May, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Whacking Small Business Employees, Helping Illegal Immigrants 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, 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.

Yesterday and today, and possibly longer, we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) MRCTV recently ran a piece on a real life business and the real life struggles Obama Care has placed on a business owner, his business, and especially his employees. According to writer Steve Bannister on May 19, 2016:

• Testifying in front of a Congressional small business committee, CEO Tom Kunkel of Full House Marketing and Printing in Maryland said that Obama Care forced him to stop helping his employees pay for their individual, personal health care plans.
• IRS directive “Notice 2013-54 prohibits businesses from assisting with their employees’ individual market health insurance.”
• Cohen testified: “I was just stunned. I could no longer help my employees with health care expenses. Mid-year, I had to tell my employees I could no longer reimburse them for health care and that they were essentially on their own.”
• If Cohen continued to help his employees he would be fined $100 a day per employee, a penalty that would shortly put him out of business.
• A small business industry organization, NFIB, estimates that 912,000 businesses are affected by this ridiculous rule since 16% of the country’s 5.7 million small businesses had been helping out their employees with payments of their individual health insurance payments.

The impact of such nonsense is drastic as Kunkel pointed out since many of his employees lost access to their current health care plans when he was forced to stop helping them out financially and one employee had to go without her cancer medication for a month: “I had several employees who could not afford their premiums without my contribution. Since they were mid-year in their plans, they were forced to cancel insurance, reenroll in a lower cost plans, and then start over with a new deductible for the year. It was very difficult. One of my employees has cancer, and was not able to get his prescription refilled for over 3 weeks because of the new plan. He also had to pay his deductible all over again. It was a heartbreaking situation. I do not believe this is what lawmakers intended when they created the law.”

Here is an employer, and hundreds of thousands others like him, trying to do the right thing for his employees and the government via Obama Care has this asinine ruling. A major unfolding disaster of Obama Care.

2) We have previously discussed the reality that over half of the 23 Obama Care co-ops that were created by the law have already gone out of business, that 8 of the remaining 11 are on a financial death watch, and that only one out of the 23 has actually been profitable. According to Heritage Foundation writer Melissa Quinn, the Obama administration is changing its rules again as it relates to co-ops in a desperate attempt to get outside investors to invest in what were supposed to be independent competitors in the marketplace.

Now, in reality, whether anyone is insane enough to invest in these co-ops is yet to be seen. The 11 co-ops that have already gone out of business easily lost over $1 billion of taxpayer money. And according to Politico, the remaining 11 co-ops lost $400 million across all of them last year. In exchange for investing in any of these losers would allow the investors to place one or more people on the co-op’s board of directors. 

Given that major health insurance companies have already gotten out or have openly discussed getting out of the Obama Care business, it is doubtful that any sane investor would think that this is a good business opportunity and will see it for what it is: a major, desperate change in Obama’s vision for the co-ops which have been mostly losers from day one.

And given that the reinsurance program that we discussed yesterday is ending, the remaining co-ops will get less financial support from the reinsurance pool that has helped offset a little bit of their losses. An investment for losers, much like the larger Obama Care disaster.

3) Nicholas Fondacaro, writing for the MRCTV website on May 12, 2016, reported that the mainstream media, in this case, the large television networks, decided NOT to cover the fact that Obama Care and Obama suffered a major legal defeat recently. That defeat was the judge and court ruling that Obama had illegally and un-Constitutionally decided to use general taxpayer funds to fund Obama Care subsidies.

This should have been a big news story as it shows how the Obama Care train is coming off of the tracks. But instead, the networks continue to protect this President despite his massive failures in the Obama Care world and other areas of his failures. This story was big, it showed how desperate the administration is to salvage its landmark program that is in the beginnings of its death spiral. But good journalism and truth are often lacking with the news departments within the large networks today.

4) One of the biggest promises of Obama, which turned into one of the biggest lies, is that under no circumstances would Obama Care be made available to illegal immigrants. When Congressman Joe Smith yelled out that Obama was a liar during an Obama State of The Union speech when he said that illegals would not be eligible for Obama Care’s benefits, he was crucified by Democrats and liberals. Now, while he chose the wrong venue to point out the lie, he was likley correct. 

The California state government recently passed legislation that would likley extend Obama Care health coverage to that state’s 2.6 illegal immigrants via the state’s Obama Care Obama Care health insurance exchange. According to Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute: “The law does not allow illegals to enroll in the state exchanges or the federal exchange Healthcare.gov.” But as always with Obama Care, what is legal and in the law is just a suggestion for Obama despite it being illegal.

The pending state legislation requires the state government to formally request that the Obama administration violate the illegal immigrant component of the law. The proposal does require the illegal immigrants to pay for the health insurance themselves without taxpayer subsidies. At least that is what the pending legislation asks for today. 

That will do it for today’s unfolding disasters from Obama Care, the worst legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters tomorrow.


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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

February, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Millionaires Get Tax Credits, Illegal Immigrants Get Tax Credits and Small Businesses Get The Shaft

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

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

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: 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.

Yesterday and today we are reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) We often write about the disaster that Obama Care has been for American households and families. But it also has been a disaster for small businesses, the business segment that often produces the most new jobs in our economy and which sometimes create the biggest companies in the world, e.g., Facebook, Apple, etc. all started as small businesses. 

This reality was driven home by a recent article by Justin Haskins for Heartlander Magazine:

• Haskins: “Although numerous groups are facing difficulties related to ACA, few are struggling as significantly as U.S. small businesses.”
• 87% of that offer group health care insurance for their employees saw their insurance premiums go up 25% since 2014 despite Obama’s promises that healthcare costs would go down as a result of the legislation.
• 12% say their premiums went up over 50% in a survey by LevelFunded Health, an insurance agency.
• The legislation is particularly onerous for small businesses since larger businesses have a larger revenue and employee base to spread the legislative and regulatory costs and overhead of Obama Care over: “This has led numerous small businesses to cancel their health insurance benefits completely, dumping an unknown number of employees into Obamacare exchanges. This is not only bad for the employees, it’s horrible for the businesses, who are now losing quality job applicants to large corporations that offer better benefits.”
• The LevelFunded found that 56% of the 2,500 small businesses they surveyed said they are losing quality employee candidates because of the rising costs associated with employer-provided health care plans under Obama Care. 
• The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) under Obama Care was supposed to make it easy for small businesses to handle the Obama Care legislation requirements but like most aspects of Obama Care, it also failed: only 85,000 people from 11,000 small businesses had coverage through SHOP, according to Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News. 
• According to Haskins: “This is significantly less than the 1 million people the Congressional Budget Office expected to be enrolled in SHOP by the end of 2015.” 

The whole mess has caused many pains for small businesses including losing top employee talent, forcing companies to drop healthcare insurance for their employees, causing small businesses to downsize to avoid Obama Care small business penalties, causing employers to cut hours of permanent employees to turn them into part time employees, or raising prices to cope with the increased costs.

Thus, when small business owners have to focus on how to stay afloat and be financially viable in the face of Obama Care’s demanding and often stupid requirements, these owners cannot devote more time to growing their businesses which results in a growing economy and growing employment opportunities. 

2) Sean Hackbarth, writing for the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, continues the storyline from above on how Obama Care is making it so expensive and difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and take care of their employees under Obama Care:

• Filling out complex Obama Care business tax forms is a major time destroyer for small business owners, time that could be better spent on growing their businesses. 
• Businesses have to provide great detail on how they are or are not providing health insurance coverage to their employees.
• The tax reporting requirements are so complex that many businesses now have to go to professionals to do their taxes, costing them time and money.
• The New York Times confirmed the complexity and time wasting processes of Obama Care tax filings in an article about the problem: “These are some of the most complex informational returns we’ve ever seen,” said Roger Prince, a tax lawyer with the consulting firm Berry Dunn in Portland, Me.
• Dunn claims that some of his small business clients “have spent months reconfiguring their human resources and financial systems to track the information that the new forms demand. The health care law defines a full-time-equivalent employee as someone who works an average of 30 or more hours a week — and the hours worked by some part-time employees count toward the calculation. For businesses that use many seasonal, variable-hour or temporary workers, like those in the hospitality industry, simply figuring out how many qualifying employees they have can be a challenge.” Again, more wasted time dealing with government bureaucracy than expanding and improving their businesses.

And all of this extra, useless work has been for no gain to themselves or their businesses since according to a 2015 National Small Business Association poll, 95% of the businesses polled have seen their health care insurance plan costs rise in the past five years, 90% saw their health care costs rise in 2015, and 84% expect those costs to increase in 2016, i.e. a lot of tax prep work for no gain.

3) A recent article from the Free Patriot Post website confirmed another Presidential lie about Obama Care. During a State of The Union address, Obama stood up in front of the whole country and boldly stated that only citizens of this country would get the benefit of Obama Care, its benefits would not be available to illegal immigrants. Congressman Joe Wilson blurted out that the President was a liar in the middle of the State Of The Union speech, for which he was vilified by Democrats and the liberal press.

But now it appears that Wilson was right. According to a new Senate report form the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: “The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, ‘the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.’”

The report and analysis found that a whopping 500,000 illegal immigrants received that $750 million in Obama Care tax credits. The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) did confirm that 471,000 people failed to prove they were citizens but still got the credits. CMS claimed that some of those 471,000 may have actually been entitled to the credits but that still proves that those credits were given out by the Feds without due diligence being done before hand.

The report also concluded that the administration has no real plan on how to claw back the money that was given out as tax credits even though that money was given out illegally. This idiotic way of paying out to people before checking them out is derisively called “pay and chase,” i.e. we will give you taxpayer wealth today even though you have not given us the documentation you are supposed to give us and maybe we will chase you later to get it back.

What a mess and half ass way of doing business.

4) One last Obama Care fail for this month and it is a doozy. According to Melissa Quinn, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 9, 2016, loopholes within the Obama Care wording allows certain types of millionaires to qualify for taxpayer subsidized health care under Obama Care rules. Specifically:

• Under Obama Care, people whose annual income falls under 138% of the poverty level, about $16,000 per person, can get subsidized medical care under Medicaid.
• This is because Obama Care changed the Medicaid criteria for being eligible to strictly annual income and took away any use of net worth to determine who gets subsidized insurance coverage under Medicaid.
• As a result, people with many assets but low annual incomes can get taxpayer support. 
• The article quotes an insurance broker in Iowa who has a lot of clients with net worth between $2 million and $5 million, wealth and assets they have in the form of farmland or assets they received from divorce settlements but have low annual income levels.
• Thus, according to Obama Care, you can be worth millions of dollars in assets but still get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid benefits: “It [Medicaid] was designed to help the lower-income population. But without the asset test, there are folks that have the financial means and assets there that are good at figuring out how to work the system and capture a benefit they’re entitled to.”
• The Iowa insurance agent tells the story of an Iowa woman who received $1.5 million in land and received another $500,000 from a divorce settlement, both assets of which went into a trust and thus, is not reportable as income. This enabled her to get taxpayer subsidized Medicaid insurance coverage.
• CNBC reported earlier this year on the subject, citing a Florida financial advisor who was helping millionaire clients to get Medicaid coverage including one client who had a net worth in assets totally millions of dollars but was still able to get a monthly subsidy of $423 a month, courtesy of the taxpayers of America.

Just when you think you have found out of the possible ways Obama Care could screw things up, a new, original one springs to life. Taxpayer subsidies for millionaires, who would have thought that the legislation could be written that badly? 

That will do it for this month as the disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written just keep oncoming.More disasters next month, for sure.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

October, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care - Deductible Costs Up, Native Ameircans Get Screwed, and More

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

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

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

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

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

For the next several days we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) According to a report in the Washington Times on September 23, 2015, while the number of employer provided health plans has not declined as a result of Obama Care, many of the holders of those employer plans are seeing substantial increases in the level of their deductibles, that part of medical costs that the consumer has to pay for before their health insurance kicks in. Some of those annual increases are upwards of a $1,000.

The average deductible for employer provided insurance plans has more than tripled, from $303 in 2006 to $1,077 in 2015. Some experts think that this is one reason why employee wage growth has been so lousy the past few years. Employers have diverted wage increases into paying for higher insurance costs. This is part of the explanation of why wages have flattened. These deductibles have increased more than seven times the increase in wages. 

And this trend may get worse in 2016. Next year businesses with over 50 employees will have to provide health insurance to their employees which will likely continue to depress wage increases while continuing to mute job creation and economic growth.

2) A recent Kaiser Foundation study found that Obama Care’s 13% tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance policies has led many companies to terminate those plans, insurance plans that were very attractive to those companies’ employees. Thus, more Americans suffer as a result of Obama Care, losing access to their very attractive and robust health insurance plans, replaced with less attractive policies. How is that progress?

3) Melissa Quinn, writing for the Heritage Foundation on September 21, 2015, reported on another perversion from Obama Care that we have not covered previously. The logic here gets a little convoluted but the end result is another tragedy for a certain subset of American citizens.

When Obama Care was passed, it exempted individual Native Americans from the individual mandate, the requirement that an American would have to get themselves health insurance or pay a fine. However, the law did allow Native Americans to purchase individual insurance from the Obama Care Federal health insurance exchange if desired. These people would also be eligible for Obama Care subsidies to pay for their Obama Care policies if they qualified from an income perspective.

Now, here is where it gets crazy and insane. The Obama Care legislation did NOT exempt Native American tribal governments from the Obama Care employee mandate. Since many of the Native American tribes are also major employers within their regional area, they have to provide health insurance coverage for their employees that are mostly Native Americans. 

This creates two major problems:

1. Most of the tribes will have a very hard time affording health care insurance for their Native American employees and/or pay the Obama Care fines as required by the law. Thus, any policies they provide are likely to be bare bones and the least expensive required.
2. On an individual level, the law also requires that individuals with access to coverage independent of the exchange cannot get the subsidies available on the Federal Obama Care exchange.

As an example, consider the case of Rebecca Bishop. She is a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming and is an employee at the Tribe’s Cee Nu Ku cafe. She has multiple pre-existing health issues.

She originally obtained an Obama Care insurance policy from the Federal exchange, The policy costs her $948 a month but the Federal subsidies provided under the law comes out to $815 a month, reducing her overall monthly insurance costs to $133 a month.

But she will likely have to give up that policy since the law requires her to be covered by her tribe’s employer provided policies at a cost that is likely to be higher than the $133 subsidized cost she pays now. Or she can keep her current policy and lose that $815 monthly subsidy. Talk about screwing around with people’s lives. Allow them to get decent insurance and then then force them to give it up because another provision of the same law screws them over.

4) As we often do with these unfolding disaster Obama Care posts, let’s end today’s discussion with the true stories of individual Americans and how the law is causing them tremendous amounts of stress and costs. These stories come from the website:

www.myhealthcarestory.com

Chelsea from Texas on February 5, 2015

Obamacare helped me in no way. I had to leave my apartment and move back in with my parents after the new health care reform took a toll on my job. I was once able to work 39 hours a week as a part time employee and i was comfortable with what i could afford. However, Obamacare changed the rules and all of the sudden my employer dropped my hours down to only 28 per week. This is a huge difference! Instead of helping me, all that Obamacare did was cut my pay dramatically. I should have known better than to think the government might actually be doing something for the good of the people.

Paula from Texas on January 20, 2015

My husband and I are in our 50’s and in good health. We own our own business and have individual health insurance. The policy we had before ObamaCare was a HSA catastrophic plan through BCBS. Our deductible was $10,000 for the family. Our new policy through BCBS has more than doubled and our deductible is $6000/individual and $12700/family with the new policy.

Mike from Georgia on January 6, 2015

Post COBRA purchased an individual plan for 2014 at a reasonable rate. (No preexisting conditions.) The new ACA compliant plan is about 300% higher. They said they do not offer any non-compliant plans. I understand there are only a couple of holes in the law. 1. Specific disease / malady insurance you can buy. Cheap but risky i.e. if you buy heart disease ins. and have gall bladder problems you’re not covered. 2. Short Term insurance – This I did purchase. It’s not great, coverage is only for 6 months and renewal is not guaranteed. There is no coverage for immunizations, and other important exclusions but it covers most of what I want. Provider is HCC. (Find on e-health insurance dot com.)

Note: Supposedly short term insurance is there for temporarily unemployed or a bridge to medicare. Both apply to me but I cannot imagine if, for example, you’re 50 and you’ve got 15 years to medicare that would be tough to bridge. Also, I’m single if you have a typical family of 4 I cannot see how you could afford a 300% increase in premium.

Subsidies- I don’t want, need nor feel I should be forced to receive a subsidy for something that should be affordable in a free market. Pray the powers that be trash, delete, repeal or whatever it takes to rid us of the not so Affordable Care Act!

That will it for today but more disasters tomorrow. Today, besides individual stories of Obama Care disasters, we learned that policy deductibles continue to rise, workers are losing access to their favored Cadillac health insurance policies due to Obama Care’s 13% tax on those policies, and Native American tribes and individuals are getting screwed in a very unique way.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Even When The Feds Get It Right They Still Get It Wrong

Even when the Federal government and the Washington political class do something good for taxpayers, they cannot help themselves but step right back into another screw up that overwhelms whatever good their first good deed did. Consider the recent announcement of good news that the Feds had busted 46 doctors and other healthcare professionals across the country for bilking the government, and the American taxpayer, out of $712 million.

Details of the fraud and bust include the following, as reported by CNN:

• This was the largest Medicare bust ever.
• In total, 243 people were arrested in 17 cities for Medicare billing of $712 million worth of patient care that was either unnecessary or never given.
• In one case, owners of a mental health facility in Miami billed tens of millions of dollars for psychotherapy sessions based on treatment that was little more than moving patients to different locations. 
• Four other people are charged for mass-marketing a talking glucose monitor, shipping the monitors to Medicare patients across the country who didn't need or order them, and then billing Medicare for the devices to the tune of more than $22 million.
• Health care providers got in on the scam by paying kickbacks to fraudsters who got their hands on Medicare patients' personal information which they would then use to bill Medicare for care never given. 
• These fraudsters often got the patient information by preying on the down and out in society by canvassing places like homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
• A Los Angeles doctor allegedly billed $23 million for 1,000 power wheelchairs and home health services that were not medically necessary and often not provided. 
• In a Florida case, a health care provider received $1.6 million from Medicare for prescription drugs that were never purchased and never given.
• "In these cases, we followed the money and found criminals who were attracted to doctors offices, clinics, hospitals and nursing homes in search of what they viewed as an ATM," said FBI Director James B. Comey.
• The DOJ's Medicare Fraud Strike Force team led the investigations which since 2007 it has charged 2,300 people who have falsely billed the Medicare program for more than $7 billion. 
• In recent years, the Strike Force team has expanded from two cities to nine.

Great news, criminals ripping off the American taxpayer might finally be brought to justice. But let’s consider some of the downside to this whole, less than comprehensive law enforcement effort:

• These people were arrested for ripping off $712 million. However, there is no mention of how much of that $712 million will actually be recovered, much of it is likely to already have been spent and is gone forever.
• We have previously reported many times that credible, nonpartisan analyses and sources estimate that Medicare loses anywhere from $40 to $60 billion a year to waste and criminal activity. Thus, if we assume that the $712 million was all ripped off in one year, unlikely, than the recovery rate from the “biggest bust in Medicare history” is a measly 1.8% on $40 billion or 1.2% on $60 billion.
• Since the $712 million was probably obtained over a period of years, then the recovery rate is highly likely to be well below 1%. And this is the biggest bust in history, meaning other busts likely got far less.
• The strike force has been in operation for nine years, 2007 to 2015 and has busted criminals who had illegally collected $7 billion in Medicare funds. If we assume the lower end of annual Medicare ripoffs and waste is $40 billion, nine years worth of such behavior is about $360 billion. That means the task force has recovered a staggering...only 1.9% of the criminal activity and waste.

Look, I am happy that hundreds of people were busted and hundreds of millions of dollars were identified as stolen (not recovered). If some of that money can be recovered and funneled to reducing the national debt, helping the homeless and unemployed, feeding the hungry, then great. 

But come on, a measly 1.9% rate for nine years. Seems the taxpayers are still being abused by a government that cannot get out of its own way when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth. 

But the story somehow gets a little worse. Even if the Feds can collect the $712 million that these 243 people stole, it will get wiped out by the embarrassing findings of a recent inspector general report relative to Obama Care. That Federal audit report found that the Department of Health and Human Services cannot find out what happened to about $2.8 billion of Obama Care subsidies that have already been paid out.

This should not come as a surprise. The entire Obama Care data processing effort has been a disaster from day one. The online exchanges failed to work properly for weeks. The systems security features were almost non-existent, subjecting millions of Americans to identity theft risk. The interface between the exchanges and insurance companies were chaotic.

Thus, we should not be surprised when the inspector general’s report shows that those systems now cannot track almost $3 billion in just the first four months into the Obama Care world. Apparently the whole system was launched without finishing and checking the accuracy of the back end processes that would communicate between the Federal exchange and insurance companies. 

The audit went onto say that HHS did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts: “[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made,” the inspector general said. Furthermore, “CMS’s (HHS) system of internal controls could not ensure that CMS made correct financial assistance payments.” 

Other findings in the report show that HHS did not have a process in place at the time money was being paid out to “prevent or detect any possible substantial errors” in Obama Care subsidy payments and could not “ensure that financial assistance payments were made on behalf of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts.”

Great, the Justice Department may have recovered upwards of $712 million that were likely stolen over a period of years from HHS’s Medicare program and then HHS goes out and likely lost almost $3 billion, in just four months, by being totally inept when it comes to Obama Care subsidies. Even when the Federal government and the political class that operate it give us good news they still manage to overwhelm us with bad news.

There are only two solutions to this incredible criminal waste and theft of taxpayer wealth, a short term and long term solution:

- Short Term: Nine years after trying to track down criminals that are stealing from taxpayers via the Federal government and it is safe to say that hundreds of billions of dollars went unaccounted for and the recovery rate is incredibly small, less than 2%. Thus the better short term solution is to offer rewards for anyone who turns in anyone who is scamming the government. Give them a 10% reward of what ever is recovered from their tip.

Police departments have been using this tip process for decades to have the community help them apprehend street criminals. Why not use the same theory to apprehend white collar criminals who rip off taxpayers? Get the whole citizenry involved with the potential of a large financial reward, a cut of what money is recovered. Waiting nine years for the task force to put a substantial dent in the criminal activity is not working, time to try something new and creative.

- Long term: this is just another example of a government beast that is out of control and totally dysfunctional. As we have pointed out a number of times, the Federal government today is no different than Jabba The Hutt from the Star Wars stories. Jabba was a large, formless blob that fulfilled no worthwhile function but who consumed massive amounts of resources via tyranny. 

Severely downsize the Federal government and have it work on far fewer efforts that might actually work rather than what they do today, work on way too many efforts that are either not needed, too expensive, are criminally infected, or plain just do not work.

Because even when the Federal government gets it right (finds the criminals involved in $712 million worth of fraud over years), it still gets it wrong (loses almost $3 billion in just four months).

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Final Disasters For This Month

Every month for the past three years or so we have had to take time out and review the latest insanity and disasters from the Obama Care legislation. Long ago it only took a day or so to cover it all. But then the law starting taking effect and the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” made it impossible to contain the bad news, the heartache, the rising costs, and the stress put on American families to just a day or two.

To review the past discussions on this horrid piece of legislation, enter the term "unfolding disaster" in the search box above or just page through previous month's posts on the right side of this page and click on the various references to Obama Care. Very quickly, as your read the past posts, you will see that this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Not only has it disrupted lives, stymied the economy, and increased healthcare costs in this country, it never addressed the various root causes of high healthcare costs. Thus, by never addressing some of the root causes listed below, the legislation has virtually no chance of actually reducing healthcare costs in this country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The healthcare industry in this country needs serious tort reform.
• Federal government crop subsidies lead to our food chain being infested with unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
• Current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose upwards of $100 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud, billions of dollars that could be used to reduce other healthcare costs in this country.
• Cross state line insurance competition needs to be made easier to do.
• The Obama Care effort never “followed the money” to actually map out where the high costs paid by Americans for healthcare actually end up.

Since Obama Care never addressed these root causes, we are still going to have those root causes resulting in higher and higher healthcare costs regardless of how well Obama Care is implemented. And since the prime objective of Obama Care was to reduce costs, the legislation will end up being a failure.

So with that gloomy set up, let’s see what Obama Care disasters unfolded in the past month or so.

1) Yesterday we discussed the reality that there is an excellent chance that the Supreme Court will rule later this month that the Obama Care policy holders who got their policies via the Federal exchange will lose their Federal government subsidies. Why? Because in plain language, the legislation says that only those Obama Care policy holders who got their policies via state exchanges, not the Federal exchange, are entitled to subsidies.

The language could not be any clearer. And the reason could not be any clearer either. The strategy was to force the states into building their own Obama Care exchanges with the stick hanging over their heads that their state residents would NOT get subsidies if their states defaulted to the Federal exchange. It was a political ploy that will likely backfire and crash the whole process.

But you can tell the President is clearly worried about the possibility of a negative ruling, given his quotes/pleas/threats over the past week or so:

• "This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up." In other words, Supreme Court justices, you are going to look stupid if you rule against me since you never should have gotten involved in the first place.
• In another setting Obama said it's safe to "assume" the court will do what most legal scholars expect and "play it straight." Obama said it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange. But if they never intended to exclude people, why did they clearly write legislation to say those that got policies via the Federal exchange would not receive a subsidy? 
• To rule the other way, the President said, would be a "contorted reading of the statute" and a "twisted interpretation." No, it would be straightforward reading of the English language, there would be no twisting involved.
• If the Court rules against his pet law, "that throws off how that exchange operates" and millions of people would lose subsidies. "It's a bad idea." Whether it is a bad idea is a matter of opinion which does not matter. We are talking about a matter of law and how the executive branch is not allowed to change an enacted law based on the executive branch’s opinion or whim. The executive branch is vested with executing laws as they were written, not whether it is a subjective “bad idea.”
• But really, who are we kidding. A primary Obama Care architect Jonathan Gruber, infamous for saying the law passed thanks to the "stupidity of the American voter," has repeatedly and publicly stated that people living in states that do not have their own exchanges cannot receive tax subsidies for Obama Care. He's argued multiple times the law was deliberately set up to force states into setting up exchanges: "I think what's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens, you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges and that they'll do it, but you know once again the politics can get ugly around this.”

Gruber has been cited by any number of times by important Obama Care supporters, Obama, Pelosi, and others, as the brains behind Obama Care. And in the “brain’s” own words, “your citizens don’t get their tax credits.” That is pretty obvious, as obvious as the English language used in the writing of the law. Anything else the President says is just a last ditch effort to shame the Supreme Court or set them up as the bad guys.

2) What are the likely consequences of the Supreme Court rules against the law:

• According to the government, over 6 million Obama Care policy holders lose their Federal subsidies.
• According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, those 6 million people will see an average increase in insurance premiums.
• Florida residents will have the most Obama Care policy holders lose subsidies, with 1.3 million people losing about $400 million a month in subsidies.
• Texas ranked second in customers losing their subsidies, 832,000 policyholders losing $206 million a month.

In addition, as policyholders see their subsidies go away, increasing their monthly premium costs, many of the healthy Obama Care policyholders will likely drop their coverage. This will drive up the costs for the less healthy policyholders that do not drop their policies.

While terminating Obama Care is the right long term solution, its demise will cause short term stress and anxiety in the short term, something it has done many times and in many ways since it was enacted.

3) A recent Heritage Foundation article by Nina Owcharenko pointed out that Obama Care has significantly increased the costs of not only Obama Care policyholders but also those that never obtained an Obama Care: “The Obamacare subsidies were intended, in part, to hide the law’s unpopular effects. At their root, Obamacare’s costly regulations, dictating what insurers can sell and what individuals and employers can buy, have resulted in premium costs going up, not down. In the 34 states potentially affected by the Court’s ruling, those regulations have driven up costs not only for the estimated 6.4 million receiving coverage subsidies, but also for at least another 15 million who have been forced to pay more for their health insurance without getting any subsidy.”

Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation did some analysis and research and found that there might actually be some good news if the Obama Care subsidies are struck down, similar to the findings of other organizations that we reviewed yesterday: 

• Average insurance policy premiums could decrease by as much as 44% for young adults and 7% for near retirees.
• For young adults this is not surprising since the whole strategy of Obama Care was to force younger, healthier Americans pay for the health care needs of older, less healthy Americans.
• At the state level, the Heritage analysis estimated that in Arizona, insurance premiums could drop by as much as $1,044 for a 21-year-old and $402 for a 64-year-old. 
• In iowa, premiums could decline by as much as $1,068 for a 21-year-old and $486 for a 64-year-old. 
• In Ohio, premiums could be reduced by as much as $1,125 for a 21-year old and $633 for a 64-year old.

Good news might actually be the reality of striking down Obama Care. Lord knows that we have gotten almost all bad news ever since Obama Care went into effect.

4) Given the following recent quote, the President is either supremely overconfident or delusional: 

“What’s more, the thing [Obama Care] is working. I mean, part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them come to pass.”

None of them come to pass? Is he kidding:

• He promised that American families would see up to a $2,500 decrease in their annual health insurance premiums. That is false.
• He promised that if you like your current insurance policy, you could keep it. That is false.
• He promised that if you like your current doctors, you could keep them. That is false.
• He promised the legislation would not add a single dime to the national debt. That is false.
• He promised that obtaining an Obama Care policy via the online exchanges would as simple as ordering something from Amazon or getting an online plane ticket. That is false.
• He implied that identity theft would not be a factor in the online exchange processes. That is false.
• He promised that Obama Care would make America healthier. That is false.
• He promised to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land when in was sworn in. Given the number of times that his administration unilaterally ignored the tenets and schedule of Obama Care, this is false.

We could go on but you get the point. Obama Care has been an unmitigated disaster and horror show, regardless of how delusion the President is.

To prove this assertion, consider two pieces of information:

1 - Go to the following link to see a short compilation of news stories that point out the horrors of Obama Care:

http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/12/obamacare-its-still-unaffordable-unworkable-and-unfair/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguaTLZKXonjHpfsX56uUlXqK0lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ITMFkI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

2 - As we have often done, consider some of the horrors that indvidual Americans and their families have suffered as a result of the law, based on stories compiled by the website: 

www.ourhealthcarestoires.com

LARRY - MINNESOTA

For the past two months, Minnesota officials have celebrated how health insurance rates in the Twin Cities will be among the lowest available in the country next year.

But Larry Goedtel isn't joining the party.

Like some other consumers, Goedtel is looking at a steep premium increase for coverage that comes with new requirements from the federal Affordable Care Act.

Goedtel, who doesn't know whether he is eligible for a federal tax credit to offset the increase, said his premium will jump 84 percent, because the new rules say he must have a much lower deductible and purchase richer benefits such as maternity care.

It's no consolation, Goedtel said, that premiums available for 2014 will be cheaper in the Twin Cities than in Rochester, St. Croix County, Wis., and much of the nation.

"They're dictating what's good for me, and telling me I have to buy it whether I think it's good for me or not," said Goedtel, 60, of Hugo.

KYLE - ARKANSAS

My plan was not cancelled, it was transitioned to meet the new ACA requirements. The same plan that I had before, now costs me $70 more a paycheck. I have a family of 4, including 2 kids. I went from $204 a paycheck to $274 a paycheck. I get paid 2 times a month so that's $140 a month or $1,680 a year. That's money that would have been spent in the local community on buying goods and services. This figure does not include the slightly increased co pays when I go to the dr or the additional costs for prescriptions. I thought the ACA was going to save me $2,500 a year?

DENNIS - FLORIDA

I had great insurance for my daughter and myself. In 2008 I paid only $200 a month. On December 31st I lose my insurance because it is to good for the law. I have an autoimmune disease and will not have access to my medications since the managed plans do not cover them. I only see specialist which will end since I will need a referral every time. The price of the new plans $450 a month for less coverage. President Obama is a liar.

These are horror stories Mr. President and there are millions of others across the country, whether you want to believe them or not.

That will do it for this month’s update on the unfolding disasters that are Obama Care. If life is fair and the Supreme Court does the right thing, reads what is written in the law, and strikes down subsidies to two thirds of Obama Care policyholders because that is what the legislation says to do, we might be looking at a brighter future in next month’s update to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. If not, the disaster will just keep on coming, caused by the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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