Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

The Obama administration has been riddled with multiple scandals such as Fast and Furious, IRS, Benghazi, the red line on Syria, saying he is protecting Israel’s back, NSA and now the Obamacare roll out.

Bob Woodward on the Chris Wallace Show on November 18^th said he was not impressed with President Obama’s lie about Americans keeping their own insurance and their doctor if they like him. 

To paraphrase Bob Woodward’s comment he said President Obama’s goal was to do something Noble for the American people. He wanted to provide insurance for the 30 million uninsured Americans.

My impression is Bob Woodward was forgiving President Obama’s  “Noble Lie.” He moved on to the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare  web site.

http://youtu.be/gVp54E18NFU

I was floored.

I thought about Bob Woodward’s statement for a long time. His statement reminded me of Plato’s Philosopher King.

My humanities teacher at Columbia College, Gilbert Highet ,was obsessed with Plato’s concept of the “Noble Lie.”

Gilbert Highet believed it is the duty of the intellectual to support freedom and defend pluralism.

He emphasized that the concept of the “Noble Lie” was exactly what the American founders rejected in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The very next day one of my readers sent me an article by historian and author Arthur Herman ("The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization) concerning Plato’s “Noble Lie.”

He wrote,

“Thomas Jefferson once confessed to John Adams that he had been rereading Plato’s "Republic" and “laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this,” including the notion of the Noble Lie.

They knew rulers, no matter how well educated or experienced, actually have no superior knowledge to ordinary people, because they all understand and judge reality at the same level.

That’s why Noble Lies aren’t just wrong. They also don’t work very long because citizens can see what’s real and true just as clearly as any of Plato’s Philosopher Kings, and sooner or later will catch them out.

President Obama has a knack of moving the traditional media quickly off one “Noble Lie” on to another before the first lie and its consequences can be fully appreciated by the people.

George Will had a wonderful statement about this ability. He called it

Clunker progressivism.

“Barack Obama’s presidency has become a feast of failures whose proliferation protects their author from close scrutiny of any one of them.

Now, however, we can revisit one of the first and see it as a harbinger of progressivism’s downward stumble to HealthCare.gov.”

The following quote of Plato by Arthur Herman sounds a little bit like Bob Woodward’s statement last Sunday.

 “It is the business of the rulers of the city,” Plato wrote in his "Republic," “to tell lies, deceiving both its enemies and its own citizens for the benefit of the city…”  

In fact, the wise ruler — Plato’s Philosopher King — must be prepared to “administer a great many liesand falsehoods,” Plato went on, for the benefit of the masses.  

Plato goes on to justify the “Noble Lie.”

 “The Philosopher King knows that they are too ignorant to ever see the truth about their city’s problems and how to fix them.”

“And at times it’s only through telling what Plato called “a noble lie” that he or she can get the people’s cooperation in achieving it.” 

Mr. Obama, you are not Plato!

The traditional media and the Democratic Party promote these Noble Lies.

Arthur Herman goes on to say,

“And every lie is planted for a single end: to justify increasing the power of the federal government, and with it the clout of its Number One champion, the Democrat Party.”

The Democrats who voted for Obamacare either knew or understood its provisions. If they did not understand the provisions because they did not read the bill before they voted for Obamacare they were not doing their job.

It was predictable that Obamacare would be a disaster for ten of millions of Americans already holding health insurance policies. 

“Above all, they knew their president had deceived the American public into accepting this financial and moral disaster, in order to clear the way for a single payer, completely government-run health system”

In either case they should all be thrown out of office.

Americans have not seen anything yet!

Wait until they try to see a doctor or receive access to needed medical care once Obamacare get further on down the implementation road.

It is going to get worse!

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

I have been saying Obamacare is going to fail long before
the bill was passed into law. Obamacare will fail because of multiple system
design defects.

I would hate to believe these defects were built into the
system purposefully.

It was done to prove that free market forces do not work.
The Obama administration created a “not so free market”. These not so free
markets have been proven to fail over and over again.

It seems logical that given the $1 trillion dollar a year
deficits of the Obama administration, someone, somewhere would be interested in
decreasing the deficit spending.

None of the increased government spending has improved the
economy, decreased unemployment or decreased uncertainty.

The computer system defects in the health insurance
exchanges are much deeper than the sound bite treatment they getting from the
Obama administration.

The task of integrating 40-50 year old legacy computer
systems is an extremely difficult task using 50-year-old software.

Information technology experts have told me that the
health insurance exchange computer sign up system (healthcare.org) is months to
years away from getting the health insurance exchange information system fixed.

It should be destroyed after spending $634 million dollars
and redone using modern technology.               

The verification of people who qualify for government
subsidies is being dropped. The patient’s word about need is being accepted in
lieu of verification.

This is a tremendous glitch in the system, opening the
system to tremendous fraud and abuse. It is not a way to run a business.

John McAfee former CEO and founder of McAfee antivirus
said the health insurance exchange web site is a hacker's wet dream. The You
Tube explains why he came to this conclusion.

http://youtu.be/5TCtLtzSe6I

Poor patients who might qualify for the Obamacare tax
credits do not pay income tax. Therefore they have no income to apply a tax
credit against.

The administration has dropped word tax credit. It is now called
a subsidy. The law’s tax credit will be given to the healthcare insurance
company selling the insurance.

This is a “glitch.” The law was written to pay the states
for those who qualify for a tax credit. A Washington D.C. ruled that the case
by states against Obamacare has merit.

The states contend that persons’ insured through the
federal government exchanges do not qualify for federal tax credits. Only
states can receive and distribute the tax credits.

The law was reinterpreted by the Obama administration
without the consent of congress.

Another “glitch” is that the healthcare insurance industry
is given limitless power to collect money from the Treasury. The mechanics are not
transparent.

 “The
Affordable Care Act may give health insurance companies a virtually limitless
power to tap the U.S. Treasury, thereby lifting insurers' profits to
undreamt-of heights. This power derives from the mathematical formula for
calculating individual subsidies.”

The mathematical formula for calculating the subsidies
will cause America’s deficit to skyrocket further each year.

President Obama told America that Obamacare would bend the
cost curve downward and provide an efficient cost effective healthcare system
for all.

Let us look at the payment formula. A family of four
earning $30,000 year will not pay more than 2% a year for healthcare insurance
($600/year). This makes the Accountable Care Act (Obamacare) affordable for the
poor (maybe).  

If the premium of the healthcare insurance policy obtained
by this poor family costs $10,000 a year through the health insurance exchange the
federal government will pay the remaining $9,400 in the form of a tax credit to
the insurance company.

Originally, it sounded like the family would get a tax
credit after the family paid $10,000. A family making up to $40,000 a year does
not pay any taxes and therefore a tax credit is worthless.

The wording was changed from a tax credit to a
subsidy.  The tax credit now goes to the
healthcare insurance company providing the insurance policy.

The tricky thing about all this is the insurance
industry’s tax credits  reduce the
governments tax receipts and increases the insurance companies net profit.

The net effect is an increase in tax-free income from the
federal treasury.

The government collects less income tax from the insurance
company.

 The Obama
administration has given the healthcare insurance industry a huge tax break.
The tax break will increase the industry’s bottom line profits.

Obamacare has permitted the insurance company to have a
Medical/Loss ratio of 80/20. The Medical/Loss ratio means that the healthcare
industry must spend at least 80% of the insurance premiums collected on direct
medical care.

If it only spends 75% on direct medical care, the healthcare
company must give provide a 5% rebate.  

Here in lies the rub. The Obama administration has let the
healthcare insurance industry define direct medical care.

These are some of the services the Obama administration
has permitted the healthcare insurance industry to categorize as direct medical
care.

1. The cost of verifying the credentials
   of doctors in its networks.
2. The cost of ferreting out fraud such as
   catching physicians over testing patients or doing unnecessary operations.
3.  The cost of programs such as help desks
   that keep people who have diabetes
   out of emergency rooms.
4.  Some insurers have insisted that
   typical business expenses are included — such as sales commissions for
   insurance agents and taxes paid on healthcare insurance companies investments

Each one of these "direct medical care expenses"
has an added on profit included in the direct medical care expense category.

This is the way the healthcare insurance industry takes
40-60% of each premium off the top and leaves only 40-60% of healthcare dollars
for direct medical care.

Next year the healthcare insurance company will be
permitted to raise the healthcare insurance premium of a poor family to
$12,000. Its excuse will be that it is losing money.

If the premium is not raised the healthcare insurer will
quit providing the insurance. The government is totally dependent on the
insurer whether the insurer provides insurance as it does in the health
insurance exchanges or for administrative services as it does for Medicare (a single
party payer).  

The poor family still makes $30,000 dollars a year and
still pays $600 dollar a year for the now $12,000 dollar premium.

The insurance company now keeps $2,400 vs. $2,000 for
overhead and profit plus all the profit they can get from the direct care
dollars that should really be overhead.

The federal government gives the healthcare insurer a tax
credit of $11,400 vs. $9,400.

 The poor insurance
enrollee doesn't pay a penny more for his healthcare insurance.

The only loser is the American taxpayer who will pay the
subsidy in the form of increased taxes.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

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