This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Health Care debate

  • Some More Indicators of Today’s Economic “Good Times”

    Here are a few more indicators that our economic doldrums have – after close to 5 and a half years – turned the corner towards “good times”.

    • Fraction of those 18-34 years old still living with their parents: nearly one in three
    • Teen unemployment rate in major US cities this summer: over 50%
    • Fraction of the US population using a USDA “nutrition assistance” program during the last 12 months: about one in four
    • Fraction of US children “living in poverty”: about one in five
    • Fraction of US households struggling with their mortgage and/or rent expenses: over half
    • Percentage of Americans who’ve lost faith and say for them the “American Dream” is dead:  59 percent
    • Oh, and we’re also seeing another of those ObamaCare “spillover” effects: nationwide doctor shortage of 91,500 predicted by 2020

    Well done, Mr. President. A damn nice “recovery” – and in only 5 1/2 years! Lassez les bontemps roulez!!

  • Yeah, This Is a Surprise

    Analysts are now predicting that nearly all private employers will drop health insurance as an employee benefit during the next 10 years. Nearly all, as in 80 to 90+% will cease providing health insurance.

    The reason? Yeah, you guessed it:  ObamaCare. Here’s a quote from the above article:

    The research firm S&P IQ predicts less than 10 percent of those who get insurance at work will still get it there ten years from now.

    “The companies will really be hard pressed to justify why they would continue to have to spend the kind of money they spend by offering insurance through corporate plans when there’s an alternative that’s subsidized by the government” said Michael Thompson, head of S&P IQ.

    Even a former adviser to President Obama, Zeke Emanuel, predicted less than 20 percent who now get employer-provided insurance will still get it ten years from now. He wrote in his book “Reinventing American Health Care” that “By 2025 few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.”

    In words: cost transfer. They can get someone else to pay for it.

    Can’t really blame the employers for doing that, either.  They’re in business to make money.  If they can cut costs without hurting their long-term bottom line – they will.

    Providing insurance for their workers typically costs employers a buttload of money. Family coverage typically costs in the $15,000 per worker range annually. (Yeah, it really is that damn expensive. The “employee share” most people pay is only a small part of the total cost of that insurance coverage. Your boss kicks in the rest.)

    Previously, employers and employees shared that cost, with employers ponying up most of it. Under ObamaCare, employers are finding it’s cheaper to drop coverage, raise wages – and let someone else pick up the tab.

    Want to know who that “someone else” is gonna be? Look in the mirror. That would be the “US taxpayer”.

    You and me.

    And if you think taxes will stay the same or go down after that starts happening, well, I’d like to talk to you about a great deal on this this bridge right over here . . . .

    We need to kill this abominably asinine idea called ObamaCare as soon as we can. With fire. And then bury the ashes in quicklime.

  • So, What’s ObamaCare’s REAL Effect So Far?

    Since the passage of that   abomination   horrendous mistake   manifest stupidity   law foisting ObamaCare on the unsuspecting US public in March 2010 before it could be read (another date that should forever live in infamy), AFLAC has studied its implementation. Each year since, they’ve published a report on how employers and employees are implementing and reacting to ObamaCare.

    They recently published their 2014 report. Among the highlights:

    • 86% of employees expect their medical expenses to increase this year
    • 56% of employers raised their employee cost shares for health insurance last year
    • 59% of employers expect to do the same this year (yeah, that means some will do so for 2 consecutive years)
    • 21% of employers converted some employees from full- to part-time last year due to health insurance costs
    • 22% of employers eliminated or reduced employee benefits last year

    The executive summary for this year’s report can be viewed here. The website for the report – which includes a plethora of details as well as links to the previous 3 reports – may be found here.

    ObamaCare is working out just “oh so well”. We need to “kill it with fire” – posthaste.

    And then bury the ashes in quicklime.

     

    (Hat tip to Fox News and Sarah Hurtubise for the article that pointed me at the above AFLAC study and site.)

  • ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’

    That statement by then White House Chief of Staff and now floundering (sorry I just couldn’t resist that) mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, one of the true bully boys of the Democrat Left, is seldom quoted in its entirety and that’s a shame because the wisdom of it is in the follow-on:

    “What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you thought you could not do before.”

    And there, with that concise bit of political wisdom, Comrade Rahm has quite precisely handed the Republican Party the strategy to controlling all the keys to the Capitol after November 2014.

    With many scandals to choose from: Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS, and now this latest, the VA debacle, it would seem that Republican officeholders and candidates would have a cafeteria style selection of means with which to attack their Democrat opponents. That would be a mistake.

    In the coming mid-term elections, the Democrats greatest weakness is the ill-planned and not thought through health care legislation which no Republican should ever identify as the Affordable Care Act. It is OBAMACARE, first, last and always. He went to great lengths to make this statutory albatross take wing, so let him bear this fallen bird upon his shoulders to his grave. He and Democrat leaders crammed it down America’s throat, now let him and every Democrat, who in blind party loyalty and against the better interests of his/her constituents, voted for this atrocious legislative abomination, choke on that vote in the coming elections.

    The Democrats’ one defensive position is to claim that they are trying to help the little guy, the uninsured, the worthy vulnerable among us. And therein lies the trap; for who among us is any more worthy than our veterans, many of whom, if not most, come from “little guy” backgrounds, and who have selflessly served on their nation’s behalf? And as soon as any Republican challenger brings this veteran’s issue into the discussion, this failing federal medical system becomes a live grenade for the Democrat, this federal bureaucracy that has demonstrably failed our most worthy warriors since its inception. And the consequences of that failure have recently magnified under an Obama administration that would subject the entire American populace to a similar, bureaucratic, union-protected, under-performing medical model that guarantees American citizens dying before their time, all due to federal, institutional constipation.

    Following Rahm Emmanuel’s dictum, every Republican candidate in America should demand of his Democrat opponent a clear statement as to that Democrat’s position on Obamacare. Should a Democrat foolishly attempt to defend that legislative abomination and the folly it is producing, then the Republican is presented with a truly gotcha moment:

    “So, you’re saying the American people deserve a health care system just like the Veterans Administration?”

    Never let a good crisis go to waste…

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • More ObamaCare and HealtCare “News”

    And here ya go: another periodic dose of ObamaCare   insanity   foolishness   idiocy   news.

    And, just to show that it’s not only ObamaCare that politicizes healthcare issues these days:

  • Ever Wonder What the Current Administration Thinks Was A Good Example of “Bipartisanship”?

    Did you guess the 2010 vote that passed the    asinine abomination    wonderful law creating what is currently referred to as “ObamaCare”?

    You didn’t? Why not? I mean, that was a sterling example of both parties working together to craft legislation that everyone could endorse, right?

    Yeah, I know – I had to stifle the urge to toss my cookies writing the  above. We all know that’s total bullsh!t.

    In case anyone’s forgotten, the bill creating ObamaCare was passed using a  questionable (and underhanded) parliamentary maneuver, with zero GOP input or support, literally in the middle of the night.

    Bipartisan?  Yeah, right.  Bipartisan my azz.

    But that doesn’t stop the current Administration from touting that vote as an example of bipartisanship.  And no, I’m not joking.

    Sheesh.  I’d expect that kind of transparent snow job from    Opie    Jay Carney.  That’s what he gets paid to do:  dissemble on demand.  But I previously gave the Secretary of the Treasury some credit for having common sense – and a bit of integrity.

    Are they really that clueless?  Or do they just like p!ssing on our leg and telling us it’s raining?

  • About Those ObamaCare Subsidies . . . .

    Remember about 6 months ago? When I wrote that the FBI had serious concerns about the possibility for fraud concerning those ObamaCare subsidies because the data used to calculate them would be reported using the “honor system”?

    Well, it looks like there’s a damn good chance the FBI was right to be concerned. Because now we’re seeing the first data regarding just how well income information reported by those qualifying for subsidies matches up with income data on file at the IRS and other government agencies.

    BLUF:   “T’ain’t lookin’ s’good, Cleetus.  Looks to be lotsa ‘mistakes’ in them thair applikashuns.”

    Specifically:  over half of those who signed up through the Federal exchange (Healthcare.gov) appear to have an “inconsistency” in their application – an inconsistency that requires further explanation and/or additional documentation. The total number of applications with such an inconsistency is about 3 million.

    It’s estimated that up to 1/3 of this group – or about 1 million individuals – could well be receiving an inaccurate subsidy. If they’re getting too little, they’re missing out on what the law allows. (Whether the government has any business providing squat is a different argument, one I’m not addressing here.) If they’re getting too much, though, they could be in for a huge tax issue at some point in the future.

    The article doesn’t say how many of these “inconsistencies” appear to be outright fraud. But two other programs that operated on the basis of “honor system” income reporting – the “ObamaPhone” program (formally LifeLine) and the EIC tax credit – are estimated to have had historical fraud rates in the 20% to 40% range.

    The discrepancy rate here for ObamaCare is consistent with a fraud rate close to that magnitude.  And since it’s known that some ObamaCare navigators were advising people to understate their actual incomes in order to to qualify for subsidies, I’m guessing a large chunk of those “discrepancies” are indeed due to outright fraud.

    Unfortunately, we don’t yet know much in the way of details. There’s still no working process for computer checking ObamaCare applications against income data on-file with other government agencies. The matching must be done manually, so it will take a while.

    Still – this is just another bit of proof that ObamaCare is a half-baked abomination that should be burned to the ground, then the ashes buried in quicklime.  With a stake through what’s left of its bureaucratic heart for good measure.

  • ObamaCare Websites Total Cost? $5 Billion and Climbing

    I’ve written previously about troubles with various state ObamaCare insurance exchanges.  Without rehashing things, five of them – MD, OR, NV, MA, and HI – have run through nearly $500 million in Federal money, and delivered essentially squat.

    However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

    HealthCare.gov is only about half-finished.  And it’s run up a huge bill, too.  I don’t have figures for today.  But six months ago (November 2013), HHS indicated they’d spent upwards of $675 million for that “sterling example of technology”.  God only knows what the total is today.

    So it’s clear we’ve poured literally hundreds of tons of $1 bills down the toilet just in building these non-functional pieces of junk.  (A metric ton of $1 bills is worth roughly $1 million.)  But how much have we spent overall?

    Well, the Financial Times did some digging.  And they’ve come up with an approximate amount spent on those various “healthcare exchanges” to date.

    You might want to sit down.

    Kaiser Permanente did the actual estimate.  And by their estimate, the Federal government alone has spent approximately $4.7 billion since 2011 to assist in creating healthcare exchange websites.

    That’s only the total for Federal spending.  It doesn’t include state spending.  Including state spending pushes the total spent on these exchanges well above $5 billion.

    And it doesn’t include cost of ObamaCare’s subsidies, HHS bureaucracy, or any of the multitude of other costs associated with ObamaCare.

    Needless to say, after seeing this none of the other 35 states that passed on setting up their own health insurance exchanges plan to do so.  And several who have their own today have either terminated them or are seriously considering doing so.

    Sheesh.  We need to dump this SCoaMF of a Federal program posthaste.  Like preferably yesterday.