December, 2018, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Costs Up, Quality Down, And Other Disasters

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 its 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, sugar, 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: 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 insurance premiums, deductibles and copays 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.

1) In our last post we reviewed the recent court decision in Texas that ruled Obama Care as being un-Constitutional. Twenty states, led by Texas, wanted the legislation overturned using the following logic:

• Under the Trump tax cut legislation, Congress got rid of the Obama Care tenet that put forth a financial fine/penalty for any American that did not get health insurance for themselves.
• The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the penalty was not a fine but a tax that Chief Justice Roberts put forth under a tortured logic argument and thus, the Obama Care was legit since the Constitution grants Congress the right to impose a tax….but not a financial penalty for inaction.
• Also, Obama Care supporters had always made the argument, and the Supreme Court seemed to agree, that the financial penalty was crucial and indispensable to the entire legislation and not “severable” from the rest of the law, and without it the rest of the law would be invalid.
• This set the stage for Texas et al to win their case since the 20 states argued that once the penalty for not getting insurance under Obama Care went to zero, it was no longer a legitimate tax since a $0 tax is not, in effect, a tax and thus, the whole legislation should be invalidated.
• California and 16 other states countered the argument, somewhat illogically, that even a a tax burden of $0 is still a tax.

In any case, the ruling is sure to be appealed and probably appealed to the Supreme Court. But think of the insanity of the California et al logic: a tax is still a tax even if the tax rate and amount is zero. I would be more than willing to be taxed all day long as long as the tax load is always $0. But Obama Care never made any sense in any logical argument so saying a tax burden that is always zero is still a tax is par for the course.

2) The summary of the judge’s conclusion is as follows:

THE [TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT] ELIMINATED THAT [INDIVIDUAL MANDATE] TAX. THE SUPREME COURT’S REASONING IN NFIB—BUTTRESSED BY OTHER BINDING PRECEDENT AND PLAIN TEXT—THUS COMPELS THE CONCLUSION THAT THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE MAY NO LONGER BE UPHELD UNDER THE TAX POWER. AND BECAUSE THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE CONTINUES TO MANDATE THE PURCHASE OF HEALTH INSURANCE, IT REMAINS UNSUSTAINABLE UNDER THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE CLAUSE—AS THE SUPREME COURT ALREADY HELD.

FINALLY, CONGRESS STATED MANY TIMES UNEQUIVOCALLY—THROUGH ENACTED TEXT SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT—THAT THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE IS “ESSENTIAL” TO THE ACA. AND THIS ESSENTIALITY, THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] TEXT MAKES CLEAR, MEANS THE MANDATE MUST WORK ‘TOGETHER WITH THE OTHER PROVISIONS’ FOR THE ACT TO FUNCTION AS INTENDED. ALL NINE JUSTICES TO REVIEW THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT] ACKNOWLEDGED THIS TEXT AND CONGRESS’S MANIFEST INTENT TO ESTABLISH THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE AS THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] ‘ESSENTIAL’ PROVISION. THE CURRENT AND PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS HAVE RECOGNIZED THAT, TOO. BECAUSE REWRITING THE ACA WITHOUT ITS ‘ESSENTIAL’ FEATURE IS BEYOND THE POWER OF AN ARTICLE III COURT, THE COURT THUS ADHERES TO CONGRESS’S TEXTUALLY EXPRESSED INTENT AND BINDING SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT TO FIND THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE IS INSEVERABLE FROM THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] REMAINING PROVISIONS.

I am not a lawyer but it seems like the judge laid it out pretty clearly why the law is now invalid. Should be an interesting ride through the courts.

3) In writing about the judge’s decision, the Self Reliance Central website reminded us of the many failures of Obama Care over the years:

• Premium and deductible costs went up and up for Obama Care health insurance policies even though Obama promised that Americans could see up to $2,500 in annual health insurance costs under Obama Care.
• Most Americans had fewer choices of insurance, doctor, and hospital options under Obama Care tenets.
• Many Americans were forced to change their choices of preferred doctors and preferred hospital networks as a result of Obama Care even though Obama promised that if you liked your current doctor/insurance policy/hospital you could keep your current doctor/insurance policy/hospital.
• Medical providers were overwhelmed in government and insurance paperwork, reducing doctors’ ability to spend time with their patients and causing many established doctors to retire or leave the industry to get out from under the bureaucracy created by Obama Care.
• Taxpayers were forced to pay far more in Obama Care subsidies, likely incurring almost $2 trillion in additional national debt in the first ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, despite Obama promising that not a single dime would be added to the national debt.

And yet, some Democrats still want to keep Obama Care in place. That such insanity still exists after so many years of so many Obama Care disasters defies logic and rational thinking. 

4) The Conservative Zone website recently quoted a Forbes article that shows again with real numbers how much of a failure Obama Care was:

• In the four years BEFORE Obama Care was passed, average HMO premiums went down 4.6% but increased 46.4% in the four years AFTER it was passed.
• In the four years BEFORE Obama Care was passed, average Point of Service (POS) premiums decreased 14.9% but increased 66.2% in the four years AFTER it was passed.

So much for the Obama promise that annual health insurance premiums could down down as much as $2,500 per family.

5) Democrats and liberals think that they can operate an efficient and effective health care system. But for years, they have allowed Medicare and Medicaid to leak out hundreds of billions of dollars in criminal fraud. A recent article in the AARP magazine is a perfect illustration of this incompetence:

• Mashiyat Rashid, the former CEO of a Michigan health care company (Tri-County Wellness Group) recently pleaded guilty to bilking Medicare.
• He conspired with doctors to defraud Medicare of a whopping $150 million.
• They did it by prescribing opioids to drug addicts who then underwent unnecessary medical treatments that were billed to Medicare.
• He used our Medicare funds to buy a Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, a mansion and court side seats to Detroit Pistons basketball games.

The good news is that this crook was eventually caught and is going to jail. The bad news is:

• Why did it take so long to find this criminal activity? I mean did not the $150 million in billings not show up anywhere in the government’s computers? 
• How many other people like Rashid are still bilking the American taxpayer and Medicare out of billions of dollars?
• How much worse will the fraud be if liberals and Democrats get their way and greatly expand Medicare without fixing the current criminal fraud problems?

The insanity never ends, politicians and government cannot operate an efficient and effective health care function, from the failed single payer plans around the world to the failed current Federal programs of Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration and Obama Care.

6) Let’s finish up this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care with some good news. Part of Obama Care was to try and get kids to eat better in school, a noble idea totally screwed up by the Federal government. Fortunately, the Trump administration is getting rid of much of the stupid school lunch rules, as illustrated in the following video:

https://christianconservativedaily.com/trump-Administration-Rolls-Back-Obama-Era-School-Lunch-Rules/

Unfortunately, next month we will be back with more unfolding disasters from the worst piece of Federal legislation ever enacted.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

August, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Short Term and Long Term Ways to Fix What Washington and Obama Care Have Broken

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 its 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, sugar, 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: 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 insurance premiums, deductibles and copays 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.

1) Our last two posts about Obama Care have discussed, as always, the unfolding disaster that is indeed Obama Care. From narrow doctor and hospital networks, to higher and higher premiums, co-pays, and deductibles to the failures of single payer healthcare systems around the world to lower life expectancies in this country, it is not a pretty sight. 

So today, we will deviate a little bit from this misery and talk about some good things that are happening regarding health care. There are solutions out there, both small and short term and large and long term, so let’s be a little more optimistic in today’s discussion.

Let’s start with a recent article from the League Of Power website which summarized some of the short term positive efforts Trump has taken to relieve the failure of Obama Care:

• Trump has loosened and enhanced the health insurance options known as short term policies or STLDs.
• These policies are designed to bridge the gap between times when someone is not able to get a regular, permanent health insurance policy.
• Under Obama Care, any use of an STLD policy could last only three months since Obama Care wanted to and forced Americans to purchase Obama Care policies which were usually more expensive and forced Americans to get coverage for health situations that would never happen to them.
• But STLDs usually have lower premiums (often one third the cost of an Obama Care policy), lower deductibles, and more and different options than the standard, one size fits all Obama Care policies.
• Given the positive aspect of STLDs, Trump extended the time that they could be used to a full year and allowed them to be renewed up to 36 months. 
• This extension allows Americans to have less expensive health insurance that better fits their needs while giving them an adequate time to shop around for a real policy, time that Obama Care never allowed.
• Trump made Health Savings Account (HSAs) much more attractive financially to help Americans pay for their health insurance and general health needs.
• As with short term policies, Obama and Obama Care tried to take this important tool out of the hands of Americans in the fight against high health care costs.
• Trump increased the number and types of people who can use an HSA, how much money can be used to fund an HSA, and the ability of kids to inherit HSA funds from their parents.
• The best part is that HSA funds can be used for any sort of medical ailment since it is basically a cash savings plan whereas the number of Obama Care policies on the market gets smaller and smaller.
• Trump has loosened the tight controls and regulations on the states so that the states have much more flexibility to tailor medical plans like Medicaid to fit the needs of their particular citizens rather than being forced to live under the Federal one size fits all of Obama Care.
• This has resulted in more efficient, cheaper and better health care plans for Americans in need of medical help and insurance.
• This is also a first step to allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, forbidden under Obama Care, which attacks one of the root causes listed above.
• Trump is also now allowing people with related small business characteristics to band together and form business insurance pools for their employees health insurance needs.
• The heavier bargaining power of these pools results in lower costs for the businesses’ employees with higher quality care than with Obama Care policies.

Thus, finally some good news when it comes to Obama Care, the dismantling of Obama Care’s tenets is the best possible news for Americans in need of affordable, quality health insurance. 

2) But Trump is not the only one trying to find ways to unravel the disaster of Obama Care and improve the cost, efficiency, and effectiveness of our country’s health care. A new book by Charles Silver and David Hyman, “Overcharged - Why Americans Pay Too Much For HealthCare” is an in-depth look at what is going on in America’s healthcare industry today but more importantly, how to fix what ails it with a bottoms-up, consumer driven, free market approach. 

I fill not go into detail on how they would fix what is broken, they needed a whole book to do so. Let me just do two things. First, let me cite two examples they cited of the craziness of what we deal with now and what Obama Care did not fix:

• Example #1 - “After a brief overnight stay in a local hospital for snake bite treatment, Eric Ferguson was hit with a bill for $89,227. How could this possibly happen?”
• Example # 2 - “A year after Dr. Paul Davis’s daughter was given a urine test, she received a bill for the test (but never received the results). The cost? Over $17,000. For a urine test? How can a lab charge so much?”

Insanity. Their book tries to find ways that would fix such insanity. 

Second, it has received very favorable reviews from some very important people:

• ”The biggest threat to America’s prosperity and even its solvency is the mismatch between the amazingly and increasingly competent science of medicine and the amazingly and increasingly incompetent pricing and allocation of it. Now come Silver and Hyman to frighten us with the facts and to point to ways the biggest player in the healthcare game - the government - can stop making matters worse.” George Will, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and author.
• “This blood-boiling book will have you ready to root for serious change in our medical system where the patient - not third parties - is in charge.” Steve Forbes, chairman and editor in chief, Forbes Media 
• “Overcharged shows the outrageous prices and anti-competitive practices in U.S. healthcare are not the consequence of free markets but of big government.” Eamonn Butler, director, Adam Smith Institute.
• “Apologists dismiss each heartrending failure of the National Health Service [single payer government healthcare system in England] as what you get from trying to do socialized medicine on the cheap. “Overcharged” reminds us that profligate socialism is no better.” Damile Hannan, member of the European Parliament.

Soundly researched, original thought on how to fix what Obama Care could not.

3) One last piece of good news for hope. The Medium.com website recently put out their way to fix the American healthcare system. Before giving you that link, consider some stats they provided:

• Average premiums for individual insurance rose a whopping 105% in the first four years of Obama Care, breaking Obama’s promise that Obama Care would “bend the cost curve.” At the time of the promise we assumed he meant it would be bent down, not up.
• The average monthly premium went from $232 to $476.
• As the price went up, the number of people carrying Obama Care policies went down due to the increasingly unaffordable costs of such policies.
• Fewer people overall had individual policies in December, 2017 than when Obama Care took effect in December, 2014.
• The number of small businesses offering health insurance plans to their employees dropped 24% between 2012 and 2016.

Dreadful, dreadful numbers that we have reviewed dozens and dozens of times. But Medium thinks it has a cure for what ails our healthcare system which can be accessed at:

https://medium.com/@consensusgroup2018/the-health-care-choices-proposal-policy-recommendations-to-congress-a4660182d830?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRReE4yTmlPV1V4WkRNeiIsInQiOiJaXC9IdWwyY1ZvVVVNUFBsMVlKTFh0bXcyOHlsbFRxVFdsMG9kRUtNUVRBQUlKM21KSHY5bEVuQW1CcDhhem9UeEhQdmpSeVZHbGJrb2pJOVo3Ujc1QTUzUGl2YmJYbFFDTEhpdTF3WG56R2pnbExXWWxtdmNtU2lKOVMwRTkxRksifQ%3D%3D

That will do it for this month’s review of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. But hopefully we left you with some hope until next time. There are ways to fix the system, that Trump is already doing and which other, smart, non-politician people have analyzed that do it without relying on inept and greedy politicians and the lobbyists and drug companies that feed on them. 

It will not be easy but the alternative of doing nothing, or going with a single payer plan where crazy, incompetent people like Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Walters and the 500 other Washington dingbat politicians control your healthcare and life, is not pretty.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

February, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Americans Being Really Screwed by Obama Care

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its 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, sugar, 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: 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 insurance premiums, deductibles and copays 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.

As we often do each month, we finish our latest discussions about the unfolding disasters of Obama Care with real life stories and tragedies of real life America families. Higher premiums, higher deductibles, more narrow networks, etc. The source of these heartbreaking stories and realities can be found at:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

RON, MONTANA: Ron Cole, Montana Peterbilt Controller, doesn’t see the benefits outlined in the PPACA. "I see it as increasing costs than more than helping from an employer's standpoint,” says Cole. With new provisions from the IRS taking effect in 2014, including a ban on pre-existing condition exclusions, Montana Peterbilt isn’t sure it will keep offering health care, if costs rise. "All that stuff is going to cost money and all that is going to drive up the insurance costs and it may get to where it’s going to price insurance companies out of the market,” says Cole.

STACIE. GEORGIA: From Kaiser Health News:

Even some people who qualify for federal assistance, such as Stacie Brown, owner of a pottery shop, are balking. The cheapest "bronze" plan for Brown, her husband and son would cost the family $300 a month but not begin paying medical bills until they exceeded the $6,300 individual deductible. The cheapest silver plan would cost $508 a month but not start paying until a $3,000 individual deductible was met. Her son's pediatrician was not in any of the networks and that was the one medical service she felt sure her family would use. 

Brown ultimately bought a $256-a-month Assurant Health plan for her son, sold outside the marketplace, which covers his pediatrician and unlimited office visits. She and her husband have decided to forgo coverage for themselves, even though they may face a tax penalty of $700.

"I can’t afford the affordable health care," she said. "I don't know anyone in this area who can afford it, and I do pretty well in life."

ROBERT, TEXAS:” Policies bought before the law was passed were “grandfathered in” and can remain in place, she said.

But that apparently doesn’t lock in the cost of premiums or deductibles, said Robert Kecseg, an investment adviser in Lewisville. Kecseg, 61, said he bought a plan before Obamacare took effect. But the insurer that provided the coverage went out of business.

When he went to buy new insurance, he found that the cost was much higher. He had paid an annual $10,000 deductible before 2012. Now he pays double.

“It’s pretty spectacular,” he said.

The Kecsegs also faced a medical emergency this year that proved expensive, he said. In May, he suffered facial paralysis and had to be rushed to a hospital during a family reunion in Las Vegas. The emergency room care cost more than $3,000, he said.

“We’re paying it off over time,” he said.

Kecseg says, for example, that his wife is being charged for birth control. “My wife says she’s had her uterus removed, so we’re not really likely to have need for that,” he said. “But we’re going to pay for it.”

JOHN, PENNSYLVANIA: I pay for my family's insurance and had a plan that fit the family well. $2,500 deductible and $533 a month. Last year, I tried really hard to get on the Obamacare site and after probably 10 hours of trying finally got a quote. The results weren't good. $1433 a MONTH for bronze coverage with a $5000 deductible. I continued with my $533 a month plan this year because I renewed it last December, but just got a letter saying my plan could not be renewed. I'm now facing coverage that will likely cost almost 3X as much with a deductible twice as big. How is this affordable coverage? The President's promise of being able to "keep your plan" is just not true for me and never has been. I continue to be happy with my pre-Obama plan but bureaucrats claim to know what's best for me and my family. I strongly disagree.

FRED, CALIFORNIA: I am self-employed and had a modest but workable policy for my wife and two kids paying $350 a month or $4200 a year. The best we found this year under Obamacare was a Cigna policy at $1200 a month with a huge deductible. I have a small business and don't qualify for any subsidies [As if I would want them], so our premium went from $4200 to $14,400 or an increase of 342%, hardly affordable. So, we're part of a medical sharing program and we're paying the FIRST $5000 of our own medical expenses.

We've been knocked in the teeth by OBAMACARE.............not to mention the loss of freedom and the government coercion.

CAROLYN, KANSAS - CBS News has confirmed millions nationwide will be losing their current insurance coverage. That's because it doesn't meet the new minimum requirements under the Affordable Care Act. There could be thousands of Kansans in that total.

The letters started going out last month, telling Kansans their insurance policies will be discontinued at the end of the year.

"I'm self-employed," said Carolyn Perry. She runs a day care out of her home. "So I need the coverage cause anything can happen at any given time."

She's among those the Affordable Care Act was meant to help."But the premium that I'm paying now is twice as much as what it was when I first started paying it," she said. Perry buys her own health insurance. So far, she's keeping it.

The top line numbers of Obama Care have all been a disaster. But it is the personal stress and burdens on real Americans which really drives home the many unfolding disasters of 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:


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

January, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Horror Stories From Real Life Americans

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 its 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, sugar, 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: 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 insurance premiums, deductibles and copays 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.

We will finish up this month’s review of the unfolding disasters from Obama Care with real life horror stories that the legislation has inflicted on millions of Americans across the country. It is one thing to review data and statistics that summarize the failures of the law but to hear real Americans tell their real stories of how Obama Care has negatively affected their lives, it makes it so human. As always, the source of these horrors is:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

SHIRLEY, UTAH - I think it is horrible what has happened to Medicare since Obama took office. Coverage has gone down, out of pocket expenses have gone up, they've stolen money out of our Social Security and Medicare fund that I paid into for 46 years, to subsidize the Affordable Care Act, (which isn't affordable for most people ). Doctors and medical facilities don't want to take care of people on Medicare anymore because they've cut what they will pay them now.

MARGIE, NORTH DAKOTA - As if they have not stolen enough of our SS with obamacare my insurance has really hit me hard. I was paying $70.00 for my Diabetic Insulin every 90 days, now it costs me $800.00 every 90 days for the same product.

MICHAEL, NEW YORK - Michael Kennedy, who runs two family-owned dog-grooming salons near Albany, said changes to his cut-rate insurance coverage mandated by ObamaCare had more than doubled the cost, from $132.99 to $325.92 a month per person.

And when he checked the cost of buying an ObamaCare policy instead, it was “basically the same price, or even more,” he said.

Kennedy, 46, said that he and his wife clear only about $60,000 a year from their Pink Dog Parlor and Resort business, and that paying the new, higher premiums will be “a huge challenge.”

“It’s like another 100 dogs we need to groom,” he said.

MICHAEL, VIRGINIA - About 5 years ago, I changed my health plan to an HSA through Anthem, to reduce my costs. We had just had our daughter, and the reduced plan seemed perfect in my favor. Gradually, that planned increased to 535/month by August 2010 - No thanks.

I switched to Golden Rule in 2011, and we enjoyed a 249/month plan, keeping my HSA. We have a 5k deductible. It increased yearly to 281, 317, and then 392 after adding my newborn son. Then the "Letter" came in August, something like "...due to rising healthcare costs...518/month."

The increases on my plan previously were in the 13% range, and suddenly it goes up 32% and we're in perfect health.

I scream when I hear the President say, that costs have not gone up as much as previous years...and I wonder who he's talking about. Any other plans I have investigated, just 1 in my current price range, are 10-20% higher for the same coverage, deductible, etc.

JUDY, ARIZONA - My primary care physician and 2 specialists I saw quit practicing because of Obamacare. The insurance company we had for many years increased their premiums by 60% in the last 2 years, costing $1200+ per mo. We had to change insurance companies to one with lower costs but fewer benefits...because of Obamacare.

DIANE, ILLINOIS - We got a letter from our insurance company stating that our premium for both my husband and me was going to be $1120 a month with a $12,700 deductible. This through a private company. Our policy was being cancelled. I went on Medicare in January. Prior our premium on cancelled policy was $679 for both of us. After policy was cancelled 12/31/2013 then reinstated for just my husband his premium for just him was $475.13. The reinstated policy term was to be from January til December. The old policy ran from May of last year and was to go to May of this year. So my husband's premium got increased in January and then we got a letter from insurance company stating his premium was going up again this May to $538.56. So they used the January date and the original May date to levy premiums twice. So what's going to happen next year. Are we going to get two premium increases in one year again? We are all at the mercy of this disgusting messed up law and Obama keeps changing it at will to push his political agenda. 

DEAN, GEORGIA - From WTOC-GA:

Reporter: New details on the Chatham county commission's move to cut hours for over 100 part-time seasonal employees. The Affordable Care Act would require the county to pay for insurance for those seasonal employees if they work more than 30 hours a week. The county says they can't afford it

The change mostly affects summer lifeguards at the county's aquatic center. . . 

Dean: We have to guard the taxpayer's money, and there's no way to fund full-time positions when only part-time work is actually needed.

MICHAEL, MICHIGAN - Insurance broker Michael Harp said small businesses, part of what's known in the industry as the "small group market," are used to seeing health insurance premiums climb about 10 percent a year, but it's never before been this dramatic. For Extreme Dodge to have kept deductibles and out-of-pocket costs at last year's levels, he said, would have cost the dealership almost 50 percent more than last year.

Harp says what is happening at this dealership is representative of the other small businesses he deals with. Businesses with 50 or fewer employees currently provide health insurance to about 17 million U.S. workers, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

He said the biggest surprise to him in how the law impacts small business clients is "how many people are losers versus winners. … There are some people who do come out ahead, but I would say the overwhelming majority, they're paying much higher rates and they have lower benefits."

Higher costs, lost of work hours, lost access to preferred doctors, the disasters just keep on coming.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - The Disaster Of Single Payer Systems

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 its 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, sugar, 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: 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 insurance premiums, deductibles and copays 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.

1) For years we have been covering the many, many failures of Obama Care:

• Insurance premiums have gone up dramatically.
• Insurance deductibles have gone up dramatically.
• Competition has decreased.
• Policy selection has shrunk.
• Enrollment targets have not come close to being met.
• Millions of Americans lost access to their preferred doctors.
• Millions of Americans lost access to their preferred insurance plans.
• Millions of American lost access to their preferred hospitals.
• Medicaid budgets in some states have skyrocketed as a result of Obama Care.
• Over a trillion dollars more than expected will be added to the national debt.

But these disasters are not surprising since whenever Washington politicians get involved in an issue or topic they usually make the problem or issue worse and they usually make it worse in grand style. This is exactly what happened with Obama Care and the government intervention in our lives that it caused. 

But some people think that Obama Care failed because Washington and the politicians they did not have enough government intervention in our lives and the healthcare marketplace. They yearn for the so-called single payer insurance system where government bureaucrats control ALL aspects of our personal health care.

But we have previously shown how bad and inefficient these so called single payer plans are around the world. And today we have another example of failure:

• In the face of a flu epidemic in England, that country’s single payer insurance system is being overwhelmed.
• People are waiting up to twelve hours just to see a doctor for a flu examination.
• The British Health Service, their single payer system, is so desperate that they have cancelled over 50,000 non-urgent surgeries so that the limited and overworked doctors and other medical professionals can have their attention diverted to treating flu victims.
• Things are so bad that even the Prime Minister, Theresa May, had to come out with a public apology of how bad the healthcare situation is in England today: “I know it’s difficult, I know it’s frustrating, I know it’s disappointing for people and I apologize.”

But this latest fiasco of a single payer health care system should not surprise since back in 2015, the Independent newspaper in England wrote: “The UK has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world according to a damning new report which said the nation has an “outstandingly poor” record of preventing ill health.

Hospitals are now so short-staffed and under equipped that people are also dying needlessly because of a chronic lack of investment. The verdict, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will make embarrassing reading for (then-Prime Minister) David Cameron who denied the cash-strapped NHS is heading for its worst winter crisis.

Britain was placed on a par with Chile and Poland as countries still lagging behind the best performers in survival following diagnosis for different types of cancer. The UK came 21st out of 23 countries on cervical cancer survival, 20th out of 23 countries on breast and bowel cancer survival and 19th out of 31 countries on stroke.”

“Outstandingly poor, one of the worst healthcare systems, chronic lack of investment, lagging behind the best performers in survival,” etc. Still think Obama Care did not go far enough? Still think that far away faceless politicians and government bureaucrats know what is best for your healthcare? No way either Obama Care or a single payer system is efficient or effective, reality is the proof.

2) But England’s single payer system is not the only failure in the world. We have previously reported on the failure of Canada’s single payer system to deliver efficient, timely and effective health care. For example, we have already reported on how tens of thousands of Canadians come to the United States every year because it is far easier to get timely health care in the States than it is back home under Canada’s single payer system. 

The February issue of Reason magazine provided a real life example of the single payer failure history in Canada:

• Joy Hataley, a doctor up in Ontario, Canada, recently had to refer a patient to a neurologist at Kingston General Hospital.
• Obviously a referral to a neurologist likely represents a potentially grave and dangerous situation.
• When the patient went to make the appointment on the doctor’s referral he was told it would be four and half YEARS before he could even get an appointment, never mind whatever treatment might be necessary.
• The doctor was told that if this inane four and a half year waiting period was not acceptable they would try to get their patient in to see a neurologist in another city altogether.
• But if the wait time was four and half years Kingston General Hospital, what are the odds that the wait time in a different city would be much shorter?

Single payer systems always result in the rationing and the delaying of receiving medical attention. If someone needs to see a neurologist, it is doubtful that a four and a half year wait is an acceptable time frame to wait from a life and death perspective. The more government intervenes in the healthcare industry, be it Obama Care or a single payer system, the worst the health care that will be provided becomes.

3) One last single payer bashing today. I have a friend whose brother moved to England decades ago, ended up marrying a British subject and living under England’s single payer system. In the fall of 2016, he became ill and was told he had cancer that was working its way through his body.

One year later, in October of 2017 he was finally scheduled for and received surgery in which the doctors removed more than one bodily organ and the parts of another organ. Fortunately, he has so far survived. But as always with a single payer system, it rations and delays treatment way out into the future. How much easier, how much less suffering, how much less expensive, and how much higher would his survival rate had been if he had not had to wait over a year to get treatment for cancer?

It is no secret that survival rates from cancer and other treatments in England is much lower than elsewhere in the world. This example shows why. More failures from Obama Care, and single payer insurance schemes, to follow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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