October, 2015, Bonus Post, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Epic Co-op Failures

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.

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

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

A week ago or so we spend several days reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington. I had thought I would not do any more Obama Care stuff until next month but since last week a number disasters from the law have already popped so I decided to cover them today rather than wait until next month:

1) Benjamin Miller is an ordinary American who lives in Indiana. His plight and run-in with the IRA illustrates how inane and stupid the Obama Care legislation is relative to its personal insurance mandate. This part of the bill requires Americans to pay a fine via their IRS tax filings if they did not have health insurance coverage.

Before Obama Care was enacted, Mr. Miller was paying $398 a month for a health insurance plan that he was perfectly happy with. Once the legislation was enacted, the cost of his monthly health insurance premiums jumped over a thousand dollars to a whopping $1,400 month, a more than three fold increase. He decided that $1,400 was more than he could afford and thus, he dropped the insurance policy rather than pay an EXTRA $12,000 a year. 

So then the IRS got involved and send him a bill for $2,344 for not having health insurance coverage as required by Obama Care. He posted the IRS bill on Facebook to prove he was not being deceptive. Accompanying the Facebook post were his comments: “So I chose not to pay $1,400 a month so [I] got a nice little fine. Thanks Obama for the fine for not having insurance … Thanks for the Affordable Care Act. Thanks for making it so affordable!”

This insanity shows why the legislation is so horrible and so little thought was put into it. This American was going through life, very happy with an affordable health insurance plan that suited his needs. The Federal government comes along with Obama Care and says we know best, your insurance costs is going to go up three fold, increase more than a thousand dollars a month for basically the same coverage and if you do not do what we tell you, we will treat you as a criminal and fine you over $2,000, an number that will go up in the future if Mr. Miller does not get insurance coverage.

In either case, he pays an extra $12,000 a year for the same coverage or he pays over $2,000 for the Obama Care fine, that is thousands of dollars that are not being spent to grow the economy. Less dinners out, less movies, less disposable income. 

Is it any wonder the economic recovery that has transpired concurrently with the rollout of Obama Care is probably the weakest recovery ever? Mr. Miller’s saga is being repeated millions of times across the country as Obama Care has caused household insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to skyrocket, putting more money in the coffers of insurance companies and the U.S. Treasury and taking it out of the economy.

2) One reason for doing this bonus post on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care is that at the rate that Obama Care insurance co-ops are failing across the country, they might all be gone by next month. Recall what an Obama Care co-op is:

• A co-op is basically a state based, newly created private insurance company concept that was established via Obama Care.
• The legislation spent $2.4 billion to establish health insurance co-ops in 24 states across the country, supposedly offering affordable health insurance policies to those without insurance coverage.
• The purpose of the co-op was to provide a competitive market place in mostly rural areas where it was felt there would not be enough existing health insurance companies competing to drive down costs.

In our update last week we reported on how four of those co-ops, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, and New York had already gone bankrupt and out of business or had announced they were going out of business because of their failing financial situation.

Well, since then, according to writing by Melissa Quinn, writing for the Heritage Foundation, the number of failed co-ops is now up to six, more than 25% of all co-ops created with taxpayer money, with Kentucky and Tennessee joining the failure parade. Ms. Quinn’s article totalled up the damage and debris so far in Obama Care’s co-op world:

• Tennessee - $73,306,700 received from the American taxpayer, 31,109 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $2,356
• Iowa - $145,312,100 received from the American taxpayer, 91,477 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $1,588
• New York - $265,133,000 received from the American taxpayer, 209,136 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $1,268
• Kentucky - $146,494,772 received from the American taxpayer, 51,655 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $2,836
• Louisiana - $65,790,660 received from the American taxpayer, 16,322 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $4,031
• Iowa - $65,925,396 received from the American taxpayer, 20,578 people enrolled, cost per enrollment = $3,204
• Total - $761,962,620 received from the American taxpayer, 420,277 people enrolled,cost per enrollment = $1,813

What a waste of money. Three quarters of a billion dollars wasted for no return. Pretty inefficient process when it costs about $2,000 to sign up a single customer on average. Pathetic execution.

Her article goes on to report more disturbing and depressing results about the co-ops, based on official government documents:

• More than 400,000 Americans now have to go out and somehow find new insurance coverage as a result of these six co-ops failing or face stiff fines like Mr. Miller got hit with.
• 23 out of the 24 original co-ops lost money in 2014.
• 13 of the co-ops signed up significantly fewer customers than forecasted.
• It is unknown if any of the Federal taxpayer money loaned to these failed co-ops would ever be recovered.

What an incredibly poorly thought through process. More than 25% failure rate already, over $700 million likely lost taxpayer wealth, and over 400,000 Americans having their lives inconvenienced and their health coverage endangered. Three disasters at one pop.

3) But since I came across the Heritage Foundation article above, I stumbled across even more bad news from the Obama Care co-op world. According to an article on the Daily Caller website on October 16, 2015, writer Richard Pollock reported that now seven of the co-ops have already closed or announced those closing in the near future. And more importantly, according to a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general, the remaining co-ops are in deep financial trouble and the inspector general expects more to go out of business soon.

But to show you how quickly things are falling apart, just three days later, October 19, 2015, Richard Pollock, also writing for the Daily Caller reported on some startling new developments:

• According to various news reports and Congressional members, the Obama administration is hiding a secret list of 11 Obama Care insurance co-ops that they fear could be the next co-ops to go out of business in addition to the others that have already failed.
• And despite the constantly broken promise of being the “most transparent administration ever,” the Obama administration refuses to release the names of those co-ops in financial trouble despite calls from Congress and news journalists to do so.
• Even worse, Mr. Pollock claims that the number of failed co-ops is already up to eight, with five having tanked in the past three weeks.
• If correct, than nineteen out of the 24 co-ops are either financially dead or about to be financially dead, likely taking with them much of the $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds that they were staked to.
• The defunct or soon to be defunct co-ops will force almost half a million Americans to find a new source for health insurance.
• The secret 11 co-ops are on so-called “enhanced oversight” by the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), which manages the Obama Care program. 
• The 11 received formal letters from CMS demanding that they take urgent actions to avoid closing.
• Aaron Albright, chief CMS spokesman, said 11 co-ops “are either on a corrective action plan or enhanced oversight. We have not released the letters or names.” He gave no grounds for withholding the information from either the public or Congress.
• The CMS has so far ignored a formal request from members of Congress investigating the failure of the co-op program.
• Senator Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, is not happy with the CMS stonewalling situation: “Since the public’s business generally ought to be public, CMS should have a good reason for not disclosing which co-ops are troubled.” 
• He was joined in criticism of the CMS’s lack of transparency by Congressman Adrian Smith: “It’s time for CMS to stop shielding these failures from the public and start identifying faltering co-ops. Taxpayers deserve more accountability and consumers deserve to know whether the insurance they are forced to buy will still exist at the end of next year.”

You can now see why we did this bonus piece. At the current rate, if we had waited until next month for our usual Obama Care disaster review, the entire co-op infrastructure could be gone. Never has so much failed in any piece of Washington legislation that was ever passed. Costs go up, co-ops go down, the unfolding disasters that are Obama Care.

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

October, 2015, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubtrer and A Believer In Science: Skewering The 97% Myth

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.”This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims. Today we will focus only on the infamous 97% number and showoing how bougs it is.

1) Ian Tuttle, writing for the National Review, did a fabulous job showing how the infamous 97% number came from, a number that people like Al Gore and Barack Obama like to throw around to prove that anyone who is a global warming doubter is going against 97% of the climate scientists and experts in the world. The implication is how could you people be so stupid relative to the experts?

Well, Mr. Tuttle does a complete deconstruction of why that 97% number is bogus. What is interesting is that his research is so thorough that he actually finds different approaches that were used to get to the 97% myth and how each of those approaches is fatally flawed.

- According to the article, the first 97% number appeared in a 2009 University of Illinois survey study that had some serious flaws:

• The number was derived by a masters student, Kendall Zimmerman, and her advisor, Peter Doran.
• Thus, we are not talking about a well seasoned scientist, a PhD expert, or someone who has a long history in doing survey study work, we are talking about a student who does not even have her masters degree at the time.
• Her study consisted of, hold your breath, a two question online study. So participants in the study had the option of not responding to the survey, something that probably introduced bias into the study if it was not controlled for in the sample, something that does not appear to have been done.
• As a result, only 5% of the survey respondents, only about 160 people, were actually climate scientists, making statistical validity a little shaky, given the small sample size.
• But it gets worse. The 97% number was calculated off of a sample size that was half that size, 79 respondents.
• These 79 respondents were self-reported climate scientists which makes it impossible to tell if they actually were climate scientists or were mediocre climate scientists since they self reported.
• Out of this extremely small sample of 79, 77 of those agreed that global warming was caused by mankind.

As a statistician with an advanced degree in statistics, this is a horrible way to develop wide ranging conclusions. The sample size is very small. likely too small to do any extrapolation to the real world. I am sure that there are many, many more climate scientists in the world than 79. These 79 respondents are self-reported so there is no way to check if they are good or bad scientists or if they actually are climate scientists. 

And there is no way to check for response bias. It could be that the good climate scientists or those with a different opinion than the small number that responded could not be bothered answering a two question survey from someone who does not even have their masters degree yet.

- In 2010 William R. Love Anderegg, a student at Stanford University, not a Phd,not an expert, a STUDENT, used Google Scholar in his analysis to conclude that “97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC [anthropogenic climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” 

Again, major problems with this analysis and approach. The sample size in this study was a little larger, 200, but still probably not large enough to be extrapolated to the entire universe of climate scientists in particular and scientists in general. As with the Illinois study, there is no indication if these were smart climate scientists or dumb climate scientists, whether they were self reported climate scientists, etc. in order to determine the quality of their knowledge and responses. 

And finally this study was done by a student, not a season scientists or Phd expert. Are we willing to accept their conclusions and develop national policies based on two small, probably biased survey studies by students with respondent samples that are suspect? I think not.

- According to Mr. Tuttle, “Surely the most suspicious “97 percent” study was conducted in 2013 by Australian scientist John Cook — author of the 2011 book "Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and creator of the blog Skeptical Science.” This study had some serious flaws also:

• Mr. Cook obviously has a financial stake in the 97% number since he probably wants to sell more books and get traffic to his website, both of which advocate for manmade global warming.
• At first glance, Cook claims to have done an analysis of 12,000 scientific abstracts where he found “a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible.” This large number of abstracts obviously overcomes the flaws in the previously discussed survey studies above where there were only 79 respondents in one study and only 200 in another.
• But “Among papers taking a position” is a significant disclaimers since only 34% of the papers Cook looked had any opinion about anthropogenic climate change at all. Thus, our sample size has now been cut by two thirds and is not the lofty 12,000 abstracts and papers claimed on the surface.
• Since Cook decided that 33% of those supported the mankind causing global warming theory, he simply divided 33%by 34% to get 97%. Not real scientific.
• David Legates, a University of Delaware professor who once lead that university’s Center for Climatic Research tried to recreate Cook’s study and approach, a tried and true and widely accepted approach to verifying scientific conclusions, he found that “only 41 papers — 0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent,” supported what Cook’s 97% conclusion.
• Additionally, several scientists whose papers were included in Cook’s initial sample took exception that their work had been misinterpreted by Cook.
• “Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain,” Legates concluded.

Since it appears that Dr. Legates is also a potential global warming doubter, we have another scienctific voice that supports the concept that being a global warming doubter and believer in science is a sane and rational approach to take.

Mr. Tuttle’s entire article can be read at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle

2) But this is not the first time that we have discussed Mr. Cook’s analysis. In one of our blog posts from back on September 18, 2014, we went into more detail of how he got to his conclusions, writing at that time:

“One of the biggest fallacies going around to support the probably faulty theory that humanity’s actions are causing massive global warming and/or climate change is the statistic that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man made, and dangerous. If this stat is true, then why are we even having a conversation about global warming, let’s fix it right away, there cannot be any doubt.

But that is a big if, even if the President has been spouting it off. A recent report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation explained why this is such a bogus number:

• The original 97% claim first appeared in a research paper by Australian global warming advocate John Cook.
• The paper drew its conclusions having allegedly reviewed 12,000 papers on climate change and claimed that the vast majority of them supported the “consensus” on global warming.
• But Cook defined “consensus as having two and only two components: 1) that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas and 2) human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent.
• There was no quantitative or benchmark criteria used, just an unspecified extent, hardly a scientific approach or analysis. Thus, under Cook’s definition, even if a scientists conceded there was a less than 1% probability of manmade global warming, that scientist would be considered part of the 97% consensus.
• Keep in mind that John Cook’s Internet home is a global warming advocate website called Skeptical Science so he has a vested interest in global warming propaganda. 
• Unfortunately for Cook, a security lapse at his site in 2012 led to the uncovering of private email exchanges between Cook and his co-conspirators: “It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW. So [Skeptical Science activists] Jim Powell, Dana [Nucitelli] and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus.”
• This is not science, this is public relations and propaganda since the conclusions were drawn and done before any research into whether there was a consensus was conducted.

And that is how bogus science passes for real science in the world of politics and vested interests."

And Gore and Obama and others like them want to change our economy and our lifestyle, and not for the better based on extremely small and biased sample size surveys done by college students, not experts, and by people that have an answer they want to hit before they do any scientific analysis and study, the complete antithesis of science and the scientific method. Pathetic and despicable and unbelievably deceitful

More analysis and science tomorrow where we continue to prove that being a global warming doubter and a believer in science is really the correct reality today.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

October, 2015,Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: CERN Is Doubter, A Nobel Winner is A Doubter and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) Global warming advocates like Obama and Gore always like to boast that the science is settled, that 97% of climate scientists agree that mankind is causing global warming and climate change, and that you are a moron to believe any differently. But we have identified and verified dozens and possibly hundreds of scientists and experts that believe just the opposite, that mankind is having a minimal impact on the climate and that manmade global warming is really a myth.

Today, let’s add another expert to the global warming doubter side. Dr. David Evans is an electrical engineer from Australia with multiple advanced degrees in mathematics. At one timer he was a mathematic climate modeller for the Australian government’s Greenhouse Office. It is his contention, based on his experiences and education, that while the underlying physics used in developing global warming and climate change models is correct, that underlying physics has been incorrectly applied in the mathematical models.

As a result, he has gone back into the underlying models' logic, corrected two errors that existed in the mathematical forecasting process, and has found that the climate’s sensitivity and reaction to extra carbon being put into the atmosphere is much lower than previously touted. So much lower that he estimates that the UN”s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change has over-estimated global warming over the years by as much as a factor of ten: “Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

Another scientist, another expert who using science and higher education says that mankind’s impact on temperatures and climate change has been grossly overestimated and thus, overhyped, by people like Obama and Gore. Two things here:

1. I am not saying Dr. Evans is right but shouldn’t experts like him get a fair chance to present both his credentials and findings and not be ignored for not automatically endorsing something that many liberal politicians want us to blindly accept?
2. Some critics might say that his views do not count since he is not a climate scientist, he is an electrical engineer with some math degrees? To which I would answer in three parts: first, not being a climate scientist might be a good thing since he might take a view from a whole different point of perspective that a climate scientist would never consider. Second, if he is not qualified than using Bill Nye The Science Guy to support manmade global warming theories is also off limits since he is really not a science guy, I believe his education is in engineering. And finally, Gore and Obama are lawyers so thewy are not nearly as qualified as Dr. Evans.

In any case, an educated person who is heavily involved in global warmng history and modelling now tells us that those models are wrong, making it more realistic for those of us who are global warming doubters to be secure in our beliefs.

2) Hans von Spakovsky writing for the Heritage Foundation, recently discussed some really scary and ridiculous stuff coming out of a group of 20 professors from across the country. According to these 20 professors, if your are a global warming doubter, if you are skeptical about the impact mankind is having on the planet, then the Federal government should arrest you and prosecute you under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. 

Yes, having an opinion now in America is grounds for going to jail because according to these professors, you have: “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”

As background, RICO is a Federal law from 1970 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act that is supposed to be used as a tool to go after organized crime, including dangerous drug cartels and Mafia operations. Yes, daring to have an informed opinion that differs from the opinion of these 20 people is grounds to classify you as a mobster or member of a violent drug cartel. No First Amendment rights for you, straight to jail.

How crazy, ridiculous, and dangerous have people in the Al Gore camp become? And how hypocritical. Two of the signees of the letter comes from the University of Washington whose mission statement says that the university wants: “an environment for objectivity and imaginative inquiry and for the original scholarship and research that ensure the production of new knowledge in the free exchange of facts, theories, and ideas.” I guess they forgot to add the part of putting you in Federal prison if your facts, theories, and ideas to not match up with theirs.

If this asinine idea ever took hold, consider the following scenario that could happen. Several years ago, world renowned scientists at the world renowned CERN Institute in Switzerland conducted valid scientific experiments where they conclusively proved that solar activity was responsible for global warming cycles and trends and not mankind. Thus, under the wacky idea proposed by these 20 scientists, the dozens and dozens of scientists from seventeen countries who proved that mankind is not causing global warming would all be prosecuted under the RICO act. 

Excerpts for the February 1, 2012 post that we wrote on their findings include the following:

This past summer, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) conducted just such an experiment. Before going into their findings, let's talk a little about CERN. 

It is my understanding that CERN is comprised of some of the top physics scientists in the world. I could find no source that disparaged any work that CERN scientists had previously done. CERN is the organizations that is primarily responsible for the development of the World Wide Web and it built the multi billion dollar Large Hadron Collider in Europe. It is affiliated with 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities in 60 countries. I do not think there is any doubt that CERN is the epitome of scientific research.

Back in the summer, CERN scientists conducted experiments where they actually modeled global warming conditions in a lab environment where they "built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the earth's atmosphere."(Source: European Union Times, September 3, 2011).

The experiments they conducted were carried out by 17 European and American institutes and 63 CERN scientists. Their findings were then written up and published in the highly acclaimed scientific publication/journal, Nature.

Their findings and conclusions: the sun's cosmic rays and their role in cloud formation, rather than man made emissions, are responsible for the earth's warming temperatures. Wow, real scientists working at a prestigious research facility using scientific means concludes that global warming is not caused by anything man is doing.

But under this letter’s proposal, the CERN scientists would go to jail for daring to present an alternative scientific theory to manmade global warming.

But that blog post also contained another example of a world wide famous scientists who would go to jail under this letter’s proposal:

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby, Ivar Giaever, a Nobel laureate, recently quit as a fellow of the American Physical Society over the Society's unequivocal position that man made global warming is "incontrovertible" and his personal position that no "scientific assertion is so sacred that it cannot be contested."

Yeah, let’s throw a Nobel Laureate in jail for daring to disagree.

Note: Both of these examples and others about being a global warming doubter can be read at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

While the letter is stupid, the concept is dangerous. When we act to use government force to suppress the ideas of others then we are marching down the road of George Orwell’s Big Brother where there is only one truth and that truth is controlled, often brutally, by the political class and the oppressive government functions it operates. Certainly not a scientific approach, is it?

That will do it for today but stayed tuned over the next few days where we continue to update the concept that it is sane and rational to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

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

October, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Sedentary Americans, Diabetes Epidemic, Obama;s Lies, and More

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

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

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating 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.

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

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

For the past several days we have been reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington. Today's review will end this series of Obama Care updates until next month:

1) We have often made the claim, including in the preceding paragraphs, that Obama Care will never succeed in reducing the nation’s healthcare costs because the law never addressed the underlying root causes of those ever rising costs. The legislation and Obama tried to resolve a public health issue with a hokey insurance solution that is bound to fail and fail in an expensive manner.

As an example of why this is a public health issue, consider a recent Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the May 8, 2015 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, 28% of Americans were TOTALLY sedentary in 2014. TOTALLY means that they did not participate in a single physical activity such as lifting weights, running, yoga, bowling, or even stretching. 

These results come from a survey by the Physical Activity Council which estimated that 83 million Americans age 6 or older did nothing to maintain their personal physical fitness throughout 2014, an increase of 18% since 2007. Is it any surprise then that obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other expensive to treat illnesses are driving up the cost of healthcare in this country? 

These medical afflictions could all be addressed if America would start doing some exercising. Instead of launching a public health initiative to drive down the demand for healthcare services, and by driving down demand the price and costs of healthcare would also come down, we are stuck with a failing insurance system via Obama Care that leaves the public health driver of costs unaffected. Insane.

2) Let’s continue on the whole public health issue them for this next discussion. Based on recent analyses and data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, half of all U.S. adults are suffering from diabetes or are at risk of getting diabetes in the near future. Yes, one out of every two Americans are currently or getting close to being in a diabetic state, a condition that has driven up health care costs in this country and will likely continue to drive those costs in the future. 

As we stated in the previous point and in other posts, this is an unaddressed public health issue that Obama Care did nothing to remedy. According to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, most of these cases are Type 2 diabetes, which is caused by, surprise, surprise... poor diet and a lack of exercise. Sound familiar, public health issues, not an insurance issue.

The government study, recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians were more than twice as likely to suffer from diabetes as white people. Thus, not only have we identified an overall root cause of rising healthcare costs, we have also found where to focus a public health campaign to alleviate that problem.

Fix the root causes and the reduction in the demand for health care services will drive down the cost of providing healthcare services, it is simple logic and simple economics. But nothing with Obama Care is simple or logical and that is why it is a failure.

3) The large majority of Americans who got health care coverage as a result of Obama Care got it because they were now eligible for Medicaid coverage, the lowest form and probably lowest quality of health insurance available today. But coverage is coverage, right? Better than no coverage, Right? 

Wrong. As Peter Suderman from Reason magazine points out back in mid-2013, those people with Medicaid coverage are not healthier or better off with similar people that do not have Medicaid coverage along several important health measurements. A test/control study in Oregon published by the New England Journal Of Medicine found that Medicaid has “no measurable effect on any of the objectively measured physical health outcomes the study examined.”

This study took advantage of a unique situation in Oregon relative to Medicaid patients. The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment randomly picked over 6,000 state citizens to be covered by Medicaid and and a similar and large control group of state citizens that were not covered by any insurance including Medicaid. The study then went back after two years to compare the health profiles of the test/Medicaid covered group and the control, non-Medicaid covered group.

What they found is very interesting and unexpected:

• Those with Medicaid coverage did NOT have healthier blood pressure readings, did NOT have better cholesterol levels, and did not have better diabetic blood pressure control vs. the control group.
• Those with Medicaid coverage did not use the emergency room any less than those without Medicaid coverage.
• Those with Medicaid did see some reduction in their out of pocket healthcare costs vs. the control group.
• However, total spending on healthcare by those Medicaid patients, the majority of which is paid for by taxpayers, shot up significantly without any apparent improvement in overall health. 

In other words, Medicaid, the main insurance provider source under Obama Care, a Federal program that is infested with criminal elements, fraud, and inefficiencies, apparently does not make people any healthier or reduce their reliance on expensive emergency room services vs. doing nothing even though more was spent via Medicaid on those Medicaid customers according to a peer reviewed, published study. 

In other words, like most government programs, the Medicaid option via Obama Care resolves very little and accomplishes even that little bit at great expense to the American taxpayer. 

4) We have probably done over a hundred posts on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have discussed the reality that it never addressed the underlying root causes of our rising healthcare costs, how people like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and many other politicians bold faced lied of what the benefits of the legislation would be, how we were promised that if we liked our current doctor, hospital, or insurance plan that we could keep them under Obama Care (we could not), how the middle class would not see any tax increases as a result of Obama Care (we did), how the program would only cost $900 billion over ten years (according to the Congressional Budget Office it will cost twice that much, at least), how it will not add a dime to the national debt (it will add over a trillion dollars), how insurance costs for a typical American family would go down by upwards of $2,500 a year (those costs rose significantly instead) etc., etc., etc.

To review those past posts, just type in “unfolding disaster” in the search box above. Or, go to the following link to get a 17 minute synopsis of everything that went wrong with Obama Care from the start:

http://www.youngcons.com/greatest-video-deconstruction-obamacare-you-will-ever-see/

While the presentation is a bit over dramatic, the essence of the message is clear and verifiable: this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington, it was the most deceptively presented piece of legislation ever presented by Washington, and the lies associated with it are despicable.

5) And if the previous set of video clips and the lies they contain is not enough to make you lose your lunch, consider the following set of video clips of the President making sure that we knew we would save up to $2,500 a year on health insurance premiums once Obama Care was passed. This promise almost became a mantra of this President, as you will see in the video, a mantra that turned out to be either the largest lie ever told to the American public or the words of a President who had not idea what he was talking about….or both:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o65vMUk5so

6) We will end this month’s chapter of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care with just a few more real life examples of how Obama Care is causing havoc with American families, using the website, www.myhealthcarestory.com, as our source:

Wayne from Indiana on October 21, 2013

Just got my 2014 healthcare package details this week. It includes a 73% increase in premium contribution, $600 deductible increase, and $2,000 increase in out of pocket maximum. My current plan option was discontinued so I could not “keep my plan” even though I was completely satisfied with it. Now I am hoping my current doctor will accept the new plan.

David from Alabama on November 5, 2013

My premium increase is devastating to my budget and I am, for the first time in my life, worried about my health care. I was just getting by and thanks to The “Affordable” Care Act (Obamacare) I am no longer able to make ends meet. Is this what Obama means by redistributive policies? It is more like reverse Robin Hood if you ask me.

Pat from Minnesota on October 17, 2013

The company that I am a insurance agent representing- sent us a letter saying that due to the changes in the healthcare law- in 2014- that they no longer are offering the group plan that we have had since I started there over 25 years ago. We now all need to find our own individual policies.

I am sure we will be back the same time next month with more disasters from Obama Care, the disaster that keeps on giving.

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