May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Rewarding Government Incompetence Via Bailouts, Budgets, and Failures

This is our third post in this series which is covering the political class insanity and idiocy that has arisen in just the past month or so. The first post in this series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-2014-political-class-insanity-part.html

It is unknown how many more days we will need to be dedicated to the ongoing insanity of our politicians but I am quite sure we will not wrap everything up today.

1) Yesterday, we discussed the fact that the final bill has come in for the taxpayer bailout of General Motors and that the company’s ineptness and the government’s meddling cost the American taxpayer just over $11 billion. This comes out to the equivalent of every U.S. household sending a check for about $100 to the Detroit car maker to cover its mistakes.

According to an article in Moneynews on May 2, 2014, the final bill on their entire set of buyouts has now been tallied. Including the General Motors loss, the overall American taxpayer loss on the bailouts has come to about $40 billion. This is the equivalent of every American household sending a check out for about $350 to bailout the big auto makers and banks.

The really distressing part of this final report is the fact that the American taxpayer still faces a potential, worst case liability of $190 billion that could be needed to bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This potential hit comes out to the equivalent of each household paying out about $1,650 each to cover this ticking time bomb, all because the political class meddled in the housing market without really knowing what they are doing. Pathetic.

2) It is amazing how many different ways government officials can screw things up in so many different ways. According to an audit done by the EPA’s Inspector General, the EPA's international affairs office lost track of about 200 passports required to be in its possession, according to a new report from the agency's watchdog. The EPA Inspector General found that 199 of the 417 employee passports reportedly in the possession of the Office of International and Tribal Affairs couldn't be located.

The office failed to enforce its own passport guidance of having staff return passports after travel. The report found: "Lack of compliance with agency guidance may put the agency in the position where sensitive personally identifiable information is not being adequately protected." The EPA agreed with the audit findings, agreed that it had violated its own rules, and was taking steps to remedy the situation. 

All of which raises a few questions:

• The EPA has been around for decades, has it not figured out how to keep control of sensitive information like passports?
• Has any fraud or crimes been committed as a result of the organization losing track of almost two hundred passports?
• Has anyone been fired (doubtful) for not following the organization’s own rules and guidelines?

Only the political class and the government it operates can screw up in so many different and unique ways, with not accountability for the screw ups.

3) Political class insanity is not confined to Washington. The Associated Press recently reported that state Democrats in Illinois are trying anyway possible to approve $100 million in Illinois taxpayer wealth to woo those responsible for deploying the Barack Obama library to deploy it to Illinois.

The problem, as reported by the Associated Press, is that the state has roughly $7 billion in past due vendor bills and a $100 billion shortfall in its employee pension programs. The state’s financial position is so serious that the governor wants to make permanent a three year-old tax increase, which was set to expire next year, to avoid making huge budget cuts. 

Given the dire financial situation, isn’t it pretty insane to divert $100 million to build a library? Talk about a sad state of priorities and please, do not tell me added tourism dollars will more than offset the $100 million cost. First of all, all politicians always underestimate the actual costs on every government expense so you can be pretty sure that the $100 million estimate will eventually balloon to several times that size. And second, do we really think the world’s citizens are going to beat a path to south Chicago to visit the Obama library? Doubtful. 

3) With all of the political class shenanigans going on, it is no surprise that we have been reporting and discussing many recent Inspector General reports that have uncovered much of that insanity. The Treasury department, which houses the IRS, had a recent audit uncover the fact that more than 2,800 IRS employees are facing disciplinary actions.

While the lack of discipline by almost 3,000 IRS employees is distressing enough, the Inspector General report also uncovered the following disgraces:

• Those 2,800 employees facing disciplinary actions received more $2.8 million in monetary bonus payments. 
• Those 2,800 employees also received 27,000 worth of additional time-off bonuses and more than 175 quality step increases (which allows employees to receive promotions faster).
• More than 1,100 of the 2,800 employees have “substantiated Federal tax compliance problems” yet they still received over $1 million in cash awards, $250,000 in time-off awards and 69 quality step increase awards within the same year the IRS proved the employees hadn’t fully paid their income taxes.

Thus, in the unreal world that is Washington and the Federal government, misbehaving can get you a lot of incremental pay at taxpayer expense along with a lot of other extra perks even if you do not pay your income taxes. Good work if you can get it. Imagine how much IRS employees get that are NOT facing disciplinary actions.

4) Although the numbers are not very large, the growth rate of these numbers is increasingly worrisome. 231 Americans gave up their citizenship at the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008, the end of the Bush administration. By 2012, just four years later, that annual 231 number had more than quadrupled to about 1,000 and had tripled to 3,000 by 2014. 

Again, the numbers are not large but the growth in the number of Americans giving up on their country is distressing. These are Americans who most likely have become so fed up with the conditions and government and political class insanity that they are willing to give up their citizenship, move to a foreign land, and forego their past for what is increasingly being viewed as better opportunities overseas. 

That trend is probably not because the Washington political class has improved economic opportunities in this country, has respected and increased freedom in this country, or have shown any penchant for caring for the country before taking care of the personal ego and financial needs. Such a shame when our politicians are so bad that citizens are willing to forego their homes and citizenships for a better life elsewhere.

5) Speaking of bad cost forecasting by the political class, consider the unfolding nuclear disaster in South Carolina. As the Soviet Union dissolved two decades ago, Russian and U.S. officials decided that reducing each country’s nuclear arsenal would be a good idea and that the nuclear material taken from the disabled nuclear weapons should be processed into nuclear fuel rods that could be used in nuclear reactors to generate electricity. The final agreement included plans to convert 34 tons of weapons grade plutonium into fuel rods to be used on commercial reactors.

The U.S. conversion was going to take place in South Carolina. The initial estimate to complete the job was put at $1 billion and was to begin in 2007 and be finished by 2016. However, as always, the political class did another lousy job at cost forecasting:

• The U.S. Department of Energy has already spent $5 billion on the project despite the overall original estimate of $1 billion.
• The Department estimates it will take another $6 to $7 billion to finish the job just to build the facility to do the conversion.
• It will take at least another $20 billion to do the conversion once the facility is built.
• It will take another 15 years just to complete the conversion, at least 13 years beyond the original estimate.
• Thus, the entire effort will cost about $30 billion, assuming no more cost surprises, which is about 30 times higher than the original estimate and 13 years later than the original time estimate, assuming there are no more time delays.

Unreal that any estimate or forecast could be off by so much. As a professional statistician and business forecaster, I know I would have been fired long ago if my forecasts were off by a factor of 30. One has to believe there was intention deception to get the project started by low balling the cost estimate, that is how far off and pathetic the cost estimation was.

But the insanity does not end there relative to the Department of Energy:

• The Department of Energy has put a hold on the project for now with no date on when to restart the program, essentially wasting billions and billions of dollars with absolutely nothing to show for it, as described by Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists: "It’s a major fiasco. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted, it’s a classic boondoggle."
• But it is not the first time the Department has screwed up badly. Costs for a nuclear waste treatment facility in the state of Washingotn have almost tripled over the original cost estimate.
• A uranium processing plant in Tennessee was supposed to cost $1 billion but will likely cost $11 billion and is currently running a whopping twenty years behind schedule.
• And the final insult to injury relative to the South Carolina effort: the cost of uranium from other sources has fallen by about 70% over the years making any fuel rods that eventually come out of the South Carolina conversion effort priced far to high to be useful to commercial reactors.

A lot of detail to prove again that one should never, ever trust a government program’s cost estimate, whether it comes from Washington politicians or government bureaucrats. The next time that a government program or project comes in on budget and on schedule will be the first time it comes in on budget and on schedule.

So let’s review. The political class has wasted billions on bailouts, it has wasted billions on energy programs that never succeed, they have lost passports, they reward unruly IRS employees and they cause Americans to give up their home and heritage to move overseas. Seems about right for one day of political class insanity, tomorrow is another day of the same.

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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Obama Approval Dips To An All Time Low, Bad Harry Reid Priorities, Failing To Educate Our Kids, and More

This is our second post this month on our continuing monthly series on political class insanity. Seems there are endless ways in which American politicians continue to insult our intelligence, waste our wealth, prove themselves ignorant of reality, and fail to efficiently and effectively execute any kind of government operation. Their sad saga continues again today with insanity from just the past month or so.

1) I have always loved the old line of wisdom that goes as follows: “It is better to remain silent and thought ignorant than to speak up and remove all doubt.” This came to mind recently when a Congresswoman did not obey this adage when Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton stated that "perhaps the most catastrophic war of the 20th Century - invasion by the United States of America" in Iraq. How ignorant is this statement:

• First of all, the invasion occurred in the 21st century, not the 20th century.
• Although it is impossible to accurately estimate the number of humans killed in World War II most reputable sources put the death toll at between 70 and 80 million people, certainly more catastrophic than the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
• These 70 to 80 million deaths included 700,000 British military casualties and 60,000 civilian deaths, Soviet Union deaths of 26.6 million people, about 5.7 million Polish deaths, 5.3 total German deaths, and over 400,000 U.S. military deaths (source: www,worldwar2.org).
• In World War I there were about 16 million deaths and 20 million other casualties, making this war also far more catastrophic than Iraq.

Idiot speech from a Congress person, insane. Her actual ignorance is on display at the following website:

http://m.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/matt-vespa/dc-democrat-iraq-most-catastrophic-war-20th-century

2) As a country we spend a lot of money on educating our kids. Unfortunately, spending money and getting good education attainment results on our investment are usually not related. Our kids always end up behind the kids of dozens of our countries on standardized tests.

This dichotomy of high spending and low results is nicely illustrated by the following graph from the U.S. Department of Education and other reputable sources:



While we are spending almost 200% more on public schools than we spent in 1970, far above the rate of inflation, and the staffing growth in public schooling is up almost 100% since 1970, math, reading, and science performance has barely moved since 1970. 

In no other aspect of our lives would we tolerate this sort of incompetence. For some reason, though, we seem to think nothing of handing over massive resources to the political class, hoping they would improve the lot of our kids, and then sit idly by for over forty years during which no improvements are made.

Given that the current Presidential administration has been in place for more than five years and there is no sign that they have any plans or strategies to fix this four decade old problem, it is highly unlikely that this situation will change in the remaining years of this administration. Thus, we would have wasted another eight years and hundreds of billions of dollars to allow this graph to remain unchanged. 

No plans, no strategies, no changes, just massive spending for minimal results. Are we starting to see why we need term limits? Forty years of incompetence should not be rewarded with continued employment in Washington.

3) Speaking of more costs, consider the following graphs that recently appeared in a Washington Examiner article, based on data form the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

Over the past five years, quarterly growth in the nation’s health care spending has gone up between 2% and 4% on average with quarters being above 4% and some quarters being below 2%.

However, over the past two quarters, we have seen the growth rate break out of this range, so much so that in the fourth quarter of last year the quarterly growth in health care spending in this country was almost 6% and in the first quarter of this year the quarterly growth was an unprecedented 10%. It just so happens that those two quarters, which had the highest growth rate in the past five years, corresponded with the rollout of Obama Care, a piece of legislation that was supposed to reduce health care costs and spending, not increase them.

Now, the Examiner article correctly points out that these figures will likely be revised in the future as more data becomes available. However, that means they also could be higher than currently estimated. It is looking like just another case where legislation coming out of Washington is doing the exact OPPOSITE of what it was supposed to do, raising costs rather than lowering them. Only in the American political class can you get the exact opposite result of what you intended to do.

4) There are over twenty million Americans who are unemployed or under employed. The economic growth from the latest quarter is almost nothing. People are dying and homeless in the Midwest from tornados. The Ukraine is being torn apart from within and without. Wasteful government spending is out of control, our kids are not getting educating, and health care costs are going up.

So what does Senate Majority Harry Reid give a speech about on the Senate floor recently? He wants the National Football League to pressure the Washington Redskins owner to change the name of the team since in Mr. Reid’s opinion it is racist. 

No new economic policies, no strategic planning to contain the Russian threat in eastern Europe, no overhaul of our public education system, nothing of consequence to the majority of Americans. Just the name of a football team that has been around for 80 years.

Now, I am not saying the name is not racist. I am saying that a Senator from Nevada should really shut up and work on the major issues affecting all Americans vs. worrying about the name of a football team that resides almost three thousand miles away form his home state. A pathetic set of priorities.

5) One last piece of insanity today. An ABC News poll recently found that President Obama’s approval rating has sunk to 41%, the lowest level of his Presidency. This is about five years and four months into his administration. [The fact that ABC television news hardly mentioned the dire poll results is a topic of another blog on media prejudice.]

On March 7, 2006, an ABC News poll showed that President Bush’s approval rating had fallen in the same range, a 42% approval rating. Thus, it would appear that we are not much better off with this President than the previous President, especially when you consider that Obama hit the same low point in his Presidency about one year sooner than Bush hit the same level in his Presidency. 

The more things change the more they stay the same with political class failures across the board in education, war on drugs, foreign affairs, wasteful spending, and Americans’ disapproval of the job the Washington political class is doing. Term limits anyone:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

More insanity 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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Obama Vacations, Veterans' Mistreatment or Non-Treatment, and General Motors' Final Taxpayer Debt

It is the beginning of another month so it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity, idiocy, and wasteful spending from the American political class. As we have said many times before, when we started this blog back in 2009, we usually could cover the insanity in a day or so. 

However, it seems the insanity and lunacy has been growing exponentially over the years. So much so that we will probably need another half dozen or so posts this month to get it all covered, that is how quickly and deeply the performance of the American political class has deteriorated just in the past few years.

Given so much has happened in the past thirty days, we will try to be quick and crisp in order to get everything discussed before it becomes to depressing to go on. As we go through the latest insanity, consider joining our term limits effort at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, after reading what the politicians are doing to our wealth, our freedoms and futures, how much worse could it get if we dumped every incumbent out of office and started again with a fresh set of people sitting in Washington?

1) Several years ago, the American taxpayer, courtesy of the Washington political class, gave tens of billions of dollars to General Motors to bail it out of the incompetence it had gotten itself into from a financial perspective. Rather than let the company go through a regular bankruptcy proceeding, which would have cost the American taxpayer nothing, the Obama administration intervened, likely as a favor to its union supporters, and substituted taxpayer money for a coherent and regular bankruptcy proceeding.

Well, according to the latest financial report relative to the bailout, the Inspector General in charge of all bailouts reported that the final tab for the American taxpayer was just over $11 billion. This is the equivalent of every American household writing a check for about $100 and sending it to General Motors to bail it out of its mess that it created. Again, this was an unnecessary, politically driven bailout that never needed to be done.

But what have we gotten for our bailout? According to a recent Washington Examiner article, the stock is down 16% so far this year, millions of GM vehicles have been recalled because they likely caused at least 13 deaths because of a systemic malfunction, and General Motors executives have told investors to “temper” their expectations for the rest of the year. In other words, things are likely to get worse before they get better.

Note: this $11 billion loss does not include the billions in special tax relief the Obama administration granted the car maker or the bailout money that was spent on other, former divisions of General Motors. Thus, at least $100 from each American household for basically not much in return.

2) An April 30, 2014 article by the Washington Examiner looked at the results published by Judicial Watch regarding Presidential vacations. According to the documents Judicial watch obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests:

• Just the travel costs for the Obama and Biden family vacations are now about $40 million with more than two years still left in this Presidency, assuming impeachment does not occur.
• Two 2014 golf outings by President Obama cost a whopping $2.9 million, according to Judicial Watch.
• Judicial Watch said in a press release that the Air Force provided documents and records that put the price of the first family's trip to Key Largo, Fla., in March at $885,683 just for flying Air Force One. 
• The travel costs to golf in Palm Springs, California, in February was $2,066,594.
• While the travel costs for the Obama and Biden vacations are $40 million, much more taxpayer money was spent on accommodations, communications, rooms and cars for staff, security and U.S. Secret Service protection, Navy and Coast Guard ships offshore and the positioning of cars and helicopters.
• However, according to the article, those other costs have not been revealed publicly.
• Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in a press release, I think captured the disgrace of this type of wasteful and extravagant spending: “It is clear that the Obamas continually abuse the perks of the president’s office at taxpayer expense. And it is particularly interesting that Obama has chosen to take not one but two luxury vacations back-to-back while inveighing against ‘income equality.’ President Obama’s waste of the hard-earned tax dollars of working Americans on unnecessary luxury travel is an abuse of office.”

So the next time you are stretching and crimping to save for a vacation, remember that the Obama and Bidens are using your tax money to golf at high end resorts and travel to the four corners of the world on their taxpayer funded vacations. And by the way, they do not have to be frisked and patted down at the airport like you and I, they do not have to pay for an extra piece of luggage to travel with them, and they get more than the typical 18 inches of space between their seat and the seat front of them.

3) While the previous bit of travel insanity is a annoying and a waste of money, the following piece of insanity is disgusting and disgraceful. The Washington Examiner reported on May 1, 2014 on some severe abuse allegations being put forth by Veterans Administration whistleblowers and veterans families:

• According to the article, more than 1.5 million medical orders were canceled by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) without any guarantee the patients received the treatment or tests they needed or promised within those orders.
• Apparently, since May 2013, veterans' medical centers across the country were under pressure to clear out 2 million backlogged orders for patient care or services.
• By April 2014, the backlog of what the agency calls “unresolved consults” was down to about 450,000 from the original 2 million. That means that mans that more than 20,000 medical orders, on average, were cleared out every week over that timeframe, a highly unlikely legitimate rate.
• And that is the issue since not even top officials at the Veterans Administration can identify what happened to other 1.5 million.
• The Government Accountability Office reviewed the process VA used to close old consult orders and found that poor documentation in patient files and the lack of independent verification made it impossible to know whether patients got care they needed before their medical orders were canceled: “We found they closed consults but there was no evidence as to why it was closed,” Debra Draper, health care director for the GAO, told the Examiner. 
• “By not having that independent verification or any other controls, there isn’t any way of knowing whether they were appropriately closed out. You don’t know whether people received the care or if they received it in a timely manner. There’s no audit trail. There’s no way to know whether they were appropriately closed,” she said.
• But this type of record destruction and purging is nothing new since the Examiner had reported earlier in the year that the VA mass purged backlogged medical orders that cleared 40,000 unresolved appointments in Los Angeles beginning in 2009 and 13,000 in Dallas during a one-week period in September 2012.
• This is vitally important to many veterans who are in dire need of medical attention, help, and procedures but may not be getting it because their requests and records have been destroyed to make it look like the waiting times have been reduced when they have only been destroyed.
• As an example, a Veterans Affairs report from April said 23 patients at various VA medical facilities afflicted with gastrointestinal cancers died after they could not get the colonoscopies or other tests that had been ordered within the deadlines in agency policy.
• Those tests could have detected the cancers in their early stages, when they are most treatable.
• Recent news reports have stated that at least 40 patients in the Phoenix VA health system may have died as a result of delayed care, according to an investigation by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and reports by the Examiner and other news media outlets.
• The VA’s inspector general is investigating allegations that two sets of appointment logs were kept to hide long wait times for medical care and that almost 60,000 overdue medical orders were purged in Phoenix to also cover long wait times.
• A review by General Accountability Office (GAO) found that lax procedures and the lack of independent verification left the VA unable to prove that all patients got the care they needed before the appointment was closed. In a sample of cases, the GAO “found no indication that a clinical review was conducted prior to the consults being discontinued.”
• Both the GAO and the inspector found evidence that there were performance review and financial incentives within the VA to close out as many open cases and records as possible, leading to Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix VA health system, got a $9,345 bonus last year.
• Recall from above that possibly 40 Phoenix area veterans died as a result of not getting the care they were entitled to by the VA in a timely manner.

Two takeaways here. First, I find it disgusting and disgraceful that government bureaucrats and politicians would allow veterans to die and suffer just to make sure their careers are protected and their financial compensation is protected or enhanced. Whether they are inept, unkind, or uncaring, makes no difference.

Second, it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the rest of us have this kind of fate in our future as an inept and incompetent government bureaucracy and political class take over more and more of our medical care via Obama Care and other government health care initiatives. The government obviously cannot manage a health care program for veterans, an effort they have been trying to do for decades but still cannot get it right. There is no way to believe that monstrosities like Obama Care for the rest of us will be much different, particularly right out of the gate.

So right out of the gate we see evidence that the political class is needlessly taking our wealth via the General Motors bailout, are taking their vacations via our tax dollars, and might be taking our veterans to an early grave because of bureaucratic bungling. Insane and just three more reason for term limits now.

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

May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 8: Bogus Sign Up Numbers, Aetna Looks To Jack Up Prices, and A Marine Proves Harry Reid A Liar

This is our eighth and final post this month covering the latest insanity from the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It becomes more and more difficult to keep up with the disasters as we continually find out why this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class. The first post in this series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/may-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is.html

1) Harry Reid recently and falsely claimed that no one in the country was paying more in health care insurance costs as a result of Obama Care. This is just one in a series of lies that the good Senator from Nevada has perpetrated on the country over the past few years. We know there are millions of people that have either lost their insurance and are stuck paying more for replacement insurance policies or who kept their policies but have been told by their insurance companies that their rates are going up as a result of Obama Care.

Just to prove again the Reid was either grossly wrong or grossly lying, consider the plight of a regular American, a Marine veteran, who saw his insurance costs more than double as a result of Obama Care:

http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/barbara-boland/veteran-says-he-thinks-president-lied-him-about-obamacare?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Marketing&utm_term=Facebook&utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=b-megyn-soldier

It is interesting that one of his state’s Senators also came out and more or less implied that this former Marine was lying. It is pretty sad when so-called leaders of this country have to resort to lies and deceptions and the slandering of American citizens to cover-up their ineptness on this legislation.

2) One of the huge and disgraceful bets within the Obama Care legislation was whether or not the President and his allies could convince younger, healthier Americans to sign up for health insurance plans that most would never need in order to take their money to support the needs of older, less healthy insurance customers. The business case financials depended on the intergenerational transfer of wealth from younger/healthier to older/sick citizens.

Early surveys and analyses of those that actually did sign up for health care insurance have indicated, as we have reported, that this bet was lost. Rather than getting almost a 40% level of younger and healthier, the signup profile shows that less than 30% were younger and healthier Obama Care customers. If that is indeed the case, than those insurance companies that participated in the Obama Care exchanges will have to raise their premiums and deductibles in 2015 to make up the difference.

We have already reported on the fact that Humana is leaning towards a substantial increase in premiums in 2015 to make up for the shortfall in younger and healthier that they are starting to see. And last week, Aetna, America’s third-largest health insurer said that its customers should expect to see 2015 premium spikes that in some states will be “over double digits” as a result of the Obama administration’s endless “on the fly” Obama Care changes.

The company’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, told reporters that while his company prefers to stay at its current level of Obama Care participation in just 17 states, customers can expect health insurance premiums to climb in 2014 despite Obama Care. Specifically, Bertolini said that, depending on a customer’s state and the mix of sick versus healthy patients, customers will see insurance hikes ranging from “the very low single digits” to “some that will be over double digits.” So much for the President’s promise that the average American family would see their annual health insurance costs go down by $2,500. Going down $2,500 is not consistent with the reality of going up  “over double digits.”

3) One of the problems the President has relative to his signature legislation is that no one except his die hard fans believe anything he says anymore. Remember, even the Obama-friendly Washington Post awarded him the biggest lie of the year for 2013 and included three of his promises in the top ten lies for 2013, a very dubious achievement for the leader of the country.

A quick review of his lies and deceptions include, but are not limited to the following:

• If you like your current insurance policy you can keep it under Obama Care. No, respected estimates show that anywhere from 5 to 6 million Americans lost their insurance coverage because of Obama Care.
• If you like your current doctor and hospital, you can keep your access to your current doctor and hospital. No, we now know that Obama Care policies are showing much tighter and narrower access to doctors, and hospitals, meaning that millions of Americans have lost access to their preferred doctors and hospitals.
• The average annual insurance policy costs for the average American family will go down by $2,500 a year. No, in 45 states, the average costs of health insurance premiums are going up and generally going up a lot, according to a study and analysis done by the Society of Actuaries.

Other lies in other areas include:

• He was going to cut the annual deficit in half by the middle of his first term. Instead, he has recorded record deficits for every year of his Presidency.
• He would immediately shut down the prisoner camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. More than five years into his Presidency and the camp is still open.
• He was going to run the most transparent Presidency in the history of the country. Instead, we have the most opaque administration ever.
• He was going to unite the country and get everyone to work together. Instead, he has stood by as his political allies have attacked and slandered his political opponents, ordinary Americans, and media people who dare to question his policies.
• He was going to support the Constitution and execute the laws of the land. Instead, he has operated the most lawless Presidency in the history of the country, from the illegal gun running of Fast and Furious to using the IRS to harass his political opponents and critics to spying on every American, Congress, foreign leaders, and the media, etc.

Quite a track record of lying. Thus, when this administration claims, without any backup proof that Obama Care has signed up 8 million Americans, it is difficult to believe that is a valid and integrity based number.

Nevertheless, lets assume that 8 million is reality, although we doubt it based on the trck record of lies, and do some simple math:

• Given that reputable sources estimate the 5 to 6 million Americans lost access to their preferred insurance policies as a result of Obama Care, the net gain in insured Americans is not 8 million, it is only 2 to 3 million. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and go with 3 million NET new Americans enrolled on insurance policies.
• But that 8 million is not the number of people that actually have new, valid, paid for  insurance policies, it is the number of Americans who indicated that they were going to sign up, not the number who actually paid their first premium payment. Estimates of non-payers range from 10% to 50%. Again, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that 90% of those interested actually paid for their policies, reducing the number of actual, newly insured Americans from 3 million to 2.7 million Americans.
• What is not known is how many of those 2.7 million Americans would have signed up for health care insurance anyway in the absence of Obama Care. If we assume/guess that 10% would have purchased insurance anyway, that 2.7 million becomes 2.4 million, best case, most optimistic case.

Thus, if there truly are about 50 million Americans who do not have health care insurance coverage, after four years of hype, news reports, hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, political debate, neighborhood outreach programs, celebrity endorsements, etc., Obama Care has managed to sign up just under 5% of the uninsured Americans for health insurance (2.4 million divided by 50 million.) This is truly a pathetic performance.

But not an expected performance. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that less than half of uninsured Americans will have health insurance coverage in ten years, severely missing the President’s intent to have every uninsured American covered.

What also is not covered by the above numbers is what happens when Aetna, Humana, and other Obama Care insurance partners come into 2015 with insurance policy costs that are double digit and triple digit percent higher than in 2014? How many of those 2.4 million Obama Care enrollees will opt out of their Obama Care policy because it got too expensive to keep? A further reduction in the 2.4 net newly insured.

For a detailed look at other factors that will further reduce the phantom 8 million enrolled number, go to an interesting analysis at:

http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/18/why-obamacares-enrollment-triumph-will-prove-fleeting/

This author uncovers more lies relative to Obama Care including some that are properly designated as “whoppers.”

4) And remember, the number is really not that all important. Whether it is 8 million or 2.4 million, at the end of the day, Americans will still be eating too much of the wrong kinds of unhealthy foods, Americans will still not be exercising enough and will still be the most overweight and obese country on the planet, Americans will still smoke too much, the government will still be subsidizing tobacco growers and corn growers whose product ends up as high fructose corn syrup throughout the food chain, there will be no concentrated effort to tame the growing problem of aging diseases, etc. The true root causes will still be driving up health care costs regardless of ‘the number.” Obama Care creates the number but does not create the right solutions.

That will do it for today and for this series. Likely bogus numbers from the administration on signups, costs of Obama Care policies likely to skyrocket in 2015, and Washington Senators call Americans liars. Just another day in the bizarre world of Obama Care. More disasters have been piling up over the past eight days or so but they will have to wait for next month. There are many other facets of polticial class insanity to cover and they cannot wait any longer, starting tomorrow.

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