December, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: America Is Still Obese, Killing Small Businesses, 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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. Today we continue this month’s update of Obama Care that we began earlier this week, the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed.

1) Yesterday, we discussed the reality that restaurants are being hit especially hard by Obama Care’s rules, fines, taxes, and regulations because the industry’s margins are so tiny and narrow. Any incremental expense of any magnitude places them in jeopardy of going out of business very quickly.

Such a situation was recently documented in a Heritage Foundation article on December 11, 2015 by Melissa Quinn. The details of that Obama Care disaster include the following:

• Quinn discusses the reality that a Nashville deli, Noshville Authentic New York Delicatessen, is soon to go out of business in part because of the cost of complying with Obama Care regulations.
• The motto of the deli had always been, “anyone is welcome here from ages 0 to 99, because you’ll find something on the menu.”
• The deli has been around and profitable for almost twenty years with more than half of the employees having been working there for at least 10 years and on quarter of the employees having worked there for almost 15 years.
• Thus, this had been a successful business, serving both customers and employees well for a very long time, in some cases serving food to three generations of the same family.
• But the owner, will be closing the deli on December 27 because of Obama Care: “Having more than 50 full-time employees means you have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, and it was an unknown risk of how much it was going to cost. But it was going to be significant, and take a lot of time and labor to take care of the transition and the reporting and the forms.”
• He estimated that the incremental cost of Obama Care would be between $70,000 and $100,000 a year, an expense that his deli's financials could not withstand.
• For three years he tried to find ways to stay in business and comply with the regulations and bureaucracy of Obama Care but could not find a way to make it work.
• Congresswoman Diane Black who serves the deli’s Congressional district, spoke about the plight of this deli and other small businesses on the House floor recently: “I hear from especially the small business owners about how difficult the health care coverage is for them. They’re trying their best, but they’re also having insurance companies come into the office saying they’re going to have to increase their employees’ premiums by 35 percent which means they have a decision to make...Do they [business owners] pass that [added cost] onto the employee? Do they take that up themselves? And many of them are saying, ‘Look, we’ve done that for the last couple of years where we absorb these increases, but we can’t afford to keep on doing that.’ And so they’re having to pass them on to the employees."
• This deli is just one example of why the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that Obama Care would cost the economy two million jobs over time.
• Some businesses will try to stay in business by turning their full time workers into part time workers in order to avoid the Obama Care mandates, which will then create a situation where many Americans not only do not have healthcare but have lower wages to boot.
• The Congresswoman struck a blow for liberty, freedom and personal choice when she recently went on to say: “The government shouldn’t be telling people that this is what we’re going to require you to have when they know best what they need. One size does not fit all, and you shouldn’t be pushing everybody into this pipeline. Different needs, different costs, all of that should be considered by the individual, not the federal government.”

A real life example of real life people, business owners, employees, and customers being screwed by this horrid piece of legislation.

2) One way to bring down healthcare costs and make health insurance more affordable, as mentioned in the above list, is to make people healthier. One way to do that is to encourage them to eat better, exercise more, and lose weight. Reducing obesity reduces a full range of healthcare and medical costs including diabetes, heart disease, joint distress, and probably to some degree, cancer.

But five years into the Obama Care era, years into Michelle Obama’s disastrous attempt to get kids to eat healthier, the results of addressing this root cause of high healthcare costs is another miserable failure. According to a Daily Beast article that was summarized in the November 27, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, “Despite efforts to improve the American diet and lifestyle - like the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign - the percentage of obese Americans has actually increased. About 38% of U.S. adults were obese in 2013 and 2014, compared to 35% in 2011 and 2012.”

Another Obama Care failure. A root cause is getting worse instead of better under the legislation, which means this root cause will continue to contribute to the ever rising healthcare costs in this country. It is a root cause that Obama Care obviously has not come close to remedying.

3) A recent article by Guy Benson on the Townhall website on December 11, 2015 described how Obama Care was hurting real people in need of medical treatment in the state of Texas:

"Last summer, the state's largest insurance carrier dropped all preferred provider organization plans from both the Affordable Care Act's federal exchange in Houston and the private individual market. Now, with only weeks to go before existing plans expire, patients, doctors and hospitals are scrambling to find what care is available under the insurer's replacement health maintenance organization plans. "Jody would be dead if she didn't have her oncologist," said Steve Schoger of his wife, his voice catching. The Woodlands couple had their plans canceled. Both have cancer; both are in experimental clinical trials at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center they fear cannot be replicated elsewhere. They are at turns furious and terrified...Dr. Robert Morrow, president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas' Houston and Southeast Texas Region, said in a recent interview that the decision to drop 367,000 PPO plans across Texas, even though customers were paying more for them, was driven by economics. 

He called the plans "unsustainable" after his company lost $400 million by paying out more in claims than it collected in premiums...Dan Fontaine, executive vice president of administration at M.D. Anderson, has similar concerns about the disappearance of exchange coverage for Houston's prestige medical institutions: "The management of risk used to be handled through denials of pre-existing conditions," he said of pre-ACA days. "It is now being handled through the narrowing of the marketplace.""

So, Obama Care supporters claim that 10 million Americans got health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care. But that was before hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their healthcare coverage when Obama Care co-ops went out of business almost overnight. It does not include the 367,000 Texans who have now lost their Obama Care policies that they signed up for and now have to scramble to find other, likely less optimal policies for their coverage. Seems the more Obama Care policies that get written today, the more Obama Care policies disappear tomorrow, causing stress and health issues for untold thousands of Americans.

4) We have often talked about how more than half of the Obama Care co-ops have already gone out of business or are going out of business due to financial hardships. The financial future of the remaining co-ops grew more dim with the recent signing of a large budget bill by the President last week. 

That budget legislation included an explicit condition that taxpayer money never be used to bailout any Obama Care insurer via the legislation’s risk corridor program which includes the co-ops. Given the shaky financial of the co-ops, this restriction on the risk corridor potential makes them an even riskier bet to be around for the long term. 

Which makes this a good time to review how many co-ops have already failed, how much taxpayer money they took down the drain with the, and how many hundreds of thousands Americans lost their insurance coverage as a result, graphic courtesy of the Heritage Foundation (click on the graphic for a better view):




5) Let’s finish off today’s unfolding disaster that is Obama Care review with a few more heartbreaking stories of Americans who have suffered as a result of this putrid legislation: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.DR. DANIEL CRAVIOTTO - CALIFORNIA: Daniel is a physician who wrote an op-ed in WSJ expressing his frustration with ObamaCare: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements. Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?[. . .] Meanwhile, our Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have significantly declined, let alone kept up with inflation. In orthopedic surgery, for example, Medicare reimbursement for a total knee replacement decreased by about 68% between 1992 and 2010, based on the value of 1992 dollars. How can this be? Don't doctors have control over what they charge for their services? For the most part, no. Our medical documentation is pored over and insurers and government then determine the appropriate level of reimbursement.I don't know about other physicians but I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.MARIA - CALIFORNIA: Maria Berumen, a tax preparer in Downey, was uninsured for years because of preexisting conditions. The 53-year-old was thrilled to find coverage for herself and her husband for $148 a month after qualifying for a big government subsidy.
She jumped at the chance in early January to visit a primary-care doctor for long-running numbness in her arm and shoulder as a result of bone spurs on her spine. The doctor referred her to a specialist, and problems ensued. At least four doctors wouldn't accept her health plan — even though the state exchange website and her insurer, Health Net Inc., list them as part of her HMO network."It's a phantom network," Berumen said.It was no surprise to her family doctor, Ragaa Iskarous. She has run into this problem repeatedly with other patients in the last month, the doctor said. "This is really driving us crazy."One last update tomorrow, a post that will focus on the personal pain and suffering of real Americans whose real lives were upended by Obama Care, the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

 

Part 3: Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Relative To The Lobbyist Behind The Curtain

Over the past two days we have been discussing a theme that goes as follows: “Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind the Curtain.” The purpose of the two posts was to do a reality check in that even though the issues of gay marriage and the Confederate flag are hot and “trending” this week, they are minor nits on a fly’s butt compared to the two other issues we discussed in those blog posts:

1. Monday we discussed the writings of Gary Hart, a former liberal U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate, and his insightful and correct conclusions that we are being overrun by the most corrupt political class of all time and the lobbyists that drive their corruptness.
2. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that when the whole economy and financial viability of the U.S. collapses due to political class overspending and fiscal insanity, whether or not one has a new type of marriage license or a flag will be totally insignificant in the economic downfall of the country.

Unfortunately, people have pointed out these are not the only two major issues that most of America is ignoring or ignorant off, that other issues are being ignored by the mainstream media in the frenzy to cover what again we consider minor issues in the big scheme of the world and the future of the country. Thus, rather than cutting this theme short, we find it necessary to devote another two days to two other big issues that are threatening this country and our democracy as most of the country frets about a marriage license and a piece of cloth:

• Today we will review a set of critical and dangerous issues/crises that are getting no media play at all.
• Tomorrow we will reivew an outstanding peice of journalism from the www.vox.com website, an article that paints a picture and probability of World War III, starting in the Baltic states, that is terrifying.

But before we do that, I am going to run the explanatory paragraphs we used the past two days to set up the reason why we find “Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind the Curtain.”

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Later this week we will post our monthly series of political class insanity posts. Every month we gather and discussed the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and corruption of the American political class. Unfortunately for us, over the years we have been doing this feature, every month we have needed more and more time just to cover one month’s worth of insanity.

Before we do that for July’s insanity, let’s look at some bigger picture issues that dwarf the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, stupid quotes, and overall inept performance of the American class. Yes, it is important to point out how wasteful spending goes on in Washington, how government and political class programs never efficiently or effectively implement their goals, how stupid our politicians often sound when they open their mouths.

But the two topics we will discuss yesterday and today dwarf these issues. In fact, the top two social and political issues being hotly debated this these days are also nits relative to the two overarching issues we will be discussing today and tomorrow. It really does not matter what you think about gay marriage and the Supreme Court’s recent decision on it. It really does not matter what you think about the Confederate flag and what it stands for. 

Talking about them in the context of the bigger issues is a total waste of time since both issues pale in comparison to the two bigger issues. The gay and lesbian community consists of less than 5% of the nation’s population. Confederate flag supporters are probably comparable in numbers, small minorities in the country. 

But unless we address the major issue of political corruption in Washington (yesterday’s topic) and the unrelenting build up of the national debt (today’s issue) and the wasteful spending that goes with it, then who can get married and who can fly a flag of their choice will become totally, totally irrelevant in our near future since these two bigger issues affect EVERY American, not just a small minority of them.

Yesterday’s post is based on the writings of liberal former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart. He is the author of 21 books and the following quotes come from his recent book, “The Republic Of Conscience.” While I have pulled out only a subset of quotes from his book that was discussed in a recent Time magazine article, I encourage everyone to go to that online Time article at:

http://time.com/3937860/gary-hart-america-corruption/

Mr. Hart eloquently and precisely points out how our democratic processes have been thoroughly corrupted by the American political class and the media, lobbyists, and organized political entities that feast on those processes and American tax dollars and freedoms. We have discussed this corruption of the democratic processes before,both in this blog and our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”

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Let’s look at some issues that are much more important and will affect many, many more Americans than gay marriage and a flag:

1. ISIS, the wealthiest terrorist group ever to exist, is still controlling wide swaths of the Middle East and has threatened to attack the U.S. homeland on July 4th. Don’t think they have the capability? Keep in mind that the U.S. Federal government just had a truck hijacked in Mexico that contained over 11,000 U.S. valid travel visas. Put it all together: corrupt Mexican police officials and wealthy drug cartels, rich terrorists, and before you know it we have 11,000 valid U.S. travel visas in the hands of some very violent people who really do not care about gay marriage or the Confederate flag, only about death and destruction within our borders.

2. The Taliban launched a daring attack on the Afghan parliament in the capital of Kabul while its parliament was in session. If the Taliban is making such daring attacks while the U.S. and other nations’ troops are still inside the country, what will they do when the American military presence is severely cut back? If the capital city is not secure and safe from Taliban attacks today, then nowhere else in Afghanistan is safe. 

Thus, as soon as the U.S. pulls its last soldier from the country at some point in the future, the current Afghan government will likely collapse almost immediately, the Taliban will seize power, and the United States’ fourteen year presence in Afghanistan will have been futile. Making the loss of thousands of American lives and the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars, the majority of which was spent during the Obama administration, a total and disgraceful waste.

3. The Pentagon released its new “Law of War Manual.” In it there is a chilling finding, as reported by Anti-Media: 

“One change in terminology directly targets journalists, stating, ‘in general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces […] or unprivileged belligerents.’Apparently, reporters have joined the ranks of al-Qaeda in this new “unprivileged belligerent” designation, which replaces the Bush-era term, ‘unlawful combatants.’ What future repercussions this categorization could bring are left to the imagination…”

In other words, the U.S. armed forces are now justified in killing journalists in a combat zone, apparently based on their interpretation of the situation. For a country that supposedly cherishes freedom, a free press, and the First Amendment, this Federal government/military action has slippery slope all over it. Certainly should be putting a chill in honest journalists and their desire to print the truth but who may now be viewed as enemy combatants for their honest reporting.

4. On June 23, 2015 Wikileaks released more NSA documents that implicate the agency in spying on France, specifically current and former French presidents and members of the French cabinet. According to the documents: “The top secret documents derive from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of French Presidents Holande, Sarkozy, and Chirac, as well as French cabinet ministers and the French Ambassador to the United States.” This brings to 35 foreign countries and their dignitaries that the U.S. Federal government has spied on. So much for a valid foreign policy when you tick off those same allies by spying on them. Or as the new old saying goes under the Obama administration’s failed foreign policies: “Our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us.” Tough to trust anyone who spies on you.

5. Speaking of failed foreign policies, Russia is now making noise in the Baltic countries on its western border after invading and occupying large areas in the Ukraine. Given that these Baltic states are members of NATO and are theoretically guaranteed full NATO military assistance if they are attacked by say, Russia, what happens if Russia actually does attacks a country like Estonia? Will NATO counter attack and open the possibility of full fledged war with a nuclear armed Russia or do nothing, which will expose NATO as an empty shell of a defense treaty and thereby render it obsolete? Neither of these two options is good which means something should have been done earlier to make sure these were not the only two options. (Much more detailed discussion tomorrow on this harrowing possibility).

6. And finally, scientists recently came across high levels of Helium 3 in oil rig pipes in southern California. Without going into the details and the science, the bottom line appears to be high concern that Helium 3 is leaking into the underwater oil fields from deep inside the earth’s crust, a new phenomenon, indicating that southern California could be on the verge of a massive earthquake, rendering gay marriage and the Confederate flag meaningless in that state.

Thus, rather than paying so much attention, passion, and venom on gay marriage and the Confederate flag, maybe some of our focus and energies should be focused eklsewhere. Like, on sealing our borders and protecting our citizens from visa-armed ISIS terrorists, making sure that the expense in blood and treasure in Afghanistan is not wasted, protecting the First Amendment from our military who can now legally target journalists for termination, stop spying on our allies, find a way to accommodate the Russian problem without going to the brink of nuclear war over a country that no one could find on a map, and think about putting together an earthquake recovery plan. Time to move onto to other issues that have far more ramifications for far more Americans.

One last post tomorrow on this theme of moving beyond the currently hyped minor issues of the day as we discuss the situation with Russia that no one in the American public is aware of all talking about but one that renders gay marriage and the flag totally insignificant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, let’s review today’s disasters:

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

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

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

October, 2014 Part 2 - The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: 30 Million More Americans To Lose Coverage, Higher Costs, Lower Quality, and More

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

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

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. To see what disasters have popped up over just the past month or so, read on:

1) Daniel Mitchell, writing for the Townhall website on October 8, 2014, reviewed some Obama Care analyses that were done by the Cato Institute’s Mike Tanner. 

Here is what Mr. Tanner had to say about Obama Care and the promise you could keep your existing health insurance plan:

…roughly 6 million Americans were kicked off their insurance because their plans failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, didn’t provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that federal bureaucrats thought that they should have. …on average, ObamaCare plans were worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. A new wave of cancellations is about to begin as well. …In several states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges or even withdrawn from the market altogether. And if that was not bad enough, Americans with employer-based insurance may find out their insurance has to be changed starting next year.

So we pay more, get less, deal with lots of uncertainty, and still millions of Americans could not keep their original plans despite the Presidential promise and/or deception.

What about saving consumers money:

If judged against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums, ObamaCare deserves an F. …In states where the individual market was not already dysfunctional, there were significant premium increases.

Another Presidential lie/deception.

What about the impact on taxpayers?

This summer the Congressional Budget Office announced that it had given up trying to score the cost of ObamaCare, given the frequency with which the administration was making unilateral changes to the law. …roughly 85 percent of those enrolled through exchanges are receiving subsidies, higher than predicted. Overall, the best estimates suggest the law will cost $2.63 trillion over the next 10 years. That will be paid for by $1.38 trillion in new taxes and at least $1.25 trillion in additional debt.

Over another trillion dollars in debt for the Federal government, an additional debt load of almost $11,000 for every U.S. household.

What about the impact on jobs?

…surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta confirmed that businesses are cutting employment and shifting workers to part-time positions because of ObamaCare. According to the New York Fed, 21 percent of manufacturers and 17 percent of service companies have reduced the size of their workforce because of the law. In addition, roughly 20 percent of both manufacturers and service companies said that they have shifted workers from full- to part-time jobs.The overall impact on employment could be as high as two million workers.

So, according to reputable and often government sources, Obama Care will stifle job growth, add over a trillion dollars to the national debt, generally raise insurance premiums while reducing the quality of care, and cause millions of Americans to lose access to insurance policies that they were perfectly happy to have for their specific needs.

Oh, by the way, none of these analyses include the fact that the Obama administration is likely to offer billions and billions of dollars in bailout money, really bribes, to insurance companies that partake in the Obama Care program. How can anyone argue this is not the worse piece of Federal legislation ever passed?

2) Although the Obama administration promised, and failed miserably, at being the most transparent administration ever, that has not stopped it from taking its love of secrecy, lack of transparency, and stealth over to the Obama Care website exchanges. According to an October 7, 2014 New York Times piece written by Margot Sanger-Katz, the new head of the www.healthcare.gov effort, Kevin Counihan is promising that the next round of Obama Care signups will be a tremendous improvement over the fiasco that occurred last fall.

In an interview with Alex Wayne of Bloomberg News, Mr. Counihan said his objective was to create a consumer experience so satisfying that it would result in “raving fans” for the insurance shopping site. Compared to last year’s botched rollout, he has a pretty low bar to get over for this kind of experience.

But will it really be so satisfying given the reality that the so-called improved experience and website won’t have any tools to allow consumers to see which doctors and hospitals are covered by individual insurance plans? Mr. Counihan explicitly told Bloomberg that HealthCare.gov would not change to allow consumers to comparison shop on insurance plan networks.

How is that major shortfall going to get people “raving” about the experience? Are we just supposed to blindly choose a plan and hope that it has good doctors and hospitals and that there is a broad enough selection to satisfy our family’s needs? 

When you buy a new car, you get to test the engine, sit in the seats, choose your color, see what the maintenance plans are ahead of buying, and compare that information to other dealers, that is a good consumer experience. If the government was running a car showroom, you would see the price and the options but nothing else, a totally unsatisfactory buying experience. But to expect anything more out of Obama Care would be folly.

3) While an estimated 5-6 million Americans lost access to their preferred individual health insurance policies as a result of the first wave of Obama care tenets, you might not have seen the whole carnage yet. According to an October 4, 2014 NewsMax article that interviewed health policy expert Betsy McCaughey:

• 30 million more Americans could lose their current health care coverage due to the next wave of Obama Care rules and regulations.
• These 30 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored healthcare at the end of the year because those plans will not meet the requirements of Obamacare: "Most people still get their health insurance through an employer. Thirty million people could lose their on-the-job coverage this year and be forced onto one of those exchanges."
• The reasons these policies are being killed is: "The plans that the employers bought in the small-group market are suddenly no longer eligible — and employers are going to be stuck with going to the very expensive Obama Care one-size-fits-all requirement or saying to their employees, 'I am sorry, you will have to get it somewhere else.'
• Under the Obama Care legislation, many small companies with fewer than 50 employees have insurance plans that are set to expire this year. However, as the plans expire, businesses will either be required to provide plans that meet Obama Care's long list of requirements, making them more expensive, or they can drop coverage, forcing employees to obtain coverage on their own.
• But because those companies with fewer than 50 workers are most likely to drop coverage rather than pay the higher costs due to the Obama Care requirements, millions of Americans will most likely get "a very raw deal" when those policies expire at the end of the year, according to McCaughey: "Rates will go up for quite a few people." 

Great, so if you thought six million Americans losing their preferred health care insurance plans was a tragedy, what would you call 30 million more Americans who work for small businesses losing their health insurance? All this grief, aggravation and stress for a piece of legislation that has no chance of ever being successful along any dimension of measurement. Pitiful.

That will do it for today’s disasters. Higher costs, worst quality, massive disruption of peoples’ lives, the song carries on but never changes, And worst yet, we still have more Obama Care disasters to cover tomorrow.

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