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Lies About Government Spending

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama and the mainstream media have been bragging about how well Obamacare is working. They cite that Obamacare is bringing down government health-spending growth.

However they have not been telling the truth. They have taken numbers out of context and have spun a lie.

The evidence presented by federal actuaries is that health growth has been under 4% in the five years prior to 2014.

The Obama administration has made a big deal out of this finding. President Obama has bragged that he is bending the cost curve with Obamacare.

His statements are deceptive. It means government health spending growth has been just under 4%. It is still increasing by 4% year to year and not the usual 6%-10% increase.  

Obamacare spending for direct medical care did not go into effect until 2014. All that went into effect was increases in taxes from 2010 until 2014 and spending on the growth of the bureaucracy resulting in a 4% growth. The math had nothing to do with increased direct medical care.

According to federal actuaries, spending on all health care grew 5.5% in 2014. Actual enrollment was lower than expected enrollment in 2014.

2014 was the first year of spending on direct medical care. Healthcare spending will continue to increase in 2015 to 5.3%. The reason is spending for Obamacare took affect in 2014 and continued in 2015. The reason for the slight predicted percentage decrease for 2015 is at least two fold. Less people signed up for Obamacare in 2015 than predicted and reimbursement for physicians and hospitals decreased.

Other reasons for a government decrease in spending are consumers are paying a greater share of their medical bills and reining in their use of medical care services.

One in three Americans said they or a family member delayed medical care because of costs in 2014, according to a report late last year by survey company Gallup.”

President Obama and his administration are deceiving the American public about the success of Obamacare.

The cost to taxpayers and people who are insured has actually increased. President Obama continually tells us costs are decreasing.

The mainstream media, especially The New York Times and Paul Krugman, continually repeat the lie. If you repeat a lie enough times people begin to believe it is the truth.

A reader asked me where did the New York Times readers leave their thinking apparatus. Someone else pointed out that the New York Times readership is decreasing because the newspaper has lost its credibility.

The New York Times opinions seem to be presented without supporting evidence.

The truth is premiums are increasing, coverage is decreasing and insurance deductibles are increasing for everyone including the middle class. Access to medical treatment is decreasing. Out of pocket expenses are skyrocketing.

The deception continues unchallenged by Republicans. No one is talking about the fact that the Obama administration is lying about what is happening on the ground.

“According to a report from actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published in the journal Health Affairs. In the years through 2024, spending growth is expected to average 5.8%, peaking at 6.3% in 2020.”

The cost of healthcare to the government is going to increase further and faster than predicted by federal actuaries as a result of expanded government insurance coverage under the 2010 health law, and the ever expanding Medicare’s baby-boom beneficiaries entering Medicare age.

As technology increases and as the baby boomers enter Medicare and more expensive life-saving drugs are developed costs to the government are going to increase.

The cost of pharmaceuticals is reported to have increased by 12% last year. The deals the government makes with the pharmaceutical companies are pathetic. The prices continue to mount for the government as consumer out of pocket costs for drugs increase.

By 2024 healthcare costs to the government and consumers are projected to be over 20% of our GDP and rising at the present Obamacare rate.

Americans will be older and sicker.

There is little government focus on helping our population become motivated to become  healthier and more responsible for their health and their own healthcare as they age.

Obamacare is forcing Americans to become more dependent on the government for their healthcare needs.

Hopefully, people are noticing that government does not work and more government will be a disaster to our medical and financial health.

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Cecelia Feld: Colorful Abstract Collages

By Cassie Rief in Featured Artists  EmptyEasel.com   January 14, 2015

“Hi Cassie

 I have been married to Cecelia for 52 years. She is a great woman as well as a very talented artist.

 I fell in love with her 56 years ago because of her wonderful personality, great looks and exquisite sensitivity for the joy of life.

She has a phenomenal ability to express this joy of life through her abstract art.

Cassie, you picked that up in your excellent description of her work.

I was a pre-med student with a fine arts concentration at Columbia College in NYC.  I took all the courses related to abstract art from 1900 to 1959 offered at   Columbia College and audited courses given at Barnard College.  I was fascinated by abstract art. I graduated from Columbia College  in 1959.

I graduated with a good understanding of abstract art.

Many people do not understand abstract art. 

 I would like to publish excerpts of your article about Cecelia, with your permission, in my blog Repairing the Healthcare System, to give my readers an understanding of the meaning of Cecelia’s abstract work. 

Your analysis of her art is right on target.

On August 27, 2015 Cecelia is going to have an opening of an exhibit of some of her work on the Colorado University campus in conjunction with the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

 Your excellent article on EmptyEasel.com  will be a good introduction to Cecelia’s exhibit.

 Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE”

 

“Hello, Stan!

I would be more than happy to give you the “go ahead” to publish whatever you’d like from my article as long as you would cite either myself or EmptyEasel as your source

 Thank you for being so kind as to ask first. I’m thrilled you enjoyed my article and interpretation of Cecelia’s art, which is wonderful. I hope your readers find a better appreciation and understanding of her art through the article.

Please take care!

Cassie Rief”

 http://emptyeasel.com/2015/01/14/cecelia-feld-colorful-abstract-collages/

Cecelia Feld: Colorful Abstract Collages

By Cassie Rief in Featured Artists  EmptyEasel.com   January 14, 2015

 “Artist Cecelia Feld of Dallas, Texas, feels strongly about the art of conversation, especially when it’s her artwork telling the story!

Cecelia says that when color, line, shape and texture are in conversation with one another, it brings about a lively, energetic quality to the composition.

Her collages typically combine several repurposed prints (etchings, monotypes, and collagraphs) with found paper. She then often paints on the paper, using acrylics to anchor and frame each collage.

“Travel, near and far, has always provided inspiration for my art,” Cecelia said. “Through painting, printmaking, collage and photography, I interpret the world around me.”

 Let’s take a look, shall we?

In the collage below, yellow, green, and blue colors accent loose, squiggly paint smears that surround and incorporate a variety of images cut into several different geometric shapes.

Cecelia 1

As I look, I find myself trying to pick out individual elements of the collage before realizing the totality of the piece is what makes it so vibrant.

Being able to identify a stylish bracelet here, a chandelier there gives the collage a sense of avant-guardism, but the energy of the piece is at its best when enjoyed as a whole.

Cecelia definitely loves to incorporate half-circles into her work, and I think it’s particularly successful in Have Map, Will Travel because it draws the viewer in and out of the collage, shaking up the idea that artwork must fit within certain parameters.

Cecelia 2

The color combinations in this collage work especially well together, featuring spicy cinnamon hues, plum, and mint shades, all of which are soft, warm and inviting.

Lovely inklings of periwinkle are sprinkled deftly throughout the collage, while gentle curves mimic the slightest winding road, in essence, bringing a map to life.

Lastly, large brushstrokes swirl and arch in a flourish in Springtime Suite 3, where all the colors of spring have awoken from a winter’s dream and are bursting forth like a bouquet of daisies, tulips and baby’s breath.

Cecelia 3

Spearmint green abounds energetically throughout this collage, leaving a bright, playful trail that links everything together.

An angled box to the left of the painting is the focal point, where various items encircle a luxurious green and gold chalice found resting comfortably deep within the collage.

Of course, any review of Cecelia’s work wouldn’t be complete without a mention of her beautiful photographs, which touch the soul and tell of the widespread places she’s been and the unforgettable people she’s met along the way.

I encourage you to take a minute to view the rest of Cecelia’s work on her website.

www.studio7310.com

I hope this short tutorial helps explain the joyful message in Cecelia’s Abstract Art.  

Cecelia combines color, form, line and texture into compositions to evoke joyful emotional responses.

I hope to see as many of you as possible at the Mackey Auditorium Gallery on the Boulder CU campus from 6.00 pm to 7.30 pm Thursday August 27, 2015.

To those of you who cannot come go to Cecelia’s website www.studio7310.com and use Cassie Rief’s tutorial as a guide to heighten your enjoyment of Cecelia Feld’s work.

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

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A Small Glitch In Healthcare.Gov?

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama and his mainstream media shills such as Paul Krugman keep on insisting that Obamacare is working fine.

A recent “secret shopper” audit by the GAO (Government Accountability Office) has discovered  that the Obamacare website healthcare.gov has exposure to fraud and abuses. Obamacare does not have a plan to prevent this kind of fraud and abuse.

The title of this blog should be, “How To Fake A Healthcare.gov  Application And Get A Healthcare Insurance Subsidy.”

 “Last year the Senate Finance Committee asked investigators at the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to test the Affordable Care Act’s internal eligibility and enrollment controls. So they created a dozen fictitious identities and applied for insurance subsidies—and 11 fake claimants got them.”

Healthcare.gov did not have a verification protocols operational.  This was supposed to be part of the non existent back end for 2014.

The GAO online and over the phone supplied invalid Social Security numbers, doctored citizenship status or misstated income on tax documents.

Eleven of the twelve phony applicants received up to $2500 per month in tax credits or $30,000 per year.

What is worse is that these 11 phony applicants re-enrolled in 2014 for 2015. Some of them received a larger tax credit without providing additional documentation for 2015. Some were renewed automatically.

How much did the taxpayer pay for this pathetic website?

The exact amount is not known because it is not transparent.

Which part of the federal budget was charged for the website?

Was the website an Obamacare expense?

How many people received large and fallacious subsidies by lying?

How much has the government spent and wasted on Obamacare so far?

How can President Obama tell us with a straight face that Obamacare is working well?

How can we tell President Obama we are sick and tired of his lies?

How can we prevent President Obama from getting away with these lies?

The health insurance exchanges are supposed to verify income and identities before approving subsidies. This was promised but could not happen in 2014. The back end of healthcare.gov was not completed. The back end was supposed to be completed for 2015.

The GAO study was able to circumvent the initial identity proofing.

The exchanges are “required to seek post-approval documentation in the case of certain application ‘inconsistencies.’

The post-approval documentation was only requested if there were inconsistencies in the application. Some applications were automatically renewed.

The GAO also reports that the follow-up was often unclear or inaccurate and didn’t turn off the subsidies.”

The GAO concluded that the customer service representatives were clueless and incompetent.

No one in the Obama administration has been held accountable or fired.  The cover-up by the Obamacare administration is obvious.

Officials running ObamaCare told the GAO they possess “limited ability to respond to attempts at fraud” and that measures to ensure program integrity would undermine “consumers’ ability to ‘effectively and efficiently’ select Marketplace [ObamaCare] coverage.”

The explanation is an affront to logic and the taxpayer’s intelligence. This incompetence was not reported in the New York Times or the traditional media.

As President Obama was telling the American public that Obamacare is working fine and as Paul Krugman was backing him up with his Noble Prize T-Shirt on, the Obama administration was wasting probably wasting  billions of taxpayer dollars on a program that was not working.

When are the American people going to wake up and say this has to stop?

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

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President Obama Says Medicare, Medicaid ‘Not In Crisis’

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

The media is the message. President Obama controls the media and his messages come out loud and clear even if they are lies.

On the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid President Obama said,Obamacare is “finishing the job” begun by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson”.

President Obama also claims that, the two federal health care programs are not in crisis, and those who say they’re in trouble are playing politic.”

This is the Saul Alinsky attack method to marginalize your enemies whether they are right or not.

According to Obama, those who say “Medicare and Medicaid are in crisis” are doing so as “a political excuse to cut their funding, privatize them, or phase them out entirely.”

President Obama was the one that cut Medicare funding not his political enemies.

 No one wants to phase out Medicare or Medicaid entirely.

Sensible critics know both programs are not economically sustainable in their present form.

They are suggesting making the recipients of Medicaid and Medicare more responsible for themselves and their care in order to convert each program to an economically sustainable one.

President Obama is the one playing politics. He is using the media via his bully pulpit to proclaim his indefensible message.

Even Medicare actuaries and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – say both programs are “unsustainable.”

Anyone on Medicaid would be surprised to learn they are receiving “efficient, high quality care” with their difficulties in seeing a doctor and their rapid non-communicative visits.

It is not “efficient high quality care.” Price constraints do not permit efficient high quality care.

President Obama prefers to live in his own fantasy world about this issue as he does with most issues including the Iran nuclear bomb deal.

The current supposed percentage decrease in spending is fiction as I explained in my last post. The decrease in the percentage of the budget deficit is the result of an increase in taxes.

The advantage of tax increases without service increases is about to disappear. Then the budget deficit resulting from Obamacare will skyrocket.

Additionally there will be a doubling of the Medicare population as a result of the aging baby boomers. This increase will require combinations of benefit cuts, eligibility changes and cost-share increases.

All of these changes are occurring right now. Seniors who are aware of the changes only because they are presently receiving care are feeling it and are complaining. Soon a great percentage of seniors will begin complaining.

President Obama will have no hesitation to increase taxes and decrease payment to providers even further.

As baby boomers age into Medicare eligibility, a significant and growing proportion of doctors don’t accept Medicare patients. Many primary care physicians are becoming concierge doctors. They will only accept Medicare patients if the patients pays $2,000 to $30,000 per year to be a member of his panel. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement is too low. Physicians have to see many patients to make ends meet.

 According to the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, 29% of Medicare beneficiaries who were looking for a primary-care doctor in 2008 already had a problem finding one.

All of this is beyond President Obama’s vision even though it is happening right now.

Obamacare is causing private insurance to become unaffordable for the middle class.

Obamacare’s regulations on pricing and coverage have already forced termination of private health insurance for more than at least five million Americans in the individual insurance market.

The Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that as many as 10 million people will be forced off their chosen employer-based health insurance by 2021.

This increase represents at least a tenfold increase in the 2011 projections at the onset of the law.

“Numerous reports in the top medical journals like CancerAmerican Journal of Cardiology, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, and Annals of Surgery clearly show that patients with private insurance have better outcomes than similar patients on government insurance. It is highly likely that restrictions in access to important drugs, specialists and technology account for these differences.”

All one has to think of is the VA hospital system and its scandals to visualize the effect of government bureaucracy and its bureaucrats on a healthcare system.

Another example is the government bureaucracy’s inefficiency in building the web site for the federal health insurance exchanges.

Why are Americans not protesting? Why are Americans letting President Obama get away with destroying the healthcare system?

Medicaid’s problems are more complicated than Medicare’s problems as a result of Obamacare. I have a feeling the Democratic congress that voted for Obamacare is realizing they should have read the law and understood the law before they passed it.

Originally Medicaid was healthcare insurance for people receiving welfare. Obamacare expanded coverage to all people below 138% of the definition of poverty. In most states the yearly salary is below $38,000 per year.

The federal government originally subsidized the states at the 50% level for Medicaid costs. For the next year the subsidy is 100%. Then the federal government will decrease the matching rate to 90% and subsequently to 80%.

States cannot print money to cover their obligations. States must balance their budgets. One of the reasons thirty-seven (37) states opted out of the program is because they would have to increase state taxes even further. Somewhere along the way Medicaid coverage for the poor has to be revised. Medical care is poor and reimbursement is terrible. The poor cannot find doctors. It is unsustainable and medical care needs to be improved.

President Obama keeps on lying to the American public as he tries to protect his “legacy” legislation Obamacare. It has become a legacy history will prove he should not be proud of.

To declare on Medicare’s and Medicaid’s 50th anniversary that both of these programs are not in crisis is a bold faced lie.

Medicare and Medicaid will decimate the federal budget unless something positive is done about these two programs.

Medicare and Medicaid in their present form will crowd out funding for vital priorities like national defense, infrastructure security and homeland safety while failing to deliver on their promises of quality health care at an affordable price for seniors and the poor.

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

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President Obama: “Obamacare is driving Down the Federal Budget Deficit”

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

In July 2015 in a speech on the economy at American University, Barack Obama  made the following statements.

The cost of “health care is now the single-biggest factor driving down” the federal budget deficit.”

The American public is tired of listening to President Obama’s lies, mostly lies and half truths.

Politifact analyzes many of President Obama’s statements of fact and grades them with Pinocchio’s and scores these statements.

 

President Obama’s statements by ruling

  • True               119         (21%)   (119)
  • Mostly True   149          (26%)  (149)
  • Half True       151          (27%)  (151)
  • Mostly False    67         (12%)    (67)
  • False                70          (12%)   (70)
  • Pants on Fire     9             (2%)   (9)

 

Total                                    100%          565

Politifact determined that President Obama was telling the whole truth only 21% of the time.

He was mostly truthful 26% of the time. We have seen these mostly true statements over and over again.

A recent example is that he has not seen the private agreements in the Iran Nuclear Deal. He has not seen the agreement in writing but he has heard about it as John Kerry heard about it.

I consider this an act of deceiving the American public.

Half true, Mostly false, False and Pants on fire classifications add up to 53% of the time President Obama has used the bully pulpit of the President Of the United States to deceive the American people.

If you add the 26% of the mostly true statements to the rest of the deceptions you get an astonishing 79% of the time an attempt has been made to deceive the American public.

This brings me to President Obama’s statement at American University. “Obamacare is driving Down the Federal Budget Deficit”

Politifact gave this statement a mostly true.

The statement is mostly false in my opinion. The devil is always in the details. President Obama has mastered the details of deceptions.

“Partly because health care prices have been growing at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years, the growth in what health care costs the government is down,” Obama said in a speech about the economy last week at the American University.

The budget deficit is a result of revenue generated as compared to expenses. If a government spends more money than it takes in it has a deficit. The size of the deficit is a function of the deficit over the revenue. A deficit reduction from one year to another is that percentage difference one year to another. It is a percent and not a real amount.

A deficit reduction can result from many factors. One very important influence on the deficit is an increase in revenue resulting from an increase in Obamacare taxes. There has been a tremendous increase in taxes resulting from Obamacare. The effective tax rate as I have shown previously as a result of Obamacare is up to 50%.

Another influence on the deficit is a decrease in spending.

Medicare spending has decreased as a result of a very clever maneuver by the Obama administration. It claims it has increased reimbursement by around 2%.

Originally Medicare would pay 80% of the allowed reimbursement and the patients would be responsible for 20% of the fee allowed. The allowed fees have decreased. Fees previously allowed have been changed to non allowed fees.

Physicians’ claims for services might be for $200. Medicare might allow $80. Medicare would pay $64 and the patient or his Medigap coverage would be responsible for $16.

This has not changed. However the percentage of the claim allowed has been reduced and patients without Medigap insurance are responsible for the difference.

This is in addition to Medicare premiums and deductibles increasing yearly. Medigap premiums have also increased yearly.

Medicare recipients are experiencing greater out of pocket costs. Many cannot afford the cost and are not going to get medical care.

This has two potential effects. Office visit claims are reduced and Medicare payments are reduced. It decreases the deficit but could result in a sicker patient. Patient cannot afford the out of pocket expenses.

The result is Medicare experiences a decrease in the percentage it affects the federal deficit.

It could result in a valid decrease in office visits or an increase in sicker patients and higher Medicare expenses.

Obamacare might have helped decrease the resulting government deficit but it could result in increased spending in the future.

It did not result in better quality care.

All of this is very difficult for a casual observer to follow. Meanwhile, President Obama has established the media message that Obamacare is working to decrease the budget deficit.

Then pundits like Paul Krugman, can ridicule opponents of Obamacare for saying Obamacare will fail.

President Obama uses an argument that is a half-truth. However, it does not represent real numbers. He uses percentages.

In addition, many of the costs of Obamacare such as the web site and the website navigators are left out of the real costs of healthcare.

Other costs are left out of deficit reduction analysis such as the direct cost to the consumers and the direct loss of revenue to providers.

“Since the Affordable Care Act was first proposed, policymakers have been debating its potential effect not just on health care but on the economy as a whole. The bill effectively increases some types of spending, reduces other types and increases some taxes.”

 

Growth in national health spending, which had dropped to historic lows in recent years (deficit reduction), has snapped back and is set to continue at a faster pace over the next decade, federal actuaries said last week.

Senator Ron Johnson, member of the budget committee, discusses the real present and future costs of Obamacare. He also discusses President Obama’s misleading promises about Obamacare. Senator Johnson gives us a real understanding of the Obama administration’s manipulation of the facts.

https://youtu.be/gIN50dswlL0

Obamacare is a bad deal. It is destroying the medical profession. It is destroying the economy and America’s chances for economic growth.

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

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Obamacare 101!

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

I hope it is common knowledge that President Obama and his administration lie about the success of Obamacare.

The traditional media and especially the New York

Times simply regurgitates these absurd lies as published in the Obama administration’s press releases.

I have many smart, sophisticated friends who are physicians, lawyers, engineers and business professionals whose only source of the news is the New York Times.

They honestly believe that FOX news and the Wall Street Journal are entertainment vehicles of right wing conservatives. They think these organizations do not publish real news.

It is what the Obama administration and the New York Times told them.

FOX news and the Wall Street Journal get closer to the truth than the New York Times. They cover important stories of the day while many of the stories are not even mentioned in the traditional media.

The New York Times used to be my only source of news.  One day I realized the bias in almost every story in both the news and on the editorial pages.

I have been a critic of Obamacare from the beginning. It has been my opinion that Obamacare could not work. I have even suspected that President Obama wants to destroy medical care in America with Obamacare.

The construction of a massive bureaucracy to redistribute wealth for the benefit of the poor has not worked in the past because corruption, inefficiency and errors are usually built into the development of massive government bureaucracies.

Our federal government has never produced a well-oiled business devoid of inefficiency and corruption. Two recent examples are the TSA and the VA.

As medical care becomes more complex and as President Obama tries to control medical care the ability to develop a well-oiled machine becomes more elusive.

He does not understand that you cannot legislate morality especially by executive order. The bureaucracy and regulations make no sense to people he is trying to force to comply.

Government should be for the people and by the people. You have to provide incentive for people to enthusiastically operate within the systems created and encourage them to improve and take responsibility to improve the systems.

I have also presented my views on the value of the constitution and the freedoms we as Americans have under the constitution.

No one should be immune the law or the values of our constitution. President Obama and his administration are trying to force his ideology on the American people and trying to control our thinking by restricting our freedoms.

Many Americans do not pay attention to what is happening until it starts happening to them. Sometimes it is too late to change horrible laws and regulations.

Last week I received a note from a reader. The subject of the email said MANDATORY!

It is a simple explanation of the mechanics of the system imposed on us by Obamacare for everyone to understand.

Maybe some of my sophisticated friends and colleagues will start understanding the danger of Obamacare and why it cannot work.

President Obama’s Personal Experience: Obamacare 101!

Only weeks after leaving office on January 20, 2017, former President Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Troy the Plumber to come out and fix it.

Troy drives to President Obama’s new house, which is located in a very exclusive, gated community near Chicago where all the residents have a net income of way more than $250,000 per year.

Troy arrives and takes his tools into the house.  He is led to the guest bathroom that contains the leaky pipe under the sink.  Troy assesses the problem and tells President Obama that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes.  President Obama asks Troy how much it will cost.  Troy checks his rate chart and says, “$9,500.”

“What?  $9,500?” Obama asks, stunned, “But you said it’s an easy repair.  Michelle will whip me if I pay a plumber that much!”

Troy says, “Yes, but what I do is charge those who make more than $250,000 per year a much higher amount so I can fix the plumbing of poorer people for free.  This has always been my philosophy.  As a matter of fact, I lobbied the Democrat Congress, who passed this philosophy into law. Now all plumbers must do business this way.  It’s known as the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act of 2014’.  I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

In spite of that, Obama tells Troy there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Troy leaves.  Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book calling for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses in the area have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Troy ‘s price, Obama does nothing and the leak goes un-repaired for several more days.  A week later the leak is so bad President Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. Michelle is not happy as she has Oprah and guests arriving the next morning.  The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there’s a risk the room will flood, so Obama calls Troy and pleads with him to return.

Troy goes back to President Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, checks his new rate chart and says, “Let’s see, this will now cost you $21,000.”

President Obama quickly fires back, “What? A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!”

Troy explains, “Well, because of the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act,’ a lot of wealthier people are learning how to maintain and take care of their own plumbing, so there are fewer payers in the plumbing exchanges.  As a result, the price I have to charge wealthy people like you keeps rising. Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work by those who get it for free has skyrocketed!  There’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs, but the amount we get doesn’t cover our costs, especially paperwork and record keeping. This unfortunately has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, they’re not being replaced, and nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they can’t make any money at it. 

 I’m hurting too, all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their ‘fair share’.  On the other hand, why didn’t you buy plumbing insurance last December?  If you had bought plumbing insurance available under the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act,’ all this would have been covered by your policy.”

“You mean I wouldn’t have to pay anything to have you fix my plumbing problem?” asks Obama.

“Well, not exactly,” replies Troy. “You would have had to buy the insurance before the deadline, which has passed now. And, because you’re rich, you would have had to pay $34,000 in premiums, which would have given you a ‘silver’ plan, and then, since this would have been your first repair, you would have to pay up to the $21,000 deductible, and anything over that would have a $7,500 co-pay, and then there’s the mandatory maintenance program, which is covered up to 17.5%, so there are some costs involved.  Nothing is for free.”

“WHAT?” exclaims Obama.  “Why so much for a puny sink leak?”

With a bland look, Troy replies, “Well, paperwork, mostly, like I said.  And the internal cost of the program itself.  You don’t think a program of this complexity and scope can run itself, do you?  Besides, there are millions of folks with lower incomes than you, even many in the ‘middle class’, who qualify for subsidies that people like you must support.  That’s why they call it the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act’!  Only people who don’t make much money can afford it.  If you want affordable plumbing, you’ll have to give away most of what you have accumulated and cut your and Michelle’s income by about 90%.  Then you can qualify to GET your ‘Fair Share’ instead of GIVING it.”

“But who would pass a crazy act like the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act’?” exclaims the exasperated Obama.

After a sigh, Troy replies, “Congress… because they didn’t read it.”

       I hope this simple example helps all those sophisticated New York Times readers understand the dangers of Obamacare more clearly.

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

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