Obamacare Daily Disaster Update

I’ll bet you hoped that while you were away clogging your arteries with turkey, gravy and pie, that Obamacare would just go away. It hasn’t. Like a husky zombie who’s zeroed in on dorm full of cowering brain surgeons, it just keeps coming... and it will never stop until somebody puts it out of its misery. Here’s the latest:

● It Works... When Nobody’s Looking: Obama claims they got the website working, but then promptly told people not to use it so they didn’t break it. If you can’t use it, then it doesn’t work. As aside, did you know they haven't built the mechanism for processing payments yet? Or that they haven't yet fixed the ability of the website to accurately transmit data, like user identities and enrollment data. But hey, the website "works" now... whatever that means.

● Not My Problem: The National Association of Health Underwriters undertook a little survey last week. They found that only 30% of doctors were willing to treat Obamacare patients because of the low reimbursement rates, few specialists will take Obamacare insurance, none of the major hospitals will take Obamacare insurance, and the four biggest insurers (United Healthcare, Aetna, Cigna, Coventry) have refused to participate in the exchanges.

So if you ever manage to get Obamacare, you might as well use the policy to wipe your rear end because that’s about all it’s worth... nobody’s going to take it.

● In Triplicate: Because they haven’t been able to work out how the small business part of Obamacare is supposed to work, Obama has delayed that part for a year. He recommends that you contact an insurance broker... uh, a what? An insurance broker? You mean, there are people out there whose job it is to help others shop for insurance? In light of this shocking discovery, I’m left wondering why we need the Obamacare website at all? Oh, that’s right, because only a Democrat would get the government to do something the private market already does, not be able to make it work, and then call it a legacy.

● Except For All The Rest: Obama claimed this weekend that “he’s got nowhere to go but up.” That’s optimistic. What he meant was that things are as bad as they can get on Obamacare, so as they fix the problems, his popularity will rise again.

//snicker snicker If you say so, moron.

Actually, what Obama doesn’t get is that the moment the ship hits the iceberg may seem like the bottom of the barrel, but that’s only the beginning. Obama still needs to get the website fixed so it’s no longer a “third world experience.” The experts say that could take years and require a total start-over. Then he has the problem that nobody actually wants his insurance because it’s overpriced and worthless. And as we get closer to forced-signup day, you’ll hear more and more horror stories about smokers and sick people all getting hit with several thousand in monthly fees. You’ll hear about more and more people losing their insurance until the number reaches around 80 million... each of whom will remember his bazillion promises about letting them keep their insurance. The people who do get coverage will discover what a deductible means and that they can’t find doctors. Rates will keep rising at every turn. The few reputable insurers who are involved with back out, the less reputable will go bankrupt. And soon enough, the Democrats will realize that their best strategy is to blast the zombie, so they will smear it themselves.

Yeah, that crunching, screeching sound you hear as the ice rips the hole in Obama’s legacy, that’s just the beginning.

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Obama Fails By Not Hurting People Enough!

Things aren’t going well for Obama. His plan to “fix” his latest crisis isn’t playing too well anywhere in the country, least of all the editorial pages, where they are getting quite nasty about our Kenyan Overlord and his plan. It’s also interesting how carefully they avoid recognizing the people they are hurting.

So you know, “the fix” is Obama’s response to the problem that 50 million Americans are going to lose their insurance when Obama claimed they could keep it... he claimed that 29 times, though he now denies he said it. His proposed fix is to let insurers keep selling “substandard” plans for one more year. Essentially, the goal is to put this issue off until after the 2014 elections.

That said, however, there are three problems with this. First, it’s highly unlikely that insurers will actually offer those policies even if allowed, and many states (especially liberal ones) won’t allow it. Secondly, the election is in November 2014. When exactly do you think the cancellation notices will go out with a one year fix? That’s right, end of summer 2014... right before the election. I guess no one in the White House owns a calendar. Third, the plans in question will absorb away healthy people, which will cause Obamacare rates to spike.

The newspapers seem to get this and they are very upset with our Overlord. Observe:

● The New York Times said Obama’s proposed fix was better than the “destructive” Republican plan whatever that was (the Times doesn't seem to know), but Obama’s proposed fix “raises troubling questions.” Ya think? What questions are those? Well, the paper says that raises questions of “incompetence” on the part of the administration and it damages Obama’s credibility. But it then says that those questions “cannot be answered easily.”

Ha. Wrong.

(1) Did Obama knowingly lie to 50 million people? Yes.

(2) Why did no one at The Times question these obvious lies even as the Republicans pointed them out? Because you’re partisan hacks.

(3) Is it clear that Obama intended to strip 50 million people of insurance to help 7.3 million people this year? Yep.

Simple. But of course, that would require integrity... something The Times lacks.

The Times then says this, which is rather interesting:

“If a relatively small population of people get extensions, as some experts think likely, the effect on premiums in the overall health insurance market may be minimal. Even so, this disturbing reversal is caused by the incompetence of the administration in ushering in reforms that millions have been waiting for.”

Ok, let’s use our brains. (1) If 50 million people is a “relatively small population,” then why are we worrying about the 40 million uninsured? (2) If the effect on premiums is “minimal,” then why object to this fix at all? Spite? (3) If millions are waiting for Obama to usher in these reforms, then why did The Times applaud when Obama granted extensions to unions, big business, and even some small businesses? Why exclude Congress? Selective application of arguments is evidence of advocacy.

● The Washington Post actually thinks people losing their insurance is a good thing (as does Nancy Pelosi), though they didn’t have the integrity to say so. Instead, they question Obama’s integrity for not saying so... the hypocrites said:

“Unfortunately, it was his promise that was wrong, not the design of the law. At best, his proposed fix will have little impact except to let him shift the blame; at worst, it will undermine reform.”

So the real problem is that Obama doesn’t have the courage not to lie. Hey, I agree with the Post for once! Wow! I never thought this day would come!

● The Wall Street Journal called this a “nonfix,” designed to avoid needing to work on a genuine fix. The Journal then summed up modern liberalism pretty well:

“They are trying to impose on Americans insurance they don’t want, at prices they don’t want to pay, while limiting their choices of doctors and hospitals. This is the reality of modern liberal government.”

Yep. And they spy on everyone, they bomb Arab countries, and they hand out money to Wall Street like it was candy.

● USA Today called this a “punt” and titled their editorial, “Obama prescribes ugly fix for Obamacare.” Like The Post, USAToday notes that the problem with the fix is that it lets the healthy people escape from Obamacare, which means they won’t be subsidizing the people Obamacare was designed to help. It seems lost on them that this means they are choosing to hurt a lot of people to help a few others. They also note that Obama’s fix won’t work because states might not go along with it (especially liberal states... which will bring more bad PR to the Democrats) and because insurers aren’t going to play this game in any event.

It’s amazing how talented liberals are at ignoring the people they will hurt just so they can claim they helped someone. That’s usually called being sociopathic... or is it psychopathic?

Anyway, this weekend, Obama met with a group of CEOs from Big Insurance. They were working on a plan to save their dirty deal, known as Obamacare. Now ask yourself how the media would have responded if Bush had huddled with a group of CEOs to find a way to save some government handout to those same CEOs.

Oh wait, we already know. For years, the MSM was obsessed with how many oil industry executives the White House met and what they talked about. This was portrayed time and again as Bush dealing with cronies to rape the American people... a veritable outrage! It’s funny how those same MSM types can report an even more egregious situation with Obama, with a known plan to force consumers to buy their over-priced insurance and lavish government subsidies to cover the costs, and not a single “journalist” seems capable of noticing the problem.

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A Stunningly Good Article

Speaking as a blogger, the news sucks these days. Seriously, if the world were a Scrabble game, I would toss all my letters back into the bag and start over. So lets string some news items together and pretend this was all one long, solid piece of analysis.

● EPIC OPEC FAIL: The US has quickly become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. Ha ha. Saudi Arabia formerly had the crown, but now we have it. Next time King Dontcarehwathescalled Abdul comes to Washington, he’ll be bowing to Obama!

● Obamacare In Motion: Obamacare’s failure just keeps getting uglier. New numbers being reported suggest that the states who actually got their websites to work have signed up. . . well, almost no one. According to a report from a consulting firm, the 12 states who are running their own healthcare portals (and actually have them up and running), have signed up a total of 49,100 people. That’s 3% of the 1.4 million people those states were expected to sign up.

Or is it? See, that 49,100 includes Medicaid signups in several of those states. Medicaid signups don’t count toward the solvency of Obamacare. So the numbers are even worse than that. And almost all of those signups are in California or New York, which is ominous for state market places in other states... not that anyone will miss them. People in North Dakota (30 people), the District of Columbia (5 people), North Carolina (1 person), Alaska (0 people), and Delaware (4 people) don’t seem to care.

At the same time, more than 15,000,000 people are expected to received policy cancellation notices in the next couple months. Ho ho ho! Merry Upyoursmas! Some speculate, however, that the real number could ultimately approach 50 million. Still, you’re talking about 305 people hurt for every one “helped.”

● Oregon Ducks and Covers: Oregon led the Obamacare bandwagon. They promised to build a website that would skool the nation and signup a gazillion smelly hippies to their plan... man. Ironically, but not coincidentally, their website remains down and not a single hippy has been able to sign up yet... man. Personally, I think Oregon needs to be punished by being pushed into the sea. But if you want something less drastic, how about we sell the Commune State to China and let the Chinese show them how a real commune works?

● Iran Intoproblems: Team Obama admitted this week that they’ve been talking to the Iranians since day one of his administration. Apparently, there was a deal most everyone was happy with in which Iran would stop enriching uranium in exchange for dropping some sanctions. But then the whole thing blew up (no pun intended) when France apparently demanded more concessions.

This is actually a difficult issue because the Iranians are crazier and less responsible than talk radio hosts. So you can’t really trust them. At the same time, there is no military solution unless we want to take over the whole country, which we don’t. Sanctions don’t really work... ask Cuba. So there’s really no good answer.

Even worse, there is a complex web of interests around this. The US just wants Iran to stop being a threat. Pakistan kind of likes Iran all tied up. Saudi Arabia wants them tied up too – Saudi Arabia is Iran’s mortal enemy in the region and is p*ssed that we’re talking to Iran. Israel is the rhetorical target of Iran and typically receives the brunt of Iran’s tantrums. They would like to see Iran bombed back into the pre-stone age. China sees Iran as an ally against the US. Europe’s goal is inactivity with dignity. The American public has no taste for war with Iran. Talk radio has no taste for anything but war with Iran... unless it happens. Good grief. This is unworkable.

Frankly, I’ve said this before, but the only solution is a sort of grand bargain with Iran. Offer Iran what it wants, which is respect, friendship and joint influence in the region, if they agree to stop all this stupidity. If they don’t, kill their leaders... tell them there will be consequences.

● If A Moron Falls On Cable And No One’s Watching: Alec Baldwin is drawing about 150,000 people to his show on MSNBC. At least it’s more people than Obama got to sign up for Obamacare.

● Droning On and On: According to the CIA, 87 nations now possess drones. This makes me wonder what’s wrong with the rest? Building a drone isn’t like building a stealth fighter. All you need is balsa wood and a lawnmower engine. In fact, I suspect if you look hard enough online, there’s probably a drones.com somewhere. Commentarama should buy a drone and then send mocking letters to the countries that don’t have one.

● 2016 Shuffle: Arg. 2016 is starting to take shape and I’m not at all thrilled with what I’m seeing. On the left, there seems to be a push to oust Hillary with Elizabeth “Fake Injun” Warren. Warren has a couple of good ideas, but is otherwise cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Seriously, she’s the deep end of the dipsh*t pool and she could well become the nominee.

On our side, there seems to be an establishment push to make Chris Christie the guy. Arg. Listen to me very closely if your name is Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan or Bobby Jindal... get your timid butts out there into the news and start driving this party. You need to win over the establishment right now and the public at large. If you don’t, you will be crushed by Christiasaurus Rex.

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ObamaCare Update

Here’s a quick Obamacare Update for those of you playing along at home. It’s been a rough week for Obama, but don’t worry, he’s on top of things.

● The numbers... oh, the numbers: Every time we turn around, it turns out that the numbers are worse than expected. First, note that team Obama steadfastly refuses to release any numbers of real signups (though they will release visitor numbers) until November and they’ve forbidden the insurers from releasing numbers. Why? Well, because the numbers suck. According to one insurer, less than 20 people have signed up in North Dakota. Yes, 20 people. Zero have signed up in Alaska. One leak placed the overall number of people signing up in the first two weeks at 52,000, but then that number was dropped to 31,000. That would mean a signup rate of 2 million, whereas Obama need 7.3 million to save his skinny ass.

And it gets worse: it turns out that most of those 31,000 aren’t actually signing up for insurance... ha ha!... they are new Medicaid signups. See, to boost their numbers, Obama decided to run Medicaid signups through the same system. The problem with this is that none of those people count toward the 7.3 million because they don’t pay.

As an aside, more people signed up in one week for a one-way trip to Mars then signed up for Obamacare since it began... and their website was able to handle the traffic.

● Too Little Information: Insurers are also complaining that they are getting useless data: spouses identified as children, people with multiple accounts, random closing of accounts, etc. Insurers continue to say that only a tiny percentage of the applications they have gotten are useable.

● More Harm Than Good: People keep losing their insurance because of Obamacare. Over a million policies are being cancelled in Florida and New Jersey this week. The number of people losing their insurance dwarfs the number getting insurance from Obamacare. Nice work, dipsh*ts.

● Freak Out!: The Democratic freak-out has begun. You can see it all over the papers and blogs. They are terrified that this thing is imploding. Their concerns are that (1) signing up has proven to be so difficult that people are being turned off and won’t come back – Jay Leno quipped that it’s easier to sign up for al Qaeda than it is to sign up for Obamacare, (2) that Obama has no plan to fix this disaster and doesn’t know whose ass to kick (hint: it’s black, skinny and can usually be found on a golf course), and (3) that the numbers coming back are so low that the “insurance rate death spiral” I’ve told you about is inevitable. Because of this, every red-state Democrat is calling for a delay of the program and others are demanding a scapegoat.

● A Workaround: With signup nearly impossible, people have started contacting insurers directly. This has led to an interesting discovery. Apparently, said insurers are offering better deals with more options if you contact them directly than they are if you go through this “best deal imaginable” offered by Obamacare. If word of that spreads, then Obamacare is beyond doomed. The reason is that these people don’t count toward the 7.3 million because they aren’t paying into those pools.

Making this worse, the insurers are taking the good (paying) candidates and shipping the rest back to the exchanges where they get subsidies. In effect, the insurers are cherry picking the good clients and leaving the dregs to Obamacare, which will make the insurance rate death spiral even worse.

At this point, the media is kindly calling these people a “lost opportunity” for Obamacare, but look for them soon to become traitors and the insurers to be accused of fraud by Defenders of the Democratic Realm like 60 Minutes.

● Stop! In the Name of Law: The lawsuit to stop the subsidies in states that didn’t join Obamacare voluntarily continues. If that succeeds and it has a good argument (though I can’t see it succeeding), then rates will rise for Obama’s core audience.

● Senior Citizen Surcharge: So it turns out that I was wrong when I told you that they want to charge me $270 a month for crap insurance. Another glitch that has been discovered is that the rates being quoted to people aren’t being adjusted for age until they actually submit applications for insurance. At my age, that means something like a 25%-50% higher rate than the one actually quoted to me by the website. Ah, sticker shock. Anyway, twice way-too-f***ing-much is still way-too-f***ing-much.

● No Penalty, huh?: The issue of the penalty has now been examined by the Wall Street Journal, and just as I told you, the IRS has no real ability to collect. They can only take the money from refunds owed to you (or they could sue you, which they won’t unless you owe millions because a US attorney needs to bring the suit and they are too busy). So if you adjust your withholding so you don’t get a refund, then you’re immune. And after ten years, the debt is automatically forgiven. But never fear, say liberals, 75% of the public gets a refund... yeah, as if those people won’t change that once they realize how to avoid paying this.


What I love about this whole situation is that it’s like watching a top notch presentation of Don Quixote. All of the silliness and fantasy the Democrats usually bring to their plans are on full display and reality is proving to be a harsh mistress as each of their fantasy ideas gets blown apart as soon as it meets reality...

1. You can’t hide lies forever.
2. You can’t lie to someone right up to the point they are asked to sign on the dotted line and still expect them to sign.
3. You can’t make people buy something they don’t want just to support your stupid ideology.
4. People don’t give the incompetent an unlimited number of chances.
5. You can’t plan a system around people acting against their own self interest.
6. Government can’t even build a website, yet we’re supposed to trust it to guide our lives?

I guess that makes Obamacare “a teachable moment.”

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The SNL ObamaCare Skit That Didn't Happen

If Saturday Night Live had even the slightest bit of comedic integrity, they would be poking fun at all the massive problems their idol Obama is causing with Obamacare. But they don’t. So here is what you missed because SNL is a pathetic lapdog of the Democrats.




Mrs. John Anderson (Wife of SNL Slug): What are you doing, honey?

Mr. John Anderson (SNL Slug): I’m shopping for insurance on Obamacare.com so we don’t get fined.

Wife: What do you mean fined?

John Anderson: If we don’t buy insurance, which we can’t afford, we’ll get fined by the IRS. That’s Obama’s way of helping us.

Wife: Oh, that’s wonderful. The Girl Scouts should do that too. It would be great for their business! How much does the insurance cost?

John Anderson: I have no idea. I can’t get into the site. And the one time I did, it asked for all of our personal information, it accessed our credit, it demanded naked pictures of us, and then it locked me out.

Forget this, honey! They have a phone number: 1-800-FUK-YOUZ. I’m calling them!

//phone rings

Voice of HAL 9000: This call will be monitored by the National Security Agency to determined if you are a terrorist.

Obamacare Navigator: This is Agent Smith. How can I help you, Mr. Anderson?

John Anderson: How did you know my name?

Obamacare Navigator: We know everything, Mr. Anderson.

John Anderson: You know, I have rights. And one of those is the right to privacy.

Obamacare Navigator: Go ahead, Mr. Anderson. Try to use that right. It will be interesting to see how you use it when you can’t speak.

John Anderson: Uh... I was just kidding. I’m looking to sign up for Obamacare.

Obamacare Navigator: Give me access to your bank account.

John Anderson: Wait a minute! You haven’t told me how much this will cost.

Obamacare Navigator: That’s none of your business.

John Anderson: I refuse.

Obamacare Navigator: Don’t make me drone you, Mr. Anderson.

John Anderson: Uh... just kidding again! Here’s my bank information—

Obamacare Navigator: We already have it. You’ve been charged $2,150.

John Anderson: Wow! That’s not bad for a year.

Obamacare Navigator: That’s for the first month.

John Anderson: But that's more than twice what I was paying before! Obama said this was supposed to be affordable!

Obamacare Navigator: He meant for the insurance companies.

John Anderson: He what?

Obamacare Navigator: Drones, Mr. Anderson... can you hear them?

John Anderson: Uh... yeah, that’s a great rate. What’s my deductible?

Obamacare Navigator: $5,000 a year.

John Anderson: But my current employer’s plan had a $1,200 deductible.

Obamacare Navigator: Then stay on that plan.

John Anderson: They cancelled it when Obama let Big Business off the hook. What is my yearly out of pocket?

Obamacare Navigator: You’ll find out.

John Anderson: What does that mean?

Obamacare Navigator: It means, we’re not telling you yet... not until we get your money.

John Anderson: Can you give me a hint?

Obamacare Navigator: It will be somewhere between $12,700 a year and $17,000, Mr. Anderson. But it could be higher too. And for the first year it’s actually $25,400 or more.

John Anderson: That’s insane! Why even have insurance!!!

Obamacare Navigator: Drones, Mr. Anderson... drones. So can I put you down for a yes?

[Scene changes to two old, white, male executives who have been monitoring this discussion and looking at Mr. and Mrs. Anderson’s naked pictures.]

Mortimer Duke: I can’t believe we didn’t think of this sooner, Randolph?

Randolph Duke: Good things take time, Mortimer.

Mortimer Duke: Who would have guessed that we could use the US government to force people to buy insurance that is twice as expensive and covers less than their prior insurance?

Randolph Duke: The threat of force is a wonderful thing.

Mortimer Duke: Well, you won the bet. //hands over $1 bill You know, I’m surprised Obama agreed to this.

Randolph Duke: // laughs

Mortimer Duke: Why are you laughing?

Randolph Duke: Obama? You think there’s an Obama. Take a look at this picture of George W. Bush and compare it to Obama.

Mortimer Duke: My God, Randolph! You just painted the animatronic Bush black and put a wig on him!

Randolph Duke: Exactly, Mortimer. Did you really think I would let a negro run this country?

Mortimer Duke: Of course not. Now let’s work on that Girl Scout Cookie bill.

Randolph Duke: Why not?

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Obamacare Week Two

Obamacare just can’t catch a break. . . evil never does. It looks like the numbers are even worse than expected, unless you believe the whoppers coming out of New York. Moreover, the technical problems appear to be worse than expected. Here are some more thoughts:

● What Numbers?: HHS won’t release the number of people who have signed up for Obamacare until November, though I suspect they won’t release them then either. But that hasn’t stopped the numbers from leaking out. Last week, we spoke about some of the numbers and what they mean. This week, others are catching on. According to the Mail Online, administration sources have said that only 55,000 people signed up for insurance during the first week. The fact they won’t counter these numbers and the horrible PR they bring suggests they are accurate.

As an aside, New York claims it signed up 80,000 people, which would be more than everyone else combined and six times what California claims... something isn't right there.

● Just Short of the Green: The Mail Online calculates that at this rate, only 2 million people will sign up during the required six month open enrollment period. Obamacare needs more than 7 million to be financially viable.

● Don't Sign Up Anyone Under 30: Obamacare also needs 2.7 million “young invincibles” to foot the bill for the everyone else. Clearly, that ain’t happening. In fact, the 2 million number suggests they won’t get any of the “young invincibles,” which isn't surprising because that's basically throwing away money.

● The Big Flopper: If only 2 million of the 48 million uninsured sign up for Obamacare, then it’s a flop. Add in the fact that they would rather be fined than “helped” and what you have is a thorough repudiation.

● Obamacare? We Don't No Stinking Obamacare: Let’s think about this 2 million number. There are at least 9 million uninsurables who supposedly need insurance to stave of bankruptcy and to get critical treatment. So why aren’t they all signing up? Well, either, Obamacare is a bad deal for them OR there aren’t really 9 million uninsurables. Either way, the program loses it's biggest justification.

● One Step Forward, Three Steps Back: If only 2 million people sign up, then Obamacare has thrown 3 people off insurance for every person it added, as the run-up to Obamacare caused 6 million people to lose their insurance. Sounds like the government.

● Glitch In The Machine: The government is now privately admitting that they may need to scrap the $614 billion Obamacare computer system and start over. According to computer experts who have examined the system, it was built backwards with the wrong things using the most resources and by trying to use too much information at once. Tinkering won’t fix it. There are new problems discovered each day too. The insurers now say that they are getting duplicate applications along with phantom cancellations because of a glitch... so they don't know who is real and who isn't. Apparently, it's not calculating the subsidies correctly either, so one insurer stopped issuing insurance because they don't know if they are giving the right prices.

● Compare My Butt: The administration keeps trying to avoid the obvious that people aren't signing up by claiming that people are just comparison shopping at this point, which is why there haven’t been more applications. Yeah, only that’s nonsense. For one thing, there is nowhere to comparison shop. And if there was, then the whole justification for Obamacare goes down in flames. Think about that.

For another, industry people have noted that the website is build backwards, so that you need to apply before you can find out what it will cost you. Thus, no one who hasn’t opened an account can comparison shop! Indeed, the industry people are stunned. They note that there isn’t a commercial website in the world where you need to give your personal information before they tell you what they are offering.

● You Fail!: Not surprisingly, Obamacare gets really poor reviews. According to an AP poll:

● Only 7% of the public say the rollout has gone extremely well or well. In fact, only 19% of Obamacare supporters say the rollout has gone extremely well or well.

● 40% say it hasn’t gone well. The other 53% don't care enough to find out.

● Only 7% of respondents said that someone in their household has tried to sign up. And 75% of them experienced problems. Further, only 10% of those who tried actually went on to sign up for Obamacare, and 25% of those people weren’t sure if they had signed up correctly or not.

As an interesting aside, the AP claims these numbers are encouraging because 7% of the public could mean 20 million people want to sign up... but compare that to the 48 million they're supposed to help (still optimistic?). In any event, the AP is wrong. The question was households, not people. There are 310 million people, but only about 120 million households in the country. Thus, the "interested" number is closer to 8.4 million. Then you factor in that only 1 in 10 actually signed up and you’re looking at 840,000 by the AP’s count. But even if half of them eventually sign up, you’re still only talking four million... again, three million short of what they need. And even if all of them sign up, you're still looking at 16% of the people the program was supposed to help.

● Enough Rope: Finally, this is what happens when the Republicans don’t save the Democrats from themselves. The Democrats are brutally incompetent in everything they do, and historically, they’ve relied on the Republicans fixing their messes to make their programs palatable. This time, the Republican leadership stood fast. The result is an epic disaster unfolding. This is a system that has thrown more people off insurance than it’s covered. It’s cost a fortune and it doesn’t work. It’s attracting less than a third in raw numbers of what it needs to be financially stable and it has no chance of attracting the quality of applicants it needs.

This thing will die under its own weight. Let it.

But even more importantly, realize that you can’t get the public on your side about something until they feel its sting. With less than one in five of the people who will be fined even knowing someone who bothered to visit the websites, the public isn’t ready yet for this to be a big deal. Attack it rhetorically, but wait for the backlash to try to kill it. In the meantime, do what the Democrats do so well... tell the public they need to elect more of you if they want this thing killed.

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Obamacare: The Strong Smell of Failure

Ya know... sitting here, it looks to me like Obamacare is failing.

Let’s do this in Steps.

● Step 1: To understand Obamacare, you need to grasp what it needs to work. Like vampires need blood, Obamacare needs the public to part with their money. But even more specifically, Obamacare needs the young to part with their money. Old people are expensive to insure, they get sick and need medical care and insurers are likely to pay more to insure them than they collect in premiums, especially when they are forced to take in all old people no matter what their condition and they can only charge them the same rate as everyone else.

That’s why the young matter. The young are needed to prop up Obamacare with their dollars or the insurers will go break. If they go broke, the program fails and the whole scheme collapses.

● Step 2: It is estimated that seven million people will sign up for Obamacare in the first year... that will be considered “success.” Of those, they need around 2.7 million of those people to be “the young invincibles”, i.e. the people between 18 and 35 who are healthy and don’t need insurance.

● Step 3: Obamacare opened and they trumpeted the millions of hits they got. But it turns out that very few people were actually opening accounts. Figures are scarce, but it looks like around 4,000 opened accounts in the big states, 1,000 in the middle states, and a couple hundred in the small states. As a rough guess, we are looking at under 20,000 people opened accounts on the first day.

● Step 4: Of those people, it now turns out that only around 10% of those who opened accounts went on to apply for insurance. So we’re looking at 2,000 applied for insurance. Of those, anywhere from 50% to 99% didn’t provide enough information to process their insurance. That means maybe 1,000 people got insurance the first day and another 1,000 only think they got insurance.

● Step 5: Now we ask, is this a good number? Well, consider this. The opening day probably will have the highest turnout. That’s how life works. And in this case, that makes even more sense as everyone who has been waiting to get insurance they couldn’t otherwise get will show up to get it. BUT for the sake of argument, let’s assume that they get the same number every day from now on... a highly unrealistic assumption.

If we apply that assumption, then by January, 1.8 million people will have opened accounts and 180,000 will have signed up for insurance. At that rate, 7.3 million people will have opened accounts by the end of the year, and 730,000 will have insurance.

Hmm. If only 730,000 people sign up, that would be an epic disaster... Titanic class. Obamacare would become “Obama’s folly”... a hundred billion dollar program to help almost no one. But it’s unlikely that the 10% sign-up ratio will continue; it will rise as fewer gawkers visit and as the requirement for coverage kicks in... of course, that means the number of visitors will crash too, but let’s hold that thought. For the moment, let’s assume that 100% of visitors will start signing up immediately. Is that enough?

Well, no.

If 100% of these people sign up (an impossible figure, which is already based on obviously false assumptions that the same number of people will keep visiting each day), then 7.3 million people will have signed up by years end. That would seem to put Obamacare on track... barely.

But there are problems with this number. The number of visitors will fall dramatically. And it won’t stay consistent day after day. It will spike at the start and then crash throughout the year. So the total number will be far less than 7.3 million. If the numbers fall in half (marketing suggests an 80% fall), then we’re looking at 3.6 million people... almost four million short of their goal.

Further, there’s something else strange here.

It is estimated that there are between 9 million and 25 million uninsurables. You are smoking crack if you think those people won’t sign up as soon as possible. So think about this. Why didn’t Obamacare get more visitor... at least nine million? Why didn’t more people open accounts? And why didn’t the people who opened accounts get insurance? You would think that signing up nine million people should be easy, so why are they on a pace for 730,000?

More importantly, are the people who are opening accounts “normal” people or are they uninsurable? It’s entirely possible that the only people signing up are the people who can’t buy normal insurance. If that’s the case, this system will go broke before June.

It’s hard to tell what any of this means yet because so much can still change. But right now, this looks like a disaster in the making. It looks like they aren’t getting nearly enough interest in signing up and that suggests that the people who are signing up are the ones who will be so expensive they will break the system.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Team Obama is trying to put the best face on this. Said Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in response to a question about the number of people signing up being “embarrassingly small”:

“It’s the wrong question, We know that people take time to make important decisions like this. They go on, they compare their options. The fact that so many millions of people rushed to get information is a good sign.”

Uh... no. That doesn’t wash. There is nowhere they can go to “compare” other products; the choice is buy or not buy, and so far, the “so many millions” aren’t buying.

Interesting times.

UPDATE: They are now touting the "nearly 9 million visitors by Friday night." That's five days. They initially claimed around 5 million visitors. So instead of 5 million a day, it's down to more like 1.8 million a day... except, if you factor out the first day, you are actually looking at 4 million over four days, or one million per day instead of five million. Not only will that number continue to drop, but if the percent signing up remains the same, then they are in much, much worse trouble than expected. Of course, that could also be the same million trying to sign up each day, after which point the pipeline of suckers is empty.

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How To Win The Shutdown Fight

Well, we're down in the muck of all this government shutdown crap. No one wanted to be here, and a lot of us would like to yell at GOP leaders how stupid they are, but that won't fix things. We're in it, and we can either make things worse for us with mutual recriminations (as usual), or we can try to win this battle. And I think we sort of can.

Now when I say "win," what do I mean? For starters, I don't mean defunding, much less repealing, ObamaCare. We shouldn't resign ourselves to that abomination, either; but evidently, the TOTUS is going to stake his legacy on the legislation, and I believe he would rather resign than abandon that goal. Besides, he's still got enough support from his base that he can't be made to give it up. Nor does it mean completely humiliating him at the negotiation table (if/when we ever get there). Neither side ever has total victory in these things.

No, a Republican "victory" in this showdown would consist of a couple different things. 1) While we almost certainly can't wrangle defunding out of the Dems, a further delay of key provisions or even some significant revisions are still within our grasp, at least theoretically. (What those revisions would be, I can't say; that's for people with a better knowledge of the ins and outs of health care.) 2) Although I've never been a huge fan of "PR triumphs," preferring real triumphs instead, the fact is there is a way for the GOP and its conservative philosophy to come out on top whatever happens with ObamaCare. And as events this week have shown, the Democrats have done quite a bit to help us along with that. But there's still a lot to do.

So for whatever it's worth, here are my proposed steps:

Step One: DON'T PANIC. First off, let's not automatically assume that Republicans are going to lose this fight and have their public image permanently trashed. Remember the speed at which the news cycle travels? The whole shutdown issue won't go away in voters' minds, especially if if gets conflated with the debt ceiling fight, but it's not going to be the deciding factor in the next elections. Those are still more than a year off. (That kind of undercuts my argument about being able to turn it around on the Democrats, but the important thing is avoiding a disaster ourselves, so that's okay.) As some pundits have been pointing out recently, making comparisons with the 1995-96 shutdown fiasco isn't a huge cause for worry, either; in reality, all sides bounced back to their previous approval levels soon enough, and Democrat wins in '96 probably would have happened anyway, given the economy and all.

Plus, keep in mind that as a result of redistricting, relatively few GOP congressmen are in swing or bluish districts and therefore in electoral danger, and that's not likely to change significantly regardless of the outcome. Which leads me into my next point...

Step Two: Talk To Your Public. Notice I said "Your Public," not "The Public." Again, most of the GOP congressmen are safe, because they have reliably red districts. A majority of them, being loyal to the Right, are naturally going to blame Obama and Senate Democrats for the shutdown crisis more than House Republicans. They'll get some blame, don't get me wrong, but not the bulk of it. This makes the advice being floated from some conservatives even smarter: If Boehner can't get any traction with Obama and Reid in the next couple days, he should let the bulk of fellow GOPers go home for a little while and get some feedback from their constituents. This is an okay move, because not only will they be seen as trying to respond to the desires of the public, they can come back and truthfully claim (based on what they've been hearing in their conservative districts) that the public gives equal if not more blame to the Democrats, and they're wanting Obama and Co. to compromise on this. If they won't, this is all on them.

Step Three: Get In Their Faces. As a certain famous politician once said. Obama and Senate Democrats have been providing conservatives with SO many openings this week. There's been Harry Reid's idiotic "Why would we want to help just ONE child?" line from the other day. There's Mr. Friend of Labor himself, the Prez, saying shutting down the government is as unjustifiable as a worker shutting down a factory because he doesn't like how it's being run (no, really). And there's all sorts of unhinged rhetoric from the Left about physically destroying the GOP for its temerity. Get on TV, ignore the gotcha questions from the reporters, and make the Dems own this rhetoric.

And while you're at it, guys, bring up the inadvertent admissions from the Left's own heroes. Bring up Bob Woodward's statement that the continuation of this shutdown is "on the President's head" for refusing to engage in serious discussions and creating a vacuum of leadership. While he's not exactly a major hitter in Hollywood, bring up actor Rob Schneider's recent announcement that he's switching to the Republican Party. Imply that it's the Democrats who are driving people away with their inflexible, extremist positions, and don't let up. The media will be forced to at least address it, and people will start to wonder.

Step Four: Be All Sweet Reason. As you probably know, the House Republicans have pushed through temporary, partial spending bills all this week, funding specific portions of the government, which have all been killed by the Senate. They should keep doing this. They may bear a lot of the onus for causing this shutdown right now, but the longer this goes on, the longer the Senate keeps rejecting these stopgap measures, the more people will start to wonder why Reid won't allow even a brief, incomplete respite. In fact, Boehner and the leadership should ramp it up. If the Senate will kill them anyway, expand these bills to include more and more of the government, and finally announce that you're ready to temporarily fund all the rest of DC (or as much of it as the rules allow) right now, if only Obama and Reid will agree to some further negotiations on ObamaCare. This is going to get noticed--and in that case, all the stories the media is running about those po' wittle civil servants going broke while unemployed may come back to bite the Left.

Now, this may not do the job, and in any case, we should limit our expectations. But a full-court press by the House, using all these tactics, will certainly force the public to rethink who's really responsible for this mess, and who's ready to fix it. And it's just possible, given the growing debacle with the ObamaCare rollout, that the Dems really will be forced to the bargaining table on this, too. Maybe not. But it's better than just bemoaning each other.

Any suggestions?

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Health Insurance Exchange Challenge!

I don't know about you, but I am having no luck finding out any information on the basic healthcare exchanges available in my state. The best I have been able to find is an Excel spreadsheet that gives me a list of premiums for each "precious metal" category (platinum, gold, silver, bronze, and catastrophic) The last category, not only is it not a precious metal, but I am not eligible because I am too old...can I say that might be "age-ist"?.

[I will NOT compare this to the Homeland Security Terrorist Threat color chart, I will not compare this to the Homeland Security Terrorist Threat color chart...I will not...]

Anyway, in New York, there is no available information on deductibles, out of pocket expenses, or what each plan may or may not cover. Maybe I am asking too much, but shouldn't this be basic and readily available information? It is a little shocking that it isn't.

Other shocking news is that many people (even those that have long time employer-supplied insurance) do not understand how insurance works. I have had conversations with co-workers who do not understand that the deductible must be paid out-of-pocket before the insurance company will begin to cover medical bill. You do understand that, right? These are intelligent people who have had their insurance supplied by the employer for a very long time. Imagine someone who has never had insurance. It must be really confusing.

But, because we live in enough different regions of the country, by working together we can come up with enough information that we can get a fairly accurate picture of what the exchanges offer and if they will help...anyone.

So here is your challenge if choose to accept it...

Here is the link to Healthcare.gov Try to find any information you can about the exchanges in your state and share it with the group. Find out what the basic range of premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses, if you can and report back. It is your choice whether you create a "log-in". Frankly, I don't suggest it at this point, unless you really want to sign up [no judgment, if you do, btw].

To get the ball rolling, the premiums in New York range from $350 to $900 with no other information readily available without creating a "log-in". Even if I wanted to, the website is so bogged down that it will not allow it.


As an aside, I was talking to a very intelligent medical professional I know this weekend (I have many in my immediate family), and he explained his take on the new insurance mandate. He fully expects that, yes, people will sign up in droves, get their "proof of insurance" cards for tax purposes, and then shortly after just stop paying their premiums...and then the doctors will be stuck with trying to extract payments out of the insurance companies.

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Some Strategies For Breaking Obamacare

It looks like Obamacare will be with us for at least another year. This year will be key however, because this year will establish the long term rates. In other words, right now the insurers are guessing how many healthy saps will sign up. The fewer of those there are, and the more the uninsurables who sign up cost them, the higher the rates will be next year. Skyrocketing rates next year will kill the program no matter what happens politically. With that in mind, here are some strategies for doing your part to slay the bloated evil that is Obamacare.

(1) Denial of Service. Keep them busy. Everyone should call the Obamacare hotlines and visit the Obamacare websites when they start. This is called denial of service. Just spend your time there using their servers, clogging their phone systems and chatting with their "volunteers"... they don't have very many. What would you chat about? Well, you're a consumer, you have every right to see how much they want to give you as a subsidy and what the various plans will cost you and what they will cover. And while they're talking to you, they aren't talking to other people.

(2) Denial of Funding. You can't defund the program itself, but you can do your part to make sure it is starved of cash... profit actually. In particular, the goal needs to be to make sure that only the truly sick (the uninsurables) sign up through the Exchanges. The reasoning is simple. The Quisling Insurers who have signed up for the Exchanges are betting on the mandate to force people who don't need insurance to sign up and pay inflated rates to subsidize the uninsurables who will race to sign up. Without those healthy subsidy-providers, the insurers will go broke as their actuarial assumptions will be all wrong and they will either fall out of the program with huge losses (possibly bankruptcy-level losses) or they will jack up their rates extremely high to cover the pool of very expensive people who signed up, which will keep everyone else from signing up, which will create a vicious cycle which will collapse the program.

You can help make this happen by avoiding the Exchanges. Here are your best options in order of bestiness:

(1) Don't get insurance, don't pay the fine. That's the ideal state of being. (FYI, the IRS has issued their regulations and it is not criminal to skip paying the fine and they can't come after your property or your wages. The only way they can collect it is by keeping your refund... which you can prevent.)

(2) Get insurance through work if it's offered. Encourage other employees to do the same, unless the business is getting their insurance through the Exchanges. In that case, skip it and pick another option.

(3) Encourage everyone who can stay on their parent's policy to do so.

(4) Don't get insurance, pay the fine. Paying the fine sends the money to Uncle Sam, not the insurers. In other words, even though Uncle Sam may use the money to pay for the subsidies, this doesn't increase the overall amount of money the insurers take in. That is the same practical effect as not buying insurance at all as far as the insurers are concerned and it will still hurt their rates.

(5) If you feel the need to get insurance, then buy it from a company that does not participate in the Exchanges. Buying insurance from an Exchange participant, even if it's not from the Exchange, is the same thing as buying through the Exchanges. Boycott companies in the Exchanges.

(6) If you have a medical condition that will cost a lot of money, then by all means buy through the Exchanges. The more expensive you are, the better. Pick on smaller insurers if possible. They will have smaller capital reserves.

(7) If you have insurance through an Exchange for some reason, use the hell out of it, especially the things that are supposed to be free under the policies.

(3) No Rest For The Wicked. Start thinking about calling your Democratic Congress/Senate critter about once a month to let them know you aren't happy about their attempts to destroy our healthcare. Call them about every single issue that comes up with your insurance. Get your friends to do the same. If they ever dare to have a Town Hall, this should be the primary topic, complete with statistics they can't answer and sob stories... my aunt lost her insurance because of you... and her job too! Make them regret voting for this thing and keep them scared that there are thousands others out there like you who want to punish them for it.

Any other thoughts?

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Losing Your Insuance and Obamacare Shutdowns

“If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.”

-- Barack Obama

Apparently, you can't. Two points on healthcare today. First, let’s look at how Obamacare is robbing people of their insurance despite Obama’s pledge above. Then, let’s talk about an interesting poll about the shutdown.


● Obamacare: Obamacare is causing millions of people to lose their insurance. Consider these points:

(1) For whatever reason, people keep missing the fact that 6 million people have already lost their insurance because of Obamacare. When he started in 2010, 43 million people had no insurance, now it’s 49 million... and that’s despite more kids being added to parents’ policies, so the numbers are actually higher.

(2) People with individual plans started losing those plans early because Obamacare imposes new requirements which prevent most individual plans, which typically have high deductibles, from counting as Obamacare compliant.

(3) Then small employers started dumping their plans. Surprise, it’s cheaper to pay a couple hundred dollar fine than $10k a year to cover an employee, and with the Exchanges as an alternative, there was no moral reason to keep offering insurance either. This also turned out to be a good way to break the unions.

(4) Employers everywhere soon started making people part-timers because then they don’t need to offer insurance and they don’t get fined. The BoL monthly jobs reports have shown this trend as full-time jobs keep vanishing as part-time jobs appear. Similarly, reports of employers switching to part-time hours have been coming from unions, universities, school systems, big firms like WalMart and dozens more. Not only does this mean less insurance, it will make it harder for poor people to earn a living... and then Obama fines them.

(4) Now they are dumping spouses from company policies. Obamacare requires employers to cover children of employees if they offer coverage, but it doesn’t say anything about spouses. The assumption was that employers wouldn’t do anything so dastardly. Well, they are. To save costs and to hopefully get employees to switch to other policies, employers are dropping spouses like the plague. UPS just announced that 15,000 spouses would be dumped. Delta has made similar noises, as have other large companies. Smaller companies have been doing this for a while now.

Other large companies are imposing a surcharge on spouses, which is also allowed. Right now, 14% of employers with more than 5,000 employees impose such a surcharge. Last year, the number was 4%.

Thank you, Obama! You’ve done a wonderful thing. Who are you going to hurt for your next trick?

● Non-Support for Shutdown: On the shutdown front, as Tea Party groups start running ads attacking Republicans as “chickens” (seriously... welcome to grade school) for not shutting down the government, the Republicans have commissioned a poll to find out how much support a shutdown actually has. The results are pretty interesting:

● Self-identified “conservative Republicans” make up only 19% of the public. That’s consistent with what I’ve seen. I will add that they are also concentrated in the Southern states, though the poll doesn’t say that.

● Even among those self-identified “conservative Republicans,” only 9% self-identify as “very conservative” with the other 10% self-identifying as “somewhat conservative.” So forget any idea that talk radio is speaking for “the silent majority” or even the majority of Republicans. The talk radio base is about 9% of the public.

● Within self-identified “very conservative” ranks, 63% favor a shut down to try to defund Obamacare. However, these numbers flip for everyone else. Indeed, within “somewhat conservative” ranks, 62% oppose a shutdown. And when you look at the party as a whole, you find that only 37% favor a shutdown.

● Overall, only 23% of the public (which includes conservatives) favors a shutdown.

What this tells us is as with immigration, the Republican base is much closer to the views of the public than they are the views of the talk radio base, even as the talk radio base claims to speak for the majority of Republicans. And in this case, both the base and the public overwhelming reject the idea of forcing a shutdown. That actually makes sense too. Right now, millions of people are learning the cost of liberalism as Obamacare ruins their insurance. Conservatives need to refrain from making conservatism less attractive than what they are experiencing from liberalism. Let Obamacare work its horrors and then step in with an alternate plan to replace it. Remember, you can’t save people until they know they need to be saved.

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This Week's Obamacare Lies

“Misinformation is the enemy of Obamacare.” So said HHS Secretary Sebelius. That’s funny. I thought misinformation was part of the plan. In fact, the more I read about it now that the propaganda phase has commenced, the more I’m sure that misinformation is the plan.

Almost every day lately, there has been a new article about Obamacare in which some Obamacare proponent tries to confuse and mislead the public so the public can’t see what this jerk-off plan is going to cost them. There are several tactics being used in this regard and they are all fraudulent:

● You Can’t Compare: Now that the rates are coming out, people have noticed that these rates are much higher than what they have been paying. The response to this has been to tell people that no matter how bad the rates may appear compared to what you pay now, you really can’t compare the rates under Obamacare to the rates you currently pay because “you’ll be receiving so much more coverage.” Hurray! Isn’t that wonderful?

No. To the contrary, forcing someone to buy more than they want and then bragging about how much more they got is obnoxious bullsh*t. It’s like arguing that yes, you were raped, but we bought you dinner afterwards with your own money! Isn’t that great?!

The truth is that it is perfectly valid to compare what you are being forced to pay against what you were paying the prior year because you didn’t ask for the additional coverage being forced upon you. The claim that we really can’t compare because of this different levels of coverage is pure propaganda.

● It Doesn’t Really Cost That: With people suffering from sticker shock, another tactic is to tell people that the rates aren’t what you’ll really being paying because you’ll get a subsidy! Wee! This claim typically goes something like this: “While the rates may appear higher than some people are paying now, most will get significant subsidies to help them pay for it. For example a typical subsidy is $2,672.”

This is bunk. To back up the claim that most will get a subsidy, they point to a Kaiser study which concluded that 48% of people who currently buy their own insurance will be eligible for tax credits that would offset these premiums. 48% is not “most.” Moreover, this study only talks about people who buy their own insurance. That’s only 16% of the population. So they are basically saying that 8% of the public is “most.” Further, this study was just based on income and it ignores a key factor: if you are offered insurance through work, then you aren’t eligible for a subsidy. So forget it McDonald’s worker if you think Obamacare is going to give you a penny to cover your costs.

Additionally, the subsidy numbers are bait and switch. Pay careful attention: remember that the promise is that 48% of the individuals who currently buy their own insurance will get the subsidy. But the subsidy amount they keep citing is for an average family of four on the sliver plan. That’s apples and oranges. So how much is the subsidy for individuals? They don’t tell you. They never tell you. And the reason is that it’s really, really low. So essentially, these articles are saying this: “Here are the costs, but don’t worry because some people will get a large appearing subsidy, but that won’t be you and we won’t tell you what you’ll get.” Moreover, the subsidies they are talking about are for the silver plan, which is a lot more expensive than the basic plan, yet the costs they cite to are always the cheapest (bronze) plan.

● Low Ball The Estimate: Always citing the cheapest plan is another tactic they use. And not only that, but the cheapest of the cheapest, whether or not it is widely available. Colorado just came out with their estimates and the numbers ranged from $177 a month to $774 per month for individuals (over $1,000 for individuals on group plans). Immediately, Obamacare propagandists began using the $177 figure. Only, no one is going to get that. The rate varies according to where you live and the $177 rate is in Greeley (pop 92,000). In rural Grand Junction, you will be paying a minimum of $237.

What you pay will depend on who your provider is. And for most people, you are looking at $250-$400 a month. That's a far cry from $177. And when you realize that you also will be responsible for more than you'll ever incur as a deductible and co-pay, this becomes a rotten deal.

Interestingly, the fine for not playing along with Obama is 1% of your income. If you somehow got the magic rate of $177, then you would pay $2,124 for the year. Doing a little math, that means that your breakeven point, where it makes economic sense to buy insurance rather than pay the fine is if your income exceeds $212,400.

● IchtsNa on the EductibleDa: Speaking of the deductibles... last week, Obama delayed yet another part of his law. This is the part that caps the out-of-pocket costs the policy holder must pay at $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families. Without that provision, many people will face a “double cap,” under which the insurance company imposes one cap for doctor and hospital services and another for drugs. In effect, the above numbers could well be doubled.

Putting all of this together, they are lying to you about being incapable of comparing plans across years, they are low-balling the estimates, they are inflating the subsidies and pretending that everyone will get them, when they won’t, and they won’t tell you how to calculate them. They aren’t telling you that the deductibles are so high that you’ll pretty much pay anything you are likely to incur unless you end up in the hospital for an extended stay... and they aren’t telling you that if that happens, you can get massive discounts and have charities pay for large chunks of it in any event. Essentially, they aren’t tell you that you are a fool if you buy this.

So why do this? Won’t people find out the truth when they apply? Yes, but the goal of the bait and switch is to get you into the store so the salesman can pressure you to make a bad decision. At that point, they have different kinds of misinformation, false logic and pressure they can use to trick you into parting with your money:

“You know, you’re getting a better deal than other people...”
“You know, it wouldn’t cost much more to step up to a higher tier plan...”
“You know, if you leave that employer, you could get subsidies...”
“You know it’s a crime not to have insurance...”
“Why pay a fine and get nothing when you can pay just a little bit more and get next to nothing insurance...?”

That’s why they want you to know nothing at this point. Misinformation and confusion is part of the plan.

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Single-Payer Paranoia Vindicated? Hardly

Well, I know what talk radio will be screaming about today: “HARRY REID ADMITTED THAT OBAMACARE IS A TROJAN HORSE FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM!! DIRTY REPUBLICANS COLLABORATORS!” Of course, that’s not what Reid said, but that's how certain people want to spin it. What he said was pretty interesting though and has some interesting implications. Let's discuss.

Here’s what happened. Reid was interviewed by PBS on Friday about Obamacare. He was asked if his goal was to get America into a single-payer system. His answer was: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

OMG!! I KNEW IT, BOEHNER AND THE RINOS BETRAYED US something something OBAMACARE!

cough cough Sorry, that slipped out.

Anyways, it's never been a secret that progressives want a European-style single-payer system... because that works so well. //rolls eyes. And Reid explained that when they started with Obamacare, they wanted to impose a single-payer system, but they didn’t have the votes. So they instead tried to insert a public option into Obamacare, which would have eventually caused a single-payer system because private insurers can’t compete against a government-run insurer and they would have all been driven out of the system. But again, they didn’t have the votes, particularly after Joe Lieberman opposed it. At that point, they needed to pass something because they had hung their hats on delivering healthcare reform. Reid didn't say this part, but it was obvious: Obamacare would be their only achievement despite having a supermajority, so failing to deliver something would have been suicide. Hence, they abandoned the single-payer idea and they passed the Insurance Company Subsidy Act known as Obamacare.

Reid then described Obamacare as “a step in the right direction,” the phrase you'll hear misinterpreted over and over today with orgasmic delight both on the right: "OMG!! HE CALLED IT A STEP! SEE, IT'S ALL PART OF A FIENDISH PLAN!! FARGLE FARGLE KNEW IT ALL THE TIME, GODD*MN BOEHNER TRAITOR buy my book" and on the left: "Nondenominational Hallelujah! Nondenominational Hallelujah!". Willful idiocy aside however, what this really was is face-saving. Obamacare is not what Reid wanted. To the contrary, it actually makes a single-payer system much less likely. But what was Reid going to say? “Yeah, that thing we passed and told you was great... it sucks donkey balls and boy was it a mistake.” -- Harry Reid. No way. He can't admit that they blew their chance to give his constituents what they want. So he made standard noises about this being a step in the right direction humma humma, but never fear, we know what the ultimate goal is and we'll get there blah blah blah.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Reid made it clear that his goal remains a single-payer system, and to make that happen, he said they need to find a way to “work our way past” insurance-based systems. Think about that. To get a single-payer, they need to break the public away from insurance. BUT, Obamacare goes the other way and entrenches the current health insurance model even further because it forces employers to provide insurance or face fines and it forces individuals to buy insurance or face fines. In other words, it tries to make everyone get into and become accustomed to the insurance system. That’s a bit like someone whose goal is to stop people from eating meat forcing everyone to buy ten years worth of McDonald's gift certificates. Thus, by passing Obamacare, Reid made it much, much harder for them to ever get a single-payer system. In effect, Obamacare is more like a Trojan condom preventing a single-payer plan than a Trojan horse meant to cause it.

Of course, talk radio has already worked out how this is all part of the master plan to bring about the Boehner/Obama Single Payer System. See, Reid and the Democrats know that Obamacare will fail, they're actually counting on it. Their fiendishly clever plan in passing Obamacare was to make insurance so expensive that no one will be able to afford it. Then those suckers, the American public, will naturally join hands in union and ask Obama/Reid to fix the system they just ruined. It's manical! DAMN YOU RINOS!!

Devious, isn't it? Yeah, it's also retarded. Humans don't go back to the person who broke something through their own incompetence and beg them to double down on their solutions... "Please sir, can we find a bigger cliff." Doesn't happen. Look it up. What actually happens is people turn to their opponents and say, "That other guy is a dipsh*t. You fix it." Seriously, do you really think that the people who will lose their insurance over the next couple years, or those who will find themselves unfairly fined, or those doctors and hospitals who find that even more of their bills go unpaid are going to turn to Obama/Reid to double-down on the thing that just caused their problem? Hardly.

That "theory" also fundamentally misunderstands how Obamacare works. Obamacare is the insurance exchanges... that's it, but more than 71% of the public gets their insurance elsewhere (this could be as high as 87% actually). If the exchanges completely implode or their rates skyrocket, the 71% who get their insurance through work won't be affected at all. Thus, they sure as heck aren't going to go to anyone and beg that Obamacare be fixed by wiping out the private insure they continue to enjoy and overwhelmingly report being happy with. "Please sir, take what has been working for me and toss me into that mess you just created." The 17% who currently buy their own insurance and will probably be forced into the exchanges aren't going to ask for a single-payer system either. They're going to want a return to what they had... before Obama ruined it for them. The 11% currently uninsured are likewise made up of people whose sole concern will probably be to get the fines cancelled. Most of them aren't going to care about universal coverage and they aren't going to be in the best mood if Obama comes calling with a new solution. The insurance companies aren't going to ask to be wiped out either. Doctors aren't going to ask to be made de facto employees of the state. Heck, even unions now see the danger of universal coverage. So where exactly is this wave of Americans who will come begging Obama to rape them even harder this time? That wave starts and stops with around the 7% of the public that is leftist ideological and maybe about 5 million people who are uninsurable... that's it. Everybody else is going to want to go in the other direction.

You know, now might be a good time to start suggesting an alternative path actually... something other than the awful and many-times-rejected "let insurers compete across state lines."

Oh well. Go enjoy the idiocy because I'm sure they'll be in fine form today. Just don't take it internally. Remember that when they tell you that ObamaBoehnerCare is the most fiendishly clever plan Saul Alinsky ever invented, that they are ignoring the fact that both Reid's Plan A and Plan B failed, that Obamacare was all he could get, and that it actually entrenches the system Reid needs to destroy to achieve his goal. That's hardly a master plan, except perhaps in the eyes of a Marxist... a Groucho Marxist.

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More Obamacare Chaos

As Obamacare continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s medical tract like an uncooked pork milkshake, it's time for another update. Here's what you need to know to be fully entertained updated:

● Why Save Employers?: I’ve been debating why Obama would push off the employer mandate, but not also push off the individual mandate. There really is only one answer that keeps coming to mind: he wants to jack up the number of people in the Exchanges. Why? Well, all those “wonderful” rates you keep hearing about from the Exchanges are based on the assumption that vast numbers of healthy people will sign up for insurance. If they do, then the rates will work because those people will pay much more than they cost -- then the system might survive. But if they don’t, then the rates will skyrocket and the system is dead. How bad will it get? I would expect the rates in the Exchanges to double in 2015.

I based that on New York’s rates. It was announced this week that New York’s rates would fall 50%! Surprised? You shouldn’t be. New York already imposes the requirements Obamacare imposes on insurers, such as taking everyone and having no limits on payments. Unlike Obamacare, New York doesn’t force anyone to buy insurance. The result is that all the healthy people stay away from insurance in New York and insurance becomes MEGA-EXPENSIVE for those who are in the pool. That’s why the rates are so high. That’s also what will happen if people don’t signup for Obamacare. So if people don’t sign up, New York’s rates are what you would expect nationwide from Obamacare... and that will kill the program by making it too expensive for anyone to buy.

So how does this relate to the employer mandate? The insurance providers are already admitting that their rates assume that a sufficient number of healthy people will be forced to buy their insurance to make the rates viable. But that’s not happening. People with existing care want no part of the Exchanges and people without insurance aren’t planning to buy any. This is why Obama delayed the employer mandate. By delaying the employer mandate, Obama is hoping to prevent employers from offering insurance, which will force their employees into the Exchanges, where they can prop up the rates at their present level until the fines get high enough that people are forced into the Exchanges.

But it won’t work. Why? Well, two reasons. First, the delay isn’t going to change anything. Big companies already provide health insurance and those that don’t aren’t going to start just because of an insignificant fine -- they’re actually looking at something called "skinny plans" as a way to minimize fines. Secondly, as has been shown by companies who do offer health insurance (like McDonalds), people don’t sign up for it because they can’t afford it, not because they don’t want it, and a fine isn’t going to change that. So basically, delaying the employer mandate won’t change anyone’s mind on this issue and it won’t fill the exchanges.

● That Wasn’t The Deal Vader I: Hospitals whored themselves for Obamacare because they were promised that if they accepted slightly lower Medicare/Medicaid rates, then they would get significantly more money from newly-insured patients and all these new Medicaid patients, and they would never be faced with people who can’t pay again. Apparently, hospital companies are managed by retarded baboons because they fell for this.

Now it turns out the Medicare/Medicaid cuts were worse than expected. Plus, there were additional cuts to Medicare/Medicaid as a result of sequestration. Moreover, with Republican states not expanding Medicaid, which means more than 60% of the new people they expected to be covered by Medicaid won’t be, they’ve discovered that they aren’t going to be getting the new Medicaid patients they were promised. Because of this, hospitals have started laying off massive numbers of staff.

And it ain’t over yet. The suggestion that everyone would have insurance was always a sucker bet. First, the number of uninsureds has actually increased 14% under Obama. Secondly, the law was written in such a way that it expected most people who don’t currently have insurance will pay the fine rather than buy insurance... that’s what funds the law! How hospital managers missed that reeks of management-negligence or more retarded babooning. So no new Medicaid patients, no new insurance patients, bills still going unpaid, and compensation rates going down... 0% of promises filled. Nice trade, guys.

● That Wasn’t The Deal Vader II: Obama made two firm promises when he pimped for Obamacare: “If you like your insurance... you can keep it,” and “If you like your doctor... you can keep your doctor.” And if you believed it, then you might be an idiot. Not only are we slowly learning that tens of millions of people will be dumped from their existing insurance, but HHS admitted this week that you might not be able to keep your doctor either. This is no surprise. It will depend on the plan you pick and if your doctor is part of that plan.

● That Wasn’t The Deal Vader III: Hoo boy, the unions are furious. And they have good reason. Obamacare seems designed to kill the unions. With labor laws being what they are, there isn’t really a lot of point to labor unions anymore. In fact, the only real selling point they have left is that unions can provide cheap access to good healthcare. Without that, private sector unions will probably die off. This is why they’ve opposed universal coverage for a long time, actually. Well, Obamacare wasn’t supposed to be a threat because it doesn’t provide anything like universal coverage and it was supposed to basically allow the unions to keep working outside the system. But now they realize that’s not true. Now they realize that Obamacare makes it very easy for employers with union employees (especially small/mid-size companies) to dump their expensive health plans by pushing their employees toward the Exchanges. Unlike everyone else, however, union employees can’t get subsidies, so the Exchanges are too expensive to use no matter what happens to the rates.

Hence, Obamacare has taken what was the unions’ only real reason to exist and turned it into a point to avoid unions. Are we sure Obama isn’t a plant?

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News Nuggets

Let’s do a couple of quick-hit news items you may have missed... nuggets, as it were... golden chicken parts.

● Obamacar-nage: We’ve been saying all along that Obamacare will kill jobs. Now there’s some interesting proof in the form of a poll. The poll was commissioned by a law firm and it was conducted by Gallup. They surveyed 603 small business owners and found this:

● 41% said they have frozen hiring to avoid Obamacare.
● 19% said they have laid off employees to avoid Obamacare.
● 48% think Obamacare will hurt their bottom lines. Only 9% think Obamacare will be good for their business.
● 55% think Obamacare will lead to higher costs. Only 5% think it will lead to lower costs.
● 52% think Obamacare will lead to a reduction in the quality of healthcare. Only 13% expect an improvement.

This is rather interesting, especially the first two points. If half of small businesses have either frozen hiring or laid people off, that’s a horrible sign for any sort of economic improvement. Small business accounts for two-thirds of all new jobs over the past couple decades. Interestingly, this has some “experts” shocked as they figured small business would happily take a bullet to solve Obama’s problem... ha ha. Others are still stupidly holding out hope that “education” can change minds. Propaganda is fun, but it doesn’t work when people can see the bottom line.

● Obamacare Lies: Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services boasted that insurance premiums fell nearly $4 billion last year, which they called "savings" and which they attributed to the Obamacare requirement that insurers spend at least 80% of their revenue on providing medical services. Well, not quite.

Someone asked the industry lobbyist, America's Health Insurance Plan, about this and the response was that they had no idea where the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid got their data because the industry didn't give it to them. Moreover, they noted that most insurers were already well above the 80/20 requirement, so the requirement isn't likely to have done anything in any event. In the end, they weren't sure why premiums would have gone down. I can tell you why though. When Obama first announced his plans to destroy our medical system, there were 43 million uninsured. Now there are 49 million. That means somewhere around six million people lost their insurance since Obama deigned to bless us with "universal coverage." Call me crazy, but I'm thinking those six million people no longer paying health insurance premiums is probably what caused the overall amount paid in premiums to drop by $4 billion.

● Economists Are Liberals? A lot of people seem to think that economists are conservatives. I’m not sure why people think this, but it’s not true. According to a 2008 survey of the American Economic Association:

● 49% of members were registered Democrats and only 17% were registered Republicans.
● 60% supported Obama.

In a 2003 study of 1,000 economists, only 8% supported free-market principles.

● China Breaking: I’ve said several times that China has serious problems and will probably never overtake the US economically. Their demographics are against them, as their population is aging ultra-fast, and China's population will start shrinking dramatically soon. Similarly, their costs of doing business have been rising so fast that they are no longer competitive. They’ve lost manual labor work to Bangladesh and apparently it now makes more sense to open most new factories in the US rather than China. Making things worse, China appears to have slipped into recession and their growth is well below the level people have generally assumed they need to maintain social stability. Indeed, there is also a question of whether they ever actually had the growth they claimed. Everyone knows official statistics in China are fantasy, so people have been estimating growth based on electricity consumption figures. Now it turns out that China knew this and has been faking that data as well. Some people think China is only growing at 4% compared to the 9% they have been claiming.

Historically speaking, when you look at the other Asian tigers, each of whom burned out, China is following the same pattern – fast growth as they move people from the peasantry into the working class, followed by stagnation once they run out of peasants and as wages rise. If China's growth is in single digits, then they're pretty far along that curve. To put it simply, history tells us that China has peaked.

Now their last gasp appears to be a plan to move more people to the cities. Right now 1/2 of the population lives in cities. They want to increase this to 2/3. To do that, they are moving the equivalent of the entire population of the US into cities they are only now building. The plan is to get them all relocated by 2030. This sounds like a disaster in the making as it sounds unlikely there will be jobs for these people in those cities. Be thankful that for all of our problems, we are nothing like China.

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Obamacare Update No. 437

It’s time for another Obamacare update. This thing truly is a gift to bloggers. Today’s theme in the slow motion train wreck of Obamacare is “That’s not fair!”

● The First 49,000: When Obama pimped his plan to destroy our healthcare system, he promised over and over: “If you like your healthcare, you can keep it.” That was a lie, as people are now learning. Aetna announced Saturday that they will stop selling individual insurance in California because of the new regulations imposed under Obamacare (they will still sell business policies). They will cancel around 49,000 policies. No comment from California.

● That’s Not Fair!! I: It turns out that Obamacare has a problem. It’s not affordable for low income people. To make the insurance “affordable,” the amount an employer can pass on to employees is capped at 9.5% of their income. Well, it turns out that this is way too high for most people. Take the case of a restaurant worker who makes $21,000 a year. That 9.5% works out to $1,995 or $166.25 per month – and that’s before the $3,000+ deductible they will need to pay before the insurance kicks in. For someone who most likely lives paycheck to paycheck, that is not something they can afford. Indeed, we are suddenly awash in articles pointing out all the people in the restaurant, retail, hotel and service industries who can’t afford the insurance. The service employee unions are furious.

Even worse, they are now discovering that employers can get around Obamacare by offering expensive plans that require the full 9.5%. This keeps them from being fined because they actually comply with the law by offering the insurance, but they don’t end up paying for it because none of the employees will sign up. (As an aside, no one has recognized this yet, but this will destroy the Obamacare funding mechanism.) Even more hilariously, those employees then cannot get subsidies because their jobs technically offer plans. Ha ha. Nice work donks! Way to punish your supporters.

● That’s Not Fair!! II: Reuters just discovered something dastardly which no one could have seen coming... except Obamacare critics. Employers are finding ways to avoid providing insurance:

● A survey of 52 Wal-Mart stores found that 27 were only hiring temps, 5 weren’t hiring, and 20 were hiring a combination. And it turns out there is a company directive to hire as many people as possible as temps.... because they don’t qualify for insurance. They are also planning to cut back hours on others so they don’t qualify. Liberals are shocked and called this “creepy” (noting specifically that Wal-Mart lobbied for this, so they don’t understand why Wal-Mart would do this), and they claim it will backfire in some non-specific way. This is going on all across the country right now.

● Obamacare requires that insurers cover people’s kids until they turn 26... but it says nothing about spouses. The result is that policies are springing up everywhere that exclude the employee’s spouse – an alternate form allows the spouse on the policy, but only if they are primarily covered by insurance at their own workplace. The idea is to get employees to shift onto their spouse’s policy so the employer doesn’t need to cover them.

● Employers are instituting requirements in policies that allow the employer to force the employee to seek a second opinion before they can do anything expensive. There are actually firms that specialize in “finding savings” by talking employees into less expensive options. Sounds like the mob: “Be a real shame if something happened to your colon...”

● That’s Not Fair!! II: “This is simply not fair,” whined Democrat John Larson (Conn). What was he talking about? Chuck Grassley slipped a provision into Obamacare which requires Congressional staffers to suffer with the rest of us by seeking insurance through an exchange rather than getting the gold-plated government plan they get now. Apparently, this has deeply upset the poor dears and they are headed for the exists. This has led to fears of a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill... which isn’t possible as no one on Capitol Hill has a functioning brain. Trust me, zombies would never attack Congress.

Anyway, the Democrats are demanding a fix. After all, they shouldn’t be forced to endure the things they force upon us! That “is simply not fair!” The initial reports were that Boehner was onboard with fixing this as there is bipartisan upsettedness over this. But Boehner shot that one down. Said his spokesmonkey:

“The speaker would like to see resolution of this problem, along with the other nightmares created by Washington Democrats’ health law, which is why he supports full repeal. In the meantime, it is Democrats’ problem to solve. He will not sneak any language into bills to solve it for them — and the Democratic leadership knows that.”

Excellent Mr. Boehner! In light of this, Harry Reid has grumbled that there will be no legislative fix... “And cancel Christmas!” He is, however, hoping that OPM will rule that the Feds can contribute to these plans on behalf of those staffers – something which isn’t clear yet.

This has been a fascinating discussion to watch because the Democrats are claiming how this is actually anti-reform to force the staffers onto Obamacare because the government program they were in is the better model of reform. Huh? Then why didn’t you make that law instead of Obamacare, you turds? In any event, this truly shows the elitist mentality and why no one would shed any tears if zombies did eat the Congress.

● Setting The Goal High: Most people typically set their goals higher than they can achieve to motivate themselves. Not Obamacare. Gary Cohen, who is involved in implementing the federal exchanges, says “As we move closer to October, my hopes are the range of things that could go wrong gets narrower and narrower.” In other words, he’s expecting problems and hoping they can be fixed as they go. How bad could these problems be? Fellow implementeer Henry Chao, put it this way: “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” Aim high, el Hefe.

● Rate Shock Continues: Finally, rate shock continues. In a private briefing of insurers, the big players conceded that rates are going to shock people. Said Aetna’s CEO:

“In some markets, insurance premiums could increase as high as 100 percent. And we’ve done all that math. We’ve shared it with all the regulators. We’ve shared it with all the people in Washington that need to see it. And I think it’s a big concern.”

UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Humana and Cigna have all said the same thing. They blame (1) the “community rating” which jacks up the costs on the young to pay for the old, (2) forcing higher “minimum actuarial values,” (3) forcing insurers to take anyone who applies, (4) HHS forcing them to include new benefits people wouldn’t normally pay for, and (5) a tax on premium insurance.

In an article this week, Forbes outlined these things and explained how the Republicans could win votes by fixing some of these problems. To put this kindly, that is F**KING WRONG!!! NO!! DO NOT TRY TO FIX THESE THINGS!!!

This is the problem with the Republicans historically. The Democrats pass some disaster of a bill and act all smug about it. The Republicans try to minimize the negative effects of the bill. In the process, they make it tolerable because they redirect the harm it does so that most people don’t get hurt. That takes away the pain. No pain, no learning. No learning, no desire to repeal. Meanwhile, the Democrats smear them for trying to undo the “noble thing” the Democrats passed even as they are thankful the Republicans are saving their butts. This needs to stop. The Democrats created a bill that will mock poor people by offering them insurance they cannot afford and then fining them for not taking it, that will allow big business like Wal-Mart to dump their healthcare, that will turn everyone into part-timers, that will force millions of people off the insurance they currently like, that will eat into the budgets of hundreds of millions of people, and which will eventually bankrupt states and insurers.

LET IT HAPPEN.

Do NOT let the Democrats off the hook. Make them face the wrath of the public for what they have done. Do not alleviate that wrath by sparing the public from the full brunt of the Democrat’s stupidity.

Fortunately, Boehner’s words give me hope that the Republicans are on to this: ”It is Democrats’ problem to solve.” Exactly.

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