The Obamacare Galaxy 7 10-26-16
Related:
Is Tired Covered by Obamacare?
by Whiskey Politics Oct. 26, 2016
I’m tired. Tired of both sides. Tired of the media, especially Britt, Bill, Sean, Kelly, Anderson and Jake. Tired of intellectual dishonesty from friends who call my side racists and Trump Hitler. Tired of those on my side not admitting we nominated a gift to the Left that will never stop giving, even after #ExplodingCommode2016™ is in our review mirror. As a country we once at least pretended there was honor and dignity in our electoral process. Now, when Hillary’s campaign is shown to be the lying liars they are, their media acolytes shift to DEFCON 4 election mode. When Trump has the opportunity to close the deal (and he’s had countless) he shifts to thin-skinned defense mechanisms not seen in my household since my kids were 4.
But I don’t blame just this election on being tired. We were tired in 2012. We were tired of the lies, cover-ups, media bias, unaccountable malfeasance from the highest levels in our supposedly public government. Tired of the powerful special interests feathering their own nests with taxpayer funds while passing policies harmful to those they say they are trying to help. Whether it was banks protecting themselves with the unconstitutional Dodd-Frank Act, or the insurance lobby written bribery known as Obamacare.
This gargantuan fraud passed much to the horror of a majority of Americans and every single Republican office holder. Democrats forced Obamacare down America’s throat foie gras style. 2017 enrollments are being opened as you are reading this, and for a vast majority of individuals, they are seeing massive cost increases and will have to make tough decisions. My split household has an increase of 22% and 28%. Yet smarmy Democrats on the teevee point to the relatively few who are covered by taxpayer largesse. Of course, hardly any interviewer calls shenanigans. The ACA is insolvent. Why hasn’t the MSM pointed to the fact the Treasury will be used to bypass Congress and bail out the failure that is Obamacare. Forbes reports:
by Whiskey Politics Oct. 26, 2016
I’m tired. Tired of both sides. Tired of the media, especially Britt, Bill, Sean, Kelly, Anderson and Jake. Tired of intellectual dishonesty from friends who call my side racists and Trump Hitler. Tired of those on my side not admitting we nominated a gift to the Left that will never stop giving, even after #ExplodingCommode2016™ is in our review mirror. As a country we once at least pretended there was honor and dignity in our electoral process. Now, when Hillary’s campaign is shown to be the lying liars they are, their media acolytes shift to DEFCON 4 election mode. When Trump has the opportunity to close the deal (and he’s had countless) he shifts to thin-skinned defense mechanisms not seen in my household since my kids were 4.
But I don’t blame just this election on being tired. We were tired in 2012. We were tired of the lies, cover-ups, media bias, unaccountable malfeasance from the highest levels in our supposedly public government. Tired of the powerful special interests feathering their own nests with taxpayer funds while passing policies harmful to those they say they are trying to help. Whether it was banks protecting themselves with the unconstitutional Dodd-Frank Act, or the insurance lobby written bribery known as Obamacare.
This gargantuan fraud passed much to the horror of a majority of Americans and every single Republican office holder. Democrats forced Obamacare down America’s throat foie gras style. 2017 enrollments are being opened as you are reading this, and for a vast majority of individuals, they are seeing massive cost increases and will have to make tough decisions. My split household has an increase of 22% and 28%. Yet smarmy Democrats on the teevee point to the relatively few who are covered by taxpayer largesse. Of course, hardly any interviewer calls shenanigans. The ACA is insolvent. Why hasn’t the MSM pointed to the fact the Treasury will be used to bypass Congress and bail out the failure that is Obamacare. Forbes reports:
|
The Obama administration is maneuvering to pay health insurers billions of dollars the government owes under the Affordable Care Act, through a move that could circumvent Congress and help shore up the president’s signature legislative achievement before he leaves office.
The story says the cash would likely come from “an obscure Treasury Department fund.” On the face of it, you might think the government is going to pay. But remember the government really doesn’t have any money at all — it is your money. All government money is there by virtue of the taxes imposed on businesses and people. Basically, the failures of Obama’s signature healthcare law is going to be paid for by you, the U.S. taxpayer. It gets worse. This move is yet another bailout for big business, just like the banking bailout of 2009. The cash will go to health insurance companies. That’s something that won’t sit well with many Democrats or Republicans. After all, why should the citizenry pay for the mistakes of businesses? |
Or… why should the citizenry pay for the mistakes of one political party, when the other was staunchly against it? Remember, NOT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTE! How about the DNC, Democratic politicians and their voters pay? After all, it was their pathological lies, bribery of Senators and finagling of special interests like AARP who dragged the bankrupt law across the reconciled finish line. Remember these lies?
“If you like your Doctor, you’ll get to keep your Doctor”. Lost my Dr. in 2014.
“If you like your plan, you’ll get to keep your plan.” I’ve had 3 different plans since.
And now, as horrified parents contemplate Christmas presents, they’re required to downgrade to the crappy Bronze plan (meaning out-of-pocket expense for EVERYTHING).
The Presidents namesake law was built on lies, shell games and fraud. Just ask Democrats opening their 2017 enrollment forms if they still believe the biggest lie of all:
“If you like your Doctor, you’ll get to keep your Doctor”. Lost my Dr. in 2014.
“If you like your plan, you’ll get to keep your plan.” I’ve had 3 different plans since.
And now, as horrified parents contemplate Christmas presents, they’re required to downgrade to the crappy Bronze plan (meaning out-of-pocket expense for EVERYTHING).
The Presidents namesake law was built on lies, shell games and fraud. Just ask Democrats opening their 2017 enrollment forms if they still believe the biggest lie of all:
POWERLINE OCTOBER 24, 2016 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF
OBAMACARE IN 2017: MUCH HIGHER PREMIUMS, MUCH LESS CHOICE
The Obama administration admitted today that Obamacare premiums will rise an average of 22 percent for the Silver Plan in 2017. The Silver Plan is the Obamacare benchmark upon which federal subsidies are based.
The subsidies will shield many Obamacare purchasers from the impact of the increase, but a large of number of purchasers will be hammered. And, of course, taxpayers will be hit as well by virtue of the increased subsidy payments.
Most significantly, the skyrocketing premiums non-subsidized Obamacare customers face will fuel the cycle that’s causing premiums to skyrocket. Premiums have risen dramatically because too few healthy people who aren’t entitled to subsidies are enrolling in Obamacare. Thus, those who haven’t yet eschewed it are required to pay more.
But the more they are asked to pay, the more likely they are to eschew Obamacare in the future. This will mean that premiums must be significantly hiked again the next time, and the cycle — or “death spiral” — will continue..... read more here
OBAMACARE IN 2017: MUCH HIGHER PREMIUMS, MUCH LESS CHOICE
The Obama administration admitted today that Obamacare premiums will rise an average of 22 percent for the Silver Plan in 2017. The Silver Plan is the Obamacare benchmark upon which federal subsidies are based.
The subsidies will shield many Obamacare purchasers from the impact of the increase, but a large of number of purchasers will be hammered. And, of course, taxpayers will be hit as well by virtue of the increased subsidy payments.
Most significantly, the skyrocketing premiums non-subsidized Obamacare customers face will fuel the cycle that’s causing premiums to skyrocket. Premiums have risen dramatically because too few healthy people who aren’t entitled to subsidies are enrolling in Obamacare. Thus, those who haven’t yet eschewed it are required to pay more.
But the more they are asked to pay, the more likely they are to eschew Obamacare in the future. This will mean that premiums must be significantly hiked again the next time, and the cycle — or “death spiral” — will continue..... read more here
Obamacare and the Fundamentals
The Corner, National Review
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON October 25, 2016 4:54 PM @KEVINNR
The conspiracy theory about the woefully misnamed Affordable Care Act is that the architects of Obamacare intended their program to fail, thus creating an opening for a so-called public option which would then be expanded to a full-on British-style government health-care monopoly. That’s a fun story, though it isn’t true.
The truth is worse: These idiots thought this would work.
Well, not this — not exactly. Obamacare is what you get when the product is designed by a committee from the marketing department. It needed to have a certain balance of taxes and subsidies so that Barack Obama could go out and say that it would add not one dime to the deficit while Ezra Klein and the nonpartisan partisans at Politifact cheered along. Everybody knew that the specifics were going to change with the political winds — Hillary Rodham Clinton even campaigned against a key revenue provision of Obamacare, the “Cadillac tax,” in her quest for the Democratic nomination.
That the popular bits of the program would remain or be expanded while the unpopular bits that pay for it would be revised, delayed, or magicked away through exemptions and the like, was obvious, and not only to pointy-headed free-market types such as myself. (Although: I told you so. So did a bunch of other people.) The Congressional Budget Office all but rolled its eyes at the set of assumptions it was given to score the bill’s fiscal effects, and it warned that the bill was unlikely to be enacted to the letter. Which is to say: The CBO told you so, too.
The Democrats promised something very unlikely: That we’d provide more health-care coverage for more people and spend less money doing it — and that the typical annual health-insurance premium for an American family would decline substantially, by an average of $2,500 a year. The opposite is happening: Premium prices have gone up, and they are expected to go up by 25 percent in the coming year. That’s an average of 25 percent: Some places will see much steeper increases.
Is there another product you use the price of which increases at that rate, or anything like that rate?
The terrifying fact is that the architects of Obamacare thought they could brazen their way through this, that they were so smart that they could tell you rubes whatever it was you needed to hear to get the bill passed and then just fly by the seat of their pants, fixing everything on the fly in a grand display of enlightened technocratic adhocracy.
Oops.
This all goes back to fundamentals: What drives down prices is abundance. Abundance comes from productivity. Productivity comes from investment. Investment requires stable market conditions for investors, entrepreneurs, workers, and firms to execute medium- and long-term plans. If you were the manager of a large investment fund, how much money would you put into a medical-devices startup, not knowing what the tax or regulatory environment is going to look like the day after tomorrow — or what the larger health-care ecosystem is going to look like in a year or two? If you were a top-performing student with a knack for science, why on Earth would you go to medical school when you could go make four times the money as an intellectual-property lawyer, six times the money on Wall Street, or, with a little luck, forty times the money in Silicon Valley? Given the current Democratic appetite for price controls and regulatory aggression, how much of your own money would you invest in an experimental pharmaceutical? If you were a top-performing manager being courted by a hospital consortium and a technology company, why would you go to work for the hospitals?
Obamacare was intended, in theory, to enhance competition. The Democrats were never quite clear on how that was going to work, but that’s what they said. In Philadelphia, the nation’s fifth-largest city, those shopping for health insurance have a grand total of two insurers to choose from. Until recently, the state of Pennsylvania had 13 insurers; today, it has eight.
It is worth keeping in mind that the people who brought you Obamacare want to apply the same model across the commanding heights of the U.S. economy.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441432/why-obamacare-doesnt-work
The Corner, National Review
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON October 25, 2016 4:54 PM @KEVINNR
The conspiracy theory about the woefully misnamed Affordable Care Act is that the architects of Obamacare intended their program to fail, thus creating an opening for a so-called public option which would then be expanded to a full-on British-style government health-care monopoly. That’s a fun story, though it isn’t true.
The truth is worse: These idiots thought this would work.
Well, not this — not exactly. Obamacare is what you get when the product is designed by a committee from the marketing department. It needed to have a certain balance of taxes and subsidies so that Barack Obama could go out and say that it would add not one dime to the deficit while Ezra Klein and the nonpartisan partisans at Politifact cheered along. Everybody knew that the specifics were going to change with the political winds — Hillary Rodham Clinton even campaigned against a key revenue provision of Obamacare, the “Cadillac tax,” in her quest for the Democratic nomination.
That the popular bits of the program would remain or be expanded while the unpopular bits that pay for it would be revised, delayed, or magicked away through exemptions and the like, was obvious, and not only to pointy-headed free-market types such as myself. (Although: I told you so. So did a bunch of other people.) The Congressional Budget Office all but rolled its eyes at the set of assumptions it was given to score the bill’s fiscal effects, and it warned that the bill was unlikely to be enacted to the letter. Which is to say: The CBO told you so, too.
The Democrats promised something very unlikely: That we’d provide more health-care coverage for more people and spend less money doing it — and that the typical annual health-insurance premium for an American family would decline substantially, by an average of $2,500 a year. The opposite is happening: Premium prices have gone up, and they are expected to go up by 25 percent in the coming year. That’s an average of 25 percent: Some places will see much steeper increases.
Is there another product you use the price of which increases at that rate, or anything like that rate?
The terrifying fact is that the architects of Obamacare thought they could brazen their way through this, that they were so smart that they could tell you rubes whatever it was you needed to hear to get the bill passed and then just fly by the seat of their pants, fixing everything on the fly in a grand display of enlightened technocratic adhocracy.
Oops.
This all goes back to fundamentals: What drives down prices is abundance. Abundance comes from productivity. Productivity comes from investment. Investment requires stable market conditions for investors, entrepreneurs, workers, and firms to execute medium- and long-term plans. If you were the manager of a large investment fund, how much money would you put into a medical-devices startup, not knowing what the tax or regulatory environment is going to look like the day after tomorrow — or what the larger health-care ecosystem is going to look like in a year or two? If you were a top-performing student with a knack for science, why on Earth would you go to medical school when you could go make four times the money as an intellectual-property lawyer, six times the money on Wall Street, or, with a little luck, forty times the money in Silicon Valley? Given the current Democratic appetite for price controls and regulatory aggression, how much of your own money would you invest in an experimental pharmaceutical? If you were a top-performing manager being courted by a hospital consortium and a technology company, why would you go to work for the hospitals?
Obamacare was intended, in theory, to enhance competition. The Democrats were never quite clear on how that was going to work, but that’s what they said. In Philadelphia, the nation’s fifth-largest city, those shopping for health insurance have a grand total of two insurers to choose from. Until recently, the state of Pennsylvania had 13 insurers; today, it has eight.
It is worth keeping in mind that the people who brought you Obamacare want to apply the same model across the commanding heights of the U.S. economy.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441432/why-obamacare-doesnt-work
|
|