Obama Care Update: Still Silly, Still Expensive, Still Having No Chance Of Being Successful

Given how much time we have recently had to devote to government waste and excessive spending, we have not checked in with another looming disaster in this country known as Obama Care. Within a week or so we expect to hear what the Supreme court justices think about his monstrosity. The hope is that they will strike most or all of the legislation for various reasons that we have pointed out over time including the numerous infractions it incurs relative to the Constitution:

 http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/04/lawyers-opinion-of-why-obama-care-needs.html

However, although we have not discussed Obama Care for a while, that does not mean that the scandals, waste, insanity, and other negative aspects of the law have not been uncovered by people far more expert in the field than me:

- According to a May 31, 2012 article in Politico, the White House and Congressional Democrats cut backroom deals with members of the pharmaceutical industry in order to get Obama Care passed. The industry agreed to pay for certain aspects of the bill but agreed only after the Democrats and the Obama administration agreed not to allow drugs to be reimported back into this country for resale.

Apparently, the drug companies sell drugs in this country at such high prices and mark-ups, relative to the rest of the world, that it is possible to buy drugs and medicines from U.S. drug companies, ship them overseas, ship them back into this country for sale, and still make worthwhile profits. The last thing the drug companies wanted was to have their margins slashed and undercut in the U.S. so they cooperated with the Obama administration to help pay for part of the health care reform components to protect their margins. Thus, they conspired to keep drug prices in this country artificially high, with the help, blessing, and force of the Federal government.

Thus, rather than helping bring down the cost of medicine and health care in this country, the Obama administration and the Democratically controlled Congress helped keep the drug company cartel's predatory pricing in place. And to add insult to injury, this information came out only because the House of Representatives went after emails and documents via the drug companies. The Obama administration refused to turn over the damning emails and documents showing how they conspired to keep drug prices high.

- In a June 7, 2012 New York Times article, a NY Times./CBS survey showed that:

• More than two-thirds of Americans hope the Supreme Court will overturn some or all of the 2010 health care law.
• Only 24% said they wanted the Supreme Court “would keep the entire health care law in place.”
• 41% said the court should kill down the entire law and another 27% said the court should overturn just the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
• Only 24% said the entire law should be kept as is.
• Only 43% of Democrats in the survey said the entire law should be kept as it currently is.
• Over 79% of independent voters wanted all or part of the law stuck down.

Thus, this survey and others like it show that America understands how bad the legislation is. The only ones still holding out seem to be the Democrats in Washington.

- A June 4, 2012 by the Wall Street Journal talked about a Federal government grant process that was created under Obama Care. The article was written by a doctor named Steven Greer who had actually sat on the grant process review panel for a short time. The panel was called the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) and was supposed to sponsor projects that would lead to the reduction of health care costs in this country.

Despite its lofty goals, Mr. Greer concluded "it is one more pork program and venue for political cronyism." The process is supposed to distribute a whopping $10 billion in grants over the next ten years in its quest to test better ways to deliver and pay for health care.

Given his work history and experience in this area, Mr. Greer served as a chairman on a panel to review grant applications for an effort called the Health Care Innovation Challenge. His panel's expert review and recommendations would theoretically help the CMMI process spend its taxpayer money wisely.

Unfortunately, the review process was anything but organized, fair, and efficient. His panel had only two weeks to assemble a team to review and grade over 3,000 applications, on numerous criteria, some of which were over 100 pages long. In the article Mr. Greer points out that "applications to the government's National Institutes of Health or the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, by contrast, undergo months of thoughtful review by scientists who are well-regarded in their fields. I began to wonder how much CMMI was interested in high-quality input from the grant reviewers."

The panel also ran into serious IT problems with computers losing reviews and notes. The process was so fraught with incompetence that the article reports that most of the panel;s members, including Mr. Greer eventually resigned over frustration.

Given the backdrop of incompetence, it should come as no surprise that the initial projects approved for taxpayer money were less than stellar uses of that money:

• George Washington University earned $1,939,127 event though its proposal claimed it could eventually reduce health costs only by $1.7 million.
• The Center for Health Care Services in San Antonio received $4,557,969 in order to try and save $5 million according to its grant application.
• A $5,862,027 grant was made to the University of Chicago Medical Center to "train and create new jobs for an estimated 90 individuals from this high-poverty, diverse community." A noble goal but the whole intent of the CMMI was to find a way to systematically reduce national health care costs, not increase those costs via the hiring of more medical personnel in the President's hometown.
• From a classic conflict of interest perspective, consider the case of a Dr. Donald Berwick. He was the  Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from July 2010 to December 2011.  During his time at the center, CMMI was established. Under the CMMI umbrella is another program called the Partnership for Patients. In December 2011, the Partnership for Patients awarded a contract to the Health Research and Education Trust, which in turn awarded a subcontract to the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement—which Dr. Berwick ran for 19 years before he moved to Medicare. A source involved with Partnership for Patients told Mr. Greer about the relationship.

Conflicts of interest, programs that cost more than the amount they are supposed to save, and using the money for purposes that it is not supposed to be used for. What a mess and waste.

- An Associated Press report from May 30, 2012 reported on how a once popular small business tax credit created by Obama Care has been less than successful. Only 170,300 U.S. businesses out of a pool of as many as 4 million potentially eligible claimed it in 2010, about 4 percent.

A recent government report found the tax credit time-consuming to apply for and not rewarding enough to be financially attractive. According to a recent audit by the General Accountability Office (GAO):

• The tax credit is structured so its biggest benefits go to very small companies paying low wages. About 4 out of 5 these small businesses don't offer coverage, and the tax credit is not sufficient to encourage them to start doing so. The average credit claimed in 2010 was only about $2,700, relatively small vs. the cost of introducing a new health care insurance program for a very small business.
• Many small companies did not qualify for the credit because  they paid fairly decent wages. The GAO report quoted an unidentified tax preparer who explained that "people get excited that they're eligible and then they do the calculations and it's like the bottom just falls out of it and it's not really there. It's almost a bait and switch."
• The complicated application and tax form process is also likely reducing participation. IRS Form 8941, which employers must complete to claim the credit, has 25 lines and seven worksheets, according to GAO said. Some tax preparers told the GAO it took clients anywhere from two to eight hours to pull together required information and tax professionals another three to five hours to calculate the credit.

-  A Moneynews article from June 18, 2012 reviewed the opinion of noted economist and author Robert Samuelson based on a piece he wrote for the Washington Post. Mr. Samuelson viewed President Barack Obama’s focus on reforming health care as a centerpiece of his first term amounted to a "colossal error of judgment" that weakens the economic recovery and angers millions of Americans."

Mr. Samuelson also opined on his other Obama Care viewpoints, many of which we have already covered:

• Obamacare increases business owner uncertainty and decreases businesses' confidence just when an economic recovery from the Great Recession requires more confidence and less uncertainty.
• Due to the complexity of the law, people don’t know where they will get insurance or how much it will cost, another major uncertainty in the economy and people's minds.
• 30% of employers in a recent survey say they might drop insurance coverage and pay fines. People losing coverage as a result of Obama Care is the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do.
• Obama Care increases the cost of hiring new employees and thus discourages job creation by requiring employers to buy health insurance for some workers.
• Because the law's mandate exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers, that’s an incentive for firms not to grow and not hire more people.
• Instead of reining in health care costs, the exact opposite will happen, with Obamacare increasing health care costs.
• Obamacare will likely worsen the Federal national debt, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. Obama’s plan will raise Federal spending by $1.76 trillion by 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
• The plan also favors older Americans and discriminates against younger Americans by forcing some young Americans to buy insurance at artificially high premiums to support the increased health care costs established by Obama care and likely placate the insurance companies by providing them more customers (the last phrase and accusation is my opinion, not Mr. Samuelson's).

Another expert checks in and does not like what he sees.


Another badly written and poorly executed process, courtesy of Obama Care. Just like Obama Care's short lived, poorly thought out CLASS program for long term care, did no one involved in the writing of this legislation have any concept of the reality outside of Washington? Apparently not, given how many components of this law are poorly written and out of touch with reality.


There you have it, the continuing stream of bad news from Obama care. Wasteful, idiotic spending where the proposed savings, even if realized, are less than the cost of attaining those savings.


A citizenry that understands how bad this legislation is but the people who wrote it still do not get it.

Conflicts of interest and funding misdirected to purposes it was never intended for.

Back room deals that the administration attempted to suppress and hide despite its promise to be transparent.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court can deliver us from this evil and we can start over on attacking the high health care costs in this country the right way, the sensible way, the non-political way, and with real transparency, not Obama transparency.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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/

Political Class Insanity - June, 2012, Part 1: A Chicago Strip Club, Senator On An Airplane, IRS Licenses, Silly Soda Rules And More

Every month, since we began writing this blog over two years ago, we have taken a day to write about what we call political class insanity. Political class insanity takes many forms including wasting taxpayer money on trivial and silly projects and programs, interfering in the lives and freedoms of Americans for no good reason, losing taxpayer money to fraud and criminal behavior, and identifying politicians acting in their own self interests and political careers rather than the best interests of the country and its citizens.

Unfortunately, as we have gone through time, we have not been able to fit the monthly political insanity into just one blog post, the amount of monthly idiocy has become too much. Sadly, this is the case again this month as we will need the next two days to get all of the latest insanity in.

1) Let's start with some examples from our best source for political class insanity, our monthly edition of Reason magazine:

- Many times we have reviewed the tremendous amount of taxpayer wealth that has been flushed down the drain by the Obama administration and its continual funding of solar and alternative energy companies in this country, the vast majority of which were never viable businesses to start with and most of which have gone bankrupt, taking down taxpayer investments with them. Billions expended and nothing to show for them, whether in the area of newly "created" green jobs or the creation of green energy.

Now, research and actual results show that this was never a viable strategy to begin with, i.e. the Federal government subsidizing alternative and solar energy's growth:

• Phillipp Rosler, Germany's minister of economics and technology points out in the Reason article that subsidizing solar energy with government (taxpayer) money is actually "a threat to the economy"
• Since 2003, Germany has spent $130 billion on solar energy that produces just 3% of the country's electricity while increasing the overall cost for German electricity by $14 a month.
• In 2010, Spanish researchers calculated that nearly nine jobs are destroyed in the rest of the Spanish economy for every one created by government solar subsidies.
• Researchers at an Italian think tank, Bruno Leoni Institute, found that each green job subsidized and created in the Italian economy cost five others outside of the solar industry.
• Similarly, a German think tank, the Rhine-Westphalia Institute For Economic Research, concluded that government solar subsidies "resulted in massive expenditures that show little long term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security."

As a result of these findings and research, Spain has already ended all subsidies for renewable energy projects, Britain and Italy plan to reduce their solar subsidies by 50%, and Germany plans on phasing out all of its alternative energy subsidies by 2015.

Meanwhile, the American political class and the Obama administration continue to think that giving away taxpayer money to selected cronies and pet projects in the alternative energy field is a good idea. Europe figured it out: if a technology, product, or service is a worthwhile economic endeavor, no government subsidies are needed. If it is not a worthwhile or viable economic endeavor, no amount of government subsides and support will make it viable.

The Chevy Volt, Solyndra, Beacon, Spectra, A123, ENER1, and many other heavily subsidized, U.S. alternative energy companies have been multi-billion dollar American failures. The insanity is that the politicians in this country do not realize they are insane yet, unlike their European counterparts who have recognized their own insanity.

- The IRS has just established a new set of regulations that forces income tax preparers who fill out income tax forms for Americans to pay $50 to obtain a license from the Federal government before they can complete any tax returns in the future. According to Reason, this is the first time ever that the IRS and the Federal government have come down so hard financially on those that prepare income taxes.

But is this a worthwhile regulation? It raises many more questions about why it is needed than it answers:

• Apparently you do not have to prove you are capable of correctly completing someone else's income tax forms. You just have to pay the government $50 for the privilege of getting a license, the overall quality of the tax preparation business does not appear to be improved.
• If you have a family member or friend who prepares your taxes and you are comfortable with how well they have done it in the past, you may lose that comfort zone if that preparer decides it is not worthwhile paying the annual $50. In this case, your life has been disrupted by unnecessary government interference into a process that will not be improved by that government interference.
• How would they ever enforce such a statute, especially if a friend or family member helped you prepare your taxes? All the two of you would have to do is agree that you prepared the taxes yourself, the government would be none the wiser. Thus, not only is it unnecessary and costly, the intent of the law is easily eluded.
• Shouldn't individual Americans be the ones to decide who completes their taxes? If I trust my neighbor to do my taxes, that is the risk I should take. If I feel I need a big tax company to complete my taxes, that is the decision I should decide to make and pay the likely higher cost of tax preparation for a less risky approach to my tax preparation.

Just another unnecessary regulation that improves no one's life, does not improve quality, and mocks the government that introduces such nonsense since it can be sidestepped so easily. The only ones that applaud such a law are the big accounting and tax preparation companies, e.g. H&R Block, since the Federal government may have just wiped out a lot of their competition for tax preparation services. Makes you wonder how many campaign dollars flowed from the big tax prep firms to the politicians that pushed for such a ludicrous regulation.

2) Let's be honest, the country is facing many dangerous and difficult situations. We have skyrocketing debt, our schools under educate our kids, the war on drugs continues to be lost, Iran and North Korea are steadily approaching the day when the will be nuclear armed countries, health care costs continue to increase year over year, our borders still leak, etc.

Given these major problems, what is a major political figure in Washington worried about? According to a May 27, 2012 Associated Press report: "Senator Charles Schumer is urging airlines to allow families with young children to sit together without paying extra."  If polled, how many Americans do we think would put this issue in their top ten list of worries for their family and the country? Would it even make the top 50 or top 100?  Ridiculously bad priority setting.

I would like to make a deal with the good Senator: Mr. Schumer, you worry about the big issues facing America with your colleagues in Washington and maybe resolve one or two of those, and I will worry about my relationship, customer service wise and price wise, with a private company such as an airline. I would much prefer that you improve the education of American kids, for example, than focus on where American kids sit on an airplane.

Just another horrific example of politicians working on the wrong issues. This continues to indicate to me that they do not really know how to fix the major issues of our day, forcing them to work on trivial stuff to reinforce their self image that they are at least working on something, no matter how trivial.

3) According to an article at http://www.examiner.com/ on May 16, 2012, a local Illinois taxpayer advocate group, Illinois For the Good of Illinois, was looking into the spending history of the Chicago city government when they came across some interesting findings. The group had been looking at every single check the Chicago government had written over the past ten years to vendors.

The group found $74 billion worth of vendor checks had been written over that time frame. One of those vendors turned out to be very interesting and somewhat distressing. Sixteen of those vendor checks, totally about $5,200, were directly made out to the Admiral Theater strip club in Chicago.

Now, there may be legitimate reasons why the City of Chicago had to send the Admiral Theater strip club at least 16 different checks at different times. I cannot possibly think of what those reasons might be but maybe they exist. The bigger concern I would have as a Chicago taxpayer is were there only 16 checks and only one strip club involved? Or where other, similar checks written to other "endeavors" like the Admiral but their existence was covered up with accounting tricks and deceit?

4) A May 17, 2012 online article at the Fox News Latino website reported that the state of Florida believes that it has about 53,000 dead people on its voting rolls. 53,000 people, or people impersonating them, are currently eligible to vote in Florida unless the political class and state government can clean up those voter files within the next few months.

After hundreds of years and thousands of elections, one would have hope that the political classes around the country, at the local, state, and national levels, would have already figured out and implemented the processes needed to ensure that elections are clean, accurate, and supportive of  a very basic tenet of our democracy, one vote and one vote only for every citizen. Apparently, at least in the state of Florida, and likely in many other places, it is insanity to believe our politicians can actually deliver on that voting promise in 2012.

Maybe they are too busy worrying about seating arrangements on airlines.

5) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the June 8, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Afghanistan produces about 375 tons of heroin for export every year. Of the 375 tons, only about 3.5% of it is ever intercepted by Afghan authorities, according to the United Nations.

Makes you wonder if it is time for the political class and the nation to take a good, hard look at our failed war on drugs if well over 350 tons of heroin are flowing into the world every year, an amount that is highly likely to go up once Western troops Afghanistan. Continuing to try and win this war by intercepting illegal drugs is probably going to continue to be a losing proposition.

6) Under Federal law and nutritional guidelines, it is illegal to allow kids to purchase soda during lunch from a school vending machine. Kids can purchase the soda before the lunch period and drink it during lunch, they can purchase a soda before the lunch period and drink it after lunch, they can purchase a soda after lunch and drink it after lunch, they just cannot purchase during the lunch period and consumer it during the lunch period. Sounds silly, doesn't it?

But it is not silly to Davis High School in Utah, which was recently fined $15,000 for violating this bizarre and silly set of guidelines. Rather than make it simple, and more effective, why not just ban the sale of soda in public schools altogether? Setting the above conditions just makes the feds look like idiots since the regulations can be beat so easily by the kids.

Bad priorities from Schumer and airline seating, bad alternative energy economic policy from the Obama administration, bad soda consumption rules, bad election process management, bad check writing in Chicago, and bad bureaucracy growth in the tax preparation arena from the IRS. It is a BAD time to be an American citizen and taxpayer under the current dark cloud of the current political class. Unfortunately, the bad times will continue to roll along, along with the associated insanity, when we finish up with similar instances of political class insanity tomorrow.


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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/