August, 2017, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Vote For The Worst Federal Government Entity Today!

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) Joseph Lawler, writing for the Washington Examiner on July 27, 2017, reviewed how even if you are a major screw up working at the IRS you really are never fired:

• The IRS Inspector General recently reported that the IRS is still hiring former employees that it fired for various types of misconduct.
• The Inspector General report found that of the 2,000 former IRS employees that the IRS rehired in 2015 and 2016, more than 19%, or 200 individuals, had earlier been fired or had resigned in the midst of an investigation into their bad behavior.
• Some of those 200 had been investigated for improperly accessing taxpayer private tax records while some had actually cheated on their own taxes.
• Senator Richard Burr had requested the inspector general report, calling the IRS' rehiring of fired workers a "mind boggling abuse of taxpayer money."
• Burr was also ticked off that during Senate testimony, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified under oath that the IRS does not hire workers it had previously fired.

Ah, the la-la land of Washington D.C. where government workers can get away with just about anything and still get a good paying, taxpayer funded job and lying to Congress and the American people, under oath, is a generally accepted practice with no criminal consequences. Insanity.

2) Over the years it has been a tough call as to what Washington bureaucracy wastes the most taxpayer money with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon usually topping the list of the most inept and inefficient organizations. Anneta Grieffe, writing for the Dennis Michael Lynch website on July 25 2017 puts a vote in for the Pentagon with her latest report on waste:

• A recent 17 page report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the Pentagon wasted over $28 million over the past decade by buying the wrong type of uniforms for Afghan soldiers.
• Unbelievably, someone in the Pentagon authorized the purchase of $28 million worth of forest camouflage uniforms, useless in a country like Afghanistan which has very few forests, instead of desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding insult to injury, the forest camouflage uniforms are more expensive than the desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding further insult to injury, SIGAR report cited another major screw up in that the Pentagon spent extra money for the license to the camouflage uniforms when they could have gotten a pattern for free.
• As always, the politicians get involved AFTER the damage is done with Senator Claire McCaskill ranting: “This is a contracting decision that makes you smack your head in frustration. It’s a prime example of wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of how this happened.”

She and the rest in Congress should all be smacked in their head for allowing this and thousands and thousands of other government wasteful spending endeavors to occur and endure.

3) As we always do lately, let’s check in with Chicago and see how their violence is doing. As you know, Chicago has been in the grip of a crime wave and violence wave for years now with no local, state, or Federal politician having the brains or the willpower to stop it. 

Probably driven by the illegal drug trade, Mexican cartels and other local gangs use violence to protect and secure drug sales turf every day, with the residual violence killing innocent city citizens on a daily basis. The reality is that the very stringent and tight gun control laws in the city has done absolutely nothing except make lawful and frightened citizens have a tougher time arming themselves to defend themselves.

As far as the latest from the streets of Chicago:

• In a recent week, six people were killed and 35 others were injured by the city’s violence.
• This puts this year’s death toll at a rate that was slightly higher than last year’s carnage. 391 deaths in 2017 vs. 387 vs. the same timeframe from last year, a year in which 783 Chicago citizens died from criminal violence, about two per day.
• If there is any good news from this recent week of violence is that the number of people shot is down so far this year, 2,112, vs. 2,337 in 2016. 
• This violence continues despite the boast by Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson that his department has removed more than 5,000 firearms from city streets this year.
• And yet, there have still been more murders this year vs. last year, indicating that maybe more gun control is not the way to resolve this situation.

While there has been some small encouraging signs of winning back the Chicago streets, e.g. murder arrests are up 10% and gun confiscation is up over 30%, getting more than two civilians killed every day is still a disaster with no politician in sight having the answer.

4) While the Pentagon was busy wasting tens of millions of dollars on the wrong type of uniforms, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was busy wasting hundreds of millions of dollars through sheer incompetence:

• According to a new inspector general report, the SSA improperly paid out over $200 million over the years to people who collected SSA benefits under two different Social Security numbers or people who were dead.
• This double SSA number blunder happened in at least 5,000 instances identified in the inspector general report.
• In 13,000 cases, SSA benefits were paid to dead people even though they were recorded and recognized as dead somewhere in the bowels of the SSA data systems processed.
• In addition, the report found that a whopping 4.9 million Americans currently have more than one SSA number assigned to their names.
• In one example, an individual who died in 1997 had his SSA benefits properly terminated but the SSA never checked if he had a second number assigned to his name, which he did, and that number resulted in $31,000 being cashed 14 years later.

Always tough to pick out the worst performing Federal government organization, the Pentagon that paid for the wrong kind of uniforms, the IRS who hires back people that should have not been rehired  or the Social Security Administration who doubles pays benefits to living people and continues to pay benefits to dead people. More insanity to follow over the next week or so.

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

July, 2017, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Stress For Real Life Americans Thanks To 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, sugar, 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 copays 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 are only going to share some stories of real Americans and the suffering and expense they had to endure as a result of Obama Care.the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. The source of these heartbreaking stories is:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

CURT - NORTH DAKOTA: I'm a 58 year old retired school teacher. I pay my own premiums. A year ago I was paying $252 a month I now pay $538 per month. My wife is a dental assistant who has always had her insurance paid for. Last month her boss of 27 years informed her that her premium went UP $356 per month. He was nice enough to split it, but now she gets $175 per month deducted out of her check. Less coverage and higher deductibles. Last week she found out she has to pay $75 per month out of her own pocket for prescriptions, where before her old plan paid for it..so we are paying about $530 per month more now than a year ago...remember I am living on a teacher’s pension....this really stinks.

JOHN - UTAH: After three months and more than 50 phone calls, I gave up on buying coverage through HealthCare.gov. I wanted to purchase a plan for my 45-year-old son, who has a rare degenerative condition affecting his coordination and speech.

We have a son who is critically ill. We cannot take any chances. Not having insurance would, in no short order, lead our family to bankruptcy.

DOREEN - MICHIGAN: We've always been self-sufficient and paid our own way for health care, entering into payment plans when necessary. Most of our providers were happy to slightly discount their usual rates for services, since we are self-insured, thus negating their dealing with insurance companies. In November 2013, our primary care provider sent a notice effective 1/1/14 that his office visit rate for Self-Pay Patients would increase to $90-$150 from its previous $55. Though not explicitly stated, we surmised that this was a result of Obamacare, as we've been seeing this doctor for many years with no significant increase in price/visit and the notice makes very clear that we should notify them if our health care insurance situation changes.

We remain self-sufficient and refuse to have others forced to subsidize our needs.

YVETTE - MAINE: "The least expensive of the new federal healthcare options will cost her $14,400 a year."

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!

LENNY - OKLAHOMA. OKLAHOMA CITY: An Oklahoma woman says because of Obamacare her husband lost his insurance, and almost his life.

Laura Hubbs works for an oil company in western Oklahoma. Her employer told employees this fall that because of the Affordable Care Act it was too costly to continue paying insurance premiums for spouses. So her husband didn't have insurance when he got sick three weeks ago.

Lenny Hubbs was just released from the hospital Monday afternoon after an ordeal that cost him part of his lung and over $100,000 in hospital bills.

Doctors diagnosed Lenny with pneumonia and said his lungs were filling with blood. Lenny, who is a self-employed contractor was always on his wife's insurance. After that ended, they say premiums were too high for them to afford on their own and they don't qualify for Medicaid.

"He's healthy, he's never went into the Dr. before," said Hubbs.

Without insurance, the couple believes they didn't get proper care at two hospitals, sitting at one hospital for nine days where they say doctors did nothing. A couple days ago the couple demanded to be transferred to Mercy Hospital where Lenny finally got help.
They went ahead and removed half of his lung just because that blood sat in there too long," said Laura.

It will be a month before Lenny can return to work. In the meantime, Laura has been frantically searching for insurance they can afford.

"I couldn't even get the good insurance with it, because that was $500 a month."

MARIA - CALIFORNIA: Maria Berumen, a tax preparer in Downey, was uninsured for years because of preexisting conditions. The 53-year-old was thrilled to find coverage for herself and her husband for $148 a month after qualifying for a big government subsidy.

She jumped at the chance in early January to visit a primary-care doctor for long-running numbness in her arm and shoulder as a result of bone spurs on her spine. The doctor referred her to a specialist, and problems ensued. At least four doctors wouldn't accept her health plan — even though the state exchange website and her insurer, Health Net Inc., list them as part of her HMO network.

"It's a phantom network," Berumen said.

It was no surprise to her family doctor, Ragaa Iskarous. She has run into this problem repeatedly with other patients in the last month, the doctor said. "This is really driving us crazy."

Higher costs, phantom networks of doctors and hospitals, lost access to current insurance coverage, etc. The story of Obama Care failures unfolds more and more every 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

July, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: One Way To Fix Our Health Care Crisis and One Way Not To Fix 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, sugar, 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 copays 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) Yesterday we started talking about an article on the iPatriot website by Dr. Tom Barrett. We talked about his review of how bad things are today as a result of Obama Care. Today we will review some of his common sense solutions that rely on common sense rather than the lack of brainpower of American politicians.

As we go through his solutions, keep in mind that many of them are mentioned above since both his list and our list above address the root causes of today’s high health care costs:

• For some reason, Federal law inhibits insurance companies from selling health insurance policies across state lines. If you really want more competition in the health insurance market, remove these types of artificial barriers that make it hard for insurance companies to compete in different markets and different states.
• Pass legislation that would make it easier for people to join together under some common interest or trait which would allow them to negotiate lower insurance rates, much like employers do today.
• Clean up the mess that hospitals are faced with today, i.e. “Repeal the 1986 law that requires hospitals to provide care for illegal aliens and others regardless of their ability to pay. Allow hospitals to turn away non-emergency cases. There are plenty of free clinics in almost every county. Emergency room care for non-emergency situations costs about five times as much as Urgent Care Clinics, whether the patient or insurance pays. Free clinics are obviously even cheaper. I have spent thousands of hours working in emergency rooms. Without question, the majority of cases we saw were not emergencies – but they clogged up the system and delayed treatment for real emergencies.”
• Reduce government regulations and insurance paperwork so that healthcare professionals actually work on health care issues vs. administrative work; research by BMC Health Services Research found that $375 billion is wasted every year on unnecessary insurance-related administrative costs.
• How much cheaper would healthcare be in this country if you could reduce the expenses in the industry by a whopping $375 billion?
• Avoid the stupid mistake that Obama Care made when it required Obama Care policies to cover a whole myriad of potential health concerns (e.g. forcing a 60 year old single male to pay for maternity benefits) and offer a full range of health insurance options so that people can choose the best policy for their needs and risk tolerance including catastrophic policies that cover only catastrophic health care needs, an option that is illegal under Obama Care.

So very well said, address the root causes of the healthcare crises which is really a public health issue, not a health insurance crises, the fatal flaw of Obama Care. Dr. Barrett had some final advice for our bumbling politicians in Washington: “If you enact health care legislation, don’t pretend that health insurance is health care. Deal with the real reasons for rising health costs, including fraud, lawyers abusing the system with shameful malpractice claims, and the abuse of insurance coverage.”

2) One has to look no further than the Veterans Administration to see how poorly the Federal government operates a health care operation, a reality that should scare any American away from supporting a single payer health insurance system in this country. VA scandals have been plentiful with long waiting lists resulting in American veterans being denied and delayed medical treatment while VA administrators covered up their incompetence to protect their careers and pay bonuses. 

Despite Obama’s many promises to fix the VA’s dysfunction, six months into the Trump administration it appears that Obama failed again in this endeavor, not surprising given that his administration failed in just about anything it touched. According to CBS Evening News:

• Nearly 100 veterans died while waiting for medical and health care at the Los Angeles Veterans Administration facility.
• A new VA inspector general analysis found that 43% of the 225 patients who died between October, 2014 and August, 2015 were waiting for appointments or were in need of medical tests that they never were able to get before they died.
• The report did conclude that not all of the deaths could be attributed to not getting the tests they needed in a timely matter but you can be sure that not getting the tests and attention in a timely manner did not prolong their lives either.
• Dr. Christian Head, who is a surgeon at the Los Angeles VA where this crisis happened claims that 140,000 patient consults were deliberately deleted and that things were worse than at the Phoenix VA, the location where we first saw how bad the VA was: "The number of patients waiting for care, the deletion of consults, and the wait list were much more significant here than at Phoenix I first noticed an unusual number of patients who are presenting with delay in diagnosis, meaning that they present into the system, they disappeared for a number of years and then they presented late with advanced cancers. Those consults were being deleted, literally removed from the system." 

There you have it, another VA example where it is still a stupid idea for the entire country to be subjected to such gross government and bureaucrat fatal bungling and cover ups from a single payer system operated by the same Washington politicians that bungled not on health care via the VA but health care via Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care. 

That will do it for today, one example of how to actually make Americans healthier and healthcare less expensive and another example of how not to do it, i.e. letting the government handle healthcare matters. One more post tomorrow on this theme, another compilation of real Americans telling us how they endured real suffering at the hands 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:


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

July, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Why A Single Payer Plan Is Still Nonsense and More Obama Care Failures

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, sugar, 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 copays 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) We have spent a number of posts in this theme over the past month on what a lousy program Medicaid is for Americans. It is expensive, inefficient, criminal and fraud infested, financially unsustainable, and worse of all, according to a large number of research studies, it does not make people any healthier than those people that have no health insurance at all. It is a complete and utter Federal government run failure.

We have also spent time over the past couple of years discussing what a complete disaster the Veterans Administration has been in serving the health and medical needs of our armed forces veterans. Waiting lists so long that people die waiting to get medical treatment, criminal fraud, wasted taxpayer wealth, and massive cover ups of VA administrators’ incompetence.

Given that it is pretty obvious that the Federal government is incapable of operating any kind of medical and healthcare operation, along with being incapable or running any kind of operation efficiently and effectively form the Postal System to AMTRAK, what do many liberals and Democrats in Washington want to do? Yes, they want to double down on failure and operate and control ALL of the country’s medical and health operations. They want to put the U.S. into a single payer system where the government, politicians, and bureaucrats control your entire health care needs and fate.

Several key Democrats have supported the idea of a single payer system, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer recently stated that: "We're going to look at broader things. Many things are on the table. Medicare for people above 55 is on the table. A buy into Medicare is on the table, buy into Medicaid is on the table. On the broader issues, we'll start examining them once we stabilize the system."

“Stabilize the system?” Really Chuck, Medicare and Medicaid have been around for about fifty years and Washington has not stabilized them yet, what makes you think you can “stabilize”the programs now? Give me a break.

Larry Kudlow, an economist and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, nicely summarized what a stupid idea Schumer has: “A government plan is not going to work. Medicaid, which is a disaster and has spiraled out of control and has expanded and expanded and expanded with no eligibility requirements anymore – that’s the perfect example. If you want a Democratic program that is going to be government-run, single payer – take a look at Medicaid, which has been a disaster.”

A recent article on the Moneymax website shed some light on why Schumer and the others mentioned above are insane:

• Medicare spending was a whopping 15% of the total Federal government budget in 2016.
• It is projected to rise to 17.5% by 2027.
• The Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund is expected to be out of money by 2029, according to research from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
• Medicare spending per capita is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 4.5% over the next decade.
• Since the economy has been growing at a measly 2% for the past eight years on average, at some point the economy will not be able to sustain Medicare spending since that spending is growing more than double the underlying economy supporting it.

So let’s summarize: the people that cannot run Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration health care function, the Postal System, and AMTRAK efficiently and effectively want to control all of our health care matters. Still no cure for stupid.

2) Dr. Tom Barrett, writing for the iPatriot website on July 18, 2017, did a great job describing what a failure government run medical operations are and then provides some common sense ways to reduce healthcare costs in this country without any government and politician intervention in our lives. We will talk about the first topic today, the problems, and continue tomorrow with his solutions.

The problems and current situation:

• Obama promised that Obama Care would lower health insurance premiums but insurance premiums have actually doubled in some states since the legislation was passed.
• Obama promised better insurance policies but Obama Care insurance policies are often so bad that the policies provide no insurance coverage at all since deductibles and networks are so high and narrow.
• Research by Health Pockets: “...reveals that the average ObamaCare Bronze plan (the cheapest one available) has deductibles of $12,393. That was the amount many of these families paid for a year of insurance. Now they have to pay higher premiums, and the insurer doesn’t pay them a cent until they have shelled out $12,393.”
• The New York Times reported that three million Americans living in 1,388 U.S. counties, one third of ALL U.S. counties, now only have access to only one Obama Care insurer despite Obama promising that Obama Care would INCREASE the number of competitors.
• At least 45 counties now have zero Obama Care insurance companies.
• Despite Obama’s promises of lower costs and “bending the cost curve” of health care in this country, seven years into ObamaCare and health care costs still rise much faster than other costs of life:

So in summary, costs have not gone down they have gone up, the number of competitors has not gone up it has gone down, healthcare insurance coverage has not gotten better, it has gotten worse. Has any piece of legislation ever passed by Washington so totally and utterly failed like this piece of legislation? And people like Schumer want to continue to control more and more of our healthcare? Lord help us.

Tomorrow we will continue to review the article by Dr. Barrett but with an emphasis on his proposed and common sense solutions to reduce healthcare costs without the American political class being involved.

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

July, 2017, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Obama's Promises Unfulfilled and Medicaid Still Sucks

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, sugar, 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 copays 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) Obama promised that if Obama Care was passed, by the end of 2016 over 20 million incremental Americans would have obtained individual health insurance coverage from Obama Care insurance policies from participating insurance companies. 

Of course, we now know that the number of Americans who got coverage from Obama Care policies is about 50% below that promise from Obama. And since Obama Care caused 6 to 7 million Americans to lose their current insurance coverage, the incremental number of Americans who got coverage insurance is really only 3 to 4 million, not the 20 million that Obama promised.

And things appear to be going in the wrong direction from an insurance coverage perspective:

• According to a Moneymax article on July 10, 2017, the number of uninsured Americans has risen by 2 million over the past year.
• This was the latest estimate from the Gallup-Sharecare Well Being Index.
• The current percentage of uninsured is 11.7% at the end of June, 2017 vs. 10.9% at the end of 2016.
• This is a statistically significant difference.
• The losses were concentrated among younger adults and people buying individual insurance policies, the market segments that Obama Care was designed for.

But none of this should be a surprise since:

• Premiums and deductibles for Obama Care customers have risen dramatically despite Obama’s promise that annual insurance costs would go down upwards of $2,500.
• Young adults were duped into Obama Care policies in order to have their premiums subsidize the health needs of less healthy Americans which tend to be much older than the young adults dropping their insurance coverage.
• As more and more insurance companies leave the Obama Care market, leaving fewer and fewer options for health insurance in a market, it should not be a surprise that people are dropping insurance since their choices for insurance are getting thinner and thinner.
• So not only has Obama Care fallen over 50% short of its rosy predictions but as time goes on more and more Americans are deciding that that they are not getting the value for their health insurance costs that Obama promised.

So much for Obama Care curing the country's healthcare problems.

2) Obama Care supporters like to brag that well over 10 million Americans now theoretically have health insurance via Medicaid. Which on the surface would appear to be a good thing except that, according to a recent article in the National Review:

• A “gold standard” research project of a randomized control trial of Medicaid in the state of Oregon found that Medicaid provided no significant improvement in health in Medicaid recipients vs. uninsured people.
• Analysis by economist Raj Chetty concluded that health care access to Medicaid for low income households had nothing to do with life expectancy.
• Yale researchers determined that states achieve better health outcomes when they allocate LESS of their social spending towards health care.
• Somehow, since Obama Care was enacted the country’s mortality rate stopped decreasing and actually started going up, a trend that was WORSE in the states that enrolled in Obama Care’s expanded Medicaid program.
• A study of Medicaid in three states found that Medicaid expansion under Obama Care found no improvement in mortality in Arizona and Maine and a decrease in mortality in New York state, showing that maybe or maybe not, at least in this study, Medicaid is at best a hit or miss at improving the health care of people.

So saying that Obama Care is great because millions of people now have access to a government health insurance program that does not improve health is ridiculous.

For the original article and more details, go to:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449107/obamacare-probably-didnt-save-any-lives

Another day, another set of Obama Care failure examples.

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

July, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Republicans That Cannot Plan and Democrats Who Cannot Tell The Truth

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, sugar, 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 copays 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) Let me start this month’s Obama Care disaster review with a quick hit on Congressional Republicans. For like seven years they have correctly ranted and raved about how much of a disaster Obama Care is. They have correctly pointed out that none of the rosy promises Obama made about the legislation came close to becoming reality. Many of their successful election campaigns were based on how bad Obama Care was and how it needed to be repealed and/or replaced. 

Thus, given that they had seven years to come up with a workable and working alternative to this rancid piece of legislation, one would have hoped that when they did regain control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency that would have done their homework and had a replacement bill ready to go the first day they could. That they would have negotiated out any differences within their party over the past seven years to have the best bill possible that would sail through to enactment.

But alas, as always when dealing with the political class, hope does not exist. When it was their turn at bat, they could not find their bat. When it was their turn to go for a touchdown, they could not find their helmet. They had nothing ready to go once the situation was perfect for them and as a result, their infighting has resulted in nothing to replace or repeal Obama Care. Heaven help us from all politicians and their inability to resolve any problem.

2) More than half of those who got health insurance under Obama Care did not get it through robust individual insurance policies purchased on the open market. They got Federal government insurance via Medicaid. While Medicaid is a low cost insurance option, it is also a low quality health insurance and health care option in so many ways, many of which we have previously discussed in this blog.

Betsy McCaughey is the chairperson of the Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths so she obviously knows something about health care and disease. In a July 5, 2017 article for the Heritage Foundation, she lays out her expert opinion on why Medicaid is so frigging bad for your health:

• First off she destroys the myth that liberals and Democrats are spewing that Republican efforts to fix the damage done by Obama Care will get senior citizens evicted from nursing homes, calling it “sheer demagoguery.”
• But she does imply that in one sense that would be a good thing in some cases since many Medicaid nursing homes are afflicted with “filth, rampant infections, and neglect—conditions routinely tolerated by our indifferent public officials.”
• For example, New York state pays out some of the highest Medicaid rates in the country but according to the Federal government ratings a whopping 40% of New York state nursing homes provide inferior care.
• This 40% is not even the worse in the country since 10 other states have higher rates of inferior care in their nursing homes.
• Across the country one third of nursing home residents, often Medicaid patients, incur serious, often permanent injuries due to neglect according to a recent Federal government inspector general report.
• The Federal government estimates that annually 380,000 Americans in nursing homes die from infections that they caught in those nursing homes.
• So you can see, in one sense, getting kicked out of a sub par nursing home might IMPROVE your health.

But that is besides the point. Republicans efforts to fix the Obama Care damage does not “gut” Medicaid spending as liberals and Democrats claim, it just slows down the rate of growth in Medicaid spending. And if Washington was doing its job and cleaned up the massive inefficiencies and criminal fraud in Medicaid that results in horrible nursing home conditions and the criminal pilfering of the Medicaid program then everyone’s health would be a lot better, And their would be more than enough money to help those that truly need better help than what they are getting today.

And by the way, Medicaid spending growth has to be brought under control. As we have reported previously, in four state budgets today Medicaid spending accounts for over 30% of the entire state government budget. As Medicaid keeps growing in costs, there is less and less state government resources for roads, schools, and other needed services. 

Medicaid is like a fifty year old pickup truck that was designed to tow two tons. It was never fixed up and kept in good shape over those fifty years. And then Obama Care came around, without upgrading anything within that old pickup truck, and told it to haul ten tons. As a result that fifty year old pickup truck is falling apart and costing more and more every year to do a job it was not designed to do. Fix the Medicaid truck, Washington or get a new one so that 40% of New York state nursing home patients do not live in squalor.

Depressing stuff to start off this month's Obama Care disaster review. Republicans that cannot plan ahead and Democrats who cannot tell the truth. Lord help us as we continue this week with 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.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

July, 2017, Part 5, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Wind Power Is Not The Answer and China Hits The Jackpot In The Paris Climate Agreement

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) While global warming advocates have always been big supporters of solar energy, we have shown research, numbers, and realities over this past week that proved the production and destruction of solar panels cause more total environmental damage than fossil fuel driven energy sources. This obviously should kill the lust of global warming advocates for solar energy.

But what about that other great savior of the Earth, wind power? Maybe that source of clean energy is the great salvation of humanity from manmade global warming and climate change without the destructiveness of solar panel mining, manufacturing, and destruction activities.

Unfortunately, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends research and report, wind power is probably not the salvation of the Earth that Al Gore types hoped for:

• According to the 2016 report, from a total energy perspective (i.e. not just electricity production), wind power provided about .46% of the global energy consumption in 2014 (solar and tidal energy sources were even less productive at a combined .35%).
• This paltry .46% was achieved despite decades worth of government and taxpayer subsidies for wind power generation.
• While about 14% of the world’s energy is from renewable sources, the vast majority (75%) of that renewable source consists of energy from biomass including sticks, logs, charcoal, and dung burned for energy by the poor around the world.
• Another large chunk of that renewable energy is from hydroelectric sources, not wind and solar.
• The International Energy Agency estimated that world energy demand grew 2% in 2014 or almost 2,000 terawatt hours.
• This means if we wanted to deploy wind turbines just to cover that incremental 2%, about 350,000 wind turbines would have to be installed just to cover the increase in energy consumption, not replace the energy from other sources.
• Since only about two thirds of that amount of wind turbines exist today, having been built over the past decades, it is highly unlikely that enough wind turbines could be put in place to even handle the year over year growth in energy needs.
• Given that 50 acres are needed for each megawatt of wind energy produced, 350,000 turbines would cover half the landmass of the British Isles and doing the same thing for 50 years to cover the annual growth in energy needs would eventually require a landmass the size of half of Russia.
• This energy source would of course still be subject to the whims of the local weather, no wind = no energy.
• And land availability is just one problem with wind energy; other problems include the pollution and CO2 created by the manufacturing, shipping, and installation of wind turbine parts and cement needed for their foundations and the other environmental issue of mining impacts on the environment from mining rare earth metals needed for the magnets of the turbines.
• Oh, and let’s not forget the biological impacts of the untold number of birds and bats killed every year from flying into the turbine blades.

A more detailed discussion of these numbers and other highlights of the International Energy Agency’s findings, including how much dirty coal has to be burned to build wind turbines, can be accessed at:

http://rightalerts.com/the-utterly-complete-and-total-fraud-of-wind-power/

So yes, let’s talk about global warming and climate change but let’s do it in the context of looking at ALL of the data and ALL of the research, including the tremendous downsides of solar and wind energy courses.

2) A lot of liberals and global warming advocates went nuts when Trump pulled us out of the illegal, un-Constitutional, and stupid Paris climate agreement. One of the primary reasons to pull out was the reality that the U.S. would have been making all of the sacrifices and paying blackmail to other countries not to pollute while other major players in the world economy would have had none of those same burdens placed on themselves.

The primary beneficiary of such a stupid agreement that Obama negotiated was China which was probably laughing all of the way to the bank with what it got away with in the agreement, as outlined by a Heritage Foundation article Michael Bastasch on June 2, 2017:

• Under the Paris agreement, China would be able to and plans to raise its coal powered energy generation capacity (remember, coal is a VERY big contributor to global warming) from 900 gigawatts in 2016 to as high as 1,100 by 2020, just three years from now.
• That would make China’s COAL generated energy larger than the TOTAL energy capacity of Canada.
• But this massive 22% increase in coal burning was somehow legal under the Paris agreement since China is allowed, under the agreement, to allow its greenhouse gas emissions to rise, in absolute terms, for another 13 years until 2030.
• In other words, China’s economy and citizens would not experience any global warming inconvenience or economic hardships for at least another 13 years, i.e. how badly did Obama handle that negotiating point with a major economic power and competitor and major CO2 emitter?
• China did promise to cut CO23 emissions per unit of output but that really does not matter if the total CO2 emissions is growing fast, i.e. “China can reduce its emissions per unit of output while increasing overall emissions—that’s what matters in terms of global warming. It’s almost like it is gaming the whole Paris Agreement.”
• The Energy Information Administration estimates that China’s total emissions will grow a whopping 32% between now and 2040 and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate will increase 34% over 2012 levels by 2030.
• Much of this new energy will be coming from coal powered power plants inside China.
• Oh, and by the way, not only is China getting away like highway robbers relative to its domestic energy production within the Paris agreement, but it is also exporting its coal production expertise around the world, having recently signed an agreement with Pakistan (according to a Reuters report) “to spend around $15 billion over the next 15 years to build close to a dozen coal power plants of varying sizes around the country.”

Bottom line is that the Paris Climate Agreement was a really crappy agreement from a U.S. perspective, an agreement that even Al Gore has publicly admitted would have virtually no impact on the environment. But it would allow countries like China to go along their merry way with little or no negative impact on their economies and citizens while burdening the U.S. and its taxpayers with economic hardships. It is a crappy, illegal agreement that should be ignored.

That will do it for this month’s review under the theme “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Climate is a difficult animal to understand, made even more difficult and dangerous when people like Al Gore ignore the realities, data, science, and research that do not fit their pre-conceived notions or agendas. The purpose of this theme is to uncover what is real and then decide what, if anything, should be done. More doubts 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