July, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:

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.

This week we have been taking a look at the latest disasters from Obama Care, including the gathering evidence that ObamaCare 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) Correction to previous version at the request of parties involved.

2) Some supporters of Obama Care actually think that the legislation did not go far enough in giving the Federal government bureaucrats and Washington political class more control over our lives and personal health care situation than what Obama Care does. these folks favor the complete takeover of health care by the government, similar to the so-called single payer systems in some European countries.

There are at least two serious problems with this mindset, both of which we have discussed already in past blog posts:

• The Federal government is incapable of doing anything efficient or effective. There is no reason to think that putting them in charge of every facet of our personal health care would somehow come out any differently.
• The actual, real life experiences of Europeans who get sick under a single payer plan have been absolute horror stories, with people waiting months and months just to get a simple medical test done, people dying before they could get treated, etc.

But there is another reason to fear a single payer plan as outlined in a Recent Washington Times article. A recent survey of health care executives in Britain found that many of them plan on rationing health care options in order to get their skyrocketing costs and financial obligations under control. 

About 40% of England's 211 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are considering putting limits on eligibility for services such as foot care, hip replacements, knee replacements, and other treatments. In addition, smokers and those who are considered obese will be among those denied surgery and other treatment, according to a survey conducted by the HealthService Journal, in an extension of the controversial policy of “lifestyle rationing”.

Chief executives, chairs and board members at 67 CCGs were asked: 

• “Is your CCG considering introducing new limits to access/eligibility for services during 2015/16, for financial/efficiency/value reasons?”
• Among the respondents, 39% said yes, 57% said no and 4% did not know.
• Jeremy Taylor, chief executive of National Voices, which represents 140 health charities, stated:  
• “It’s very worrying to hear this because access to services that people need is a key aspect of what makes the NHS the NHS. It’s comprehensive, it’s national, it’s free at the point of use and it’s not based on ability to pay, so if you want to ramp up rationing then you call into question the extent to which it’s still a comprehensive service based on clinical need. This is worrying but not surprising, given the overall financial state of the NHS.”

This is what happens when government bureaucrats start taking over your life, in this case, your health care aspect of your life.  By never attacking the root causes of high health care costs, see the list above which includes such maladies as smoking and obesity, you never the tame the causes of ever rising health care costs. As a result, with limited financial resources and rising health care costs, you have to at some time start cutting back on quality and quantity of services, the exact same thing that is happening in England's single payer system.

And Obama Care is taking us down the same road since it also did not attack the root causes of our rising health care costs. By allowing the root causes to fester and grow in this country, you can be sure that at some time down the road in the world Of Obama Care, rationing will also occur in this country, it is the simple rule of supply and demand.

3) One of the root causes of our ever rising health care costs is the ever rising incidents of cancer and dementia-related illnesses. Unless research and breakthroughs occur in these two illness areas, it will not matter who has an Obama Care health care insurance policy since at some point in time the entire health care industry collapses in this country.

Consider the current incidence and projection of Alzheimer's diseases, just ONE of the dementia related diseases. According to statistics in a recent article in the AARP Bulletin newspaper:

• Current national spending to treat Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was $214 billion.
• That annual number will grow to $486 billion by 2030 and $1.2 TRILLION by 2050 unless something is done to curtail the disease.
• The number of Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was about 5 million people.
• That will grow to 8.4 million by 2030 and 13.8 million by 2050.

Obama could have made an epic contribution to history, the country, and his legacy if he had proclaimed to the country back in the early stages of the Obama Care legislation development that the country would make a concerted research and financial effort to cure Alzheimer's disease within ten years. This would have been the equivalent of John F. Kennedy's proclamation that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s decade.

But, alas, as always with this President, he was not epic. he focused on trying to fit an insurance solution to a public health problem and failed miserably.  Without taming the Alzheimer's threat, without curbing the obesity epidemic, without getting the country to kick the smoking habit, without making our food supply healthy, etc., without putting a public health solution together for the problem, it does not matter how much an Obama care Bronze plan costs today. 

Because very shortly, no one will be able to afford any health care as the rising costs of our public health problems overwhelm the ability to provide care.

4) As we often do with these Obama Care posts, lt us close today with real life stories of real life Americans and how ObamaCare is ruining their lives. The source of these true stories is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

STEVE - ALABAMA: Like many, my health premium has nearly doubled ,and my deductibles and co-pays have increased some four fold. Yesterday my wife, who has a serious illness that has attacked her eyes over the years, learned that she could no longer receive a prescription that her doctor wants to write for her. This drug would help maintain her condition as to avoid flair ups with her eye problems. Her doctor informed her he can no longer prescribe the medication due to the recent health care law changes. 

PATRICK - VERMONT: My wife and I are both over 65 and on medicare. Our supplement in the past was free and all we paid was co-pays for medical care and prescription, with no yearly deductible. Our supplemental insurance, United Healthcare, said they were not allowed to offer that plan any longer. So, this year we have to $30.00 each, plus a $2,500.00 each for deductible. It is pretty tough living on a fixed income. So it pretty evident that the elderly can no longer go to a movie, restaurant or any form of enjoyment. The little extra we had after regular bills is being sucked up by the insurance and medical needs.

ERIN - MASSACHUSETTS: I lost coverage with doctors in my area. It's not right and it's not fair. The current federal government and their policies are detrimental to the health of my business and my family.

ROBIN - CALIFORNIA: My premium went up $350 my deductible went from $500 to over $5000 and my benefits were not at all any better.

That will do it for today and this month on our continuing update on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More individual Americans suffering as a result of the law, the continuing failure to address the root causes of the rising health care costs, more jobs lost as a result Of Obama Care, and how rationing might be coming to this country sooner than later. I am sure that more disasters will bring us back to this topic 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

C.L.A.S.S. Is Dismissed And That Is Not Good For Obama Care

In a recent review of Obama care failures, we reported that the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Program) portion of the legislation was possibly in danger of folding since the head actuary in charge of it, along with members of his staff, had been reassigned. At that time, the Health and Human Services Department refused to officially verify the program was having problems.

Well, the suspicions were correct. Various news reports over the past week reported how the program has been deemed a failure, even by the Obama administration. Details include the following:

• Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius officially announced the termination of the program with a letter to Congress on October 14, 2011, concluding "there was not path close to solvency for the CLASS program."
• Included in the letter was the statement: "Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time." In other words, even for the wasteful spending political class, this dog of a program couldn't hunt.
• This part of the legislation was the pet program of the late Senator Ted Kennedy and was intended to allow Americans to purchase long term disability insurance for a low monthly premium.
• The initial target cost of the monthly premiums was hoped to be as low as $150 a month that would eventually pay out $50 a day if long term disability was needed.
• But the program's expected monthly premiums were now expected to be between $200 and $300 a month and could go as high as $3,000 a month in certain situations.
• But this termination should not come as a surprise since it is reported that the Congressional Budget Office stated as early as April, 2009 that "the CLASS program could be subject to considerable financial risk in the future if it was unable to attract a sufficiently healthy group of enrollees." Sort of sounds a lot like the Solyndra fiasco where the Obama administration was told ahead of time that the financials were likely to be shaky at best and the administration still went ahead with this disaster of a program.

Why this is so important is the fact that one of Obama's supposed selling points of Obama Care was that it would reduce the national debt over the first ten years by $125 billion or about $12.5 billion a year. However, shortly after the legislation was passed we found out that the $125 billion surplus cost did not include all of Obama Care's final components.

As reported by the Associated Press, these unaccounted for costs would add an additional cost of about $105 billion over ten years, reducing Obama Care's supposed positive impact to only $20 billion over the first ten years or a mere $2 billion a year.

But things got worse. Given that the legislation screwed up the wording and logic relative to Social Security payments and how they would be calculated in the Obama Care world, it appears that more Americans would be unnecessarily eligible for Federal government support in purchasing insurance, to the tune of about $30 billion a year, wiping out Obama Care's supposedly positive financial impact and now adding to our mountain of national debt.

And now the termination of CLASS only adds to the national debt since the original legislation estimate showed that CLASS would reduce the cost of Obama Care by about $80-90 billion. That positive impact now goes away with the program's cancellation.

The opponents of Obama Care weighed in with opinions and the following quotes:

• "The CLASS Act was a budget gimmick that might enhance the numbers on a Washington bureaucrat's spreadsheet but was destined to fail in the real world." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
• "It (CLASS) was a gimmick, it was an outrageous gimmick. It was designed to basically make the score of the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) look good...but none of the serious adults ever felt that this thing was actually a legitimately workable program." Dr. Robert Moffit, Senior Fellow at the Center For Policy Innovation.
• "The cost of Obama Care was masked by the revenues the CLASS Act was supposed to generate for the five years before it began paying out benefits. Obama Care, as of today, is as much as $87 billion more expensive." President Tom Fulton, Judicial Watch.
• "It's stunning to see how quickly the various aspects of the Obama Care law are unraveling before our eyes. It's the shoddiest piece of legislation in modern history." Betsey McCaughey  former lieutenantt governor of New York

It is tough to argue with their points since even the administration is giving up on the effort, at a paper cost of tens of billions of dollars. As a side bar, it also brings into question the Constitutionality of Selebius unilaterally terminating the program. One would have thought that since Congress passed the legislation, they would have to be the ones to terminate even a bad program such as this. Just another fiasco, disaster, chaotic situation spawned off of a very bad piece of legislation.

But things are getting worse for Obama Care beyond CLASS. The Congressional Budget Office originally estimated that 9-10 million Americans would see their employer provided health insurance coverage cancelled, forcing them into government insurance exchanges. However, a recent analysis by the business consulting firm McKenzie, based on a survey of over 1,000 businesses, estimates that 30-50% of these private businesses will terminate their company health insurance plans as a result of Obama Care.

If this happens, this would throw upwards of 78 million Americans into the government health insurance exchanges, seven to eight times as many than were anticipated under the Obama Care's financial analysis. If even half of MacKenzie's estimates comes true, it could up to $500 billion to the cost of Obama Care and the national debt.

Oh, and by the way, there are rumors that the establishment of the government insurance exchanges is way behind schedule, complicated by the recent resignation of the Health and Human Services chief who was supposed to spearhead the effort, Joel Ario.

CLASS is dismissed, the financial model for Obama Care continues to implode, tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their health insurance coverage with no alternative in place to pick up the slack and the biggest disaster of all: the legislation has not and never will address the underlying causes of our nation's high health care costs. That is why the political class supporters of this "shoddiest piece of legislation in modern history" also need to be dismissed.



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 http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

They Somehow Did It Again - Another Week, Another Two Obama Care Calamities

Just when you thought there was no way there could be more bad news about Obama Care, another way, or in this post two ways, pop up to prove you wrong. This marks the fourth time out of the past five weeks where we have found it important enough to review the latest research, findings, analyses, conclusions, and bad news about Obama Care, the 2,000 page plus atrocious piece of legislation that was supposed to cure the nation of it skyrocketing health care cost burden.

Two sets of bad news this week. Let's start with a pair of business surveys, as reported by the Associated Press (AP) on August 24, 2011, regarding health care that were recently completed by Towers Watson and benefits consultant, Mercer:

• About one out of every ten midsized and large employers in the country expect to stop offering health care coverage to their employees once the Obama Care insurances exchanges begin operating in 2014.
• Additionally, another one in five companies are unsure about what they will do after the 2014 onset of the insurance exchanges.
• These companies would drop their insurance plans since it would be less expensive to stop offering health insurance to their employees and pay the Obama Care fines then to continue paying for health care insurance under the new tax rules of Obama Care.
• The AP article quotes Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute: "If one employer does it (drop their employee health care insurance), other are likely to follow. You would see this playing out over the course of years, not months." In other words, if a company's major competitor drops their health care insurance program, than that company is likely to do the same to stay competitive.
• The article discusses the views of Michael Turpin, a national practice leader at broker and consultant USI Insurance services. He claims that one of his clients, a major entertainment industry company, plan to drop their insurance coverage the instance any of their competitors do the same in order to not be at a financial disadvantage, "In those industries...if somebody makes the first move, the others are going to follow like dominoes."
• The industries most likely to drop health care coverage for their employees are those companies in the retail and hospitality area, i.e. the companies mostly likely to employ lower wage, poorer employees.

Another recent survey, conducted by the National Business Group On Health, of 83 companies from the Fortune 500 list found the following results:

• These companies expect their health care insurance costs to rise 7.2% in 2012. The majority of those costs will be passed on to these companies' employees. Thus, Obama Care's early impacts are not reducing the health care cost burden on both companies and individuals as hoped for.
• 27% of the companies surveyed expect to change their insurance limits on preventive services and wellness service components in 2012 as a result of Obama Care. Although not explicitly stated, it can probably be safely assumed that these limit changes for these health services will make the companies' insurance plans less robust and useful to employees.
• 14% of the companies surveyed expect to change their insurance limits on mental health coverage and substance abuse in 2012 as a result of Obama Care. Although not explicitly stated, it can probably be safely assumed that these limit changes for these health services will also make the companies' insurance plans less robust and useful to employees.

More bad news and it keeps on coming. Nowhere have we seen a company, analysis, survey, or industry expert come out and state that Obama care will fulfill its stated objectives:

• Rather than reducing the number of Americans without health care insurance, it is highly likely to result in companies dropping their current health care insurance plans, resulting in millions of more Americans not having health care insurance.
• Rather than reducing costs, there is every indication that Obama Care will increase the cost, or at the very least not impact the rise in health care costs.
• Rather than solving the problem of high health care costs in this country, this legislation has introdced such uncertainty into the market and world that employers are cutting back on hiring and expansion, not knowing what the true impact on their businesses will be.

The Obama administration and the political class has done an absolute abysmal job of explaining what Obama Care's implications are likely to be. As a result, companies and businesses are like a deer in the headlights, trying to figure out how to survive in the uncertainty.

And that uncertainty is likely to increase going forward as this dangerous piece of legislation becomes a major issue in the 2012 Presidential campaign and as it gets closer and closer to review by the Supreme Court. Uncertainty results in conservative business thinking, expansion, and optimism. Is there any surprise that this rise in uncertainty as a result of Obama Care has a very high correlation with the lack of private market job growth over the past year or so? Deer in the headlights do not make for good job creators.

Can it get any worse? Guess we'll find out next week.



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 http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

Ignorance, Lying, and The Growing Nonsense Of Obama Care

Many times in this blog we have reviewed the many facets of Obama Care and always come up with the same conclusion: this is one of the worse pieces of legislation ever passed and signed into law. The creators of the legislation never understood the root causes of our ever skyrocketing health care costs. Without an understanding of the underlying problems, there is virtually no chance of developing and implementing a coherent and effective solution.

Before looking at the latest nonsense to come out about the law, let's reviews what some experts have said in the past:

- In a March 1, 2010 article in Fortune magazine, an interview of Dr. Delose Cosgrove, CEO of the renowned Cleveland Clinic, revealed the following knowledge, from a leading expert in healthcare:

• Obesity accounts for at least 10% of the health care costs in the United States.
• Smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise accounts for 40% of the premature deaths in this country.
• These same factors account for the 70% of the health care costs associated with chronic diseases such as heart disease in the United States.
• Smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise account for 75% of the nation's total health care costs.

Thus, according to an expert's view, the root causes driving our high health care costs are public health related questions: diet, exercise and smoking. Rather than attack these true causes of high costs with a public health care effort, Obama Care basically constructed a massive taxation process and bureaucracy that adds complexity and taxation without solving the underlying causes.

Need more, consider the findings from the National Academy of Sciences, an independent Federal agency:

• The United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world.
• Despite the high expenses, life expectancy in the U.S. is less than the life expectancies in many other developed countries.
• Smoking and obesity are the primary factors driving the lower life expectancy, and likely higher health care costs, in this country.

More of the same. Rather than address the cause, Obama Care tries to solve the problem administratively.

But the latest research paints an even worse picture. Remember, one of the primary avowed objectives of Obama Care was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans in the United States, estimated to be between 30 and 40 million Americans. However, if you consider the following expert analyses, the legislation will fall far short of this objective also. 

According to a recent study by the McKinsey Consulting Group, as published in their publication, McKinsey Quarterly, 30% of the American companies surveyed by McKinsey said they would drop their employee health care plans because under Obama Care, it is a better business decision to not carry a health care insurance program and pay the small fine than it is to continue operating a health care insurance program.

The companies in the McKinsey survey's 30% said that even if they raised wages to compensate for dropping their healthcare plan, it would still be less expensive for the companies under Obama Care.

Mr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin is an economist and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He is obviously someone with some valid credentials to examine Obama Care. He did so in a recent analysis and report that was published by the American Action Forum. His results and findings are damning to the legislation:

• According to his analysis, Obama Care "is fiscally dangerous, raising the risk of higher labor (and other) taxes at a time when the job market is struggling."
• The legislation's weak fine system provides a strong incentive for companies to stop offering their employees and retirees health care insurance coverage.
• This could result in 35 million Americans, who are covered by employer provided health care insurance, being left without health care insurance.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimated, badly, that only 3 million individuals who previously received coverage through their employers will get subsidized coverage through the Obama Care insurance exchanges. Thus, they are off a factor of twelve in their forecast.
• By tossing 35 million more Americans into the uninsured pool, Federal subsidies will increase by over a TRILLION dollars in ten years, wiping out any perceived or touted savings Obama Care was supposed to bring to the national debt.
• Obama Care will have the greatest impact from a marginal tax rate perspective on the lowest earning workers in the country.
• The analysis reviewed individual company feelings towards Obama Care, noting that Caterpillar is on record of saying that Obama Care would reduce their employee health care costs by 70% if they dropped their employee and retiree insurance programs. AT&T has said it's annual health care insurance costs would drop from $2.4 billion to only $600 million since it would be far less expensive to drop their insurance program and pay the fine for not having one.

Great, a piece of legislation that is supposed to reduce the number of Americans without health care insurance will likely increase the number of Americans without health care insurance by tens of millions of people. These analyses were not done by Republicans or Tea Party advocates. McKinsey is a highly respected corporate consulting firm with a long history of high powered analysis and Mr. Holtz-Eakin has the experience and education to back up his work.

Let's look at the numbers a slightly different way. Obama Care advocates claimed that upwards of 40 million Americans did not have health care insurance. But there are subsets within that 40 million. Some more affluent people could afford to buy insurance but decided not to since they feel they could cover health care costs with out of pocket cash as the need arose. Some of the 40 million were found  to be sons and daughters of the more affluent and knew that their parents could pay for their health care expenses. Some of the 40 million were older Americans who had not yet gotten around to signing up for Medicare.

Thus, even if you buy the 40 million number, the actual, truly needy Americans who did not have health care insurance, was substantially below 40 million, let's conservatively say it was 35 million. 35 million Americans out of a total population of of 311 million Americans is about 11%. Thus, in order to fix the problem for 11% of the population, we changed the world for upwards of 89% of Americans.

But wait! Out of the 89%, Obama Care is likely to result in another 35 million Americans losing their health care coverage. Ridiculous and nonsensical. How can anyone say this is good legislation?

Want more? According to the statistics in this past Sunday's St. Petersburg Times, there is another set of numbers out that show how stupid Obama Care is. The numbers were within a St. Petersburg Times article on how companies are trying to get their employees involved in exercise and other healthy activities. 

The statistics from the article claim that 15% of the population drives 85% of the nation's health care costs, 5% of the population drives 60% of the cost, and 25% of the population have no healthcare costs. Would it not have been a better strategy to focus on these small groups of Americans that cause the vast majority of health care costs and fix their problems rather than upsetting the entire health care system in the country? Nonsense again.

How simple could it be? Address the underlying drivers of high health care costs: obesity, bad diets, smoking, and lack of exercise. Understand who is the primary drivers of health care costs and resources and fix their problems. Instead, we get a cumbersome, complex, expensive, and incoherent 2,500 page piece of legislation that addresses none of the underlying problems  while destroying health care insurance for tens of millions.

Which brings us to the the other two topics in our title, ignorance and lying. President Obama stated over and over that Americans who currently had health care insurance through their company could keep it under  Obama Care. Was he that ignorant of reality to understand that if a company could save millions or billions of dollars by dropping health insurance that they would do so? Who came up with the measly fines that companies would pay if they dropped health care insurance? Could he and Pelsoi and Reid have been that ignorant of simple business principles?

Or was he lying? Did he actually understand that by passing Obama Care, tens of millions of Americans workers would lose health care insurance but lied about the likely outcome in order to get the legislation passed? Nonsense, lying or ignorant, hardly traits I would want in the President of the United States.

Much like the lost war on drugs, failing public education, the lack of an energy program, the lack of an immigration policy, and a myriad of other problems that have been unsolved for decades, the lack of problem solving skills of the American political class are on constant display. That is why the steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that address these very problems and provide processes to solve them, along with changes to our entire political process, need to be implemented as soon as possible.

Like the brilliant Dean Wormer quote from the movie Animal House, "Fat, drunk, and and stupid is no way to go through life," I am getting tired of living the political class equivalent: "Ignorant, lying, and nonsensical is no way to run a country."



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

Florida Senator Bill Nelson - Five Months And Counting, Waiting for Your Response

I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida which makes Democratic Senator Bill Nelson one of my two U.S. Senators. In early August of 2010, I sent him a letter at the same time I sent the White House a letter, asking both parties very specific questions about Obama's health care reform legislation. Senator Nelson was one of the Senators who voted to approve the legislation.

My purpose for writing both letters was purely personal. My wife and myself are currently AT&T retirees, having spent almost fifty years in total working for AT&T. As a result of that long service, we are blessed to have AT&T provide health insurance coverage in our retirement years. One of President Obama's selling points of Obama Care was that those Americans that currently had private health care plans would continue to still have them, nothing would change.

However, as the months have gone by, AT&T  (Fortune magazine article from early August, 2010) and other major corporations (e.g. Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar, McDonalds) have hinted that they may drop their employee and retiree health care coverage because under Obama Care it is less expensive to pay a fine for not providing health care then it is to continue providing health care coverage. Thus, my letters below to the the Democratic White House Administration (Letter # 3 below) and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson (Letter #2 below).

Unfortunately, after five months, neither party has responded to my request and answered my questions. Not only have they not answered to my questions, they have not responded at all, not even to admit that they received my correspondence, never mind answering my relatively simple and important questions. Talk about poor customer service, not even an acknowledgement of receipt. And this from a Presidential administration that bills itself as the most open and communicative administration ever. In fact, I have never received any confirmation from my numerous White House inquires, both by email and snail mail, even though I have requested an answer every time.

Given their callous lack of response, I made good on my threat and for the first time ever in my life (I am almost 60 years old), I voted for a Republican for national office this past November. For the first time ever, I was actually happy to see the Republican gains in Congress, given the cold shoulder the Democrats gave to me on something that is very important, and potentially very expensive, in my life.

Letter # 1 below is a new letter I sent out to Senator Nelson earlier this week. I will be very interested to see if this one gets a response, either next week, next month, five months down the road or never. I want to see if the first letter got "lost" or just got ignored.

In the meantime, let's review why Obama Care continues to fall apart:

• Probably millions Americans like myself that worked or continue to work for major U.S. corporations face the very real threat of losing their health insurance coverage and being forced to find new coverage, quite possibly at much higher prices. This situation potentially will cause more Americans to lose coverage and end up paying more for coverage, the exact opposite of what was intended.
• A Reuters news report from January 6, 2011 reported that 33 governors sent a letter to the administration pointing out that they were having severe budget difficulties funding existing Federal mandated insurance programs even before the onslaught of additional Obama Care funding requirements become a reality.
• The administration has already issued over a hundred waivers to the health care legislation for some companies' health insurance plans to account for unforeseen consequences of the bill's passage, just months after the passage occurred. How many more unforeseen conseqences are likely to appear as we go forward? Historically, unforeseen consequences from political class actions are almost always bad news for Americans.
• Today on the local Tampa news reports it was reported that three of the largest blood banks in Tampa are likely to merge into one super blood bank company. An Associated Press report in late 2010 reported on a "merger frenzy" in many components of the health care industry as a result of Obama Care. Thus, rather than increasing competition which would result in lowering the skyrocketing health care costs in this country, the legislation is having the unintended consequence of actually reducing competition through the merger frenzy.
• The legislation is highly unlikely to reduce the Federal budget. The legislation was sold in by quoting a Congressional Budget Office estimate that it would reduce Federal spending by $135 billion over the first ten years. However, shortly after that estimate helped pass the bill, the Associated Press reported that the CBO did not estimate costs for all of the components of the bill. Their $135 billion savings estimate left out over $100 billion of costs, virtually wiping out the purported gain. And, since the passage of the bill, reputable analytic efforts, such as an in-depth review by the Cato Institute, have shown that the bill could add at least a TRILLION to the national debt.
• Do not even get me started how the legislation will make criminal out of a sizable number of Americans who choose not to pay for government mandated insurance.
• The major flaw in the legislation is that it did not attack the root causes of our rising health care costs. These costs are high because Americans eat too much, they eat too much of the wrong food, they smoke too much, they do not exercise enough, and they are getting older. Rather than treat the problem as a public health issue, which it is, they treated it as a tax and government regulation issue, dooming it to an expensive failure.

We could go on and on but it would still not answer my letters to my President and Senator. Hello, anybody home? I need some answers and five months and counting is too long of a time for a constituent to wait for you to come to the door. Remember, 2012 will be here before you know it. I would hope to have answers by then or the Republicans may just nab me for a second time.



*****************
Letter # 1 - Mailed January 9, 2011

Senator Nelson:



Five months ago I sent your office the attached letters, one addressed to you and one addressed to President Obama. My wife and I are former AT&T employees and are now retired. AT&T provides our health care insurance and they do a fine job of it with their high deductible plan. Since we are responsible for the first thousand dollars or so of our coverage and expenses, the plan encourages us to take personal responsibility for our health care, resulting in lower costs for everyone involved. Let me be very clear: we are very happy with our current health care insurance.


However, the AT&T Chairman strongly implied in a Fortune magazine interview article last summer that it was highly likely that AT&T would drop this insurance plan for its current and retired employees. From a corporate perspective, under Obama Care it is financially better for AT&T to drop its coverage for millions of Americans and pay the Obama Care fine than it is to continue offering their current plan, or any plan.


In light of this very depressing news, I asked the President’s office and your office for help in answering our health care questions. My wife and I are both in our late 50s and she has a pre-existing condition. Looking for health care under these conditions is not something we expected to have to do. In fact, the President claimed during the debate on Obama Care that we could keep our existing insurance coverage. This turned out to be a hollow promise if AT&T and other companies drop their plans altogether as a result of Obama Care, as many have already suggested they will do.


What is just as depressing is the fact that neither your office or the President’s office had the common decency to even acknowledge receipt of these letters. This is horrific customer service - a constituent contacts you for help and you do not have the class or courage to answer and address our concerns. Is it no wonder that Democrats took a shellacking in November - not only have you potentially ruined health care insurance for millions of Americans you will not even defend it or help those that you put into distress.


So, I am trying again. The questions in the original letter remain unanswered. I would appreciate answers to those questions. If I get no response this time, I guarantee I will become actively involved in your defeat the next time you run for any office.


Walter Korschek


Address


Phone Number


Email Address


********************
Letter # 2 - Mailed early August, 2010
 Senator:


The letter below is being sent to the President at the same time that it is being mailed to you. As you can see, I am not a happy American since I am highly likely to lose my AT&T retiree health care coverage as a result of the recently passed health care reform legislation, a law that you voted to approve. I am asking the President to answer the three questions below and I am also asking that you or a member of your staff do the same. Myself and millions of other Americans are likely to lose their corporate health insurance coverage and I feel we are entitled to answers like those I have posed.


I would prefer to have those answers from your staff by November in order to fully understand who to vote for at that time. Beware, that those answers will also carry over to 2014 when I believe you are up for re-election. Please be forewarned that that is unlikely if your answers are unsatisfactory or millions of us have lost our insurance coverage by then. This is not a hope for answers to these three questions, this is a demand for answers to these three questions without political spin or generalities. I would like to know the answers to my particular situation. Have a nice day,

Walter “Bruno” Korschek


****************
Letter # 3 - Mailed early August, 2010August 13, 2010


Mr. President:



I know that you are a very busy man so I will try to keep my questions about health care reform and the recently passed legislation as short and simple as possible.


I could ask you why you think this is a good piece of legislation even though I truly believe that it will be a failure and will come very close to bankrupting the country. The basis for my conclusion has nothing to do with political partisanship (in fact, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.) From my perspective, "Obama Care" never effectively addressed the root causes of our escalating health care costs: Americans eat too much of the wrong kinds of food, they exercise far too little, they are overweight, they smoke too much, and they are getting older. This legislation does not address these causes, it just raises taxes and moves money around within the bureaucracy. I could ask you about this but I will not.


I could ask you why you have not stepped forward and denounced those in your party that have likened Americans like myself, i.e. those that have legitimate and honest concerns about this health care reform bill, to the racists who fought against the civil rights movement from the 1960s. I thought that we lived in a free country where citizens could freely address their elected representatives without being slurred in the most debasing way possible, just for having a different opinion. Your lack of fortitude to oppose those Democrats who frequently use the term "racist" to malign myself and those Americans expressing their honest opposition, cheapens the bravery and contributions of those from long ago that fought actual racism. I could ask you about this but I will not.


I could ask you why you felt it necessary to pass this legislation by the back door called reconciliation. This is a major, major issue in the country that will affect every American for decades to come. Sneaking it in the back door, without using the traditional, time honored method of passing laws in his country, belittles the approach and makes it look like it was forced through without the full weight of the democratic process behind it. I could ask you about this but I will not.


Here is what I will ask you about. But first, some background facts:


- Let me reiterate that both my wife and myself have never voted for a Republican for national office in our lives.


- We both spent several decades of our lives working hard for AT&T, retiring several years ago, secure in our thinking that AT&T's promise of health care benefits and coverage for our long years of service was a good bet.


- We both try to eat well, we exercise at our local YMCA on an almost daily basis, neither of us smoke, and we rarely drink. In other words, we take personal responsibility for our health and our health care.


- One reason for our personal responsibility behavior is that we are on a high deductible insurance plan with AT&T. We are each - responsible for the first $1,200 of our annual health care costs before we get any insurance coverage at all. However, for this personal responsibility, we also pay nothing in annual premiums.


- During the debate leading up to the passage of health care reform, you reiterated more than once that those of us that currently had health care coverage would be able to keep it. However, in a recent article in Fortune magazine, the CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, was interviewed (several pages of the article are attached). Towards the end of the interview, he was explicitly asked whether AT&T would consider dropping health care insurance coverage for its employees and retirees. His response made it clear that this was a very viable option for two reasons. First, from a business profitability perspective, under the new health care reform law, "you're better off paying the government a fine and dropping health care coverage for your employees", improving AT&Ts bottom line. Second, he talks about "economic gravity" which appears to be code words for "if others in his industry do it, AT&T will have no choice but to do it also."


Thus, a few quick questions for you:


1) Were you just naive when you made the comments that we could all keep our current health care insurance, not realizing the simple fact that companies are in business to make money and if this bill makes it easier for them to make more money by not insuring their workforce, that is what they will do? Or were you being disingenuous, knowing that this would happen and deliberately misinforming the country to help get your health care reform bill passed? Naive or disingenuous, in either case you will be making millions of American voters unhappy in November and in 2012 when we are forced out of our current health care coverage and will blame you for either ignorance or arrogance in this situation.


2) I am 57 years old and my wife is 56 years old and if Mr. Stephenson does decide to terminate AT&T's health care coverage for employees and retirees, where do you suggest that my wife and I get coverage? What insurance company is going to want to pick us up, and millions of other older Americans who lost their coverage, at our ages even though we are both healthy and taking personal responsibility for our continued good health?


3) If we are forced out onto the market for health care insurance coverage, our new coverage is likely going to be much more expensive. Our annual health care costs will go from a maximum of $1,200 each to a minimum of several thousand dollars each. Is this how you planned to reduce health care costs for middle class America? Is so, then you need to explain the math to me. Maximum of $1,200 to a minimum of several thousand dollars, does not make sense out here in the real world. How does this reduce the escalating health care costs for the 90% of Americans that already had health care insurance prior to the passage of this bill?


Thus, I am not going to ask you about why you and the rest of Congress did not address the root causes of high health care costs in your legislating process. I am not going to ask why you have sat back and been silent while those Americans with legitimate and honest dissent against this bill have been likened to racists by members of your party. I thought you represented all Americans, not just those that agreed with your policies. I will not ask you about why you did not have the courage and guts to pass this legislation the right way, through the front door like every other piece of legislation, but instead snuck it through the back door of reconciliation.


However, I will ask you or your staff to contact me and explain where and how I can get health care coverage at my age if AT&T and the rest of corporate America decides it is a better economic choice to pay a government fine than to cover their employees and retirees with health insurance. I will ask you to explain whether you were naive or disingenuous when explaining that we would be able to keep our current health insurance coverage. And finally, please explain how paying no more than $1,200 a year under my current coverage (with many years paying nothing for coverage during healthy years) is a better deal then finding new coverage at my age and paying several thousand dollars a year for the privilege.


Although I have written to the White House many times, I have never received any answer to my questions on a wide variety of topics even though you promised to have the most open and responsive administration of all time. That has not happened yet. However, in this case I do require, in fact I demand specific answers to my three questions above, and not generic political spin answers either. For your sake I hope to receive those answers before early November and certainly before 2012.


Thank you for your time,


Walter "Bruno" Korschek


Address


Phone Number


Email Address

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.

A Healthy Solution To Our Unhealthy Health Care Cost Problem - Understanding The Root Causes

A recurrent theme in this blog is the failure that is Obama Care and how, despite over 2,000 pages of new legislation, the new law is highly likely to be a miserable failure on many fronts:

• It will fail health wise because the process and people (the political class) that developed it did not have the creativity and problem solving skills necessary to identify the root causes of rising health care costs in this country and attack those root causes.
• It will fail health wise because Obama Care is little more than a rearranging of existing medical expenses and new taxes that do not aggressively address the root causes of rising health care costs.
• It will fail financially because it did not address the rampant fraud that currently exists in our government health care programs, fraud that is likely to increase exponentially as government interference and incompetence increases in this field.
• It will fail financially since those that put the legislation together never wanted a true picture of the final costs, with budget estimates excluding some of the provisions of the final bill and the legislation's timing was such that in the first ten years, revenues are collected for all ten years but the true costs and expenses of the program don't start until the fifth year.
• It will fail freedom-wise since the legislation and the government behind it forces every American to purchase health care insurance whether they want to or not, hardly liberty enhancing government in action.
• It will fail freedom-wise since it did not put the responsibility for efficient health care on the individual, it let the individual off the hook for their own health care by substituting government regulations, agencies, and compulsions.

What are the true causes of rising health care costs in this country? I do not know if anyone has the complete answer but it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the following factors are significant:

• America does not exercise enough.
• America eats too much.
• America eats too much of the wrong types of food.
• America does not exercise enough.
• America smokes too much.

If these are indeed "root causes" of our poor health and resultant high health care costs, than they need to be addressed as a public health problem, not a tax, expense, and government bureaucracy problem. No matter how much you rearrange current health care expenditures, no matter how many more taxes you impose to pay for rising health care costs, no matter how many citizens you force to purchase health care insurance, the problem will not go away since these root causes have not been the  focus of your legislation. Until it is, Obama Care has no chance of solving the problem.

Consider an article in the current issue of AARP's magazine. The article focuses on the residents of Albert Lea, Minnesota which is a participant in the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project. This program started in May, 2009 and is focused on lessons learned in so-called "blue zones" - regions in the world where people have a long life span. The lessons learned in these zones focus on exercise, good eating habits, connecting with others, and finding purpose in life. Outputs and activities from this towns efforts included fifteen healthy initiatives, among which were the following:

• Cooking classes to help people learn to eat healthier.
• Formation of walking groups to get people more active and connected to others.
• Construction of pedestrian-friendly paths.
• Creation of community gardens.
• Two thirds of the city's restaurants began serving health food options.

Within just five  months, town residents participating in the program had lost three pounds on average and had gained about three years to their estimated life spans. One resident, used her participation in dance classes to lose thirty pounds.  Another resident has lost 55 pounds and has increased his life expectancy form 52 years to 78 years by eating smaller portions at meal time, walking daily, and doing community theater work.

A year later, according to the article, more and more people are walking, dancing, and bicycling. In 2010, residents had accumulated over 42,000 miles in distance traveled via exercise, up from about 37,000 miles in 2009. Twenty two town employers now offer work-site wellness programs to their employees, which has resulted in over 1,000 free health assessments. These people are living healthier, living longer, and not contributing to our rising health care problems since they took personal responsibility for their health, not nameless and numerous government agencies.

Similar results were pointed out in a spring, 2010 Fortune magazine article which was an interview with Dr. Delose Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic is one of the best and well known hospitals in the world. Despite being the best and serving some of the richest people in the world, they also have one of the lowest costs structures. How did they accomplish this double play of outstanding care at low costs? According to the article and Dr. Cosgrove's experiences:

• In our current health care industry there is no incentive for staying well.
• Obesity in America accounts for 10% of all health care costs.
• Smoking, diet, and lack of exercise, according to Dr. Cosgrove, contribute to  40% of premature deaths in this country, 70% of chronic diseases such as heart disease, and account for 75% of the nation's total health care.
• At the Cleveland Clinic, all deep fryers were removed from the cafeterias, the menus were made healthier, the candy and soda machines were removed, free exercise programs were initiated fro Clinic employers, free Weight Watcher memberships were made available, and in the first year of this transformation, Cleveland Clinic employees lost 120,000 pounds of weight, 60 tons.
• From a smoking perspective, smoking was banned on the entire grounds of the Clinic, free smoking cessation classes were offered to both employees and the entire county where the Clinic is located, a lobbying push was made to ban public smoking everywhere in Ohio, and the Clinic stopped hiring smokers. In four years the smoking rate in the county went from 28% to 18%, a little less than the national average of 20%.

See a trend? Health care's rising cost problems cannot be solved by more government bureaucracy, more fraud in government health programs, punitive laws that make criminals out of Americans who do not purchase a government mandated service, and more taxes. It can be solved by understanding the root causes, which are likely the same ones identified in Albert Lea and at the Cleveland Clinic, and treating rising health care costs not as an accounting problem but as a public health problem.

If you make people healthier, you will reduce their need for medical and health care services which reduces demand and basic economic theory then takes over: reduced demand results in reduced prices and costs. Unfortunately, as we see every day, our politicians do not understand basic economics.

What to do? First of all, the legislation known as Obama Care needs to be repealed since it is becoming more and more obvious every day that it does not address the root causes of our problem and the financials upon which it was based were not solid: the cost of implementation will be significantly higher than the cost estimate that was used to sell the legislation.

Second, Step 26 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" needs to be implemented. This step provides a process of root cause problem identification via a panel of experts from a diverse set of fields and disciplines, sans lobbyists and politicians, in order to develop a long term public health care approach to reining in medical costs. This approach would leverage knowledge of diet, smoking, obesity, and exercise that we know accounts for a huge portion of our problem.

In real life, if you understand what is causing the problem, it makes it a lot easier to to solve the problem. Unfortuantely, in our surreal political world, we never get to the root cause of any problem, probably accounting for the dismal track record of our political class in the areas of drug addiction, failing public schools, leaky borders, high unemployment levels, etc. over the decades




Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

And The Wheels On The Obama Care Bus Are Coming Off

We have not talked about the health care legislation known as Obama Care for a while so I thought it might be a good idea to check in and see how things are going. Unfortunately, for both the President and millions of Americans, early indications is that this legislation will make a bad situation worse. Keep in mind, two of the big reasons for passing this bill was to provide health care insurance coverage to the 10% of the population which does not currently have health care insurance and to reduce the high cost of health care insurance and medical treatment in this country.

How is the legislation doing vs. these objectives? Not good. Consider:

- In the August 20, 2010 issue of Fortune magazine, there was an interview article with the chairman of AT&T, Randall Stephenson. Although most of the article focused on AT&T's marketing and financial situation, the closing question was about AT&T's likely response to Obama Care. Mr. Stephenson was very clear with his answer. He did not want to drop health care coverage for his employees but under the new legislation, it was a better business decision for AT&T to drop its employee coverage and pay the much smaller fine to the government for not having a health care plan. He discussed "economic gravity" which appeared to be code words for "if my competitors take this path (dropping health care insurance programs) which makes them financially stronger, than AT&T would do so also." Thus, rather than reduce the number of uninsured Americans, this legislation might actually put hundreds of thousands of current and retired AT&T employees on the list of those that do not have health care coverage insurance.

- This was not the first time that AT&T was in the news regarding the new health care bill. In a Fortune magazine article on May 6, 2010, it discussed the fact that AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, and John Deere, among other companies, had created financial reserves in the billions of dollars to possibly pay for the increased expenses the health care legislation would incur, implying that these and other companies might drop health care coverage for their employees also. This ticked off Congressman Waxman of California, who demanded to see all of the internal documents these companies had produced relative to Obama Care and scheduled Congressional hearings to review the documents. Waxman initially thought that the companies were making up fear stories to discredit the legislation and he wanted to go after them. However, after reviewing the documents, he abruptly cancelled the hearings, apparently realizing that the companies were right in anticipating higher health care insurance costs for their employees. Now, we are not looking at hundreds of thousands of AT&Ters losing their health care coverage, we are looking at millions of Americans losing their health care coverage as a result of Obama Care.

- It gets worse. In a September 30, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, it was reported that McDonald's had warned the Federal government that it also might drop its health care coverage for its restaurant employees since the new legislation was incompatible with some specialized health care insurance plans ("mini-med plans" which are popular  in the retail and restaurant industry) it had for its employees. They were asking for a waiver to the new law or they would have to drop their plans since they could not be in compliance with the new law.

I guess the drafters of the legislation never did their homework to understand how mini-med plans might be affected. Since about 1.4 million Americans are covered by these types of insurance plans, the potential is there to add over a million more people, in addition to the millions of AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, and John Deere employees and retirees who may lose their health care insurance coverage.

The other sad part of this situation is that we are already seeing companies looking for exemptions to the law. It is never a good sign when a new law may have t  grant exemptions to its own rules within months after the law takes affect. This shows that someone, or everyone, in Congress did not do their homework on the ramifications of this bill.

- In that same article, it is stated that health insurance companies have already proposed a round of double digit increases in premiums in order to cover some of the mandates in the new law. Looks like between the financial cash reserves that bigger companies are setting aside for anticipated higher costs and the insurance companies asking for more money now from their premiums in order to cover the requirements of the law, that we are not going to see any abatement in rising health care costs as promised by Obama Care.

- In a very ironic twist, a November 4, 2010 Associated Press article reported that AARP was raising its health care insurance premiums for its own employees anywhere from 8-13% in 2011. Part of the increase is due to generally rising medical costs but part of the increase is also due to Obama Care that the AARP vigorously endorsed. AARP is trying to avoid a 40% tax on high cost plans that will take effect in later years under the law. The article mentioned that Boeing employees are also going to see an increase in their insurance premiums as a result of the 40% tax. Thus, at least the law's unintended, mostly bad, consequences, does not differentiate friend from foe.

- But it gets even better (or worse, depending on your perspective.) In a November 12, 2010 Associated Press article, the reporter profiled a breast cancer surgeon who had posted a warning in her waiting room that she would stop taking New Medicare patients if Congress allows looming cuts in doctors' Medicare compensation to become law. If nothing is done quickly, Medicare payments to doctors will decrease 23%.

Although this crisis has nothing to do with Obama Care, it is instructive of how things will likely unfold in the the future. This specific cost cutting process started back in the 1990s as an attempt to get Medicare costs under control but the implementation of the law was constantly pushed back year over year. The article quotes sources as saying that if the funding is not restored, two-thirds of doctors would stop taking Medicare patients, endangering the health of tens of millions of Americans. The cost to the government of another delay to the original law's implementation? About $1 billion a month, $12 billion a year.

Why is this important? Obama Care calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to be axed from Medicare payments to doctors over the next decade. In fact, most of the flimsy financial justification for Obama Care assumed that these hundreds of billions of dollars would be saved by shorting the doctors relative to what they get today. However, if the majority of doctors are going to stop taking Medicare patients as a result of the government taking $12 billion away in payments, how many doctors do you think will stop taking Medicare patients if the government takes away hundreds of billions of dollars?

It would get ugly real fast. But I am pretty sure what would not happen. Congress would cave into pressure, would not implement the Medicare cuts called for by Obama Care, and the financial model on which this legislation was sold would be destroyed, leaving the American taxpayer with a health care industry more broken than before and much more expensive than before.

- Much of this legislation was modeled after the health care reform law passed by the state of Massachusetts. Within a few years after that law was passed, costs are already out of control, the expected drop in emergency room visits never materialized, medical coverage is being curtailed, and the system was trying to delay accepting new customers.

- The Obama administration admitted a few months ago that upwards of $100 billion a year is lost through fraud and criminal activity in current government medical insurance programs. How much worse will that fraud become and how many more taxpayer dollars will be lost by implementing an even larger government health care programs without first fixing the current fraud and criminal problems?

So let's review:

• Millions of working and retired Americans are likely to lose their health care insurance coverage from larger companies for the simple reason it is a better economic decision under Obama Care to not have the expense of insuring their workforce and to pay a much smaller fine.
• Companies are setting aside cash reserves in anticipation of the higher costs of complying with the law, preventing them from using that money to hire more employees, conduct more research and development, and compete with other global companies.
• Hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million Americans receiving health care coverage via their retail or restaurant jobs, will likely lose coverage because their specialized insurance programs cannot be made compatible with the requirements of the new health care reform law. Thus, rather than reducing the number of Americans without affordable health care insurance, this legislation is highly to increase the number of uninsured Americans.
• Insurance premiums are already going up as a result of the new law, including those premiums covered by supporters of the law such as AARP.
• The hundreds of billions in savings predicted from Obama Care in the area of Medicare doctor payments is likely to never materialize since even a small decrease has already provoked doctors into promising not to accept Medicare patients.
• The one state that has a similar plan to Obama Care has experienced a nightmare of rising costs, declining coverage, and unexpected steady streams of people into emergency rooms.
• More and larger government health care programs is likely to result in higher amounts of fraud and crime.

Why has this turning into a disaster within seven months after it was signed? The political class never understood the root causes of our rising health care costs, high costs that put affordable health care insurance out of the financial reach of millions of Americans. Without understanding the root causes, there is very little chance of coming up with an efficient and effective solution. The horror stories listed above prove this point. Higher costs, higher premiums, and fewer people getting insurance coverage, the exact opposite of what the legislation was supposed to do.

What should be done? Two things. First, this law has to be repealed and the process has to start over. It has introduced unbelievable uncertainty into the market, uncertainty that has left companies in a non-hiring mode since they do not understand what their future health care costs will be. Thus, it is better for employers to hunker down with the current workforce than to expand and possibly find out they cannot afford the additional employees due to Obama Care. Plus, at 2,500 pages or whatever the final number was, nobody in Congress or the White House understands what is in the legislation and what the unintended consequences will be.

Second, a process such as the one proposed in Step 28 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" needs to be undertaken to understand the root causes of our high medical costs. Obama Care never understood the underlying causes. All this bill did was take the existing money in the national health care delivery system and move it around, and then stir in additional taxation on top of everything. It never got underneath the problem to understand the reality of the situation.

In an old children's song, "the wheels on the bus go round and round." In the world of Obama Care, the wheels on this bus never go round and round since they fall off almost immediately, probably increasing the number of people on the bus without insurance and raising the cost of eventually fixing the bus.


Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/