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Three Very Big Deals

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Three very big deals occurred with to Obamacare the last few months that have received very little traditional media coverage. There has been sparse traditional media coverage of the significance of these three issues to the future of Obamacare.

It looks like the Obama administration is losing its ability to freeze, marginalize  and scandalize its opposition to gain public approval of President Obama’s agenda.

Obamacare and all of its lawless modifications are negatively affecting all the stakeholders who thought they would be better off with Obamacare.

This includes the indigent, middle class workers, the upper class and all the businesses involved in healthcare.

The three issues are: 

1. The D.C. appeals court overturns subsidies given by federal health insurance exchanges.

2. Obamacare application data is wrong for 2 million applicants receiving subsidies.

3. The Obama Administration adds major exemptions to the Obamacare individual mandate.

I will cover each issue in separate blogs. What is common to the three issues is that the Obama administration changes the law passed by congress at its whim  without the consent of congress.

The D.C. Appeals Court Overturns Subsidies From Federal Health Insurance Exchange.

A three judge panel of the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ruled that subsidies may not be offered in the federal health insurance exchanges. The Department of Justice immediately announced it will challenge an appeals court ruling that strikes Obamacare subsidies for millions of americans using HealthCare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange.

The subsidies are critical to the success of Obamacare. Otherwise, Obamacare premiums are unaffordable to people making less than $50,000 per year. There is some debate as to whether the premiums are affordable to people making more than $50,000 per year. 

Obamacare was written to encourage states to set up health insurance exchanges. Many states refused to set up health insurance exchanges. The state governors and congress realized the economic and bureaucratic burden was going to be overwhelming even if the government covers 90% of the costs.

Additionally, states that opted out fear the federal government would have too much control over the states’ rights.

As soon as the Obama administration saw this coming in 2010 after the law was passed, it had the IRS issue a ruling that contradicted the law’s intent.

The IRS rule allows the federal health insurance exchanges to provide subsidies to people buying insurance through the federal health insurance exchanges.

The intent of the law passed bywas that only states could provide tax credits. I have not yet been able to figure out how tax credits can mean tax subsidies.

“ ACA Section 1401 provides that eligible taxpayers may receive income tax credits for the purchase of insurance “through an Exchange established by the State under Section 1311.”

"Section 1311 calls upon states to establish health insurance exchanges. It does not provide for the federal government to create health care exchanges."

"Rather, a separate provision of the act, Section 1321, provides that if a state does not “elect” to create an exchange that meets federal requirements, the federal government shall then “establish and operate” an exchange."

"Thus, under a plain reading of the text, the ACA only provides for tax credits for state-run exchanges, and if states fail to create exchanges, there are no tax credits for insurance bought on a federally run exchange.”

The IRS’s ruling provides that eligible taxpayers may receive tax credits for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans established by states under Section 1311 or by the federal government under Section 1321. The only problem is that this is not consistent with the actual text of the statute passed by congress or the intent of the law.

"Section 1311 expressly requires that an authorized Exchange must be “established by a State.” Section 1304(d) also expressly defines “state” as “each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia.” Later amendments to the PPACA also provide that Exchanges created by territories are to be treated as the equivalent of state-run Exchanges, but there is no such language concerning federally run health insurance exchanges.

There are all sorts of legal arguments on both sides of the issue. It will be up to the Supreme Court to decide.

However, Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and Obamacare architect has repeat over and over again that“states that set up their own health care exchanges would make their residents eligible for subsidies.’” 

Jon Gruber spent a couple of years barnstorming the country warning states that they had to set up their own exchanges, and that failure to do so would cut their residents out of the subsidy pool. This was the intent of Obamacare as stated by the architect of the law.

In a speech Jon Gruber gave in 2012, he delivered both a promise and a threat

"In the law, it says if the states don't provide them, the federal backstop will. The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop, I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it.”

“ I think what's important to remember politically about this, is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits.”

“But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens, you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country.”

“ I hope that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they'll do it.”

  

http://youtu.be/LbMmWhfZyEI

Government supplied subsidies are vital to the survival of Obamacare and its accompanying bureaucratic waste.

It should be pretty clear what the intent of the law is. President Obama has been  brazen in changing and enforcing laws to fit his agenda.

It is obvious he is trying to do the same in this case with the IRS ruling that many believe is illegally modifying the intention of the law without the consent of congress.

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

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Paul Krugman’s Inappropriate Victory Lap

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Paul Krugman is one of President Obama’s henchmen. Mr. Krugman also won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Last week he wrote a victory lap article for Obamacare. He continues to write articles without solid facts and a total disregard for basic economics. He works very hard to freeze and then belittle his opponents and the Republican Party.

“When it comes to health reform, Republicans suffer from delusions of disaster. They know, just know, that the Affordable Care Act is doomed to utter failure, so failure is what they see, never mind the facts on the ground.”

He attempted to freeze Mitch McConnell by ridiculing him.

“Thus, on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, dismissed the push for pay equity as an attempt to “change the subject from the nightmare of Obamacare.”

Mr. Krugman then pours out his non-facts as irrefutable facts by quoting the Rand survey that was just released in full.

“The same day, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a study estimating “a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.”

The results of the Rand survey were published in the Rand Corps’ blog. The blog itself questions the significance of the 9.3 million numbers of enrollees through the Health Insurance Exchanges as implied in government statements.

Although a total of 3.9 million people enrolled in marketplace plans, only 1.4 million of these individuals were previously uninsured. 

The purpose of Obamacare was to insure the previously uninsured. The Obama administration has not published the actual number of uninsured that have been covered in the initial enrollment period.

The actual number of previously uninsured receiving healthcare insurance from the government’s Health Insurance Exchanges is closer to 895,000 people.

Paul Krugman’s fact that 9.3 million have been insured as a result of Obamacare is not a fact according to the Rand survey.

The headline of the RAND blog was “Survey Estimates Net Gain of 9.3 million American Adults With Health Insurance.”

"Our survey work can't say for certain, which of these shifts are due to the ACA and which are due to other factors, but we can draw some limited conclusions. A more detailed report describing the results summarized below can be found here."

http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/survey-estimates-net-gain-of-9-3-million-american-adults.html

Paul Krugman statement is a direct contradiction of the RAND survey’s statement

The RAND Corp, uses the number of uninsured as 40.7 million people in 2013. This could be a low number.

Many have used an estimate of 48 million were uninsured. It means the RAND number has a large margin of error. Estimates Net Gain of 9.3 Million American 

The RAND Corp., also states that 5.2 million lost healthcare insurance coverage in 2013 as a result of dropped healthcare insurance plans.

 It is estimated by many that 6.6 million lost their healthcare plans because the plans did not comply with Obamacare standards.

Let us use the RAND Corp’s numbers to understand the facts of enrollment through Obamacare. The RAND Corp survey labeled these numbers as estimates.

  • "Of the 40.7 million who were uninsured in 2013, 14.5 million gained coverage, but 5.2 million of the insured lost coverage, for a net gain in coverage of approximately 9.3 million.
  • This represents a drop in the share of the population that is uninsured from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent.
  • The 9.3 million person increase in insurance is driven not only by enrollment in marketplace plans, but also by gains in employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) and Medicaid.
  • Enrollment in ESI increased by 8.2 million."

 Let us assume the 9.3 million estimate of the total increase in number of people insured is correct.

If 8.2 million people received healthcare insurance from employer sponsored healthcare insurance then only 1.1 million received healthcare care insurance from either private insurance plans or Medicaid on Obamacare’s Health Insurance Exchanges.

There is claimed to be an increase in 3.6 million people receiving Medicaid.  Of that 3.6 million increase in Medicaid enrollment, 1.4 million have signed up through a marketplace.

 The remainder gained Medicare coverage through other sources.

This means a net loss of three hundred thousand Americans having private insurance as a result of Obamacare and the Health Insurance Exchanges (1.1 million- 1.4 million = – 300,000)

Mr. Krugman builds on these non-facts and concludes with an undocumented conclusion. He states as a fact;

Obamacare is looking like anything but a nightmare. Let’s start with the good news about reform, which keeps coming in.

 First, there was the amazing come-from-behind surge in enrollments.”

He then criticizes his opponents in an attempt to make those who disagree with him and the Obama administration appear mean spirited and unwise. 

“Then there were a series of surveys — from Gallup, the Urban Institute, and RAND — all suggesting large gains in coverage.

Taken individually, any one of these indicators might be dismissed as an outlier, but taken together they paint an unmistakable picture of major progress."

 “There are indeed some nightmarish things happening on the health care front. For it turns out that there’s a startling ugliness of spirit abroad in modern America — and health reform has brought that ugliness out into the open.”

Paul Krugman attacks the Koch brothers and Mitch McConnell.

It’s worth noting that, so far, not one of the supposed horror stories touted in Koch-backed anti-reform advertisements has stood up to scrutiny, suggesting that real horror stories are rare.”

It is important to note that Mr. Krugman offers no documentation to his quote. There are many honor stories that are documented.

When he attacks Mitch McConnell he offers facts from Talking Points.com. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obamacare-cuts-kentucky-uninsured-rate-by-40-percent

The talking point article contradicts the RAND survey numbers.

So, which is right?

It does not matter to Paul Krugman because the Media is the Message. Paul Krugman has gotten his message across in the New York Times.

“At the state level, however, Republican governors and legislators are still in a position to block the act’s expansion of Medicaid, denying health care to millions of vulnerable Americans.”

The concluding message is Republicans are bad. Democrats are good.

 Paul Krugman said the health economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the principal architects of health reform  recently summed it up:

The Medicaid-rejection states “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injections into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.” Indeed.’

It is not true Democrats care for the poor according to Chicago Pastor James Meeks as he throws his support behind the Republican Gubernatorial candidate in Illinois.”

“The Democratic party just assume always that 97 percent of the African-American vote will go to the Democratic party. If that assumption is true, they never have to work for our vote,” Meeks said.

He worries about the gun violence, the poverty and the no-end-in-sight outlook. “Our schools are still broken and getting worse. We’re last in employment or business. Our neighborhoods are deplorable,” says Meeks. “And we still get the same promises from the Democratic party, but we don’t get any deliverable. I think it’s time we should look at another candidate.”

 Poster Meek summed it up saying: “The Democratic party just assume always that 97 percent of the African-American vote will go to the Democratic Party. If that assumption is true, they never have to work for our vote,” Meeks said.

Pastor Meek has 23,000 members in his church.

 The Democratic Party and Mr. Krugman’s methods of operation are to accuse, confuse and then conclude.

Obamacare is spending money like a drunken sailor. Obamacare has an outlandish bureaucracy that has produced little benefit. As this new entitlement grows it will bankrupt the country.

It is best for Democrats to blame the bankruptcy on the Republicans’ resistance.

Paul Krugman is an economist. He should heed the lessons of Economics 101. 

Mr. Krugman please watch this You Tube.

 

 

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=91d_1386194531

 The pity of it all is Paul Krugman is spinning the Story Of Obamacare away from reality.

Fewer and fewer Americans are buying into Obamacare as they see how it is affecting them in daily life through increased taxes and false rhetoric.

Obamacare is not an abstraction anymore. It is an ugly reality for those affected.

There is a much better way to provide healthcare coverage for all.

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

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Here Come The Fibs, Distortions and Lies

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

As we approach November 6th (election day)
we will be subjected to more fibs, distortions and lies from President Obama
and his administration.

He has had a miserable record during his first term in
office. The only tactic he has left is to make villains out of Mitt Romney and
Paul Ryan while he makes promises he cannot keep. He has not kept most of the
promises he made before he took office.

As soon as Paul Ryan finished his speech at the
Republic convention he was accused of telling lies.

Carl Sandburg said in The Prairie Years “If you tell a lies enough times it becomes
the truth. The problem is a liar must have a good memory.”

Mr. Sandburg left out the fact that your audience has
to have a good memory to recall your first lie. One of the lies President Obama
told was the lies of Jonathan Gruber in 2009.

At the height of the Obamacare debate, Mr. Gruber’s
lie was all over the op-ed pages throughout the nation. Mr. Gruber, an MIT
economist and architect of Obamacare, stated that Obamacare would reduce the
cost of healthcare insurance for everyone.

“What
we know
 for sure “is
that [the bill] will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” 

The law
permits children under 26 years old to stay on their parents’ healthcare
insurance plan.

Immediately, the parents’ healthcare insurance premiums rose
significantly.

 

           Jonathan Gruber
is now telling state governments that the law will significantly increase the
cost of insurance for everyon
e.

 The result is the opposite of the promise.

President Obama brags about this achievement. In
reality he gave the healthcare insurance industry an excuse to raise premiums.

 Jonathan Gruber asserted that in 2016, young people would save 13 percent, and older
people 31 percent, on their insurance premiums
.

 “President Obama, too, touted the
bill’s ability to “bend the cost curve,”
 repeatedly
promising
 that the law would “bring down premiums by
$2,500 for the typical family.”

Jonathan Gruber now: “Obamacare will increase premiums by 19-30 percent.”

President Obama now figures he can call Paul
Ryan a liar.

He has a sympathetic audience in the traditional
media. However, President Obama with Obamacare is throwing Grandma over the
cliff. In fact it looks like he is pulling a Thelma and Louise with the United
Sates of America.

 

 http://youtu.be/4z88U915uq8

President Obama still seems like a nice guy. Everyone
would love to believe in him but they just can’t trust him.

 During
his speech Paul Ryan said,

 

And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at
the expense of the elderly
.

You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay
for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small
businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. 
They needed more.  They needed hundreds of billions more.”

 “So, they just took it all away from
Medicare
.  Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars,
funneled out of Medicare by President Obama
.  An obligation we
have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for
The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare.”

Paul Ryan’s statement is correct.  President Obama accused Paul Ryan of leaving
the $716 billion dollars in Medicare. He did but he does not use it for
Obamacare. Mitt Romney will repeal Obamacare his first day in office.  

The
$716 billion left in Medicare by Paul Ryan will shore up the solvency of the
Medicare program itself.

Below
is what President Obama was using the $716 billion dollars in Medicare cuts for.
Notice the $1.2 trillion dollars in new taxes and the $716 billion dollars in
Medicare cuts are being used to pay $644 billion dollars for Medicaid expansion
and $1.19 trillion dollars for subsided exchanges. The a deficit would be $141
billion dollars.

 
Untitled.png obams 716

Does
anyone believe the deficit would be that low? I doubt it.

President Obama was going to cut $542 billion from
Medicare in the original CBO scoring.

It
turns out that President Obama is the liar. Someone ought to tell President
Obama, “The public is getting tired of
his lies once they understand them.”

Paul
Ryan also said,

 “President Obama created a bipartisan
debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.  He thanked them,
sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing
.”

Paul Ryan is
absolutely correct. Simpson and Bowles are still steaming about their
commission’s treatment by the President. Paul Ryan then went on to say,

“Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions
equal to the problems.  How did the president respond?  By doing
nothing – nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue.”

This is what Erskine Bowles,
President Clinton’s former chief of staff and the leader of President Obama’s
deficit commission, had to say about Paul Ryan in September of 2011;

I’m
telling you, this guy is amazing.
I always thought I was okay with arithmetic.
This guy can run circles around me. He is honest, he is
straightforward, he is sincere
. And the budget he came forward with
is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible,
straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like
we did by four trillion dollars
.”

President
Obama attacked Paul Ryan by saying Ryan voted against the Simpson-Bowles
commission.

The
traditional mainstream media has supported President Obama’s attack without
fact checking. The media was satisfied that President Obama’s message
neutralized Mr. Ryan’s attack on the President.

The
mainstream media never bothered to find out why Paul Ryan voted against the
Simpson-Bowles recommendations.

The
media figured it, the media, is the message. President Obama figured the
media’s message would take care of Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan was clearly a hypocrite
to the mainstream media.

 It’s
true that Paul Ryan voted against the Simpson-Bowles recommendations because Simpson-Bowles
raised taxes while doing little
to nothing about health-care spending
, the biggest driver of
growing deficits.

By
rejecting Simpson-Bowles, Ryan decided to put forward his own plan for deficit
reduction the Path
to Prosperity
.

On
the other hand this is what Erskine Bowles had to say about President Obama’s
budget:

“President Obama, as you remember, came out with a budget.
And I don’t think anybody took that budget very seriously. The
Senate voted against it 97 to nothing.

He therefore, after a lot of pressure from folks like me, he came
out with a new budget framework. And in that budget framework, he cuts the
budget by four trillion dollars over twelve years. And, to be candid, this four trillion dollars cut was very heavily back-end loaded.
So, that if you looked at it on a ten-year basis and compared apples to apples,
it really was about a two and a half trillion dollar cut.”

More tricks to deceive the public. I could go on and on. Americans
have been fibbed and lied to by its purveyor of hope (President Obama).

However, I think President Obama has lost his tall with the
public. He is now calling for sympathy. He wants the public to let him finish
the difficult work he started.

I hope the public does not give him that chance.

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

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Politicians Give Me A Headache: Part 3

 

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

As the Presidential campaign comes to a close the important issues of the campaign get blurred or discarded. Healthcare reform is one of those issues.

In the past I enjoyed the clarity of thinking of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Lately it has adopted a patina of fuzzy thinking and muckraking. It frequently misses the essential issues in the name of free enterprise. Last week Newt Gingrich said something intelligent. He said the Republican party should abandon the notion of anti-government for the notion of government involvement with competent management. Barack Obama has hinted that he gets it. 

John McCain does not have a healthcare plan. His healthcare plan has one tactic but is not a strategy to repair the healthcare system. It is an anti-government tactic. An effective healthcare plan must have many tactics. The tactics must align the agendas of all the stakeholders. The most important agenda is the medical care provided to consumers. John McCain’s tactic keeps control of the healthcare industry in the hands of the healthcare insurance companies. The healthcare insurance industry is the stakeholder that has abused the healthcare system. Its abuse has led to the abuse by other stakeholders.

John McCain’s healthcare tax credit is supposed to permit the self-insured to pay for healthcare insurance with pre-tax dollars as opposed to post tax dollars. Employer provided healthcare insurance presently pays for employee insurance with pretax dollars.

Equal tax treatment for employers and self employed should have been instituted years ago. John McCain’s non healthcare plan has many problems. His tax credit is not large enough compared to the cost of healthcare insurance. His plan will give employers an excuse to abandon providing healthcare insurance for its employees. The result long term will be an increase in the number of uninsured. A worker earning $40,000 cannot afford $12,000 a year for healthcare insurance for his family even if $5,000 is tax free. The problem is the cost of insurance and the cost of care.

The Wall Street Journal editorial spends time criticizing the Obama campaign for John McCain’s deficiency.

“One underreported story of this election is how heavily John McCain has been damaged by Barack Obama’s television ad assault on his health-care plan. A lot of voters seem to believe the Democrat when he says that Mr. McCain wants to deny them coverage or bankrupt them with crushing hospital bills.”

Barack Obama’s television advertisement is correct. The result of Mr. McCain’s “healthcare plan” will be just that because “affordable plans” will be sold that do not provide adequate healthcare coverage. We are seeing it now with higher co-pays, higher deductibles and underinsured. The healthcare insurance industry’s goal is to maintain high profits without regard for other stakeholders’ needs.

The Journal spends most of the article criticizing Jason Furman, who is Mr. Obama’s economic policy director because he agrees with Mr. McCain’s tactic. John McCain’s tactic is a tax credit for the self employed that is long overdue. Jason Furman does not agree with the taxable income portion of employer provided healthcare insurance. John McCain’s tax credit, taxable income proposal would result in the elimination of employer provided healthcare insurance.

The problem is healthcare reform needs more than one tactic. It needs innovative reform of the healthcare system. Effective healthcare reform must put the consumer in control of his healthcare dollar with incentives for rewards if consumers use their healthcare dollar wisely. Government and the healthcare insurance industry’s control of the healthcare dollar has not worked. Government control does not work because the government can not manage effectively and outsources control to the healthcare insurance industry.

I do not agree with Senator Obama’s plan because it is going to head us down the road of government as a single party payer with healthcare insurance company management like the Massachusetts plan.

Neither candidate has a viable plan. The WSJ editorial does not focus on the issue of healthcare reform. It confuses us about a sidebar tactic.

“ But wait, let’s consult another one of Mr. Obama’s advisers. David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard, put it this way: “Health insurance is not something that is made better by tying it to employment. As a result, essentially all economists believe that universal coverage should be done outside of employment.”

That passage comes from Mr. Cutler’s 2004 book, “Your Money or Your Life,” which outlined a strategy for universal health care. Not surprisingly, Professor Cutler’s plan, like Mr. McCain’s, also applied subsidies such as “tax credits — people get a lower tax bill, or a refund from the government, to be used to purchase insurance.” In this he was echoing many other liberal health experts such as MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, another Democratic policy star.

I think the WSJ thinks Americans are stupid. If they throw enough unrelated quotes at us we will be totally confused.

I believe as Colin Powell believes. Barack Obama is potentially a transformational figure. He seems to have a deeper view of issues than most. Hopefully, he is smart enough to see through the folly in his healthcare advisors’ plans. John McCain is not transforming anything.

Permalink:

It’s De Ja Vu All Over again!

 Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama uses the same moves over and over again in order to fool the traditional media and the American citizens. Why change tactics when they always work?

He knows Americans want to believe him.

Jonathan Gruber, a consultant economic architect of Obamacare was correct when he said that a lack of transparency is a powerful political tool. He said Americans are too stupid to see through the charade.

President Obama thinks his job is to transform America. He never defined what transforming America means.

Americans assumed he would make America a better place to live for the average citizen.

In the last six years the average American has not had job security, healthcare  security or a better standard of living. President Obama keeps telling Americans they have a better life.

President Obama saying it does not make it so.

Americans are starting to perceive reality and do not believe him or in him anymore.

In February 2014 I published the following blog. The tactic President Obama uses is to present a half-truth that is not close to the truth. He confuses Americans so they do not know what to believe. They stop paying attention to what is happening to them and society. They do not search for the truth until it affects them directly.

President Obama’s fantasy is now affecting the hard working middle class. They now know he lies to them. They feel they have been taken for fools.

In the last few weeks he has been putting out false narrative about how well Obamacare is doing.

Last years blog will set they stage to understand the way the tactic has been played over and over again.

 

"Why Use Facts and Logic?  

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

 February 27,2014

I pointed out the tactics used in Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals. 

President Obama uses these tactics over and over again to attack his opponents, obfuscate reality and confuse the public.

The public has figured out President Obama out. Reality is now in healthcare and Americans are feeling it.

The middle class independents voters are feeling it the most.

President Obama’s opponents have not figured out how to neutralize  the Alinsky formula. 

If someone points out the truth he is attacked, belittled and marginalized. President Obama is using executive powers to attack the constitution in order to restrict Americans’ rights to freedoms.

The most recent FCC foray to determine the quality of news reporting was cancelled by the uproar about the attack on free speech.

President Obama has tried to shift public attention away from Obamacare by bringing up many topics at once.

The traditional media goes along with this because President Obama is the number one newsmaker. The media have only a limited time or space to cover topics.

Let’s face it. These important topics are not entertainment. They are boring.

A story that floored me was President Obama’s his austerity claim. He said his new budget would finally end the dreary "era of austerity."

Did he think increasing Americans national debt $6 trillion dollars over 5 years was austere?

“ The federal government will still spend $561 billion more this year than it did in 2008.

I was under the impression that the Republicans took a shellacking from President Obama once again by the way the recent budget deficit and debt ceiling resolutions were reported. The opposite is true.

President Obama wanted the sequester abolished, roughly $2 trillion more in spending, and almost $1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade.

The latest budget deals delivered none of that. While the sequester was relaxed, all the additional spending was offset with no higher taxes.

Speaker Boehner did not do so bad. 

In 2014 President Obama’s take on the debt ceiling is extremely interesting.

 

 

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/022114-690858-obama-budget-and-his-phony-complaint-about-austerity.htm

 

In the last few weeks President Obama has been telling his base over and over again that Obamacare is going to be a non-issue in the November 2014 elections. He told Bill O’Reilly in his Super Bowl interview that 6 million people have already received insurance.

 

http://youtu.be/9uzJYlbhH54

Both were lies. It doesn’t seem to bother him to lie.

Dick Durbin, the second man in the senate, told a Sunday morning talk show that 10 million have signed up by end of January.  

On February 25th President Obama announced that 4 million have signed up. He did not say how many of those were on Medicaid, how many bought private insurance, how many lost their insurance because of Obamacare, how many bought private insurance on the health insurance exchange and how many never had healthcare insurance.

He has used the 6 million over and over again even though he received 4 Pinocchio’s from the Washington Post fact checker.

The traditional media just publishes what he tells them even though they have stories with facts that contradict his pronouncements.

President Obama has henchman at the New York Times. Paul Krugman is the chief.

He makes pronouncement without facts.

His February 23, 2014 article “Health Care Horror Hooey” is one of those articles. He starts by brow beating his audience about the death tax (Estate Tax).

“You might think that such heart-wrenching cases are actually quite rare, but you’d be wrong: they aren’t rare; they’re nonexistent. “

No evidence was presented for the statement.

In particular, nobody has ever come up with a real modern example of a family farm sold to meet estate taxes.

One reason is that there are few family farms in existence today.

The whole “death tax” campaign has rested on eliciting human sympathy for purely imaginary victims.

The problem in my view is people paying estate taxes are being taxed a second time on the same money.

I do not care how rich a person might be the government should not be entitled to tax money twice.

And now they’re trying a similar campaign against health reform.

This statement is nonsense

I’m not sure whether conservatives realize yet that their Plan A on health reform — wait for Obamacare’s inevitable collapse, and reap the political rewards — isn’t working.”

My sense is Paul Krugman views conservative as shiftless idiots. He presents no proof as to whether Obamacare is working or not. He simply declares Obamacare isn’t collapsing.

“But it isn’t. Enrollments have recovered strongly from the law’s disastrous start-up; in California, which had a working website from the beginning, enrollment has already exceeded first-year projections.”

Mr. Krugman ought to read his own newspaper. The New York Times reported that California does not have enough physicians participating in Covered California to service its subscribers. Many subscribers have not paid their first premium.

 The mix of people signed up so far is older than planners had hoped, but not enough so to cause big premium hikes, let alone the often-predicted “death spiral.”

There is absolutely no information about age mix and health risk available for Covered California that I could find.

It is clear the administration is withholding this information.

In fact, Covered California has had to close its website in order to try to cover the discrepancies.

Paul Krugman claims insurance premiums and deductible have not gone up. I think he ought to look at the health exchange insurance premiums and deductibles for the individual market on the health insurance exchange.

He does not talk about the reasons for all the waivers given by President Obama. He does not talk about the congressional exemption.

He does not speak about the exemption delay for the corporate insurance market. Why not?

Millions of families will lose their insurance coverage and be driven into the Obamacare health insurance exchanges or face government penalty.

The IRS sent out a warning this week that if person does not have adequate qualified healthcare insurance a penalty would be assessed on to their tax bill in 2015.

Paul Krugman is being intellectually dishonest with the American people. The American people are being forced into an entitlement program they do not want.                                                                                                                                                            This is not “Health Care Horror Hooey Mr. Krugman.  It is reality.                                                       At the time of Krugman’s article a CMS report was publish that found 65% of small businesses that offer insurance will likely see their premiums rise thanks to ObamaCare. That translates into higher insurance costs for 11 million workers.

“No doubt, Obamacare boosters will charge that this information is from some right wing think tank.“                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The Obama administration immediately started shouting foul to the CMS study. They said the study was incomplete and the conclusions will change.

This is a typical use of an Alinsky tactic by President Obama.

David Horowitz writes in his book Barack Obama’s Rules For Radicals, There can be no conversation between the organizer and his opponents.  The latter must be depicted as being evil.
 

In this case his own CMS is depicted as being evil.

One study, for example, found that 63% of small employers in Wisconsin will see premiums jump 15% because of ObamaCare. A separate study found that 89% of small companies in Maine would see rate hikes of 12% on average.

Another, by consulting firm Oliver Wyman, concluded that ObamaCare would push up small group premiums nationwide 20%.

As soon as the CMS report came out, Democratic leaders rushed to the microphones to dismiss it.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's spokesman said it was "incomplete" and that the GOP would use the report "to mislead and deceive Americans."

President Obama, the American people got it. After all the lies, deceptions and misrepresentations we know what you are doing with your people and your shills.

 We do not trust you!"  Feburary 27 2014

 

In February 2015 President Obama’s misdirection continues. There is a lack of transparency about the 2015 www.healthcare.gov enrollment figures. The goal for enrollment is rigged.  Last year is was initially published that there were 9 million enrollees.

Those figures were false. It was eventually corrected down to 6.8 million.

The 6.8 million figure included the people who have lied to get higher subsides. Presumably they lied with the help of President Obama’s Navigators who receive $48 an hour from the government to help people complete their applications.

 At least 15% (1 million plus) of these people have dropped their healthcare insurance coverage because they lost the subsidies and/or the deductibles were too high.

As the Republic House and Senate are preparing to repeal Obamacare, the public is hearing from President Obama through the traditional media that Obamacare is working well and will not be repealed.

His fantasy is expressed in the following January 2015 headlines.

President Obama’s Fantasy

Obamacare Will Cost 20% Less Affordable will Cost 20% Less Than Initial Projections, CBO Says

Right-Wing Media Won't Tell You That The CBO's New Obamacare Cost Estimates Are Lower Than Expected

 New York Times: "Budget Office Slashes Estimated Cost Of Health Coverage." 

 HHS: More Than 7.1M Have Enrolled In 2015 Plans Via HealthCare.gov.

Obamacare website enrollment crests 7M as Feb. 15 deadline looms

7 Obamacare Facts You Need to Know at the Halfway Point of Enrollment

Burwell: ‘Time is running out’ for ObamaCare signups

To a casual observer the problems are solved. The cost of healthcare are affordable. Obamacare’s enrollment numbers are great.

 The Facts next time.

 

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

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