October, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Insurance Company Exits, The Silence of Hillary, and An Illegal Bailout Stopped

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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) Over the past two days we have been reviewing how Obama Care is imploding across the country. It was a piece of legislation that was doomed to failure from Day One and now that reality is coming to past. Today and tomorrow we are probably going to sound a little redundant as we continue to review the implosions but it is important to understand how wide and how deep this disaster is becoming. So bear with us as we continue to document the impacts of the worst piece of legislation ever produced by Washington.

Let’s see what Michael F. Cannon had to say for the Cato Institute on August 30, 2016:

• It is now impossible to purchase an Obama Care policy in Pinal County, Arizona as ALL Obama Care insurance carriers have pulled out of the Obama Care market there, leaving 10,000 people without health insurance coverage.
• Aetna and Blue Cross had considered staying in the county if they could get an 86% and 65% increases in insurance premiums respectively approved by the state of Arizona but even then decided that even those huge increases in premium rates would not be enough to be profitable.
• The highly touted co-op concept also fizzled in the county since the Arizona Obama Care co-op went out of business like sixteen of its brethren did across the country.
• In a sad irony, those residents of Pinal County are still going to have to pay Obama Care fines for not having insurance even though it is impossible for them to buy Obama Care insurance policies in their county now.

So much for Obama's promise that the legislation would increase competition and reduce costs, it worked so bad that it eliminated ALL competition from the county, the exact opposite of the promise.

Mr. Cannon reminds us of Obama’s promises back in the early days of the legislation: “In 2009, President Obama promised that under Obamacare, “it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition” or “to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it the most” or “to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime.” Obamacare would place a “limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses” and require insurers “to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies.”

Weighty promises, none of which became true for people across the country who are losing access to most, if not all, Obama Care insurance carriers so it makes no difference if their costs of illness are limited or they get free services if they cannot even get a policy. The unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

2) Reason magazine, via an October 3, 2016 article by Peter Suderman, came up with a very interesting observation: even though Obama Care is imploding in glorious and disastrous ways, Hillary Clinton has been very, very quiet of the mess. In 15 out of 16 speeches she has given over the past month, she only mentioned Obama Care once and that was because Obama was in the audience. 

As a politician who until recently thought that Obama Care was a great accomplishment, maybe she looks a little foolish with that statement given that:

• The state of Minnesota state government announced that Obama Care premium rates would go up between 50% and 67% in 2017, with state officials calling it “an emergency situation.”
• A few weeks before Minnesota admitted Obama Care was coming off the rails in their state, Tennessee officials declared that its Obama Care exchange was “very near collapse.” That state approved rate hikes for Obama Care policies in 2017 of more than 40%.
• In Arizona, the majority of state counties will be served by only one Obama Care insurer with at least one county being served by NO Obama Care insurers.
• In at least four other states, the entire state in 2017 will be served by only one Obama Care competitor: Alaska, Alabama, Wyoming and Oklahoma.
• Janet Trautwein, the head of the National Association of Health Underwriters, a trade group for insurance brokers, was recently quoted in the The New York Times, "Employer markets are fairly stable, but the individual insurance market does not feel stable at all….In many states, the individual market is in a shambles."
• Even Obama realizes to some degree that things are coming apart with his recent suggestion that the Federal government become an insurance company, an idea we have already debunked and ridiculed yesterday.

No wonder Hillary has been quiet as things have unraveled, she is on record defending what is a rapidly sinking ship, as summarized in the Reason article: “Clinton's silence is telling. Crucial elements of Obamacare are on teetering on the brink of collapse, and the only solutions that its backers have on offer involve spending more public money and giving the government even greater power over health coverage and care. Is it any surprise she doesn't want to talk about it?” If she had a solution, this would be a great time to step into the breech. Given her hesitation, it must assumed that she has no solution.

3) Things have gotten so bad that the Obama administration tried to an end run around the wording of the law and illegally funnel money to insurance companies in a last ditch effort to keep them financially sound and in the Obama Care world. 

Fortunately, their efforts were uncovered and ruled illegal by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Chris Jacobs, writing for the National Review on September 29, 2016 did a great job explaining how things went down: “...the reinsurance funds collected from employers had two – distinct purposes: first, to repay Treasury for the $5 billion cost of a separate program in place from 2010 through 2013; and, second to subsidize insurers selling Obamacare plans to high-cost patients during the law’s first three years. When collections from employers turned out to be less than expected, HHS [the Obama administration] prioritized the second objective to the exclusion of the first – an action that, according to the GAO, violates the plain text of the statute. As the opinion noted, “the fact that HHS’s collections ultimately fell short of the projected amounts does not alter the meaning of the statute.” The memo continued that, because agencies must “‘effectuate the statutory scheme as much as possible’ . . . HHS continues to have an obligation to carry out the statutory scheme using a method reflective of the specified amounts even though actual collections were lower than projected.” As a result, the GAO concluded that the Department has no authority to divert to insurers approximately $3 billion in reinsurance contributions that should be allocated to the Treasury.” 

Nice try if illegal. But we should not be surprised, the Obama administration has illegally changed the law and delayed tenets of the law many, many times. This attempt to illegally divert billions of dollars to insurance companies smacks of desperation and crony capitalism.

Another day, another set of Obama Care failures More of the same 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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2016, Part 10, Political Class Insanity: Hillary's Lack Of Trabsparency, Our Opppresive Tax Freedom Day, and The Failure of Dodd-Frank

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) After seven and half years of Obama and his administration hiding secretes, stonewalling Freedom Of Information Act Requests, spying on journalists, and falling miserably short of his campaign promise to operate the “most transparent” administration ever, it would certainly be refreshing to have a President who actually is honest, in integrity, and not suppressing information that Americans have every right to see and examine, no matter how embarrassing to anyone in Washington. But if Hillary Clinton gets elected, we should probably expect more of the same thing, a government and administration shrouded in secrecy and corruption.

We make that assumption based on two of Clinton’s recent actions that provide no indication that she will be any different than Obama. It is no secret that Hilary is very chummy with and gets a lot of campaign donations from Wall Street firms and executives. In fact, she has given many private speeches to those same firms and executives for which she received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But she refuses to release the texts of those speeches to the public, a suspicious move that many have interpreted as saying that she will be very friendly to Wall Street interests if elected President. In fact, some people who heard those speeches verify that assumption. But she still refuses to release what could be very embarrassing and hypocritical texts of her speeches that would be in opposition to her public stands where she talks tough about Wall Street while secretly telling them not to worry.

And she followed up this potential scandal with the following little shenanigan. According to Chuck Ross, recently writing for the Daily Caller website, the Clinton campaign managers used a white noise machine to prevent reporters from hearing what Clinton was saying at a fundraiser speech in Colorado. This was reported by Stan Bush who is a reporter for Denver’s local CBS affiliate, CBS-4, who was present when the noise machine was turned on. 

The fundraising event was held outdoors at the home of Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democratic super delegate. Bush posted a video online of what it sounded like, comparing it to a low intensity throbbing noise, like a helicopter off in the distance. As with Obama and his lack of transparency, what is Hillary hiding? At least relative to transparency, maybe a Hillary Clinton Presidency would be just like having a third Obama term….unfortunately for democracy and integrity.

2) Earlier this week we talked about how insane Bernie Sanders is in that he actually wants to raise taxes on EVERY American if elected in order to fund is socialism/communism government programs. This insanity is despite the reality that the Washington political easily wastes hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a year from inefficiencies, duplication, uselessness, and criminal fraud. 

How heavy and despicable has the tax burden become in this country BEFORE Bernie Sanders tries to increase taxation in this country. Consider the latest Tax Freedom Day analysis from the Tax Foundation: 

• On average across the country, Tax Freedom day in 2016, the day we stop working for al levels of government and start working for ourselves and our families, will fall on April 24th.
• This is 114 days into the year, about a third of the year we now work for the American political class and the government levels they so ineptly operate.
• This breaks down to working 46 days to pay our Federal, state, and local income taxes, 26 days to pay our payroll taxes, 15 days to pay sales and excise taxes, 11 days to pay our property taxes, 9 days to pay the corporate taxes,and 7 more days to pay other assorted government taxes.
• And understand that this is a national average, some high tax states such as NewYork and California likely have Tax Freedom Days that extend into May, the fifth month of a 12 month year.
• If you include the deficit spending of the Federal government, essentially taxes that have been delayed into the future, then the true Tax Freedom day is actually 16 days later or May 10.
• In 1900, the average American paid only 6% of their income in taxes compared to almost a third in 2016.
• To more fully illustrate how oppressive taxation is now in this country, the Tax Foundation points out that in 2016 the average American will spend more in taxes than they spend on housing, clothing and food COMBINED:

Besides the insult of taking so much or our wealth in the face of how much money our politicians and government waste, such a high tax burden severely impacts our personal freedoms. We have less money to start our own business. We have less money to send our kids to the schools we want them to attend. We have less money to help out our favorite charities. We have less money to live where we want. We have less money to live the lives we want to live despite working hard to get the wealth we end up giving to the government.

And as we have said many times before, it is not as if we have a lot to show for giving the political class almost a third of our annual earnings. Our roads, bridges, and tunnels are still falling apart. Our borders still leak. Our public schools still continue to not educate our kids. Our government retirement plans, Social Security and Medicare, are plummeting towards insolvency. Current political and government economic policies have resulted in anemic economic growth.

If giving government and the politicians that operate it one third of our earnings has failed, maybe we need to do the opposite, reduce taxation and reduce government’s size and wasteful spending habits. How much worse could it get? This country was formed under the banner, “Taxation without representation.” Today, taxation with representation is not much better.

3)The Dodd-Frank legislation passed early in the Obama administration was supposed to make sure that the Great Recession never occurred again. Besides being over 1,000 pages long, the regulations that have been written so far to support the law now total over 22,000 pages. It was this legislation that created the term, “too big to fail.” This means that big financial institutions and banks would never again be allowed to have such a big negative effect on the industry and the national economy that it would cause another recession and/or require the American taxpayer to bail them out.

Despite what its supporters of the law said at the time, it is pretty obvious from a number of perspectives that this law was doomed to failure from the start. First off, anything that is 22,000 pages long is way too unwieldy to be effective. No bank or government entity is going to efficiently, effectively or legally understand what is buried in 22,000 pages of government jibber jabber.

Second, if anything, today’s banks and financial institutions are bigger and riskier than they were ten years ago prior to the Great Recession. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and others are not any smaller. Although they may have set aside more resources to cover a cash crunch, market crash, or other downturn, they still are too big to fail today.

This last assumption was recently voiced by Neel KashKari. Mr. Kashkari was the main driver and developer of the Federal government’s bank bailout program during the Great Recession and oversaw the infamous TARP program (Troubled Asset Relief Program) that fed taxpayer funds to the big financial institutions and banks. He is now the President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. Thus, Mr. Kashkari has some pretty impressive credentials when it comes to knowing what is going on in the financial industry today.

In a recent speech, he boldly stated that the country’s major financial institutions are still too big to fail. That in the next financial crisis, Dodd-Frank be damned, the American taxpayer will have to rescue these same financial institutions again despite 22,000 pages of useless regulations. His solution is much simpler than 22,000 pages of regulations: turn the too big to fail banks into smaller banks by breaking them up into smaller component pieces.

Then, if a new, smaller bank failed during an economic downturn, no big deal, no taxpayer bailout. Simple, elegant and not a chance of ever becoming reality, given how closely big banks and American politicians have become: favorable legislation and treatment for continual campaign donations.

Another day, another set of insanity from the political class. Ineffective financial reform legislation, as stated by an insider expert, despite much ado about nothing, the oppressive and tyrannical tax burden in America today, and Hillary’s lack of transparency, i.e. what is she hiding? 

This is the last post in this month's continuing series of Political Class Insanity. This month has set a record in that we needed a whopping ten days to get through all of the nonsense, idiocy, wasteful spending, loss of freedom, and other fiascos from the American political class. Things are getting worse over time vs. getting better. 

Maybe it is finally time to implement term limits, for lord knows allowing the same tired and corrupt politicians to stay in office year after year is not working. How much worse could it get if we got some new people in those chairs in Congress and the White House:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Aprtil, 2016, Part 4, Political CLass Insanity:Americans Leaving The Country, EPA Destructive Idiocy,and GM Still Owes Us $10 Billion

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:1) Obama keeps saying that things are great in America despite the reality that over 45 million Americans are receiving government food assistance, the labor participation rate is at 40 year lows, economic growth continues below the historical trend rate, over 14 million Americans cannot find a job or can only find part time work, the national debt will likely double under his watch which will burden future generations’ economic well being, the threat of terrorism growths more dangerous every day, a large majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, freedoms and liberties are being crushed by the political class, and no major issue facing America ever gets resolved. The gap between his perception and the reality of America today is mind boggling. But let me throw out another mind boggling statistic that shows how depressed Americans are. According to an analysis from CNNMoney, more Americans than ever are leaving America forever. 4,279 Americans cut their ties with the country in 2015, up 20% in just one year. This reality is 18 times higher than the number of Americans who renounced their citizenship in 2008, just before the onset of the Obama Presidency.One theory is that the high taxes and the complexity of filing taxes with the IRS, especially Americans who are living and working abroad, have frustrated some Americans so much that they have just decided to get away from this complexity of tax compliance. So rather than getting tax money from these likely wealthy Americans by making filing taxes easier and less expensive to pay, the Washington political class is forcing these Americans to go elsewhere in the world, taking ALL of their taxable income with them. The trend of Americans getting out is on a steadily increasing trend year over year:



How bad is the current set of politicians that their inability to have a coherent and fair tax system is actually causing more and more Americans to give up the citizenship of their country? Sad and pathetic.2) Parts of Kentucky and West Virginia are turning into third world economic basket cases because Obama and his administration have been trying to destroy the coal industry in this country from day one of the administration. Under the shaky and theoretical assumption/myth of man made global warming, this administration has pushed through regulations that have dampened the use of coal in this country and caused massive unemployment growth in the coal mining regions of Kentucky and West Virginia.But at least these newly unemployed Americans can take satisfaction that the destruction of their livelihood and lives helped save the planet. But did their sacrifices save the planet? Not according to the head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy. The EPA’s latest coal killing effort, was meant to show “leadership” in the world vs. actually curbing man made global warming, according to McCarthy. That’s right, we are ruining people’s via the EPA for no reason and no impact on the environment.And even this "show" only objective is coming up far short. According to a Congressman, stated during McCarthy’s Congressional hearing when she said the plan was just for show: “But even then no one is following us. Since that Paris accord China has already announced that they’re going to put up 360 [coal plants]. India has announced that they’re going to double their use of coal since the Paris accord.”But 360 new coal plants is just the start. China plans on using more coal in its energy future and India has said that it will DOUBLE its coal usage within four years. Thus, the two countries that Obama was trying to impress with our citizens’ sacrifices, China and India, have basically said go away, we will use more coal and build more coal plants regardless of what the U.S. does. And while our lesser use of coal will be wiped out by the much higher use of coal by the rest of the world, thousands of American families and workers have their lives destroyed for nothing. How insane is that?3) We have not talked about the taxpayer bailout of General Motors lately but it recently has popped up in the news. Back in the midst of the Great Recession, the Washington political class gave General Motors (GM) tens of billions of dollars and additional tax breaks in order to prevent them from going through a traditional bankruptcy proceeding. Keep in mind that when the Federal government finally got out of the bailout arrangement with GM, the American taxpayer was out over $10 billion.Now, fast forward to today. Based on the latest government filings by the company, as reported by Elizabeth MacDonald of Fox Business, while GM makes nearly all of its profits in the U.S., in 2015, GM paid only $5 million in Federal income taxes. If you add up all of the taxes GM paid to all levels of government in this country in 2015, the ended up paying nothing in taxes despite record sales and high profits. But GM, according to government filings, paid $908 million in taxes in China despite getting most of its sales and profits from the U.S. Now, I have always advocated for Americans and American businesses to be taxed at the lowest rate possible since the American political class wastes so much of our tax money now. But really, something is wrong, and it is probably called crony capitalism, when politicians can give a private company tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer wealth, allow that company to not pay back over $10 billion of that wealth despite being a profitable enterprise, so much so that it can pay a foreign government almost 10% of what it still owes the American taxpayer in one year. How insane is our tax code and the idiots that operate it?Oh, and to add to insults to injury, recall that when the GM bailout package was put forth, Obama promised it would not cost taxpayers “a dime,” another Obama lie or deception. Also, instead of investing in American workers and American factories, GM recently announced that it will be the first auto maker to import and sell one of its Chinese made SUVs, in this country later this year. Pathetic.That will do it for today’s insanity. A political class that throws taxpayer wealth at its corporate cronies with no great return on those funds, an EPA and administration that kills industries and people’s livelihood for no reason, and Americans continue to get so fed up with the mess that our politicians have put the country in that they are willing to renounce the citizenship of their birth and their lives. More insanity 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

October, 2014 Part 1 - The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - More Americans to Lose Their Policies, But Insurance Companies Might Get Bailed Out and More

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

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

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. To see what disasters have popped up over just the past month or so, read on:

1) An article in the Investors Business Daily that was written by Stephen Moore and published on October 1, 2014, highlighted the very real reality that insurance companies that took on Obama Care policies are likely going to receive taxpayer bailout funds as a result of the Obama Care legislation.

The bailout potential is legislation's controversial "risk corridor" program, which is supposed to provide financial "protection" against losses to insurers that sponsor exchange plans. The basis of the concept was to create a pool of funds from the profits of some insurers with ObamaCare plans to offset the losses of others. According to a 2013 analysis by the Society of Actuaries, the risk corridors program "provides a strong incentive for insurers to participate in the health insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable healthcare act.". 

In other words, the Federal government took a lot of the risk out of being an Obama Care policy provider. If a company screwed up its operations or financial results, they could always blame the legislation and get rewarded for not doing the job profitably.

Without these subsidized risk corridors and financial incentives to prop up the Obama Care plans, insurance companies will stop issuing Obama care plans and policies, and the entire program could be derailed.

Mr. Moore’s article goes on to compare this insanity to the insanity that was used to back up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the real estate industry, a back up plan that cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars. The Federal government guarantee on bad mortgages encouraged bad mortgages to be written by mortgage brokers since they could count on the government to make them whole on defaulted bad mortgages. 

The guarantee against losses on Obama Care enrollees encourages insurers to toss sound underwriting standards out the window, knowing that any bad policy decisions will be financially rewarded by the American taxpayer. Should be interesting to see how Obama and the Federal government try to spin this potential taxpayer hit where the lowly American taxpayer bails out big companies who are in cahoots with the Federal government. 

2) Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, recently wrote a piece on how the Obama Care legislation is turning the country into a country of part time workers, based on analyses done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He ponts out three specific reasons why the law is causing more part time jobs to be caused vs. full time jobs to be caused or retained:

• Obama Care carries an explicit tax on full-time work.
• Obama Care carries an implicit tax on full-time work for those who are ineligible for the Obama Care’s health insurance subsidies.
• Obama Care carries an implicit tax that links the amount of available subsidies to workers’ incomes.

Based on these three factors, the Mercatus analysis and research found that the law will eventually reduce weekly employment per person by about 3 percent—translating to roughly 4 million fewer full-time-equivalent workers. 

The primary conclusion of their work is that Obama Care and its subsidy and tax structures create strong incentives to work less. It will create an environment that will put millions in a position in where working part time (29 hours or fewer, as defined by the ACA) will yield more disposable income than working their normal full-time schedule. Furthermore, it appears, based on their study, that women will be far more affected then men by this impact on full time employment.

Thus, another piece of freedom slips away. When government policy dictates whether or not you should work full time or part time, that is not a good policy. That choice should be left to the individual with government policy not having any influence on that freedom of choice.

3) David Hogberg’s writing has been referenced a number of times in this blog. Mr. Hogberg writes for Amy Ridenour’s National Center blog and specializes in health care and Obama care issues. His recent writing from October 10, 2014 took a look at how Obama Care was impacting health insurance coverage obtained from employers:

• His analysis was based on research work done by various branches of the Federal Reserve Board.
• The only piece of good news coming out of the research was that the percentage of businesses that are increasing the number of employees covered exceeds those that are covering fewer employees. 
• However, all of the other the other changes to employer plans was bad news for employees.
• The percentage of businesses that are increasing employee contributions, premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums and co-pays far exceed the percentage that are reducing them in every type of business. 
• As for range of services covered and size and breadth of the networks, the differences between the percentage of businesses that are reducing them versus increasing them aren’t as large, but they are still substantial.

So, costs are going up and quality is going down, offset by some increase in the number of employees covered. Not a good report card but not surprising, given all of the other analyses and realities we have reported about this heinous piece of legislation. Obama promised lower costs and higher quality care and like most Federal government endeavors, we got just the opposite: lower quality at higher cost.

4) All opinion polls about Obama Care show a strong majority of Americans who want the law radically changed or terminated altogether. Recent polling shows the same results with even Democratic voters more and more believing that this is a very bad piece of legislation:

• In May, only 6% of Democrats said Obama Care hurt them. But recent polling shows that 15% of Democrats polled said Obama Care hurt them.
• The poll found that only 27% of Democrats say Obama Care has helped them, a slight 4% increase since May. 
• Overall, more than one in five Democrats (21%) said in the long run Obama Care will “make things worse.”

Not a good sign when you core constituents are having growing doubts about the legislation. And that doubt could get larger by the November elections since in the next few weeks, insurance companies in thirteen states and DC are likely going to terminate hundreds of thousands of existing insurance policies as a result of Obama Care mandates that require these polices to fulfill extensive Obama Care requirements: “It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

In Virginia alone it is expected that 250,000 existing health policies on the chopping block…forcing people to seek alternative health care coverage in the middle of election season. And we already know what is likely to happen when these people look to buy Obama Care policies:

• Many of those forced out of their current plans and into Obama Care may not be able to keep their doctors or access their favored hospitals.
• They will likely face higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expense, making Obama Care an election issue on the eve of voting.

An other month and another set of disasters: perfectly good insurance policies getting cancelled for no good reason, businesses cutting back on insurance coverage for their employees, loss of freedom in deciding whether to work full time or part time, and other taxpayer bailout for big business highly likely. And we have just begun, more disasters tomorrow and the following days from the piece of legislation that never stops giving…bad news.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 3: Obama Care Increases Costs and the Number of Uninsured, Fining The Poor Becuase They Are Too Poor, and Rube Goldberg Would Be Proud

This is our third post in our regular monthly series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have been documenting this disaster for the past several years but over the past year or so we have had to go to multiple posts every month just to keep up with the waste, the lunacy, and failures of Obama Care.

The first post in this month’s updates can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/06/june-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is_6417.html

Past posts can be found by just entering “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

1) One of the big promises of Obama Care and its supporters is that lower income people would see most of the benefits and little, if any, of the financial pain of the legislation’s tenets. However, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis and report, that is nothing more than another broken promise of this administration:

• According to the analysis, about one million low-income Americans will pay a fine under Obama Care.
• These one million Americans are among the estimated four million Americans who will need to pay the individual mandate penalty for not having health insurance by 2016 as a result of Obama Care: “All told, CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] JCT estimate that about four million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf). An estimated $4 billion will be collected from those who are uninsured in 2016, and, on average, an estimated $5 billion will be collected per year over the 2017–2024 period.”
• A chart included in the report revealed that 200,000 of those estimated to be paying the Obama Care penalty will be earning less than 100 percent of the poverty line. 
• An additional 800,000 Americans are considered low-income, earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, will also be paying Obama Care penalties

What makes this situation doubly ironic is 1) the President claimed that health care costs would go down $2,500 on average for American families, and now we are seeing poorer American families being financially penalized for not making enough money to afford health care insurance and 2) at one point Obama actually campaigned against this mandatory insurance coverage option back in 2008. This happened during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, because he realized the insanity of a mandate for imposing fines on people who could not afford health insurance to begin with.

Apparently, that view was just for the campaign since his signature piece of legislation, Obama Care, did exactly that, mandated poor Americans to pay a fine for not buying something they could not afford. Insanity.

2) In another illegal move by the Obama administration, it is again going against the schedule and requirements of passed legislation by allowing 18 states to continue delaying a key part of Obama Care’s health insurance exchange for small businesses, “employee choice.” This latest delay puts off this component of the legislation until 2016, if then.

Which raises the same question that has been raised any number of times after this administration unilaterally and arbitrarily delayed numerous pieces of this legislation: if the President thinks he can change approved legislation according to any whim that strikes him, then why are we still paying the 500 members of Congress? We apparently do not need them if their only function is to pass legislation that turns into mere suggestions, rather than law, and Obama does what he wants? Obama Care is not only the worst piece of legislation ever passed it is turning into the most lawless piece of legislation ever passed.

3) We have previously discussed the top line results of a recent University Of Minnesota study that concluded that health care costs will accelerate because of Obama Care and that there will actually be more uninsured Americans five or so years down the road then there are today as a result of Obama Care. 

I recently came across a more in depth discussion of that work by one of the analysis’s authors, Mr. Parente, who is an associate dean of the Carlson School of Management and director of the Medical Industry Leadership at the University of Minnesota. Highlights of his analysis and what drives his conclusions include the following:

• Health-insurance companies who deal with Obama Care policies are expected to soon begin releasing insurance policy rate estimates for next year's plans, with most industry experts expecting consumers to experience far significantly higher premiums. 
• It is not expected by that Federal subsidies will increase by the same amount to keep current Obama Care policy holders financially whole, meaning that those policy holders will experience higher out of pocket costs in 2015.
• If this happens, both in 2015 and in the follwing years as expected, lower-income and some middle-income consumers will be forced out of the private insurance market, viewing the expense as more and more unaffordable.
• Using the 2014 health-insurance exchange enrollment data and a micro-simulation model funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Parente estimated the national and state impact of Obama Care on insurance prices and enrollment from 2015-24 to illustrate this phenomenon.
• The average premium for an individual exchange health plan (Silver) will increase by $1,375 by 2019 while the average family premium for the same plan will increase by $4,198. 
• The steepest price increases will not occur until 2017 and after, when three things happen.
• First, Obama Care‘s "essential benefits" requirements will kick in. All Obama Care insurance plans, including those currently exempted for hardship and old plans extended for various reasons, must provide all of the law's mandated benefits from January 1, 2017. On average, roughly 15% of plans offered in 2013 do not qualify for sale on the insurance exchanges once all of the time extensions run out. Depending on the state, as many as 60% of the plans sold in 2013 would not be permitted for sale going forward since they do not cover all of the essential and mandated benefits, forcing people to buy more expensive plans or drop health insurance altogether..
• Second, Obama Care’s program to subsidize those insurance companies that provide Obama Care policies will also expire in 2017, i.e. the bailouts end in 2017. 
• Other insurance companies subsidies also end in 2017. For example, health insurers will no longer be able to bill the government for 80% of a patient's health-care costs when they make more than $45,000 in annual claims. As all of these subsidies end, the insurance companies are highly likely to pass the now unsubsidized costs unto their policy holders, further increasing the cost of Obama Care policies, leaving consumers to pick up the tab through premium payments. Federal subsidies will be unable to keep up with such dramatic rate spikes. 
• Faced with all of these upward cost pressures, consumers will react the only way they know how: by looking for cheaper options such as the remaining high-deductible health plans offered by private companies and the exchanges as well as plans with very limited physician and hospital networks established to maximize efficiency but not quality care for the average patient. These plans are likely to provide no or limited access to specialized facilities and physicians. 
• And finally, rising premiums will create a death spiral exodus from insurance plans, with increasing departures forcing insurance companies to raise premiums even more on the remaining customers to make up for the shortfall which will drive out more customers from Obama Care plans, etc. 
• And these disasters and death spirals exclude what might happen with employer provided health insurance plans. It is expected that many businesses will find it less expensive to drop their company insurance plans and pay the Obama Care fines, forcing millions (the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the ACA will lead to a seven-million person decline in insurance provided by employers by 2020) of Americans to find health insurance coverage on the individual market at the same time that individual market insurance policy costs are spiraling upwards.

This leaves the newly uninsured with two options: If they qualify by their income, sign up for Medicaid or stay uninsured and face a penalty. Many will choose the first option but that will cover a relatively minor set of uninsured Americans since those people exceed the income limits of Medicaid. 

Whatever these millions of Americans do, there will be a significant number of uninsured Americans unwilling or unable to pay for the constantly increasing cost for health insurance available on the exchanges and forced to pay penalties. By 2024, the authors of this analysis and research estimate that there will be more than 40 million uninsured, roughly 10% more than today.

Thus, here we have another well researched and thought out piece of analysis that shows again that Obama Care will do the exact opposite of what it set out to do: rather than decreasing the cost of health insurance and making health insurance affordable for millions of Americans, it will make health insurance more and more unaffordable for every American and eventually result in a net gain of uninsured Americans when it was supposed to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

4) One last piece of bad news today to chew on about Obama Care. The original legislation is supposed to be about 2,500 pages long. The number of pages of regulations that were created to implement the law is reported to be well over 10,000 pages. As we have said many times before, there is nothing elegant about this legislation. It is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that is so complicated it will eventually collapse and implode into itself from its own complexity and idiocy.

Someone actually tried to flowchart the actual information and process flows of Obama Care. This is legitimately what they came up with:






No way something this complicated has any chance of ever succeeding, especially if the Washington political class and Federal government bureaucracy are operating the levers.

Based on this flowchart, one of my favorite sayings comes to mind: “Try to pare things down, Very few moves to a lot.” It looks like Obama Care got this wisdom backwards, like it got everything else backwards: “Never pare things down. A lot of moves, spread over 2,500, pages accomplishes very little." 

We will finish up our latest Obama Care analyses tomorrow. As you read through these posts it becomes very clear that we have been right all along. We have always maintained that the legislation never went after the root causes of our escalating health care problems, a view we will explore tomorrow using some very interesting data and research. 

Because at the end of the day, regardless of what Obama Care does, Americans will still be overweight, they will still eat too much of the wrong kind of foods, they will not exercise enough, and they will still smoke too much. Those and a few other factors are the drivers behind our escalating health care costs, not whether or not someone has a bronze insurance plan from Obama Care. Obama Care will never succeed since it never understood the root causes of the problem, mistaking a public health crisis for a health insurance coverage crisis.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Debating The Merits Of Yogurt, Unintended Heroin Consequences In Afghanistan, and More

This is our second post this month in our recurring monthly series on political class insanity. We do this update every month in order to stay on top of the never ending wasteful spending, idiocy, inane comments, and ineffective programs that the American political class continually piles on us, the nation, our freedoms, and the economy. 

1) Over Memorial Day weekend, traditionally a heavy car traveling time, the Obama administration set another dubious record relative to not having a comprehensive and strategic energy plan and vision for the country, a plan that would reduce energy costs while protecting the environment. 

May 26 marked the 1,251th consecutive day that the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline in this country cost more than $3 a gallon, according to AAA data. Recall that when Obama came into office, the average price for that same gallon of regular gas was about $1.89. Thus, during the first five and a half years of this administration, the cost of gas has gone up about 93% relative to today’s average price of just over $3.62 a gallon.

And given the Washington political class’s inability to think strategically or agree on just about anything, it is highly doubtful that the American consumer and driver will see any kind of breakthrough in this area in the near or distant future. Constantly high gas prices force consumers and households to divert their income and wealth to energy needs and not for growing the economy.

2) The next one I love since it proves that at whatever level of government a politician is residing, they almost always have the wrong priorities and work on the little stupid issues that no one really cares about in these time of high unemployment, failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, leaky borders, etc.

State senators in New York were hard at work recently spending legislative time on whether or not to make yogurt the official state snack. Let me let that statement sink in for a minute. Of all the problems facing New Yorkers, these buffoons are not only proposing that yogurt become the official snack of the state they are actually DEBATING the issue. You cannot make this lunacy up.

The following video clip from Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart highlights the best moments of this debate. Take note how one legislator actually wants to argue the definition of what a snack is:

http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/12/joke-new-york-senate-passes-bill-making-yogurt-state-snack/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

3) In a previous insanity post we had discussed the idiocy of having people on the payroll in Washington D.C. that are actually responsible for dictating how street crosswalks are to be designed and implemented. I guess they did not think that local politicians and local citizens could figure out how to implement safe school crossing signs. Such a waste of taxpayer wealth on Federal bureaucrats that add nothing to anyone’s life.

But this type of transportation related idiocy is not confined to street crossings. When the Federal government gives back each state a cut of the gasoline tax that the states collected in the first place, they dictate that 2% of those funds be used or set aside for Transportation Alternatives Programs or TAP.

TAP options include such things as sidewalks, streetlamps, bicycle paths and beautification. While some of these things might be necessary, e.g. sidewalks, does it make sense to force states to pay for shrubbery and bike paths when the country’s infrastructure is falling apart?

Is it better to fix a failing bridge or to plant some nice bushes next to a bike trail? Every dollar for beauty is one less dollar spent on safety. For example, the state of Pennsylvania is required to set aside $27.5 million for TAP programs in 2014 and NOT use that money to fix the 5,218 deficient and failing bridges in the state. Insanity that some nameless, faceless bureaucrat can dictate the priority of a bush over the safety of citizens.

4) The Obama administration has had an ugly and expensive tendency of betting taxpayer money on the wrong businesses and industries over the duration of its term. It lost tens of billions of dollars trying to prop up failing alternative energy companies, almost all of whom had contributed money to Obama’s election campaigns. These companies include but are not limited to, Solyndra, A123, Beacon, Evergreen, Spectra, and others.

Another failed bet, a bet that wasted billions and billions of taxpayer wealth, is General Motors. According to a May 15, 2013 Associated Press report, this is what we are getting from a quality perspective for our billions of dollars: 

• General Motors is recalling more than 140,000 2014 Chevrolet Malibu cars to fix a problem with the power-assisted brakes. 
• The recall affects models with 2.5-liter four-cylinder engines and stop-start technology that shuts off the engine at red lights. 
• The Malibus were part of a larger recall involving 2.7 million vehicles.
• The biggest component of the recall, 2.4 million midsize cars from model years 2004 to 2012, is concerned with brake lights that can fail.
• GM confirmed it knew about the defective brake light problem as early as 2008, about when the bailout plan involving tens of billions of tax dollars was starting to being formulated.
• This latest recall comes on the heels of another recall of 2.6 million smaller cars earlier this year for faulty ignition switches. 
• GM knew about that problem for at least a decade, well before Washington rewarded this type of behavior with a bailout.
• The ignition switch problem, which can unexpectedly shut down a car's engine, has been linked to at least 13 deaths.
• In total, GM has already recalled more than 11 million cars and trucks in the U.S. so far this year.

Three main insanity issues here. First, the Washington political class gave GM billions of dollars despite the many product problems it had that were likely killing Americans. Second, the Federal government, which is supposed to be protecting Americans from faulty products, failed miserably to act for over a decade despite being financed for all of these years with taxpayer money. And finally, did GM management intentionally cover up these fatal defects in order to have their company and careers saved by a taxpayer bailout? If so, is that a criminal act?

In any case, wasting money on defective products should never be a government function

5) About 80% of the world’s heroin supply is cultivated in Afghanistan, according to a recent Sacramento Bee article that was summarized in the February 21, 2014 issue of The Week magazine. Yes, the country where we were involved in the longest warfare in our history, a place where we wasted probably hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American servicemen’s lives, is now the premier producer of illegal heroin.

Under the Taliban, the entire Afghan heroin industry was almost totally wiped out. Under the corrupt government we helped install, the heroin trade is now worth about $3 billion a year or about 15% of the country’s GDP. 

Thus, another incremental cost of our Afghan military venture will be the cost and destruction of heroin right here in this country’s streets from drug addiction. Talk about unintended consequences. But unintended consequences are a staple of the American political class who never attempt or never have the ability to think through what problems their actions might result in before jumping in without a long term strategic plan in place.

That will do it for today, but more insanity will follow at least into tomorrow. Until then, consider joining our movement to impose term limits on all Federal politicians, one and done. 

Because really, how much worse could it get if we replaced all of the current politicians in Washington, the same ones that botched the whole Afghanistan mission, the same ones that took our money and gave it to their corporate cronies for nothing in return, the same ones that rate shrubbery more important than road conditions, etc. Let’s replace the current ones with a new set of people who might be a lot smarter and a lot more concerned with the future of the country than what we are stuck with now:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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