Caption This - Obama, the Jokester

I know you see the title and think this is going to be a creepy Biden photo. Yippee! But we've been there and done that. And anyway, that was just creepy Biden being creepy Biden. But what is this?

Shouldn't the Secret Service be doing something? I guess not since they are the same ones who forgot to lock the front door of the White House and allowed a crazy person to run around for a while. Anyway, this photo was taken to sell Obamacare...yeah, really.

Oh, yeah, the above photo is a snapshot from a commercial. Yes, this is what our President does while the world is blowing up around us...he makes a commercial to sell Obamacare for BuzzFeed...



Now if he could only decide what the "root causes" of all of those darn "extremists" are...[Hint: Jobs...]

Post your captions, comments, or just do what I am doing, and cower in the corner and breath very deeply until you calm down...

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Democrats Seek Relief from Obamacare Taxes...

In honor of the closing of the last open enrollment period for healthcare coverage that ended on February 15, I thought this was would be fun. Oh, this is so rich with irony I couldn't resist. Three Democrats who voted for Obamacare (a/k/a "Affordable" Care Act) are now squealing like pigs about the pending 2014 Obamacare taxes that are being levied this year against citizens who failed to purchase health insurance for 2014.

Sander Levin (D/MI - voted Yes), Jim McDermaott (D/WA - Yes) and Lloyd Dogget (D/TX - Yes) are having a change of heart. For the record, this is how they voted the first time...LINK Of course these three also voted "No" when others tried to repeal, but hey, who knew it could possibly have an impact on regular citizens? If they had only read the legislation the first time around, but as we know, reading is not a requirement for voting. But who could have anticipated this problem? Oh, yeah, we did. Because it is so special, I just had to copy the whole AP report in total for your pleasure. [Okay, I have added my own editorial comments...]

DEMOCRATS SEEK RELIEF FROM HEALTH LAW PENALTIES
BY RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The official sign-up season for President Barack Obama's health care law may be over, but leading congressional Democrats say millions of Americans facing new tax penalties deserve a second chance. [Penalities! No kidding?? When did this dawn on you?]

Three senior House members strongly urged the administration Monday to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year. [No kidding?? Why?]

The three are Michigan's Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama's law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010. [ Oh, no you didn't!]

The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it's already too late for them to sign up for coverage, since open enrollment ended Sunday. [No kidding?? Really?]

That means they could wind up uninsured for another year, only to owe substantially higher fines in 2016. The fines are collected through the income tax system.[Say it ain't so!]

"For the many families who may now be about to pay a penalty, there should be an opportunity to avoid both further penalties and to obtain affordable health insurance," said Doggett. [No kidding?? Why now exactly? Didn't you read the bill before you voted "Yes"?]

This year is the first time ordinary Americans will experience the complicated interactions between the health care law and taxes. Based on congressional analysis, tax preparation giant H&R Block says roughly 4 million uninsured people will pay penalties. [Oh, NO! Who knew this could happen??]

The IRS has warned that health-care related issues will make its job harder this filing season and taxpayers should be prepared for long call-center hold times, particularly since the GOP-led Congress has been loath to approve more money for the agency. [Yes, we must find some way to blame the Republicans...]

"Open enrollment period ended before many Americans filed their taxes," the three lawmakers said in a statement. "Without a special enrollment period, many people (who will be paying fines) will not have another opportunity to get health coverage this year. ["Special enrollment period" has been for two years now. Am I right?]

"A special enrollment period will not only help many Americans avoid making an even larger payment next year, but, more importantly, it will help them gain quality health insurance for 2015," the lawmakers added. [Again didn't they know? "Special enrollment period" has been for two years now. Am I right?]

So far, administration officials have deflected questions about whether an extension will be granted. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell has authority to grant special enrollment periods under certain circumstances. [Hey, what happened to Kathleen Sebelius?? Oh, yeah, she was "resigned to spend more tiem with her family" after that unfortunate October 2013 Obamacare website fiasco...]

Supporters of the law say an extension would mainly help low- to middle-income uninsured people, the same group that Obama's coverage expansion was intended to serve. But Republicans may criticize it as another tweak to what they see as unworkable "Obamacare." [A little late that those Dems are now thinking of helping those "low- and middle income" people. But I thought it was the Republicans who hated those people??]

The health care law imposes fines on uninsured people whose incomes are deemed high enough to enable them to afford coverage. The goal is to broaden the pool of insured people, helping to keep premiums in check for everybody. [Oh, no! You mean there are people who make enough money, but can't afford Obamacare?? How did that happen??]

The law also offers subsidies to lower the cost of private coverage for people who don't have job-based health care. That financial assistance is provided through a new tax credit. [But, but, but...it wasn't suppose to BE a tax, right?]

Although the tax credit subsidies cover most of the premiums for many people, the coverage requirement and the fines that enforce it remain deeply unpopular. [But, but, but how is it possibly "unpopular? They must be racists then, right?!]

And the cost of being uninsured in America is going up significantly. [No, really?? Who could have predicted?? Oh, yeah...Sarah Palin for one. Oooh that must hurt...]

For 2014, the fine was the greater of $95 per person or 1 percent of household income above the threshold for filing taxes. That fine will be collected when taxpayers file their 2014 returns. [That same IRS where Lois Lerner worked??]

But this year the fine will jump to the greater of 2 percent of income or $325. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures. [That's those who did not enrolled by 2/15/15, right? Oh, NO!!]

Polls show that many taxpayers are unaware of the potential financial exposure. [HOW...IS...THIS...EVEN...POSSIBLE???]

Floyd Cable, a real estate agent from Wichita Falls, Texas, said the escalating fines were part of the motivation for him and his wife to sign up last week. Both are self-employed, and stretching to pay health insurance premiums has been a struggle. [Good for you, Mr. Cable!]

"We have been going without insurance the last couple of years just because the rates are so astronomical," Cable said. [Really?]

But they were also concerned they could wind up on the wrong side of rising penalties. And, being in his early 60s, Cable said he recognizes the value of having health insurance against unexpected illness. [So, it was the possible penalties and not the fear of astronimical healthcare bills that was your incentive?? Hmmmmm....]

An extension would probably help people still on the fence, like he was. ["Fence"??? There's a fence? Oh, it's just on the borders where that would be racist, right?]

"Anything that could be done to give people more time to sort through this, is not only a good move for the administration, but just makes common sense," Cable said. [Oh NOW we are talking "common sense"! Reading the bill would have been "common sense" too, but why quibble now, right? And FOUR YEARS wasn't enough???? How slow do you read, Mr. Cable???]

Since both the subsidies and penalties under the health law are administered through the tax system, some experts have urged the Obama administration to permanently schedule sign-up season to overlap with tax-filing season. [Yes, let's...if only someone...anyone had just read the legislation before they signed it into law...]

Now, it has been over four years since this legislation passed and countless articles, Op/Eds, blog posts, and chances to repeal/replace and NOW Democrats are having issues?? How is this possible? Frankly, I have no sympathy, but I do have a pounding headache...

Comments?

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More Interesting Obamacare Numbers

With Bev trapped in a world without Commentarama Access, I thought I’d share some interesting Obamacare numbers with you. The left has been screaming that Obamacare is working, and they point to various numbers to prove it. But there is something wrong with the numbers they use.

The first claim the left loves is that Obamacare has slowed the rate of growth of medical costs. In other words, while it’s still getting more expensive, it’s not getting as expensive as fast as it has been. As a result, Obamacare will cost 20% less than expected over its first five years.

Here’s the thing...

Obamacare will be cheaper, but not because it caused costs to go down. Instead, it will be cheaper because fewer people are enrolling. When created, the CBO expected 13 million would be signed up by the end of this year. They have since lowered their estimate to 12 million. Moreover, the real number is likely to be around 9 million. Nine million is 30% less than estimated. Thus, while Obamacare may be 20% cheaper, getting the reduction has been the result of cutting the number of participants by 30%. That’s nothing to brag about. Moreover, you would think that a 30% reduction in participants should lead at least to a 30% cut in costs, not a 20% cut. So any bragging about cost cuts is completely misleading the public.

A corollary claim to this is that by cutting costs, Obamacare has made Medicare cheaper as well. But that claim causes the same problem: the Medicare cuts are not the result of cost savings, they are the result of Obama simply removing those moneys from the Medicare program, i.e. rationing.

At the same time the left brags about the cost of Obamacare going down, they also like to claim that Obamacare is signing up more people than expected. But this is misleading. When the law was passed, the Democratic-controlled CBO estimated that 13 million would sign up by the end of 2014. By 2015, the number is supposed to rise to 21 million. But we aren’t even close to those numbers. Instead, Team Obama has revise the number down to nine million and now pats themselves on the back for meeting that lowered goal. Pathetic. That’s 43% of the initial estimate.

At other times, they combine Medicare/Medicaid signups, even though those people are counted separately under the CBO estimates.

What’s more, they now estimate that ultimately 31 million people will remain uninsured despite the program. But if that’s the case, then why did we do this? And how can the program be considered a success when it only reached 37% of the people it was designed to reach?

You tell me.

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More News About Healthcare...

So, remember when our entire healthcare system was overhauled so that everyone could finally benefit from "preventative care"? Legislation was passed to require that all of our health insurance policies would provide "free" annual exams because it would make us all healthier and would be less costly with all that early detection and stuff. Well, if you do, then this ought to interest you...

Perhaps you remember Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, He is the brother of current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who was also the former Chief of Staff to President Obama. And you may remember that Dr. Emanuel was one of the chief advisers who helped create the "Affordable Care Act" that would ovehaul our entire healthcare system. As part of the grand overhaul, it requires that said "free" annual exams would be provided by physicians and insurance companies at "no cost" to the patient.

Well, now Dr. Emanuel (brother of Rahm) has just offered his opinion that all those preventive exams are, in fact, a load of bunk. In his latest Op/Ed piece in the New York Times from Friday - Skip Your Annual Physical, he pretty much spells out how research shows that annual exams do nothing to help uncover or prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease or other chronic diseases. Instead of people dying in the streets for lack of available and adequate preventative care for which we just overhauled our entire healthcare system to correct, it turns out that two of the top "leading causes of death in Americans" are "uintentional injuries and suicides". So all of those routine tests that doctors put you through in those annual exams have no benefit except in the rare occasion that some underlying condition just happens to be discovered by accident. Yeah, you are more likely to die by accident that to have some disease diagnosed by accident.

Here is what he writes -

"Regardless of which screenings and tests were administered, studies of annual health exams dating from 1963 to 1999 show that the annual physicals did not reduce mortality overall or for specific causes of death from cancer or heart disease. And the checkups consume billions, although no one is sure exactly how many billions because of the challenge of measuring the additional screenings and follow-up tests."

Of course, like when they said doctors just did toncillectomies to increase revenue, according to Dr. Emanuel, they also have been pushing the whole bogus preventative care thing too. But as I recall (and correct me if I am wrong) we were told repeatedly by the pro-ACA'ers that if only everyone could get all those "preventative care" exams, then no one would ever need real healthcare again because doctors would catch all those expensive diseases and conditions before they became really expensive diseases and conditions and we would all be much healthier and happier and the Earth would begin to heal and Peace would break out and...oh, wait that was something else.

Anyway, so where before we had insurance that did not cover "preventative care" like "wellness" visits and gym memberships, it did cover much less likely catastrophic events like broken bones, cancer treatments and chronic illnesse. Now we are forced to pay for insurance mandated by the US Government that will fully cover worthless "preventative care", but barely cover the less likely really bad stuff. Help me to understand why anyone ever thought this was a good idea.

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Ha Ha Ha Harvard

Wow. Sometimes, it takes the eggheads a long time to catch up to what the rest of us already realize. This seems to be the case with the good liberals at Harvard, who are shocked that Obamacare is going to cost them more. Read these complaints and laugh that a supposedly super-intelligent person could only now be getting this...

The background is this. Harvard has decided that it will make its professors and staff pay more toward their own healthcare because of the changes Obamacare has caused. Not only did many of these same professors advocate for Obamacare, but some even helped draft it. Harvard economist David Cutler, for example, advised Obama on the law in 2008. He now notes that while Harvard remains a very generous employer, the school’s professorial ranks have so far avoided being asked to pick up the added costs Obamacare has imposed... until now.

Others are less sanguine about this.

Harvard Professor of classics, specifically Virgil, Richard Thomas slammed the higher fees he will be paying, calling them “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”

Wow. Ok, let’s start with that. For a highly paid Ivy League college professor to whine about higher costs being “regressive” is delusional. Costs are regressive when they are imposed on poor and middle class people, not people earning six figures and more. Did old Dick not realize when he and his rich friends pimped for this that the heaviest burden would fall on the middle class? Does this 1%er not realize that the rest of us have no sympathy for the tiny percentage increase he needs to bear when the rest of us have been ordered to pony up 20% of our incomes to satisfy his need to feel generous? A-hole.

As for the corporatization of the university, what did old Dick expect? His buddy Obama created a law that handed vast amounts of power to health insurance companies. In so doing, it slaughtered the freedoms of consumers, of doctors, and of hospitals. Should we really feel bad that Harvard has decided to act “more corporate” by passing along costs that Dick and his buds forced onto Harvard and the rest of the nation’s employers?

Mary “Dirty Froggy” Lewis, a professor of French history, has taken the lead against the cost increases, calling them “a salary reduction.” Le shock! Did she not understand that would be the effect when she and her buds imposed this law on the rest of working America?

She goes further too, noting that “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.” Uh, yeah. Was this unclear when you passed this? This law results in a massive monthly pay cut and then, to protect the vested corporate interests, forces you to pony up cold hard cash to meet your deductibles and out of pocket limits right at the point where you get sick. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, and it absolutely shouldn’t outrage the people who pimped for this.

Mary “Still, But Not Deep” Waters, a professor of sociology... whatever that really is, whined: “It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” and “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”

Wrong actually. The law sought to save money by shifting costs onto healthy people who wouldn’t otherwise buy insurance. It only whacks sick people because they are the ones trying to use this largely worthless coverage. As for the resources, Shallow Mary clearly doesn’t understand that when you impose a cost on something like a corporation, it tries to pass that on. Just as Mary would never accept a pay cut to let Harvard increase the salaries of the cleaning staff, Harvard will not take a pay cut just because Mary got a law passed to give her more health benefits.

As for the “what is the crisis” question, shouldn’t we all be asking that? Only 15% of Americans lacked health insurance, and every one of them still had a right to seek treatment. So where was the crisis? Moreover, with only 6.3 million people signing up out of 49 million, it’s pretty clear there never was a crisis. So Mary... STFU.

Ultimately, what’s really hilarious about this is the shock that these nasty changes they imposed on the rest of us 310 million saps are only intolerable now that they are applying to our elite brethren, who assumed they were immune from the consequences of their actions.

Kind of makes you smile, doesn’t it?

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Stopping Obama's Executive Orders

I've said before that there is only one way to stop the left from doing something. That is to take the very tools they create and use those tools against them. Logic, human nature and history all suggest this is true. Why am I raising this point? Because there is only one way to stop Obama's executive orders on immigration, global warming and whatever else: turn his usurpation of power against the Democrats. Let's discuss.

Let us begin with a quick history lesson. The Democrats were fine impounding money until Richard Nixon did it to their favorite programs. They invented the special prosecutor and used it with abandon against Reagan and Bush. They only changed their minds when the Republicans used it against Clinton. Then they raced to kill it. They happily used the Department of Education to nationalize education as they saw fit... until Bush used the same tools they created to impose his views on the country's education system. Suddenly, the Democrats discovered a deep love of state's rights and they demanded an end to federal interference. They loved judicial activism, until conservative judges began using the same tools to reverse liberal laws. The examples go on and on, on many levels. In each instance, the Democrats created some new lever of power which they used to impose their will on the system and an unwilling people, and they only gave up that power when the Republicans finally started using it against them... nothing else stopped them.

Indeed, in each instance, nothing short of the Republicans using this new power against liberal interests had the slightest effect on them. The conservative response typically began with hand-ringing about this being an abuse of power or illegal. Liberals laughed it off. Then conservatives tried to find ways to cut off funding or pass laws to stop the abuse. Again, liberals laughed. Why? Because if conservatives succeeded, all they would achieve was stopping the left from winning more gains... nothing would be reversed. And if they failed, then the liberals could continue to win more gain. Basically, they won no matter what. It was only when conservatives finally started using this power to reverse liberal policies and impose conservative ones that liberals finally saw a real potential for harm to their cause and they rushed to kill these new powers.

Why this matters now is simple: Obama has created a new tool to impose his views on immigration and global warming on the country by Executive Order. The conservative response, as always, is to shout that this is illegal and to seek to cut funding or pass laws stopping Obama from doing this, harrumph! But as the above demonstrates, this is no threat to the Democrats. It's a win-win for them, with the worst case being that they get some of what they want.

That's why we need a change of strategy. To stop Obama, we need to make it clear that we will use the same tools of Executive-imposed non-enforcement to neuter their favorite environmental laws or affirmative action laws or Obamacare provisions. Sure, the Democrats can reverse those actions the next time they win the White House, but eight years of ignoring Obamacare, for example, would be more than fatal to the law. The Democrats will immediately see the risk to everything they have built in Washington and they will freak out and work their butts off to find a way to stop anyone from being able to do this.

That's how you stop Obama, by making it clear that the cost of his ideological tantrum will be the neutering of all the laws they cherish. In fact, some leftists are already worried about this.

BTW, as an aside, there is a real problem with what Obama has done on immigration. His administration may decide not enforce the laws, but he can't grant an amnesty. That means the next administration can still deport these people. Basically, the best he can achieve is to give these people a two year stay of execution. That's hardly going to be worth it to these people, especially if they need to out themselves to make it happen. By comparison, eight years of the IRS not enforcing the Obamacare penalty will crush the system's actuarial assumptions... so will eight years of slow-walking subsidies to insurance providers, etc.

As always, the Democrats have much more to lose from this than we do, provided conservatives are willing to fight fire with fire.

Thoughts?

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A Ground-level Update On Obamacare

This is a difficult time for Obamacare. The Supreme Court is looking at it again and may wipe out the subsidies most people get, which will destroy the law if it happens. But even if the law survives that, it remains deeply unpopular and has become an albatross around Democratic necks. Indeed, it has been blamed by several Democrats (including now Harry Reid) as the reason they got blown out in the midterms, and many are trying to position themselves as critics of the law they passed. What makes it so unpopular? Well, here's an example I've run across personally.

When I went to the hospital ER, they gave me a referral to a wound clinic. Ok, I thought, I don't know what they will do for me, but I'll go. So, imagine my surprise to discover that the wound clinic could not take a referral from the ER. When I inquired why they couldn't take the referral, I was told that Obamacare forbids this and, thus, they now require patients to go back to their GPs to get referrals. What if I don't have a GP, I asked, or if my insurance doesn't require me to use a GP as a gatekeeper? It doesn't matter... Obamacare prohibits this.

So I had to see my lousy doc and blow another $80 in insurance money and a $24 co-pay just to get a referral that I had already been given. What a waste!

When I got to the wound clinic, I was shocked to discover that this group of nurses are fantastic. They are MUCH, MUCH more knowledgeable at treating wounds than any of the doctors I've seen. And in one week, I already saw more improvement than my doctors had managed in six months. In two weeks, things were going so well that I can visibly see healing and I've even had a couple days where I didn't need pain pills. Wow! Fantastic.

Anyways, I started chatting with them, as I tend to do. I learned some amazing things:

(1) They lost 20% of their patients when Obamacare kicked in, because many insurance companies dropped wound care as a cost savings measure to compensate for other things the law forced them to cover. The nurses are furious about this because they said these were most often the people who needed the care the most, and now they are basically on their own. And I can attest to the fact that you can't duplicate this at home... no way, and GPs aren't trained to do this either.

(2) They lost another 10% of their patients because their clinic, which had been associated with the hospital but not part of it, was forced into the hospital structure to comply with Obamacare. I have heard similar things from cardiology groups, a vascular group and a bariatric group, i.e. that the law made it impossible for them to remain independent and, thus, they had no choice but to join the hospital. The result is that the wound clinic must now charge a $100 per visit hospital facilities charge, even though nothing has changed in the way they practice or even the location where they are located. The result of this was to drive away the people without insurance, who couldn't afford the extra $400 to $800 a month.

(3) The referral thing is costing new patients an extra trip to their GP every so often. Again, this is wasteful.

(4) Some of the treatments they provided in the past had to be dropped because of price pressure.

So the result here is that around 1/3 of people who saw these expert nurses no longer see them. Those that do see them are paying a good deal more to do so, and some services have been cut. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to be about getting more people treatment? Apparently, that's not the point. Apparently, the point is to strip people of anything beyond basic treatment.

In fact, Paul "I'm An Idiot But I'm Smug" Krugman scratched out an article recently in which he praised Obamacare for cutting the rate at which Americans were spending on healthcare. He based this on a huge drop in Medicare spending. What he missed was that the drop wasn't because people were getting the treatment more efficiently... they just weren't getting it because Medicare stopped paying for it.

Oh, and while the leftist media continues to try to scream that this program has been a success (something the public clearly doesn't accept), keep in mind that the plan called to insure 46 million people. But so far, only 8 million signed up, and only 6 million bothered to pay. That's a 12% success rate. Was that worth disrupting our entire healthcare economy and the policies of 270 million people? Was it worth stripping 30% of wound care patients of needed treatment? Hardly.

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Chuck Schumer Must Be Running For Something...

You may have missed this during the hubbub of Thanksgiving, but New York Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer (D/NY) dropped a little bomblet on his fellow Democrats.

In a post-Nov. 4 election drubbing, he made a speech at a National Press Club on Nov. 25, he had this to say...

"After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them," Schumer said. "We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform."

The third-ranking Senate Democrat noted that just about 5 percent of registered voters in the United States lacked health insurance before the implementation of the law, arguing that to focus on a problem affecting such "a small percentage of the electoral made no political sense."

The larger problem, affecting most Americans, he said, was a poor economy resulting from the recession. "When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, 'The Democrats aren't paying enough attention to me,' " Schumer said.

The health care law should have come later, Schumer argued, after Democrats had passed legislation to help the middle class weather the recession. Had Democrats pushed economic legislation, he said, "the middle class would have been more receptive to the idea that President Obama wanted to help them" and, in turn, they would have been more receptive to the health care law.

Schumer said he told fellow Democrats in the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act that it was the wrong time to pass the law.

"People thought—and I understand this—lots of people thought this was the only time to do this, it's very important to do. And we should have done it. We just shouldn't have done it first," he said. "We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, 'What about me? I'm losing my job. It's not health care that bothers me. What about me?' … About 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, mainly because it was paid for by either the government or their employer, private sector. So they weren't clamoring. The average middle-class voter, they weren't opposed to doing health care when it started out, but it wasn't at the top of the agenda."

-from National Journal 11/25/2014

Duh, ya' think, Chuck?? Oh, wait, but I thought it was going so well? But then again I can't say we didn't warn him...but...well, from his own words circa 2010, this is what he had to say...

"I am proud to support the historic Affordable Care Act – the 2010 health care reform bill that recently became law and will help over 30 million Americans, including almost 3 million uninsured New Yorkers to gain access to affordable health insurance.,."

Well, you can read the rest...LINK

Oh, he's just sad that his dream of replacing Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader has been dashed and yeah, he's up for re-election in 2016. So we can understand how desperate he may be to distance himself from his vast mistakes. By the way, Chuck has been Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee since 2010, so he has been the key election strategist on the issues the Dems have been running on and responsible for the losing streak in the mid-term elections.

Any thoughts?

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Obamacare and those Stupid American Voters...

So what do the Democrats do when one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act admits that they pretty much had to lie to get the bill passed? No, they don't blame Bush...not this time. And what do the Democrats do when this same architect refers to them in terms of "the stupidity of the American voter"? Well, they blame the messenger Rich Weinstein. Who is this guy anyway?

Well, here's the story. Rich Weinstein, described as a "mildmannered investment adviser" from Philly, went on a mission to figure out why his insurance policy had been cancelled and his new improved ACA policy premiums had dramatically increased.

“When Obama said 'If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period'—frankly, I believed him,” says Weinstein. “He very often speaks with qualifiers. When he said 'period,' there were no qualifiers. You can understand that when I lost my own plan, and the replacement cost twice as much, I wasn’t happy. So I’m watching the news, and at that time I was thinking: Hey, the administration was not telling people the truth, and the media was doing nothing!” - Bloomberg

Mr. Weinstein searched hours and hours of videos of "David Cutler, Zeke Emanuel, Jonathan Gruber and people like that" and listened to what they had to say. All he did was listen. Then he hit on this clip from ACA architect and MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber from a UPenn conference in September of 2013...



Did he just admit that the bill was purposely written is such a way that the CBO wouldn't be able score it as a tax? And did he just admit it was the lack of transparency that was the political key to getting the bill passed? Well, yes and they could do it because of the "stupidity of the American voter or whatever".

Needless to say, this video hit the Web-verse and has gone viral. Mr. Gruber realized he had been caught, so he went on Ronan Farrow's MSNBC show (the least watched show on TV) to explain that he spoke "off the cuff" and his remarks were "innappropriate". LINK

Mr. Weinstein says he has more video to refute the claim that Mr. Gruber's remarks were "off the cuff" gaffes. But Weinstein's over-arching issue was how did he, just a regular guy looking for information, manage to find all of this and not one journalist even tried? And I have to say he is right. With all the high-minded Woodward and Bernstein wannabe's out there looking for the gotcha moment, why didn't they track down these videos?

Though beside the point right now, the Supreme Court case that Farrow and Gruber are referring has been brought by several states that hinges on a small phrase that says "people qualify for tax credits to help pay insurance premiums when they buy a plan on an exchange “established by the state.” The dispute is whether the federal government can subsidize insurance when a state opts out of creating their own state run exchanges and whether that phrase were just a "typo" as Prof. Gruber describes them or a huge flaw that kills the federal exchanges and possibly the ACA.

And as an final point: When will it dawn on the Democrats and liberals that the stupid American voters of which Mr. Gruber is referring is them?

So here we are. Any comments or would you rather look at videos of animals doing cute things?

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Why Obamacare Will Never Be Popular

You may have heard that a fairly reliable recent poll found that people are liking Obamacare less and less the more they deal with it. This has Democrats freaking out and conservatives gloating. What interests me though is the question of why. Let’s discuss.

The poll in question was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation... inventors of the Kaiser Roll and the German Kaiser. They’ve been tracking Obamacare since it was just a gleam in Obama’s eye, and they’ve found that right now Obamacare is less popular than it’s ever been. Specifically, only 37% of Americans have a favorable view of the law and 53% have an unfavorable view. The other 10% responded “Dave’s not here, man.”

So what is going on here? This has the Democrats panicked because they assumed that once the law was passed, opposition would fade as people accepted that the law could not be repealed and they decided to explore the benefits. But that didn’t happen. Why not? Well, because there aren't many benefits. In fact, the law seems designed to help only a truly small, narrow sliver of America at the expense of millions more. Consequently, Obamacare's popularity is falling among every group -- conservatives, liberals, Democrats, the poor, the rich, the middle class, etc.

Here is why I think this is true:

● Conservatives remain unhappy for ideological reasons. They see Obamacare as a massive waste of government funds which simultaneously restricts freedom of choice. They realize that over time, this will destroy our healthcare system rather than improve it.

● Liberals are upset because they don’t see how Obamacare got them what they wanted. Their vision of Obamacare was a plan, where you flashed your ID card and you could get treatment anywhere on the government’s dime, paid for by the draining of “the rich.” Said differently, they wanted to unload all the responsibility for their own healthcare on Uncle Sam. Instead, they found themselves told that they must now pay money to insurance companies to get inferior care that few can afford. What’s more, they need to jump through bureaucratic hoops to make it happen.

● Populists are upset for the same reason: they see Obamacare as a restriction of freedom done in the name of boosting the bottom line of Big Government contributors from the health industry.

● Middle Classers are upset because they see the massive rise in healthcare costs that they are bearing through their premium increases as being the direct result of Obamacare -- though interestingly, only 28% of respondents said the law hurt them personally... 56% said it has no effect (15% said it helped them). I think what bothers the Middle Class more is that they see Obamacare as a way to soak them to provide more benefits to undeserving voters.

● The poor are upset, even though they essentially get free Obamacare, because what they are getting isn’t worth a crap. Despite being free, there are still costs (like co-pays) they need to cover. Finding doctors has proven to be impossible. Not to mention, they don’t do paperwork, yet they are finding now that they need to.

● Doctors are unhappy because they are getting raped to make the system work.

Essentially, Obamacare includes something for everyone to hate, but nothing for anyone to love. Next will come the fines and the revelation of the unfairness of the fines, and people will be even more upset. Add increasing premiums and people aren’t ever going to like this law.

Thoughts?

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The Release of Bengdahl and other stuff...

Let's see, what is the controversy for this week? We all know the drill. The late Friday afternoon media drop of the week. Oh, yeah, the release of Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five notorious, high ranking members of the Taliban. YEY! No man left behind! The only US POW has now been freed. Oh, but the WH just didn't have time to let Congress know as is their obligation. Oops, they're sorry, but it was crucial. [God, I'm tired of this stuff and we have 2 1/2 more years of this crap.]

Right on cue, Susan Rice, someone we can always count on to tell the truth, hit the weekend pundit shows with the usual blah-blah and the "accusing the Republicans of making this political" has begun. At the same time Obama took to Air Force One and left the country just in time for the "narrative" to get muddled in "It's the Republican's fault" accusations. I hear that Obama was caught off guard with the negative response. He was expecting "euphoria", but all he got was a lead balloon crashing on the WH lawn. Even Diane Feinstein is upset. Once again we see the WH leadership playbook in action. Oh, and the big parade in Bengdahl's hometown has been cancelled.

Frankly, I don't really care much about Bengdahl's release. I tend to believe his own writings and all of his platoon mates who have come forward to say he deserted to go "walk-a-bout". I mean, this is a volunteer military, so it's not like he was forced to be there in the first place. He volunteered. He deserted his post. And no matter what the military decides to do in the way of a court marshal, all Obama has to do is pardon him. What I do care about is that five very dangerous people who even Diane Feinstein refused to release in an exchange for four years now, are now free to move about the world freely. Oh, yeah, Obama promised that part to the deal was that these five men would be monitored and that the Qataris would keep them under close scrutiny. Oops, well, Qatar has already released them to move about their country unmonitored and...oops, didn't Obama say we would would be monitoring their whereabouts. Well, no, we won't. Their families have already been flown to their side and I predict that they will be back in the bosom of the Taliban within the next few weeks, just as soon as all the hullabaloo dies down.

Why do we even bother. I had a friend who voted for Obama twice say to me how angry she is about all of this. When I informed her that Obama did this without informing Congress which is his obligation, she responded that Bush never informed Congress about going into into Afghanistan or Iraq. Uh, say what? I love her dearly, but you can imagine my response. Oh, yeah, isn't "blame Bush" part of the liberal program?

Oh, did you hear that the VA is stonewalling any investigation? Yeah, we are at Stage 7 of my 10 Stages to Leadership list. I wonder how long Bengdahl will have to wait for his appointment with the VA?

Anyway, I'm done. Any thoughts?

P.S. Remember a few weeks ago when I alluded that I was having to pay 247% more for my employee provide health insurance coverage? Yes, I am truly thrilled about Obamacare. Well, now I learned this week that, as of June 1, I only "technically" have health insurance, but no one can actually "verify" that I am covered. Yeah, my new insurance company is "backlogged" in assigning policies, so I won't actually be covered for the next "few weeks". I just hope that in the next "few weeks" I don't need any life-saving emergency procedures. My family may have to resort to my life insurance coverage to pay for it. I feel so much better about Obamacare now. Yeah, it is so working...

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Misstating the Rand Report

You probably heard about the Rand survey by now. This is one of those documents Democrats love – vague and with sneaky caveats which make the headline true, but misleading. Here’s what you need to know.

First, let me point out that the Rand Corporation used to be to the left what Halliburton became: the corporate boogeyman controller of the New World Military Capitalist Order (note the image attached to this article, which you can find at many leftist sites). So there is a lot of irony in the Democrats pointing happily to a Rand report, but irony is typically lost on Democrats.

Anyways, according to Team Obama, the Rand report tells us that Obamcare (1) gave 18.0 million people insurance (2) 9.3 million of those were uninsured before, and that (3) only one million lost their insurance because of Obamacare. And that’s before they even factored in the surge in enrollments at the end of March!! Take that, suckas!

Ok, let’s unpack this fudge, shall we.

First, swimming through the numbers, Rand reports that only 3.9 million people signed up for Obamacare. This number will likely go up because of the last minute surge, but it would be stunning for it to rise anywhere near Team Obama’s claim (now) of 7.5 million (unless they just accept Obama's fake data). Put simply, that’s a failure. And it's nowhere near the 18 million liberals are claiming was found in the Rand report.

Moreover, Rand estimates that only 1.4 million of those people were uninsured. The rest were simply dumped into the exchange by their employers.

The rest of the 18.0 million number comes from two sources. First, 5.9 million were added to Medicaid. Note that this is half the 9 million team Obama was claiming for the past several months. So someone has some explaining to do... if only we had a real media watchdog. Secondly, recall that this number is not “new” enrollees, this number is “new plus re-enrollees.” In other words, it’s likely that the vast majority of these people were on Medicaid already and just had their policies renewed. Basically, they are crediting Obamacare with providing insurance to people who already had it. Other studies have found that less than one million of these people were new to Medicaid.

The rest of the 18.0 million are 8.2 million people who got insurance at work. To credit Obamacare with this is laughable. This is simply a function of more people finding work... that’s it. And if we are going to credit Obamacare with this, then we need to “credit” Obamacare with the people who lost insurance since it first came up in 2009. In that regard, the number of uninsured rose from 14.4% under Bush to a high of 18% under Obama (Rand actually credits Obama with a reduction from 20.5% to 15.8%, so lets run with that). This means that Obamacare stripped 6.1% of Americans of their insurance: 18.9 million people. Hey whoa!! Where have I seen someone claim an 18 million number recently? Hmmm. It's funny how all of Obama's numbers magically add up.

Anyways, Obama cost 18.9 million people their insurance. 8.2 million found coverage through jobs. 3.9 found their way to the exchanges. And about 1 million were added to Medicaid. Thus, Obamacare cost 18.9 million people their insurance, but "got" 13.2 million their coverage. That leaves 5.7 million people forgotten.

That's not a victory. Also, think about this. Obamacare’s success can now be defined thusly: after spending trillions and disrupting millions, Obamacare has managed to bring the insurance rate almost back up to what it was under Bush.

Aim high, jackass.

Of course, that’s the same level of "success" Obama has achieved with unemployment, income growth, inflation or pretty much any other measure of economic health. So at least he's consistent.

Finally, as an aside, another study has found that the people in the Exchanges are a good deal sicker than the rest of the insured public. In particular AIDS patients and those needing specialty drugs have gone to the Exchanges. According to an Express Scripts study of 650,000 claims filed in January and February with 25 insurers, Exchange participants are four times more likely to be treating AIDS, AIDS drugs are in the top ten spending list under the Exchange but not outside the exchange, hepatitis C treatments are similar. Pain medications were 35% higher in the Exchange than in other plans, drugs to control seizures were 27% higher, antidepressants were 14% higher. All of this means “expensive!” All in all, the Exchanges are spending 47% more than private insurers on "specialty drugs," i.e. drugs used by less than 1% of the public.

What this tells us is that the Exchanges really are packed with people with long term, very expensive conditions, i.e. the uninsurables. That, combined with the low turnout, is a disaster in waiting for Obamacare.

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Gone Fishin'

Okay, so I don't really fish (NTTAWWT), but I am traveling today. So you are free to associate with abandon. No holds barred. No topics off limits. Okay, one limit - keep it clean and kind of family-friendly. No, most definitely "family-friendly".

If you are lost for a topic, here are a couple of "conversation-starters":

1. Equal-pay legislation - It died in Congress, but is there really a pay disparity? I read article after article that opines "yes! of course, women are victims" and "No! if you compare apples to apples, there is virtually no pay disparity". I have no opinion (yeah, right! If you believe that, I have a bridge that needs sellin'!), but what do think?

2. Obamacare - That's always fun. The Rand Corporation just published their findings in regards to Obamacare. Now I have a great deal of respect for Rand Corporation. In their reports that I have read on a variety of subject, they always have balanced, well-researched analysis. And this one is no different. But I need your opinion on the report - Changes in Health Insurance Enrollment Since 2013: Evidence from the RAND Health Reform Opinion Study.

So, this was the screaming headline on HuffPo, "9.3 MILLION MORE INSURED!!!***"! But, contrary to HuffPo's "analysis" that 9.3 million now have insurance that they otherwise would not have, the Rand analysis gives a much different take. It is almost as if the writer at HuffPo didn't really read the report. Now I have to admit, I cherry picked too, but I found two key statements in the Rand report that are interesting, but I would like your opinion:

On the opening "summary - "We also found that 3.9 million people are now covered through state and federal marketplace - the so-called insurance exchanges - and less than 1 million people who previously had individual-market insurance became uninsured to the period in question..."

And on page 6: "...Our estimates suggest that only about one-third of new marketplace enrollees were previously uninsured. While this seems relatively low, it is slightly higher than findings reported earlier..."

Any comments?

***Huffpo changed the original screaming headline and buried the story after its original posting. Someone probably read the Rand report and realized that the analysis wasn't really in their favor. I posted a comment on HuffPo that pretty much said that it was apparent that the writer had not really read the report. And amazingly, my posted comment was did not make it passed the censors...

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Opposition to Obamacare NOT Racist

Cynthia Tucker is a black, female journalist who gained prominence in the 1990s, and all the negatives that entails, i.e. she’s steeped in the race/gender wars. This last week, she laments that it’s hard to understand the “irrational hatred of Obamacare” (which of course is code for racism). But let’s put that aside. What Tucker doesn’t get is that the hatred of Obamacare isn’t irrational. Let’s discuss.

Tucker does what all politicized hacks always do: she creates her own facts to support the conclusion she wants you to reach. She begins with the fraudulent advocacy technique of talking about some woman she knows who is happy to finally have insurance. Whoopee! Anecdotal evidence is meaningless. In fact, I can counter with someone who thinks we should ban insurance. So what have proved? Nothing, Cynthia.

Anyways, she buys into Obama’s 7 million number and calls it “stark evidence of the overwhelming market demand.” Isn’t that cute, she’s a moron! Let us consider the seven million number and her point:

● First, it’s nonsense to call something that is forced upon people by threat of fine as creating “market demand.” That’s like saying Hitler created “market demand” for Nazism in every country he occupied by forcing it upon people. “Markets” imply willing buyers and sellers, not the coerced.

● Secondly, the 7 million number is obviously fake. Quoting it uncritically only demonstrates bias. Let’s see how many people actually have Exchange-sold policies three months from now, then we’ll talk Cynthia.

● Thirdenly, even if we accept the 7 million number, this is “stark” evidence of a lack of demand, not evidence of demand, you dingbat. There are 49 million uninsured. If we assume that all of the 7 million were uninsured before, then still only 1 in 7 signed up despite the threats of being fined if they refused. That’s evidence of horribly weak demand.

● Further, the evidence suggests that only 800,000 of the signups didn’t have insurance until Obamacare came along. That means only 1.6 in 100 of the uninsured responded. Again, how is that evidence of anything except disdain?

As for the other 6.3 million, those are people who were insured, but lost their insurance because of Obamacare and had no choice but to buy this inferior product at inflated prices. It’s not evidence of demand to ban all other alternatives and then point to your sales.

She then tells us that even though it’s too early to call Obamacare a success, it is a success. According to her,

● “It made great strides in improving access to health care.” Uh, not really. More people lost insurance than gained insurance. And only an idiot would say that disrupting the entire system to get 800,000 coverage is making strides.

● She says it will be a “boon” to the economy that young people can stay on their parent’s plans.... as if that made any sense at all.

● Now you can’t be denied coverage! That’s true, but you can be denied treatment. Which would you rather have? In fact, the biggest problem Obamacare will encounter is that people will buy this insurance, but won’t be able to find doctors, and certainly not good ones. Basically, Obamacare will cause the “two America’s” dystopia liberals always whine about, with rich people getting to see great doctors and getting treatment anywhere they wish, while poor and average people get handed worthless policies that leave them dying in the waiting rooms of third-rate converted animal hospitals. Thanks Cynthia, may it happen to you and yours first.

● Now you can get affordable insurance away from your employer! LOL! Actually, Obama killed the affordable policies. So to restate this truthfully, “Now you will lose your employer-sponsored plan and you can go buy way overpriced, underprovided phantom-coverage from Obama’s website.

Next she takes on those nasty, racist Republicans. She points out that they should love Obamacare because it “adheres to market-based ideas.” Yeah, right. There isn’t a market-based idea in the whole bill. Further, she whines, the Republicans are free to offer alternatives. This is, of course, revisionism. This bill was written in secret by a couple Democrats and the insurance companies. It was voted on without amendments, without reading, without Republican input or public input being allowed. It even got pushed through on an abusive procedural motion. I guess Cynthia wasn’t paying attention.

Of course she finishes with a nasty, slander: “Could it be that Republicans are simply furious that millions of Americans like [her friend] finally have health insurance?” No, Cynthia, racism is your obsession, not ours.

Anyways, let’s cut to the chase. She just doesn’t understand the hate. Ok, how about this...

Why should we like a law that forces us to buy a product we don’t want, a product that costs more and provides less coverage than we could have obtained on the open market before Obama banned those policies. A law which ham-fistedly attempts to reshape 1/12th of our economy. A law which has cost nearly ten million people the insurance they liked (more to come), that has severed their relationships with their doctors, which put many independent doctors out of business, which cost people their jobs, which cut down the part-time hours available for part-time workers, which forced churches to provide abortion coverage and old people to pay for pediatric issues and males to pay for feminine issues and young people to massively subsidize the elderly. A law which promises huge, rich insurance firms subsidies all paid for on the backs of the middle class. A law which may yet wipe out unions. A law which will break various state and federal budgets.

Maybe that’s why people hate it, Cynthia. And if you weren’t a racist who is looking for anything you can spin into “white people hate us!” perhaps you would see this. The problem isn’t that Obama is the first black president, it’s that he’s the first abusive, incompetent, shithead black president.

Hating Obamacare is not an irrational response. It is quite rational. In fact, I wonder how Cynthia would respond if we passed a law which forced everyone to buy a 45 caliber (or above) handgun for home defense and we made blacks pay twice as much to subsidize old whites. Do you think she’d marvel and fake confusion at all the irrational hate coming from the left? Would she finish with, “Could it be that Liberals are simply furious that millions of Americans like old Earl finally have access to home protection?” Somehow, I doubt it.

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Pivoting to Jobs...Again

So did you hear the one about how Obamacare is now "settled science" and we're not supposed to dwell on it anymore. Hey, that's what Obama said in his victory dance on Tuesday at the goal line after his touch down as he spiked the ball and declared "Mission Accomplished" Where have I heard that before? when he announced that we had magically reached the golden number of 7.1 million sign ups for Obamacare! Yey! Now, you naysayers, it's time to pivot again...to jobs...again.

It's over, people. Move on. Nancy Pelosi has pivoted to job creation and stuff, so expect...well...nothing on that to happen. God, how that woman can drone on.

Oh, but wait, Jeffrey Young at Huffington Post has begun to question the numbers. Interestingly, they are the same questions that we have asked.

5 Things The Obamacare Enrollment Numbers Won't Tell You.

Hmmmm, I'm thinking that Mr. Young wont' be writing for HuffPo much longer...

This is my take. We should now change the word from "pivot" to "pirouette". With all the spinning and twirling and creative choreography, maybe it would be more appropriate,

Any thought?

Sorry this is short and not so sweet, but I am getting an new oven tomorrow and have to get ready. If you lived in a Manhattan apartment, you'd understand...

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An Horrible Article On Obamacare

I need to stop reading other articles because they make my head explode. Today’s article comes from Meghan Foley of the Wall Street Cheat Sheet. Foley is generally quite a talented writer on the subject of Obamacare, but not this time.

The article is called “Obamacare Paradox: Unsubsidized by Satisfied Insurance Customers,” and it suggests that people who got their insurance away from the Obamacare exchanges are surprisingly satisified with Obamacare – hence the paradox, i.e. why should someone who doesn’t benefit from the law like the law. The article goes like this:

1. More than 80% of the people who have gotten insurance in the exchanges are getting subsidies. That’s more than 4 million out of the 5 million who have signed up. They seem happy.

2. Critics complain that the subsidies are an attempt to hook people on subsidies, but even though only 20% of people signing up are not get subsidies, that doesn’t mean that those who aren’t getting subsidies are unhappy with Obamacare or that they staying away in protest.

3. Critics say that the $1 trillion in tax increases in the bill will depress economic activity, and will cost 2.5 million jobs, which are valid concerns, but the subsidies make the law work and people like the subsidies.

4. Even people who don’t purchase through the exchanges like the law.

Ok, let’s take this apart. First, she provides no evidence of happiness. In fact, I would counter that people are not happy or else more than 5 million people (of the 49 million uninsured) would have signed up and polls wouldn’t continue to show a majority favoring repeal.

Secondly, as for asserting that the people who got subsidies are happy, well yeah, people who get subsidies will not complain because they’re getting something for a lot cheaper than they otherwise would.

More interesting though is her assertion that the unsubsidized are happy. To make this argument, she relies on interviews with people. She admits that ancedotal evidence doesn’t prove anything, but then she goes ahead and relies on a couple interviews. She even says that perhaps with many more interviews, the anecdotal evidence will be persuasive, but that’s totally flawed logic. Anecdotal evidence is meaningless because it cannot be extrapolated to a larger population.

Moreover, the anecdotal example she uses is horrible. First, the claim she makes is that people who do not use the exchange are happy with Obamacare. But the woman she talks about actually did use the exchange. What she did was shop through the exchange to find a policy and then she called the insurance company directly to get that particular policy. Yet, Foley presents this woman as someone who bought insurance completely outside of the exchange system.

Further, the reason the woman is happy is because she has a pre-existing condition which kept her from getting insurance in the past. So she’s one of the 5 million people the law was specifically intended to help. Of course she’s happy with the changes! But don’t pretend that this woman is somehow representative of the public at large.

Interestingly, Foley tries to make her seem representative by quoting an HHS figure, which claims that between 19% and 50% of people have pre-existing conditions according to insurers. AND, the collateral effect of that affects those people’s families. Really? There are 2.7 people per family in the US on average. So if the collateral effects are true then between 51.3% and 135% of Americans are affected by this issue. Does that make sense to you?

Even taking just the 19% figure is obviously false. How do we know? Because the uninsurance rate is ony 15% total. Moreover, we’ve been told that there are only 5 million to 9 million people who are denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions. That’s a maximum of 2.9% of the population. So what is happening here is that someone who is in the 2.9% of the population for whom the law was specifically written went through the Exchange except for the final step of ordering the policy, and they are being sold as somehow representative of half the population and as someone who had no interaction with the Exchange.

Like I said, Foley has generally been very good at diagnosing the problems with Obamacare honestly and logically. She does research and reads the law. She doesn’t fall for public relations lies. Indeed, she hasn’t been alarmist or an apologist, but this article struck me as really stunning.

In fact, when you think about reality as compared to the spin here, what you see is that Obamacare is doing what conservatives said: it’s caught on only with people who are getting subsidies or those who are uninsured. Beyond that, it’s got pathetic market penetration. And with the economic damage being done with the tax hikes and the job losses, this is a law will never gain popularity.

Finally, as for the idea that the subsidies are good because they make the law work, maybe that fact alone is proof that the law shouldn't work. Keep in mind that the Inquisition didn't work without torture, but that doesn't make torture a good thing nor does it mean the Inquisition should have worked.

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Obamacare Fails At Its Mission

Obamacare is a total failure in all aspects. It doesn't do the things it was supposed to do, people aren't responding, and it's hurting way more people than it helps. But there's even a more damning criticism, which is that it's not insuring the people it was intended to help. The left has been trying to preempt this charge with propaganda headlines like this one: "Obamacare has brought the insurance rate to a recent-history low!" But don't believe. In fact, check out this chart.

As you can see, Obamacare has brought the uninsured rate all the way back down to where it was during Obama's first year. That's it. He has yet to get anywhere near the level of insurance during the Bush years. That's called an Epic Fail. So don't even start to believe this garbage about the uninsured rate being at a "recent history low." Bullsh*p.

Moreover, there's a lot of speculation that this rate is basically tied to the employment rate, which is a way of saying that it's not Obamacare's fault that the uninsurance rate soared under his time in office. But if that's the case, then it's ridiculous to let them claim credit for reducing this rate again, especially as there's no evidence that Obamacare mattered.

So how much has Obamacare actually helped? Team Obama has carefully avoided collecting any data on how many of the people buying insurance were previously uninsured, but private research suggests that only around 20% of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. If that's true, then we're looking at Obamacare adding 800,000 new people to the ranks of the insured... plus another 1.8 million if you count Medicaid.

Assuming these numbers are legitimate (and they aren't), that means Obama added 2.6 million people to the ranks of the insured. That works out to 0.8% of the public. Pathetic. Moreover, compared to the 11 million who slipped into the ranks of "uninsured" under Obama, that's not a great answer - and that doesn't even count all the job damage Obama has done. Our local liberal college, for example, just announced they are cutting back hours of part timers to avoid Obamacare.

What's more, these numbers are fake. The 9 million Medicaid number is all people who have signed up since the law went into effect. It does not in any way break out people who are new to the system. Attempts to figure out this number have found that less than 5% of these people are new. Suddenly, Obama's 0.8% falls to 0.5%.

The 800,000 number isn't what it seems either. Some part of those people lost their insurance because of Obama's economy in the past 5 years. If you exclude those people, then it's possible that none of the people who signed up were actually "uninsured" in 2008 or before.

So think about that. For something that has attracted far less than 0.5% of the public - when it was supposed to help 15%, the Democrats have jacked up the rates of 263 million people, driven doctors out of business, nearly broken hospitals, killed the job market at the low end, all but ended overtime and decent hours, and forced around 12 million off insurance... not to mention those who couldn't keep the insurance they liked or the doctor they liked. What a bargain.

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Obamacare Updates Are Painless...

Put down the gun, step back from that ledge my friend, climb out of the wood chipper. We’ll get through this Obamacare update together. You will be ok. I promise. So grab a handful of valium or Viagra or furosemide and let’s begin!

● Doctor No: The Thompson Twins sang, “Doctor, doctor, can you hear me calling calling,” and apparently the answer in “No,” as Californians are learning. See, it turns out that to keep costs “low” (“you use that word... I do not think it means what you think it means”), the Obamacare insurers in California created networks with very few doctors in them. Essentially, they filled these networks with the cheapest, skankiest doctors they could find and they cut out anyone who actually wanted to be paid.

Now people are furious as they discover that their doctors aren’t in the networks, that they can’t find doctors, and that they can’t find specialists and hospitals who will take their insurance. Naturally, California Democrats are outraged that the laws of economics have ruined their plans, so the legislature is passing laws with the intent of forcing these insurers to add more doctors to their networks by magic. Zero thought has been given to how this will affect the prices, but that’s the fun of watching California do its thing... watching them bounce from mistake to mistake until it all falls apart.

● Jobs Are For Losers: Once upon a time, there was a charmless monster called Obamacare which lived to eat people’s healthcare and kill their jobs. And boy did it ever feast. The CBO has determined that Obamacare will cost two million jobs over the next decade because it increases the costs of employment. Add that to Obama’s economic record of zero net jobs created.

Bizarrely, Team Obama is claiming that this will be a good thing because it means that these people who lose the jobs they depend upon to earn a living will now have more time to spend with their families. Huh?! Are they serious? Ok, I’ll call your bluff, Mr. President. If people losing their jobs is a good thing, then fire half the government... set them free to spend their time with their families. Jerkoff.

● So Much For Competition: Obamacare does nothing to lower costs. To pretend they did, Obama claimed that Obamacare would lower costs because competition would cause the companies to reduce their costs to win customers. Apparently that was a lie too. Shocking. It turns out that four companies are getting 95% of the signups. That’s called an oligopoly.

● The Check’s In The Mail: There is a law under which the federal government pays the insurance premiums for AIDS patients, because they deserve it and you don’t. Anyways, there is a problem. Insurers aren’t allowing third parties to pay premiums under Obamacare because they think the law makes that illegal. So suddenly, people with AIDS who moved over to Obamacare are being dumped by the insurers on the basis that they won’t accept the third-party checks. Nice.

In truth, this is probably really just an attempt to dump AIDS patients, who are very expensive, but we’ll see who’s really to blame here.

● You Got Screwed!: Before the election, many companies talked about the costs they would incur under Obamacare and how those costs would be passed down to workers. The MSM ignored them. Well, we’re seeing it now: lost jobs, jobs cut to part time, dumped healthcare are all part of it. Now we’re hearing about things like AOL, which just changed their 401K rules ostensibly because of the costs of Obamacare. What they’ve done is stop contributing to 401Ks every pay period. Instead, they will make a one time payment each December, assuming you are still employed on that date.

● Young Hearts: Finally, young people keep staying away in droves. Team Obama is blaming the chaotic rollout, but that’s not the problem. They need around 40% of those signing up to be young suckers, but they are only getting 25%. Even worse, I’m seeing hints that the young they are getting are on Medicaid. Whoops. These are not the droids you’re looking for!

There. We’re done. You lived. Go have some cake. :D

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Republican Health Plan... Arg

So last week sometime, the Republicans put out their proposed healthcare plan... the thing they want to replace Obamacare with. The plan was drafted by Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr and Tom Coburn and it kind of stinks. Well, drop the “kind of.” Here are the details.




The plan stinks, but it’s not all bad. Here are the good parts:

● First, it starts be repealing Obamacare in its entirety. That’s a good start. There is too much insider and insidious crap buried within Obamacare to try to poke through it line by line. Kill this rotten beast and start fresh. Good move.

● Secondly, they keep the most popular parts of Obamacare – the parts the public will not give up easily: ending lifetime limits and letting adult children stay on their parents’ plans until 26.

Then things go downhill fast.

● First, it wipes out the state exchanges and the mandate, which is good right? Well, yeah, only it doesn’t really wipe those out. Yes, it technically wipes both out. BUT the law provides that insurers can’t charge for pre-existing conditions so long as you’ve been “continuously insured for 18 months.” This is a hidden mandate and I have no idea how you track this without an exchange to designate what is acceptable coverage. But that’s not even the real problem. The real problem is that this moves the uninsurables from the Exchanges, where they can be tracked and everyone see their cost, into the private insurance market where they will be hidden behind the cost of insurance generally.

In other words, the government is dumping the uninsurables into the lap of the insurers, just as Obama is doing, only the Republicans are doing it secretly.

● Secondly, whereas Obamacare limited insurers to charging old people three times as much as the young, the Republican bill doesn’t eliminate this limit, it just changes it to five times. Basically, young people continue subsidizing old people, only not as much.

● With the individual mandate vanishing, insurers will need some other subsidy to support the requirement that they take on the uninsurables. The Republicans raise this money by taxing portions of employer plans.

● Because the feds can never hand out too much money, they continue the idea of tax credits for anyone earning less than 300% of the federal poverty level, i.e. the Obamacare subsidies.

So here’s what we have. The Republicans are keeping the Obama bribes for the old and the poor and Big Insurance. They are hiding the cost of what they are doing by shifting it from the Exchanges deep into the balance sheets of private insurers, to whom they will provide a subsidy. To raise the money for all of this, the Republicans tax the insurance policies that middle class workers get from their employers. They do exactly nothing to make the system better, safer or cheaper.

Maybe they should kick a few puppies while they’re at it. Seriously, a retarded monkey working at a broken typewriter would probably come up with better policies than the GOP. How can an entire party be so bereft of intelligence?

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Obamacare: Epic Failure Continues

If it's Monday, it must be Obamacare disclosure day. Ug. On the one hand, these Obamacare updates need to stop. They’re killing me. On the other hand, they are kind of funny in a train wreck sort of way, and this is information you should know. So let’s get to it and then we’ll never talk of this again.

The Wall Street Journal has done an interesting analysis of Obamacare. They wanted to know if Obama was being even close to truthful in the numbers he’s spewed forth about Obamacare. He hasn’t. Surprise! Here are their fascinating findings:

● Two different industry groups have conducted surveys to see what percentage of the two million people who “bought” Obamacare policies were previously without insurance and how many were simply dumped into the system when Obama killed their prior policies. Depending on the survey, 11%, 25% or 35% of the enrollees were uninsured before. Thus, if Obama’s goal is to get new people covered, then he's only succeeded with somewhere between 242,000 and 770,000 people... the rest simply replaced existing insurance.

● 242,000 is far less than the goal of 7 million at this point. Even using the bigger number (770k) still means he's only hit 11% of his goal. Moreover, only a fraction of those have actually paid... and they don’t have insurance until they pay.

● Of those who didn’t sign up, 52% said they couldn’t afford Obamacare. 30% said they couldn’t work their way through the system.

● Of those who had pre-existing insurance, around 10% were dumped into the Exchanges by heartless employers, the rest were forced into the Exchanges when heartless (and brainless) Obama made their prior plans illegal.

The Journal also examined Medicaid enrollments and found that Team Obama is lying through their teeth about those. Team Obama claims that 4 million people have signed up for Medicaid because of Obamacare. But...

But people sign up for and drop out of Medicaid all the time, and you can't just attribute them all to Obamacare. To figure out the real story, Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics compared the enrollments in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and to those that didn’t. What he found was that 55% of the enrollments in Medicaid took place in states that did not expand their coverage as Obama wanted. Hence, those people signing up was not the result of Obamacare as they were already eligible under the old system. Then he went back and looked at prior enrollment trends in the other states and found the normal baseline enrollment before Obamacare. Comparing that baseline to the post-Obamacare sign ups, he found that Obamacare added only 190,000 people to Medicaid.

The liberal Washington Post examined Trende’s analysis and concluded that he was right. They then labeled Obama’s four million claim “ridiculous” and gave three Pinocchios to everyone “who had improperly used the administration's figure or left the wrong impression about it.” You know things are bad when liberals are accusing Obama of lying.

Anyway, with 10 weeks to go in their enrollment period, and the CBO estimating that 14 million people should sign up for 2014, Team Obama is behind the eight ball. So far, they’ve only achieved 6.8% of their goal with no reason to think they’ll do much better in the future.

... and that needs to be balanced against the 5 million who lost their insurance and the 100+ million who saw their premiums soar.

Epic fail.

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