Showing posts with label university of minnesota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university of minnesota. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

May, 2023, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Biden Lies Again, Americans Cannot Afford Their Medicine, Poverty is Still An American Embarrassment, and The University of Minnesota Is Racist

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 


Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:


1)It is funny how liberal politicians and liberals in the education field end up being the type of racist that they always seem to be accusing other people of doing. The latest example is at the taxpayer funded University of Minnesota:


  • The university recently announced that they are offering a research program that white students are forbidden to be a part of.

  • The program is called the Multicultural Summer Opportunities Program (MSROP) and is hailed as “an intensive 10-week summer program in which undergraduate students of color work full-time with a faculty mentor on a research project.”

  • Furthermore, this is not a nickel and dime operation: “Each participant will receive a $6,000 stipend for personal and research expenses. An additional research stipend is assigned to the faculty mentor for use by the student.”

  • But if you are a white student, I guess “white” is not a color, an applicant must “Identify as a Student of Color or Native American” with a specified goal “to prepare students of color and Native Americans for graduate school.”


So, if the University of Minnesota operated a program that only white people could apply for, left wing liberals and politicians would go ballistic. But operate a program for “people of color” only and it is fine. 


Additionally, this is obviously illegal from any number of state and federal laws that forbid racial discrimination. Bill Jacobson, president of the Equal Protection Project (EPP) summed up the insanity nicely: “The U. Minnesota segregated summer program is inexcusable, and it’s shocking that a major university would so openly make educational opportunities open only to students of a certain skin color. There is no good form of racial discrimination. Depriving white students of educational opportunities does not promote racial or any other form of justice.” Jacobson continued. “U. Minnesota’s conduct is inexcusable.”


State taxpayer tax money, much of which comes from white taxpayers, being used to discriminate against white students, strictly because of the color of their skin, how ironic, racist, and unfair.


2)We have often  discussed the reality of how millions of Americans are suffering today:


  • About  600,000 Americans are homeless.

  • Millions of Americans are constantly in danger of not being able to afford enough food for their families, given the high inflation era of the Biden era.

  • Millions of Americans are suffering from drug addiction, with over 100,000 Americans dying annually from overdosing on illegal drugs, something that has become so  much easier in light of Biden’s border failures that has allowed fentanyl tonnage to flood the country.


And yet, Washington politicians continue to waste untold billions of dollars every year with stupid government programs, ineffective government programs, and foreign aid that has no benefit for any American. For example, Biden and Washington have sent over $75 billion to the Ukranians to fight the Russians, much of which will never be used for the purposes intended.


Think about how some of that $75 billion being sent halfway around the world could be used in the following situation:


  • The Census Bureau recently announced that 10.9% of the 3,142 counties in the country have been experiencing “high poverty rates for an extended period.”

  • Additionally,  "Research suggests people living in high poverty areas experience significant barriers to well-being whether or not they're poor themselves," Bureau statisticians Craig Benson and Alemayehu Bishaw, as well as economist Brian Glassman wrote in their report. "The longer poverty exists in an area, the more likely the community lacks adequate infrastructure and support services." 

  • 80% of the counties were located in southern states.


Just another example of the American political class not caring about the needs of Americans, $75 billion being used far far away kind of says it all.


3)We have recently been talking about the economic failures of the Biden Presidency:


  • At one point, national inflation was running at a 40 year high.

  • While the inflation rate has come down, it is still running about twice what it was when Biden took over.

  • Home mortgage rates on average just broke though the 7% level, making about 80% of American households now being unable to afford to buy a house in the country.

  • Gas prices are about 50% higher than they were just two years ago.

  • Food prices are also much higher than they were before Biden came along.


Biden is causing economic hardships on millions of Americans. And the latest victim of his failed economic programs is the new reality that:


  • According to a recent study, about 20% of American senior citizens are being forced to skip or stretch their prescription medications due to high costs.

  • According to the lead researcher on the study, Stacie Dusetzina: "We also found that most respondents wanted to talk with their doctors about medication costs and would want their doctor to use tools to estimate their medication prices if they were available." 

  • Twenty percent of the study respondents said cost prevented them from  adhering to their prescribed medicine regumen.

  • Nine percent said they skimped on basic living needs to afford their medications and 5% said their high drug costs drove them into debt.


Billions of dollars for foreign wars, stupid government programs, and yet Americans are homeless, hungry, drug addicted, and not getting the meds they need, another political class failure.


4)We have often discussed the reality that Biden has been a compulsive liar many, many times in his political career. In fact, we recently put a post together that reviewed over three dozen times (not a comprehensive list) that Biden told an outright lie:


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2023/01/38-times-that-joe-biden-blatantly-lied.html


And he recently told a lie that he has told many times and just as many times has been proven untrue. He recently told some troops during a trip to Japan that his son, Beau, died in Iraq: “My son was a major in the US Army. We lost him in Iraq.” In reality, his son  died of brain cancer in 2015 in a hospital in Maryland.


His latest lie, in his own words, can  be viewed at:

https://www.thefirsttv.com/senile-joe-confused-biden-again-tells-troops-his-son-beau-died-in-iraq/


So today we learned that: Biden continues to lie, Americans are under stress with the high cost of drugs and medications, 10% of  U.S.  counties are still viewed as poverty stricken, and the University of Minnesota is just another racist entity.


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:


Sunday, June 29, 2014

June, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 3: Obama Care Increases Costs and the Number of Uninsured, Fining The Poor Becuase They Are Too Poor, and Rube Goldberg Would Be Proud

This is our third post in our regular monthly series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. We have been documenting this disaster for the past several years but over the past year or so we have had to go to multiple posts every month just to keep up with the waste, the lunacy, and failures of Obama Care.

The first post in this month’s updates can be accessed at:


Past posts can be found by just entering “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

1) One of the big promises of Obama Care and its supporters is that lower income people would see most of the benefits and little, if any, of the financial pain of the legislation’s tenets. However, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis and report, that is nothing more than another broken promise of this administration:
  • According to the analysis, about one million low-income Americans will pay a fine under Obama Care.
  • These one million Americans are among the estimated four million Americans who will need to pay the individual mandate penalty for not having health insurance by 2016 as a result of Obama Care: “All told, CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] JCT estimate that about four million people will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf). An estimated $4 billion will be collected from those who are uninsured in 2016, and, on average, an estimated $5 billion will be collected per year over the 2017–2024 period.”
  • A chart included in the report revealed that 200,000 of those estimated to be paying the Obama Care penalty will be earning less than 100 percent of the poverty line. 
  • An additional 800,000 Americans are considered low-income, earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, will also be paying Obama Care penalties
What makes this situation doubly ironic is 1) the President claimed that health care costs would go down $2,500 on average for American families, and now we are seeing poorer American families being financially penalized for not making enough money to afford health care insurance and 2) at one point Obama actually campaigned against this mandatory insurance coverage option back in 2008. This happened during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, because he realized the insanity of a mandate for imposing fines on people who could not afford health insurance to begin with.

Apparently, that view was just for the campaign since his signature piece of legislation, Obama Care, did exactly that, mandated poor Americans to pay a fine for not buying something they could not afford. Insanity.

2) In another illegal move by the Obama administration, it is again going against the schedule and requirements of passed legislation by allowing 18 states to continue delaying a key part of Obama Care’s health insurance exchange for small businesses, “employee choice.” This latest delay puts off this component of the legislation until 2016, if then.

Which raises the same question that has been raised any number of times after this administration unilaterally and arbitrarily delayed numerous pieces of this legislation: if the President thinks he can change approved legislation according to any whim that strikes him, then why are we still paying the 500 members of Congress? We apparently do not need them if their only function is to pass legislation that turns into mere suggestions, rather than law, and Obama does what he wants? Obama Care is not only the worst piece of legislation ever passed it is turning into the most lawless piece of legislation ever passed.

3) We have previously discussed the top line results of a recent University Of Minnesota study that concluded that health care costs will accelerate because of Obama Care and that there will actually be more uninsured Americans five or so years down the road then there are today as a result of Obama Care. 

I recently came across a more in depth discussion of that work by one of the analysis’s authors, Mr. Parente, who is an associate dean of the Carlson School of Management and director of the Medical Industry Leadership at the University of Minnesota. Highlights of his analysis and what drives his conclusions include the following:
  • Health-insurance companies who deal with Obama Care policies are expected to soon begin releasing insurance policy rate estimates for next year's plans, with most industry experts expecting consumers to experience far significantly higher premiums. 
  • It is not expected by that Federal subsidies will increase by the same amount to keep current Obama Care policy holders financially whole, meaning that those policy holders will experience higher out of pocket costs in 2015.
  • If this happens, both in 2015 and in the follwing years as expected, lower-income and some middle-income consumers will be forced out of the private insurance market, viewing the expense as more and more unaffordable.
  • Using the 2014 health-insurance exchange enrollment data and a micro-simulation model funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Parente estimated the national and state impact of Obama Care on insurance prices and enrollment from 2015-24 to illustrate this phenomenon.
  • The average premium for an individual exchange health plan (Silver) will increase by $1,375 by 2019 while the average family premium for the same plan will increase by $4,198. 
  • The steepest price increases will not occur until 2017 and after, when three things happen.
  • First, Obama Care‘s "essential benefits" requirements will kick in. All Obama Care insurance plans, including those currently exempted for hardship and old plans extended for various reasons, must provide all of the law's mandated benefits from January 1, 2017. On average, roughly 15% of plans offered in 2013 do not qualify for sale on the insurance exchanges once all of the time extensions run out. Depending on the state, as many as 60% of the plans sold in 2013 would not be permitted for sale going forward since they do not cover all of the essential and mandated benefits, forcing people to buy more expensive plans or drop health insurance altogether..
  • Second, Obama Care’s program to subsidize those insurance companies that provide Obama Care policies will also expire in 2017, i.e. the bailouts end in 2017. 
  • Other insurance companies subsidies also end in 2017. For example, health insurers will no longer be able to bill the government for 80% of a patient's health-care costs when they make more than $45,000 in annual claims. As all of these subsidies end, the insurance companies are highly likely to pass the now unsubsidized costs unto their policy holders, further increasing the cost of Obama Care policies, leaving consumers to pick up the tab through premium payments. Federal subsidies will be unable to keep up with such dramatic rate spikes. 
  • Faced with all of these upward cost pressures, consumers will react the only way they know how: by looking for cheaper options such as the remaining high-deductible health plans offered by private companies and the exchanges as well as plans with very limited physician and hospital networks established to maximize efficiency but not quality care for the average patient. These plans are likely to provide no or limited access to specialized facilities and physicians. 
  • And finally, rising premiums will create a death spiral exodus from insurance plans, with increasing departures forcing insurance companies to raise premiums even more on the remaining customers to make up for the shortfall which will drive out more customers from Obama Care plans, etc. 
  • And these disasters and death spirals exclude what might happen with employer provided health insurance plans. It is expected that many businesses will find it less expensive to drop their company insurance plans and pay the Obama Care fines, forcing millions (the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the ACA will lead to a seven-million person decline in insurance provided by employers by 2020) of Americans to find health insurance coverage on the individual market at the same time that individual market insurance policy costs are spiraling upwards.
This leaves the newly uninsured with two options: If they qualify by their income, sign up for Medicaid or stay uninsured and face a penalty. Many will choose the first option but that will cover a relatively minor set of uninsured Americans since those people exceed the income limits of Medicaid. 

Whatever these millions of Americans do, there will be a significant number of uninsured Americans unwilling or unable to pay for the constantly increasing cost for health insurance available on the exchanges and forced to pay penalties. By 2024, the authors of this analysis and research estimate that there will be more than 40 million uninsured, roughly 10% more than today.

Thus, here we have another well researched and thought out piece of analysis that shows again that Obama Care will do the exact opposite of what it set out to do: rather than decreasing the cost of health insurance and making health insurance affordable for millions of Americans, it will make health insurance more and more unaffordable for every American and eventually result in a net gain of uninsured Americans when it was supposed to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

4) One last piece of bad news today to chew on about Obama Care. The original legislation is supposed to be about 2,500 pages long. The number of pages of regulations that were created to implement the law is reported to be well over 10,000 pages. As we have said many times before, there is nothing elegant about this legislation. It is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that is so complicated it will eventually collapse and implode into itself from its own complexity and idiocy.

Someone actually tried to flowchart the actual information and process flows of Obama Care. This is legitimately what they came up with:











No way something this complicated has any chance of ever succeeding, especially if the Washington political class and Federal government bureaucracy are operating the levers.

Based on this flowchart, one of my favorite sayings comes to mind: “Try to pare things down, Very few moves to a lot.” It looks like Obama Care got this wisdom backwards, like it got everything else backwards: “Never pare things down. A lot of moves, spread over 2,500, pages accomplishes very little." 

We will finish up our latest Obama Care analyses tomorrow. As you read through these posts it becomes very clear that we have been right all along. We have always maintained that the legislation never went after the root causes of our escalating health care problems, a view we will explore tomorrow using some very interesting data and research. 

Because at the end of the day, regardless of what Obama Care does, Americans will still be overweight, they will still eat too much of the wrong kind of foods, they will not exercise enough, and they will still smoke too much. Those and a few other factors are the drivers behind our escalating health care costs, not whether or not someone has a bronze insurance plan from Obama Care. Obama Care will never succeed since it never understood the root causes of the problem, mistaking a public health crisis for a health insurance coverage crisis.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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




Friday, June 27, 2014

June, 2014, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 2: Higher Costs Continue, Another State Exchange Bites The Dust, and More

This is our second post in this month’s update series of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. For years and especially the past nine months, we have done a monthly review of all the idiocy, costs, an d ineffectiveness of the legislation known as Obama Care. It is a piece of legislation that was supposed to lower health care costs in this country but in general has caused health care costs to spike upward while destroying many of the good assets of the health care industry in this country. 

To review past discussions of this disastrous legislation just browse the menu on the right side of this page of put the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. The following news articles and analyses are just the most recent findings and unintended bad consequences of the worst piece of legislation ever written.

1) A recent study by the Manhattan Institute found that Obama Care will actually increase the cost of health insurance more expensive rather than less expensive in this country: 
  • Obama Care will increase the underlying health insurance premiums by 41% on average. 
  • The greatest increases will be for young healthy males who are the guinea pigs for subsidizing others who are generally older and sicker than young healthy males.
  • Obama Care subsidizes will primarily benefit those nearing retirement, another indication that younger Americans are being used to subsidize the health care of older Americans, an age group that is usually wealthier than younger people just starting out in life and their careers.
  • Overall, 41 states plus D.C. will experience health insurance premium rate increases. 
  • According to Forbes, commenting on this Manhattan Institute analysis, “This nearly-complete analysis finds that the average state will face underlying premium increases of 41 percent. Men will face the steepest increases: 77, 37, and 47 percent for 27-year-olds, 40-year-olds, and 64-year-olds, respectively. Women will also face increases, but to a lesser degree: 18%, 28%, and 37% for 27-, 40-, and 64-year-olds.”
  • In addition, the eight states that will experience the largest premium increases are southern and western states: Nevada (179 percent increase), New Mexico (142 percent increase), Arkansas (138 percent increase), North Carolina (136 percent increase), Vermont (117 percent increase), Georgia (92 percent increase), Dakota (77 percent increase) and Nebraska (74 percent increase).
Thus, another third party analysis of reality, confirming what we have pointed out previously from other third part, impartial analyses, Obama Care is doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, it is raising and not lowering the cost of health care and health insurance in this country. This is a far throw from what the President promised, I.e. that the average family would see an average $2,500 reduction in their annual health care insurance premiums.

2) But some people would correctly point out that the above mentioned analysis did not take into count the Federal government subsidies that the legislation provides to lower income Americans. For that point of view, consider the following graph from an analysis done by Forbes:











The Forbes analysis came to similar conclusions:
  • For those Americans aged 27, Obama Care will raise their health insurance premiums 52% on average for males (going from $133 a month to $201 a month) and 22% for females.
  • This is to be expected since the Obama Care legislation is based on forcing younger Americans to pay more for insurance they are far less likely to need to subsidize older and sicker Americans who are much more likely to need health care and insurance.
  • Once the Federal subsidies are figured in for those that are eligible, the increase for 27 year old males is still a whopping 41% while the female cost actually goes down a little by 5%.
In no case to we come close to the Obama promise of a $2,500 a year decrease in health insurance premiums.

3) Let's stay with this increasing of health insurance premiums trend by reviewing once again a recent University of Minnesota analysis of what impact the legislation will have on consumer costs. Although we have discussed the findings in previous posts, it is worthwhile going over them again since this is a third analysis that proves again what we just proved above, namely that Obama Care is a cost increaser and not a cost decreaser.

The University of Minnesota analysis forecasted the insurance cost increases at the national level and in 10 key states into the future:
  • The Annual Cost Of An Obama Care Individual Exchange Health Plan Will Increase $1,375 Within 5 Years.
  • The Annual Cost Of A Family Obama Care Exchange Health Plan Will Increase $4,198 Within 5 Years. 
  • The Largest Cost Increase For An Obama Care Individual Exchange Health Plan ($1,677) Within 5 Years Will Be In New Hampshire.
  • At The National Level, 489,000 MORE Individuals Will Be Uninsured Within The Next 5 Years compared top when the legislation was enacted.
Only in Washington can you pass legislation that is supposed to dramatically reduce costs and get more people health insurance and end up with dramatically higher costs and fewer people covered by health insurance, at least according to the University of Minnesota study, and many other scholarly analyses.

4) According to a recent Associated Press news report, the bureaucracy of managing and administering the entire Obama Care process is still really screwed up:
  • At least 2 million newly Obama Care insured Americans are at risk since of being in trouble with the IRS and law according to a recent government report.
  • Government officials determined data from Obama Care application forms do not match what was in other government records, which could affect how much consumers pay for their health plans or if they are even legally eligible for benefits and Obama Care subsidies.
  • And this estimate could actually be too low, meaning that millions of Americans may not be eligible for the subsidies they are receiving.
  • That would make them liable for repaying those subsidies at tax time next year or be prosecuted for perjury if they intentionally put misleading information on their Obama Care applications.
  • This is worst news than what government officials told The Washington post a few months ago that more than 1 million of those enrolled in Obama Care plans may have received incorrect subsidies, and that the government was unable to fully fix the errors. 
  • And it gets worse since a recent survey done by Roll Call reported that, based on its 50-state survey, at least 2.9 million Americans who signed up for Medicaid as part of the Obama Care enrollment process STILL have not had their applications processed, many of which are over six months old. 
What a mess and what a disgrace. Three years lead time and billions of dollars spent and still the political class and Federal government could not get it right, from an embarrassingly bad website design that failed immediately to paying out taxpayer wealth to millions of people who may not deserve it under the legislation’s guidelines to still not being able to process peoples’ applications six months or more after they were submitted. I am not sure you could have done a worse job of implementation if you were trying to screw it up.

5) One last disaster from Obama Care for today, as if the first four were not enough. After spending about $130 million to build a faulty website, Maryland state government officials decided to flush good money after bad and voted to spend $43.5 million more to transition the state’s health insurance exchange site to new technology that is supposed to fix the original enrollment snafus.

According to the Associated Press, the additional funding includes a $29.3 million, five-year contract with Xerox to host this new technology that has already been used in Connecticut’s health exchange Obama Care. Another $14.2 million, three-year contract was approved for Deloitte to handle software licensing, whatever that means.

Fortunately, Maryland officials claim that more Federal money will not be requested to fix the botched website process. Which is only right since the American taxpayer had already given the state of Maryland received $180 million to fund its botched Obama Care health insurance exchange.

That will do it for today, more disasters to follow and review tomorrow. Through all of these realities and analyses a few things become crystal clear:
  1. The Federal government and the political class that operate it are totally inept when it comes to implementing anything of any magnitude. Obama Care and the latest scandal in the Veterans Administration and its poor health care treatment of veterans are just two examples of this principle of incompetence.
  2. The unintended consequences of the legislation are far more devastating then if nothing had been done, e.g. higher insurance costs, less freedom, lower health care quality and coverage, etc.
More of the same tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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