November, 2023, By The Numbers, Part 2: Bad Immigration Numbers, Bad Economic Numbers, Bad Violent Crime Numbers

 On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political class tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

1)One of the major problems that has arisen since the early years of the Biden administration is the increasing amount of urban, and non-urban crime, across the country. And Americans have noticed:

• A recent opinion poll found that 28% of Americans are now afraid to go outside their homes at night.

• About 50% of those polled are worried that their car will be either stolen  or broken into.

• 37% fear they will get mugged and 32% fear they will be attacked while driving, either by road rage or carjacking.

• 72% of Americans are worried about being a victim of identity theft.

• 40% of those polled said they are afraid to walk within one mile of their homes alone at night.

• 34% say they have concerns about driving to certain parts of their communities.

• 28% say their concern about crime causes them anxiety about talking with strangers.

• Analysis by the Brennan  Center for Justice led them to  conclude that skyrocketing crime in urban areas is a “serious cause for concern.”

One of the very basic tenets of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they serve. Given the fear that has been uncovered as a result of growing crime rates, it appears that the American political class is failing to successfully execute this vital, basic government function.

2)If Americans are so worried about their safety as a result of the failure of our political class, many of them are taking their security needs into their own hands:

• A recent NBC News opinion  poll found that 52% of respondents said there was a gun in their household.

• This is the highest level of household penetration of gun ownership ever.

• Thus, over half of American households have a gun on premise to protect themselves and their family.

• This is up from 42% in 2013 and 46% in 2019.

Kudos to Americans taking charge of their lives, shame on politicians that have failed to protect.

3)Biden is on record with his belief, or outright lie, that the economy under his leadership is doing great. The numbers beg to differ:

• Only 38% of Americans approve of the way Biden is handling the economy.

• Airline ticket prices are 13% lower than they were last year… but they are still 21% higher than they were when Biden took office.

• Rental car rates are down 9% on average from last year…but they are still 55% higher than they were when Biden took office.

• Egg prices are down 22% from last year…but are still 40% higher than they were when Biden took office.

• Milk prices are down 16% form last year…but they are still 11% higher than when Biden took office.

• Bacon prices are down 5.1% from last year…but are still 24% higher than they were when Biden took office.

• Used car and truck prices are down 7% from last year…but they are still 23% higher than when Biden took office.

No wonder that less than 40% think Biden is doing a good job when it comes to the economy. The bigger question is why ANYONE thinks he is doing a good job.

4)Biden’s failed border policies have allowed millions of unvetted, unvaccinated, and often criminal illegal immigrants to pour into the country, many which are like the following examples:

• In just the past two months along the Del Rio,, Texas section of the southern border, U.S.  Border Patrol agents apprehended 21 criminal illegal immigrants with previous felony sex convictions, with many of the sex convictions related to the sexual abuse of children.

• In the past year, Border agents have apprehended 27,295 illegal immigrants with known criminal records vs. a total of 21,936 that were arrested during the entire Trump Presidency.

• Thus, about 30% more criminal illegal immigrants have been  captured during the past year of the Biden Presidency vs. four years of the Trump Presidency.

Another example of the Federal government and Biden’s failure to carry out that basic tenet of government, to protect the lives and property of American citizens, pretty tough to do when so many known criminal elements are strolling into the country.

And do not forget this one troubling thought: the Border Patrol  agents have caught 27,295 illegal criminal immigrants. How many did they NOT catch and who are now wandering among us?

Enough numbers for today,  most of which are not good whether it  is dangerous illegal immigration numbers, devastating economic numbers, or dangerous crime numbers. Remember, the numbers don't lie even if politicians do.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:

https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

July, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Obama Admits to Failure, Obama Bailouts The Insurance Companies, and More

Earlier this month we did a single post on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have been doing this theme for years and years where we have been constantly amazed and depressed about how much havoc this poor piece of legislation has rained down on Americans and how much of a medical, insurance, economic, and operational disaster it has been. We did mention at that earlier post that we only had to devote one day of discussion to the disaster this month vs. the multiple days we have had to do just about every other month for the past four years.

But apparently we spoke too soon. In just the few days since we did that solo post, a number of other Obama Care disasters have hit the fan that we should discuss before next month rolls around. So here goes, with the typical introduction of missed root causes that we always preface our unfolding Obama Care disasters with.

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Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

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

1) Yesterday, we talked about the reality that 16 out of 23 Obama Care co-ops had already flamed out financially and gone out of business. As a result, they took over $1.7 billion worth of taxpayer wealth down the drain with them and caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their health insurance coverage. We also discussed the reality that six of the seven remaining co-ops are also on the verge of going out of business. 

And now it seems that even Obama has faced the reality that his vaunted co-ops are a disaster. Remember, the co-ops were supposed to serve as a competitive counter weight in geographic areas where there was little competition for health insurance customers, which theoretically allowed those that serve those areas to jack up insurance rates. However, if the co-ops all go out of business, those competitive advantages will never appear.

According to a Wall Street Journal report that was summarized on the Legal Insurrection website, Obama recently proposed that the Federal government step up and “Congress and his White House successor add a government-run, or public, insurance option to the Affordable Care Act and increase federal financial assistance for people to buy coverage [in geographic areas with little or no insurance competition].” Does this not sound remarkably like the original co-op plan, a plan that has had expensive and disastrous ramifications and results? 

Let’s review the Federal government’s track record in the healthcare industry:

• Sixteen out of 23 Obama Care co-ops have already failed and the remaining ones are more likely to fail than succeed.
• Medicare and Medicaid are so criminally infested that together they likely lose upwards of $100 billion a year to criminal fraud and inefficiency.
• Medicaid is so bad that one out of three doctors in the country do not accept Medicaid patients, probably resulting in Medicaid patients not getting access to the best doctors in the country.
• An extensive Harvard study of Medicaid patients in Oregon showed that Medicaid patients were no healthier than comparable people that had no health insurance.
• Obama Care has missed its customer enrollment forecast and promise in 2016 by almost 50%.
• Obama Care policy premiums, deductibles, and co-pays have increased substantially over the past few years despite Obama’s many promises that those costs would go down.
• The Veterans Administration, that operates a network of government run hospitals across the country to serve our veterans, has been found to be inefficient, poorly run and managed, and fatal to many veterans who did not get the care they needed in time.

In this reality Obama actually thinks that the Federal government is capable of operating an effective insurance program across the country? Have we forgotten how horrific it was to sign up for Obama Care health insurance policies via the Obama Care exchanges? Have we forgotten that many of those exchanges, like the Obama Care co-ops, have already gone out of business? Have we forgotten how the Obama Care data systems exposed millions of Americans to identity theft and fraud? Talk about the potential for another unfolding disaster.

2) The Americans For Prosperity website on July 15, 2016 ran an article where it described how the Obama administration was likely illegally bailing out insurance companies offering Obama Care policies even though Congress never approved funding for such an activity. 

Recall, the original Obama Care legislation had provisions for creating a subsidy fund using excessive profits on Obama Care policies from insurance companies doing well under the Obama Care legislation which was given to insurance companies that were not doing well with Obama Care policies. This plan was supposed to ease the industry into the Obama Care world and be temporary, with this subsidy fund expiring after just a few years.

Apparently and allegedly, the administration has been sending billions of taxpayer dollars to various insurance companies after this subsidy program went out of business. A Federal judge recently ruled that this funneling of funds to the insurance companies was unlawful since Congress did not authorize the transfer of taxpayer wealth to the companies.

In addition, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services has also allegedly been sending billions of taxpayer dollars to cover the losses of insurance companies through another provision known as Obama Care reinsurance. According to the article, $3.5 billion has already been sent to the insurance companies as the administration tries to avoid the inevitable: the death spiral of Obama Care.

3) I recently came across one of the more infamous video clips of the Obama Care era. It involved an MIT economic consultant to the Obama administration’s development of Obama Care, Jonathan Gruber. Gruber famously called Americans stupid and how the legislation was written in such a convoluted manner as to make it very hard to understand what the legislation actually did. To view an adjunct member of the Obama administration calling you stupid, go to the following link:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2014/11/obamacare-architect-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-is-why-obamacare-passed-video/

4) We often finish off these unfolding disasters of Obama Care by showing real life cases of real life American families who have suffered under the legislation. The sources of these heartbreaking stories comes from the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

ED - OHIO: Even after the administration made hundreds of improvements to the troubled Obamacare website, many people are still encountering difficulty.

Ed Anderson, a graphic designer from Columbus, Ohio, who was recently bumped from his wife’s insurance policy for reasons relating to the new law, discovered that his family’s monthly premiums will double even if he chooses the most inexpensive plan available to him through the new federal insurance exchange in his state.

Anderson said he and his wife currently pay a monthly premium of $460 through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But now that he can no longer stay on his wife’s plan, he will have to get his own coverage. The most inexpensive option would cost him a $428 monthly premium. And he and his wife can’t qualify for a federal subsidy because their joint income exceeds the cutoff. The new insurance policy will cost the Andersons an extra $5,000 a year in premiums alone.

“When you’re trying to keep your house, pay car insurance and put your kid through college, it’s tough,” Anderson said. Everything we do is going to be affected by this. Getting groceries, eating out. Going anywhere. It’s just crazy.”

MARK - IDAHO: Mark A. York, a 60-year-old freelance writer in Hailey, Idaho, said he began shopping after he received a letter saying that his current insurance policy would be canceled because it did not meet the requirements of the health care law. In the exchange, he said, he found policies with premiums similar to what he is now paying, $440 a month, but “the deductibles were so high — $4,000 to $6,000 a year — that it defeats the purpose of having insurance."

JOSH - TEXAS: All I have to say is that it's way too expensive. I make 1600 hundred a month they want me to pay 650 bucks a month that's BS I live check to check already I'll be homeless if I get health care. I'm 28 with 1600 a month barely enough to put food on the table pay bills and gas in my vehicle I have to borrow money every month as it is so this would just be ridiculous it's cheaper for me to pay the penalty at the end of the year oh well what do you do

KEN - COLORADO: My wife and I have been on the same health insurance plan for 12 years. The cost of that plan has gone up 110% in the last three years and we had to go with different plan due to the cost. The new plan covers less with higher deductibles. It is due to the Obamacare act. We called BCBS to ask why the cost has gone up each year (that's three calls, one a year) we where told the same each time, to get ready for the new health care act. So much for cheaper insurance. IT IS A SAD, RECKLESS LAW! All those who voted for it should be ashamed for what they did!

P.S. We are now slaves to our government, we now have to buy something from a private company or pay a fine, to live in this country.

That will do it for this month’s review of unfolding disasters from Obama Care. The President finally admits that a major component of his legislation is a disaster that needs to be remedied, the same President tries to illegally and secretly bailout the suffering insurance companies, we are reminded that those who constructed Obama Care thought we were all too stupid to understand what was being forced onto us, and a reminder that many,many Americans are suffering serious hardships from the worst piece of legislation ever passed. More disasters sure to come around by next month.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

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 7, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care -By The Numbers

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.

This will be the final review for this month of the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) A recent article by Heritage Foundation writer Paul Winfree reviewed how far off government estimates were on how Obama Care was going to work out:

• We have previously discussed the concept of risk corridors, the process where the Obama administration would take excess profits from companies offering Obama Care policies and give it to Obama Care companies that experienced excess losses from Obama Care policies.
• These corridors would exist for the first few years of Obama Care to encourage companies to offer Obama Care policies and to ease the transition into Obama Care world.
• This process would not involve taxpayer wealth since the administration and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) were confident that there would be more excess profits than excess losses.
• The CBO estimated in 2014 that there would be $1.7 billion in excess profits while the administration was much more robust, estimating there would be an amazing $5.5 million in excess profits.
• The reality was far different than this forecasts with the actual excess profits coming in at just $362 million, a paltry 20% or so relative to the CBO forecast and a small fraction of the administration’s fairy tale $5.5 billion estimate.
• Obviously the CBO and the administration had no clue at how bad these Obama Care policies actually were from a profitability perspective.
• But apparently they were the only entities that were so ignorant since a report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a 2014 report stating the risk corridors program would come up short and the Standard And Poor’s Ratings Service in May, 2015 estimated that excess losses would exceed excess profits.
• Fortunately, Congress passed a piece of legislation in 2015 that keeps taxpayers out of the paying for the shortfall.

Thus, even though many people and organizations knew that Obama Care financials were a joke from the start, it took the Obama administration and the CBO years and years to figure out that these estimates were not pessimistic and lowballing, they eventually became reality.

2) Let’s keep rolling with the dreadful Obama Care numbers, this set of numbers from Forbes:

• At one point the CBO estimated that by 2016 Obama Care enrolled total would be over 20 million, they then reduced it to 14 million, and are now saying it will be closer to 9.5 million.
• Many of these enrollees were enrolled into Medicaid via Obama Care, putting more financial pressure on failing Federal program that is heading straight into financial ruin.
• Of the 9.5 million people, less than 2 million will enroll without a need for a tax credit subsidy, making the Obama Care financials and insurance company results very poor.
• George Mason University’s Mercatus Center analyzed previous enrollment estimates of both government and private entities, all of which came in much higher than today’s reality.
• These models assumed that not only would a lot more American sign up for Obama Care but that a far higher percentage of those people would be healthier and younger than who actually enrolled: “…Early data, however, show that insurers have enrolled a disproportionate number of older and sicker people. Despite an $8 billion subsidy through a reinsurance program to pay the majority of the expenses for high-cost ACA plan enrollees, insurers’ 2014 losses on ACA plans equaled about 12 percent of the premiums collected. Of the 23 health care cooperatives (co-ops) that were initiated with ACA start-up loans, 12 have already gone out of business or are shutting down at the end of 2015 because of massive losses from ACA plans. Part of the reason for a worse-than expected risk pool is that the individual mandate appears to be leading fewer relatively healthy people to enroll than was expected.”
• UnitedHealth, as we have already reviewed, may drop out of the whole Obama Care marketplace due to the half a billion dollars they have already lost on Obama Care policies, a reality that is causing them to scale back their marketing efforts and plans in order to discourage new customers getting their Obama Care policies from UnitedHealth.
• As of the middle of the summer, five of the 13 states that had set up their own Obama Care health care exchanges had already folded and been absorbed into the Federal Obama Care exchange. This is in addition to over half of the 23 Obama Care co-ops already having been shut down or in the process of being shut down.
• The cost of Obama Care policies are generally going to increase in 2016, the third year in a row they have increased, even though the President claimed that families could see an annual decrease in their health insurance costs of up to $2,500.

What a mess. You probably could not make a worst piece of legislation if you tried:

1. Over half of the co-ops have crashed. 
2. About 40% of the state exchanges have already died. 
3. The long term care aspect of Obama Care died a few years ago.
4. Premium costs of all Obama Care policies, bronze, gold, silver, and platinum, will on average go up over 20% in 2016. 
5. Higher than previous deductible levels have created the perverse situation where more people have health insurance but cannot get healthcare because they cannot afford the higher deductibles.
6. Employers have cut back on hiring to avoid Obama Care penalties and fines, reducing working hours of workers and economic growth. 
7. Even when companies offered health insurance via their companies, very, very few of their employees signed up.
8. More older and sicker people than expected have signed up for Obama Care vs. younger and healthier people which is torpedoing the financial results of the insurance companies. 
9. The lower than expected enrollment and worse than expected mix is making the risk corridors come up short in supporting insurance companies.
10. The legislation will add almost $2 TRILLION to the national debt. 
11. The threat of identity theft is extremely high, given the poor data security aspects and implementation of the Obama Care computer systems.
12. The credibility of this President and his administration has been crushed given the many lies, deceptions, and shortfalls that have been publicly declared.
13. Etc., etc., etc.

And the saddest aspect of all, the root causes of this country’s high healthcare costs, as listed above, still rampage on despite $2 TRILLION of government expense and the extensive turmoil caused by the law. If the law had least eliminated some of the root causes of high healthcare costs, it may have been somewhat worthwhile. But alas, it did not and the unfolding disasters continue to unfold every, single month. 

It took us seven days to get through all of the latest ObamaCare disasters. I guarantee you we will be back next month with another list of unfolding disasters.

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