May, 2015, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Cowardness In Congress,Beating the Obama Care System and More

Every month for the past few years we have had to dedicate multiple posts every month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is without a doubt the worse piece of legislation ever passed passed by Washington, as one can see from our dozens of posts and the hundreds of mini-disasters we have discussed in each of those posts.

The legislation has increased insurance costs, stifled the economy, caused millions of people to lose access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies, increased the national debt, and exposed the many lies and intentional deceptions of this President and his political allies. It is a piece of legislation that has no chance of accomplishing its supposed goal of reducing healthcare costs in this country since it never understood nor addressed the underlying root causes of our high healthcare costs. These root causes include,m but are not limited to:

• Americans eat too much overall and too much of the wrong types of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• Washington laws and regulation encourage additives such as high fructose corn syrup to infest our food supply.
• The medical industry is in urgent need of tort reform.
• Current laws and regulations discourage cross state border insurance company competition.
• Federal healthcare programs today are infested with criminal activity that wastes upwards of a $100 billion a year.
• The Obama administration never “followed the money” to find out where the waste and over charging was in the entire medical industry.

Without understanding and alleviating these root causes, it makes no difference how many people get Obama Care insurance policies, the costs will keep going up and care will keep going down.

So with this quick background, let’s take a look at what Obama Care disasters have popped up in the past month or so, something we started with yesterday’s post:

1) In order for the Obama Care financials to pan out, about 40% of its customers were expected to be in the younger age brackets, aged 18 to 34 years of age, (i.e. the “young invincibles”). The reason is that younger people tend to be healthier and need less health care. Thus, the plan was for these younger policyholders to help pay for the expected higher medical costs of older policy holders. If that percentage is too low then the Obama Care population would skew older and less healthy, making the financials blow up and the costs to the insurance companies be higher than expected or wanted.

And so far, after the second open enrollment period, the financial expectation relative to the average age of Obama Care enrollees is not looking good. The age profile for the second round of enrollment shows that the young invincibles make up about 28% of Obama policy holders, about the same percentage as the first year.

This low percentage of younger customers could eventually lead to a death spiral of cost increases for Obama Care policies: the insurance companies holding these policies realize that they are paying out more in insurance costs than expected which requires them to raise policy prices which turns off even more younger people which causes the Obama Care poll to be comprised of even older, sicker people which increases healthcare costs… 

And if you combine the reality that in 2017 the Federal subsidy programs being paid to insurance companies to keep Obama Care policy costs low go away, then the costs of this badly planned legislation will sky rocket and cause the entire operation to implode. All because the root causes were never addressed and remedied which led to a fatally flawed economic model.

2) Simple economic theory says that the more you have of a product or service the lower the prices will be due to increased competition. Unfortunately, when it comes to small, rural hospitals, Obama Care is causing there to be less medical services available which is likely to drive up costs. According to a recent Associated Press report, small, rural hospitals across the country are closing down due to financial stress:

• For example, after 45 years of providing health care in rural western Missouri, Sac-Osage Hospital is being sold piece by piece.
• Ceiling tiles are going for 25 cents, the room doors for an average of less than $4 each, the patient beds for $250 apiece. Soon, the remnants of the hospital that long symbolized the lifeblood of Osceola, population 923, will be torn to the ground.
• A total of 50 similar rural hospitals have closed since 2010 with the trend accelerating with more closures in the past two years than the past ten years combined. Wasn’t it Obama Care that came into existence a little over two years ago?
• The AP report found that upwards of another 283 rural hospitals could be shut down in the near future and that 35% of all rural hospitals are now operating at a financial loss.
• Many of these hospitals rely on Federal government payments to cover Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus, according to the AP report, “Hospitals that rely heavily on those government programs have been particularly hard hit by Federal budget cuts and provisions in the 2010 federal health care law that reduced charity care reimbursements and changed other payment criteria.”

Did Obama Care cause all of the problems forcing the closing of rural hospitals? No, but 1) it did contribute to the financial distress and 2) it did not help the situation either, leaving millions of Americans without good medical options within their geographic and financial price range. In other words, even if you have health insurance via Obama Care, does you no good if you cannot get health care.

3) If you did not have health insurance coverage in 2014, when you filed your Federal income taxes you were supposed to pay a penalty for not having coverage. The strategy for having the penalty was to force people to get Obama Care health insurance if they did not have any coverage to begin with and imposing a financial burden by the writers of the legislation seemed like a nice, vindictive way to force people to do something they might not want to do, i.e. make them criminals.

But the website, www.townhall.com, found a way and strategy to avoid paying for high priced, poor quality Obama Care policies, still protect yourself from a devastating illness, and how to game the Obama Care system to satisfy your needs with minimal costs. Their approach is really quite ingenious and totally legal and it leverages the Obama Care tenet that no one can be denied Obama Care insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

Rather than having me try to explain the process, go to the following link to find out how to outsmart Obama Care, stay legal, and save a lot of money in the process, an approach that seems particularly attractive to younger people

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2013/12/23/how-to-get-real-and-affordable-health-insurance-without-obamacare-n1767438/page/full

4) Stephen Moore, recently writing for the Heritage Foundation did a nice job of reviewing the history of cancer treatment and the current status of cancer treatment in this country. His writings can be accessed at:

http://dailysignal.com/author/stephen-moore/

He makes a convincing case that of all the factors hindering the search for cancer cures, Obama Care might be the biggest factor inhibiting advances in cancer treatment:

“Finally, the greatest setback for cancer research and wonder treatments in modern times is Obamacare. That dismal law puts new taxes on the next generation of life-saving drugs, vaccines and medical devices. It may be the dumbest tax in history. Mr. President, if you want more of something, you don’t raise taxes on it, you cut them. Repealing these taxes is one small step Washington could take to accelerate the race for the cure and save millions of lives each year. What are we waiting for?”

Causing companies and researchers to divert capital away from research and development to cover Obama Care taxes is a viable line of reasoning, especially since the law itself has such low potential for doing any good and the potential for developing anti-cancer treatments is so much higher with so much large positive societal impact.

5) One last disaster for this month. Today, a Senate committee voted against getting rid of one ofthe largest injustices of Obama Care. As the law is written, Federal employees, from sitting Congressional people to lowly Congressional staffers were supposed to get their health insurance via Obama Care individual policies, much like millions of other Americans and suffer the same consequences of such a move as millions of other Americans.

But Congress, cowards as they are, convinced the Obama administration to exempt them and all Federal workers from such high cost nonsense and illegally allowed them to get lower cost, taxpayer subsidized health insurance through, of all things, the Washington D.C. small business Obama Care exchange. A petition to right this wrong reads as follows and provides more details:

No Washington Exemption from Obamacare!
Send Letters to Congress : 60,177 Letters Sent So Far

When the Democrats were rushing the health care law through Congress before most of them even knew what was in it, Republicans insisted on language requiring members of Congress and their staff to go into the new health care exchanges, to experience the same thing millions of Americans would experience and create a strong incentive, therefore, for them to make sure the system works.

Like many Americans being dumped into Obamacare exchanges, members of Congress and their staff stood to lose their employer contributions - in this case, the generous financing of their health benefits by taxpayers that they had before the law passed and took it away.

But unlike all of the other Americans in that situation, Congress had access to President Obama to personally intervene on their behalf. And he did, with an OPM rule allowing them to avoid the costs of being dumped into Obamacare exchanges. That's wrong.

And because there is no mechanism for employer contributions in the regular exchange, Congress also filed false documents claiming the House and Senate each have less than 50 employees to sign up as "small businesses," even though over 13,700 employees have in fact signed up. That's fraud.

Tell Congress: "Support Chairman Vitter’s effort to end Washington’s Exemption from Obamacare!"

If you believe that the law should be followed by those that actually wrote it and that this special financial favor be disposed off, please go to the following link to take action:

http://action.americancommitment.org/11464/no-washington-exemption-from-obamacare/

So, let’s review today’s disasters:

• The Obama Care policy holder mixed is badly skewed to older and sicker patients, likely leading to an eventual death spiral of rising costs.
• Healthcare coverage is decreasing in rural America, something not anticipated by Obama Care and probably made worse by Obama Care, as rural hospitals are closing rapidly.
• There is a low cost, legal way to beat Obama Care and still have healthcare coverage.
• The biggest obstacle to new treatments for cancer could be Obama Care itself.
• Congress took the cowardly way out and continues to disobey the law it wrote relative to health insurance for Federal workers.

Obama Care, the law that keeps on failing, month after month after month.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

September, 2014 Part 2 - The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care; Microchipping Your Body, Thousands of Virginians Lose Their Currnet Insruance, and More

Over the past few years, but especially over the past thirteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers or into unemployed workers.
• It has generally increased the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the negative ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate any kind of successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

The disasters continue below and over the next few days.

1) Virginia news outlets reported on September 11, 2014 that a quarter of a million Virginians are about to lose their current health insurance coverage and policies because those policies “are not following the affordable care act [Obama Care] rules.”

Executive Director of Virginia Association of Health Plans, Doug Gray explained: “We’re not allowed to offer those plans anymore. So what we’re saying to them is, you need to move to one that’s compliant with the law because that’s what we can offer.”

According to a reporter, Alana Austin, “This goes back to that now heavily-criticized line we heard before Obama Care was put in place: ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it.’ Ultimately, that turned out not to be true for thousands of Virginians and companies in the commonwealth.”

The original article and video can be viewed at:

http://www.westernjournalism.com/thanks-obama-250000-virginians-set-lose-health-care-due-obamacare/#qRXx8mqzK576gzuE.99

2) Stories like the following one are usually ignored in this blog, I usually chalk it up to hysteria and rumor mongering. But the fact that the story was covered on NBC News’ national telecast made me think that it might actually be true. NBC rarely reports on anything negative about the Obama administration so when they do report on anything negative about the Obama Presidency, it catches my eye.

NBC News recently predicted that by the year 2017, all Americans will be tagged with an embedded microchip somewhere in their body. They will be implanted to help identify individuals immediately. According to the news report, the technology’s purpose is to answer one simple question, “Am I who I say I am?” 

Obviously, the chance of abuse and Big Brother-like tactics and oppression rises dramatically if the Federal government can track who and where you are. Fortunately, some state leaders agree with the very large downside of such an intrusive government effort. In some states, such as Virginia, state legislation is in development to stop this from happening. 

The NBC News report also claims that an RFID Brain Chip has been developed and is currently being tested on several humans. They cite the proof of the RFID Microchip program in Obama Care by citing the part of the legislation calling for the program: It was reported that the use of Micro-Chips in Bill H.R. 4872 was located on Page 1014 under “National Medical Device Registry” it tells about a “Class II Device That is Implantable” and yes, they passed the bill. 

Seems like an awfully large loss of freedom for such a small potential of upside in the worst piece of legislation ever passed. Details of the NBC report can be found at:

http://800whistleblower.com/all-americans-will-receive-a-microchip-implant-in-2017-per-obamacare/?utm_content=buffer23d0d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

3) We go over a lot of statistics and a lot of overall realities when discussing the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. But we also like to hear form ordinary Americans and how their lives are generally affected in a negative way by the legislation. Check out the following video on how some Americans, likely just like you and me, have been impacted by the law:

http://joeforamerica.com/2014/01/employees-react-obamacare/

4) Over the past year or so we have seen the disaster that is veterans’ health care as administered by the Federal government’s Veterans Administration. High cost for low quality care that actually ended up costing an untold number of veterans their lives as a result of the government’s inability to operate an efficient health care system for veterans.

But the Veterans Administration is apparently not the only entity that has no clue how to operate an effective and efficient health care delivery system. According to a recent study implemented the City University of New York (CUNY) and the London School of Economics, a full 25% of the operating budget at U.S. hospitals goes for bureaucracy, double what hospitals spend in any other country around the world.

In the U.S., annual hospital administrative costs now top $667 per person. In comparison, the same spending comes out to only $158 per person in Canada, $164 in Scotland, $211 in Wales, $225 in England and $325 in the Netherlands. Because of varying methods of accounting, the researchers could not make comparable estimates for Germany or France. But they estimated that hospital administrative costs in Germany and France are about 40% less than in the U.S.

“We’re squandering $150 billion each year on hospital bureaucracy,” said researcher David Himmelstein, a professor at the CUNY/Hunter College School of Public Health and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “And $300 billion more is wasted each year on insurance companies’ overhead and the paperwork they inflict on doctors.”

But with the advent of Obama Care, that overhead and paper work load is likely to get higher and higher. Resulting in higher and higher costs to operate a hospital, costs that the taxpayers and the economy eventually have to absorb.

Now, for complete disclosure, the researchers concluded that the answer to this overly expensive U.S. cost problem is for the Federal government to take over the entire domestic health care system, the so-called single payer system, to eliminate this problem. Of course the researchers ignore two major problems with their proposed solution:

1) Our Federal government has already tried that model with our veterans and all it did was kill them sooner at a very expensive rate.

2) The researchers fail to take into account the reality that citizens around the world living under a single payer system also suffer through long delays and postponements of life saving treatments in those countries, i.e. they suffer the same fate as our veterans under a single payer system. While their systems might have less expensive hospital costs, their quality of care is not very good at all under a single payer system.

The details of their research can be found at:

http://personalliberty.com/one-fourth-medical-dollars-disappear-vast-healthcare-bureaucratic-rat-hole/

More bad news on the Obama Care front, just like every month around this time. And sadly, more of the same 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

February, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 4: Closing Hospitals and Shredding the Constitution While Trying To Fix the Law

This is the fourth post this month that examines the unfolding disasters that are constantly coming out of Obama Care. For three years we have been correctly predicting that this will be a disastrous piece of legislation that will damage the economy without its intended purpose of reining in ever escalating health care costs.

Since August, 2013 we have usually had to dedicate upwards of six or seven posts a month to stay on top of the fiascos. Those in depth previous posts can be accessed by looking at the lists of posts each month to the right of this screen. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-2014-unfolding-disaster-of.html

Let’s get started with Day 4’s disasters below:

1) Obama Care was supposed to reduce health care costs, the President promised that the average American’s annual health insurance bill would decrease by $2,500. But the law was written so poorly that many doctors are retiring early because of the hassles within the law which will reduce supply and increase health care costs, not decrease costs.

Early results of looking at Obama Care health exchange policies show that the vast majority of policies are MORE expensive than previous policies that Americans could own but no longer can get access to. This too will increase health care costs. 

Many medicines that were covered by previous polcies are not covered by Obama Care policies, further increasing costs for Americans. Thus, there are many factors and unintended consequences of the law that are doing the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do, i.e. reduce costs.

To that list of cost increasers it looks like we now have to add the fact that many hospitals across the country, especially those serving poorer and more rural populations of Americans, are being forced to close because Obama Care is causing the Federal government to decrease the reimbursement levels that had previously, pre-Obama Care, had been in effect.

As an example, the fourth Georgia hospital in two years is closing its doors due to severe financial difficulties caused by the law’s payment cuts for emergency services. The Lower Oconee Community Hospital is a small rural hospital that is suffering from serious cash-flow problems, largely due to the area’s uninsured population. Federal law requires all hospitals to treat all people that come to their emergency rooms for treatment and later be reimbursed by the Federal government for the service.

This hospital serves a poorer population where about 23% of the population does not have health care insurance. Thus, the uninsured usage of the hospital is high and as the Federal government cuts the levels of reimbursement, these four hospitals and others across the country have to shut down, leaving these poorer, less fortunate Americans with less health care coverage, all because of Obama Care.

Apparently, the problem is the result of the Supreme Court decisions that validated most of Obama Care but allowed states to opt out of its Medicaid expansion. The law was written assuming that all states would be involved in the Medicaid expansion. When half of them opted out, it destroyed the financial integrity of the law’s business case and the reimbursement levels to these less affluent hospitals.

Thus, we will now see a lower supply (i.e. fewer hospitals) which will grow the costs of health care even more since there is less supply and competition, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.

2) It seems like every week or so for the past year, Obama has decided to change something in the health care law for a variety of different reasons. He, of course, had no right or legal standing to do so since the law was legally approved by Congress and turned over to the executive branch to execute and put into operation. Under our Constitution, the President has no authority not to implement the law as it was written, debated, voted, on and enacted. 

If any changes needed to be made, assuming the President actually accepted and believed in the Constitution, he would have gone back to Congress and worked with them to amend the law to account for unforeseen obstacles. That it was a democracy is all about, everyone gets to have their opinion heard and voted on. Apparently, that is merely a suggestion for the administration, not a centuries old tradition and legal precedent.

How many illegal unilateral changes has the President made? A recent Fox Business analysis on February 12, 2014 identified 28 major changes and counting:

1. November 6, 2012 Medicaid physician reimbursements: Increased reimbursements for primary-care physicians who treat Medicaid beneficiaries didn’t go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, as scheduled. 
2. January 31, 2013 Bundled Payments initiative: The Obama administration was late starting an experiment with changes to how doctors and hospitals are paid by Medicare, which was slated to take effect Jan. 1, 2013.
3. February 1, 2013 Medicaid funds and preventive care: Increased federal funding for states that eliminate Medicaid co-payments for preventive care didn’t really go into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, as scheduled. 
4. February 6, 2013 Basic Health Program: The federal government announced a one-year delay for the “Basic Health Program.” 
5. February 20, 2013 Out-of-pocket costs: The administration announced that the law’s cap on out-of-pocket costs of $6,350 for individuals and $12,500 for families will not be enforced for some employer-based health insurance plans until 2015
6. April 1, 2013 Small Business Health Options Program: The federal government announced that the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) will be delayed until 2015. 
7. July 2, 2013 Employer mandate: The Obama administration announced that the employer mandate requiring employers with at least 50 full-time workers to provide them with coverage or pay a penalty will now be enforced starting in 2015, not 2014 as originally planned. 
8. July 2, 2013 Employer reporting requirements: The Obama administration announced that it is going to also delay, until 2015, associated reporting requirements relating to potential employer penalties. 
9. July 5, 2013 Verifying coverage status: The Obama administration announced that it has decided to roll back requirements for new state insurance marketplaces to verify health coverage status of people who apply for subsidized coverage. 
10. July 5, 2013 Verifying income: The Obama administration announced that it had decided to roll back requirements for new state insurance marketplaces to verify the income of people who apply for subsidized coverage. 
11. July 5, 2013 Electronic Medicaid notices: The Obama administration announced a delay in the requirement that state Medicaid agencies be able to use electronic notices to notify individuals of their eligibility for federal assistance. 
12. August 27, 2013 Finalizing federal exchange plans: CMS notified insurance companies that it would delay signing final agreements on plans for the new insurance exchanges. 
13. September 26, 2013 Online enrollment for small-business exchanges: HHS said employers with 50 or fewer workers will not be able to sign their staff up for insurance in federally operated exchanges until a month later, November 1, because of technical problems. 
14. September 26, 2013 Online enrollment in Spanish: The Obama administration announced that the Spanish-language version of healthcare.gov will not be equipped to handle online enrollments on Oct 1. 
15. October 23, 2013 March enrollment deadline: The Obama administration said that it would delay imposing penalties for six weeks on some consumers who might have been caught in a sticky timing problem for enrolling in coverage through the health law’s new insurance exchanges. 
16. November 14, 2013 Canceled insurance plans and minimum standards: The Obama administration announced that it is allowing insurers to extend existing individual and small group plans for one more year for current customers even if those insurance policies don’t meet the minimum standards set by the health reform law. 
17. November 22, 2013 Extra days to enroll for Jan. 1, 2013 coverage: Americans hoping to sign up for health insurance under health reform will have an additional eight days to do so for coverage to begin January 1, 2014. 
18. November 22, 2013 Health Insurance Enrollment for 2015: The administration pushed back the period during which Americans sign up for coverage under health reform in its second year of operation, a change that could reassure insurers while also avoiding the 2014 midterm elections. 
19. November 27, 2013 Online enrollment for small businesses: The Small Business Health Options Program, known as the SHOP exchange, will not offer online enrollment until November 2014, a one-year. 
20. December 12, 2013 Payment deadline delayed: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the first time directed insurers to give consumers until Dec. 31 to pay their first-month premiums. 
21. December 12, 2013 High-risk insurance pools: About 85,000 people with a history of serious illnesses, who are enrolled in high-risk insurance pools created under the health reform law, will get a month’s reprieve before they lose that coverage. 
22. December 19, 2013 Delay of individual mandate for some: The Obama administration will not require the millions of Americans who received health-insurance plan cancellation notices to purchase a new policy next year. 
23. December 23, 2013 Extra day to enroll for Jan. 1, 2013 coverage: The Obama administration extended a deadline for health insurance under health reform, giving consumers shopping on HealthCare.gov in 36 states an extra day, until Dec. 24, to pick plans to kick in for coverage beginning Jan. 1.
24. January 14, 2014 High-risk insurance pools: About 30,000 people (down from 85,000 in October) with a history of serious illnesses, who are enrolled in high-risk insurance pools created under the health reform law, will get an additional two months -- until March 31 -- before they lose that coverage. 
25. January 18, 2014 Equal coverage rules: The Obama administration is delaying enforcement of a provision of the health reform law that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than to other employees. 
26. February 10, 2014 Employer mandate for medium-sized employers: The Obama administration announced it would give medium-sized employers (businesses with between 50 and 99 employees) an extra year, until 2016, before they must offer health insurance to their full-time workers. 
27. February 10, 2014 Employer mandate coverage percentage: The Obama administration announced that they would phase in the percentage of full-time workers that employers with more than 100 employees need to offer coverage to from 70 percent in 2015 to 95 percent in 2016 and beyond. 
28. February 10, 2014 Measuring employees for employer mandate: The Obama administration announced that they are allowing companies that have close to 100 workers some discretion in whether they have to comply. 

A more detailed discussion and the entire article can be accessed at:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2014/02/12/28-delays-and-counting-to-health-reform/

A few of observations, beyond the illegality, unconstitutional, and probably impeachable offenses of making these changes to established law without getting approval of Congress and the people they represent, American citizens:

• First, how incompetent is this executive branch and administration if after three years, billions of dollars and probably tens of millions of man hours that they cannot put together an operation that now how has to be fixed by at least 28 major and different delays and changes? Answer: very incompetent.
• Second, I think we see another reason why this is such an amazingly bad piece of legislation. If you have to make 28 major changes to a law that you and your political peers wrote themselves, remember that no Republicans voted to enact this law, how badly was it written or how ignorant are you of reality that so many changes have to be made? Answer: very ignorant.
• Finally, how many of these decisions were made for the good of the country and the health of Americans and how many were done for political and political calendar reasons? I would venture a guess that the majority of these were done to minimize the negative impact on Democratic politicians rather than focusing on what is best for the country. That is what turns this President away form being a feraless leader and towards being nothing more than a typcial Chicago politician.

Okay, I thought we could get through all the disasters today but that was asking too much, especially when we start getting into obvious violations of the Constitution. Hopefully, tomorrow we can get through it all before more disasters unfold.

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

January, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 3: Real Life Obama Care Disasters, Medicaid Increases Hospitals Visits, And Bronze Plans' Expensive Surprises

This is our third post this month in what has become a monthly series on the idiocy and unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Millions of Americans have lost access to their preferred insurance policies, their preferred doctors, their preferred hospitals, and needed medicines, they have lost access to work hours and actually jobs,, the economy has suffered terribly, identity thieves are going crazy with glee, the national debt is going up faster, and a whole myriad of other threats and troubles have occurred as a result of this heinous piece of legislation.

Things are so bad that we are having a difficult time documenting and review all of the insanity. Over a six day period we will do our best to bring you the worst from Obama Care.

1) As we have discussed many times, there has been a lot of problems with Obama Care’s information systems processing and operations including the website where theoretically a person could easily sign up for an Obama Care insurance policy. The problems including the snafu that many people might think that they have health insurance via Obama care but the systems never properly processed the application and payment, leaving the person uninsured despite their belief that they are covered. 

And that reality is starting to come true. There are news reports starting to arise where people are going to the doctor or hospital and finding out that they are indeed NOT covered by an Obama Care insurance policy and either need to pay cash up front for the entire medical expense and fix the problem later or are walking out and not receiving the medical treatment they need because of the sticker shock of the price unadjusted for insurance. 

Regarding the top selling type of Obama Care plans, so-called Bronze plans, Kaiser Health News reports on the following developing problems:

• Newly issued Obama Care Bronze Plans may not pay a dime of a simple doctor costs until an annual deductible of $5,000 is met/paid for by the policy holder: “This could be the next shoe to drop, as people don’t realize that if they’re buying a bronze plan, they may have to pay $5,000 out of pocket before it contributes a penny,” said Carl McDonald, senior analyst with Citi Investment Research, speaking at a Washington, D.C., conference.
• Some health industry experts are concerned that some new Obama Care enrollees will be discouraged from seeing doctors if they have to pay the full charge, rather than simply a copayment. This would be the exact opposite behavior that Obama Care was supposed to be encouraging.
• First -time insurance buyers via Obama Care may not realize they’re on the hook for additional costs before insurance and benefits kick in, having chosen a plan based solely on the lower monthly premiums.
• In seven major U.S. cities, half of Obama Care’s bronze plans on require policyholders meet the entire deductible before insurers help with the cost of a simple doctor visit, according to an analysis by eHealthinsurance.com, a private online marketplace, for Kaiser Health News. 
• A typical office visit can run $65 to $85, while more complex visits can cost more.

Thus, people are going to see higher monthly premiums, higher deductible levels, and delays in seeing any benefit of their Obama Care policy until they have paid out thousands of dollars in their own cash for any medical care. How does this reduce the cost of medical care int his country, an severely broken promise of the President?

2) Consider the following recent video news headlines regarding Obama Care and the human stories behind the numbers and agony of Obama Care‘s failures:

New York Woman’s Medical Care Delayed And Insurance Cancelled Due To ObamaCare Broken Promises

WWLP-MA: New ObamaCare Taxes Are Bringing Higher Costs To Massachusetts Residents

Faces of Obamacare WBOY-WV: 18,000 West Virginians Forced To Enroll In ObamaCare Again Due To Website Glitch

Oregon Mom Can’t Afford Health Coverage From ObamaCare

ObamaCare’s Taxes Are Hiking Costs For Small Business Owners

The actual videos of their heartbreaking stories can be accessed at:

http://obamacosts.gop.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=obamacosts

3) A Washington Examiner article from January 3, 2014 pointed out the next likely huge failure of Obama Care. One of the original Obama Care promises was that the legislation would reduce the amount of visits, time, and costs for medical treatments that go through hospital emergency rooms. The faulty reasoning is that if previously uninsured Americans now had health insurance via Medicaid, they would be much less likely to us emergency rooms.

But if the writers had done their homework and a little research beforehand, they would have realized how inane this assumption would turn out to be:

• According to the article and a just-released results of a new study published in the Journal Science, based on 10,000 low-income residents in Oregon newly covered by Medicaid, emergency room visits were actually 40% higher than those with no insurance at all and no access to Medicaid.
• Supposedly, a big driver of our high expenditures in ever increasing health care costs has been due to those people without insurance going to emergency rooms.
• According to this study, increased ER visits as result of expanded Medicaid coverage increased spending by $120 per covered individual.

The article points out that several factors could be at work here.

• Being covered by Medicaid does not necessarily increase the chances of getting personal care in a private office since many doctors do not accept Medicaid patients and the related payment schedules. Thus, this may be another Obama Care example of people having healthy care insurance but who cannot get health care medical attention.
• Another factor might be that behavior is driven by cultural experience. Anyone who understands the culture of low-income Americans who do not have experience with health insurance, knows that these are not communities where health care is associated with private physician visits. It is associated with emergency rooms and hospitals.
• It may well be that as more lower-income individuals get under the Medicaid umbrella, they simply feel even more comfortable doing what they always have done — going to the emergency room.

Thus, rather than putting the fire out, i.e. reducing the costs and visits associated with hospital emergency rooms, Obama Care may actually be throwing gas on the fire by adding to the emergency room usage crisis. Just another bad, unintended consequence of a bad piece of legislation.

4) Let’s look at another real life example of how Obama Care is crushing Americans finances and health care insruance coverage using an NBC news report about a car delaership in Michigan, a classic American small business that President Obama was likely referring to in this quote from june 22, 2010: 

“This law will cut costs and make coverage more affordable for families and small businesses.“

In reality, at least for the Michigan car dealership, not so much, just another broken Obama promise. Highlights of the NBC story include the following points:

• The car dealership had its current employee health insurance policy canceled directly as a result of the Obama Care legislation, a policy and benefit the dealership had provided to its employees for 35 years.
• The car dealership owner decide at that point to give every employee a lump sum payment of $2,400 to each employee so they could individually purchase insurance. On their own. This increase his business costs from the previous year under the old insurance policy, rebutting the President’s assertion that Obama Care would reduce small business costs.
• These additional costs prevent him, like any other business owner, from expanding his business, hiring more employees, taking better care, financially, of current employees, all actions that would help grow the economy.
• As a further courtesy and help to his employees, he brought in a professional insurance broker to help his employees get on a group health insurance plan.
• The best group plan that the broker could develop did benefit a small minority of the dealership’s employees by getting them lower costs.
• However, for the vast majority if employees, relative to the previous plan that Obama Care killed off, deductibles are rising from $1,125 to $3,000, out of pocket costs went from $2,250 to $6,350, family deductibles jump from $6,000 to $12,700.
• During a company meeting to discuss employee benefits and health insurance, one employee asked: “How is this helping the average American that works 40 to 50 hours a week? How are we supposed to live?”
• Another employee is quote in the piece stating: “There’s nothing wrong with trying to help people, but there’s a better way. This isn’t the way.”

There has to be a better way, truer words about Obama Care have never been spoken. The original TV piece that NBC aired can be accessed at:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/106283-video-watch-obamacare-actually-affecting-small-businesses-employees/

This is what happens when inept politicians that do not understand the root causes of a problem pass a piece of legislation that most did not read which was written by insurance company interests and which runs a mind boggling two thousands plus pages long. Americans and their families suffering, economic growth being stunted, and the original problems made worse, not better. The trifecta of incompetence that unfortunately, continues 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

More Bad News On Obama Care - Strikes One, Two and Three

Trust me when I tell you that I do not go out looking for bad news on Obama Care, the health care reform legislation that the Democrats forced through the back door of reconciliation for passage in the spring. It is just that the bad news and pending failures of the legislation just keep on coming.

We have already covered the fact that many major corporations including AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, and Caterpillar have made very public overtures that they may drop their health care insurance plans for their employees and retirees since it is less expensive for their companies to pay a government fine for not having a health insurance plan than it would be for continuing to have employee and retiree health insurance. The Associated Press reported several months ago that the much touted ten year savings of $135 billion for the Federal government was really closer to a ten year savings of less than $25 billion since the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of $135 billion did not include all of the programs and their associated costs that went into the final legislation. The CATO Institute's detailed analysis of every component of the legislation led them to estimate that rather than reduce the Federal deficit by $135 billion it will increase it by over $2 TRILLION.

Now, consider some recent bad news:

- According to a recent article in the New York Times by Reed Abelson, as the Obama administration rolls out components of the health care reform legislation they are finding that they have to already start issuing waivers to prevent some insurance companies and employers from terminating their current health insurance plans in order to stay in conformance with the legislation. The article also points out the administration has already promised to issue more waivers going forward.

The administration has already issued 111 waivers covering about 1.2 million American workers, workers that would not have been able to continue to get health insurance from their employers, because of Obama Care guidelines, without the waivers. Apparently, those in Washington who put the law together never took the time to do some elementary homework and understand the impact it would have on these million plus American workers before the legislation is even ten months old.

- Talk about unintended consequences. Another New York Times article, on November 21, 2010, discussed how the new health care reform legislation would lead to a "merger mania" in the health care industry. This mania would occur as hospitals, medical clinics and doctor practices merge together to save costs and cash in on the incentives in the legislation. The article described the merger activity as a "growing frenzy."

As a result, many in the medical industry have hired and sent lobbyists to Washington to persuade the Obama administration to relax or dump existing laws and regulations that attempt to prevent health care monopolies. Some health care experts fear that this merger mania will reduce competition within the industry and by creating a more monopolistic environment, actually drive up costs for providing health care. It would create incentives, under Obama Care guidelines, to short change the health care given to patients in order to collect cost savings bonuses under the legislation. According to an expert on the health care industry quoted in the article, Thomas L. Greaney from St. Louis University: "The risk that dominant providers and dominant insurers may exercise their market power, individually and jointly, has never been greater." Great, a law that was intended to reduce costs will probably increase costs.

Great piece of legislating, folks. A law that was supposed to foster competition, provide health care coverage for more Americans, and reduce the nation's health care costs, is actually likely to suppress competition, throw more Americans into the pool of the uninsured, and will lead to skyrocketing health care costs. Strike one, strike two, strike three, you're out.

The only way out of this fix is to start over. The batter known as Obama Care has already struck out and we are still in the first inning of passage. The process established in the Social Issues section of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" provides a process and approach to identify the root causes of our rising health care costs, formulate solutions that directly attack those underlying root causes, and does it all without lobbyists and politicians. Obama Care never understood or attacked the root causes, it just moved money around within the current system, loaded on way too many new rules and regulations, and stirred in some additional taxes on top of everything. As a result, we get the mega problems we are seeing already with the legislation. Throw out the existing law and bring in some new players that know how to play the game of solving a problem.

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



Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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