September, 2017, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Idiocy Of A Single Payer System, Drug Costs Still Going Up, and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements 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)Even though  greatly enhanced government and political class interference in the healthcare market via Obama Care turned out to be an enormous failure, some liberals and Democrats are doubling down and saying the reason Obama Care failed was because there was not enough government and political class interference in the healthcare market.

These harping for more interference are calling for a so-called “single payer” health insurance process where the government controls every single aspect of your health care. But Brian Riedl, writing for the National Review website on August 15, 2017, showed how stupid this idea is:

• Every time someone proposes a single payer system in this country the reality of the cost of such a system shows how stupid the idea is.
• Bernie Sanders’ single payer proposal would cost $32 TRILLION in the first ten years.
• This would be about $3.2 TRILLION a year, equal about 80% of the entire Federal government budget today.
• This $32 TRILLION would require an annual average tax increase of $24,000 for every American household.
• The state of Vermont looked at a single payer system for their state in 2014 and gave up when the estimated costs would require a state tax increase of 160%, about $27,500 per Vermont household per year.
• New York also took a run at a single payer system and gave up when the costs got too high.
• In California, the estimated cost of their entry into a single payer system was a whopping $440 billion a year, a sum greater than the entire state government budget.
• The $440 billion came out to a per household annual cost of $26,500.
• In Canada, a country that has had a single payer system for a long time, three quarters of Canadians also see fit to purchase supplemental health insurance to cover prescription drugs, ambulance costs, dentistry, and other services not fully covered by the single payer system, which kind of defeats the whole concept of a single payer system which is supposed to cover “all” medical costs.
• And these cost estimates to not include the inevitable increase of tests and procedures being done if everything is “free” in a single payer system.
• And even if a liberal thinks these astronomical costs are manageable, keep in mind that no government program has ever come in under budget so the $32 TRILLION estimate is probably too low by orders of magnitude.

Unbelievable costs for a process that has never worked anywhere else in the world. And consider the pathetic history of Washington in managing health care processes besides the Obama Care failure:

• Medicare loses about $60 billion a year to wasteful spending, criminal fraud, and inefficiencies.
• Medicare is hurtling towards bankruptcy with a projected $33 TRILLION shortfall over the next 75 years.
• We have reviewed the reality that Medicaid also wastes tens of billions of dollars every year and is so ineffective as a health care process that numerous studies have shown that Medicaid customers are not any healthier than people with no health insurance.
• The Veterans Administration was so inept as a government run health care process that people died while waiting to get an appointment with a doctor within the VA system.

So let’s review: Obama Care failed, Medicare and Medicaid are rushing towards fiscal insolvency, the Veterans Administration killed people with its inefficiency, and no country in the world has operated a single payer system that delivered quality and comprehensive health care at a reasonable cost. And yet, some American politicians still want to go forward with such a system  in this country. To use a medical analogy: there is still no cure for stupid when it comes to a single payer system.

2) According to a Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the June 9, 2017 issue of The Week magazine, the median out of pocket cost of a prescription drug through Medicare Part D was $117 in 2015. This was higher by nearly half of the level it was in 2011, $79. But wasn’t Obama Care supposed to reduce healthcare costs when it was passed back in 2010? Obviously, it did not do the job on prescription drugs if the cost went up almost 50% in just four years.

In addition, there are now 220 Part D drugs with annual out-of-pocket costs greater than $1,000 while in 2011 there were only 118 such drugs. Out of control cost rises with no sign that Obama Care had any impact in restricting such increases.

3) We have always said that Obama Care failed because it tried to resolve the problem of ever rising healthcare costs in this country by applying a very poor insurance solution when what is really needed is a well constructed public health solution. We have listed the root causes of our high health care costs above, one of which is the reality that America is generally overweight, a major cause of high healthcare costs, from hip replacement to diabetes.

This reality was recently highlighted in a Newsmax article by Cathy Burke on September 1, 2017:

• The 14th annual State of Obesity report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation determined that “obesity is a national security issue.”
• This reality has resulted in that almost 25% of all military recruits are rejected because they are too overweight.
• Furthermore, a majority of today’s kids in this country are not fit to serve in the military because they are overweight, have criminal records, are drug users, or have educational deficits.
• And obesity is a major problem  even for those recruits that get into the military since “obese service members and their families are costly, the report found, costing the military about $1 billion every year in healthcare costs and lost productivity.”
• Overall, in the entire U.S. population adult obesity rates are greater than 25% in 46 states.

As we have said many times before, obesity is a root cause of high healthcare costs in this country. It causes diabetes, it causes hip and knee replacements, it causes heart disease and other diseases, all of which result in higher and higher healthcare costs.

The root cause is obesity, a root cause that cannot be eliminated via insurance solutions, the base cause remains unresolved regardless of who pays for the damage caused by obesity. Obama Care never understood this basic issue.

Single payer idiocy, higher and higher drug costs, and obesity as a root cause, more 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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

March, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disasters That Is Obama Care: Real Life American Family Hardships As A Result Of 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, 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 co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

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

Today we will focus solely on the many hardships that Obama Care has caused average everyday Americans. The source of their grief is the website: www.oourhealthcarestoriescom

CHRIS, CALIFORNIA: From CBS Sacramento: A Sonora mechanic is in so much pain that he can barely walk, but he can’t seem to find a doctor to fix his ailing back after he and his wife switched their insurance coverage through Covered California.

Chris Dunn reached out to CBS13 hoping we could get answers.

He needs his surgery yesterday. But instead of scheduling his date, he and his wife are navigating a confusing maze of doctors and insurance plans.

We get this coverage and go to the best doctor to fix Chris, and they tell us we’re out of network said his wife Tammy.

In January, they transitioned from an Anthem Blue Cross Plan over to Blue Cross Covered California. She says they had to switch to avoid the premium skyrocketing, but didn’t realize their provider network would be smaller.

MARTIN, CONNECTICUT: Connecticut psychologist Martin Klein has plenty of experience dealing with insurance companies. After all, he's been practicing in the state for 11 years and runs two offices, one in Branford and one in Fairfield. But his experience with insurers over the past couple months has surprised even him.

Since 2008, Klein has held an insurance policy from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Connecticut, the state's largest insurer. The policy offers what he considers comprehensive coverage at a reasonable price. It does not however, meet the minimum coverage criteria set by the Affordable Care Act.

On September 26, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield sent Klein a letter notifying him that his plan would no longer be offered for renewal when it expires in January.

Losing his insurance plan is a big financial blow for Klein. He makes just enough to not qualify for a subsidy on the health exchange, but lives in a New York City suburb where the cost of living is high. Based on his research on and off the exchange, Klein says he would have to pay 50% more to get a plan that he deems comparable to the one he is losing.

Klein says he cannot afford a comparable plan, so he has decided to purchase an HMO with a $12,700 deductible for himself and his family.

What concerns him most about the plan is that it limits him to a narrow network of providers, all of which are in Connecticut. This prevents him from keeping some of his doctors in New York City.

Basically, said Klein, he's going to accept his new policy and, "hope nothing major happens."

JAMIE, KANSAS: From DallasNews: Even with pricier plans, some consumers have access problems.

James Potts’ $647-per-month silver plan was issued by the same company that had insured him with a different plan that was canceled under the Affordable Care Act. The 64-year-old property insurance agent assumed his doctors would remain the same under the insurer’s new plan, but didn’t double check.

When Potts got a nasty cold, he called three facilities near his home in Wichita Falls and was shocked to find none took the insurance, including his primary care doctor.

“It was a waste of money for me,” he said. “I couldn’t find doctors that would talk to me.”

JULIE, NEW MEXICO: Last June, Birch received a letter from Lovelace Insurance warning her that her coverage would be terminated. However, it told her to wait for more information before she did anything. The months rolled past and no phone call came. She paid her premium in December, assuming everything was sorted out. However, on January 4, 2014, she was told her insurance was cancelled and she would have to log onto the New Mexico healthcare exchange. So she did.

After spending two hours filling personal information into the ever-growing ACA database, the system stopped her from enrolling her children. It needed to determine if her sons were eligible for Medicaid. The error message promised that a state representative would contact her, but no one has. When she tried to call, the wait was 45 minutes.

Birch wasn’t eligible for the marketplace’s Platinum plan, but the next best thing – the Gold plan – offered her comparable care for $519.23 a month with a $3,000 deductible—an increase of over $175 a month with no coverage for her children caught in Medicaid limbo.

Her frustration escalated not because the cost increased and her children were uninsured, but because none of the plans let her keep her primary care or orthopedic doctors.

"This is just downright unacceptable," Birch said. "You develop relationships [with doctors] for a reason."

JOHN, MICHIGAN: Retired, after 42 years, on a fixed income and my health insurance is provided in part by my previous employer.

Also raising my granddaughter who graduated college last week.

In January, 2014, my health insurance premium INCREASED 20%, a $1650 annual increase. Who's getting all this additional money? That's $1650 I'm NOT spending on my family's other needs. Thank you Democrats!!

As stated in the letter from my previous employer, the reason for the increased premium was solely attributable to Obama Care. Additionally, my plan's deductibles and co-pays also increased. We are now reluctant to visit the doctor at all due to the outrageous costs! That's comforting.

At a time in our lives that I can afford it the least, my government, in their infinite liberal wisdom, forces me to pay more so the minority; the 15% of people that don't have and choose not to have medical insurance are somehow covered.

The lies spewing from this crazy administration about the benefits of Obama Care are outrageous and cannot stand!

PATRICIA, MINNESOTA: In order to keep my monthly payment the same, I had to raise my annual deductible from $3,000.00 to $5,000.00. I also lost the three times each year that I could go to the doctor for a $30.00 co-pay. I also lost the flat fee I paid on prescriptions of $10.00 for generic and $25.00 for non-generic. These items I now pay from dollar one. This conceivably could cost me a lot of money each year.

DEBORAH, CALIFORNIA: From the LA Times: "All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it," said Deborah Cavallaro, a real estate agent in Westchester. "I'm infuriated because I was lied to."

Supporters of the healthcare law say Obama was referring to people who are insured through their employers or through government programs such as Medicare. Still, they acknowledge the confusion and anger from individual policyholders who are being forced to change.

Cavallaro received her cancellation notice from Anthem Blue Cross this month. The company said a comparable Bronze plan would cost her 65% more, or $484 a month. She doubts she'll qualify for much in premium subsidies, if any. Regardless, she resents losing the ability to pick and choose the benefits she wants to pay for.

"I just won't have health insurance because I can't pay this increase," she said.

LIONEL, LOUISIANA: Baton Rouge public relations consultant Lionel Rainey said Wednesday the price of his health insurance will double even though he rarely makes a doctor’s appointment.

His policy is among the 92,793 individual insurance plans that Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon reported would be discontinued because the coverage does not meet the coverage standards set by the federal Affordable Care Act.

Rainey’s plan didn’t meet the minimum standards but he was happy with it.

“I don’t go to the doctor much. This was the plan that fit me and fit my lifestyle,” the 35-year-old said.

Rainey declined to name his insurer, but he said the new policy will cost him nearly $600 a month. He said he also will get coverage he does not need, such as a maternity plan.

Rainey put plans to expand his business on hold when he got the letter from his insurance company.

He wanted to hire an additional person but is unsure whether he can afford it.

As a newlywed, he also must buy insurance coverage for his wife, a full-time graduate student. He does not qualify for subsidies for the exchange.

NANCY, NEW YORK: Anchor: Many people in the Rochester area lost their healthcare insurance January 1st--they're among the millions across the country who saw their plans cancelled under the Affordable Care Act. Nancy Miller is one of them. A self-employed hair-dresser, she'd began doing research in September to make sure she'd be covered this year, but she then learned the health plan that she had for years was no longer availabl the other options were too expensive. Miller has some health issues that require medication and tests: treatments she's delayed because of a lack of insurance.

Nancy Miller: I'm not going to lose my house because I don't have health insurance and I need medical assistance. So I'm down in the dirt, I can't do anything, I can't go to the doctor, I can't get my tests run, I can't go for an MRI. 

DEBRA, IDAHO: I found out I don't make enough to qualify for subsidy, nor can I afford to buy insurance that costs over half of what I make each month. I fell between the cracks. Plus I also will end up paying a penalty for no insurance. This is horrible!

LARRY, CALIFORNIA: Among those suffering sticker shock is Livermore real estate broker Larry Waelde.

Like many others, he believed Obama when the president said people could keep their existing plans if they liked them. But Waelde said his existing $773 monthly premium for his family of four will more than double, based on rates he has reviewed on the state's online insurance exchange.

"The damage has been done," said Waelde, an Anthem Blue Cross customer who doesn't think he's among the 104,000 whose policy cancellations will be delayed.

Waelde said that Obama's public apology over the cancellations last week helped, and he is holding out hope for "some sort of remediation."

Another month and another set of Americans whose lives were decimated and disrupted by Obama Care, the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters next 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:


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

August, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Cost Increases, More Missed Enrollment Targets,and More Heartbreaking Stories

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, 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 co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

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

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) A July 7, 2016 article by Micheal F. Cannon of the Cato organization summarized some of the failures of Obama Care, based on a study by Jeff Goldsmith and Bruce Henderson of Navigant Healthcare:

• Obama Care’s exchanges was supposed to double or triple the size of the individual health insurance market which it failed to do.
• The Obama Care so-called 40% "Cadillac tax” was supposed to encourage large companies to change their current group healthcare insurance plans which it has failed to do so far even if it was not scheduled to take effect until 2018.
• At the end of 2015, only 8.8 million people had signed up for Obama Care policies and as few as half of these policyholders may have been previously uninsured, i.e. half of the current policy holders just churned from another policy they already had, contrary to the aims of Obama Care which was go get currently uninsured people covered with insurance.
• While 12.7 million people signed up for Obama Care policies in the latest 2016 sign up period, that number is dropping fast as many of them have not paid their premiums after signing up. And any way, the Obama administration objective was to have 21 million people signed up for Obama Care policies this year, a number that will be missed badly even if all of the 12.7 eventually pay for their policies, a highly unlikely situation.
• The Obama Care co-ops and large insurance companies alike have lost untold billions of dollars since the costs of serving Obama Care customers has been far higher than expected or forecasted.
• Obama Care’s Accountable Care Organization/Medicare Shared Savings Program, something I know nothing about, apparently was another disaster and failure with lower than expected enrollment and lower than expected financial benefits.
• The Cadillac tax which supposed to encourage large companies to change their current insurance plans for the better and help finance the overall Obama Care effort has been postponed from 2018 until 2020 and will likely never take effect given the political opposition from just about everyone, robbing Obama Care of one of its pillars of financial credibility.

Just another analytical view of the unfolding disasters that continually crop up from the Obama Care morass.

2) According to a July 15 2016 report on the Americans For Prosperity website, the Obama administration has been illegally paying off some of the losses that Obama Care insurers incurred as a result of the Obama Care legislation.This bailout process was being done despite the fact that Congress never approved the bailouts which have totaled in the billions of dollars. That was the basis of the ruling by a Federal judge who ruled that “the Obama administration unlawfully used this taxpayer money, saying the only way it can be spent is if Congress authorizes it.”

Given that major healthcare insurers are already pulling out of Obama Care policies or severely cutting back because of financial losses, imagine how bad those losses would have been and how many more companies would have pulled out if they had not been getting illegal bailout money? Thus, from an insurer perspective, the true results are worse than they appear to be.

3) Staying with the Americans For Prosperity website, they recently ran an article that highlighted three other studies that show, using real world numbers and results, that Obama Care has been an absolute disaster:

- A Brookings Institute study from 2014 using real data found that “enrollment-weighted premiums in the individual health insurance market increased by 24.4 percent beyond what they would have had they simply followed…trends.” In other words, Obama Care caused an incremental 24.4% INCREASE in premiums despite Obama's constant promise that premiums could go DOWN by as much as $2,500 a year.

- An S&P Global Institute study found that individual medical costs increased significantly between 2013 and 2015, up by an estimated 69%. Thus, it does not appear, according to this analysis, that Obama’s promise to “bend the cost curve” was successful, not when medical costs are up a whopping 69%.

- And finally, the article found that “2014 insurer data shows that premiums for individual market Qualified Health Plans (QHPs), ACA-compliant plans certified to be sold on exchanges, were much higher than premiums for individual market non-QHPs, mostly plans in existence before 2014 that did not comply with the ACA. Relative to non-QHPs, insurers collected more than $1,000 per enrollee in higher premiums and more than $2,300 in higher premium revenue per enrollee in 2014 after accounting for large premium subsidy programs for their QHPs.” 

In other words, people who had plans they were happy with, prior to Obama Care taking effect, because those plans fit their needs and their budgets were forced to pay a lot more for Obama Care policies once the legislation made their current policies illegal to own and forced the insurance companies to remove them from the market. Put another way, the insurance companies got a lot more money from American taxpayers because the government via Obama Care forced American to purchase more expensive insurance policies.

Three more studies that show, using real world data, that Obama Care continues to be an unfolding disaster.

4) As we often do with this series, let’s finish today’s and this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care but looking at real life Americans struggling with real life health issues as a result of Obama Care. The source of theses struggles is the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com:

DAVID, NEVADA: I was really looking forward to my $2,500 savings I was promised. My total yearly cost instead went up by $2,620 with a higher deductible. President Obama could not have been this far off in his prediction which means he knew he was lying and said it anyway

DOREEN, MICHIGAN: We've always been self-sufficient and paid our own way for health care, entering into payment plans when necessary. Most of our providers were happy to slightly discount their usual rates for services, since we are self-insured, thus negating their dealing with insurance companies. In November 2013, our primary care provider sent a notice effective 1/1/14 that his office visit rate for Self-Pay Patients would increase to $90-$150 from its previous $55. Though not explicitly stated, we surmised that this was a result of Obamacare, as we've been seeing this doctor for many years with no significant increase in price/visit and the notice makes very clear that we should notify them if our health care insurance situation changes.

We remain self-sufficient and refuse to have others forced to subsidize our needs.

JANET, COLORADO: From Denver 7 News: We talked to Janet Chapple who is infuriated by the president's political catch phrase, "Keep it, if you like it."

Chapple, who works for a small property management company, said the president's statement was a blatant lie.

"The small business plan that my employer offers is being canceled by Kaiser (Permanente)," she said. "It's not an issue of cost. It's just that they are no longer going to be offering small business coverage."

"This is not what i consider a bare bones plan, by any means," she said. "That's exactly where my frustration comes in -- we have a very good plan here."

She said she spent time researching it and says her canceled plan exceeds the minimum coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

My Family’s Experience:  To these stories let me add one of our own from a family member of mine. My wife recently had a small knee surgery performed on a torn meniscus of hers. As we walked out of the surgery center, the nurse handed us a pair of crutches and told them they were ours, we had purchased them as part of the surgery’s cost. My wife used the crutches for two days at most, at which part we decided to sell them on Craigslist since we foresaw no use for them. I did a little research and found that this model usually sold for about $109 when they are new. I listed them for $45, knowing from experience that if you want something to sell on Craigslist it has to be priced very economically.

I got no takers for the crutches which gives you an idea that at $45 they were probably overpriced. However, the bad news recently arrived in the mail that the crutches we were given were being billed at a whopping $800, crutches that we used for two days and which have a retail value of just over $100. Now, the insurance company paid for some of the cost, there was an insurance company discount for some of the cost, but the surgery center was trying to bill us for $338, more than three times the retail value of the crutches. 

Which gets us back to the root causes of our high healthcare costs that are listed above. Specifically, Obama Care failed to “follow the money” as it relates to healthcare costs. And our own experience is just one example. Where do those hundreds of dollars go to that are a result of severe overbilling for a simple pair of crutches? I am sure this type of gross profit taking by the industry goes on everyday in every aspect of the healthcare industry. This explains a huge chunk of every rising healthcare costs, when $100 crutches get sold for hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Somebody is getting rich with this type of scam and Obama Care failed to root out these kind of excesses.

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

Fighting Islamic Terrorism In the Wake Of Orlando - Attacking Root Causes Rather Than Each Other

As I am writing this, the country is still trying to recover from the heinous radical Islamic terrorist attack that took the lives of 49 Americans and wounded over 50 at an Orlando nightclub. It was a terrible and tragic event that should never happen anywhere, either in the United States or anywhere in the world. Innocent people out for a good time with friends and family, ending so tragically.

By one documented count, this was the 86th (22 in just the past year and a half) radical Islamic terror attack within this country since 2001. Many of these attacks involved guns but many did not. Nineteen Islamic terrorists did not storm the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 with AR-15 rifles, they used airplanes as terror weapons. Others have used bombs (e.g. Boston Marathon bombings), others have used knives. The root cause of all of these terror attacks, though, did have one thing in common: radical Islamic tenets and followers.

And thus, to prevent future attacks like Orlando, it is the root cause, radical Islam, that needs to be attacked. It is not lax gun control laws. We have tough gun control laws now and that has not prevented the 86 terror attacks. It is not Christianity, no radical Christian or Christian concept was involved in the 86 terror attacks. It is not domestic oppression of the gay lifestyle in this country, not when homosexuals are being executed, stoned, thrown off the roofs of high buildings in countries where radical Islam is rooted.

Failure to attack the root cause of terrorist attacks in this country will not terminate radical Islamic attacks in this country. Failure to protect ourselves from this root cause will cause more Americans to needlessly die. Denying Americans the ability to defend themselves via the Second Amendment will cause more Americans to needlessly die. 

But as is typical with the Obama administration and liberal politicians, they see the terrorist attack death of over four dozen Americans as not a call to action to attack root causes but a political opportunity to advance their political agendas. In this case, it is the continued pressure and fallacy to make it harder and harder, eventually illegal, for Americans to be gun owners. 

With 86 domestic radical Islamic terrorist attacks since 2001 it is pretty obvious that the Federal government cannot totally stop or protect us from attacks. Banning a single non-automatic rifle, the AR-15, for sale or prohibiting anyone on the No-Fly list from buying a gun or increasing background checks for gun purchasers is just plan out of touch with reality:

• Banning certain drugs did not eliminate access and usage/abuse/addiction of those illegal drugs so thinking that a criminal or terrorist would not get their hands on a gun or a rifle because it is illegal is ridiculous. Under Obama, our borders are wide open and you can be sure that if a demand for illegal weapons exist, the drug cartels or other criminal elements will find a way to fill that need via our leaky southern border.
• Of the 86 terror attacks, no one appears to have purchased a gun AND been on the No-Fly list. Implementing this concept is a solution to a problem that does not exist.
• The Orlando terrorist shooter came under investigation TWICE by the FBI, he was given a government security clearance to work for a government security contractor that involved carrying a gun as part of the job, and he was twice identified to the FBI by a gun shop dealer shortly before the terror attack because he was looking for body armor and bulk ammunition. If the FBI, who was focused on this single individual, could not flag or stop him from attacking innocent Americans, I cannot imagine any enhancements to any background checking process that could match or exceed this kind of FBI scrutiny, which ultimately failed.

Despite these simple logic points, Obama continues to obsess on window dressing gun control measures that leaves the Islamic terrorism root cause intact. If Obama was a real leader looking for real solutions, maybe he would consider taking the following steps and initiatives that might actually work to protect us compared to what he is worried about:

1) The terrorist attack in Orlando involved a single radical Islamic gunmen attacking and shooting over 100 adults before he was stopped even though there was a uniformed police officer on site. Imagine what the carnage would be if that single gunman had attacked a school with hundreds of kids and only a couple of dozen adults. The outcome would be unthinkable.

That is why we repeat our suggestion from our January 18, 2013 blog post that the Federal government immediately establish a budget item of about $7.3 billion to station at least one armed police officer in EVERY American school by September. We saw a preview of how bad this situation could become when a single mentally deranged young adult attacked a school in Newtown, Connecticut. Imagine what a focused, trained radical Islamic terrorist(s) could do by attacking a school.

We had a warning three years ago but Obama and the rest of Washington did nothing to secure our schools. Out calculation back in January, 2013 came up with the following budget:

- Number of schools in the country = 132,183

- Average annual salary of a U.S. police officer =$55,000

- Annual budget required to protect every school = $7.3 billion

Rather than spending billions of dollars to resettle potentially harmful Middle East refugees into this country, why not take those billions of dollars to provide armed security to our schools before it is too late? I know what my priorities would be but it is pretty clear it is not the priority of Obama and the rest of Washington since their kids are likely already protected by armed guards, our kids be damned. 

When a terrorist takes out a school of American kids while we are spending taxpayer money on refugees, that carnage and blood will be squarely on Washington and Obama, despite having been warned of such a nightmare several times beforehand.

2) Over the past seven plus years the Obama administration has been busy launching hundreds of drone attacks in multiple countries throughout the Middle East. This has been a vain attempt to take out terrorists’ leaders since even if successful, other terrorists simply step forward to take the dead leaders’ place. The fact that terror attacks and threats have intensified and become more numerous across the world is a potential indication of how much this military strategy has failed. 

But even worse, while these drone attacks may have killed a few terror leaders, it has also killed hundreds of civilians, including kids, who had nothing to do with terrorism. This reality is most likely fueling a lot of the underlying hate and recruiting ability of radical Islamic terror organizations, the United States seemingly indiscriminate bombing of civilians throughout the Middle East. Maybe Obama needs to reconsider the pros and cons of drone attacks especially in light of bombing and killing kids in many countries. We would not stand for it if our kids were being bombed, bombing other nations’ kids probably has the same effect in those countries.

3) The following seven proposed solutions come from a Heritage Foundation article by Bridget Mudd on June 17 2016. Ms. Mudd starts off with the following strategy steps to combat radical Islamic terrorism:

A. Combat Terrorism Abroad and Deny ISIS Territorial Gains - as long as ISIS has a territorial presence somewhere in the world, they are a tangible, physical entity. This gives them a legitimacy that is highly symbolic. After a number of years under the current Obama strategy, ISIS still maintains a major territorial presence. Ms. Mudd suggests a change to this failed strategy: “ISIS requires a global approach in which the U.S. leads a multipronged, multination effort that seeks to deny ISIS the ability to hold territory. This will disrupt its recruitment of foreign fighters, and will counter its destructive ideology.”

This obviously involves a military solution that Obama has not had the nerve to even propose, never mind implement. If he was a real leader, he would take a cue from the masterful international coalition building that the first President Bush assembled to free Kuwait back in the early 1990s. Instead, he prefers to host Super Bowl winning teams in the White House, play almost 300 rounds of golf, take multiple annual vacations, and pass bathroom guidelines. 

B. Shut Down the Foreign Fighter Pipeline - Part of the military coalition action item we just discussed, if you deny ISIS a physical territory, it becomes a lot tougher for ISIS to recruit fighters and future terrorists since they have no base of operations. This will also require better and more interconnected intelligence work across countries to identify recruits that are both going and coming from ISIS territory.

C. Ensure That the FBI Regularly Shares Information - This step would encourage the FBI to be more sharing of information with state and local police and law enforcement entities.This obviously was not the case in the Orlando shooting where the FBI had a lot of interest in the terrorist shooter but it is unclear what, if any information was shared with local Orlando law enforcement.

D. Expand Active Shooter Threat Training Across the Country - Police training for such terrorism shootings needs to be increased to minimize the damage once an attack is underway. Additionally, the whole hostage situation strategy needs to be re-examined in the light of our now terrorism infested world. Historically, police usually wanted to start a dialog with a hostage taker and go slow since the hostage taker usually wanted something independent of the hostages.

In a terror attack situation, the hostages are what the terrorist wants, that is his end game. Thus, going slow and trying to talk to the terrorist is not going to be fruitful since the terror is the objective, not money, not free transportation out of the country, etc. The Orlando terrorist had a lot of time to go through the crowd and shoot over a hundred people while police gathered outside. This historical strategy of waiting needs to be re-examined and possibly replaced with a quick strike strategy in our new world of terror.

Please note: this is not an attack or criticism of the law enforcement actions in Orlando. I am sure they followed their current protocols and processes. It is only a suggestion thta maybe those protocols need to be reexamined in light of the world we now live in.

E. Community Outreach Remains a Vital Tool - As Ms. Mudd says: “The U.S. should facilitate strong community outreach and policing. Such capabilities are key to building trust in local communities, especially in high risk areas. If the U.S. is to thwart Islamist terrorist attacks successfully, it must do so by putting effective community outreach operations at the tip of the spear.”

F. Maintain Essential Counterterrorism Tools - Legitimate government surveillance programs are also a vital component of U.S. national security and should be allowed to continue. This is a delicate balance of security and freedom and privacy, it does not include the Obama doctrine of collecting massive amounts of electronics communications on every American. It should be a focused, laser like attention to high potential suspects strategy that maintains the Fourth Amendment.

G. Counter Islamist Ideology - The U.S. needs a strong, proactive counterterrorism policy in order to prevent future terrorist attacks like Orlando. There is no such policy today as far as I can see. If it exists, then please, someone explain it to me. The fact that it is not obvious means it either does not exist or it is totally ineffective and useless. ISIS has made great use of social media to recruit and spread their cause. The civilized, non-radical Islamic world needs to do the same thing.

4) Even if we did all of the above steps, we would probably not be successful on a long term basis without a long term strategy for the ISIS problem and geography. What that long term strategy and plan could look like will be a topic of discussion for tomorrow.

As always with American politicians, they do not do their work ahead of time and when a disaster, failure, or attack occurs, they go running around with no plan or intelligence guiding their actions. They immediately revert back to their own personal political agendas, very quickly ignoring what the disaster was, how it could have been prevented and how to prevent it in the future. 

Instead, they come up with simpleton plans for complex problems. And simpleton plans rarely, if ever address the root causes of the problem. The Orlando shooting, and the 85 other radical Islamic attacks over the past 15 years, were not caused by a certain gun, a bad background checking process, or a Christian baker refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple in Oregon. 

It was caused by a radical element within the religion of Islam, that is what needs to be addressed, surrounded, isolated, and neutralized. Failure to recognize that reality and act accordingly is a sure fire way to ensure future attacks and fatalities.

The actions discussed above are what we as a nation and civilization should be working on now, not name calling and personal political agendas, not ineffective knee jerk reactions. Obviously, what Obama and the rest of Washington have been doing is not working, 86 terrorist attacks is more than adequate proof of that.

Solving the big picture, the long term strategy tomorrow.

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