The Stunning Stupidity of The (Totally Unaffordable) Affordable Care Act

This is my promised follow-up to my April 28th essay, The Unfolding Nightmare of The (Totally Unaffordable) Affordable Care Act.

Capitalism is the most amazing engine of innovation the world has ever known. Capitalism finds the tinest nook of a need and leaps in, unfettered, to fill this miniscule of a void.

For example, did you realize there over ONE MILLION different vehicle combinations for sale in America today! There are hundreds of brands and models of cars, and even more models of trucks, and hundreds more motorcycles. Then you add the choices of commercial vehicles, ambulances, heavy duty haulers, delivery trucks, oil tankers, grain trucks, trash and refuse trucks.... Well, you get the idea and I'm not including airplanes and railroad vehicles.

Need a vehicle? You have over one million choices.  There is one just perfect for you.

Need health insurance? You have exactly one choice.  Just one. Only one. Period.  There is no innovation. There is no variety. There are no options. There is no competition.  One size fits all.

To make matters one hell of a lot worse, the one single, solitary Health Insurance Plan was written by a committee. A committee of politicians and special interest lobbyists.  The politicians included many things that are totally unnecessary, designed only to garner votes.  They included little gifts (worth hundreds of millions of dollars) to their friends.  They actually did not care if the damned plan worked.  

They purposely kept out any little remnants of capitalism.  They expressly forbid competition across state lines.  And they forbid any innovation.  Every aspect of the exact nature of the Health Care Insurance was spelled out to the tiniest detail in the 2,000 page bill and the tens of thousands of pages of regulations.

Although Insurance companies are required to provide the product and administer its implementation, they were forbidden to sell it.  Advertising was run only by the government and sales were accomplished by untrained, unqualified "Navigators."

The stunning power of capitalism that gives you hundreds of versions of the Ford F-150 Truck, and gives you brilliant "Madison Avenue" advertising to explain all the features and benefits of the truck was forbidden by the legislation.  Nope, government knows best.

When I purchased my Ford I had the benefit of dozens of competing dealerships with well trained salesmen and full service garage mechanics from which to chose.  And the dealers all fought for my business and competed to offer me the lowest price.  Of course the government outlawed such competition for my Health Care dollars. 

Thanks to the complicated Affordable Care Act, I am allowed to buy ONE complicated, unworkable, nightmare of an insurance product, from an untrained "navigator" or, worse yet, for a non-working "Internet Website." 

Why did this happen?

Well Democrats, and many of my fellow liberals and progressives, hate capitalism.  To them, Capitalism is public enemy number one.   They believe, as they sip on their Starbuck's Latte and text on their iPhone, that Capitalism is a nightmare of oppression. Capitalism is not to be trusted. Capitalism must be controlled, regulated, managed and, ultimately, neutered.

The Democrats, who designed the Affordable Care Act without input from a single Republican, decided patient choice would no longer be available to Americans. You can chose your car, your coffee, your chicken sandwich, but not your health insurance.  Your 85 year old Aunt Mary, your two year old nephew Phillip and the high wire acrobat in the circus all get the same plan.  And all pay the same basic rate

In the place of choice you get mandatory services provided to each and every customer whether they’re wanted or needed or not.  

This is what has led to the insane price increases combined with massive deductible increases virtually all American's are now encountering.  And this one size fits all policy is also the cause of the elimination of many doctors and hospitals from most people's plans.  ObamaCare actually forces narrower networks and fewer doctors to care for (potentially) more patients.

ObamaCare doesn't work because it basically cannot work.

I like my Ford F-150 Truck.  I like the color blue.  I like the gas milage.  I like the long bed for hauling my four-wheeler.  And I like that fact that, unlike my ObamaCare Insurance Plan, my Ford will NOT cost me $10,000.00 every year in deductibles and premiums.

The government does regulate some aspects of my truck.  The EPA sets gas milage targets that Ford must meet.  And there are safety standards, air bags, seatbelts and more.  Had government taken the same approach to health insurance, I would be choosing from dozens of plans, with competitors from all around the nation.

We Liberals must learn to embrace what works and discard what doesn't.  Government can do a good job of regulation.  They should then have let the marketplace develop the products, advertise and sell them.  Liberals must learn to harness the horsepower of capitalism, not lock it away in the barn.

Employers Take a HIT - Health (Provider) Insurance Tax

Here's a hidden tax almost everyone missed.  This year alone ObamaCare raises taxes on all Americans by EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS by adding an eight percent tax to all Employer' Provided Insurance Plans.

Guess what! Much of this cost is passed on to employees and the rest of it to customers.

Here's the story in a very interesting format, from National Public Radio:

The Unfolding Nightmare of The (Totally Unaffordable) Affordable Care Act

It is possible to write a thousand essays about the failings of the Affordable Care Act, each covering a different aspect of this ill conceived and horrifically executed piece of legislation.

Then one could write a thousand more about the damages done to America and the American citizens at the hands of ObamaCare and the mindless bureaucrats charged with implementing this nightmare of a healthcare system.

Everytime I go to write a blog entry about ObamaCare I'm despondent I haven't written more and sooner.

But today the "other shoe" dropped for the small business where I work.  The insurance provider (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) was unable to renew the current policy and replaced it with a new policy that complies with the absurd requirements of The ACA (affordable Care Act or ObamaCare as it is unpopularly known).  The new play is a "silver level" plan

Here's the good news - the premiums only increased 15%.  The Board of Directors quickly decided to absorb all of the cost increase, passing NONE of it on to the employees.

But the bad news is devastating,  Deductibles and copays have skyrocketed.  Effectively employees who face a major (but far from life threatening) illness or injury to a member of their family could face copays and deductibles of over $12,000 or more!! Previously, under similar circumstances an employee would have paid under $2,000.00.

Likewise prescription co-pays skyrocketed, from $9.00 for a generic drug to $40.00.  Brand Name drugs jump to $120.00 or more under certain circumstances.

Co-Pays and Deductibles cover every conceivable procedures individually, so they multiply exponentially for a hospital stay, where x-rays, ct-scans or MRI's might be needed before surgery.

My good friend Steve keeps singing the praises of Obamacare in his blog here. Sadly I don't believe his experience is the same as younger, lower to middle income workers.

Middle class Americans can raise a family of four (especially if they are married with a working spouse), but little is left for savings.  But even with a middle class income of $40,000.00 to $65,000.00 annually, they cannot afford to get sick with the co-pays and deductibles they face under the new ObamaCare compliant insurance policies.  Even a minor illness or accident with place the average employee into deep debt our total bankruptcy.

Can you imagine an illness striping you of 1/3rd our your annual take home pay.  Name one middle class person who could afford that cost.

Based on this astonishingly bad news, the Directors of the company where I work are looking at ways to increase employee coverage to the "Gold" or even "Platinum" level of ObamaCare.  But even Platinum will increase deductibles and co-pays over the old plan. If the decision is made to upgrade the level of the plan then monthly premiums will skyrocket.  There are no good options.

In spite of President Obama's dishonest effort to delay the implementation of ObamaCare plans for employers and corporations until after the November election, the insurance companies will roll out the new plans on a company's annual renewal date.  

This may be the first story you read, but it won't be the last.  Look for hundreds more over the next few months.  As this rolls out it seems unlikely any Democrat can be re-elected.

I'll be covering exactly why this is happening in an upcoming blog entry..

What Grade Would You Give Barack Obama?

What grade would you give President Barack Obama for 2013?  If it's an "A" you'll really enjoy the thoughtful and detailed blog article by my friend Steve over on the peripateticblogger.com

Sadly I can't agree with Steve. My reply is printed below:

Whoa! I'm shocked to say the least.  It's one thing to be an Obama supporter and a strong and unyielding supporter of the Liberal agenda, it's quite another to give Obama any marks for success.

His signature accomplishment, The poorly named Affordable Care Act (to which he contributed absolutely nothing beyond overblown sales hucksterism) should be an F---.  The program will leave more people uninsured than ever before, will destroy the middle class (who will carry the financial weight of the program) and will quickly collapse into dust.  Unfortunately it may also destroy the actual health care system as it collapses.  Let us hope that doesn't happen.

Over the next four years it will be largely replaced.  Unfortunately the program is so tainted it might result in a rebound toward the Republican models rather than the single payer plan we all originally envisioned.  It certainly will cost Democrats control of the Senate in 2014.

Barack Obama is ill suited to be President and has been proven unable to accomplish the job.  None of this had to happen.  It was all avoidable and a more able politician and manager could have given us the Affordable Health Care Act we all desired and deserved.

Anecdotal Evidence

ObamaScare
by SCOTT SCHABLOW

So far, my experience with The Affordable Care Act provides me with ZERO confidence that any part of it will ever produce anything other than chaos. I am hereby renaming the plan ObamaScare, because frankly it frightens the hell out of me. Friends tell me stories about premiums rising 1000%, A friend called the Alabama Insurance Department and the spokesperson there said the average Alabamian may see a 300% increase in premiums. That is IF ANYONE EVER GETS TO COMPLETE THE PROCESS! I spent a couple hours filling out the online application. The section before the identity verification kept losing my information each time I logged off, even after repeated saves. Each time I logged back in I had to re-enter the same information. This game I repeated SIX TIMES at about 30 minutes each. I FINALLY got to the end of the section and I was ready to embark on the ID verification process and present the submitted application tfor verification.

But wait, after I submitted the information for the ID verification process I got an error saying that my ID could not be verified online. I needed to call the Healthcare Marketplace. Where is this cool sounding marketplace? Near the Wharf in SanFran? Or maybe PepperPlace in B'ham? Nope it's nowheresville. I place the call. After waiting on hold a short while I heard, "Hello this is the hellfiredamgeplace whatdjks;aieh kdsljf". Assuming that the inaudible mumbling I just heard actually confirmed I had called the correct place, I proceeded with, "Yes, hello, I am trying to fill out my application at Healtcare.gov (I really wanted to say I'm battling ObamaScare Gallactica!) and I got to the part where I need to verify my identity and I got an error saying to call this number."

She says "OK." Silence. . . more silence. . . not a word. Me: "Hello, is anyone there?' She: "yes." Then more silence, but this time I can hear someone in the background whispering, "Ask him mumble mumble blah blah." More silence (even the mysterious whispers have stopped). Then, like someone jumping out of a closet in front of an unsuspecting kid feeling this way through a dark hallway, "SIR, WHAT CAN I HELP YOU WITH?" Well by now I'm thinking, you can get me one of those portable de-fib units they have at public spaces - and set that phaser to stun 'cause you just gave me a heart attack! I recomposed myself and essentially repeat the same, "the web site told me to call you" blurb. Then I added is this the right number?" She assures me it is and that some other people have had trouble in that spot." BINGO, SCORE WE HAVE A WINNER, she knows what I'm talking about! Smooth sailing ahead! I wait with great anticipation for forthcoming wisdom; an action plan to set this thing into motion!

She says, "Umm, just a minute" and puts me on hold. Tick tock, tick tock. Another blanket of silence has covered this corpse of a customer service call. And this has officially, at this very second, shredded my hope of ever seeing my family alive again. Oh, sorry, It just felt that way. She returns again, this time at a normal volume level and the mumbling is understandable. But it's not exactly professional, or semi-professional or even business casual. It's an insulting combination of slang phrases and one word sentences that has no place in an private office conversation, much less in a customer service center. Things like "do wut," uh-huh, gonna, naw, nuttin', ain't and more. Aside from the slacker talk, the bottom line is the system wouldn't work for me, nobody could fix it, tell me why or what's wrong or anything. Oh, except I needed to write down my name, address, telephone number, and MAIL it with a copy of my driver's license, social security card, a lock of my hair, a DNA swab, a urine sample, fingerprints, a retinal scan, a psychological evaluation and my Facebook password. I asked her if she could just get a copy of the stuff she's needin' from the NSA, because they've been following me for years. Silence. Me: "I'm just kidding, I'll send the stuff, gimme the address. " She does and proceeds to tell me it would take 3 to 8 weeks to get verified. I'm no math whiz but I know there is not 8 weeks left in the year. "Ma'am, if it takes 8 weeks, what am I supposed to do for health insurance in the meantime. She: "I dunno" I hang up, resolved to find a real solution.

Today a friend tells me the new web site actually works. But she also says that I better get back in there quick because she had to start over. I login tonight and the application resumes on STEP NUMBER ONE. All the information I have entered again and again is gone. Along with it is a popup message saying that I need to remove, delete and destroy the old application and start all over again. Lucky number seven, right? Well tonight, I aint' doin' nuttin' like 'at. Gonna chill away from ObamaScare and dream of a better time.

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Scott Schablow is a long time friend. He is the Director of Digital Marketing & Social Media for The Hip Brand Group in Birmingham, Alabama. This essay originally appeared on Scott's Facebook page and is reprinted here with his permission. 

My Reply to Steve

Thoughtful, calm, intelligent and reflective are qualities that my friend Steve has possessed the entire time I've know him.  It's likely he's been this way all his life.  And, he has great balance in his life, able to separate politics from his family and personal life.  He keeps things in balance.  I urge you all to read his blog, The Peripatetic Blogger.  He generally posts only once a week,and only after great reflection and analysis.  He loves the Oklahoma Sooners and the Dallas Cowboys.

He wrote a blog this week which, in part, chastised some Democrats for breaking ranks with the President over the Affordable Care Act.  He feels they should "all hang together."  Indeed I'm tempted to agree with him, especially on the "hanging" part.  But, hey, I don't want to be accused of pulling a Martin Bashir, so please disregard that last comment.

I wrote a short response to Steve that I felt deserved repeating here.  In short I don't ever feel that Party Loyalty should ever interfere with good judgement.  Here is my response to Steve:

Dear Steve, 

I believe the President Obama had the very best of intentions.

And I know that our Congress is badly broken and that caused The ACA to be written in back rooms and passed late at night by a Congress that never read the bill or had the time needed to resolve potential defects.

And, even though not a single Republican voted for the act, they deserve equal blame for the dysfunction that forced Pelosi and Reid to act in a hurried and secretive manner.

Regardless of all this, the bill is nothing short of a disaster. Forget the website as that will get fixed. It’s not the problem anyway. As a result of the ACA more people, not fewer, will be uninsured. Most people will pay substantially more for insurance, not less. The blow to the middle class, financially, will be nearly unimaginable. Meanwhile the rich, who had Cadillac Plans to begin with, will be virtually unaffected.

This will all get fixed, eventually. But, in the meantime, the ACA doesn’t deserve the support of any self respecting Democrat (or Republican). Let’s admit our mistakes, avoid placing blame, and get on with the job of repairing the system.

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Here is just one of the first (and certainly the most ironic) examples of the financial disaster awaiting the middle class: Woman Hailed by President as Obamacare Success Story Now Can't Afford Obamacare

Destroying the Very Fabric of the American Healthcare System

I wish that the politicians in Washington weren't so busy building sound bites for the 5 o'clock news that they could actually get together and save America's Health Care System, but, alas, they are incapable of compromise or even intelligent analysis.

Group "A" are so determined to save the reputation of the President they will never admit they made a (gigantic) mistake or compromise to find a solution.

Group "B" is so determined to bring down the President a notch or two that they cannot offer intelligent or reasonable compromises that just might solve the problem at hand.

And the public is so caught up in the political rhetoric, many do not see the tsunami on the horizon about to drown us all.  

But make no mistake about it, the entire Health Care System in the United States, unarguably the finest health care infrastructure in the history of mankind, is months away, a year at most, from complete and utter destruction.

And it's all being caused by The Affordable Care Act, the single worst piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress.

About 200 million Americans will lose their current Insurance.  The replacements, if they can be found, will be significantly more expensive for most Americans (about 4/5th will pay several thousand dollars more annually) and they new insurance will have significantly higher deductibles and may well (or most certainly will) force Americans to change their doctors and hospitals.

The hospital infrastructure will collapse.  Some hospitals will be forced to close.  Others will greatly curtail services.  A few, perhaps fifty or less nationwide, will become hospitals for the super rich, those able to afford completely private care.

Sarah Palin's Death Panels of non-medical actuaries will decide on care and payments, effectively making the best care treatments unavailable except to the super rich.

The total economy is mere months away from a total collapse into recession or depression.  The ACA (or ObamaCare) is a nothing more than a hidden super-tax that will drain hundreds of millions of dollars out the middle class taxpayer's wallets, through increased (and unaffordable) premiums and deductibles. 

It's happening every day now.  Moments ago REUTERS reported that insurer UNITED HEALTH CARE is being forced to drop thousands of doctors form Medicare patients programs due to Barack Obama's ego driven theft of millions of dollars from Medicare to fund his ObamaCare albatross.

This was one hundred percent foreseeable and avoidable. Many Republicans and many pundits and analysts and blogger like me have been correctly forecasting this for three years.  But we are all branded by Democrats and media not willing to actually read the ACA bill, as anti-Obama haters.  Alas, that was never true, we were and are the lookouts, warning the people of the on-rushing waves of health care and economic destruction, begging you to save yourselves and get to higher ground.  

Every day a few more are swept away and a few more listen.  I fear it's too late.

Bon Voyage, Titanic!

ObamaCare is destroying the American health care system.  One side casualty is the Democratic Party.  As of today not one single Democrat Senator can possibly be re-elected, regardless of how Blue his or her state may be.

And the intelligent Democrats know it.  And none is sharper or more savvy than former President Bill Clinton.  So President Clinton did what only a true elder statesman of the party can do. He politely told President Barack Obama to get his head out of his ..... and do everything necessary to fulfill his promises to the American people.

See CBS NEWS: Bill Clinton says Obama should honor health care promise

To be certain, former President Bill Clinton is also trying to protect future President Hillary Clinton.  Bill Clinton understands the politics. He understands the people.  He reads the dynamics.

He also would like the health care system to actually work.  We're at over FIVE MILLION INSURANCE POLICY CANCELLATIONS right now, on our way to nearly ONE HUNDRED MILLION!!!  The impact on people will be horrific.  The impact on the health care system itself will be catastrophic. Hospitals will close. Doctors will be forced out of work. People will suffer and some, perhaps many, will die.

And Democrats who lacked even the intelligence to read the bill before passage will all be forced out of office.  Today, they cannot be re-elected. They all need Bill Clinton. 

We all need Bill Clinton.

"Nobody's madder than me,,."

As The Affordable Care Act disintegrates before our very eyes, Barack Obama has spoken nearly every day this week proclaiming "Nobody's madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should," and other variations of the same message.

Sadly, it just isn't true. If President Barack Obama were really mad that an incompetent staff had nearly destroyed his signature achievement he would have demanded and received the resignations of those responsible, those who betrayed the President. For a man who rests his entire Presidential legacy on this one act, this particular failure is unforgivable.

If President Barack Obama was genuinely mad, he would demand to know why a "no bid" contract for over $400,000,000.00 was issued to a third rate Canadian company to build his signature website after he proclaimed in his election campaign that no bid contracts would end forever. He would most assuredly want to know why there were no penalties written into the contract for failure to produce the work. This, too, is a personal betrayal of the President and he should take it personally.

If President Obama were truly mad he would want to know who issued regulations that turned his oft repeated proclamation "If You like your insurance, you can keep it," into a complete falsehood.  If we assume President Obama meant what he said, he would demand this egregious error in regulation writing be corrected, fixed, and fixed immediately.

If President Obama were blazingly mad that a woman with cancer was being thrown off her insurance, the very act ObamaCare was designed to stop, he would explode in anger at the regulations written by bureaucrats into his law that forced this to happen.  He would have called the woman on the phone and guaranteed her he would fix this error.  He WOULD NOT have sent his minions out to attack the woman on Twitter, making her the villain simply because she told her story.

President Obama is not mad, except, perhaps, at me for writing this blog.

One President's Halliburton is Another President's CGI Federal

One of the many things that made President George W. Bush one of the most hated Presidents ever among Democrats and others on the left was the use, and we felt THE ABUSE, of NO BID CONTRACTS going to friends, classmates, crony's and lobbyists who had an inside track into the Bush Administration.

Investigations into the NO BID CONTRACTS were a staple of the nightly news on the major networks, articles in The Huffington Post, blog entries in The Daily KOZ and conversations everywhere.

Ultimately the issue of no bid contracts became so large it was a major campaign issue for candidate Barack Obama.  There is no doubt in my mind that his promise to "END NO BID CONTRACTS FOR GOOD" was a major factor leading to his election.

The generally left leaning BUZZ FEED has even put up a montage of Obama's many speeches promising to end NO BID CONTRACTS.  Click on the link above to see them all or just check out the one I've republished below:




Of course now we find that Kathleen Sebelius' Health and Human Services Department awarded a four hundred million dollar ($400,000,000.00) to CGI Federal, a Canadian company with close ties to Barack and Michelle Obama and the Obama Administration with absolutely NO BID. 

What's worse, especially after listening to Barack Obama's speech above, there were actually four other companies who attempted to submit bids for the ACA (ObamaCare) contract and those bids were never opened or reviewed by the Administration. CGI Federal got exactly the kind of insider sweetheart deal given behind closed doors that candidate Obama PROMISED to end forever if he were elected President. 

But, as it turns out, CGI Federal is used to getting no bid contracts with a license to siphon off federal funds. The AP is reporting today about a major failure on the part of the government to distribute funds to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. 

Congress allocated $1.7 BILLION for Hurricane Sandy Relief and hired CGI Federal, without any bidding, as a consultant to aid in the allocation of the funds. Although 24,000 family is desperate need have filled out the applications for aid, only a paltry 1.2% of the money has ever been distributed. Everyone else is still waiting. 

In this case, the government and CGI Federal are a bigger disaster than the hurricane itself. 

Of course no one is ever held accountable in the Obama Administration. When quizzed, they all, from Barack Obama on down, admit "mistakes were made." But then they quickly add the important thing is to "look forward" and "fix the problem."  

Looking forward is Washington code for "spend even more money." 

Barack Obama is no where near our worst President ever. But he easily is the President who has consistently told the most outright lies when campaigning for office or campaigning for his pet projects. 

It's his own little version of a "no bid contract."  

Severe Pain

“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you. First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

                                                                  --- President Barack Obama, July, 2009

If only that were true. I don't think President Obama meant to lie. He just never bothered to read the bill he signed into law.

I am deeply saddened by the emerging details and near tragic consequences of The Affordable Care Act. Millions of Americans are now losing their insurance precisely because of The ACA.

You've likely noticed that all Liberals, Democrats and Progressives and the Main Steam Media now refer to the law as The Affordable Care Act or The ACA.  Only weeks ago all Democrats used to proudly call it "ObamaCare" as did President Obama himself during the election.  Now that it's all falling apart they can't run away from that name fast enough.  

I've seen the disaster coming in part because, unlike Members of Congress and unlike President Obama, I actually studied the bill.  I read it and studied it and I listened carefully to others who had great knowledge of the details and the likely consequences of what is now, unarguably, the single worst piece of legislation to ever emerge from Congress.

I've written again and again and again and again about the pain and suffering this law would cause, the almost unimaginable expense to both the government and to individuals, the dismantling destruction of our health care system and the impact on both doctors and patients.  I knew many, if not most, people would not be able to keep either their doctors or their insurance.

One of my friends commented last night that at least now I can say, "I told you so."

I would have preferred to be wrong.  I take to comfort in being right.  I take even less comfort in the fact that our intractable Congress is not currently up to the job of fixing the problems..... or even addressing the problems.

Millions of people will now lose their health care and their insurance because of President Obama's ego and stupidity (there is simply no other word to describe his failure to ever read the bill he claimed as his own). They will not be able to get substitute insurance under the unworkable system of insurance the law mandates.

Those who somehow can magically cobble together insurance to replace their cancelled policies and can somehow afford the staggering cost of premiums and deductibles will be very angry.  When they discover they can no longer see the doctor of their choice or use the hospital of their choice they will be very angry.

Many Democrats now see the handwriting on the wall.  Sadly, it's just too late.  Dems are quietly lobbying for a delay in implementation, but that might actually make matters worse.  People are receiving notices of cancelled policies today.  Their insurance ends on December 31st.  God forbid they need surgery on January 1st. Delaying the ACA won't help.

Here's my prediction: November of next year will be a bloodbath for Democrats. Republicans who shut down the government trying to stop ObamaCare will turn from goats into legendary folk heroes.

There is no excuse. This was all foreseeable.

A Lesson We Liberals MUST Learn

The ObamaCare roll out somehow managed to be more flawed than the horrific law itself. As impossible as it seems, the initial introduction of President Obama's prize accomplishment from his first term is, so far, one of the biggest embarrassments in the entire history of our government.

And each and every day it gets worse.

The President's biggest allies for the first two weeks were the hapless Republicans who stole the spotlight from the ObamaCare introduction with their ill advised government shutdown.  President Obama ought to write Senator Ted Cruz a "Thank You" note". 

The biggest error the President made was letting the shutdown be settled.  Two weeks was not long enough to fix the flawed website design. And once the shutdown ended, the press and blogosphere turned its full attention to ObamaCare.

Speaking of mistakes, President Obama's second largest mistake was not to accept the Republican DEMAND that ObamaCare's mandates be delayed a full year.  He needs that time (which could have easily buried the issue past the 2014 election) to fix this mess.

Actually biggest problem is the ObamaCare Law itself, but that is for another blog entry in a few weeks.  Today we, as Liberals, need to learn one critically important lesson: The Government Should NEVER Do Anything EVER!

If we love people, if we want fairness, if we demand the folks get full value with no waste, programs like Universal Health Care need to be turned over to the private sector. We can legislate universality, fairness and value and we can hire inspectors to make certain the law is accomplished, but GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT RUN THE PROGRAM.

We, the taxpayers, spent $680,000,000.00 on bad code, poor design, insane logic, zero testing and no results.  By contrast Facebook's website was started at less than $80 million. Twitter at less than $300 million. And there are countless other examples.  And they all work.

The problem lies in government management, the bidding process and the sheer bureaucracy that permits no innovation and allows no decision to ever be made. 

Megan Neal pointed out over on the Motherboard Website (not a political site, but an IT site) that the bureaucratic morass of bidding on government contracts guarantees no qualified company will ever win a contract or even bid on one.  

     The "procurement" process of government contracts is so labyrinthine, the administration has to hire firms that are adept at the process, even if that means they're not sufficiently adept at the actual task. As a result, despite a government budget of $80 billion a year for information-technology services, federal web services wind up clunky and glitchy like they're stuck in the dial-up age.

Today many are calling for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be fired for incompetence. Indeed she is totally incompetent and ought to be fired. In any private company she would have been long gone, years ago. But politics, not competency rule Washington.  And that is exactly why programs should always be delegated to the private sector.  Yes, private companies will make a profit but, like Amazon, they will get the job done for less taxpayer dollars with better results.

As Liberals we hate giving profit for needed services to the private sector.  Yet we waste many times the money for vastly inferior services.  We must learn to Legislate and Regulate, instead of trying to Implement the program in the systemically incompetent government sector.

Insurance Regulation versus Medical Care Reform

Today, for a few short hours, is an exciting moment for those who somehow hoped to end The Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare as it is known to both its friends and foes. Senator Ted Cruz is holding his mini-filibuster and it is the stuff of great television.  It is also, I'm told by politicians who know the inside scoop, doomed to failure.

In my opinion his filibuster is much worse.  It is a tragic waste of time, energy, enthusiasm and public opinion that needed to be aimed at amending and correcting the many, tragic, often horrific, errors of ObamaCare.  It isn't even possible to "defund" ObamaCare as Senator Cruz proposes and it is a mistake for him and the Republican controlled House to even try.

Repealing ObamaCare would be wonderful, but that's not possible either, so repair is the best option.

What I want to add to the discussion tonight is a simple and rather brilliant observation made on television this morning by my new favorite Congressman, Doctor Brad Wenstrup of Ohio. Yes, he is an M.D. and he served in Iraq prior to becoming a Congressperson.

Like me, Congressman Wenstrup sees the desperate need to provide medical services to the poor and to the uninsured.  He sees the need to provide full and complete care for the people who face major illnesses.  He has proposed fully thought out and intelligent programs for the government to provide such services.

The problem with ObamaCare, he wisely observed this morning, is that it will not accomplish any of these goals.  Not one! Why? Because ObamaCare isn't Health Care Reform, it's Insurance Regulation and over-regulation at that! 

Under ObamaCare the uninsured will still be uninsured and will still flood Emergency Rooms for services like diabetes care, or simple cases of flu, or child wellness vaccinations, all of which that Emergency Rooms are not equipped to handle.  It will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, needlessly.

Meanwhile, by providing totally unneeded and tragically misplaced Insurance regulation, the currently insured will lose their coverage and have it replaced by managed coverage that will almost uniformly change their doctors, hospitals and coverage costs.  

You can count on this for sure - Next year you will not be able to keep your insurance, your doctor or your hospital.  And you can count on  this,too - it's going to cost you personally, a lot more, more in premiums and more in deductibles.  And you may well be denied needed medical care as a bonus.

The answer was always deregulation not increased regulation of insurance.  Here's a much needed example, just one of many. Once we deregulated the Telephone companies we got better service, the long promised (but never delivered) picture phones (now called Facetime), and virtually free long distance.  And phone bills are a tiny fraction of the cost they were for your mom and dad (or grandma and grandpa).

Instead of over-regulating Insurance we need to completely deregulate it!  Get rid of every state board.  Allow full competition across state lines.  Costs will drop and coverage will improve.

Meanwhile the government should fund clinics for the uninsured and the poor instead of forcing them to misuse emergency rooms.  Finally states should administer "catastrophic care" programs for those facing major illness. This could be done for a tiny fraction of the cost of ObamaCare.  

That's the prescription from Dr. Wenstrup.  Let's stop filibustering and start fixing the problem.

The Slow, Inexorable March into Hell

I realize I should be writing about the Affordable Care Act nearly every day.  So should every blogger and analyst. The issue genuinely is that important.

But there are other important issues, too.  And important events capture our attention, like the current debate over military action in Syria.  Nearly every blogger, liberal and conservative alike, are debating this chain of events, presidential powers, war powers, red lines and more.  This is an important discussion and President Obama's actions could have major ramifications for the region or even the world.

On a brighter note, the Syrian debate has temporarily distracted Republicans from their insanely stupid, "Defund Obamacare" debate in the House and Senate.  First it is technically impossible to "Defund" the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and second, the move actually hurts the effort to fix or even repeal this monstrosity of a law.

Democrats know full well the law must be massively altered to become remotely functional.  But they don't dare allow any bill to come to the floor fearing (quite correctly) such a bill would bring about nearly complete repeal of the President's most important legislative victory.  And, so far, protecting the President is more important than serving the best interests of the American public.

So we continue the slow slog down the hill to a medical insurance disaster.  Virtually everyone loses.  Two important news articles this week illustrate the misguided nature of the ACA, it's ill conceived provisions and the unintended consiquences of passing a 1,900 page bill without even bothering to read it.

Late last week, the 22,000-member United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers withdrew its support for the Affordable Care Act and went one step further and demanded its full repeal.  Several other unions have also withdrawn support or demanded exemptions from the law.

The Roofer's Union issue hit the very core of the problem with the ACA.  The insanely mercurial ACA forces everyone in America into a one size fits absolutely no one policy and penalizes severely anyone who dares to have better health insurance.  This is the dumbing down of American Healthcare.  The bottom line is that the Roofers are deemed to have a "Cadillac" plan and must pay a penalty premium in taxes for their hard earned union benefits.

While President Obama said "If you love your plan, you can keep it," that was simply untrue.  What he should have said is "Many Americans will be forced to accept inferior insurance at much higher rates than they've had in the past."  And he might have added, "My bill will favor non-union workers and give then tax subsidies while taxing Unions for their negotiating skills."  That's exactly what ObamaCare (the ACA) does.

On the flip side of the coin the ACA is even a worse disaster for America's creative culture, hitting artists, musicians, photographers and "gasp" even writers hard by taking away their insurance entirely.

Here I have to quote Nancy Pelosi, the real architect of the ACA (it should be called PelosiCare) who said, "Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."  The sad joke here is that before Pelosi dumped this rotten fish onto the canvas of unsuspecting artists, they had achieved that goal. PelosiCare took it all away.

Once again the enemy is the ACA's dogged determination to create a one size fits absolutely no one insurance template.  But for loosely knit groups likes artists or photographers, Congress made it much worse.  Ignoring the pleas of Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, Congress outlawed insurance plans from operating across state lines and demanded each individual purchase only through his or her State Insurance Exchange in each individual state.  Hence group policies that served creative artists across state lines were made illegal!!!  Virtually every policy serving loose knit groups will end this December, forcing artists and musicians and other independent professionals to purchase significantly more expensive policies from their state exchanges.

In reality Nancy Pelosi should have said, "Under my Affordable Care Act, artists and creative people will be forced into the workplace to accept mundane labor jobs and will no longer be allowed to pursue their dreams. Creativity, whether in Insurance or in the arts will no longer be allowed to exist."

I'll leave you today with this terribly funny ObamaCare parody video produced by the extremely evil Karl Rove Crossroads group.   Laugh while you still can because, like it or not, the ACA takes over on January 1st.

Walgreens: Capitalism May Yet Rescue Americans From Obamacare

Capitalism is doing what it does best: finding and filling the voids between supply and demand.  And, let's be honest, The Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare has more voids than a black hole.

We are mere months away from losing the two things President Obama said we could keep under ObamaCare: our doctors and our insurance.  Both will soon be gone.  Our insurance will be replaced by a significantly more expensive model guaranteeing care most Americans neither want or need.  Meanwhile, our doctors are either retiring or being placed in the untenable position of seeing far more patients that he or she can possibly manage.

But your local drug store, Walgreens, is coming to our rescue! They are going to take over a significant portion of Primary Care at low cost, affordable rates.  Of course you won't see a doctor, but will see either a nurse practitioner or a physician's assistant (whatever that might be) who will diagnose illness, prescribe medicines and order additional tests, x-rays, etc.  Somewhere out in the cloud, probably right next to your mp3's, will be a real medical doctor that will oversee and review the actions of these first caregivers.

This is all actually quite a good thing.  The biggest beneficiary will be Hospital Emergency Rooms.  At a tiny fraction of the cost, people, especially the uninsured, will receive treatment for most minor illnesses that they previously couldn't receive outside of emergency rooms.

And, let's face it, the rest of us will get care for chronic illnesses we won't be able to receive from our previous doctor.

Walgreen's will benefit by filling most of the prescriptions they prescribe and they will be paid between $65.00 and $135.00 per visit.  Some of that cost may or may not end up being paid by the insurance policy you will be forced by law to obtain.

This is good.  At least until my fellow government loving liberals decide that they simply cannot allow a "Company" to make a profit off people's illnesses.

I for one, would prefer to get medical care from Walgreen's rather than the a medical version of the DMV.

Here is a review of the Walgreen's Announcement from Kaiser Health News: Walgreens Becomes 1st Retail Chain To Diagnose, Treat Chronic Conditions

You Want the Slow Death or the Quick Death?

"...we are now seeing weekly examples of this Administration’s inability to govern."
                                                                     ---Joe Klein From the article
                                                            ObamaCare Incompetence
                                                            Time Magazine, April 2, 2013

Is Barack Obama the worst President in History? Of course not. There are numerous examples of more dishonest Presidents and more incompetent Presidents.  None-the-less it is President Obama who is doing the most damage to this country and who just might bring our current era to an abrupt and very unpleasant end.

It is the perfect storm where the government's gross incompetence, the President's massive ego and faltering world economy all meet at once.

I've outlined in numerous articles including the one just a few days ago that the massive debt and continuing deficit spending will destroy both the government and our nation's economy in just a few years.  That's the slow death.

The quick death is coming courtesy of ObamaCare, The Affordable Care Act, the worst single piece of legislation in the history of government.  It was poorly conceived and horribly written with mercurial attention to a thousand details but no understanding of how today's medical industry actually works.  It was written in the back rooms by bureaucrats mostly under the influence of special interest groups and industry lobbyists   It was passed by a Congress where not one member ever read the 1,900 page bill and I believe that NONE have read it to this very day.

If you support UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, as I do, you have to be terrified of this act which will accomplish just the opposite.

It will abruptly increase the out-of-pocket cost of medical care for virtually every person, reduce the number of people receiving care, bankrupt large portions of the medical industry, drive up costs and explode the national deficit.

You will not be able to keep either your current insurance (it will no longer exist) or your doctor, who will likely retire or be stretched so thin he or she will rarely see patients.  Most care will fall to Nurse Practitioners, or Registered Nurses of other less well trained members of the medical establishment.

Hospitals will become overcrowded ad under financed.  Some clinics will close. Others will be forced to operate on a cash only basis, refusing to take insurance.

It's going to get very ugly in a matter of months.  Read DEMOCRAT Joe Klein's Time Magazine article, ObamaCare Incompetence, to start. It's short and it's scary.  And it's the tip of the iceberg.

Health Insurance Now Cost MORE Than a New Car - Every Year!!

"Health Insurance Costs More Than a New Car" is certainly a Drudge worthy headline.  He has a eye for the grabber headline that yields massive click-thrus.  And this one sure caught my eye.


But in this case the click through from Drudge leads you to an honest to goodness news story in POLITCO (not even an op-ed piece).  But it's still a scary story.  Family Health Insurance for the average family in America now exceeds $15,000.00 a year.  That's more than the cost of a new Ford Fiesta. Every single year!


You could have a Jay Leno sized garage full of cars in just a few short years if you simply stopped buying Health Insurance!!


How can this possibly happen?  The key is that the average American doesn't realize how much he is being charged.  His or her costs are partially paid by the employer and the balance is split up by paycheck, between 24 and 52 payments a year, so they seem smaller than they actually are.


The POLITICO article goes out of its way to make certain readers know that OBAMACARE (or the Affordable Care Act) is NOT the reason for these huge premiums, it's mostly actual increases in healthcare costs.  In fact the POLITICO article points out that Obamacare may hold back future cost increases.


But this is reality and the article makes clear that these costs are increasing much faster than the rate of inflation.  I believe the so-called Affordable Care Act is not part of any solution.  I'm sorry the bill became so politically charged that real compromise was never even considered.  Republicans and Democrats share the blame equally.  Although I feel Nancy Pelosi was primary the architect of this fiasco.


Market forces could reduce these costs, but only once the actual payer, the patient or the employee, understands how much he is really paying.  Our system of employer paid health insurance hides the real costs from the insured, while forcing the uninsured into certain bankruptcy.

The Littlest Victims of Obamacare

I had hoped, and lobbied hard, to defeat every member of Congress who had voted to pass The Federal Health Care Reform Act, now often referred to as ObamaCare. Sadly while many were defeated, many gained re-election in spite of their complete betrayal of the American public, our health care system and, especially, senior citizens. We can only hope that the revised Congress can repeal parts of this horrendous act and repair other parts.


As Nancy Pelosi had promised, once we passed the bill we are now actually finding out what is in it. And, we are discovering, everything Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama promised about the bill was a lie.

But Michelle Malkin has discovered the ultimate irony. The massive labor union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has lost the very benefit they touted as the major reason for passage, insurance coverage for children. The SEIU paid millions of dollars in hard earned union dues lobbying for this bill. Today, that very same union cancelled all health insurance benefits for children BECAUSE they can no longer afford the price of that insurance under the ObamaCare mandatory guidelines.

READ THE FULL and very tragic STORY AT MICHELLE MALKIN'S BLOG:

Here's a tiny excerpt:

Late last month, the Service Employees International Union informed dues-paying members of its behemoth 1199 affiliate in New York that it was dropping its health care coverage for children. That’s right. A radical leftist union, not an evil Republican corporation, is abandoning the young ‘uns to cut costs.

More than 30,000 low-wage families will be affected, according to The Wall Street Journal. Who’s to blame? SEIU 1199 benefits manager Mitra Behroozi singled out oppressive new state and federal regulations, including the much-ballyhooed Obamacare rule forcing insurers to cover dependents well into their 20s:

“…(N)ew federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi explained in an Oct. 22 letter to members. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Keep an Eye on Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) as Health Care Evolves

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is deservedly making very big news this September with his very public break with the infamous ObamaCare bill. He is making all the right moves to insure his state and his constituents will not be taking part in the least popular parts of this Federal Government boondoggle.

Last Spring, when we all discovered that the President and the "powers-that-be" were not going to listen to the near brilliant common sense approach to health care reform being championed by Senator Wyden, he very quietly snuck an "state opt-out" provision into the 2,000 plus page bill. Of course nobody read the damned bill anyway, but that only made Wyden's move easier.

Now Wyden is helping Oregon use the very opt-out he provided to escape the most unpopular provision of the bill and to replace it with a sate bill that might actually work.

You can learn all about Senator Wyden's approach to health care and his recent efforts to opt-out Oregon in these articles:

Sen Ron Wyden writing in The Huffington Post: Missing The Point

The Hill: Wyden Makes His Case for Health Care Waiver

Wall Street Journal: Wyden Defects on ObamaCare

Wyden is in a tough re-election battle. I hope the (much needed and much deserved) Republican Sweep this November doesn't rob the Senate of one of it's brightest members.