March, 2017, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Americans Are Not Worried, Solar Cells Are Bad, and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.
• To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) Rather than listen to what people like Gore think about global warming and what it means to them, what do ordinary Americans think about global warming? Let’s look at some of the latest opinion polls on this very topic, as summarized by www.constitution.com website on March 25, 2017 based on a recent article from the Daily Caller News Foundation:

• A new poll by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication organization found that while most Americans adults think human activities may be warming the earth about half of those polled do not feel it will negatively impact their lives.
• 50% of American adults believe that global warming will not harm them at all or only a little while only 40% think it will them moderately or a lot.
• Only 49% of those polled think “most scientists think global warming is happening” and 28% think there’s “a lot of disagreement” among scientists.
• Thus, there are great divisions among Americans on whether or not global warming is a threat to them personally and there is not a consensus among Americans on where scientists land on the whole concept/myth of global warming, unlike what people like Al Gore would tell you that there is an overwhelming consensus and that you are an idiot if you do not see the dire threat of global warming.
• A 2016 YouGov poll found that only 9.2% of Americans rank global warming as their biggest concern in life.
• A 2015 Fox News poll found that only 3% of American voters listed climate change as the most important issue facing the country.
• Also in 2015, Gallup polling found that Americans concerned about global warming feel to the same level of concern as in 1989.
• Another Yale poll from 2016 found that only 17% of Americans were “extremely concerned” about global warming enough to want the government to take immediate action while 28% were simply concerned but did not see global warming as an urgent issue, meaning more than 50% of Americans had no concerns at all about global warming.
• A University of Chicago poll found that 61% of Americans would NOT support any government program or tax to stop global warming if it cost them more than $10 a month.

So, as you see, there is not a lot of support for a full bore fight against the myth/concept of global warming/climate change, Americans have far more important issues and priorities in their lives than what people like Al Gore have to say and rant about.

2) Andrew Pollet, writing for the Daily Caller website on March 1, 2017, had some very interesting statistics and analyses for those out there that think solar energy is the clean energy wave of the future relative to the environment:

• New Federal government data shows that a potent greenhouse gas, Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions, a key chemical agent used in the production of photovoltaic cells used for solar panels, has increased dramatically over the past years.
• Its annual emissions have gone up 1,057% in the past 25 years in this country whereas U.S. carbon dioxide annual emissions are up only 5% over that time period.
• Emissions of NF3 are also up significantly in Asia where a lot of solar cells are manufactured.
• NF3 emissions are 17,200 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 100 year time period.
• Dr. Michael Prather, an earth science professor at the University of California in Irvine says: “By itself, NF3 is not going to create a climate problem. But everything adds up. Everybody should be paying attention to the pieces that all add up.”

We go over this to show that when discussing global warming and solutions, if any are actually needed, that ALL of the available data should be looked at to see a complete impact on what energy sources do what to the total environment over time. Blindly saying that we should go solar on everything may actually be causing more problems than it solves or resulting in far less benefit than someone like Al Gore might hype.

Also continue to remember that before we start throwing more and more restrictions and regulations on energy and the economy in this country that America’s annual carbon dioxide emission rate is down over 12% since 2005 and down by 2.6% in 2015 alone. We are doing a pretty good job of getting global warming gases under control without overwhelming restrictive political and governmental actions, a fact that ego driven people like Gore and most politicians would prefer that you not know about.

3) An old statistician adage goes as follows: “If you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything.” Which leads us to a statistical atrocity that we have discussed before in this blog but is worth going over again, given how much the data was tortured to get people like Al Gore the answer they wanted.

I was reminded of this misuse of data by a recent article from the “I Have The Truth” website, written by Scott Osborn on February 8, 2017. Remember how we have previously discussed the falsehood that Al Gore, Barack Obama, and other global warming advocates were always throwing around, namely that 97% of climate scientists believe that mankind is causing massive global warming. How did that overwhelming number come about:

• Well, first of all it is based on the opinions of only 77 “climate scientists” of which 75 said that mankind is causing massive global warming, hardly a representative sample of scientists.
• And it is not based on a massive scientific study, it was based on a brief two minute, two question online survey that was conducted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2009 by two researchers at the University of Illinois.
• But the survey was not sent to 77 climate scientists, it was sent to over 10,000 scientists of which only 3,000 surveys were returned.
• The 3,000 returns were then whittled down to 77 scientists that had had peer reviewed climate articles accepted for publication, or as Larry Bell of Forbes wrote: “Then of those [3,146 that actually took the survey], only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic. That “97% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered “yes”.”

If you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything. 

What about the 7,000 non-respondents who decided that filling out a two question survey from someone they did not know was worth their time, were the results adjusted for that bias? 

What about the 3,000 people who actually responded to the survey who might be great scientists, in either climate studies or other related fields, who might have a different view but did into fit the final and arbitrary screening process that eliminated all but 77 of the over 3,000, was that bias taken into account? The study and the conclusions and the data butchering render this broad and widely misused statement a sham.

And if I remember correctly, one of the researchers was a masters candidate, not a Phd candidate or a holder of a Phd in a climate related field, at the University of Illinois. She had not even attained her master's degree which brings into some doubt her credibility conducting and analyzing the results of a survey like this. This is what the analysis looks like and how it was tortured down to get the answer the researchers wanted:

Contrast this study’s conclusion, done by a person who does not even a masters degree in a climate related field with the recent comments of one of the founders of GreenPeace, Dr. Patrick Moore who actually has a Phd in the field of ecology: “I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.””

You pick the “expert” you think is right. I go with the Phd holder. 

That will do it for today’s review of the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Americans have bigger and better issues to worry about, if you ask them, than the potential for global warming, solar power is not nearly as clean and friendly relative to global warming as the global warming advocates would have us believe, and torturing the data is a no no, especially when the torture is so obvious to get the skewed result you want. More 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.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:


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

March, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disasters That Is Obama Care: Real Life American Family Hardships As A Result Of Obama Care

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will focus solely on the many hardships that Obama Care has caused average everyday Americans. The source of their grief is the website: www.oourhealthcarestoriescom

CHRIS, CALIFORNIA: From CBS Sacramento: A Sonora mechanic is in so much pain that he can barely walk, but he can’t seem to find a doctor to fix his ailing back after he and his wife switched their insurance coverage through Covered California.

Chris Dunn reached out to CBS13 hoping we could get answers.

He needs his surgery yesterday. But instead of scheduling his date, he and his wife are navigating a confusing maze of doctors and insurance plans.

We get this coverage and go to the best doctor to fix Chris, and they tell us we’re out of network said his wife Tammy.

In January, they transitioned from an Anthem Blue Cross Plan over to Blue Cross Covered California. She says they had to switch to avoid the premium skyrocketing, but didn’t realize their provider network would be smaller.

MARTIN, CONNECTICUT: Connecticut psychologist Martin Klein has plenty of experience dealing with insurance companies. After all, he's been practicing in the state for 11 years and runs two offices, one in Branford and one in Fairfield. But his experience with insurers over the past couple months has surprised even him.

Since 2008, Klein has held an insurance policy from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Connecticut, the state's largest insurer. The policy offers what he considers comprehensive coverage at a reasonable price. It does not however, meet the minimum coverage criteria set by the Affordable Care Act.

On September 26, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield sent Klein a letter notifying him that his plan would no longer be offered for renewal when it expires in January.

Losing his insurance plan is a big financial blow for Klein. He makes just enough to not qualify for a subsidy on the health exchange, but lives in a New York City suburb where the cost of living is high. Based on his research on and off the exchange, Klein says he would have to pay 50% more to get a plan that he deems comparable to the one he is losing.

Klein says he cannot afford a comparable plan, so he has decided to purchase an HMO with a $12,700 deductible for himself and his family.

What concerns him most about the plan is that it limits him to a narrow network of providers, all of which are in Connecticut. This prevents him from keeping some of his doctors in New York City.

Basically, said Klein, he's going to accept his new policy and, "hope nothing major happens."

JAMIE, KANSAS: From DallasNews: Even with pricier plans, some consumers have access problems.

James Potts’ $647-per-month silver plan was issued by the same company that had insured him with a different plan that was canceled under the Affordable Care Act. The 64-year-old property insurance agent assumed his doctors would remain the same under the insurer’s new plan, but didn’t double check.

When Potts got a nasty cold, he called three facilities near his home in Wichita Falls and was shocked to find none took the insurance, including his primary care doctor.

“It was a waste of money for me,” he said. “I couldn’t find doctors that would talk to me.”

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."

JOHN, MICHIGAN: Retired, after 42 years, on a fixed income and my health insurance is provided in part by my previous employer.

Also raising my granddaughter who graduated college last week.

In January, 2014, my health insurance premium INCREASED 20%, a $1650 annual increase. Who's getting all this additional money? That's $1650 I'm NOT spending on my family's other needs. Thank you Democrats!!

As stated in the letter from my previous employer, the reason for the increased premium was solely attributable to Obama Care. Additionally, my plan's deductibles and co-pays also increased. We are now reluctant to visit the doctor at all due to the outrageous costs! That's comforting.

At a time in our lives that I can afford it the least, my government, in their infinite liberal wisdom, forces me to pay more so the minority; the 15% of people that don't have and choose not to have medical insurance are somehow covered.

The lies spewing from this crazy administration about the benefits of Obama Care are outrageous and cannot stand!

PATRICIA, MINNESOTA: In order to keep my monthly payment the same, I had to raise my annual deductible from $3,000.00 to $5,000.00. I also lost the three times each year that I could go to the doctor for a $30.00 co-pay. I also lost the flat fee I paid on prescriptions of $10.00 for generic and $25.00 for non-generic. These items I now pay from dollar one. This conceivably could cost me a lot of money each year.

DEBORAH, CALIFORNIA: From the LA Times: "All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it," said Deborah Cavallaro, a real estate agent in Westchester. "I'm infuriated because I was lied to."

Supporters of the healthcare law say Obama was referring to people who are insured through their employers or through government programs such as Medicare. Still, they acknowledge the confusion and anger from individual policyholders who are being forced to change.

Cavallaro received her cancellation notice from Anthem Blue Cross this month. The company said a comparable Bronze plan would cost her 65% more, or $484 a month. She doubts she'll qualify for much in premium subsidies, if any. Regardless, she resents losing the ability to pick and choose the benefits she wants to pay for.

"I just won't have health insurance because I can't pay this increase," she said.

LIONEL, LOUISIANA: Baton Rouge public relations consultant Lionel Rainey said Wednesday the price of his health insurance will double even though he rarely makes a doctor’s appointment.

His policy is among the 92,793 individual insurance plans that Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon reported would be discontinued because the coverage does not meet the coverage standards set by the federal Affordable Care Act.

Rainey’s plan didn’t meet the minimum standards but he was happy with it.

“I don’t go to the doctor much. This was the plan that fit me and fit my lifestyle,” the 35-year-old said.

Rainey declined to name his insurer, but he said the new policy will cost him nearly $600 a month. He said he also will get coverage he does not need, such as a maternity plan.

Rainey put plans to expand his business on hold when he got the letter from his insurance company.

He wanted to hire an additional person but is unsure whether he can afford it.

As a newlywed, he also must buy insurance coverage for his wife, a full-time graduate student. He does not qualify for subsidies for the exchange.

NANCY, NEW YORK: Anchor: Many people in the Rochester area lost their healthcare insurance January 1st--they're among the millions across the country who saw their plans cancelled under the Affordable Care Act. Nancy Miller is one of them. A self-employed hair-dresser, she'd began doing research in September to make sure she'd be covered this year, but she then learned the health plan that she had for years was no longer availabl the other options were too expensive. Miller has some health issues that require medication and tests: treatments she's delayed because of a lack of insurance.

Nancy Miller: I'm not going to lose my house because I don't have health insurance and I need medical assistance. So I'm down in the dirt, I can't do anything, I can't go to the doctor, I can't get my tests run, I can't go for an MRI. 

DEBRA, IDAHO: I found out I don't make enough to qualify for subsidy, nor can I afford to buy insurance that costs over half of what I make each month. I fell between the cracks. Plus I also will end up paying a penalty for no insurance. This is horrible!

LARRY, CALIFORNIA: Among those suffering sticker shock is Livermore real estate broker Larry Waelde.

Like many others, he believed Obama when the president said people could keep their existing plans if they liked them. But Waelde said his existing $773 monthly premium for his family of four will more than double, based on rates he has reviewed on the state's online insurance exchange.

"The damage has been done," said Waelde, an Anthem Blue Cross customer who doesn't think he's among the 104,000 whose policy cancellations will be delayed.

Waelde said that Obama's public apology over the cancellations last week helped, and he is holding out hope for "some sort of remediation."

Another month and another set of Americans whose lives were decimated and disrupted by Obama Care, the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. 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.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:


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

March, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Vox Asks The Wrong Question, Obama Care Trolls and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) The liberal, leftist news site, Vox, recently asked its readers to submit success stories related to Obama Care. Vox, along with its head honcho Ezra klein, has been a big fan of Obama Care in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington and the disasters it has caused or made worse: ever rising premium and deductible costs, depressed economic growth, higher taxes, doctor shortages, millions of Americans losing access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and current insurance policies, increasing identity theft via Obama Care data systems, increases to the national debt, etc.

But undeterred, Vox tried to find positive testimonials on how great Obama Care was. And that idea fell flat on its face when it was overwhelmed with negative stories of how Obama Care ruined or negatively changed their lives, with some of their stories and comments listed below:

• Cost of my insurance skyrocketed, so I registered Republican and voted for Trump.
• lost my doctor & plan. My Aunt's plan is up 48% and she needs the insurance because of her kidney prob. Family can't afford it!
• the hospital I work for is freezing raises because insufficient reimbursement for services rendered. The ACA needs to go.
• My son's business/employment closed and he was unable to find a full time job because NO business would allow over 30 hrs/ week.
• my insurance policy went from $998/yr to over $1240/yr or over $14K/yr. I could buy a new car every year for that much $$
• Due to unaffordable #Obamacare premiums I'm selling my house next month & moving in with family. It's destroyed my dreams.

Keep in mind that people reading the Vox website, and who likely responded to the Vox Obama Care story request, are likely liberals and Democrats who probably had high opinions of Obama. 

Thus, if Democrats and liberals are so down on Obama Care you can imagine how down the rest of the country is on it. Which brings up that old adage: never ask a question that you may not want the answer to. Vox, the place that loves Obama and loves Obama Care, found out this truth the hard way.

2) Sam Dorman, writing for the Associated Press, in an article that appeared on the Political Insider website on February 27, 2017, reported that: “Obamacare may have received a massive amount of support on social media because many of its online defenders were paid professionals, according to digital expert Matthew Brown:”

• In an interview with journalist, Sharyl Attkisson (one of the few journalists that I believe has any integrity based on her prior history of standing up for the truth in the face of Obama administration opposition), Brown reviewed the leaked government emails that discussed “"creating an army of fake social media profiles" and using "tricks to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas."
• Brown did a statistical sampling of over 200,000 Facebook postings, all of which defended Obama Care.He found that 60% of those 200,000 Facebook posts, 120,000, came from just 100 profiles, leading him to believe that those Facebook “users” were being paid to post supporting comments for Obama Care.
• Brown called these fake posters, "Digital activists are paid employees; their purpose is to attack anyone who's posting something contrary to the view of the page owner wants expressed." 

So it looks like Obama Care supporters and/or the Obama administration were using “fake news” tactics via fake social media posts and attacks before the term “fake news” came into being. Which is sad since if you cannot pass legislation that can stand on its own merits and you need to construct an elaborate spying machine online to combat the realities and disasters of that legislation, then maybe that legislation really does stink.

3) We have often pointed out that while the Obama Care legislation was a couple of thousands pages long, the resulting government regulations that came out of it were many, many times more, adding to a government regulation overload that is overwhelming many industries including medicine and health care. The Charles Hughes Smith blog recently published a chart from the Physicians For A National Health program that showed how those usually unnecessary and burdensome regulations were negatively affecting the health care industry:

The blog draws the following common sense conclusion: “Add layer after layer after layer of new complex regulations to the practice of medicine, and soon enough you need millions of paper-pushing employees to monitor compliance, enforce compliance, pursue administrative and criminal charges of non-compliance, file claims and counterclaims, defend the innocent from false accusations, write hundreds of pages of new regulations, and so on….But the system is now so onerous and out of control that the practice of medicine now requires far more attorneys and compliance-regulatory-paper-pushers than it does doctors and nurses.”

And the more time, money and resources spent on government regulations compliance and paperwork means less resources spent on actual health care which creates doctor and nurse shortages (supply) which in the world of economic drives up prices and costs to handle the demand for healthcare services. And Obama Care was the king when it comes to regulations overload.

4) Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, writing for the I Have The Truth website on February 15, 2017, did report on some good news as it relates to Obama Care, something that we very rarely have the honor or stating. Under the Obama administration, the IRS would refuse to accept your Federal income tax return unless you reported on it which health insurance coverage you had the previous year, if any. This is important since the Obama Care legislation required to you carry and pay for health insurance or pay an ever escalating Federal government fine.

Under the previous rules, the IRS would not even accept your return if that information was not on the return, causing you to deal with the IRS prior to fulfilling your legal obligation to file your tax return. This delay, besides being stressful, opened you up to additional IRS sanctions and fines since it could cause you to miss the legal filing deadline.

According to Ms. Monroe-Hamilton: “The Obamacare mandate required that Americans either be covered by health insurance or they had to pay a tax penalty. Well, the IRS quietly altered their rules this month for the submission of tax forms, making reporting of health insurance coverage “optional.” They still say they may follow up if you don’t check that little box, but they don’t say what would trigger that. I sincerely doubt they will ever bother tracking down people over it. Which means the Obamacare mandate is pretty much dead at least at the IRS. Glory freaking hallelujah! The IRS will no longer reject your tax forms if you don’t fill out that portion that indicates whether or not you have health insurance...Now the mandatory disclosure is voluntary and that will be a relief to millions of Americans. Returns that no longer state whether you have coverage or not, will not be automatically rejected by the IRS now.”

The IRS confirms the reporting: “Processing silent returns means that taxpayer returns are not systematically rejected, allowing them to be processed and minimizing burden on taxpayers, including those expecting a refund.” 

This is great news on two fronts. It obviously makes filing taxes less stressful, less dangerous from a legal perspective, and easier. But in the bigger picture, it is another hole in the wall of Obama Care whose mandatory insurance tenet and the resulting fine if you did not get health insurance was critical to the hoped for success of the entire legislation. Removing that requirement to some degree is welcome news for freedom and for those that want the Obama Care death spiral to continue.

Tomorrow we will wrap up this month's review of Obama Care’s unfolding disasters by reviewing actual Americans’ horrible experiences with this bad, bad piece of legislation, experiences that humanize what havoc Obama Care has wrought on everyday Americans.

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:


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

March, 2017, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The State of Maine Gets It, Bernie Sanders Still Does Not Get It

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) As we have previously reported, the state of Maine and its current governor and state politicians have been quite successful in reducing welfare and food stamp rates in their state without much or any hardship on its citizens. By requiring food stamp recipients to work, volunteer or go to school for a minimal amount of hours a month, they reduced their food stamp enrollment and costs by well over 50%, showing how much corruption and inefficiency there was in the program.

But Maine did not stop there. Their innovative and common sense approach to Medicaid has had fantastic results in spite of Obama Care vs. because of Obama Care. But before we get into their outstanding results, let’s review how bad things were in that state from a Medicaid perspective, as described by Mary Mayhew on March 10, 2017 on the Heritage Foundation website (Ms. Mayhew is the commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services):

• Between 2000 and 2010 the previous state politicians in Maine had allowed the state’s Medicaid program to double in both enrollment and cost.
• These additional state Medicaid costs caused the state to continually reduce the amount of money paid to hospitals and doctors under the state’s Medicaid program and caused other, vital state medical services to be slashed since whle Medicaid costs were skyrocketing, government tax revenue was not.
• Since the state budget had to be balanced every year, more money on the state Medicaid line meant less money on other vital services budget lines.
• Other programs that saw their budget Ines cut including nursing facility budgets, home care services budgets, and programs for the elderly, disabled and developmentally challenged were also cut.
• Despite the increase in the state’s Medicaid costs and enrollment levels, the uninsured rate for Maine citizens remained mostly unchanged, i.e. increasing the Medicaid program did not reduce the number of uninsured Maine citizens, a failure caused since individuals dropped their employer sponsored insurance coverage to get cheaper Medicaid coverage.

However, since then, the state and its current political leaders have taken a different approach, one that spits in Obama Care’s face, and have had great results:

• In six years, the state has reduced its Medicaid program enrollment by 24%.
• Its annual growth in Medicaid costs is down to a respectable 2% a year, compared to the national annual cost growth rate of 6% a year.
• The growth rate in 2017 is expected to be just .7%.
• At the same time, funding for nursing home facilities has increased by 40%, home care funding has increased by 60%, and an additional $100 million was found to support state citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
• In addition, the state increased its financial support for primary care to better help individuals with chronic diseases while also increasing support for those with mental illness.
• And despite slashing the Medicaid enrollment levels, the uninsured rate in the state has actually declined.

The state refocused on what Medicaid was supposed to be: Medicaid’s core mission was to support elderly, disabled, and extremely low-income families, it was never meant to be a default insurance program for mostly able bodied people which probably explains why it failed as part of the Obama Care legislation.

The reduction in the ever growing Medicaid budget for the state has allowed the state to cut state taxes which has stimulated economic growth and has reduced the unemployment rate to a measly 3.8%, far below the overall national unemployment level.
Lower taxes, more help for the sick and needy, higher employment opportunities, more people with health insurance, and a much healthier state budget situation. Now that wasn’t hard, was it? All the things that Obama Care was supposed to do but failed miserably at doing.

2) Much like how we have constantly pointed out how bad Washington politicians' intelligence levels are when it comes to economics, their ability to understand numbers and logic is also quite limited. Remember when Nancy Pelosi screeched that 500 million Americans a week were applying for first time unemployment benefits? Since there are only about 325 million people in the country, including infants and kids, it is quite impossible for 500 million to be applying for first time unemployment benefits every week. Other examples of math idiocy from politicians have been covered often in this blog. 

Well, Ben Shapiro, writing on March 14, 2017, reported on another example of math lunacy from the government that was parroted by Senator Bernie Sanders. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report in the past week that estimated that implementing the initial Obama Care replacement legislation put forth by the Republicans could cause 24 million Americans to lose access to health insurance. 

Before we get into the lunacy of Sanders, let’s check back on the track record of the CBO and how horrible wrong it has been in predicting anything related to health care including the impact of Obama Care:

• The CBO predicted back before the legislation took effect that it would not add anything to the national debt load, something that Obama promised over and over: in reality, it now appears, as predicted by the CBO, that over a trillion dollars in incremental debt will be added to the national debt because of Obama Care over a ten year period.
• The CBO originally predicted that 24 million Americans would have Obama Care insurance policies by 2017, while less than half have of that number have those policies today, a forecast miss of about 130%.
• The CBO then predicted that about 21 million Americans would have Obama Care insurance policies by 2017, while about less than half of that have policies today, a forecast miss of about 100%. 
• Just last year the CBO predicted that about 15 million Americans would have Obama Care insurance policies by 2017 and just one year later that forecast miss is still a whopping 36% miss.

The point of this list is to show that the CBO has a horrible record of predicting the future, to believe anything they forecast even one year into the future is likely to be grossly inaccurate. So take their 24 million people losing insurance coverage with a ton of salt, never mind a grain of salt.

Which gets us back to Senator Sanders and his wild ass prediction that millions of Americans will die if Obama Care is repealed, based on these CBO numbers, and replaced with the initial Obama Care replacement legislation proposed by the Republicans in the House: “If this legislation is passed and millions of people are thrown off health insurance … thousands of Americans will die. I think that legislation is disgusting. It is immoral. It must be defeated and I hope there is enough sense amongst some of the Republicans.”

Let’s examine some realities why this is such a stupid statement:

• While many people might lose their current arrangements for health insurance under the replacement plan, which is nowhere close to being finalized, it does not mean that they would not pick up better, cheaper insurance once the onerous Obama Care requirements are done away with, e.g. a 60 year old gay man who does not do drugs or alcohol would no longer be required to pay for Obama Care insurance that included mandatory drug and alcohol treatment and maternity expenses.
• People might lose access to Medicaid which might be a good thing since more than one university study has found that Medicaid does not result in better health results for Medicaid users (which screams ultimate failure if a program designed to make people healthier does not make them healthier despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year).
• One such study, the massive Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, showed that Medicaid did not decrease hospital visits for those it served vs. those not on Medicaid and that the study showed conclusively that Medicaid “had no statistically significant effect on several measures of physical health,” including blood pressure, cholesterol, or cardiovascular risk. 
• In addition, only about two out of three doctors in the country take Medicaid patients and only 45% take new Medicaid patients so often Medicaid patients have Medicaid health insurance coverage but cannot get Medicaid doctor access. 
• Thus, losing Medicaid insurance coverage is not that big of a deal since it does not make people healthier, reduce hospital visits, or give people access to the best and most desired doctors.
• The Manhattan Institute reports: “The best statistical estimate for the number of lives saved each year by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is zero. Certainly, there are individuals who have benefited from various of its provisions. But attempts to claim broader effects on public health or thousands of lives saved rely upon extrapolation from past studies that focus on the value of private health insurance. The ACA, however, has expanded coverage through Medicaid, a public program that, according to several studies, has failed to improve health outcomes for recipients. In fact, public health trends since the implementation of the ACA have worsened, with 80,000 more deaths in 2015 than had mortality continued declining during 2014–15 at the rate achieved during 2000–2013."
• Under Obama Care in 2015, life expectancy has dropped and the mortality rate rose for the first time decades, certainly not two trends you want a sweeping and expensive health care piece of legislation to result in.
• And Sanders fails to mention another recent CBO statistical estimate, namely that in 2018, 14 million people would opt out of the health insurance market if given a choice if they were not going to be fined by the Federal government with 5 million estimated to drop out of Medicaid itself if given the chance to do so without a fine.

So Senator, millions are not going to die, that is just reckless and stupid rhetoric. Medicaid does not make anyone healthier to begin with so if people lost access to Medicaid they would not be in any more danger of dying even if they stayed with Medicaid, who even knows if the CBO numbers are right given their horrendous track record of predicting, and people do not want something if they are forced to take it, especially if it is a shoddy expensive product, something that Obama Care is.

Want to get more people health insurance coverage Senator? Attack the root causes of our high healthcare costs listed above: that would reduce the medical bills in this country which would make insurance so much cheaper and affordable that people would want to have it. 

Obama Care does the exact opposite of what is needed: it addresses none of the root causes and then forces people to choose bad insurance policies that are expensive for medical costs that are still skyrocketing. Until then please shut up, you are contributing nothing to the solution with rhetoric that is baseless and inane.

That will do it for today’s Obama Care disaster stories. One set of politicians in the state of Maine that get it and are making their citizens healthier at a cheaper rate and a U.S. Senator that still does not get it and wants the disasters from Obama Care to keep on coming. More disasters 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.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:

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

March, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: A Small Step In The Right Direction

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today and this week, I am not yet going to get into whether the proposed Republican replacement legislation for ObamaCare is a worthy effort, I am still trying to understand its tenets and potential ramifications. My early view is that it also stinks (but probably does not stink as much as Obama Care) but I am keeping an open mind about it as my research proceeds.

But today let's focus only an alternative to the the alternative. Senator Rand Paul has come up with a piece of legislation that would replace Obama Care and which is a mere four pages long. Recall that Obama Care was a monstrosity piece of legislation that was something like 2,000 pages long. I am assuming that the Republican proposed replacement will also be quite long.

And anything that long like Obama Care is likely to be unwieldy, inefficient, filled with loopholes and trap doors, and eventually, useless. I like to stick to the old saying: “Keep things simple. Few moves can accomplish a lot.” It is better to do a few things well than to fail at many things.

Keep in mind that two of the greatest pieces of legislation ever passed by Washington were the Civil Rights Act, which was less than two pages long, and the Voting Rights Act that was less than three dozen pages long.

Which brings us to a fascinating proposal from Rand Paul who has put together a replacement piece of legislation for Obama Care which is four pages long. Count them, four pages long. Keep in mind that Senator Paul is a real doctor so he has some insights to the problem of healthcare that few others in Washington probably have. Robert Zerfing, writing for the CSC Medical Group on March 9, 2017, provides some background on Paul’s approach:

• The purpose of Paul’s approach is to expand lower cost, higher quality healthcare for more Americans regardless of their medical history.
• His philosophy on the proposed legislation is as follows: “Getting government out of the American people’s way and putting them back in charge of their own health care decisions will deliver a strong, efficient system that doesn’t force them to empty out their pockets to cover their medical bills. There is no excuse for waiting to craft an alternative until after we repeal Obamacare, and the Obamacare Replacement Act [his proposed legislation] charts a new path forward that will insure the most people possible at the lowest price.”
• His proposal has four simple tenets: 1.) Choose inexpensive insurance free of government dictates; 2.) Save unlimited amounts in a health savings account (HSA) and have wider options for using those funds; 3.) Buy insurance across state lines; and 4.) Join together in voluntary associations to gain the leverage of being part of a large insurance pool.

According to Mr. Zerfing’s article, the following goes into a little more detail on how the above tenets would play out in real life:

-Legalizes Inexpensive Insurance Plans:

• Ensures that Americans can purchase the health insurance coverage that best fits their needs as opposed to the idiocy of Obama Care which forced Americans to purchase insurance coverage for things that did not apply to their lives or needs.
• Eliminates Obamacare’s essential health benefits requirement, along with other restrictive coverage and plan requirements, to once again make low-cost insurance options available to American consumers.

-Protects Individuals with Pre-Existing Conditions:

• Provides a two-year open-enrollment period under which individuals with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
• Restores HIPAA pre-existing conditions protections. Prior to Obamacare, HIPAA guaranteed that those in the group market could obtain continuous health coverage regardless of preexisting conditions.

-Helps More People Save To Buy Health Insurance and Cover Medical Costs:

• Authorizes a tax credit (up to $5,000 per taxpayer) for individuals and families that contribute to HSAs.
• Removes the annual cap on HSAs so individuals can make unlimited contributions.
• Allows HSA funds to be used to purchase insurance, cover premiums, and more easily afford a broader range of health-related expenses, including prescription and OTC drugs, dietary supplements, nutrition and physical exercise expenses, and direct primary care, among others. 

-Guarantees Fair Tax Treatment of Health Insurance:

• Equalizes the tax treatment of the purchase of health insurance for individuals and employers by allowing individuals to deduct the cost of their health insurance from their income and payroll taxes.
• Frees more Americans to purchase and maintain insurance apart from their work status.
• Does not interfere with employer-provided coverage for Americans who prefer those plans.

-Helps Individuals Join Together to Purchase Insurance:

• Expands Association Health Plans (AHPs) to allow small business owners and individuals to band together across state lines through their membership in a trade or professional association to purchase health coverage for their families and employees at a lower cost.
• Also allows individuals to pool together through any organization to purchase insurance.
• Widens access to the group market and spreads out the risk, enhancing the ability of individuals and small businesses to decrease costs, increase administrative efficiencies, and further protect those with pre-existing conditions.

-Allows the Purchase of Insurance Across State Lines:

• Creates an interstate market that allows insurers who are licensed to sell policies in one state to offer them to residents of any other state.

- Increases State Medicaid Flexibility:

• Enables states to fully exercise current flexibilities afforded to them through Medicaid waivers for creating innovative state plan designs.

-Empowers Physicians:

• Allows non-economically aligned physicians to negotiate for higher quality health care for their patients.
• Amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow a physician a tax deduction equal to the amount such physician would otherwise charge for charity medical care or uncompensated care due to bad debt, limited to 10% of a physician’s gross income for the taxable year.

The aspects of Paul’s legislation highlighted in red shows where his plan aligns with our root cause list of problems listed above. As you can see, his proposal comes much closer than Obama Care when it comes to addressing root causes of our high health care costs in this country. While it does not address a number of important root causes, e.g. tort reform, smoking cessation, food chain poisoning, Alzheimer’s research, it does address many others including nutrition, exercise, crossing state lines, etc., making it a much better start at wiping out root causes. 

And it is simple to understand and implement, being only four pages long, all of which can be read at the following link:

http://www.cscmediagroupus.com/robert-zerfing/rand-paul-obamacare-replacement

All right, that will get it done for the first update to this month’s ongoing review of the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care." A small, but hopeful step in the right direction of fixing what Obama has certainly broken.

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:


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