Love My Country, Loathe My Government: vermont

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Wednesday, January 4, 2023

January, 2023, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Another Defunding The Police Disaster, More Congressional Insider Trading, and More Foreign Aid While Americans Suffer

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1)As we have discussed, there are a lot of suffering Americans in the country today:

At any one time there are anywhere from 500,000 to 600,000 homeless Americans roaming the streets of the country.
In this time of high inflation, there are millions of American families struggling to feed their families.
The death rate from drug addiction is skyrocketing in this country as Biden has opened the southern border and allowed a flood of cheap fentanyl to come into the country.

And yet despite the suffering, and deaths, of millions of Americans, where has Waashington decided to send billions of tax dollars? To Africa to combat climate change:

The Biden administration is sending $8 billion to Africa to encourage those countries to shut down their coal burning plants.
Even if you think that man-made climate change is a real thing, wouldn't it be a kinder, more humane use of $8 billion to shelter, feed, and provide drug addiction treatment for Americans in need today instead of wasting money on a problem that may or may not exist decades in the future?
That $8 billion could provide about 2.7 billion meals to hungry Amerians, or about 4500 meals for the current homeless population in the country, or three meals a day for that population for about four years, certainly a better, more humane, and more immediate benefit than sending $8 billion overseas chasing climate change.

Oh, by the way, that $8 billion pales when you consider that the Biden administration has already sent $68 billion to Ukraine in their battle against the invading Russians. That $68 billion could feed, shelter, and treat a lot of suffering Americans.

2)We have talked about how the inane “defunding the police” effort has resulted in skyrocketing crime and violence in major U.S. cities such as NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere. But it is not just big cities where this stupidity has resulted in increased crime:

Burlington is the biggest city in Vermont even though it only has about 44,000 residents, a fraction of the population of other big cities.
Over the past few years, the politicians in the city decided, incorrectly, that defunding their police force was a good idea.
Now, the crime rate in the city is at its highest rate in about 60 years.
And within that escalating crime wave is a rising rate of murders.
The crime statistics include five murders and 18 other non-fatal shootings, which is a lot for a city with only 44,000 residents.
In 2020, the city’s politicians cut the funding for the city’s police force by about 30%, going from 105 police officers to 74.
The funding taken away from law enforcement went into so-called “racial justice” programs.
Obviously, those programs are not working if the crime rate has reached a 60 year high.
But this should not be a surprise since the police force warned that such a drastic cut would result in increased crime but the city politicians did not listen and the residents of the city are paying the price.

We have often pointed out that a basic, fundamental function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens it is responsible for. Obviously, the politicians in Burlington are falling down on executing that basic government function.

3)The STOCK Act, passed by Congress a number of years ago was supposed to punish Congressional members and their staff members who indulge in insider trading. Obviously, people in Washington get access to all sorts of secret, undisclosed information that is invaluable from a personal investing perspective.

The STOCK was supposed to stop such insider trading, actions that get ordinary, and famous people like Martha Stewart, thrown in jail. But after the act was passed, with much fanfare, Congress eventually gutted the consequences of such actions. This allowed Washington insiders to commence insider trading activities with very little financial penalty, or jail time, if they got caught. In other words, the upside financial gain by insiders far outweighed the consequences if they got caught.

As an example:

A recent analysis by the Insider news publication found that at least 77 members of Congress failed to report their financial trades and transactions as required by the STOCK Act.
This is about 15% of the sitting members of Congress and does not include those additional members that did not get caught.
Excuses by Washington politicians for not complying with the law would make a fourth grader proud including clerical errors, accounting mistakes, and some even claiming they were not aware of the law.
Obviously, if the IRS was investigating us for insider trading, none of those excuses would keep us out of jail.
These 77 members of Congress could face fines totaling hundreds of dollars while their insider trading may have gotten many times more than this puny fine process.
After ten years, not a single member of Congress has faced any serious ramifications from their obviously illegal stock and insider trading deeds.

One of the very few things that American politicians do well is that old saying: “Do as I say, not as I do.” And that trait has made many, many members of Congress, very, very rich.

That will do it for today: the hypocrisy of Washington insider trading, sending billions of our tax dollars overseas while millions of Americans suffer, and another example why defunding the police was a stupid idea from day one.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

August, 2019, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Payer Health Care Systems Around the World, Continued

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four posts ago we reviewed the many, many failures and disasters of Obama Care, probably the worst piece of legislation ever passed when it comes to comparing it to its objectives and its promises. This was the Federal government’s most recent and deepest attempt to try and control the healthcare of Americans and it has ended badly.

In our previous three posts, we showed the numbers and realities around the world of how single payer healthcare systems always fail to provide effective and efficient health care to its citizens. Despite these realities, many Democratic candidates for President want to implement a failed system like this in this country. Today we will continue that discussion of failed single payer healthcare systems from other countries, further proof that this approach to healthcare is a bad, bad idea.

We continue that discussion today, the failures of the single payer healthcare model:

1) Let’s start up in Canada today. The Fraser Institute has completed a research report on the Canadian healthcare system called, "Waiting Your Turn." It found that:

A Canadian citizen has to wait about 18.2 weeks on average to see a specialist doctor in Canada if they need specific medical care, i.e. more than four months.
This average wait time of 18.2 weeks up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, i.e. the wait times are getting far worse over time.
And this is the median average amount of wait time, which means half of those Canadians needing specific medical help wait more than four months to see a health care specialist
Canada "rations" healthcare through long waiting times and limited access, according to Dr. Roger Stark, a healthcare policy expert at the Washington Policy Center who told The Heartland Institute: "These long waits would not be acceptable to Americans, who are rightly accustomed to timely healthcare."
And the wait times vary significantly across Canada with the New Brunswick median wait time being 37.3 weeks, (an astonishing nine months plus) to Ontario where the median wait time is 14.1 weeks, still over three months.
Wait times also vary greatly according to what type of specialist you need to see with the median wait time for orthopedic surgery being 42.2 weeks, neurology patients median wait time is an average of 31.2 weeks, and the wait for radiation oncology is 4.2 weeks.
Think about this last statement: if you are fighting cancer, on average you have to wait over a month to get radiation treatment, four weeks where your cancer continues to spread.
Canadians are waiting 3.8 weeks for a CT scan, 8.7 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.3 weeks for an ultrasound.
Extensive wait times can have serious consequences, Fraser report co-author Bacchus Barua points out: "For example, they may force some patients to endure months of physical pain and mental anguish, they may result in lower worker productivity and [forgone] wages, they can sometimes result in a potentially treatable illness being transformed into a debilitating permanent condition, and in the worst cases, they may result in death."
Barua goes on to claim that the extensive wait times are not due to lack of funding and resources since Canadian healthcare expenditures per person have gone up by 50%, adjusting for inflation, since 1993.
Thus, he claims the likely underlying causes of these gross waiting times are the government monopoly on the financing and delivery of medical services and the lack of appropriate incentives for providers.
"This is indirect rationing," said Dr. Dale Dunn, a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute. "Almost 30 years ago I started seeing doctors leaving Canada because they were disgusted with the system because it prevented them from treating patients."

Steadily increasing costs for steadily decreasing quality, a fatal combination in many cases.

2) Despite these blatant disasters of the single payer model around the world, our politicians continue to ignore reality and continue to push for a single payer system in this country:

The New York State Assembly's Health Committee actually held a hearing on a proposed legislative bill to adopt single-payer healthcare in the state of New York, proving again there is no cure for stupid.
Bernie Sanders’ single payer proposal for us is estimated to cost $32 TRILLION just in the first ten years.
This would be about $3.2 TRILLION a year, equal about 80% of the entire Federal government budget today.
This $32 TRILLION would require an annual average tax increase of $24,000 for every American household.
The state of Vermont looked at a single payer system for their state in 2014 and gave up when the estimated costs would require a state tax increase of 160%, about $27,500 per Vermont household per year.
In California, the estimated cost of their entry into a single payer system was a whopping $440 billion a year, a sum greater than the entire state government budget.
The $440 billion came out to a per household annual cost of $26,500.
As we discussed in yesterday’s post, in Canada, a country that has had a single payer system for a long time, a whopping three quarters of Canadians also see fit to purchase supplemental health insurance to cover prescription drugs, ambulance costs, dentistry, and other services not fully covered by the single payer system, which kind of defeats the whole concept of a single payer system which is supposed to cover “all” medical costs.
And even if a liberal thinks these astronomical costs are manageable, keep in mind that no government program has ever come in under budget so the $32 TRILLION estimate is probably too low by orders of magnitude.

Astronomical costs for low quality healthcare, rife with long wait times for treatment, again, a fatal combination. More single payer failures to follow.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Monday, April 20, 2015

Hate Week, Part 4: Liars, Idiots, and All Men Should Die

Over the past week or so a number of potential Presidential candidates have come forward to throw their hats in the ring for the 2016 Presidential elections. Which means that the hateful hollering and yelling and name calling has started already, something that will go on for at least the next year and a half. And likely intensify and dehumanize as we get closer to the election.

Unfortunately, mature and adult political debate has disappeared a long time ago. Instead, we are stuck with a version of political divisiveness that was first explained by George Orwell in his novel, 1984:

"This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

This was the original quote. It does not take too much imagination to get from this Orwell view of oppression to today's divisive political environment to get to the following edited version by simply changing just a few words:

"This is not to say that either the conduct of politics, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, politics is continuous and universal in all parts of the country, and such acts as name calling, personal degradation, accusations of unpatriotism, sexual degradation, verbal assaults, the reduction of whole groups of fellow citizens with opposing views to idiocy and reprisals against common Americans with opposing views, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

Rather than lead and fix the problems facing the country, today's politicians only know a scorched earth approach to life and serving the country, worried only about their own careers and self enrichment, the good of the country and the citizens be damned. It does not matter if you have good ideas and principles, the only thing that matters is to eviscerate your opponents with lies, deceptions, innuendos, and nasty trash talking.

As a result, we never resolve any of the major issues in this country. Political dialog is venomous and divides Americans into separate camps and tribes, shutting down all hope of compromise and progress. And this is exactly what the political class wants. We fight each other while they continue to enrich themselves and their political donors, destroying our economy, freedoms, and civility in the process.

So for the past week or so we are calling out the haters, both the political ones and their respective allies in the media who are all too eager to join in the slander, mudslinging, and hate. Until we stop yelling at each other and start holding politicians accountable for adult behavior and adult leadership, we will continue to be stuck with the sad state of the nation that we have allowed the political class to create where it seems that they are the only ones who are doing well.

We started this "hate week" off with two previous posts we have written in the past. Today and the previous two posts got into the most recent instances of hate and call out the haters for the divisions they have driven into Americans.

1) If you are going to stoop so low as to call someone a liar, you should have the facts straight on your side of the argument. Otherwise, you look like an idiot...or U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. The good Senator from Vermont recently spouted out a little hate relative to Social Security: “When people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they’re not telling you the truth. Today, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.8 trillion surplus,” Sanders said. “So when people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they're not telling you the truth.”

So if you do not believe the Senator, you are a liar. But his statement clearly shows his ignorance when it comes to basic accounting relative to Social Security. There is no pile of gold, Google stock shares, oil rigs, or pile of cash anywhere that is owned by the Social Security Administration that is worth $2.8 TRILLION. Does not exist, has not existed for about fifty years.

Since the Johnson administration, the Federal government and the Washington politicians that operate it have taken the taxes paid under the Social Security laws and used it to pay for other government operations. After raiding that wealth, they left behind an IOU note saying that the Federal government owed the Social Security administration trillions of dollars. Trust me,those notes are not worth the paper they might have been written on, never mind being worth $2.8 TRILLION.

But the Federal government does not have a pile of gold, Google stocks, etc.since they spent that wealth long ago. Instead, they tax Americans more to make up for the robbery and transfer those additional taxes to pay social security benefits. It is a pay, and tax, as you go process, there is no surplus fund. In fact, the Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in taxes and paid out $773.247 for benefits and overhead expenses, according to published by Social Security Administration.

So you are a liar if you understand basic accounting and reality and you are a name calling Senator if you do not understand.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/sen-bernie-sanders-when-people-tell-you-social-security-going-broke-tell-them?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=n-sanders-social-security

2) Josh Earnest is Obama’s press secretary. He even got into the hate act recently relative to the fight over whether to confirm Loretta Lynch as the new Attorney General.

Reacting to a comment by Iowa Senator Grassley, Earnest said: “That in my mind is an astounding display of duplicity. It’s possible that Senator Grassley has been in Washington too long.” Ah, the old hate argument that if you do not agree with me you are wrong and maybe you need to go home. Given that a lot of Americans voted for Senator Grassley to represent them in Washington, maybe Earnest is the one that needs to go home, no one voted for him.

But it gets better. When asked if his condescending attitude was helpful to getting Lynch confirmed, he expanded his condescension to all Republicans: “I’ll just observe….that being nice has gotten us a 160 day delay. Maybe after they look up ‘duplicitous’ in the dictionary, we'll get a different result.” Did not know that Mr. Earnest was so much smarter than all Republicans, using big words that his political rivals have to reach for a dictionary to understand. Such condescension, such hate, such immature rhetoric from a press secretary no less, and not a good one at that.

3) One more piece of hate and venom for today. A Democrat activist who sits on two national Democratic party committees has been suspended from her regional party after a string of nasty sexist comments on social media. Sarah Noble made some pretty disgusting and multiple tweets on Twitter, including “kill all men”, “f**k men”, and “die cis[gendered] scum:”

Ms. Noble sits on the national committees of the LGBT Liberal Democrats and the Secular & Humanist Liberal Democrats. She has also been elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Students’ LGBT wing, which, like the LGBT Lib Dems, has a zero-tolerance attitude towards hate speech. Doe not seem like a good way to make friends and influence people relative to your issues and passions: kill, f**k, die. That will certainly make people sit up and take notice of what you are fighting for. Not. Pathetic.

That will do it for today. A U.S. Senator is not only too stupid to understand Social Security but goes out and calls those that disagree with his incorrect version of reality liars, a lowly press secretary calls the majority of U.S. Senators too stupid to understand a big word he used, and a Democratic activist that wants half of the world’s population to die or get f**ked.

Are we starting to see why nothing ever gets accomplished in American politics any more? Tough to sit down and have adult conversations when the person across the table calls you a liar, stupid or desires your death.

That will do it for the hate examples that we have discussed over the past four days. We will summarize all of those posts tomorrow and provide a warning of what is really going on behind the hatred and why we are done as a democracy unless we change the habits, attitudes , and integrity of those that infest our political processes today.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

February, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Less Competition, Less Privacy, More Personal Agony

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced off of their current and preferred health insurance policies. Millions have lost access to their preferred doctors. Millions have lost access to their preferred hospitals. Millions are paying higher premiums and deductibles than before. Over a trillion dollars will be added to the national debt. Unemployment and underemployment has been made worse because of the law’s criteria. Economic growth has been stifled. Millions of Americans are now at a much higher threat of identity theft as a result of the poor data system processes of the law. Many Americans now have health insurance, at a higher cost, but are having trouble getting access to health care as doctors are retiring earlier as a result of the law and many doctors are not accepting the lower payments they will receive from Obama Care insurance customers. And after tens years, there will likely still be tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage despite the purported objective of Obama Care.

And as we have pointed out dozens and dozens of times, the legislation will never be successful because it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs in this country. Obama put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem:

Americans eat too much.
Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans drink too much alcohol.
Americans do not exercise enough.
America’s food chain is infected and infested with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
America is aging making citizens much more likely to be victims of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers.
Medical practice tort reform is needed nationally and has been shown to work at the state level.
Cross state border insurance company competition needs to be encouraged.
The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via Medicare and Medicaid through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud, money that could be used to make America healthier, not criminals wealthier.

In the face if these ten root causes, Obama chose to ignore all of them and put n place a Rube Goldberg like government bureaucracy that has no chance of succeeding. To prove this point, let’s take a couple of days and look at the latest unfolding disasters being spawned by Obama Care:

1) The implementation of the Obama Care program was one of the worst data systems rollout disasters in the history of the country. Systems locked up, systems failed, systems lost personal information, the data security processes were called an identity thief’s paradise, a total disaster and embarrassment. Even more of an embarrassment in that the Obama administration had over three years and spent at least hundreds of millions of dollars preparing for the rollout.

One of the main culprits in the mega failure was a company called CGI Federal. CGI Federal was fired in the midst of the implosion of the Obama Care rollout and replaced with other companies who were at least able to get something up and running even if it was pathetic. CGI Federal was paid millions of taxpayer dollars before being shown the door after really delivering nothing of value in return.

But as the Washington political class and Federal government often do, they add insult to injury relative to taxpayer wealth. Merely seven months after CGI was fired from the Obama Care effort in the Department of Health and Human Services, the IRS rehired the company to help manage the enforcement of the Obama Care tax program. Unbelievable, a company so flawed is rehired less than a year later. Even worse, the company is set to receive $4.5 million on its new IRS contract that runs only until August, 2015.

An attorney, Scott Amey, for the nonprofit government watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, called the company the “poster child for government failure.” He want on to say: “I am shocked that the IRS has turned around and is using them for Obamacare IT work.”

But failure seems to be synonymous with this company. It failed to deliver on its promises relative to Obama Care in Vermont and Massachusetts on their exchange websites. According to the Daily Caller reporting, the Massachusetts site never ended being operational and yet cost taxpayers $170 million that was paid to CGI.

Back to the old Einstein saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, the Federal government uses this as a rule rather than the exception.

2) One of the real and large fears of the Obama Care data systems failures was and is the reality the systems’ security measures were not good enough to prevent massive identity theft impossible. However, as it turns out, identity theft from criminals is not the only threat to personal information that Americans may have entered into the Obama Care data systems.

It turns out that the Federal government itself is secretly sending consumers’ personal data out to private companies that are involved in advertising and marketing, according to a recent Associated Press report. According to the AP, information being shared with private firms could include age, income, zipcode, whether or not the person is a smoker, and whether the person is pregnant. It can also include a person’s computer Internet address, which apparently sophisticated marketers can eventually translate into a person’s name and address.

Apparently, this type of personal information is being sent not just to a few companies but to dozens of third party marketing and data analysis firms. While the administration has guaranteed that the information is not being abused and is used only to make the Obama Care data systems operations more efficient, this the same organization that guaranteed that if you like your current insurance policy, you can keep it, if you like your current doctors, you can keep them, that the Obama Care exchange process would be simple and easy, that Obama Care would not add one dime to the national debt, all of which turned out to be bogus guarantees, if not outright lies.

3) Speaking of Obama Care and Presidential lies, deceptions, and false guarantees, let’s go back in time a few years to 2009 and review another Obama promise, namely that the Obama Care legislation would set up health care exchanges that had a robust set of competitors in each exchange to drive down the cost of health care insurance:

We’ll…[create] a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.

Sounds great, turns out to be bogus, also like most other Obama promises and ideals that have failed relative to the law. Alyene Senger, writing for the Heritage Foundation on January 16, 2015, pointed out how this promise has fallen flat relative to competition and driving down costs:

Her analysis is based on data taken directly from Health and Human Services government reports and from state exchange data sources.
She examined how many insurance companies were actively present in each U.S. county prior to the implementation of Obama Care and how many are present now and actively involved in offering healthcare insurance in each county.
She found that there is over 20% LESS competition now than prior to the law being enacted, the direct opposite of what Obama promised.
In one third of all the counties in the country, there are only one, or at most two, companies offering insurance plans in the Obama Care health care exchanges, hardly a robust competition situation.
In some states such as Kansas and Wyoming, EVERY county has only two competitors in the exchanges from which to choose from.
In some states such as Iowa, South Dakota, Arkansas and others, every county has no more than three competitors. So much for the Obama promise that insurance companies will have the incentive to take part in the exchanges.
In a whopping 58% of all U.S. counties, there are no more than three competitors’ plans from which to choose.
While there are 14 insurance companies competing in Texas, more than half of the counties have three or fewer companies competing within their borders.
And while the Heritage Foundation article acknowledges there has been some improvement in 2015 vs. 2014 regarding competition, its analysis does show that competition was still more robust BEFORE Obama Care and took effect.
Thus, fewer competitors and fewer choices within those competitors since Obama Care tenets strictly dictate a limited set of different insurance options makes for a much less attractive and affordable set of policies than prior to Obama Care.
The article does not cover the reality that by 2017, Federal subsidies to insurance companies in the Obama Care exchanges will be terminated, a situation that will in all likelihood further reduce the number of competitors since the one incentive for remaining, Federal subsidies, will be gone.

The county by county analysis is illustrated below:

4) We will wrap up each Obama Care disaster post this week with real stories coming from real Americans who have seen their lives seriously disrupted by the legislation. Their stories and the stories of many like them can be accessed at the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestoires.com
PAM - MAINE As President Obama reached out Thursday to millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices from their health insurers, Pam Pultz waited to see what the latest twist in the health reform law will mean for her.Pultz, who owns an Agway store in Dover-Foxcroft, buys her own health insurance through Anthem. The plan suits her needs and she wants to keep it, but she said she has been told to expect a cancellation notice by the end of the month because her $14,000 deductible is too high to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

“My fear is I’m going to lose something that I bought and paid for and shopped for,” Pultz said. “I’m not doing anything wrong, and I’m being penalized.”DAN - OREGON I am a Durable Medical Equipment specialist and after 15 years of helping people with medical equipment, I am now unemployed and buying my own insurance which costs me 10 times what I paid previously. Obamacare has ended my career and my affordable health insurance. [Note: I am assuming that Dan worked in the medical device field, a field that has seen thousands of Americans laid off from their jobs as a result of the medical device taxes embedded within the Obama Care legislation.]

KENT - NEBRASKA We had our long time blue cross policy cancelled because it was not good enough for O'bama care. The policy we got offered cost us 25% more premium and increased our deductible from 5000.00 year put of pocket to 12,500.00 out of pocket. It had to include crap like birth control and maternity which 50 year old people do not need. To apply for a subsidy we had to give out all of our personal financial data to lord we do not even know who.So today’s disasters include the fact that the company that bungled the whole Obama Care exchange data systems rollout was actually rehired to track down Americans who owe Obama Care taxes, we learned that not only do identity theft hackers likely have access to your personal information, the government’s Obama Care data processes are actually giving out that information to dozens of third party, private companies for them to exploit at our expense, Obama’s promise of robust insurance company competition in the exchanges has fallen apart, and three more Americans shared their personal stories on how Obama Care has screwed up their lives. Sounds about right for this very bad piece of legislation. 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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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

Friday, February 6, 2015

February, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster Of Obama Care: Vermont Single Payer Fail, Iowa Co-Op Fail and Personal Stories of Hardship

For over a year we have had to dedicate multiple posts each month to cover the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. If you follow all of the disasters from this legislation that we have discussed, you cannot help but conclude that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced off of their current and preferred health insurance policies. Millions have lost access to their preferred doctors. Millions have lost access to their preferred hospitals. Millions are paying higher premiums and deductibles than before. Over a trillion dollars will be added to the national debt. Unemployment and underemployment has been made worse because of the law’s criteria. Economic growth has been stifled. Millions of Americans are now at a much higher threat of identity theft as a result of the poor data system processes of the law. Many Americans now have health insurance, at a higher cost, but are having trouble getting access to health care as doctors are retiring earlier as a result of the law and many doctors are not accepting the lower payments they will receive from Obama Care insurance customers. And after ten years, there will likely still be tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage despite the purported universal coverage objective of Obama Care.

And as we have pointed out dozens and dozens of times, the legislation will never be successful because it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs in this country. Obama put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem:

Americans eat too much.
Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
Americans smoke too much.
Americans drink too much alcohol.
Americans do not exercise enough.
America’s food chain is infected and infested with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
America is aging making citizens much more likely to be victims of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers.
Medical practice tort reform is needed nationally and has been shown to work at the state level.
Cross state border insurance company competition needs to be encouraged.
The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via Medicare and Medicaid through waste, efficiencies, and outright criminal fraud, money that could be used to make America healthier, not criminals wealthier.

In the face if these ten root causes, Obama chose to ignore all of them and put in place a Rube Goldberg like government bureaucracy that has no chance of succeeding. To prove this point, let's take a few of days and look at the latest unfolding disasters being spawned by Obama Care:

1) The Heritage Foundation website recently ran an article by Clay Masters on how a much hyped Obama Care health insurance start up went belly up recently in Iowa. ObamaCare legislation set aside funding to create health care co-ops organizations to compete for Obama Care customers in areas of the country where there were not many insurance companies operating. CoOportunity was one such organization that was established in Iowa.

CoOportunity was the second largest co-op in the country in terms of memberships and policies and one of the largest in terms of the Federal government spending it received. Thus, things started out well for the effort, a lot of customers and a lot of Federal taxpayer money.

Yet, the co-op failed recently and relatively quickly for a number of reasons:

The co-op paid out much more in medical bills than it had planned for.
The reasons for this higher than expected payout is that their customer base was not only larger than anticipated but also sicker than planned for.
Part of the reason for their sickly customer base is because the largest insurer in Iowa, Wellmark, decided not to participate in Obama Care in the state of Iowa.
This left Iowa residents with pre-existing conditions and higher chance of health care needs no other choices except CoOportunity and Coventry to get health insurance from since they were the only two options for insurance in Iowa under Obama Care.
Thus, while CoOportunity thought they would sign up about 12,000 customers, they ended up getting overwhelmed with tens times as many, many of whom needed high health care help and resources.
Also, the co-op thought that Federal funding support would be extended beyond the initial investment but were recently told by the Federal government that there would be no more funding available to them.

The state government has temporarily taken over the co-op but is strongly advising remaining customers to find other healthcare insurance alternatives. That left state insurance commissioner Nick Gerhart to wonder if any of the Obama Care co-ops are viable financially, especially since CoOportunity was the second largest in the country: “Ours was the second largest in the country so you’ve got to look at it that way. If the second largest can’t make it, how viable are the other ones? I don’t know. But at the end of the day they didn’t have enough capital to support 120,000 members.”

Another Obama Care component blows up, at least in Iowa. Another unfolding disaster that leaves over 100,000 Iowa citizens still looking for healthcare insurance with only one option left in the Obama Care exchange program, Coventry, for the entire state. So much for lower costs, ease of getting insurance, and increased competition.

2) We briefly touched on this topic once before but more information is available so it is worthwhile reviewing it again. While Obama Care has been worse than even the worst predictions, another approach, the so-called single payer approach, would have been far worse. In a single payer approach, the government rules and operates every aspect of healthcare. Where it has been deployed around the world, the results have been dreadful: much higher overall costs, poorer quality of healthcare, fatal delays in treatment, etc.

Now, some members of Obama’s political party would have preferred to go with a single payer approach rather than Obama Care even though it has failed everywhere else. And as this blog has proven thousands of times, the current set of politicians running this country have no track record of success in successfully operating any type of program or initiative.

The fallacy of the political class operating a single payer healthcare system in this country was vividly illustrated when the state of Vermont decided to try and do a single payer system in the state:

Obama Care legislation actually allowed states to opt out of the Obama Care requirements IF they elected to implement a single payer system for health care in their state.
Vermont decided to take a shot at that option when in 2011,they passed legislation that would have established a single payer system by the year 2017.
The fact that the state was being guided by Jonathan Gruber, the same “expert” that was responsible for much of the failures in the Obama Care effort, should have been a warning that this effort in Vermont might be doomed from the start.
The state single payer system, named Green Mountain Care, would have provided health care, dental care, and vision care for all state residents, all funded by the state taxpayers.
While the Obama Care bronze policies have an “actuarial value of 60%," i.e. these policies on average pay out 60% for all health care expenses, the Vermont single payer plan would have had a whopping 94% actuarial value.
Private healthcare insurance policies and companies would be eliminated in the state and instead of health insurance premiums, the whole thing would be paid for via taxation.
Unfortunately, reality hit when the financial analysis of such a program was done.
Paying for the program would have required a whopping 160% increase in taxation by 2019.
The state income tax rate would have to be raised from an already high of 8.95% to a unreal level of 18%.
For the wealthiest earners in the state, the total marginal tax rate would have been an astounding 56%, i.e. more than half of their income above a certain level would be paid in income taxes.
Businesses would have been hit with 11.5% state payroll tax. This would be on top of a Federal payroll tax of over 15%, both taxes of which when combined would have stifled economic growth and job creation in the state.
Thus, while their insurance premiums would have been eliminated, most state residents, both rich and poor, would have been worse off financially with a single payer system.
But the pain does not stop there. Doctors would receive less money under the single payer system, probably forcing many of them to either retire or take their skills and practices elsewhere, leaving the state with a pronounced doctor shortage, i.e. you have single payer health insurance but you cannot get health care.
The analysis of the situation relative to the doctors showed that there would have been longer delays in getting a doctor’s appointment and in receiving treatment and that the whole program would be financially negative within four years after being deployed.
Fortunately,the governor and state politicians recognized this folly and stupidity and recently cancelled the entire effort, despite what Jonathan Gruber said.

Two observations here. First, even if the state had gone forward and gotten health insurance for every in the state under the single payer model, nowhere have a I read that the state was going to go after the underlying root causes of high healthcare we listed above. Vermont residents would probably still eat too much of the wrong food, would still smoke too much, would not exercise enough, etc., leaving the root causes of high healthcare costs intact.

Second, despite the analyses and experience of Vermont in taking a serious look at a single payer system, the insanity of the political class knows no bounds. Other states including Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon,Pennsylvania, and Washington are all considering a single payer fiasco for their states. Also, a New York politician, Richard Gottfried, has been going around with a series of town hall meetings to promote a single payer system for the state of New York.

Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Apparently, single payer insurance ideas fall right in line with this definition of insanity.

3) We will finish each post in this Obama Care disaster series with some personal accounts of the hardship and hassle Obama Care has introduced into the lives of millions of Americans. We can talk about costs, and premiums, deductibles, and debt, and other bad numbers being caused by Obama Care but the personal stories of Americans drives the point home that Obama Care has been a disaster.

The source of these stories are from the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

You can go to the website and look at the many other stories of heartbreak that Obama Care has created. The following three case studies come from this website:

ROB - WEST VIRGINIA My mother suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. From diagnosis to having to medically retire from being a registered nurse, took about 2 years. Her doctor got her on meds that greatly lowered the disease, gave her more mobility, and less pain. Once ObamaCare hit, the costs of all but 2 meds has tripled. The cost of the other 2 quadrupled. Being on a fixed income, she can no longer afford these meds. Then, to add insult to injury, the cost of her co-pays has doubled.

JULIE - COLORADO Julie Dagnillo experienced the turmoil of health insurance changes firsthand.

Anthem canceled the small-group policy at her work because it did not meet the minimum requirements of the Affordable Care Act. She said she earns too much to qualify for a subsidy on the state health insurance exchange. Her broker, who is certified with the exchange, told her she probably will pay at least $100 more a month for an individual plan purchased on the exchange, but that plan would have less coverage.

The insurer also sent her an early renewal for a policy she bought for her 23-year-old daughter, Lucy. The ACA allows children to stay on their parents' policies until 26, but the family decided the individual policy made more sense for Lucy.

The premium is about $10 more a month, but it is good only through the end of 2014. After that, Lucy's options include shopping for coverage on the exchange, where she may qualify for a subsidy, or taking an Anthem plan that would cost at least $110 more a month.

"I'm completely outraged," said Dagnillo, a Pueblo resident. "We're the ones suffering the brunt for the entire nation. They're going to put us into poverty."

MARCUS - SOUTH DAKOTA The problem is that millions of Americans, like me, simply cannot afford insurance. The estimates for mid-level plans by the Kaiser Family Foundation (I’d check directly on Healthcare.gov, but the site has crashed every day so far since Oct. 1), show that premiums for my family of five will cost almost $300 a month after subsidies. When it comes to my family’s budget, you might as well be asking me for $3,000,000 a month. There is no way that my family can afford to throw away that much money every month for a plan that still has a high deductible.

[. . .] My point is that we can throw all the insurance money we want at health care, but it won’t solve the problem of getting Americans (especially low-income Americans) the medical care we need. Until the cost of health care is dealt with, the individual mandate will just be another financial burden weakening an already-fragile working class.

These three experiences are great illustrations of what has been caused by Obama Care. People losing access to their current and preferred insurance policies, prices and costs going up, and at least Marcus recognizing that Obama Care will fail because it does not deal with the real causes of high costs.

More disasters tomorrow.