December, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Child Abuse, Food Assistance Abuse, and Fiscal Abuse at the State Government Level

It has been almost a month since Donald Trump has been elected which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) Yesterday we reviewed how over time many Washington politicians have been charged and found guilty of crimes despite being a member of Congress. But it is not just actual politicians that are downright disgusting and criminal, many times it is the people they hang out with that are just as despicable. According to Brett Deckwer, writing for USA Today on November 20, 2016, Democratic Party operative Terrence Bean, likely possibly into this category: 

• Bean was recently arrested in Portland, Oregon and charged with two felony counts of having sex with a minor.
• Bean has solid White House and Democratic Party connections, having raised over half a million dollars for Obama’s 2012 election campaign.
• According to oregonlive.com: "Bean has been one of the state's biggest Democratic donors and an influential figure in gay rights circles in the state. He helped found two major national political groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and has been a major contributor for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama."
• Bean has flown on Air Force One and has made contributions to such Democratic politicians as Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Dick Durbin, and Congressman Barney Frank, among others. Photos of Bean posted online show him flying on Air Force One with Obama.

Of course, Mr. Bean is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But I would bet that a lot of politicians are thankful that the mainstream press has not pursued such a sordid situation. More details from the story can be accessed at the USA Today website at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/20/kiah-lawson-terry-bean-human-rights-campaign-gay-sex-obama-prison-column/70021560/

2) We have never denied that the obesity levels in this country for both adults and kids, are a major, major driver of the ever escalating nd ahigh healthcare costs in this country. Obesity causes all kinds of health conditions to develop including heart disease, diabetes, joint degeneration, and other maladies, all of which require health care usage and expenditures. This situation is one of the reasons that Obama Care has been and will continue to be a failure in that it failed at addressing this root cause of high healthcare costs. 

In probably its only attempt to address obesity, we have been subjected to Michelle Obama’s fight to force American school kids to eat a balanced meal by dictating what kids should eat in school. Rather than launch a public health initiative to address the need to eat right, it tried to force kids to eat right by dictating school menus. This has resulted in massive amounts of school food being wasted and thrown out and causing school budgets to be strained to comply with the Federal regulations, all for no gain since kids are not eating right anyway.

Maybe her efforts should have been more focused on the bad eating habits of American families receiving Federal food assistance every month via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Terence P. Jeffrey, reporting for the CNS website on November 22, 2016, discussed the buying habits of people under the SNAP program at a major national food retailer:

• According to a new study from the Federal agency, the Food and Nutrition Service, more SNAP money is spent on soda at the retailer's locations used in the study, a major source of the nation’s obesity problem, than any other food product category.
• A whopping $357,700,000 of SNAP money was spent on soft drinks at the grocer’s stores in the study, accounting for over 5.4% of all SNAP dollars spent.
• This was almost 50% more than what was spent on milk ($253,700,000) and about 75% more than was spent on ground beef ($201,000,000).
• In addition to bad purchases from an obesity perspective, over 3% was spent on bag snacks (e.g. potato chips), 1.54% was spent on “frozen handhelds and snacks,” 1.46% on packaged candies, 1.31% was spent on ice cream and sherbets, 1.19% was spent on cookies, and 1.04% was spent on cakes.
• Thus, over 15% of SNAP money was spent on items that Michelle Obama would have NEVER allowed to be served in the nation’s schools for lunch.
• Compared to non-SNAP money spent, only 11.47% of the money spent was spent on the above listed obesity related food, far below the 15% that SNAP recipients spent at the same grocer.
• For example, SNAP buyers spent 35% more of their budget on soda than non-SNAP buyers and 25% more on bag snacks.

If we assume that this pattern is indicative of overall SNAP purchases, then we can easily see how the SNAP program is inducing behavior completely opposite of what Michelle Obama wants and what is good for the country from a health perspective. 

Thus, as we have often pointed out, the Federal government has gotten so large and out of control that one part of the government is working against another part of the government. In this case, the Department of Agriculture with its SNAP guidelines is causing the exact same type of behavior that Michelle Obama has railed against, soft drinks, candies, cakes, etc. when it comes to our kids’ eating habits.

Obviously, what Ms. Obama should be lobbying for is to make her targeted “bad” foods not eligible for SNAP and taxpayer subsidies in order to reduce the obesity levels in this country. Since in the first eleven months of fiscal 2016 (October through August), the average monthly participation in food stamps was 44,283,586 people and 21,815,990 households, taking soda, cakes, candies, ice creams and bagged snacks out of this process would positively affect a lot of Americans. In those months, the government paid out $61,110,832,720 in benefits. 

It would also save the American taxpayer well over $9 billion, money that could be returned to the American taxpayer or put forth into a real public health initiative to change the overall eating habits of all Americans, not just school age kids. So simple a change and yet so difficult for the American political class to do.

3) We have often pointed out how out of control the Federal government is when it comes to spending. Many times we have shown how the Obama administration has doubled the national debt in just the past eight years, adding more debt to the Federal government than ALL previous Presidential administrations combined. Each American household would have to put out over $100,000 each to cover the debt load today.

But Federal debt is not the only debt load facing every American household. The organization, Truth In Accounting, recently released its periodic study, "The Financial State of the States.” It’s findings are not pretty relative to the debt load that state governments have piled up:

• To pay off their debt loads, state governments need to raise man additional $1,328,204,440,079.
• 40 out of the 50 states currently do not have enough money to pay off their debts.
• The study found that all 50 states have racked up over $2.4 TRILLION in debt but only have about $1 TRILLION in revenue to pay off the debt, leaving the $1,328,204,440,079 unaccounted for.
• This state government debt load comes down to about $13,514 that each state taxpayer would have to put into the pot to pay off the debt.
• New Jersey is the worst state with an unaccounted for debt load of $59,400 needed from each New Jersey state taxpayer to pay off that state’s debt. 
• The total unfunded debt of New Jersey is a whopping $183 billion.
• Other so-called “sinkhole states” with the most debt load per taxpayer are Connecticut ($49,000 per taxpayer), Illinois ($45,500), Kentucky ($33,700), Massachusetts ($33,300), and Hawaii, California, New York Delaware, and Michigan rounding out the top ten sinkhole states, with per taxpayer debt ranging from $18,200 to $28,500 per taxpayer.
• There are ten so-called “sunshine states,” states that have no debt and actually have excess money that if spread across their taxpayers would give each resident of Alaska $52,600, North Dakota taxpayers would get $28,400, Wyoming - $26,400 per taxpayer, Utah - $4,800 per taxpayer, Nebraska - $3,500 per taxpayer, and New Mexico, Idaho, Tennessee, and Iowa taxpayers would get back anywhere from $3,300 to $1,100.

Three major takeaways from this in-depth study:

1. Politicians in forty states have dug deep, deep debt holes for their taxpayers that will require cuts in services, cuts in pensions and retirement payouts, a rise in taxes or a combination of all three acts to stay fiscally viable.
2. According to the study, these sinkhole states have hidden expenses and used accounting tricks to make their state look better financially than it actually is, essentially kicking the debt problem down the road to future generations of state residents.
3. The 10 sunshine states prove that you can operate a fiscally sound state government if you want to.

Always keep in mind that paying off debt does not result in increased freedom, it does not make schools better, infrastructure safer, or state government more effective, it only pays off the errors and fiscal irresponsibility of previous political acts.

State politicians running up uncontrolled debt loads, a government program making Americans less healthy and more obese, and more scandals from the American political class.  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:

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

October, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Sedentary Americans, Diabetes Epidemic, Obama;s Lies, and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements 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 past several days we have been reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington. Today's review will end this series of Obama Care updates until next month:

1) We have often made the claim, including in the preceding paragraphs, that Obama Care will never succeed in reducing the nation’s healthcare costs because the law never addressed the underlying root causes of those ever rising costs. The legislation and Obama tried to resolve a public health issue with a hokey insurance solution that is bound to fail and fail in an expensive manner.

As an example of why this is a public health issue, consider a recent Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the May 8, 2015 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, 28% of Americans were TOTALLY sedentary in 2014. TOTALLY means that they did not participate in a single physical activity such as lifting weights, running, yoga, bowling, or even stretching. 

These results come from a survey by the Physical Activity Council which estimated that 83 million Americans age 6 or older did nothing to maintain their personal physical fitness throughout 2014, an increase of 18% since 2007. Is it any surprise then that obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other expensive to treat illnesses are driving up the cost of healthcare in this country? 

These medical afflictions could all be addressed if America would start doing some exercising. Instead of launching a public health initiative to drive down the demand for healthcare services, and by driving down demand the price and costs of healthcare would also come down, we are stuck with a failing insurance system via Obama Care that leaves the public health driver of costs unaffected. Insane.

2) Let’s continue on the whole public health issue them for this next discussion. Based on recent analyses and data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, half of all U.S. adults are suffering from diabetes or are at risk of getting diabetes in the near future. Yes, one out of every two Americans are currently or getting close to being in a diabetic state, a condition that has driven up health care costs in this country and will likely continue to drive those costs in the future. 

As we stated in the previous point and in other posts, this is an unaddressed public health issue that Obama Care did nothing to remedy. According to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, most of these cases are Type 2 diabetes, which is caused by, surprise, surprise... poor diet and a lack of exercise. Sound familiar, public health issues, not an insurance issue.

The government study, recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians were more than twice as likely to suffer from diabetes as white people. Thus, not only have we identified an overall root cause of rising healthcare costs, we have also found where to focus a public health campaign to alleviate that problem.

Fix the root causes and the reduction in the demand for health care services will drive down the cost of providing healthcare services, it is simple logic and simple economics. But nothing with Obama Care is simple or logical and that is why it is a failure.

3) The large majority of Americans who got health care coverage as a result of Obama Care got it because they were now eligible for Medicaid coverage, the lowest form and probably lowest quality of health insurance available today. But coverage is coverage, right? Better than no coverage, Right? 

Wrong. As Peter Suderman from Reason magazine points out back in mid-2013, those people with Medicaid coverage are not healthier or better off with similar people that do not have Medicaid coverage along several important health measurements. A test/control study in Oregon published by the New England Journal Of Medicine found that Medicaid has “no measurable effect on any of the objectively measured physical health outcomes the study examined.”

This study took advantage of a unique situation in Oregon relative to Medicaid patients. The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment randomly picked over 6,000 state citizens to be covered by Medicaid and and a similar and large control group of state citizens that were not covered by any insurance including Medicaid. The study then went back after two years to compare the health profiles of the test/Medicaid covered group and the control, non-Medicaid covered group.

What they found is very interesting and unexpected:

• Those with Medicaid coverage did NOT have healthier blood pressure readings, did NOT have better cholesterol levels, and did not have better diabetic blood pressure control vs. the control group.
• Those with Medicaid coverage did not use the emergency room any less than those without Medicaid coverage.
• Those with Medicaid did see some reduction in their out of pocket healthcare costs vs. the control group.
• However, total spending on healthcare by those Medicaid patients, the majority of which is paid for by taxpayers, shot up significantly without any apparent improvement in overall health. 

In other words, Medicaid, the main insurance provider source under Obama Care, a Federal program that is infested with criminal elements, fraud, and inefficiencies, apparently does not make people any healthier or reduce their reliance on expensive emergency room services vs. doing nothing even though more was spent via Medicaid on those Medicaid customers according to a peer reviewed, published study. 

In other words, like most government programs, the Medicaid option via Obama Care resolves very little and accomplishes even that little bit at great expense to the American taxpayer. 

4) We have probably done over a hundred posts on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have discussed the reality that it never addressed the underlying root causes of our rising healthcare costs, how people like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and many other politicians bold faced lied of what the benefits of the legislation would be, how we were promised that if we liked our current doctor, hospital, or insurance plan that we could keep them under Obama Care (we could not), how the middle class would not see any tax increases as a result of Obama Care (we did), how the program would only cost $900 billion over ten years (according to the Congressional Budget Office it will cost twice that much, at least), how it will not add a dime to the national debt (it will add over a trillion dollars), how insurance costs for a typical American family would go down by upwards of $2,500 a year (those costs rose significantly instead) etc., etc., etc.

To review those past posts, just type in “unfolding disaster” in the search box above. Or, go to the following link to get a 17 minute synopsis of everything that went wrong with Obama Care from the start:

http://www.youngcons.com/greatest-video-deconstruction-obamacare-you-will-ever-see/

While the presentation is a bit over dramatic, the essence of the message is clear and verifiable: this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington, it was the most deceptively presented piece of legislation ever presented by Washington, and the lies associated with it are despicable.

5) And if the previous set of video clips and the lies they contain is not enough to make you lose your lunch, consider the following set of video clips of the President making sure that we knew we would save up to $2,500 a year on health insurance premiums once Obama Care was passed. This promise almost became a mantra of this President, as you will see in the video, a mantra that turned out to be either the largest lie ever told to the American public or the words of a President who had not idea what he was talking about….or both:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o65vMUk5so

6) We will end this month’s chapter of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care with just a few more real life examples of how Obama Care is causing havoc with American families, using the website, www.myhealthcarestory.com, as our source:

Wayne from Indiana on October 21, 2013

Just got my 2014 healthcare package details this week. It includes a 73% increase in premium contribution, $600 deductible increase, and $2,000 increase in out of pocket maximum. My current plan option was discontinued so I could not “keep my plan” even though I was completely satisfied with it. Now I am hoping my current doctor will accept the new plan.

David from Alabama on November 5, 2013

My premium increase is devastating to my budget and I am, for the first time in my life, worried about my health care. I was just getting by and thanks to The “Affordable” Care Act (Obamacare) I am no longer able to make ends meet. Is this what Obama means by redistributive policies? It is more like reverse Robin Hood if you ask me.

Pat from Minnesota on October 17, 2013

The company that I am a insurance agent representing- sent us a letter saying that due to the changes in the healthcare law- in 2014- that they no longer are offering the group plan that we have had since I started there over 25 years ago. We now all need to find our own individual policies.

I am sure we will be back the same time next month with more disasters from Obama Care, the disaster that keeps on giving.

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 3, The Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: Less Competition, More Insurance Company Sleaze, and Heading For A Massive Court Defeat

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) Richard Pollock wrote a recent article for the Washington Examiner where he showed that the smaller health insurance companies, those that have a relative small potion of the health insurance market, look to be getting out of or being driven out of the Obama Care exchanges.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published some of its research which showed that in 40 states, the largest insurers either maintained or boosted their market share through the health exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. The GAO analysis is the first government analysis study which examined how competition within the health insurance market has been affected by Obama Care.

The study found that in 2012, consumers in the individual health insurance market on average could choose among 36 small-market company carriers in their state, each holding a market share of five percent of or less. However, by 2014 those same consumers could on average choose from only three insurers in their state exchanges, a decline of more than 90%.

Similarly, in the small-group/small business insurance market, at least 15 small-market carriers were available, on average, to consumers before Obama Care. But within the Obama Care exchanges, now only three insurance companies still competing on average.

Thus, let’s use some logic here. Before Obama Care stormed the market for health insurance across the country, premium and deductible costs were less and the number of competing insurers was more, probably a cause and effect relationship: more competition usually means lower consumer costs. 

Obama Care comes along, and the number of competitors dwindles while the cost of deductibles and premiums generally go up substantially across the country. Less competition usually means higher consumer costs, basic economics, something that is constantly lost on the American political class. And as always, when the political class acts out of ignorance, the American consumer pays more.

2) Charles Ornstein, writing for the ProPublica website on September 17, 2014, analyzed the many ways that insurance companies within the Obama Care tent are finding new and interesting ways to reduce their costs but endangering the financial and medical well being of Obama Care policy holders. My source of the story noted that his story was co-published with The New York Times’ column,  The Upshot.

A little background. Under the Obama Care legislation, health insurance companies are no longer allowed to deny coverage to any consumer with a pre-existing medical condition. Since these customers are likely to have more of a negative cost impact on the company, they are also likely to depress earnings of those insurance companies. Of course, Obama Care also required ALL Americans to have health insurance so those same insurance companies were willing to trade off some high cost customers, i.e. those with pre-existing conditions, to get millions and millions of new customers.

According to the article, in order to protect profitability, some health policy experts say health insurers may be pulling some subtle shenanigans to protect their profits by forcing customers with certain illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and epilepsy to pay more for their drugs. If potential customers with pre-existing conditions find out that a certain health insurance provider makes them pay a lot for their medicines, they might be more inclined to look elsewhere for their insurance coverage.

In this way the insurance company wins from a profitability perspective: they avoid high cost patients with high cost medical needs while still fulfilling their legal requirement to accept any and all potential consumers as customers. Very subtle, very profitable, very sleazy.

Wayne Turner, a staff lawyer for the National Health Law Program described the process: “It seems that the plans are trying to find this wiggle room to design their benefits to prevent people who have high health needs from enrolling.” In the article, Turner stated he feared a “race to the bottom,” in which plans don’t want to be seen as the most attractive for sick patients. “Plans do not want that reputation.”

The article also points to research showing that as medicine gets more expensive, customers are more likely not to take the medicine or to take the prescribed amount do to the high costs. Thus, the consumer gets screwed again by this legislation. Sick Americans who thought their prayers would be answered by the legislation are finding that the legislation gives them little protection from health insurance companies who still do not want them as customers. 

And as a result, this discourages these people from even applying for insurance, placing them right back where they were prior to the legislation being approved. Much ado about nothing.

3) In the midst of all these disasters, there is a much bigger issue that is working its way through the courts and whose fate could crash the entire Obama Care legislation. Some background:

• The legislation was written so that individual states could set up their own online Obama Care health insurance exchanges where each state’s citizens could obtain Obama Care insurance policies.
• But the states did not have to set up their own exchange process, they had the option of defaulting to the Federal government’s exchange.
• However, in order to entice the states to operate their own state level Obama Care exchange, the law made it crystal clear that only insurance policies obtained from a state exchange would come with the possibility of receiving Federal subsidies to pay for the premiums.
• Customers who got their Obama Care policy from the Federal exchange website would NOT be eligible for subsidies.

But Obama and his supporters outsmarted themselves since about three dozen states did not take the bait and allowed their citizens to go through the subsidy free Federal website. Without subsidies, Obama Care insurance policy costs become even less financially attractive.

The Obama administration decided just ignore that part of the law, basically breaking the law, and allow everyone who got an Obama Care policy, regardless of where they got it, to be eligible for subsidies. They realized that if two thirds or so of the Obama Care customers did not receive a subsidy, the entire operation crashes from high costs.

But this is breaking the law, as decided by a Federal judge’s recent ruling. Despite an IRS ruling that approved them, subsidies to residents in states without a state insurance exchange violate the language of Obama Care, according to a Federal judge in Oklahoma: “The court holds that the IRS rule is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law,” wrote Judge Ronald A. White in his decision, according to Politico.

White’s ruling accords with a similar decision by the D.C. Court of Appeals that was later vacated when the entire court decided to hear the case, as opposed to the three-judge panel that issued the ruling. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, however, sided with the Obama administration, meaning that the issue is likely to go to the Supreme Court eventually.

“Today’s ruling is a consequential victory for the rule of law,” said Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who filed the lawsuit. “The administration and its bureaucrats in the IRS handed out billions in illegal tax credits and subsidies and vastly expanded the reach of the health care law because they didn’t like the way Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act.”

Most legal experts expect the issue to eventually get decided by the Supreme Court. But given that the law’s language explicitly excludes customers coming through the Federal exchange from receiving a subsidy, odds are good that the entire house of cards will coming crashing down all because the writers and supporters of the law got too cute with the language. 

More disasters due in tomorrow on top of the three we discussed today: less competition, sleazy accounting, and trying to deny they wrote what they wrote. Every day a new disaster in a different form, the legislation that keep on giving.

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

May, 2014 the Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 3: What Should Have Been Done Vs. What Obama Did Continued

Two posts ago we laid out all of the Obama Care operations, strategies, and tenets that have already gone wrong and which are highly likely to go wrong in the coming months and years. Identity theft, higher deficits, higher national debt, higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles, loss of privacy, IRS harassment, failing government websites, millions of Americans losing access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans, millions of Obama Care policy holders being denied access to the top medical facilities and doctors in the country, etc. The list seems endless.

We also explained how the legislation never had a chance of successfully reducing our ever escalating health care costs in this country since those that wrote it never understood the true root causes of our increasing health care costs: Americans smoke too much, Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans do not exercise enough, the government restricts insurance company cost reducing competition across state lines, much needed medical tort reform never happened, etc.

Since Obama, Pelosi, Reid and other Obama Care architects never understood the root causes, we ended up with 2,500 pages of legal mumbo jumbo that created a Rube Goldberg-like subsidized government insurance program that will ultimately fail. The problem is that we have a public health crisis that is causing our higher and higher health care costs, we do not have a lack of insurance problem. High insurance costs are a symptom of the root causes, they are not the cause themselves.

Starting tomorrow, we will again start reviewing the unfolding disasters still coming out of the Obama Care legislation, much like we have done on a monthly basis since last August. Today and yesterday, however, we have gone back through our blog posts over the past few years and gathered up all of the suggestions that subject matter experts and informed, logical people have put forth to identify the true root causes of our high health care costs. That information leads one to the needed public health initiatives which should be put forth to resolve those root causes. We have also added some additional information and reports that we have not previously covered which also make our point.

I maintain that if we were successful in attacking the true root causes, as proposed below, the cost of health care would drop dramatically as would the cost of health care insurance, making it affordable for all who wanted it. The Obama Care approach, raising taxes to cover everyone with health care insurance without eliminating the underlying root causes is a fallacy solution.

The following observations, government and independent reports and analysis, success stories, and realities are in no particular sequence. However, at the end of the two posts I think you will agree that the Obama Care approach to the problem has missed the mark completely by focusing on health care insurance rather than health care solutions.

8) An article on smoking that appeared in the February 7, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, reinforced the high toll in lives, health, and costs due to smoking, as researched by the Surgeon General:

• Thirteen different types of cancer have been linked to smoking tobacco.
• Other ailments associated with smoking include vision loss, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, impairment of the immune system, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, and ectopic pregnancy.
• The report calculated that smoking is the nation’s leading cause of premature death, killing 480,000 people a year.
• It also costs the nation up to $333 billion a year in medical care costs and lost productivity.

And the Washington political class annually insists on giving the tobacco industry hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies. Insane.

9) The May, 2014 issue of AARP’s Magazine discussed the widespread malady of diabetes. According to the article, almost 26 million Americans have diabetes, about 8% of the country’s citizens have it. 26 million is bad enough news but the trend is even worse, with that diabetes number having grown by 8 million people in just the past six years. 

The American Diabetes Association recommends losing weight, exercising, and a low fat diet are great ways to reduce the odds of getting diabetes. However, the article put forth some simple public health steps that everyone can take in their daily lives to reduce the spread of diabetes and thus, reduce the increasing costs of treating diabetes:

• Stop drinking soda since according to a recent Harvard School of Public Health review, drinking just one or two sugar sweetened sodas a day increase your risk of getting diabetes by 26%. This is a result of the wide spread use of high fructose corn syrup in non-diet sodas that is encouraged by the Federal government’s misguided subsidies of corn growers.
• Take a 15 minute walk a half hour after you eat and you will lower your post meal blood sugar levels for at least three hours, according to a recent study from George Washington University.
• Adopt the so-called Mediterranean diet which is rich in fish and heart healthy olive oil and you can reduce your chance of getting diabetes by a whopping 83%.
• People who sit around six to eight hours a day on their job are 19% more likely to get diabetes. Getting up and moving around for just two minutes every hour ups one’s metabolism enough to lower glucose levels and reduce the chance of diabetes.
• Include a weight lifting component to your exercise regime beyond just aerobic exercise and you will do a better job of managing the glucose level in your body.
• Eat your meals more slowly and you will usually end up eating less and reducing weight and the chance of getting diabetes.

Simple personal and public health initiatives that would go much further in reducing health care costs than whether of not you signed up for an Obama Care Bronze, Gold, or Silver insurance plan.

10) That same issue from AARP discussed research which found that one out of every three cancers can be prevented by exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and eating right. The article points to six types of food to accomplish this reduction in your chances of getting cancer:

• Garlic and onions
• Milk
• Broccoli
• Dark, leafy green vegetables,
• Red Grapes
• Whole grains

It is that simple and you do not have to wrestle with a dysfunctional Obama Care website to get results.

11) A recent New York Times article that was summarized in the December 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that about 440,000 Americans dies each years as a result of preventable errors in U.S. hospitals. This means that one out of every size deaths in the country can be attributed to mistakes in hospitals. This makes these preventable deaths the third leading cause of death in the nation.

It does not matter whether you have a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Obama Care insurance policy since the legislation never really addresses this national problem and the associated costs caused by it. The good news is you have health insurance, the bad news is the hospital killed you anyway.

12) A mini-scandal and uproar occurred a few weeks ago when it was revealed that some doctors were receiving millions of dollars from Medicare every year for services rendered to Medicare patients. To make this number more understandable, and disgusting, a doctor getting $2 million a year from Medicare, and the American taxpayer, on average was getting about a $7,700 check EVERY business day of the year. I find it hard to believe that any doctor was providing that amount of quality and efficient medical service every day.

The situation became much clearer on why these doctors were making so much money as explained in Business Week article that appeared last week. Using the drug Lucentis as an example, you can see why doctors make millions off of the American taxpayer with very little effort.

Lucentis is used to treat is used by ophthalmologists/eye doctors to treat macular degeneration. Medicare pays doctors 106% of the average cost of a drug when a doctors administers it to a patient. Lucentis costs $2,000 for one shot making it a lucrative drug for doctors to administer since they will, on average, get 6% of $2,000 for their efforts.

However, another drug, Avastin, works just as well as Lucentis but costs only $50 a shot. Thus, a doctor would make 40 times less in Medicare payments, 6% of $2,000 vs. 6% of $50, if he or she used Avastin vs. Lucentis. 

Given that almost half of the 50 doctors being paid the most by Medicare in 2012 were ophthalmologists, what drug do we think these doctors are using the most, Lucentis or Avastin with Medicare not caring one way or the other from a treatment and payment perspective? Given that Medicare pays out about $1 billion a year just for Lucentis, it is pretty clear that at least some of these doctors are milking a stupid Medicare payment system.

I do not believe anywhere in the Obama Care legislation does it require Medicare to stop being so stupid and wasteful. Just forcing the switch from Lucentis to Avastin would save upwards of $1 billion a t year and contribute substantially to reducing health care costs.

13) An article in the march, 2014 issue of AARP’s Bulletin reported on how the nation is addicted to unnecessary medical tests, unnecessary tests that also needlessly increase the country; overall health care costs. For example, an estimated $3 billion is spent every year on PSA screening of prostate cancer which many experts now say does more harm than good. Nearly a quarter of $1,000 colonoscopies performed in older people every year are most likely inappropriate.

Nearly two thirds of women who have had hysterectomies and half of all U.S. women over 65 with not cervical cancer history report having recent Pap tests even though the American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends against this test for these women. Excessive use of MRIs for lower back pain likely results tens of billions of dollars worth of treatments that end up not working.

How many hundreds of billions of wasted costs could be saved each year if we got the unnecessary testing syndrome under control, a syndrome not addressed by Obama Care?

14) Okay, last example of how we could dramatically reduce health care costs in this country without needing a useless 2,500 page piece of legislation from Washington:

• In 1975, California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) which, among other things, capped the amount of medical malpractice awards. Since then, the California cost for medical malpractice insurance has gone up 168% on average while nationally the cost has gone up 420%. 
• In the 1990s and again in 2003, Texas passed major medical malpractice tort reform. Since then, the number of malpractice awards have gone down 25% and the cost for malpractice insurance from the state's largest insurers is down over 50%. 
• In 2005, Georgia also capped malpractice awards and has seen the number of malpractice lawsuits go down 39% and medical insurance rates go down 18%. 
• The Congressional Budget Office estimates that medical malpractice tort reform would reduce the cost of medical insurance anywhere from 10-30%. And if you reduce the costs of malpractice insurance, you eventually would see those savings translate into lower overall health care costs.

Want to bet that the reason that national and rational medical industry tort reform was NOT included in Obama Care, despite the success at the state level, is that the American Bar Association and the legal cartel did not want to see their lucrative practices in suing doctors to dry up? Just a hunch.

There you have it. Fourteen easy ways to reduce health care costs in this country that truly address the root causes of that problem. No fancy Washington legislation, no corrupt and inoperable new Federal bureaucracy, no loss of freedom, no wasting of taxpayer wealth, no increased taxes, no disruption in millions of Americans lives. 

Just a straightforward approach to resolving a public health crises with public health strategies as oppose to using a massive and inefficient government insurance operation to resolve a public health crises. Eat healthier, exercise, stop smoking, clean up the existing inefficiencies and criminal fraud that exists to day and the country would easily save hundreds of billons of dollars every year. That is what root causes analysis does for you, something that Obama and the rest of the Obama Care advocates never did.

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