February, 2016, Part 3,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Identity Theft Threats In Colorado, Scandals In New York,and Adding to the National Debt Everywhere

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: 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.

The past two days we spent reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington. I thought that is all that would be needed to discuss this month’s unfolding disasters of Obama Care but it turns out three more disasters just popped up that deserve review:

1) We have often reported on how just about every data system aspect of Obama Care left millions of Americans open to a new and dangerous threat of identity theft. These systems were done in such a rough, slipshod, and some cases illegal manner that adequate security protocols were either not deployed or deployed in a less than effective manner.

Elizabeth Harrington, writing for the Washington Free Beacon recently reminded us how bad the identity theft situation still is, at least in the Colorado Obama Care health insurance exchange:

• According to a new audit of that exchange, the Colorado exchange faced “numerous weaknesses” and had “inadequate security settings” which left the personal identity information of Colorado enrollees vulnerable to identity theft.
• The inadequate security processes had been in place for at least a year, according to the HHS inspector general review.
• The deployment of the Colorado exchange did not fully comply with Federal government requirements and thus, failed many of the security checklist tests: “As a result, the weaknesses were collectively and, in some cases, individually significant and could have compromised the integrity of Colorado’s marketplace, thus increasing the risk that PII could have been exposed.”
• The failure of the security protocols of the Colorado exchange existed despite the reality that state and Federal taxpayers paid a whopping $184 million to build it.
• And the Colorado exchange is not the only Obama Care headache in the state since the state’s largest Obama Care co-op, Colorado HealthOP, folded down in October, 2015, leaving 83,000 state residents without health insurance coverage.
• Despite getting the inspector general’s report and recommendations on how to fix the situation, the exchange only “partially remediated” the problems.

What a mess. And this was only in one state, it is likely this identity theft problem is still in place across many of the other Obama Care exchanges, years after the Obama Care legislation took effect.

2) Richard Pollock, writing for the Daily Caller website, recently discussed the ongoing scandal with the New York state co-op, one of at least a dozen Obama Care co-ops that have gone belly up in the past half year or so. Remember, these co-ops were established by the Obama Care legislation to provide insurance policies to people living in mostly rural parts of the country that had minimal choices in health insurance policies since they were served by very few competitors. About two dozen were set up with the use of billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth.

The New York co-op has been a particularly scandal-ridden effort. According to Mr. Pollock:

• So far, New York state regulators has refused to release any documents that would help explain why the country’s largest Obama Care co-op failed.
• The state’s investigation began back in September of last year and involved looking at alleged “substantial under-reporting” of the co-op finances.
• The state refused a state Freedom Of Information Act request because it claimed that disclosure of the investigation results so far would have a “chilling” effect on its continuing investigation.
• The New York co-op was originally given $355 million to get established back in 2012.
• It was one of three Obama Care co-ops operated by Sara Horowitz, a New York liberal political activist who has previous personal ties to President Obama. 
• Another of her co-ops, the one established in the state of Oregon, has also already gone financially belly up, her New Jersey co-op continues to operate.
• The demise of the New York co-op forced over 200,000 mostly low income customers to lose their insurance coverage during the Thanksgiving holiday season in 2015.
• The co-op owes New York hospitals about $200 million unpaid bills and owes New York doctors somewhere between $50 and $70 million in unpaid bills.
• Top executives who had oversight responsibility for the co-op resigned throughout 2015.

Let’s review: billions of taxpayer dollars in play, denial of Freedom Of Information Act requests, hush-hush on the results of the ongoing investigation, and top officials resign in the midst of the investigation. Lots of smoke here, probably a lot of fire lurking around under that smoke also. The only thing we can be sure of is that a lot of taxpayer money is probably lost forever to the corruption involved and over 200,000 people lost their insurance coverage. Pathetic.

3) One last short discussion on the unfolding disasters that are Obama Care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released some very dire economic forecasts as it relates to the national debt:

• If nothing changes, the debt should hit an unsustainable $30 TRILLION within ten years.
• The current dip in the annual Federal government spending deficit is a short term fluke, annual deficits and consequently rising national debt will accelerate with in a very short time frame.
• The Obama administration will add about $10 TRILLION to the debt load, about the same amount of debt accumulated by all previous Presidential administrations COMBINED.

And while there are many causes of the skyrocketing national debt, Obama Care is indeed a major driver for a number of reasons:

• For the original business case, the Obama administration claimed that the Federal government operations cost of Obama Care in the first ten years would be about $800 billion. Turns out that it will be almost $2 TRILLION, adding over a trillion dollars to the original forecasts to the national debt.
• But there are two unintended negative consequences to Obama Care, according to the CBO. First, some lower income people will find it more profitable not to work since by not working, or working only a little, their Obama Care subsidies are more profitable than if they had been working. So the tax revenue from these people who stop working because they can make more money from Obama Care is never generated for the Federal government, increasing the annual deficits and the national debt.
• Second, some higher earners may find it not as attractive to work and earn a lot since increased taxes as a result of Obama Care will make every incremental dollar earned less attractive from a tax basis, which will result in lower earnings, less tax revenue, and higher debt.
• Or in the CBO’s own words: “The ACA’s [Obama Care’s] largest effect on the labor market — especially as overall employment conditions improve — will come from provisions of the act that raise effective marginal tax rates on earnings, thereby reducing how much some people choose to work. The act also directly imposes higher taxes on some people’s labor income. Because both effects on labor supply will grow over the next few years, CBO projects, they will subtract from economic growth over that period.”

Unintended consequences are almost always bad unintended consequences when it comes to the limited foresight of today’s politicians. Obama Care is no exception.

That will definitely do it for this month’s unfolding disasters of Obama Care. Adding to the crushing load of an ever increasing national debt, scandal in New York and the wasting of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer wealth, and identity theft threats in Colorado. More disasters next month.


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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

December, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Broken Pormises,Broken Economics, 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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. Below we start with this month’s update of Obama Care, the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed.

1) We have often pointed out that Obama Care is a disaster when it comes to employment and economic growth. A recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that reality: “Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would.” In total, the CBO estimates that the legislation will now shrink the total U.S. workforce by just under 1% because of the law or about 2 million full time jobs. 

Thus, the taxes, fines, and aspects of the legislation will cause Americans to make difficult financial decisions that will affect not only their own personal careers and identity but will also reduce the economic vitality and tax base of the country. Compare this dismal reality vs. what Obama Care supporters once promised:

• Nancy Pelosi stated confidently, and incorrectly in 2011, that: “Four million jobs will be created by the legislation when it is fully in effect.” Thus, she was only off by six million, the four million jobs that did not materialize and the two million jobs that will be destroyed by the law.
• In 2010, Pelosi said that Obama Care would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately.”
• When those two idiotic forecasts turned out to be idiocy, Obama Care supporters tried to get out of forecasting business and weakly argued that Obama Care would give Americans more time to spend with their family since they would not be working as much. Pathetic.

Not only did the Obama Care cheerleaders get the whole unemployment/employment picture wrong, they also screwed up the following predictions:

• This law did not create jobs as Democrats promised.
• This law did not reduce emergency room visits as Democrats promised.
• This law did not “bend the cost curve” as Democrats promised.
• This law did not allow millions of Americans to keep their preferred doctors, hospitals,and health care plans as Democrats promised.
• This law did not deliver low cost health insurance plans to over 20 million uninsured Americans by 2016 as Democrats promised.
• This law did not result in enough younger and healthier Americans signing up for Obama Care policies as Democrats promised.
• This law did not set up two dozen vibrant health insurance co-ops across the country offering low cost/high quality health insurance coverage as Democrats promised. In fact, over half of the two dozen have already folded.

Despite these obvious and real failures, Hillary Clinton, the front runner to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee next year proclaimed that the law is "working." Not in this reality is it working, makes you wonder what color the sky is in Hillary’s world if she thinks that the myriad of Obama Care failures somehow constitutes “working.”

2) Over the past couple of months we have extensively reviewed how over half of the insurance co-ops that were set up across the country under Obama Care have already gone out of business because they were financial failures. These failures have probably resulted in over a $1 billion of taxpayer wealth that will never be recovered.

Recent news reports provide a quick review on how the New York co-op, the Health Republic Insurance of New York, was such a disaster:

• The Greater New York Hospital Association claims that the now defunct co-op still owes it at least $165 million.
• The Medical Society of New York says that 64% of its doctors in a 900 doctor survey say they are still owed money from the co-op.
• These problems are in addition to various criminal investigations of corruption and fraud that are ongoing in the state regarding this co-op’s operations.

Disaster is too mild an adjective to describe what went on with taxpayer money in New York.

3) Not to be mistaken with the co-ops, over a dozen states set up online state exchange websites where customers could go online and choose an insurance policy for themselves and their families from insurance companies that sold insurance through the Obama Care exchanges. Many of these state exchanges have already collapsed, with at least one collapsing before it signed up a single Obama Care customers.

Recently, Congressional hearings were convened which looked into the how the American taxpayer, via the Obama administration, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on state level exchanges that have already collapsed and have been abandoned. The hearings discussed a recent Government Accountability Office audit that found that none of the remaining state exchanges are “fully operational” despite five years of effort and $1.45 billion in information technology spending of taxpayer wealth.

Five years, $1.45 billion and NOT fully operational yet. Complete incompetence at every possible level.

More disasters every month including the findings today that the law is hurting economic growth, killing careers and job choices, has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, and is still a mess after five years of pathetically trying to get it right. More disasters in the coming days.

August, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Insurance Companies Get Richer and Bigger and State Exchanges Implode

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.

Today and probably for the next few days, we will look at the latest disasters from Obama Care, including the gathering evidence that Obama Care policy holders are in for a big and ugly financial surprise in their 2016 costs along with some personal stories on how Obama Care is causing havoc with American families.

1) Yesterday, we briefly touched on the reality that Obama Care is killing competition in the insurance and healthcare industries, a process that is likely to increase consumer costs while simultaneously reduce quality and choices. Chriss Street writing for Breitbart on July 26, 2015 provided some more details on the killing of competition and the reasons why health care costs will go up even faster as the range of competitors dwindles:

• Anthem insurance recently announced it was buying Cigna insurance for a whopping $54 billion. 
• This will make Anthem the largest insurer in the state of California.
• Anthem will have 40% of the California insurance when the merger is done, surpassing the current market leader, Kaiser, which has 35% of the state market. Thus, two giant insurance companies will control 75% of the insurance market in California.
• The five largest health insurance companies in the country will end up as three evenlarger companies once the large mergers are complete.
• The health insurance stock prices have tripled in some cases since the passage of Obama Care, far surpassing the growth of the overall stock market. The S&P Health Care index is up 305% since Obama took office.
• Since Obama took office, the rise in stock prices for healthcare companies has been the fastest growth rate in history.
• While overall economic inflation was .8% in 2014, health care spending grew six times as fast at 5.0%, something that was supposed to slow down under Obama Care.
• Even worse, prescription drug spending was up a whopping 13.0% in 2014.
• In 2014, health care spending in the country relative to our GDP was 17.8%, up from the 16% level when Obama took office.
• According to the article, “Influence Alley,” as printed in the National Journal, the American Health Insurance Plans organization, the industry’s lobbyist, spent $102.4 million to lobby Congress relative to the Obama Care legislation.
• And life could get even more lucrative in the next few years since, as we have previously reported, many states are likely to grant insurance rate requests that are quite high: New Mexico’s largest insurer, Health Care Service Corp, has formally asked for a premium increase of 51.6%, Tennessee’s largest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, wants a 36.3% increase, Maryland’s largest insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has asked for a 30.4% increase, and Oregon’s top insurer, Moda Health, wants a 25% increase.

So, in summary, the health insurance companies are getting richer, in all likelihood stockholders in many insurance companies are getting rich as merger mania spreads in the industry, costs for consumers are going up which makes them poorer, and healthcare costs for the country continue to skyrocket. Everyone see the problem with this reality? All caused because Obama Care rewarded insiders and lobbyists and never addressed the root causes of our high healthcare costs.

2) An Associated Press (AP) article by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar from July 26, 2015 pointed out another gross failure of Obama Care, the so-called state-based and run health insurance exchanges that were online marketplaces where consumers could log onto the exchange website and shop for and purchase insurance.

The highlights of their failure includes the following realities:

• Many of the states exchanges ended up with higher than expected costs and lower than expected enrolment, causing many of them to consider turning over their operations to the Feds, shutting down, or merging with other co-ops in other states.
• Hawaii's Obama Care exchange received $205 million in Federal startup grants, spent about $139 million, enrolled 8,200 customers at a whopping cost of about $17,000 per customer, and is imploding so fast that it is turning over its responsibilities to the Federal government.
• Twelve states and the District of Columbia have their own state level Obama Care exchanges and about half of them are under severe financial strain despite getting a total of almost $5 billion in taxpayer grants to get operational. Experts estimate about half face financial difficulties.
• According to a recent statement by Hawaii Governor David Ige: "The viability of state health insurance exchanges has been a challenge across the country, particularly in small states, due to insufficient numbers of uninsured residents." But wasn’t Obama Care supposed to be so good that people would flock to sign up and those that did not want insurance also sign up to avoid being fined?
• Covered California, the state of California exchange, missed its signup target by 20% this past year.
• To help cover their financial shortfalls, Justine Handelman, policy chief at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association thinks that the idea of the exchanges could actually make health care LESS affordable, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do: "Our biggest concern is that you may see many states looking to enact taxes and fees, and that makes health care less affordable." 
• Hawaii is the third state exchange defaulting to the Federal Obama Care exchange system, following Nevada and Oregon, which made their switch last year. 
• Minnesota's MNsure exchange cut its budget, also saw a shortfall in their recent set of enrollees, the legislature and governor have proposed no viable plans to fix the process, and Governor Mark Dayton has stated that MNsure's fate is on the table, including the option of shifting operations to HealthCare.gov.
• The U.S. attorney in Boston has subpoenaed records dealing with Massachusetts’ Health Connector, the Massachusetts exchange.
• Colorado officials are considering changes to its exchange ranging from pooling call centers with other states to folding down everything and defaulting to the Federal exchange. And the Colorado exchange is viewed as one of the most financially solvent of all state exchanges
• A Federal government audit found that the state of Maryland used taxpayer funded grants from Washington to pay for $28.4 million in costs that should have been allocated to the state's Medicaid program. 
• Vermont is also trying to fix its processes that has had major technology and system issues from the start.

What a mess. Billions of dollars wasted with little benefit in return, the incompetence at the state level exchanges appears to be as bad or worse than the incompetency at the Federal level. And remember, the Federal exchange system was barely working, requiring much more spending to fix it. What happens when multiple states start dumping their enrollee requirements onto the creaky and icky Federal exchange system? Probably more chaos, more identity theft issues and problems, and more taxpayer money spent and wasted.

The Obama Care legislation. The worst piece of legislation ever written and a piece of legislation that continues to unfold into new disasters every month. More disasters tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

The Hypocrisy and Greed of The Washington Poiitical Class and The Immediate Need For Term Limits

In writing our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” we theorized that there were really not two distinct political parties in Washington. While each party emphasizes different issues and voting blocs, they are really all part of a single political class. And the purpose of that class is solely to propagate their own time in office and their own selfish needs and personal fortunes.

Washington politicians could care less if they are making your life better. The could care less if they are keeping you safe or if they are efficiently and effectively spending your tax dollars. They are into being a politician only for their own self enrichment and ego satisfaction. 

There are the obvious signs that we have an elitist political class. 

• They allow themselves to be paid more than three times the average American household annual income. 
• They have outstanding benefits, both healthcare and other types.
• They take numerous vacations times every year, claiming a five week vacation every summer. 
• They have rigged their pay/wage system so that they automatically get a raise every year regardless of how poorly they perform their job, which has been at all time low levels. 
• They almost always leave political office much wealthier than when they come into office, an increase that cannot be solely explained by their high salaries.

But this is the obvious day to day shenanigans our politicians treat themselves to. Let’s consider some less obvious but certainly more fruitful selfish acts of our current politicians.

1) Eighteen months or so ago, the Washington political class shut down the Federal government. Rather than take an adult, mature approach to governing, they took the exact opposite approach: partisan fighting, childish name calling, and a complete inability to lead or formulate a strategy and a budget.

As a result, major parts of the Federal government shut down. No one outside of Washington was responsible for the government shutdown. It was all caused by about 500 people in Congress and the White House, who are as inept as they come. 

But who suffered? It was everyday Americans who suffered. National parks were shut down, government programs supporting Americans were suspended, etc. The Washington political class, however, felt no pain. They caused the problem but they continued to draw their high salaries, they continued to get their posh offices, they continued to get their benefits, etc. Talk about selfish: cause heartbreak for others due incompetence but rig the process so that they suffer no ill effects.

2) When Obama Care was passed, the Washington political class made an empty gesture that was supposed to force Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via Obama Care individual healthcare insurance exchanges. This would have resulted in substantially higher out of pocket costs for health insurance for those parties. This was the Washington politicians way of showing that they understood the hardships they were imposing on millions of Americans via Obama Care.

But shortly after Obama Care took effect, it became clear that this was indeed an empty gesture. Congressional leaders went to Obama and convinced him to allow Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via the Obama Care small business Obama Care exchange of Washington D.C. This would allow these Washington types to pay far less for their health insurance, an option not available to other Americans.

But this was clearly against the law. Not only was it prohibited by the legislation itself, but the D.C. health insurance exchange was explicitly and legally restricted only to businesses that had less than 50 employees. Obviously, members of Congress and their staffs number far more than 50. Nevertheless, Obama let them get away with this slap to the face of all Americans despite its illegality.

Well, at least one Senator has been fighting back against this hypocrisy and illegal move on the Obama administration’s part. U.S. Senator David Vitter, Senate Small Business Committee Chairman, had put forth a motion and effort to find out how this atrocity occurred. Specifically, who in the Obama administration filled out the paperwork and approved the paperwork to allow Congressional members and their staffs to ignore Obama Care tenets and get a break on health insurance premiums.

Sounds like a noble effort. Someone, somewhere broke the law, it is only right to find out who actually broke it and whether or not that Federal employee was told to do so by who. Unfortunately, as always, nobility and integrity are almost always lacking in Washington’s political class. The motion has at least died temporarily in committee as five Republican committee members and along with all Democratic committee members voted down the proposal.

Pathetic leadership, selfish behavior. They broke the law and now they want to cover it up so that Vitter and the country cannot find out what members of Congress and the administration might be responsible for defrauding the government through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare exchange. Vitter had been seeking an un-redacted copy of the Obama Care D.C. exchange application to determine who listed the number of employees as 45, which qualified members of Congress and their staff for special small business employee subsidies.

The stupid thing about these Senators voting no is that eventually someone is going to go to court and the court is going to force the disclosure of who broke the law. The names will get out and now the names will get out for both the original crime and the cover up of that crime. No one ever accused the Washington politicians to be especially smart. 

3) A few years ago, the CBS news show, “60 Minutes” broke a scandal that showed how Washington politicians were making themselves rich trading on insider information on pending and proposed legislation. We covered that political scandal in detail at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-proof-of-undeniable-corruption.html

Disgusting greed and law breaking that no one went to jail for. If you or I had done the same thing, we definitely would have exposed ourselves to felony jail terms. But Congress had miraculously passed previous legislation that allowed only them and their high level staff members to increase their wealth in insider trading schemes.

Due to the news, Congress immediately passed legislation called the STOCK bill which finally forbade this type of insider trading. Sounds good, right? Well, a little while after they passed the legislation, they very quietly went back and gutted the law with another piece of legislation so that they could keep the flow of insider trading secrets going to the advancement of their bank accounts.

Now it appears that they have gone one step further to ensure they can continue their insider trading. While they gutted the original bill, they did not completely destroy the SEC’s ability to investigate insider trading within the halls of Congress. The SEC started an investigation on how a Mr. Brian Sutter, a former staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an pending Medicare decision to a lobbyist. It is alleged that this first lobbyist then shared the tip with other lobbyist firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.

Sounds like a valid violation of the STOCK law and the SEC began to investigate. That is when the same politicians that passed the STOCK law started to fight back. They got a team of lawyers together that put forth the inane premise the SEC could not investigate members of Congress or their staffs due to the doctrine of separation of powers within the Constitution.

You can draw two absurd logic conclusions here:

1. Members of Congress can do anything they want including breaking the law without fear of penalty because of separations of power in the Constitution, according to their lawyers.
2. The law they themselves passed has no teeth since they now say they cannot be investigated for wrongdoing under that law that was supposed to penalize them for any wrongdoing. 

Roundabout, insane logic, all to cover up their continued and profitable insider trading practices, all of which comes at the expense of the American taxpayer in one way or another.

Again, as we stated above, the Washington political class does not care about you or me. They care about maintaining their high salaries and high benefit levels, they care about their frequent and long vacations, they care about violating the law to minimize their own expenses (e.g. Obama Care), and they will tell you they did the right thing to your face but do the exact opposite behind your backs to maintain their insider trading pipeline to riches. 

They are pathetic, liars, hypocritical, and selfish. And on top of that, they are also ineffective, as witnessed by the sad state of affairs the country’s citizens outside of Washington face everyday.

That is why supporting any group or organization that is working towards term limits deserves our support. The current set of Washington politicians have proven to be unable to resolve problems and issues while self enriching themselves to the detriment of the country. If interested in joining this movement to kick out the incumbents that have lied to us so many times for their own financial good, please visit the following site that advocates for term limits:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, how much worse could it get if we replaced every single Washington politician with someone new? At least with new, fresh faces in Washington, we would have a chance at honesty and integrity, something we have no shot at today.

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

December, 2014, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Ousted Obama Care Politicians, More Higher Costs News, and Another Failed Obama Promise

It is the middle of another month, which means it is time for another set of monthly update posts on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have written extensively on this subject for a number of years now, finally evolving our writing into a monthly update series beginning in the summer of 2013.

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

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/12/december-2014-part-1-unfolding-disaster.html

It is our contention, backed up with dozens of blog posts and hundreds of examples, that Obama Care is easily the worst piece of legislation ever produced and enacted by the Washington political class. To prove out point, just review previous posts by entering the search term, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above or just browse through the previous monthly posts over the past years to find out why this law is so bad.

Below are just a few of the many failings of the law:

• While the law did get health insurance coverage for millions of uninsured Americans, it also caused millions of Americans to actually lose their current health care insurance coverage.
• Rather than decrease the annual cost of health insurance for Americans households by $2,500, as promised by President Obama, on average, it actually increased the cost of household health insurance.
• Rather than being able to retain access to their preferred doctors, hospitals and drug treatments, millions of Americans lost access to their preferences despite Obama’s promises that they would not lose that access.
• Despite the promise that the number of emergency room visits would go down, the volume of visits has gone up.
• The law made a doctor shortage crisis even worse.
• The law’s weak data systems operations placed millions of Americans at a high risk of identity theft.
• The law has resulted in the American taxpayer subsidizing abortion expenses despite the promise that Obama Care insurance policy subsidizes would not allow taxpayer money to subsidize abortions.
• The law never addressed the underlying root causes of high health care costs in this country (e.g. a fat, sugar, and salt infested food chain, smoking addictions, lack of exercise, aging diseases, etc.) and thus has no chance of actually doing what it was supposed to do, reduce health care costs in this country.
• The law has stunted economic growth and employment growth throughout the economy.
• The law will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt despite the Obama promise that it would actually reduce the national debt.

This is probably just a partial list of the bad things this law has done to the country. Let’s read on to see the latest disasters from this disastrous piece of legislation. 

1) Earlier in this update series we reviewed how half of the sixty U.S. Senators who voted for Obama Care will not be in the Senate when it convenes in 2015. Now some of them are not around because of reasons not related to Obama Care, e.g. John Kerry is now Secretary of State, but at least half of those who lost their seats likely lost it in large part due to Obama Care.

A recent Bloomberg analysis took the analysis a little further, beyond just the Senate relative to last month’s elections:

• In 2009, there were 60 Democrats in the Senate. In 2015, there will be 46, a decrease of 23%.
• In 2009, there were 257 Democrats in the House of Representatives. In 2015 there will be 188, a decrease of 27%.
• In 2009, there were 32 Democratic governors. In 2015, there will be 21 Democratic governors, a decrease of 34%.

Now some of these Democrats may have lost their seats for other reasons such as the economy, bad campaign strategies, scandals, etc. But the unpopularity of Obama Care and what it has done to the country and the economy in a major and highly visible way had to have an a major impact on voters, a reality that is verified by interviews of election and political experts done by Bloomberg related to these figures.

The good news is that voters punished those politicians that made bad legislation, lied, and false promises. The bad news is that while they are now gone, the bad legislation they made is still with us.

2) We have constantly reported on how health insurance costs will be going up next year and in future years, according to experts in the field. We recently quoted sources that showed that the average increase for Obama Care Silver plans, apparently the most popular plans, will go up an average cost of 5% in 2015, counter to what the President hyped a few years ago, namely that, on average, health insurance costs would go down $2,500 a year.

However, a recent article in Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) showed steeper price increases in the lower tiered, less expensive, and less robust Bronze plans offered via the Federal government’s Obama Care process, Healthcare.gov. Citing projections from the Healthcare.gov website, IBD wrote that Bronze plan premiums will increase next year by an average of 18% for those who purchase through the Federal Obama Care health care exchange. 

That estimate was calculated using the largest market in each of the 34 states that use Healthcare.gov as a customer portal for Obama Care. It does not include those policies purchased in state operated Obama Care exchanges.

IBD summarized the price results by major metro areas in the following graph:

The IBD article points out a few interesting and/or disturbing trends:

• Only nine of the Healthcare.gov metro areas can expect to see average premium prices fall or remain level next year for Obama Care Bronze plans.
• Five metro areas that will see Bronze plan premiums increase by more than 38%.
• Pity the Bronze plan holders in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa market who will see their bronze plan premiums more than double. 

So much for the legislation reducing or even containing health care insurance costs.

3) President Obama promised a lot of things that never came true relative to his pet piece of legislation, many of which were listed at the beginning of today’s post, e.g. premium costs would go down, you could keep your current doctors, your could keep your current policy, etc. One of his biggest boasts was how easy it was going to be to obtain Obama Care health insurance coverage via the online health care exchange process:

“Starting on Tuesday, every American can visit HealthCare.gov to find out what’s called the insurance marketplace for your state,” Obama said. “It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health care plans … the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak...I promise you, this is a lot easier. It’s like booking a hotel or a plane ticket.”

Well, this looks like another promise that went bad or was an outright lie that was used to sell in this horrid piece of legislation to the country. According to a recent article from the website, www.bankrate.com, almost two thirds of Americans say shopping for health insurance is as bad as having a tooth cavity filled and seven out of ten Americans say it is as bad as preparing one’s own tax returns or sitting in the middle seat on an airline flight. Trust me, booking a hotel room or plane ticket online was NEVER this painful or complex, promise broken.

Now, I am pretty sure that some of this angst in obtaining health insurance is not just related to Obama Care. But the President boasted that a lot of this angst would go away under his legislation, a boast that apparently has not taken hold if it is still like going to the dentist when it comes time to purchasing health care insurance. Just another day and another Obama promise failing to become reality.

Failed promises and increased costs, seems to be the primary results of the Obama Care legislation. And unfortunately, we are not done documenting the continued failures of the law in these categories of pain and others. More to come in the following days.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

July, 2014 Update, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 2: An Incompetent Enrollment Process, Likely Cost Increases In Florida, and More

Yes, the world has been a mess lately. Fighting in the Gaza Strip, downed airliners, Russians fighting Ukrainians, the economy still stagnant, Iraq begin torn apart, Syrian civil war still killing thousands, veterans still not getting the proper medical treatment, a border that is a humanitarian crisis, etc. In the background though, has been the continuing and unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

We have had to devote many posts every month to this fiasco since last August. The fallout from the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by Washington just keeps on giving and messing up Americans’ lives. This month is no exception. We will probably need most of this week to cover it all, that is how bad the law is many, many months after it was rolled out in such a disastrous manner last fall. 

As with previous months, we will likely stop talking about it this month not because we ran out of material but because it can get so depressing going over the damage the legislation is doing to lives, health, freedom and the economy.

1) Besides the big problem Obama Care is facing that we discussed yesterday, namely that a court ruling may have gutted the main thrust of the legislation which was to give out subsidies to low income Americans to purchase overpriced and under featured Obama Care insurance policies, the logistics and operations of the entire effort continues to be a disaster.

The General Accountability Office of the Federal government recently announced that it had completed a sting operation on the sign up process of the Obama Care process. What they found was very discouraging, but not surprising, given how poorly every other aspect of failed to meet even minimal standards of quality:

• Despite using totally fake ids, undercover GAO investigators were able to obtain taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage in 11 of 12 attempts, according to Associated Press reporting.
• This latest disgrace and dysfunction appears focused on Obama Care call centers that handle applications from those people who were unable able to enroll in the system via online the online exchanges.
• Members of Congress had some correct if cynical, remarks about non-existent people being able to get enrolled in Obama Care policies. Congressman Dave Camp said the GAO finding is just more proof that Obama Care is rife with “incompetence, waste and the potential for fraud.” Senator Orrin Hatch said: “Obama Care is working really well — for those who don’t exist.”

It seems ironic and pitiful that many of our real, living, breathing veterans cannot get basic medical care from the Federal government but fictitious people have no trouble getting health insurance coverage from the same Federal government. Talk about incompetence.

2) Not surprisingly, more states are finding out that the premiums likely to be paid next year on Obama Care policies will be much higher than today’s premiums. Kaiser Health News recently did a story on what is going on in Florida relative to the latest cost increase news. Highlights of their report include the following:

• The top executive of Florida Blue, the state’s largest health insurance carrier, recently went public with the announcement that his Obama Care customers will see an increase in their policy costs in 2015.
• Apparently, the company, which picked up the most Obama Care enrollees in the state, were stuck with a larger percentage of older and sicker patients than they expected.
• In addition to not getting enough younger and healthy enrollees, the company ended up paying more than expected for people seeking more expensive health services: “We will be under tremendous financial pressure initially given the age, risk profile and high utilization of the new membership. It is far from clear that large enrollment in the marketplace is a financially beneficial place to be.” 
• In other words, expect your Obama Care policy premiums to go up next year because we are getting killed financially by those same policies.
• Florida Blue has not yet gone public with its 2015 rate increases, that information will be made available in a few weeks but the news does not sound good for none or minimal rate hikes.
• About 23% of those who bought Obama Care policies from Florida Blue this year were in the 18-to-34 age category, far below the national rate of 28% and farther below the 40% threshold that the Federal government said was needed for the entire Obama Care process to be viable.

Another state whose residents will probably not see their annual health care costs go down $2,500 as promised by the President. But that should not come as a surprise since we have not seen ANY state whose health care costs went down enough to justify that claim.

3) Given how poorly every aspect of Obama Care has unfolded so far, is there any hope that it will work itself out for the greater good over the next decade or so? If you believe the latest forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, the answer to that question is not good. 

Remember, one of the utmost, primary goals of Obama Care was to get affordable health insurance coverage for every American. That is why it is officially called the “Affordable Healthcare Act.” But that primary goal will not be attained, even ten years from now, according to the Congressional Budget Office‘s April forecast of what will happen to enrollment in health care plans from 2015 to 2024:

• By 2024, about 31 million Americans will still remain uninsured.
• Starting with an estimate that 56 million Americans did not have health insurance coverage prior to Obama Care, that number will be reduced by 25 million people who will purchase Obama care coverage in the exchanges in the next ten years.
• 13 million more Americans will gain health insurance coverage coverage through the dysfunctional Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program as a result of Obama Care.
• 7 million Americans will lose health insurance coverage from their employees as a result of Obama Care.
• 5 million fewer Americans will carry individual coverage directly from an insurer.
• Add all of these additions and subtractions up, account for rounding, and we find that the official CBO estimate forecasts 31 million Americans will still be uninsured in 2024.

Even more discouraging, the CBO estimates that the reduction in uninsured will come at a cost to the country, its taxpayers, and its economy of $1.8 TRILLION over those ten years. If we divide the net gain in insured Americans, about 25 million, into the cost of insuring them, $1.8 TRILLION, simple math shows that it will cost an amazing and mind numbing $75,000 per person to insure those under an Obama Care policy.

It is an amazing and stupefying cost and yet, despite the high cost, more than half of today’s uninsured Americans are still uninsured ten years from now. Failure is the only way to describe such a high cost to meet less than half of the overall and primary goal of the entire Obama Care operation. There has to be a simpler, more effective way.

4) We have often made the case in past Obama Care posts that the legislation, as it is written, hinders economic and employment growth in so many ways. That reality was reinforced recently n a Heritage Foundation interview with Billie Baggett of IHT Staffing, a temp agency located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Under financial and work hour pressure to comply with the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Baggett claims many South Carolina businesses are cutting back by hiring more part-time rather than full time employees. He points out that while unemployment levels have dropped, to pre-recession levels at 6.1% nationally, his staffing agency work in South Carolina shows that this number may be skewed. Many employees have returned to work, but in new part time positions.

He blames Obama Care for the shrinking work week and the growth in part time vs. full time hiring: “I would say 90% of our employers, businesses today, are hiring part-time as opposed to full-time, because of the Affordable Healthcare Act.” 

A primary provision of the 2009 law, the employer mandate, requires all business with more than 50 workers to provide healthcare benefits to full-time employees. The law defines a full time employee as any employee who works more than 30 hours a week. While the Obama administration has put off this employer mandate until 2015, Baggett believes that it still discourages business from filling full time posts: “It’s not something a corporation wants to do.” 

James Sherk, a senior economic analyst at The Heritage Foundation, agrees and believes that the Obama Care employer mandate has already affected the job market, the economy, and predicts additional downsides in the future: “Obama Care will further reduce hours by increasing the costs of hiring full-time employees while discouraging workers from working full-time. Fewer work hours will impede income mobility for low-wage workers.”

That will do it for today. More of the same for those affected already by Obama Care: faulty and criminal fraud-ready sign up processes, likely insurance premium cost increases in Florida, failure to reach fully insurance status in ten years despite an astronomical cost of failing to do so, and the continuing proof that Obama Care is stifling earnings, work hours, and the economy.

And we still have a lot more disasters to cover in this month’s Obama Care disaster updates.

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