The Cost of the ACA

There are many things about the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) that supporters of this law don't want you to understand.  So I'll help you understand it.

You can force insurance companies to cover all sorts of illnesses and injuries, including those insurees are experiencing before signing up (pre-existing condition).  It is a worthy cause, and a most would argue in favor of it.  But it comes with a huge cost.  Imagine not having insurance, having your house burn to the ground, then you go buy home owner insurance the next day, and the policy dictates the insurer must rebuild your house.  That is a pre-existing condition.

Insurance is a bet that something terrible will or will not occur.  You think it will occur, and the insurance policy pays off when it does.

Mandating all sorts of minimum or mandatory coverage could also be worthy, but not without costs.

Adding 30 million uninsured people to the rolls also adds costs for insurance companies.  Since many of them don't have it because they cannot afford it, someone must pay for the coverage they get.

All this adds huge costs to the insurance companies.  Someone must pay.  And what happens if you don't pay?  Never fear, subsidies from the government will pay the insurance companies for this also.  Guess where the government gets that money?

The ACA was never a sound policy and certainly is not a sound law.  We'll all find how just how so in due time.

When Rich Get Richer, So Do the Poor

1993-2000 The Top 1% income rose 98.7%, and the bottom 99% rose 20.3%
2000-2002 The Top 1% dropped -30.8%, the Bottom 99% dropped -6.5%
2002-2007 The Top 1% rose 61.8%, and the Bottom 99% rose 6.8%
2007-2009 The Top 1% dropped -36.3%, and the Bottom 99% dropped -11.6%
2009-2012 The Top 1% rose 31.4%, and the bottom 99% rose 0.4%

See a trend yet?  When the rich get richer, so do the poor.  When rich get poorer, so do the poor.

Source Data (Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley)

Another piece of information from this report is this.  When the rich get richer, the poverty rate declines.  When the rich get poorer, the poverty rate increases.

The A.C.O.R.N. Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

Truth About Navigators

Project Veritas, the same people that exposed A.C.O.R.N. are now exposing fraud and lying by the Healthcare.gov navigators.

Settled Law Needs Fixed?

Last night the President told Chuck Todd he was sorry we listened to him when he lied about keeping your insurance plan or your doctor.  During that interview he also said he told his team to find ways to close the holes and fix this law.
Funny!  I thought it was a good law, and now we're told it needs fixing.  Actually, various democrats have been saying both for years.  They tell us it is settled law you recall.  Then in their next breath they suggest it needs to be fixed.
Those same people also tell us if we opposed this settled law in need of fixing we must be racist.  I'm not really sure about the logic of democrats.
To summarize, the law is good, and settled.  But we should work with them to fix it.  Meanwhile, people are losing their insurance and their doctors, even though President Obama said they would not.  He did not lie, even though he knew otherwise.

More Thoughts on Obamacare

Following such doomed programs as "Cash for Clunkers", and environmental projects such as "Solyndra", what makes anyone think the federal government is capable of managing a program that constitutes 18% of the US economy - healthcare?

Cash for Clunkers did not have the economic impact dreamed of.  Rather it made a few buyers purchase a new car a few months sooner than they otherwise would have.

Solyndra cost tax payers $550 million in loan guarantees to a company managed by Obama campaign donors, that quickly went bankrupt while those investors sold off their stock and got very wealthy.

And now, we are told that a few glitches (Geez, I hate that term.) are preventing a $635 Million website from saving us all a lot of money for health insurance.  When actually, adding more people, more benefits, and fewer policy options, will lead to reduced availability, more unaffordable healthcare options.

Senator Enzi, (R-WY) spoke on the floor of the US Senate in September 2010 about he consequences which we are currently experiencing.  He seems to forecast the pain we're feeling now with incredible accuracy. (Click here for details)

Is It "Settled Law" or Not?

Unions May Get Obamacare Tax Relief

Democrats have recently taken up the mantra that Obamacare is settled law, and therefore cannot be touched. Well, does that mean unions get an exemption or not?  The settled legislation does not currently allow for union exemptions.  Nor does it allow for congressional subsidies.  And yet, Democrats are quite okay with the president changing the "settled law", but not allowing republicans to even bring up the subject of modifying or defunding the law.

There are already more than a thousand exceptions and exemptions from portions of this law.  I'm not quite sure what is so settled.

Thoughts on the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare

Way back before this became law, I told anyone who would listen the impending law would be bad law.  Here is why I thought so then, and still do.

1. The federal government is not efficient when it comes to managing programs.  There are many which are wasteful, fraud filled, and just plain inefficient.  Count the number of presidential candidates who claim they would stop the waste, fraud and abuse in various programs.
2. This law was written by whom?  Do you know?  Much of it was written by lobbyists, and the rest by legislators, political aides, and occasionally and actual elected official.
3. The law was negotiated and tailored by democrats only, in the proverbial smoke-filled room.  Votes were bought using the politically expedient bribery known as the Cornhusker Kickback, and the Louisiana Purchase.
4. No republican official was permitted into that room.  Instead, republicans were discounted as having no good ideas worth considering.  They were excluded completely from the process.
5. A bill containing approximately 2400 written pages was formed in the middle of night, under cloak of darkness, then brought to the floor of the US Senate for a vote without those voting ever having an opportunity to read it first.  It passed along party lines.  Only democrats voting for it, and no republicans voting for it.
6. As this is a tax, so determined by the US Supreme Court, it needed to originate in the House of Representatives, according to the US Constitution, but was not.
7. The democrat majority in the House also passed it along party lines.  Some democrats, facing conservative pressure in their district, we permitted by party leaders to vote against, only because they had the required number of votes already lined up.
8. During the debate on healthcare reform, President Obama gave nearly 50 speeches on the need for this law.  We now know he lied repeatedly about the effects of this law on individual policy holders.
9. This law cannot do what it is claimed will be the beneficial results.  Adding millions of people, increasing minimum coverage, mandating coverage for pre-existing conditions, and lifting lifetime limits all only raise the costs of insurance.  There is no way this can possibly lower costs.

A bad law passed by bad legislative process, while people were being either bought or lied to or both, should never be allowed to happen, and cannot be allowed to stand.