by | BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
On Wednesday, Obama tried to change the national conversation about the long string of questions dogging the White House. He decided he is back to being serious about jobs. Very serious. Serious enough to talk about jobs for an hour at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. This speech was touted as the kick-off to a series of events and talks aimed to get refocused on jobs.
A funny thing happened on the way to the recovery. In the midst of his speech, Obama slips in a scolding remark to his critics:
“But with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am here to say this needs to stop. (Applause.) This needs to stop”
He is very brazen. To come out and call the scandals “phony” is downright delusional. What’s worse, by inserting it in the context of his speech about jobs and the economy, it purposely gives the suggestion that Obama’s critics are at fault.
“If only they would stop bothering me and asking me questions about what we are doing. Don’t they know I’m in charge, anyway? They won’t leave me alone to fix the economy and create jobs. They are being mean.”
Be aware. This tactic is going to continue to be repeated during his jobs apology tour and into the fall before election season. Obama is shaping the narrative that the Republicans et al. are too busy criticising him to tackle real issues, and it’s their fault the economy is still sluggish.
Keith Koffler, the White House watchdog reporter, makes a great point — if this was President Bush, you know darn well that the Democrats and media would not let up on talking about and reporting about these “phony scandals”.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE
Staggering costs. Gross mismanagement. Delays. If these current problems with Obamacare aren’t enough to persuade you to support its full repeal, maybe this latest revelation will: The Federal Data Services Hub
What is this Hub, and how is it related to Obamacare? According to the folks over at Rare.com
“The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.”
As Rare.com astutely points out, “in these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous”.
What kind of information will be stored in the Federal Data Services Hub? Why sorts of your…data. This inlcudes “income and financial data, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security numbers, and private health information. It will compile dossiers based on information obtained from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and for some reason the Peace Corps”
And who will be in charge of your secure info? The government has it all figured out. They even have a catchy name: “Navigators”: “The hub will be used on a daily basis by so-called Navigators, which according to the GAO are “community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups, to which exchanges award grants to provide fair and impartial public education” and “refer consumers as appropriate for further assistance.” Thousands of such people will have unfettered access to the Data Hub, but there are only sketchy guidelines on how they will be hired, trained and monitored”
So there you have it. A completely intrusive, centralized information database combining health, financial, and citizenship information, overseen by officials no more professional than the current TSA. If Obama can artibrarily ignore the PPACA starting date of January 1, 2014 for businesses, than the House and Senate need to takes the reigns and push for a delay (or better yet — a full repeal) of Obamacare for individuals as well.
There is too much to risk — financially and personally — to keep Obamacare on the books.
by | ARTICLES, OBAMA, OBAMACARE
Three major Unions, including James P. Hoffa of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid this past week. In the letter, they echoed the sentimeng of millions of Americans who are concerned about Obamacare.
The opening salvo is scathing. “When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat,” letter said. “Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
The reason why this letter is attention-grabbing is the fact that the Unions have been the staunchest supporters of Obama through thick and thin. And interestingly, they acknowledge that in this letter. They write, ” We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision. Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
Ouch.
If you don’t want to read the letter in its entirety, Wall Street Cheet Sheet does a quick little analysis. “The letter lists three complaints. First, that the law creates an incentive for employers to keep workers’ hours below 30 hours per week. Second, that millions of Americans, including a great majority of union members, are covered by nonprofit health insurance plans. But with the implementation of Obamacare, union workers will be “treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens.” Finally, the letter argued that while union, nonprofit plans will not receive the same subsidies, they will be taxed to pay for those subsidies”
The interesting questions is — will Obama respond? Will changes happen? The Unions don’t seem too sure. In fact, they charge that “Unless changes are made, however, that promise is hollow”.
This strongly worded letter is all too revealing. Obama used the Unions to get elected, and how he’s folding on them since they’ve outlived their usefulness. For the Unions to deride Obamacare in this fashion is encouraging. If even the big Unions refuse to get behind Obamacare anymore, it gives more weight for Congress to work with, especially in the Senate, when considering the law and its repeal.
by | FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE
Obamacare was sold to the public as universal health insurance. Insurance, in and of itself, is an exchange of a premium payment in return for a guarantee against specific loss criteria — such as damage or death. Prime examples of this are home and life insurance. And yet, health insurance in our country is not merely a guarantee against loss due to ill health; it encompasses much, much more. In this way, health insurance doesn’t follow the examples of other insurance industries, and therein lies a major reason for Obamacare’s growing economic difficulties ($1.85 trillion) and growing opposition.
Typical health insurance plans nowadays function by providing both insurance and coverage of certain medical costs. With ObamaCare comes the individual mandate, which most people understand the meaning to be that everyone is required to purchase for themselves a health insurance policy (hence the idea of “universal coverage”). The rationale in favor of the individual mandate is to safeguard against societal calamity — that if someone doesn’t have health insurance and they get into an accident or get sick, he doesn’t become a burden on society.
A mandate to buy health insurance might not sound so terrible on the surface to some, because it dictates the purchase of something that just about everyone wants to buy anyway since it is sensible to do so. But what makes Obamacare’s individual mandate so odious is that it it forces people to buy a product comprised of both insurance and a slew of pre-selected, prepaid medical care – which includes paying for stuff they don’t need. This intentionally misuses people’s ability to buy their own reasonably priced insurance. And because the mandate requires coverage to be universal, you have to include everything and everyone, such as preexisting conditions, high risk, etc. Therefore, the individual mandate requires an-insurance-that-is-not really-just-insurance, making reality very different than what it is thought to be.
From an economic standpoint, the individual mandate is a terrible idea because its sole purpose is to obfuscate the true cost of caring for those persons whose circumstances or risk, such as preexisting conditions or age, would result in paying more for health insurance. By controlling the prices through artificial means instead of private competition, the individual mandate creates a misallocation of resources, which is a failure of the fundamental principles of Economics 101.
A second major problem with the individual mandate as it is written is that you can forgo coverage in lieu of paying a penalty and then if you develop a condition, you can still get coverage without being denied due to a pre-existing condition. Unfortunately, this only serves to make prices more expensive for those who are healthy because there must be funds to cover those who are not.
I would argue that having health insurance coverage should not be a mandate in the strict sense of the word; i.e, one should not be required to purchase it. That being said, I also think that people should regard the ownership of a health insurance policy (a “true insurance”) as a basic necessity for proper living. The attitude toward health insurance coverage –- by citizens, legislators, and insurance companies alike —- truly needs a paradigm shift if health care is to be reformed for the better. The health insurance sector must be restructured to resemble other insurance industries such as life, fire, and home; in doing so, they will create a more competitive and dignified system as well as fulfill the purpose of safeguarding against an unforeseen disaster. Therefore, the actual components of what comprises “health insurance” (currently insurance and pre-paid medical care) must change.
The idea of helping everyone to carry health insurance sounds like a lofty goal. However, the individual mandate is the wrong way to attain this. From human point of view, the idea that all persons have coverage may be good, but imposing the mandate is bad for liberty. Turning basic economics on its head, it incentivizes the wrong things and creates most expensive health care possible.
The government has never been efficient with other people’s money. The economics of the current health care law will only serve to reduce the quality of health care for our citizens because it lacks free market competition. A health care reform solution could be focusing on providing a ” true insurance” product that everyone could have – one that protects against having an extraordinary event happen whose economics is more than can be afforded. Obamacare is not an insurance; it is pre-paid medical care system whose product provides for all at all costs. Imposing an individual mandate for such a program is ultimately economically unsustainable. The current health care law should be overturned for the sake of the economic health of this country.
