January, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: An Insurer Cashes Out, Obama Causes Healthcare Costs To Rise andMOre

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 it 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 but with a big exception: 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 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.

For the next several days we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) First Unitedhealthcare announced that it was seriously considering stopping its selling of Obama Care policies because of the unprofitability of such policies. But the bad news is that a real Obama Care insurer is actually taking the real step of actually getting out of the Obama Care business. 

Cleveland based HealthSpan insurance company recently announced that it would no longer sell Obama Care policies, it is disbanding its doctor network, and told its brokers to stop paying commissions. The company raised its premium rates for 2016 policies from 9% to 32% since it’s Obama Care policy holders were less healthy than expected. In addition, the law required the company to pay over $17 million into Obama Care’s risk adjustment program in 2014, more than what had been planned for. HealthSpan also laid off a number of employees that were servicing Obama Care policies.

This comes on the heels of Unitedhealthcare stating they were thinking about exiting the Obama Care world after losing almost half a billion dollars on Obama Care policies. Ana Gupte, an analyst for Leerink Partners, told investors that she expected Unitedhealthcare and other insurers would leave the Obama Care market if they could not break even by the first half of 2016. 

She said that she believes the Obama administration could make changes to the law. This opinion is especially funny since the Republicans, none of whom voted for the law, now control both houses of Congress so the chance of changes is absolutely zero.

2) Avik Roy, writing for Forbes on December 6, 2015, did a comprehensive review of where Obama Care is today:

• The Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released its official estimates of the uninsured population and of health spending in the U.S.
• In 2014, Obama Care’s expected expansion fell millions and millions of people short of enrollment goals.
• Despite its goal of reducing healthcare costs in the country, it drove health care costs higher by the highest rate in 7 years. 
• The legislation has reduced the number of uninsured Americans by only 2.7 percentage points.
• Back in 2010, the law was expected to have enrolled 19 million uninsured Americans into Obama Care policies by 2014 and 30 uninsured million by 2016.
• However, in late 2105, CMS admitted that from 2010 to 2014 the number of uninsured fell by only 12.6 million.
• And Mr. Roy contends that 2010’s uninsured rate was artificially higher due to the Great Recession and if you use 2008 as the baseline prior to the effects of the recession, the number of uninsured Americans actually fell by only 6.7 million.
• Thus, all of the agony of millions of people losing access to their current doctors, policies, and hospitals, all of the billions and billions of dollars spent on setting up Obama Care processes, co-ops, exchanges, and bureaucracies, all of the taxes and fees that have stunted economic growth in this country, all of that has reduced the percentage of Americans without insurance by only 2.7% and has left all of the root causes of ever rising healthcare costs intact.
• This meager improvement in the uninsured rate is far smaller than expected and promised by Obama.
• And as premiums and deductibles and co-pays go up and insurance companies actually leave the Obama Care world, the pipe dream of getting to 30 million enrollees gets more and more unlikely.
• A set of economists and statisticians at CMS recently stated in the “Health Affairs” publication that the country’s 2014 spending on healthcare grew at an annual rate of 5.3%, the highest rate since 2007.
• These economists and statisticians attributed the accelerating cost of healthcare to, wait for it, the passage of Obama Care: “The return to faster growth was largely influenced by the coverage expansions of the Affordable Care Act.” 
• In other words, this is another Washington effort that actually did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, rather than reduce rising costs it contributed to the acceleration of rising costs according to people actually in the Obama administration.
• Even more distressing was that the accelerated spending in healthcare costs was especially high within the Medicaid program, going up 11.0%. Since Medicaid expansion is a major component of Obama Care, an 11.0% annual increase is a major factor why Obama Care is directly responsible for the overall increase in the nation’s healthcare cost increases.

If we go by the numbers, as Mr. Roy did, there can be no doubt that Obama Care is a failure across the board relative to its original goals. It did NOT reduce healthcare costs, it appears to possibly even accelerated their rise and it did not come close to hitting its expected enrollment goals, missing those goals by millions of enrollees.

3)We will finish today’s post as we have done many other times when discussing Obama Care with some real life stories of how this law has negatively affected real Americans and their families. These examples come from the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com which has compiled some of these heartbreaking stories of real Americans being forced to adjust their lives due to the stress that Obama Care put on them:

GRETA - WYOMING: Sen Enzi: In Wyoming alone, there are over 2,600 people who are losing health care coverage they like. I have received numerous letters from my constituents illustrating the scope of this problem. Greta from Laramie is one of them. Greta is in graduate school and paying for tuition out-of-pocket. She had the university's student BlueCross BlueShield insurance plan. In September, her husband and two daughters received notice that their family insurance policy was gone. They were happy with their coverage. Greta said their plan had very good coverage of maternity and well-child visits, low deductibles, and an affordable monthly premium. Her family can't afford a new health insurance plan which, according to her, ``costs more and gives me less.'' That is what we are facing as a Nation: Health care plans we can no longer keep and broken promises from the White House.

ROSE - PENNSYLVANIA: I can not believe what has happened to my health insurance at work. Last year it cost me about 85.00 a month with 80% coverage. This year it doubled! I now pay 171.00 and for less coverage, as with a very high deductible! When I went to the Doctors just recently, they paid only 0.896 cents. Last year they covered the cost at 80%, so I do not know how they calculate or what my deductible is! I have to get blood work done, sure it will cost a lot more this year! When I called my benefits office they claim it's because of the new laws. Tried to cancel my insurance due to the fact I can not afford to pay them, and they claim company policy I can not unless I have a different insurance or leave the job. Why shouldn't I be able to get rid of something I can not afford?

KYLE - ARKANSAS: My plan was not cancelled, it was transitioned to meet the new ACA requirements. The same plan that I had before, now costs me $70 more a paycheck. I have a family of 4, including 2 kids. I went from $204 a paycheck to $274 a paycheck. I get paid 2 times a month so that's $140 a month or $1,680 a year. That's money that would have been spent in the local community on buying goods and services. This figure does not include the slightly increased co pays when I go to the dr or the additional costs for prescriptions. I thought the ACA was going to save me $2,500 a year?

That will do it for today. High costs, lower enrollment, unkept promises, and family heartaches. Sounds about right for the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. 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:

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, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 7: Prostitutes In The State Department, EPA's Hidden Man Caves, Ambassdorships For Sale, And More

This is the seventh in a series that reviews the monthly insanity from the American political class. It is truly unbelievable that we need so much time to chronicle the insanity, lunacy, wasteful spending, and other idiocy that the American politicians can wrought every month. And of course, they do so much bad stuff they never get around to resolving the truly major issues of our times, issues that threaten and hinder most Americans.

So let’s see if we can finish up the insanity today…but no promises:

1) Although most Presidential administrations do it, the Obama administration has taken it to unheard of heights. What is it? The awarding of ambassadorships not based on experience and not based on time spent in the State Department and not based on intelligence but based solely on how much money a person has raised for President Obama’s political campaigns or how much a person has helped Obama‘s political activities and accomplishments.

This latest insult to good government was reported by a June 28, 2013 article in the Washington Examiner. Patrick Gaspard, who is the current executive director of the Democratic National Committee, was a former political director for the Obama administration. He has been nominated to be the new ambassador to South Africa.

Gaspard had previously come under scrutiny for being connected to ACORN, the community organizing group that was accused of providing advice to undercover activists about running a prostitution ring. Thus, it appears that Gaspard has no State Department or diplomatic experience, he is simply a Democratic Party political operative.

But it gets more insane. Kirk Wagar isn’t even a political operative. He is a disability insurance attorney in Miami. His qualifications to be a U.S. ambassador: he helped raise $500,000 for Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. He has been nominated by Obama to be the ambassador to Singapore.

Alexa Wesner is the founder of an organization that helps investment groups to participate in Get Out the Vote efforts in Texas. She has been nominated as the American ambassador to Austria. And what a coincidence, she also helped raise $500,000 for Obama's re-election by hosting a $38,500 a plate dinner in 2011.

Isn’t it good to know that our international standing as a nation is not represented by professional, experienced diplomats but by people with no international training, experience, or smarts? Insanity.

2) Short sighted and ignorant gun control advocates constantly want to pass new laws in an impossible journey to document gun possession of everyone in the world. They somehow think that the Federal government would be a good approach to keeping track of guns in this country.

However, that assumption recently took a hit if you understand what a recent Federal Inspector General analysis and report found out. According to the report, hundreds of shotguns, pistols, rifles and machine guns have mysteriously disappeared from United States Park Police (USPP) Federal police weapons lockers and the government has no idea how it happened or who made the theft happen.

Again, this is the same Federal government, operated by the Obama administration, that has lobbied to restrict responsible gun owners’ Second Amendment rights, has been so inept that it could not even keep an accurate inventory of weapons assigned to less than eight hundred Federal police officers.

The Interior Department’s Inspector General (IG) report summed up this incompetence quite nicely when it stated these government folks have zero understanding of “Basic tenets of property management and supervisory oversight” for “firearms management.”

But it gets worse, according to extracts directly from the report:

1. Our review revealed that USPP had no proper accounting for hundreds of weapons. We discovered hundreds of handguns, rifles, and shotguns not accounted for on the official USPP inventory.
2. We also found that individuals appointed to oversee the program, including senior command officers, gave only minimal supervision to officers and other program staff who had access to unassigned weapons.
3. We found credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.
4. Commanders, up to and including the Chief of Police, have a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management.

Seems like the government has some explaining do before it says law abiding Americans need to have their guns tracked and documented, given the government cannot keep track of its own weapons.

3) Going back to the State Department, CBS News reported on June 13, 2013 that it had received documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal government watchdog entity, that implicate the State Department in a series of global misconduct incidents:

• The DDS investigation cited eight specific examples of gross misconduct.
• One incident alleges that a State Department security official in Lebanon “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards.
• But the indecent behavior was not restricted to low level State Department employees since an ambassador was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park. The DDS investigation found that the ambassador was permitted to return to his post despite having, “routinely ditched…his protective security detail” in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.”
• Another alleged incident charged that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries.” The investigation found that this type of problem was “endemic.”
• Aurelia Fedenisn, Former State Department internal investigator, is quoted by CBS: “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

Three very disgusting things about this scandal. First, it is just plain embarrassing to the country to have its foreign based employees misbehaving like this around the world. Second, more abuse of taxpayer dollars since we are paying for the prostitution and other misbehavior, either directly or indirectly.

Third, and this might be the most troubling, the State Department tried to cover up the misbehavior and to some degree intimidate the whistle blowers who uncovered the acts of prostitution and such. According to CBS, many times DDS agents and investigators were directly told to back off their investigation of misconduct by State Department employees. To the credit of DDS, they publicly exposed the cover ups in their report: “Hindering such cases calls into question the integrity of the investigative process, can result in counterintelligence vulnerabilities and can allow criminal behavior to continue.”

Prostitutes in Lebanon, previously covered lavish GSA and IRS conferences around the country, the Secret Service prostitute scandal when President Obama visited South America, some/many Federal employees are living the high life off of our tax dollars.

4) But wait! Seems we have not covered all of the Federal employee misbehavior from the past month yet. In a June 7, 2013 NY Daily News article, and other mainstream news sources such as Huffington Post, the EPA confessed to finding a “man cave” hidden in a Maryland EPA facility.

What is a “man cave?” Well, in the EPA organization, according to the Daily News, “a huge man cave [was] apparently built with taxpayer money in its main headquarters warehouse outside Washington, D.C. — complete with exercise equipment that could rival a gym's, big-screen televisions, couches, microwaves, refrigerators, pin-up photos, magazines and books, an official EPA report states. The Landover, Md., warehouse workers, who are employed by a private contractor, hid their recreation room oasis from security cameras by screens, partitions and piled up boxes.”

More disgusting waste of taxpayer wealth. But this abuse of government property was only half the issue. When the facility was inspected, if was determined that warehouse's record keeping was both incomplete and inaccurate. The warehouse was filled with EPA/taxpayer inventory that had gone neglected for years and is now mostly unusable.

Included in the lost, wasted assets were untouched refrigerators from 2007 and unopened computers from 2005. Thus, we have Federal contract employees, paid by the taxpayer, lounging about in their home made man cave and fitness center and not doing their assigned jobs, wasting taxpayer assets. Unbelievable.

That’s enough for today. I apologize for not getting through this month’s political class insanity in SEVEN posts, we will try and finish up tomorrow. But don’t blame me, blame those in Washington and State Department posts around the world for the mess that this government is in and the mess it has wrought on the country.

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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

An Open Letter to The President - Hoping For Unity But Sowing Disunity

Mr. President:

I found your words on national unity, at the end of your recent speech on the Afghanistan war, both empty and frustrating:

"This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue – nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse.

It is easy to forget that when this war began, we were united – bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again. I believe with every fiber of my being that we – as Americans – can still come together behind a common purpose. For our values are not simply words written into parchment – they are a creed that calls us together, and that has carried us through the darkest of storms as one nation, one people."

Here you are hoping and yearning for unity but your actions and silence sow disunity:

• When Americans were rising up and demanding answers to unclear health care reform issues and legislation, you condescended to those in disagreement and told them to stop "bickering", as if they were children bickering over the last piece of cake.
• When Air Force One and an accompanying Air Force fighter made very low flight passes over New York City, causing panic and fear in those New Yorkers on the ground who were reliving the horrifying memories of the 9-11 attacks, you displayed an arrogant insensitivity by working the incident into a joke you told several days later at a banquet.
• When Nancy Pelosi called those in disagreement with health care reform plans "un-American", you were silent.
• When Democratic Congressman Grayson of Florida called all Republicans "knuckle dragging Neanderthals", you were silent.
• When one of your czars, Van Jones, called all Republicans a--h---s in a public forum in Berkley that was captured on videotape and YouTube, you were silent.
• When Henry Reid stated publicly that American tourists, the very taxpayers that pay Congressional salaries, physically smell when they visit the nation's Capital in the summer, your were silent.
• When Pelosi and Reid and a small cabal of Democrats took the health care reform legislation effort behind closed doors and into quick, no review votes, bypassing formal, vital, and democratic debate, you were silent.
• While you graciously and quickly accepted the apology of Congressman Joe Wilson who yelled out "Liar" during your health care speech to Congress, when Pelosi went for a pound of partisan flesh by censuring the Congressman, you were silent.
• When ACORN came under scrutiny for voter registration and child prostitution shenanigans and misuse of taxpayer money, you were silent.

National unity usually manifests itself in one of two ways. First, an overwhelming tragedy such as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the 9-11 attacks can pull a nation together. Second, a great leader such as Churchill in World War II or President Kennedy's Camelot vision can pull the citizenry together for a greater purpose. However, allowing fellow citizens to be called a--h---s, un-American, smelly, knuckle dragging Neanderthals is no way to become a great leader of a unified nation. By speaking to American adults as if they were children, telling them to stop bickering when they were only freely expressing their opinions and concerns is no way to become a great leader of a unified nation. Making light of American fears by telling a joke about an incident that negatively impacted a lot of people is no way to become a great leader of a unified nation.

In less than a year you went from an approval rating over 70% to an approval rating under 50%, not because you made difficult and heroic decisions but because your were silent, condescending, and insensitive. Such a high approval rating provided an unprecedented opportunity at national unity that you yearn for. You missed that historic opportunity when you went from being the hope for a better national future to becoming just another partisan politician like the rest of the political class in Washington. What a shame.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.



YQF3W74UXXEA

VPBHWM375EAD

An ACORN Grows In Chicago

Earlier today the House of Representatives overwhelming voted to also defund the ACORN organization, following the lead of the Senate from a few days ago. The two votes now need to be reconciled and passed on to President Obama for signing into law. From what I can see, most Americans were appalled by videos that have been created at several ACORN offices that portrayed ACORN personnel advising a fake pimp and prostitute on how to get around government regulations and how to get government funding for their child prostitution rings. A few observations:

• The first videotapes showed up in the media before the latter tapes were taken. One would have thought that the ACORN leadership would have notified all of their offices that a fake pimp and prostitute were running a sting to see if they could get ACORN personnel to help them with their illegal prostitution idea. Not notifying their offices of the situation and allowing subsequent operations to become entangled is just plain stupid. Stupid organizations should not get taxpayer funding.
• An AP report today mentioned that 11 ex-ACORN employees were arrested in the Miami area this week for falsifying voter registration records. This comes on the heels of last year's Ohio problem with ACORN and accusations from ex-ACORN employees that they falsified voter registration records. Why has their been no Federal investigation of ACORN since they may have been in violation of a basic American right, the right to have every vote treated fairly and accurately and not count less because of fake registrations? Maybe the House should be investigating this treason-level act and let the Joe Wilson thing die.
• Seven US Senators voted not to defund ACORN and two of them, Dick Durbin and Roland Burris, are from Illinois. Apparently ACORN is very, very big in parts of Illinois, so much so that both state Senators voted not to defund them (and tick them off) even though it was pretty obvious from multiple videotapes that ACORN behavior's was highly unethical and possibly illegal. Pretty sad when a private organization supported with taxpayer funds can intimidate sitting US Senators. Which raises the age old question: which state has the worst politicians, New Jersey or Illinois? New Jersey recently had 44 local politicians arrested for kickbacks and other crimes. Three of the past five Illinois governors are either in jail or under indictment. And now Illinois US Senators voting in a distinct minority to continue business as usual with ACORN. It is probably a question for the ages (or until the next round of indictments).