Ding Dong the Obamacare Witch is Dead Part IV

Well, well, it’s a slow and painful death for the American people.  Obamacare is taking whole swaths of people down with it.  To start with, the 5 million people whose insurance plans were cancelled are now scrambling to find insurance through the expensive, behemoth of healthcare exchanges.

So what does the White House do?  Some Obama aide signed Obama up for a Bronze Plan.  The Bronze Plan is the crappiest plan on a menu of crap plans.  According to the White House, Obama will pay $400 per month for a plan with a $6000 deductible.  

Seeing Obama has the best healthcare in the World, just look at Dick Cheney’s medical history, it was a purely symbolic gesture that served no purpose whatsoever but to rub it into the people’s collective noses that there is one healthcare system for the rich and powerful and one for everyone else.


According to a 49 state cost analysis by Forbes:

One of the fundamental flaws of the Affordable Care Act is that, despite its name, it makes health insurance more expensive. Today, the Manhattan Institute released the most comprehensive analysis yet conducted of premiums under Obamacare for people who shop for coverage on their own. Here’s what we learned. In the average state, Obamacare will increase underlying premiums by 41 percent.

As we have long expected, the steepest hikes will be imposed on the healthy, the young, and the male. And Obamacare’s taxpayer-funded subsidies will primarily benefit those nearing retirement.

Yes, the “average” percent of increase in the 49 states is 41%.  One question I have is, if the average increase in the 49 states is 41%, who is gaining by the Affordable Care Act.  Or put another way, who are the winners?

Even with the insurance rates increasing 41% on average for all Americans there is still a huge taxpayer bailout coming by the end of 2014.  Hidden deep in the bowels of the crappy Obamacare legislation is an insurance company bailout called “risk corridor”.

A recent article in the Canada Free Press lays out the scenario to come.

An American public already reeling from the catastrophic rollout of ObamaCare will more than likely be hearing an unfamiliar term being bandied about in the new year. “Risk corridor” refers to a provision in the law that allows the government to “stabilize” premium costs for insurance companies during the first three years of the healthcare rollout.

If insurance companies’ “target” costs for providing healthcare has been miscalculated, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will intercede on their behalf. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer illuminates the nature of that intercession.

“The insurers understand that they’re going to be completely ruined,” Krauthammer explains. “And what’s going to happen as a result of this? There’s only one way out, a huge government bailout of the insurers is waiting at the end of next year.” More accurately, it will be a taxpayer-funded bailout, similar to the ones given to the banks and the car companies.

That’s right, written into the Obamacare Law is a huge taxpayer bailout.  Obamacare is designed to fail and when it does, the American people lose and Wall Street wins.  For instance, there is a reinsurance provision that says insurance companies whose costs exceed $60,000 per year will be reimbursed from a $10 billion fund.  The $10 billion dollar find is paid for by levying a $63 tax on all healthcare plans, even employer sponsored plans.

More from the Canada Free Press Article:

On Monday, November 25, the administration lowered the reinsurance threshold from $60,000 to $45,000. This move will likely transfer billions of additional dollars from taxpayers to the insurance companies, even as it adds billions of dollars to the national debt. 

But don’t look to Republicans to offer anything other than the same claptrap they have been offering since Reagan decimated the healthcare system in the U.S.  First they want to have tort reform.  They claim that medical costs are up due to physicians practicing “defensive medicine”. 

According to conservatives, defensive medicine is when a doctor orders more tests than are necessary in order to protect themselves from lawsuits. 

Forbes had an article in August 2013 called Defensive Medicine: A Cure Worse Than The Disease with some interesting tidbits.

In states such as California, Texas and Massachusetts, where tort reform has been enacted, there has been no decline in the amount of defensive medicine.  A study published in the August 2013 edition of Health Affairs found that physicians practice defensive medicine based on perceived risk….

The only way to eliminate defensive medicine is to make it impossible for doctors to be sued for medical errors.

The Patients’ Compensation System, now under consideration in Georgia and Florida legislatures, would eliminate the possibility of any physician or hospital ever being sued again…

Currently, very few patients who are harmed are compensated for their loss.  A recent report by Emory University scholar Joanna Shepherd-Bailey found that attorneys rarely take cases in which compensation is less than $500,000.

The other Republican plans such as selling insurance across state lines are too nonsensical to even bother with. 

While champagne corks fly in boardrooms and on Wall Street as the stock market hits yet another high, America weeps.  Obama’s Happy New Year to America: cuts in Social Security and Medicare, loss of long term unemployment benefits, cuts to veteran’s pensions, new co-pays and deductibles for veteran’s care and the highest unemployment since the great depression. 

Ding, dong the Obamacare Witch is Dead.  Thanks Democrats for something worse than nothing.

By Patricia Baeten

Update - Budget Deal Permanently Slashes Disabled Military/Federal Pensions and Unemployment

Update:

After Paul Ryan was on Fox News Sunday bragging that 70% of the Sequestration stays in tact by slashing earned military and disabled veteran's pensions Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte was on The Lead with Jake Tapper.  Kelly is a Republican Senator from New Hampshire that is vehemently opposed to cuts to the pensions of disabled and retired veterans.  

Kelly Ayotte says the current veterans and disabled veterans pensions cut:

Video:

Washington's reaction to the budget deal:

Nancy Pelosi to Military:  Embrace the Suck

I can't understand what Pelosi finds so funny about millions of people without food, jobs and homes.

Jamie Dimon JP Morgan Chase:  "I sent an email to Patty Murray and Paul Ryan yesterday basically saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ and may the lord bless them because the country is getting stronger every single day".

Stronger for who?

Those are the words of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase who has a $23 billion dollar slush fund to pay off fines and buy off prosecutors after stealing trillions from the American people in homes, jobs, cities, pensions and savings.  Do you know that 30% of all bank tellers are on food stamps while Jamie Dimon is thanking God for slashes to unemployment, pensions and food stamps.  Not only were banks bailed out giving billions in bonuses to CEO's like Dimon, but they are receiving subsidies so they don't have to pay a living wage to employees.

Paul Ryan outlined the budget deal he reached with Senate Democrat Patty Murray on Fox News Sunday. An interesting thing Ryan said was, by making the cuts to pensions permanent, if there is a Hillary Clinton presidency, she can't restore the pensions without new legislation.  

"We’re not busting sequester caps," Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday." "In just the next two years, 70 percent of the sequester is intact. Ninety-two percent of the sequester over the life of the sequester is intact. The Democrats came into this thing saying ‘get rid of the entire sequester.’"

“We are permanently asking federal workers to contribute more to their pensions so that the hard-working taxpayers who pay for those pensions don’t have to pay as much," he said.

"This is keeping our principle intact," Ryan added. "No tax increases, net deficit reduction, permanent spending cuts in place of the across-the-board [sequester] approach.”

When Ryan says “we are asking federal workers to contribute more to their pensions so that hard-working taxpayers who pay for those pensions don’t have to pay as much”; aren’t federal workers taxpayers too?

You’ve seen the reaction from Pelosi and Dimon, here’s the reaction from America:

This heartbreaking call from a lady in Maryland that loses her unemployment the end of the month due to the deal:

Video:

Yes, while Pelosi embraces the suck and Jamie Dimon blesses Ryan and Murray, that lady in Maryland is defaulting on her rent and credit for the first time in 40 years.

And this heartbreaking call from Mike in Kentucky:

Video

Another caller from Arkansas asked about raising the minimum wage this is what you get:

Video

Obama has ticked off all the boxes on the Republican agenda.  This Obama/Ryan budget is the cruelest of all.

Merry Christmas to America from Barack Obama, after all he is the one who promoted an austerity agenda. Well he's off to Hawaii for the holidays.  Merry Christmas from Jamie Dimon, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan, Patty Murray, Chuck Schumer and all the rest of the millionaires who's lives were just enriched by slashing all hopes and dreams of the American people.

By Patricia Baeten  

  

  

Ding Dong the Obamacare Witch is Dead Part III

Well the Obamacare nightmare goes on.  This is what you get when a politician claiming to be a Democrat runs for office and then governs, and I use the term "governs" loosely, like a Republican.   Every Republican house of horrors dream has come to bear under Obama. 

Barack Obama is the first President of any stripe to cut funding for Social Security.  First Social Security was cut but freezing all cost of living raises for 3 years and then instituting the highly desired Republican plan of cutting Social Security with a payroll tax holiday.

From a Washington Post article by Amy Goldstein, October 16, 2010 Business Section:

For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday, renewing debate over whether the system offers enough help in a weak economy.

The absence of any growth in Social Security checks for consecutive years is unprecedented in the 3-1/2 decades that payments have been adjusted automatically based on the nation's inflation rate.

The news that retirement benefits will remain static was part of a trio of developments on Friday that drew attention to lingering effects of the recession. Taken together, the new reminders of the country's economic fragility carry large political stakes, coming 2-1/2 weeks before a midterm election in which the deficit and jobs are paramount concerns among voters.

Yes, Democratic voters demoralized by Obama’s Republican agenda failed to go to the polls to vote in November 2010.  The Tea Party seized the opportunity of low Democratic turnout to usher in a new wave of Republican Governors, Congressmen and Senators to demand of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Barack Obama did what no Republican would dare to do, cut Social Security.  That was followed by another Republican dream, the Social Security payroll tax holiday.  Most people were not even aware of the payroll tax holiday because the extra money they received in their paychecks from the payroll tax holiday was so small it wasn’t really noticeable.  But, they sure were aware when their payroll taxes went up 4% to recoup the 2 years of the payroll 2% tax holiday.

There was this article From Strengthen Social Security.org:

Washington, D.C. — The payroll tax holiday recently unveiled by President Obama and Republican Congressional leaders could lead to the “unraveling of Social Security,” charged Eric Kingson, Co-Director of Social Security Works and an expert on Social Security…

President Obama has proposed reducing the employee’s share of the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Restoring the 2 percent lost due to the payroll tax holiday would be a nearly 50 percent tax increase on what workers would be paying throughout the year.

Two percent of taxable payroll is what Social Security’s actuaries calculate is needed to put Social Security in surplus for the next 75 years. “There are already many in Washington who want to cut Social Security’s modest benefits, which average just $13,000 a year,” claimed Kingson. “If the tax cuts became permanent and if a future Congress chose not to continue to reimburse the Social Security Trust Funds for the lost revenue, today’s manageable shortfall would double, becoming much less manageable.  

There would be tremendous pressure to make deep cuts to middle class benefits, even as the population was rapidly aging.”

“A payroll tax holiday will also promote Social Security privatization,” charged Kingson. “Once people get to put the 2 percent in their own pockets, they will be more susceptible to appeals that they should be able to put the funds into a private account where it can be gambled on Wall Street.”

“All of these likely scenarios, if they occur, will result in the unraveling of Social Security,” claimed Kingson.

Yes indeedy, the Republican and Obama payroll tax holiday could unravel Social Security.  That’s just what Obama and the Republicans planned.

But wait, even more body slams to people on Social Security under Obama and the Republicans.  According to Fox Business News dated October 14, 2013:

Another year, another small raise for millions of people who rely on Social Security, veterans' benefits and federal pensions.

Preliminary figures suggest next year's benefit increase will be roughly 1.5 percent, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. The increase will be small because consumer prices, as measured by the government, haven't gone up much in the past year.

For the second year in a row, it would be one of the lowest raises since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

The exact size of the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, won't be known until the Labor Department releases the inflation report for September. That was supposed to happen Wednesday, but the report was delayed indefinitely because of the partial government shutdown.

More than a fifth of the country is waiting.

Nearly 58 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security benefits. The average monthly payment is $1,162. A 1.5 percent raise would increase the typical monthly payment by about $17.

So, let’s look at Obamacare.  Obamacare was a creation of the Heritage Foundation.  The Heritage Foundation is a Conservative, Republican think tank and is promoted by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They call for less Government by, for and of the people.

Obamacare was larded up with every Republican wet dream to destroy Medicare.  It is a way to take money away from Medicare and Medicaid and funnel those funds into private insurer’s profits.

For the American people it’s like being strapped into a funhouse car in the house of horrors and being jolted from one horror room into the next.  First horror house room is the American people with individual policies, losing those policies.

On December 9^th a “reporter” from the Huffington Post was on C-Span’s Washington Journal to talk about Obamacare.  A woman from Georgia called in and said she recently retired and receives $1,024 in Social Security.  She was notified by the State of Georgia that she must sign up for Obamacare.  Her policy through Obamacare will cost her about $400 per month after the subsidy allotted to her.  That entitles her to a policy under the Bronze plan.

Under the Bronze plan she pays $400 and month to the insurance company in addition to what the U.S. Treasury pays the insurance company for her.  Under the Bronze plan she has a $6,000 deductible and after she meets her deductible the insurance company pays 60% and she pays 40%.  She asked, "how is that affordable?"

The Huffington Post writer said the good news is, if she can’t afford it she won’t have to pay the penalty.

Hear that?  She still doesn’t have insurance and will be worse off if she gets insurance, that’s the good news. 

Obama and Republicans say you must bend down the cost curve.  Well, today on C-Span’s Washington Journal a previous emergency room doctor turned journalist, Elizabeth Rosenthal, was a guest to discuss her recent article in the New York Times called “As Hospital Prices Soar a Stitch Tops $500”.

"A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries.

The most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them, including California Pacific Medical Center, emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical procedures—closing a wound with a needle and thread—typically leads to bills of at least $1,500 and often much more."

Yes, the Obamacare nightmare goes on.  The Republican for profit, Wall Street mandatory profit based insurance system is thriving under Obamacare.  Unfortunately it is at the expense of an abused, beaten, jobless, broke American public.  But Obama’s Republican for-profit healthcare system is ensured endless profits.  Merry Christmas America.

By Patricia Baeten

CA Supreme Court Judge Holding Millions in Wells Fargo Stock Rules in Favor of WF in Mortgage Case

During information gathering for an article on State Supreme Court Justices’ disclosure requirements called State Supreme Court Justices Reveal Scant Financial Information, the Center for Public Integrity discovered an egregious conflict of interest by California State Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Werdeger.

According to the article by Kytja Weir:

Last December, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by a couple who had accused financial giant Wells Fargo & Co. of predatory lending.

One justice, who owned stock in the bank, recused himself from the case. But Justice Kathryn Werdegar, who owned as much as $1 million of Wells Fargo stock, participated — and shouldn’t have.

What makes that conflict of interest by the highest court in California so important is a case that is winding its way through the California court system involving Wells Fargo and the City of Richmond. 

Richmond became the first city in the country to offer to purchase mortgages of distressed homeowners from Wall Street banks and other lenders.  The city council approved a plan in April to allow the city to use its eminent domain authority to purchase loans in order to modify them and allow families to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes. 

Eminent Domain is the power of government to take private property for the public good.  The 5^th Amendment to the U.S. constitution was put into law by James Madison to ensure property owners would receive “just compensation” for their property.  Just compensation as defined by the Supreme Court means “fair market value”.

The City of Richmond’s case is based on the 2005 Kelo vs. the City of New London, CT US Supreme Court Case.  In that case the United States Supreme Court ruled in a controversial 5-4 decision, that a private developer could seize the land of private citizens for economic development as long as they paid “fair market value”. 

In the City of Richmond, California almost half of the city’s residential mortgage holders are underwater.

According to Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, “We are stepping in by taking these troubled loans off the hands of the banks, and we’re paying them fair market value for these loans.  And then we’re working with the homeowners to refinance and modify loans in line with current home values.  We call on the banks to voluntarily sell us these loans, and if they don’t cooperate, we will be considering eminent domain”.

 “Wells Fargo, three other banks and even the Federal Housing Finance Agency think otherwise”.

“The banks have filed two lawsuits alleging that the plan is an illegal abuse of eminent domain, which allows governments to seize private property for public use – like a house in the path of a new highway or a piece of land needed for a new park”.

 “The banks argue the plan would "severely disrupt the United States mortgage industry" because many other cities would likely adopt the same program to help homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth”

The Obama Administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency has sided with Wells Fargo bond holders and the banks against the City of Richmond and its residents. 

However, according to a December 6^th article in the Credit Union Times by David Morrison, the ACLU has filed suit against Obama’s Federal Housing Agency:

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Federal Housing Finance Agency seeking information about the FHFA’s position on the use of eminent domain to reduce the principal amounts of mortgage loans.

The organization brought the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under the federal Freedom of Information Act, contending that it had asked the agency about how it has developed its position on the use of eminent domain to reduce mortgage principal and, particular, about the role larger banks might have played in developing that policy.

"The FHFA has taken an aggressive stance on this issue in a way that has harmed minority communities. The public deserves to know why," said Linda Lye, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

The ACLU said that it first asked for the information in October and, after receiving one response from the agency, have not received any more.

In the wake of the city of Richmond, Calif., beginning to take steps toward using eminent domain to reduce the principal on some mortgages, the ACLU charged the FHFA threatened legal action against Richmond or any other city that uses eminent domain to reduce mortgage principals and by threatening to deny credit to people seeking mortgages in those communities.

Imagine that, the United States Government under Barack Obama is threatening any city that uses eminent domain to reduce mortgages and keep people in their homes. Will the California Supreme Court Justices with millions of shares of Wells Fargo Stock recuse themselves?

I guess that Wall Street Banks who funneled a billion dollars into the Obama campaign are being paid off in the trillions.


By Patricia Baeten

The War on Science in the Age of Ignorance

Since Ronald Reagan ushered in the Age of Ignorance in 1980, the Republican Party has dumbed down America through Fox News and Talk Radio.  There is a reason Fox News and Talk Radio are banned in Canada.  It’s the ignorance and hatred stupid. 

Anyone who has seen the movie Hotel Rwanda knows how powerful hatred and ignorance being bombarded over the airwaves is.  Talk radio in Rwanda called the Tutsi’s cockroaches that had to be chopped down by the Hutu’s.  That message was drilled in over and over, day after day until the genocide.  That is no different than the messages that are drilled in over and over, day after day in the United States by Fox News and Talk Radio.

Remember Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve for supporting embryonic stem cell research?  Embryos that were created in a Petri dish and frozen for the purpose of reproduction were burned or discarded if not used for reproduction.  Prior to the anti-science George W. Bush, leaps and bounds were made in the science world using the unused embryos for research rather than just destroying them.

The attacks on science under George W. Bush and the slashing of funding for life-saving research into rare diseases, cancer, brain injuries, and brain diseases like schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s plus a myriad of other conditions that affect the quality and quantity of life were devastating.  These devastating cuts have been continued and increased under President Barack Obama.  That’s right, it’s worse under Obama.

On Friday, December 6^th C-Span’s Washington Journal had an entire show on the effects of sequestration on the National Institutes of Health.  NIH is the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world and with the cuts under the Bush Administration and the sequestration cuts under the Obama Administration, the loss of scientists and medical research has been mind numbing. 

Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the NIH was the first guest.  Dr. Collins headed up the Gnome project under President Clinton.  The Gnome project has been called the biggest scientific advancement since President John F. Kennedy’s project to put a man on the moon.

Dr. Collins said “internationally things are so exciting right now scientifically, there’s never been a time of such promise, but frankly things have never been so constrained in terms of resources”. 

Dr. Collins said “this is a historically difficult moment in lack of support for science that began 10 years ago.  In 2003 President Clinton’s Gnome initiative was stymied by the incurious George W. Bush. 

Funding for the NIH went flat under George W. Bush and when adjusted for inflation the cut was about 3% per year.  On top of that, on March 21^st, 2013 the NIH lost $1.5 Billion dollars for research under Barack Obama’s sequestration.  All totaled the NIH has lost 25% of their research money over the last 10 years.
 

Video:

Dr. Collins said that sequester has done so much damage that scientists are leaving the U.S. for countries that are more enlightened.  The investment in NIH is a wonderful support of the economy.  When you talk about the return on investment of the funds going to all 50 states, you get a 2 fold return in just one year.

According to Dr. Collins, Neuroscience Research is the last frontier in medical research.  The human brain is the most complicated structure in the universe with 86 billion neurons, each with about 1,000 connections.  

The $1.5 billion that has been cut for brain science under sequestration in order to provide tax cuts for billionaires and banks could fund brain disease research to identify abnormalities 10 years before any onset of illness.  What is the cost to our nation for untreated brain and mental illness?  Is that worth low taxes to become an ignorant nation that has no value for its citizens and their well-being?

Obama is not a Democrat, never was, he is a Ronald Reagan Republican.  He has said over and over that he wanted to be transformative President like Ronald Reagan.  

Where presidents like William Jefferson Clinton and John Fitzgerald Kennedy were visionaries seeing man on the moon and science creating a toolkit to repair your body from your own Gnomes, Obama and Reagan saw a waste of money.

Obama is no Kennedy and no Clinton.  He has achieved his goal of becoming the transformational president that Reagan was.  Every human need is for sale to the highest bidder. 

By Patricia Baeten.   

Ding Dong the Obamacare Witch is Dead Part II

Seems the new improved Obamacare website has the same problems as the old Obamacare website, it’s Obamacare Stupid.   

David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor at the website “MailOnline” gave the new, improved website a whirl.  Here is what he writes:

·       New Obamacare website 'fix' CRASHES just as White House boasts of its success

·       Government programmers designed a 'queueing' feature to help avoid system crashes, emailing users to return when traffic levels are lower

·       That new add-on, too, crashed on Monday while President Obama's chief spokesman was boasting that it would 'improve the user experience'

·       Between midnight and noon on Monday, 375,000 people visited healthcare.gov – a fraction of whom actually purchased medical insurance

·       Amazon.com expects to complete 13 million online sales on Cyber Monday

So here’s the message he got at Healthcare.gov:

Okay, so he decided to leave an e-mail address and this is the message he received:

Know how I know the Obamacare Witch is dead?  When Peggy Noonan on her blog starts calling for Medicare for all, Obamacare is dead.  Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and avid Reagan worshipper is calling for Medicare for all.  That’s right, the speechwriter for Reagan who destroyed healthcare in America, and was virulently against Medicare and all social programs is now calling for socialized medicine.

From Peggy Noonan’s blog:

Back to ObamaCare.

More than four years ago, in July 2009, I wrote a column in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered President Obama some wisdom on health care. Obama’s newly proposed plan—the Affordable Care Act—wouldn’t work, said FDR. In fact, Obama’s proposal put him in a “lose-lose” position…

But FDR had an idea—a sly one, as his ideas usually were. First, he told Obama, drop your current bill. Second, take everyone aback by talking constantly about the national medical program that already exists, Medicare.

The sly fox was telling the young president to show good faith to Republicans by admitting problems, and reassure Democrats by showing his heart and commitment to federal solutions. 

“Then, at the end,” said FDR, “get your Democratic majorities to make one little change in the program—it’s now open to all. You don’t have to be 65. The uninsured can enroll. Do it in the dead of night if you have to, you’ve got the votes.” Such a program, he said, after so many institutional and structural changes, would of course have to have a new name. “I’d suggest ‘The National Health Service.’”

That’s right even Peggy Noonan can see that national healthcare is the only way to go.  So ding dong the Obamacare Witch is dead.  All we need is for a doctor to look at the clock and make the call.

By Patricia Baeten