telegraph newspaper:

Although it has been emerging for seven years or more, one of the most extraordinary scandals of our time has never hit the headlines. Yet another little example of it lately caught my eye when, in the wake of those excited claims that 2014 was “the hottest year on record”, I saw the headline on a climate blog: “massive tampering with temperatures in South America.” The evidence on Notalotofpeopleknowthat, uncovered by Paul Homewood, was indeed striking.

Puzzled by those “2014 hottest ever” claims, which were led by the most quoted of all the five official global temperature records – Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) – Homewood examined a place in the world where Giss was showing temperatures to have risen faster than almost anywhere else: a large chunk of South America stretching from Brazil to Paraguay.

Noting that weather stations there were thin on the ground, he decided to focus on three rural stations covering a huge area of Paraguay. Giss showed it as having recorded, between 1950 and 2014, a particularly steep temperature rise of more than 1.5C: twice the accepted global increase for the whole of the 20th century.

But when Homewood was then able to check Giss’s figures against the original data from which they were derived, he found that they had been altered. Far from the new graph showing any rise, it showed temperatures in fact having declined over those 65 years by a full degree. When he did the same for the other two stations, he found the same. In each case, the original data showed not a rise but a decline.

Damning accusations if true. How can we trust anyone, Al Gore, the Federal government, the EPA, NASA, etc. if deception is part of their argument and not science?

That will do it for today, another global warming post tomorrow. Today we learned that global warming advocates might still be trying to make their case, this time by deceptively changing raw data to conform to their theories rather than using raw data to test and confirm or refute their theories. We learned that Obama is selling out the country today for vague promises due almost a generation into the future that China and others likely have no intentions of honoring. We now know that beavers, squirrels and now wood burning stoves in America imperil the global climate. And we already knew that it has been darn cold outside.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

On a periodic basis we take a look at the topic of global warming under the theme of “ I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” We started this series because we wanted to look at ALL of the available science, ALL of the available data and ALL of the scientific opinions on the topic to reach a science and reality based conclusion on what was likely really going on.

Which is not what people like Al Gore do. Gore and other zealots call those that dare to disagree with him any number of slurs including racists, terrorists, homophobes, etc. Rather than engage in a science-based, adult conversation, his types would rather browbeat global warming doubters into submission by selectively looking at only a small amount of science and facts that support only their premise.

Now, the fact that global warming stopped almost twenty years ago, forecasts and predictions of global warming alarmists have never come true or been close to accurate accurate, and the Gore-types have had to rebrand “global warming” to “climate change” are all strong indications that these folks have been wrong all along.

Additionally, we have shown many, many times in dozens of posts that there may actually be more science that rebuts global warming and climate change than support it. To review these past posts and our proof that one can be a believer in science and a global warming doubter, enter the phrase,”I am a global warming doubter” or “a believer in science” in the search box above. 

Then take a look at the latest information and realities below that continue to show that man made global warming and climate change may not be real at all.

1) Global warming supporters up to and including the President were quick to jump on, and abuse, some recent NASA data that claimed that 2014 was the hottest year on record. There were two main problems with this hasty conclusion. First, we have already shown that scientists have already estimated that the earth was far warmer throughout its history than recent recorded temperatures:



These high temperatures of the earth were recorded before man and his use of carbon had ever showed up so to say 2014 is the warmest ever is in all likelihood false, given the above “scientific evidence.”

Second, you have to read the small print when making this claim that 2014 was the warmest ever. Consider the following details that Obama and others seem to have left out of their proclamation:

• The actual measurement showed that the earth's temperature MIGHT have gone up two-hundreths of a degree Celsius but the measurement statistic had a degree of error of a tenth of a degree.
• This means that the finding was well within the statistical error of measurement, it could have been rounding or it just as easily could have been a tenth of a degree COLDER in 2014.
• NASA, who is responsible for the measurement, now claims that given the smallness of the change, there is a 62% chance that 2014 was NOT the warmest year on record.
• So now we have moved from the President of the United States boldly stated that 2014 definitely was the hottest to his own government people saying that there is a 62% chance that 2014 was not the warmest ever.
• NASA issued a press release clarifying that its readings from over 3,000 measuring stations around the world did not indeed prove that last year was the warmest.

This is how science gets abused by global warming and climate change advocates. They run with a number without understanding what it truly means which eventually catches up to them and kills their reputation and integrity even more.

2) Patrick Michaels, writing for Cato, had the following response to the false assertion that 2014 was definitely the hottest year ever for the earth:

Whether or not a given year is a hundredth of a degree or so above a previous record is not the issue. What IS the issue is how observed temperatures compare to what has been forecast to happen. John Christy and Richard McNider, from the University of Alabama (Huntsville), recently compared climate model projections to observed lower atmospheric temperatures as measured by two independent sources: satellites and weather balloons, and they found that the average warming predicted to have occurred since 1979 (when the satellite data starts) is approximately three times larger than what is being observed. CWG would give itself probably a D- if it forecast 12 inches of snow and got only 3.

Here is what he is talking about, notice how poorly the global warming forecast models have performed vs. reality:



And yet Al Gore calls people like me a racist and other derogatory names for not believing his hype about global warming when those that are global warming advocates are so very poor in predicting and confirming their beliefs. 

Now, I am not a climate scientist. But I am a trained statistician and when faced with statistical models that are this poor, it is pretty obvious those that are building and using these models really do not have any kind of handle of what they are talking about or a realistic idea of what is really happening in the climate of the earth.

3) Laurence Tribe is a former law professor of President Obama and a campaign contributor to Obama’s political campaigns. He recently submitted a public comment on the EPA’s climate rule as unconstitutional “executive overreach” He also wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal which asserted that:

“Even more fundamentally, the EPA, like every administrative agency, is constitutionally forbidden to exercise powers Congress never delegated to it in the first place. The brute fact is that the Obama administration failed to get climate legislation through Congress. Yet the EPA is acting as though it has the legislative authority anyway to re-engineer the nation’s electric generating system and power grid. It does not.”

Tribe goes to assert that the EPA’s climate proposal is just a smokescreen to force Americans to use more expensive and less reliable renewable energy sources, e.g. solar, than solving climate change issues. This position was more or less confirmed when EPA head Gina McCarthy testified in front of Congress that the EPA plan “is not about pollution control” but “an investment strategy” to boot strap renewables like wind and solar.

So who to believe: scientists who have a vested interest in keeping a faltering global theory alive, some of which may have adjusted raw temperature findings to fit their preconceived conclusions, global warming forecast models that are anemic as far as being anemic, or a supporter of Obama’s political career who sees through the political smokescreen of the American political class?

4) Bad global warming forecasts are one reason not to take global warming advocate seriously. Another reason is when global warming supporters try to tie anything that happens in life to global warming and climate change. We have previously discussed the theory that some global warming supporters think that beavers building dams in the woods are significant contributors to global warming and climate change. Beavers...dams… who knew?

The latest culprits in global warming appear to be...wait for it... squirrels. The theory, presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, is that when squirrels dig up the earth in the Arctic permafrost, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that has been captured and stored in the ground: “We know wildlife impacts vegetation, and we know vegetation impacts thaw and soil carbon,” said Dr. Sue Natali of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, according to BBC News . “It certainly has a bigger impact than we’ve considered and it’s something we will be considering more and more going into the future.”

Squirrels and beavers. China, India, and now Europe are building coal burning power plants at a record pace and these global warming people are worried about what beavers and squirrels are doing, something beavers and squirrels have been doing for a very long time. And they call me ignorant.

That will do it for today, four more reasons why it is perfectly logical and sane to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. More debunking tomorrow.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015, Bonus Post, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: 13 New Taxes, 13 New Lies

We had thought that yesterday would be the last update to our monthly series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care but we came across some interesting,m and depressing information that we decided to share now rather than wait until next month. Too many times to mention, Obama has promised that only the wealthy in this country will see higher taxes, whether it was relative to income taxes, capital gain taxes, or Obama Care-related taxes. He actually gave a cutoff point, anyone earning under $250,000 a year would not see a rise in any of their taxes, at least relative to Federal government actions.

But like every other Obama promise, e.g. if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor, Obama Care policies will not pay for abortions, he would cut the annual Federal spending deficit in half, etc. this promise also was a lie and deception. According to a recent Forbes article written by Robert W. Wood, “How Many Obamacare Taxes Are There?”, many, if not most, of the taxes embedded in the Obama Care legislation will hit every American’s wallet in one way or another.

He went ahead and listed out thirteen taxes that he knew of within the law. He also points out that the tax complexities of the Obama Care legislation are so involved that the IRS had to issue a separate 21 page document just to explain what has to be done and the numerous forms that have to be filled out as a result of the taxes in the law. Thus, this tax season will be one of far greater complexity, stress, and likely financial pain as millions of American find out that the Obama Care subsidies they enjoyed in 2014 have to be paid back this year because those subsidies were too generous.

Thus, below are the 13 taxes he found along with some comments from us and why they will affect people that are not wealthy and whose annual earnings fall below the false $250,000 threshold the President promised.

1) There is a 2.3% tax on medical device manufacturers’ revenues, not profits. This tax will obviously hurt the financial performance of device manufacturers who will likely have to pass this tax impact along to their customers who purchase and use medical devices. 

It is not only human medical device owners that will be impacted. Since many of these companies also make medical devices for animals, pet owners, farmers, and ranchers will also likely see an increase in the prices they pay for devices as the companies try to recoup some of what Obama Care has taken away.

Now, some might say that this is not a tax on consumers who earn less than $250,000 a year which would be wrong. It is an indirect increase in life passed on because of an Obama Care tax which makes it a tax increase on everyone affected.

2) 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax. This one is a big one. Depending on your income, it adds an incremental 3.8% tax on top of your interest, dividends and capital gains.

3) Employer Mandate on businesses with over 50 full-time equivalent employees to provide health insurance to full-time employees. $2000 per employee, $3000 if employee uses tax credits to buy insurance on the exchange. Same concept as point 1) above. If a small business is forced to buy insurance for their employees as mandated by Obama Care, those tax consequences are likely going to be passed along to the patrons of those businesses as those businesses just try to stay whole after being hit with an Obama Care tax. 

As an example, there have been a number of press stories where restaurants are actually itemizing the cost of Obama Care on diners’ bills, clearly showing why the cost of food in those restaurants has gone up as a result of Obama Care. An additional fee on eating is a tax despite what Obama might call it.

4) 40% Excise Tax on high-end (Cadillac) Health Insurance Plans (40% excise tax on the portion of employer-sponsored health coverage that exceeds $10,200 a year and $27,500 for families). This will hit a lot of Americans earning far less than $250,000 since many union contracts have these so-called Cadillac insurance plans negotiated into them and last time I checked, most union members do not earn more than a quarter million dollars a year.

5) Medical Deduction Threshold tax increase (threshold to deduct medical expenses as an itemized deduction increases to 10% from 7.5%). Any American with substantial medical expenses, regardless of income levels, will end up paying more since Obama moved the goal posts out for those that might be able to get some relief from high medical bills.

6) Individual Mandate (a tax for not purchasing insurance, though the tax penalty is called a Shared Responsibility Payment, the greater of 1% of your income above the filing threshold of $10,150 for singles and $20,300 for married couples filing jointly or $95 per adult ($47.50 per child), with a maximum of $285 for a family, whichever is higher. It goes up in 2015. Obviously, when the tax or “shared responsibility payment” starts at around $10,000, you are not talking about a tax on just the wealthy.

7) Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals which fail to comply with the requirements of Obama Care. Taxing hospitals will result in less money in their efforts to provide medical care to the sick, likely resulting in all income levels paying more for services from charitable hospitals.

8) Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D. Since most employers provide drug coverage for a lot of Americans earning under $250,000 a year, their will likely be additional fees incurred on all income level Americans as a result of this provision.

9) Medicare Part A Tax increase of .9% over $200k/$250k. Okay, so maybe this one only affects the wealthier earners.

10) An annual $63 fee levied by Obama Care on all plans (decreased each year until 2017 when pre-existing conditions are eliminated) to help pay for insurance companies covering the costs of high-risk pools. All plans means all Americans, not just the wealthy.

11) Medicine Cabinet Tax (over the counter medicines no longer qualify as medical expenses for flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), health savings accounts (HSAs), and Archer Medical Saving accounts (MSAs). Again, taxation by removing a benefit for all Americans who have the foresight and initiative to do the right thing by saving on their own for medical expenses.

12) Additional Tax on HSA/MSA Distributions. Again, on all HSAs meaning most Americans who have one.

13) Health savings accounts or Archer medical savings accounts, penalties for non-qualified medical expenses of 10% to 20% in the case of a HSA and from 15% to 20% for an MSA. Fees and penalties for all Americans who violate these rules.

Obviously, the over $250,000 promise is a joke when it comes to this President keeping his promises. I do not know which is worse, the fact that this President continually lies or that millions of Americans still believe anything that comes out of his mouth. Everything, every promise, every assertion has been false.

All of these hassles, all of these incremental expenses, all of these lies, all of this stress, all for a program that has no chance of ever succeeding in bringing down the high cost of health care in this country.

More unfolding Obama Care disasters next month….unfortunately.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Stories of Stress, Hassles, and Higher Health Care Costs

This week in our four previous posts we have focused on the top line, national negative impacts that Obama Care has had on the country. Higher national debt, depressed job and economic growth, higher costs, Presidential lies and deceptions, etc. However, there is another perspective on the suffering and failures of this legislation that is at the personal and family level.

A lot of that suffering and failure has been captured by the wonder website, Our Health Care Stories, and their website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

There, individual Americans tell their horrors stories from Obama Care in detail and in their own words. This is what Obama, Congress, heartless and high paid consultants like Jonathan Gruber, and other big money and big time stakeholders have done to the people and families of Americans: they enacted and supported a piece of legislation that never had a chance of resolving the major issue it set out to resolve: the ever escalating high costs of health care in this country.

Read their stories and decide whether this whole effort from their perspective and the more global perspective that we have discussed over the past four days and past two years is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. I dare you to present evidence that it is not, especially after seeing what has been done to the following Americans and millions like them.

RICHARD - MONTANA: I'm currently paying $229 per month on a plan from Humana that does exactly what I want. It'll keep me from going broke if something bad happens.

That Humana plan does not comply with ObamaCare. So it will be cancelled at some point. Originally it was scheduled to be cancelled at the end of 2014, now I'm not sure if it will be extended to 2016 or what.

The least expensive policy I could find that complied with Ocare was about $500/mo. and that was for this year. My understanding is that compliant policies for 2015 will be about 20% higher. I hope I can keep the current policy for next year, but I don't know. I am displeased

DAVID - NEVADA: I was really looking forward to my $2,500 savings I was promised. My total yearly cost instead went up by $2,620 with a higher deductible. President Obama could not have been this far off in his prediction which means he knew he was lying and said it anyway.

JOCELYN - NEW HAMPSHIRE: In some states, it's already recognized as a problem. It's magnified in New Hampshire because just one insurer, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is offering plans there through the new marketplace. The company's new network for individual plans excludes 10 of the state's 26 frontline hospitals.

That was a rude awakening for Dr. Jocelyn Caple, who works at one of the excluded hospitals, Frisbie Memorial in Rochester, N.H., where she's president of the medical staff. She and her family are currently covered under their own policy with Anthem.

"We all use Frisbie physicians," she said. Although there's another facility she could go to next year, "it's pretty shocking not be able to come to your own hospital."

MARK - KANSAS: My sister, God Bless her, 2 years ago had a major blood clot on her leg then last year has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. In fact right now she should not be working in order to get surgery to put a pace maker in her heart. She was forced to buy one of those ObamaCare insurance policies. She has to pay $300+ a month in addition to a $2,000+ deductible. She has a ton of medical bills in addition to the $100+ for medications she needs just to stay alive. This is tearing me apart as her Brother to have to have to stand by and watch while Obamacare slowly kills my sister.

JULIE - NEW MEXICO: Last June, Birch received a letter from Lovelace Insurance warning her that her coverage would be terminated. However, it told her to wait for more information before she did anything. The months rolled past and no phone call came. She paid her premium in December, assuming everything was sorted out. However, on January 4, 2014, she was told her insurance was cancelled and she would have to log onto the New Mexico healthcare exchange. So she did.

After spending two hours filling personal information into the ever-growing ACA database, the system stopped her from enrolling her children. It needed to determine if her sons were eligible for Medicaid. The error message promised that a state representative would contact her, but no one has. When she tried to call, the wait was 45 minutes.

Birch wasn’t eligible for the marketplace’s Platinum plan, but the next best thing – the Gold plan – offered her comparable care for $519.23 a month with a $3,000 deductible—an increase of over $175 a month with no coverage for her children caught in Medicaid limbo.

Her frustration escalated not because the cost increased and her children were uninsured, but because none of the plans let her keep her primary care or orthopedic doctors.

"This is just downright unacceptable," Birch said. "You develop relationships [with doctors] for a reason."

JACKIE - SOUTH CAROLINA: For Jackie Fowler, Obama was correct: She got to keep her plan and her doctors. But that comfort costs a hefty fee. As predicted by the CMS report released last month[ . . .] she and her seven other employees are eight of the 11 million people whose premiums will increase because of Obamacare.

Last year, they paid $24,300 for their institutional group healthcare plan. Now they will have to pay $55,632 in 2014. Non-smokers in their mid-fifties and good health, she and her husband must dole out $2,000 a month for their personal coverage – double what they paid last year.

Fowler and her single fellow female employee had no need for maternity care, so they used to opt out of the coverage. Now, however, even the men in the office must be covered for their next birth.

"I don’t know what we are going to do," Fowler said, citing concern for the company’s longevity.

When asked if they will cancel their group plan and send their employees to the marketplace, Fowler said the options on the website are very limited. Although there are some plans which offer comparable care, "none of [their] doctors or their affiliate hospital are in the provider network." She is forced to choose between her doctor and an enormous insurance bill.

"I don’t know where they get the ‘affordable.’ This is anything but affordable," Fowler said. "We should be saving for retirement, not paying for insurance."

NEAL - MICHIGAN: Beyond higher out-of-pocket costs, some workers at the dealership face higher premiums. Premiums vary because of age and family size. Some end up paying slightly less or about the same for premiums. But older workers with families pay significantly more.

Among the hardest hit is Campbell, a salesman with a wife and three young children, all of whom are active in athletics. The premium payments currently deducted weekly from his paycheck will increase $77, to a total of $221 per week. "That's a huge part of the budget," he said. "We feel betrayed, lied to, and we're pissed off."

THERESA - FLORIDA: I live in Orlando FL. I am presently unemployed. I have BCBS of FL for about 3 years now. It just doubled in price because of the affordable healthcare act. I am a single 51 year old woman with no children, but I am now paying for childrens vision and dental when my plan does not even cover that for me! I do not qualify for medicaid or the tax credit so I have to cancel my insurance. I can no longer afford it since the new laws. I am devastated. What happens if I get sick?

TARA - FLORIDA: I work for a fortune 100 company. We used to have blue cross blue shield, good insurance, $500 deductible. Under Obamacare we lost or insurance company, my deductible went up to $1500, with another 20% out of pocket to the next $1500! I have been told that I need to have a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. The cost of the tests and the 2 fees for a radiologist to read each one will come to about $1700 which must be paid up front. I don't have it and have no way to get it, so now, I live in fear each day that I have breast cancer and no way to find out! Thanks Obama . . . NOT!

ROGER - OREGON: Over the past 3 years my health care costs have been driven up by 25%, 25% and 31% because of Obamacare. In 2013 my doctor decided to get out of the medical field because there was no money to be made. So I lost my doctor at a time I was admitted to the hospital for ulcers due to being told to take aspirin daily. Didn't work so well. Signing up for 2014 was a nightmare because the company I work for had to discontinue my policy because it was considered a "Cadillac" plan. The only other one they offered, doubled my costs in terms of deductible and out of pocket expenses. 

For two people now on a private company sponsored plan I now have to budget for $13k per year just to have insurance at all whether I use it or not. If either of us has issues I have to budget for another $8k in deductibles and out of pocket expenses. Yes my company helps with about 2/3 of the $13k basic policy but won't offer anything if I retire. So, at $21k per year for two people this is my largest bill if I do retire.

AARON - KENTUCKY: Dentist Aaron McLemore of Louisville, Ky., makes more than $100,000 a year and doesn't qualify for any subsidy on the Obamacare exchange. The 31-year-old's current policy is being canceled. A new policy from the exchange will more than double his monthly premium and nearly double his yearly out-of-pocket maximum.

His higher costs aren't subsidizing lower-income policyholders, whose subsidy has already been paid by the government. But he is providing a subsidy in another way: The Affordable Care Act requires him to buy a policy with features he doesn't need.

"Seeing as I'm a single male with no kids or dependents, and I'm paying for pediatric dental care and maternity care, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me," McLemore says.

************

What a mess. Never has an act out of Washington disrupted so many lives in such a negative fashion for no reason at all. And as we have pointed out many, many times, this disruption is being caused for no reason since the legislation has not chance of being successful since it does not address the root causes of our high healthcare costs int his country. It mistook a public health problem for a lack of insurance problem and thus, applied the wrong solution to the wrong the problem.

That will do it for this month's unfolding disasters being spawned out of Obama Care. However, this is a bad piece of legislation that keeps on giving so expect more disasters next month.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Single Payer Disaster, Abortion LIes and The Failure To Be Epic

Every month for the past two years or so we have had to dedicate numerous posts each month to cover the many, many unfolding disasters that have been spawned by the Obama Care legislation. This is easily the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class for so many reasons:

• First of all it will never work in reining in the high cost of health care in this country since it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high costs, mistakenly implementing a Rube Goldberg like health insurance solution for what is mostly a public health problem.
• It will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt even though Obama promised it would not add “a single dime” to the debt.
• It has stifled economic growth and job creation.
• It has increased taxes on every American, either directly or indirectly, despite Obama’s promise that it would not.
• It has forced upwards of seven million Americans to lose access to their preferred health insurance policies.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred Doctors, hospitals, and current medical treatments.
• Nationally, it has increased the cost of health care premiums and deductibles as compared to before the legislation was passed.
• It has opened up millions of Americans to the real threat of identity theft since Obama Care’s data systems security protocols are woefully inadequate.
• Even those that have obtained health care insurance under Obama Care policies are finding that their choice of doctors and hospitals are extremely narrow and more narrow than before the legislation was passed, resulting in many policy holders not getting access to the premier doctors and hospitals in this country.’The legislation has made a shortage of primary care physicians even worse since it is forcing primary care physicians to either retire earlier of move on to over options.
• Ten years from now the Congressional Budget Office predicts that tens of millions of Americans will still be without health care insurance coverage, the primary reason for the legislation in the first place.
• It has burdened the failing Medicaid system with millions of more applicants without fixing the massive problems with the system, causing more and more doctors to discontinue taking Medicaid and in some cases, Obama Care patients, resulting in the cruel irony that “you finally have health insurance but you do not have health care.”
• It failed to deliver on the Obama promise that the average American family would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health insurance costs.
• While the legislation was supposed to reduce the number of emergency room visits, it has actually increased the number of emergency room visits.
• While it was supposed to make people healthier, the legislation’s resultant high co-pay levels and high deductible levels has forced many Obama Care patients to defer medical treatment because of the higher costs.

We could go on but you get the idea. This is a disastrous piece of legislation across multiple parameters. To get more details on each of the above disasters and explore other disasters of the legislation, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

This is our fourth post for this month that looks at the latest Obama Care disasters and fiascoes:

1) Recall our past discussions in this blog of the Canadian health care system, a so-called single payer system. In a single-payer system, the government is in charge of all aspects of health care in the country. They handle the paperwork, oversee prices and costs, dictate treatment protocols, etc. Everywhere it has been implemented in the world has usually resulted in a failure: higher costs and lower quality.

At the beginning of the Obama Care process, some of the President's supporters wanted Obama to implement a single payer system in this country. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was one of the biggest supporters of such a plan.

Fortunately, Obama Care did not go all the way to a single payer system but many of its "features" have the characteristics of a single payer system:

• The Federal government dictates what features and coverage must be in Obama Care insurance policies even if some of those features and coverage are not needed and not wanted by a citizen.
• The Federal government is herding millions of people into a single payer-like system called Medicaid via Obama Care, dictating what doctors will charge for services, dictating what is covered, and basically controlling all healthcare aspects of those enrolled.
• Obama Care has increased fees, taxes, and costs as it relates to healthcare in order to pay for its dictates in both the Medicaid arena and the private insurance arena.

Thus, while we did not go whole hog into a total single payer system in this country, Obama Care and Obama took us pretty far down the single payer road. Thus, it is worthwhile to see what a single payer system does to a country's health care health even if we did not finish the journey down the single payer path.

One way to do this is to examine the state of the Canadian single payer system since it has been around for a while and its citizens' wealth levels and health care levels are comparable to ours:

• According to a recent article on the Newsmax website, a Canadian citizen has to wait about 18.2 weeks to see a specialist doctor in Canada if they need specific medical care, i.e. more than four months.
• This is the overall finding from the latest annual report from the Fraser Institute, "Waiting Your Turn." 
• It found that the median length of time Canadians wait for necessary medical treatment after being referred by a general practitioner is 18.2 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993.
• And this is the median amount of wait time, which means half of those Canadians needing specific medical help wait more than four months to see a health care specialist
• Canada "rations" healthcare through long waiting times and limited access, according to Dr. Roger Stark, a healthcare policy expert at the Washington Policy Center; he recently told The Heartland Institute: "These long waits would not be acceptable to Americans, who are rightly accustomed to timely healthcare."
• And the wait times vary significantly across the country with the new Brunswick median wait time being 37.3 weeks, (an astonishing nine months plus) to Ontario where the median wait time is 14.1 weeks, still over three months.
• Wait times also vary greatly according to what type of specialist you need to see with the median wait time for orthopedic surgery being 42.2 weeks, neurology patients median wait time is an average of 31.2 weeks, and the wait for radiation oncology is 4.2 weeks.
• Think about this last statement: if you are fighting cancer, on average you have to wait over a month to get radiation treatment, four weeks where your cancer continues to spread.
• Canadians are waiting 3.8 weeks for a CT scan, 8.7 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.3 weeks for an ultrasound.
• Extensive wait times can have serious consequences, report co-author Bacchus Barua points out: "For example, they may force some patients to endure months of physical pain and mental anguish, they may result in lower worker productivity and [forgone] wages, they can sometimes result in a potentially treatable illness being transformed into a debilitating permanent condition, and in the worst cases, they may result in death."
• Barua goes on to claim that the extensive wait times are not due to lack of funding and resources since Canadian healthcare expenditures per person have gone up by 50%, adjusting for inflation, since 1993.
• Thus, he claims the likely underlying causes of these gross waiting times are the government monopoly on the financing and delivery of medical services and the lack of appropriate incentives for providers.
• "This is indirect rationing," said Dr. Dale Dunn, a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute. "Almost 30 years ago I started seeing doctors leaving Canada because they were disgusted with the system because it prevented them from treating patients."

Steadily increasing costs for steadily decreasing quality. Even though Obama Care is not a single payer system, the negativity of a single payer systems sounds an awful like the unfolding disasters of Obama Care.

The Newsmax article concludes with this interesting news tidbit from New York: The New York State Assembly's Health Committee held a hearing in January on Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried's bill to adopt single-payer healthcare in the state of New York. Reminds me of an old saying: you cannot fix stupid.

2) There have been a lot of lies and deceptions that have come out of the President's mouth and other supporters of Obama Care over the past few years:

• The President promised that if you liked your current insurance policy you could keep it: false/lie
• The President promised if you liked your current doctors and hospitals, you could keep them: false/lie
• The President promised that not one single dime would be added to the national debt as a result of Obama Care: false/lie
• The President promised that the average American family would see about a $2,500 annual decrease in their health insurance costs: false/lie
• The President promised that signing up for Obama Care online in the Obama Care health exchanges would be simple, quick, and easy - false/lie

I am sure I am missing other lies and deceptions but you get the idea. It is very difficult to believe anything this President says relative to Obama Care given his trail of deceptions. 

And let's add another lie to this list, as documented recently by the Heritage Foundation. Obama had promised, both the country and anti-abortion Congressional Democrats, that not a single dollar of Obama Care would be used to cover the cost of abortions. This promise was critical to getting the necessary House votes he needed from pro-choice Democrats for the approval of the Obama Care legislation. Specifically, the President promised that "no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

But as expected, this has turned into just another lie. According to pro choice groups, the non-green states below are states where Federal dollars and Obama Care insurance policies may be being used to fund abortions, a direct contradiction of what Obama promised.

How important was this issue to the passage of the legislation. According to Charles Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute: “Federal funding for elective abortion was the most salient issue as the fate of the Affordable Care Act was hanging in early 2010, right up to the day of its passage.”  But a late 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed what many pro-life people had worried about - more than 1,000 Obama Care plans covered abortion while remaining eligible for Federal tax subsidies.

Even worse, the GAO analysis found that insurance companies were failing to collect from policyholders a required separate payment for abortion coverage, what critics call a “hidden” or “secret” fee. Requiring Obama Care policy holders to make two separate payments each month, one of them exclusively for abortion coverage, was the government’s attempt to prevent tax dollars, as Obama promised, from directly funding abortion.

According to the Heritage article, despite the GAO's findings and recommendations to fix what Obama promised would never happen, those fixes were not put in place for the second round of Obama Care policy signups that began in late 2014. In the absence of information or proof to the contrary, it must be assumed that Federal dollars are continuing being used to help fund Obama Care policies that support and fund abortion procedures. Thus, a critical deception was used to enact the law despite Presidential promises to the contrary.

3) One last point today, an example that shows what should have been done to reduce the high healthcare costs in this country. The following chart shows the dramtic and positive decline in breast cancer death rates over the past several decades:




Thus, the breast cancer death rate has dropped by about a third in the past two decades as a the result of better treatment, greater awareness and more women getting mammograms. The American Cancer Society says this translates into more than 200,000 deaths averted.

Imagine if Obama had focused on these types of success stories six years ago rather than a Rube Goldberg government insurance bureaucracy called Obama Care. Imagine if he had diverted those billions of dollars spent on a failed data systems process, enlargement of several existing government bureaucracies, etc. and had put that wealth into finding cures for colon cancer, prostate cancer, dementia, Parkinsons, heart disease. 

If we could reduce the death rates and incidences of these afflictions by one third or more, imagine how costs for health care in this country would plummet, making insurance that much cheaper without the idiocy of subsidies. If Obama had led the country to a healthy living and medical research vision, he could have been epic, much like Kennedy was epic when he led the country with a grand vision to use our resources to put a man on the moon  by the end of the decade.

But alas, the Obama administration has been anything but epic. We have wasted six years chasing an insurance answer for a public health and medical research issue. A one third decrease in the big diseases of our times would have been historic. Instead, Obama Care has become hysterical.

But it is not hysterical for the Americans we will focus on tomorrow, the last Obama Care update for this month. The people you will meet tomorrow have had their lives, their families, and their healthcare turned upside down in a truly negative way via Obama Care. And that is the sad human side of Obama Care.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Stress, Tax Horrors, Penalties, and Insurance Purgatory

Every month for the past two years or so we have had to dedicate numerous posts each month to cover the many, many unfolding disasters that have been spawned by the Obama Care legislation. This is easily the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class for so many reasons:

• First of all it will never work in reining in the high cost of health care in this country since it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high costs, mistakenly implementing a Rube Goldberg like health insurance solution for what is mostly a public health problem.
• It will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt even though Obama promised it would not add “a single dime” to the debt.
• It has stifled economic growth and job creation.
• It has increased taxes on every American, either directly or indirectly, despite Obama’s promise that it would not.
• It has forced upwards of seven million Americans to lose access to their preferred health insurance policies.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred Doctors, hospitals, and current medical treatments.
• Nationally, it has increased the cost of health care premiums and deductibles as compared to before the legislation was passed.
• It has opened up millions of Americans to the real threat of identity theft since Obama Care’s data systems security protocols are woefully inadequate.
• Even those that have obtained health care insurance under Obama Care policies are finding that their choice of doctors and hospitals are extremely narrow and more narrow than before the legislation was passed, resulting in many policy holders not getting access to the premier doctors and hospitals in this country.’The legislation has made a shortage of primary care physicians even worse since it is forcing primary care physicians to either retire earlier of move on to over options.
• Ten years from now the Congressional Budget Office predicts that tens of millions of Americans will still be without health care insurance coverage, the primary reason for the legislation in the first place.
• It has burdened the failing Medicaid system with millions of more applicants without fixing the massive problems with the system, causing more and more doctors to discontinue taking Medicaid and in some cases, Obama Care patients, resulting in the cruel irony that “you finally have health insurance but you do not have health care.”
• It failed to deliver on the Obama promise that the average American family would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health insurance costs.
• While the legislation was supposed to reduce the number of emergency room visits, it has actually increased the number of emergency room visits.
• While it was supposed to make people healthier, the legislation’s resultant high co-pay levels and high deductible levels has forced many Obama Care patients to defer medical treatment because of the higher costs.

We could go on but you get the idea. This is a disastrous piece of legislation across multiple parameters. To get more details on each of the above disasters and explore other disasters of the legislation, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

This is our third post for this month that looks at the latest Obama Care disasters and fiascoes:

1) People with foresight predicted this would happen this tax season and they were right, many Americans are finding out that maybe Obama Care subsidies were not as generous as they thought. The whole point of Obama Care was to get people health care insurance and for those that could not afford it, Obama promised that the American taxpayer would pay for their insurance premiums, based on a sliding scale of income. 

According to a recent CNN/Money article, Janice Riddle is one of likely millions of Americans who are getting a bad surprise as they file their taxes this year:

• Ms. Riddle applied and obtained an Obama Care insurance policy in 2014 when she was unemployed.
• She was also granted a hefty Federal monthly subsidy of $470 a month to help pay for the policy, leaving her with a monthly premium of $1 a month for the least expensive policy available.
• She was then fortunate enough to land a full time job with an insurance agency but kept her Obama Care policy in force since the employer did not provide health insurance coverage.
• She never notified the Obama Care health insurance exchange of her change in job status and as a result her subsidy stayed in effect for the entire year. Now she has found out that she now has to return the ENTIRE subsidy as a result of getting a job, needing to find almost $6,000 immediately to file with her tax return.
• This large, one time IRS cost has forced her to dip into her savings to pay back her Obama Care bill.
• The ironic part is that she never made use of the coverage during the year but still has to pay back the money.

While I feel sorry for her cash flow problem, those were the rules as set out under the Obama Care legislation. But the law was made so complicated on so many dimensions this type of confusion and stress is going to be repeated millions of times in the next few months.

Jackson Hewitt, a company that provides tax filing services, estimates that 53% of their clients who received Obama Care subsidies will have to pay back all or some of those subsidies in April. One Hewitt customer will have to pay back $12,000.

Again, those were the rules. But one would have thought there would have been a better way of doing this process as opposed to having billions of dollars flowing out from the American taxpayer to Obama Care policy holders and then a few months later forcing those policy holders to send billions of dollars back. Insanity.

2) But Federal subsidy paybacks are not the only area of Obama Care confusion. According to the Associated Press, three Democratic Congressmen are worried that many Americans do not know that they will be forced to pay a tax penalty this April if they did not sign up for any kind of health insurance by February 15 this year. That is part of the legislation, fail to get insurance, pay a penalty.

The three Congressmen were avid supporters of the law as it was debated and approved in 2009 and 2010. Now five years later, they are in a panic that some Americans may not be aware of the penalties they helped get approved into law and want the Obama administration to extend the sign up deadline beyond February 15.

If approved, this would be another possibly illegal and un-Constitutional violation, something that is a trend with this administration and this legislation: don’t like a deadline that is written into the law, then just unilaterally change it.

Two pieces of advice/opinion for these three Congressmen:

1. You’ve had five years to get the word of the penalties out to your constituents, failure to do so is on your heads since your were big supporters of this lousy legislation to begin with.
2. Do you really think that granting a few more weeks to sign up to avoid the penalties is going to make any difference? If you could not educate Americans about the legislation that you supported in five years, what chance of making any kind of difference do you think there is to do the job in five weeks or so? 

Let’s get to the real issue, Congressmen: you are scared stiff that if a lot of your voters get hit with unexpected fines and penalties because of Obama Care, your chances of reelection in 2016 go up in smoke. This is a feeble attempt to cover your butts for supporting a lousy and vindictive piece of legislation.

3) You know that a piece of Obama legislation is bad when the New York Times turns on it as it did in a February 7, 2015 article by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Her article covers two general areas relative to Obama Care, what the overall view is and what some of the individual horror stories have been.

Let’s start with the overall views:

- A study by the Commonwealth Fund in February found that the rise in health insurance premiums in employer based plans has slowed in 31 states since the passage of Obama Care. But this conclusion and results could have been caused by any number of factors, especially since Obama Care so far has had minimal impact on medium and large sized companies and their employer based plans.

Additionally, even if the rise has slowed, that comes no where close to the Obama promise that American families would see an average DECREASE in their annual health care premiums. According to Commonwealth, the rate of INCREASE has slowed in just over half the states, not decreased. Which also means that nineteen states have seen health care costs rise quicker since the passage of Obama Care, possibly wiping out a lot of the slowing in the 31 states.

And really, does this statistic have any relevance to an article on Obama Care since the legislation has not really started to directly affect employer based plans for most Americans?

- Of more relevance from the Commonwealth study was the finding that patients are paying more in health care expenses than ever before, which is especially bad since overall, wage growth in this country has been stagnant under the Obama administration. Still rising healthcare costs, even if at a slower rate combined with no or little wage growth, makes health care ever more expensive, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do. 

- The study also found that almost 10% of median household income now has to be used to pay insurance policy premiums and deductibles. And this 10% does not include payments for other health expenses such as co-pays and uncovered drugs and other medical services.

- The Times article also noted that a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 46% of Americans feel they are having trouble affording health care, up a whopping 10% in just one year, a year in which Obama Care was rolled out. Something is wrong when a piece of legislation that is supposed to reduce costs leaves people thinking and/or knowing that healthcare costs are going up and according to this poll, going up fast.

Okay, that is the bad news at 10,000 feet. What are some of the bad news stories, the horror stories at ground level in American families, as reported by the New York Times:

- New Yorker Karen Pineman bought an Obama Care policy even though she knew going into the policy that it had a more narrow network of health care providers than her previous policy, no out of network coverage, she would be paying more out of pocket to see her primary care doctor, and higher co-pays. Those co-pays came out to be a whopping $1,800 when she broke her ankle playing tennis. 

However, when she tried to set up a follow up doctor visit with an orthopedist in her Obama Care network for her broken ankle, her insurance carrier said she had to go out of state to Connecticut to see a network approved doctor: “It was ridiculous — didn’t they notice it was in another state?” said Ms. Pineman, 46, who was on crutches.

Rather than travel out of state to see the doctor, she settled with buying a medical boot on Amazon and has also paid out hundreds of more dollars ($350) for physical therapy that her Obama Care insurance would not cover even though the physical therapist was in her network.

- Alison Chavez, who is self-employed, signed up for an Obama Care policy, hoping it would be an improvement on the plan she currently had. Plus, she recently found out that she had breast cancer so she did a lot of research to ensure her current doctors treating her cancer would be available in her Obama Care network.

However, smack in the middle of her breast cancer treatments, she was told that several of her doctors and her hospital were no longer in her plan's network. She was forced to cancel needed surgery while she scrambled to find yet another insurance policy that had her doctors in the network. Not the kind of stress you want when in the middle of cancer treatments.

- Dr. Alexis Gersten, a New York dentist, switched out her family and 11 employees to a new insurance plan after her current policy was terminated. At the time she did not know that it was an Obama Care policy. That’s when the problems started with the Obama Care policy:

• When her son needed an ear, nose and throat specialist, her new network was so narrow that the nearest in network specialist was a five hour drive away.
• Although her current cardiologist was on the network list of her policy, he said that he did not take her new plan. She now has to drive an hour to see a new in network cardiologist.
• A dispute with the new insurer about how to count deductibles left her stuck with a $457 pediatrician’s bill.
• As a result of the stress and hassles, she has dumped the Obama Care policy for a different one.

- When Andrea Greenberg called the help line of an Obama Care insurance carrier to clarify the difference between two policies, she ended up talking to someone in the Philippines who was reading directly off of a script: “I was really outraged. This is an important decision with potentially dire consequences. It’s not like you’re choosing a sweater.”

- Amy Moses went online to an Obama Care exchange and ended up buying a pricey insurance policy that cost $650 a month just to ensure that she would have access to her long time doctor. Shortly thereafter, her doctor’s practice was purchased by a hospital, which then dropped her pricey plan out of their and the doctor’s network. One year later, he was still listed as being in her network.

But no one bothered to tell her of the changes so when an immediate medical procedure was required she had three days to find new doctors that were in network to handle her medical emergency: “I literally had three days to find a new in-network internist and score an appointment to get a referral, or cancel my procedure. I was stuck in insurance purgatory.”

Stuck in insurance purgatory, sounds like the theme song for the entire Obama Care network. People stressed out in critical times of their lives because of how Obama Care turned their medical options upside down and inside out. Networks that are so narrow that it requires a field trip just to see an in network doctors. High costs for fewer choices. Large one time paybacks of subsidies. Unknown fines and penalties for not having insurance coverage. Politicians scrambling to cover their you know what and careers. And the New York Times actually pointing out something bad about the Obama administration. What a mess.

Another more post tomorrow on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w