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This is the third post in this month’s series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. There is a lot to cover this month since October 1 marked the first day that Obama Care health insurance exchanges were open for business. Or not open for business, given what a disaster they were for the most part. And this was only a part of what we are learning about the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Washington political class.
The first two posts in this series can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/october-2013-obama-care-disaster-update.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/october-2013-obama-care-disaster-update_7011.html
1) Six days after the health insurance exchanges started operating, CNBC reported that its insurance industry sources were reporting that as few as 1 in 100 applications on the Federal exchange contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a plan. Some of the problems involve:
- How the exchange’s software collects and verifies an applicant’s data.
- Some of the insurance companies involved with the exchanges are stating they are receiving incomplete data from the government’s website or that the files are corrupted and unreadable in some way.
- That means the people in every batch who haven’t provided enough or correct information must be contacted for additional data to ensure they qualify for the insurance they want to buy, all this despite the fact that the Federal government has already spent over $600 million on this website effort.
- Even worse, many people might think that they actually have competed the process and are secure in assuming they are covered for health problems when in fact their registration process never got finalized and they are, in reality, uninsured.
An industry expert summed up the problems in a very succinct way: “It is extraordinary that these systems weren’t ready,” said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.
Extraordinary, unbelievable, disgusting would all be correct adjectives for a Washington effort that took three years and $600 million dollars to not work as promised. A 1% success rate, I could have done better even with my limited technical ability and done better for far less money.
2) Consider the following analysis of Obama Care health care costs that was done by the Americans For Prosperity organization using official Federal government press release data, keeping in mind that President Obama promised that Obama Care would save the typical American family about $2,500 a year in health insurance costs:
- According to the analysis and data from the Health and Human Services organization of the Federal government, health insurance rates for younger American men will increase by an average of a whopping 97% in 2014.
- The health insurance rates for American women won’t increase as dramatically, but will still increase by a still whopping 55 to 62%.
- In the worst possible cases, premiums will increase as much as 279% next year.
- However, these numbers are nowhere on the website. In fact, HHS and Secretary Sebelius are praising Obama Care saying these premiums are actually less. How could that be?
- Following in the footsteps of the crazy budgeting process in DC, HHS is actually using baseline health insurance premium analysis. Premiums are less than what the Congressional Budget Office originally predicted, so ObamaCare “saved” Americans money. Tell that to the individuals who will be paying more for insurance next year.
- Worse yet, supporters of ObamaCare argue that the premium increases don’t matter because individuals aren’t really paying these premiums. They’ll receive tax credits that offset the costs. That’s true…for some people. Individuals between 100 and 400% of the Federal poverty level will received tax credits to assist with the purchasing of insurance. But 400% of the federal poverty level is only $46,000 a year in income for an individual.
- That isn’t much comfort for a 27 year old that has to pay for these increased premiums yet doesn’t qualify for a tax credit. In Indiana, premiums will increase 53% for a 27 year old male and thousands of them won’t qualify for the subsidies. Only 44% of those between 21-30 years of age in Indiana even qualify for subsidies. In Arkansas, it’s even worse. Premiums are up 247 percent and 53 percent won’t qualify for a subsidy.
So much for Obama’s promise that an average family will see its annual health care costs go down by about $2,500. Not even close.
3) One of the very serious accusations of this whole Obama Care process is that it will be a paradise for identify thieves. Well, it looks like that fear might becoming a reality already.
A Minnesota insurance broker told the Star Tribune that he had recently received an email that contained a load of confidential information on more than 2,400 insurance agents, including info like names, Social Security numbers and business addresses.
The source of this identify theft bonanza? An unnamed staffer at MNsure, Minnesota’s new Obama Care health exchange online marketplace.
The MNsure employee had accidentally sent the email to the wrong person. Which is bad enough but why is such information being sent out on the Internet in an unencrypted format, even if it was sent to the right person?
The Star Tribune reported:
An official at MNsure, the state’s new online health insurance exchange, acknowledged it had mishandled private data. A MNsure security manager called the broker, Jim Koester, and walked him and his assistant through a process of deleting the file from their computer hard drives.
Koester said he willingly complied, but was unnerved.
“The more I thought about it, the more troubled I was,” he said. “What if this had fallen into the wrong hands? It’s scary. If this is happening now, how can clients of MNsure be confident their data is safe?”
Good question, how can anyone in America be sure their personal information is safe given that the minions in Washington have faulty computer systems up and not running that can be easily hacked for identify thieves’ easy usage and abuse?
4) 10,535 pages of final Obama Care regulations have so far been published in the Federal Register/ 10,535 pages. Does anyone think that 1) any sitting member of Congress read any of these pages, never mind all of them, 2) would have even understood them if they had read them, and 3) have any idea what negatively dramatic impact over 10,000 pages of Federal regulatory gibberish has on Americans and American businesses?
Before you answer these questions, keep in mind that two of the most important pieces of legislation passed by Washington in the past fifty years, were less than 34 pages long. The Voters’ Right Act was about two pages long and the Civil Rights Act was about 34 pages long but each had far more positive impacts than 10,000 pages of Obama Care regulations can even dream of having.
“Try to pare things down. Very few moves do a lot.” Over 10,000 pages of regulations is not paring things down and will accomplish very little.
5) The Washington Examiner recently ran an article that covered the results from a recent survey of 200 leading health professionals. In its national 2013 Health Care Survey of top health care professionals, Coupa Software (The company provides cloud-based finance applications for many of the nation’s health care providers and is especially focused on waste in the health care system) found that health care professionals are worried about a number of setbacks that the health law could result in. Asked to list the “negative impacts,” of which they could pick several, here’s what Coupa found:
– “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.” - 53%
– “Quality of care will go down.” - %51
– “The law is overly complicated.” - 49%
– “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.” - 42%
– “The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.” - 37%
– “Too complex for businesses.” - 32%
– “Americans will die earlier.” - 19%
Other findings include both good and bad anticipated outcomes from Obama Care, with the bad severely outweighing the good:
- Their survey found that the health care professionals expect that many inefficiencies, such as unnecessary emergency room visits, will be fixed under Obama Care.
- While 93% of the professionals in the survey cited negative impacts, 74% also found positive outcomes from the law, the biggest being the availability of health insurance to those who don’t have it.
- Any specific support for the law is offset by the overall view of the law by the health care community since the poll found that 56% oppose most or all of Obama Care’s provisions, only 6% favor all of the law, and 38% favor most of it.
Overall, a bad omen when top health professionals see far more downside than upside on average, especially when a whopping one in five think that more Americans will die earlier as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what the legislation intended. But unintended consequences has been a specialty of the Washington political class for a very long time.
A sign-up process that might not be fixable despite spending over $600 million on its development, higher premiums, high identify theft risk, 10,000 pages of probably non-decipherable regulations, and at least some doctors that think the legislation will kill Americans sooner rather than later. You cannot make this stuff up unless you are a Washington politician. More unbelievable fallout tomorrow.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Today is the second in a special series of posts we are doing on the political class insanity about Syria. Most informed Americans know that President Obama is itching to send U.S. military resources into action to teach the Syrian government a lesson for allegedly using poison gas on some of its citizens. As we discussed yesterday in detail, the reason for his desire is that he issued an idle threat to the government of Syria about a year ago, his now infamous “red line” ultimatum, i.e. if Syria poison gassed its own people that would be bad and incur Obama’s wrath.
The problem with issuing this ultimatum, as we discussed yesterday, is that the President never took the time or effort to establish a plan to operationalize his threat. Now, he is standing in front of the world with egg on his face with no plan and no strategy, trying to convince the world that our military should be drawn into a vicious civil war in a Middle East country.
Yesterday’s post with more details on how he got us into this pretty untenable position can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html
Today and over the next few days we will continue to review why this is such a stupid idea, sending us into war in Syria, how idiotic some of our politicians have acted with regard to this crisis, how Obama’s desire to shoot missiles makes no sense, and what others in the world are saying about this problem and why military action is NOT the answer.
1) This issue is probably one of the biggest foreign relations problems that this nation has had to face in many years. Military personnel are being put at risk. Taxpayer dollars are being diverted to go to war. Congressional members are in heated debate with each other and members of the administration on the issues.
And Senator John McCain, one of the Senate’s biggest proponents of going to war in Syria, was recently caught on film by Washington Post reporter Melina Mara….playing online poker on his smartphone the middle of the Senate hearings on whether or not to attack Syria. One of the biggest issues of our time and he thinks it is fine to play a video game while lives are at stake.
And to add insult to injury, once the Post pictures were made public, McCain actually made light of the incident by Tweeting, "Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!" Talk about disgraceful, talk about condescending, this is pathetic.
Lives hang in the balance he gets sarcastic after getting caught being distracted by such an important Senate debate and eventual decisions. These are the types of people that are leading the country today, the types of people that do not even have enough attention span to engage in a life and death matter.
2) The Heritage Foundation did a nice job with a recent posting where it laid out five questions that the administration needs to answer or clarify because the current status of information does not make sense:
- On August 31, 2013 and September 1, 2013, the President repeatedly stated that any U.S. military operation against Syria would be “narrow and limited” and would not involve troops on the ground. But when the administration put together a draft Congressional resolution that outlined how we would attack Syria, the resolution stated that the purpose of the U.S. military action is to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.” This is a very broad objective, it is not narrow and limited.
Narrow and limited military strikes are very unlikely to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stocks or delivery capacity since the Syrian government has now had more than a week, or a year, to move and protect those chemical weapons and other military hardware. So what is it, narrow and limited or wipe out the Syrian chemical weapons capability. You cannot have both, and given the warning we have given the Syrian government of our attack intentions, Obama will likely get neither.
- But U.S. military strikes are not the only entanglement that Obama wants to create for us in Syria. The administration reportedly intends to do “more for the Syrian rebels,” including providing arms.
But given that the Syrian rebels are fighting beside Islamist extremists, some of whom have ties to al-Qaeda, how does the administration plan to arm the “good” rebels but not the “bad” rebels. So far, that little snafu has not been ironed out. If it does not get done properly, we could be providing military hardware to the very people that blew up the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon on 9-11.
- The Administration assesses “with high confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year, including in the Damascus suburbs.” However, these earlier attacks did not result in a military response from the U.S. Thus, why now and why because of just the latest alleged gas attack? Arbitrary enforcement of a “red line” or any ultimatum is not a convincing argument.
- The President stated in late August that the Syrians’ behavior regarding the potential gassing of its own citizens was national security threat to the U.S. But he never said what that threat was except in the broadest and vaguest terms possible, as if we should just take his word for it.
He also stated that we need to militarily attack to discourage other fiends around the world from getting into the chemical warfare game. But it is highly doubtful that a “narrow and limited” attack over a period of a couple of days is 1) going to make us more secure and 2) is going to discourage any madman from getting into chemical weapons if the only world answers to such a move is a few cruise missiles.
- The final Heritage point is one we covered yesterday. With the exception of France, Obama has not built any kind of allied, United Nations, or international coalition partnership to help us out in this self created crisis. He is trying to lead the charge up the hill while those he would like to have allies are staying back in their fox holes, not seeing this charade as worthwhile or likely to do any good.
Heritage tied these serious shortcomings of the administration’s thought processes very nicely and accurately: “The Obama Administration’s Syria policy has been disturbingly ad hoc and reactive. The Administration has not clearly explained why it must act at this time when earlier incidents did not require action, how its proposed actions will achieve its stated objectives, and what its plans are if the military strikes do not succeed in achieving those objectives. Answers to these and other questions are vital if Congress is to take its responsibilities seriously.”
Given that a high ranking Senator like John McCain would rather play video games than take this potential war situation seriously, I am not sure that Congress is ready, willing, and able to take the situation seriously. Also, based on these five issues, it is quite apparent the administration has not been ready, willing, and able to do their homework to properly address and resolve the issues of military intervention.
3) Ron Paul, former U.S. Congressman and Presidential candidate, recently had three insightful observations/warnings about this crisis that Obama’s careless red line threat has caused:
- “We are not really positive who set off the gas. The group that is most likely to benefit from that is Al-Qaida. They ignite some gas; some people die and blame it on Assad.”
- “Assad, I don’t think, is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him.”
- “What if there is an accident and 100 Russians get killed by our bombs? Who knows? Some type of unintended consequences. Wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short-term war. Just think of all the promises over in Iraq: short term; not much money; it’s over; we’ll get that oil. And don’t believe it.”
Another view from a politician that has always been leery, and correct, about getting involved in other people’s business. What if we do kill some Russian citizens that are working for the Russian government in Syria? What if we end up with a stray missile that lands in the center of a residential area and which would likely kill far more Syrians than died in the alleged gas attack? What if Assad is actually a rationale tyrant who knew he was winning the civil war and would be crazy to get involved in such an attack?
So many questions and so few answers on such an important issue.
4) Speaking of killing civilians, this issue has always bothered me. Best estimates say that over 100,000 Syrians have died as a result of the civil war. This war has been going on for years. These people died from gun shots, mortar rounds, artillery rounds, torture, etc. Why is it so important to inject ourselves into this civil war now? If the 400 or 1,400 people (various estimates) had not been killed by poison gas but by artillery shells, would we not be having this discussion and issue?
Are Obama, Kerry, McCain and others saying it is okay to kill someone with a mortar round but we need to get involved when it is allegedly poison gas? Unnecessary death is unnecessary death. If the administration and others had been this concerned about any civilian deaths than maybe they should have addressed the issue years ago before 100,000 people died.
Okay, heavy duty stuff and we are still not done reviewing all of the issues and opinions and ramifications of going to war, again, in the Middle East, a foreign policy strategy that has NEVER worked out well. More to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, if you agree that this insanity must stop, I urge you to call your Congressional representatives now before they decide military action, limited and useless as it is, has any merit at all.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
