Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

“Obamacare Lite”

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Today we start what looks to be a long series on another atrocious Health Insurance bailout, what Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) calls “Obamacare Lite”

“The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House…”
–Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

I think David Koch or Stephen J. Hemsley must have paid Ms. Pelosi to write to Speaker Paul Ryan, “The American people and Members have a right to know the full impact of this legislation before any vote in Committee or by the whole House…”

(Where have I heard that before?)

I can think of nothing anyone could do that would more solidify the Republicans to pass this next looming disaster. Called the “American Health Care Act,” the bill has already made it through two committee hearings and is fast tracked to be passed about the day after tomorrow.

We're Here to HelpRather than wait for the Congressional Budget Office score and for outrage to build, Mr. Ryan wants to hurry the legislation through the committee stage in a few days. The reason for the rush should be obvious: the more you look at the Unaffordable American Health Care Act, the more unhealthy it appears.

Republicans have obviously learned a lot from the Democrats these last eight years.

(They hoped we wouldn’t notice. We noticed.)

Here’s a quick comparison between the Unaffordable Care Act and the Unaffordable American Health Care Act:

• ObamaCare is extremely complicated. The new House plan is extremely complicated. For example, doctors must choose from 140,000 codes (up from 18,000) when entering a diagnosis. Do you really think the new House plan changes that?
• ObamaCare (“if you like your plan you can keep it”) forced insurers to cancel policies. The new House plan will also push insurers to cancel policies.
• Obamacare has fewer options and inferior care. The new House plan will have more options and inferior care.
• ObamaCare will cost more and more and more. The new House plan will cost more and more and more. Oh, I know the argument that the “tax credits” won’t be as much as last year’s “tax subsidies.” Pfui. Health care cost Americans $2 trillion in 2008; Obamacare grew it every year so health care will cost Americans $3.6 trillion in 2017. Somebody has to pay that no matter what billing scheme Congress passes.

No matter what they say in Washington, the Unaffordable American Health Care Act is not a health care bill. The Unaffordable American Health Care Act is just another payment scheme.

“Under Obamacare [there was] dishonest accounting” Sen. Paul said. “They said the federal government will pay for Medicaid, 100 percent of it. But we have no money. We borrow a million dollars a minute and have a $20 trillion debt, so it is dishonest.”

He’s right.

No matter what the true believers think, Obamacare — the original Unaffordable Care Act — is disintegrating. It’s collapsing politically. It’s collapsing financially. It’s collapsing medically.

The new Unaffordable American Health Care Act needs to address those issues but most important, it needs to address [wait for it] American Health Care.

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
–Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Oh. Yeah. That was it.

Rand Paul and other conservatives call the GOP plan “Obamacare Lite” Unfortunately, they’re wrong. It’s not “lite” enough.

 

Insurance Pawns, I

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Here’s the column I was going to write today. It would use facts and data that have been reported for almost a decade to show, yet again, how the boosters of our current Unaffordable Care Act and the medical conglomerate it supports have become insurance pawns.

George Gobel was about six months older than my parents. He died at age 71 in 1991, shortly after undergoing heart surgery.

“Here’s the thing, Nancy Pelosi told George Stephanopoulis yesterday, “when we did the [Un]affordable Care Act, if everyone loved their care, if everyone loved it, which they didn’t, and their insurance, we would still have had to do it because the escalating cost of health care in our country were (sic) unsustainable to individuals, to families, to small business, to corporate America, and to the public sector…”


We “had three goals,” Rep. Pelosi continued. “One, to lower costs. The other, to expand benefits. And the third, to improve — increase access of many more people.”

Right.

Lower costs: In 2008, healthcare cost $7,889 per capita. In 2016 healthcare cost $10,345 per capita. In Rep. Pelosi’s world, jacking the costs by 31% is “lowering costs.”
In 2014, my own new plan cost 15% more (from $5,172 per year to $5,965) and covered less than my commercial, “substandard, predatory, and inadequate insurance.” In fact, my own individual premium was $2,502 at the beginning of the Obama Administration in 2009. Premiums soared to $7,239 on the Exchange in 2017.

Expand benefits: The Unaffordable Care Act added some coverage guarantees (you can buy insurance only during open enrollment) and premium guarantees (they will rise based on family structure, geography, the actuarial value of the benefit, age, and tobacco use).
Benefits don’t include bariatric (weight-loss) surgery, infertility treatment, alternative medicine including acupuncture, long-term care, foot care, eye exams, and more. And co-payments have skyrocketed. The co-payment for an asthma inhaler used to cost $7. Then it went to $30. Then $60. Now it’s $100, every month. Flexible spending account are limited to $2,500.

Increase access: 20.4 million people were forced at gunpoint to buy health insurance. My existing, commercial Blue Cross plan was dropped and I had to buy a new one on the Exchange.

For the record, the standard plan premiums on the Vermont Exchange were $6,880 for gold, up from $5,965 in 2014, $5,814 for silver, or $4,910 for bronze in 2016.

For the record, the standard plans on the Vermont Exchange had a $750 individual medical deductible for gold, a $2,000 individual medical deductible for silver, and a whopping $4,000 individual medical deductible for bronze in 2016, with additional deductibles for prescriptions and other services. The so-called standard “High Deductible” plans are worse.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is beating the horse again. “20 million people are about to lose their health insurance as the GOP ‘destroys’ the [Un]affordable Care Act,” she says.

Right.

Remember the flat out lies about the Unaffordable Care Act?

Caduceus• Mr. Obama said, Like your plan, keep your plan.
• Mr. Obama said, Like your doctor, keep your doctor.
• Ms. Pelosi said, Premiums will decline.
• Mr. Obama said, Premiums will drop on average $2,500.
• Mr. Obama said, Deductibles will go down.
• Ms. Pelosi said, We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.
• Kathleen Sibelius said, The Exchange website will work.
• Jonathan Gruber said, The Exchange website was secure.
• Ms. Pelosi said, Emergency room visits would decline.
• Ms. Warren said, Obamacare is the best thing that ever happened to this country.

Mr. Obama and the Congress knew the public wouldn’t buy this gift to the insurance companies, so they forced mandates and regulations and false guarantees on us. The only real guarantee was to drive up the cost of health care.

We’re going to make people buy it, Mr. Obama decreed about the false promise of the Unaffordable Care Act, and if they don’t buy it, they’re going to get penalized.

I simply do not understand why so many people, from insurance pawns like Ms. Warren to my liberal friends who support her, don’t get how bad this thing is. The news, the statistics, the facts have shown over and over that Obamacare is accelerating the demise of a system that has failed us.

“Make America Great Again!” Presidential candidate Donald Trump, 2016.
“America never stopped being great.” Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton February 27, 2016.
“The average American is actually economically in a lot of economic desperation, insecure. We have parts of this country that are — really, desolate…” Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, February 26, 2017.

Apparently the American protesters want their unaffordable premiums to climb more and more and more. American protesters want their unaffordable prescription drugs to cost more and more and more. American protesters want to their healthcare system to kill more patients than Iraq, the Maldives, Mexico, and 126 other countries. Apparently the American protesters want to buy the lies.

Those inconvenient truths, of course, don’t fit Ms. Warren and Ms. Pelosi’s story.

That’s the column I was going to write, until I realized the futility of using facts to counter the religious belief in Obamacare. I’ll just repeat a joke instead.

Squares Day…
True or false, George: experts say there are only seven or eight things in the world dumber than an ant.
George Gobel: Yes, and I think I voted for six of ’em.

Expressive

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Commuters are getting soaked in Florida. It ain’t raining.

Back in 2006, the American Association for State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Federal Highway Administration commissioned Future Financing Options to Meet Highway and Transit Needs. That and other studies going back to Robert Poole’s original paper for the Reason Foundation helped set up the market priced “express” lanes all over the country.

See, highway departments have tax-driven budgets.

Every politician says “I oppose solving these problems by raising taxes.”
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” –Will Rogers

Here in South Florida where 36-mile Krome Avenue project is now underway at a projected cost of $284.8 million, the Department of Transportation is always looking for ways to supplement its budget. They found it by adding toll lanes to the “free” Interstates. They call those “express lanes.” Most Floridians call them dangerous abominations.

Sen. Frank Artiles (R-Miami) filed SB 250 last month to do away with express lanes on all of Florida’s highways.

Yay, Frank!

Lane DivingThe bill will allow FDOT to collect tolls to pay off the bonds for the toll construction but the tolls must be eliminated after discharge of the project’s bond. It prohibits the creation of any new high occupancy toll lanes or express lanes. And it requires FDOT to change existing lanes so they are no longer high occupancy toll lanes or express lanes upon elimination of their tolls.

Here’s the biggie: Tolls may not be charged for use of an interstate highway where tolls were not charged as of July 1, 1997.

“The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.” –Grover Norquist

In Miami, FDOT turned two existing lanes into toll lanes which simply shrank the highway for everyone. It was another money grab.
Miami drivers are so frustrated, the new South Florida sport is “lane diving,” that is, drivers diving in and out of express lanes.

Express Lane Accident“At any moment there is a chance that somebody is going to dive into my lane not wanting to pay the fee for the express lanes from the beginning,” Mark Kaire told WFTS in Tampa this month. The Miami attorney represents 10 clients suing FDOT; all were had accidents caused by the orange lane dividers that separate the express lanes from the regular lanes.

By the way, FDOT got it wrong another way. The “closed” signs on I-95 Express have a black background with the “No Vacancy” part illuminated in yellow lights. The trouble is, Florida highway regulatory signs must be black and white to be legal so the Florida Highway Patrol can’t enforce the FDOT request to not use the lanes.

If SB 250 is successful, FDOT will lose the $27.6 million in revenue they made last year.

I hope Florida hasn’t heard of the Alameda freight corridor plans. They charge up to $30 fees “on each container that uses or could have used the corridor.” I can just imagine the glee at that idea within FDOT.

“Let’s see. Harper drives up Krome Avenue to avoid our tolls on Florida’s Turnpike or the I-95 Express Lanes,” goes that thought balloon. “But he should take the turnpike, so we’ll deduct that fee from his SunPass.”

12,192 crashes occurred in the express lanes in Miami-Dade County alone but there were only five fatalities.

The Florida Department of Transportation, of course, maintains that the lanes are safe.

“I truly believe that it’s only a money-making scheme,” Sen. Artiles told Local 10 News. Me, too, Frank. Me, too.

 

Politics and Art

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Art-Less, a special “no immigrant” exhibit, starts today at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. All work that was created by or donated by immigrants will not be displayed until the President’s Day weekend. Curators have removed paintings and shrouded cases with black cloth. The initiative highlights immigrants’ impact on the world of art.

Woman SpringsImmigrants to the United States created about one-fifth of the work in the Davis Museum‘s permanent galleries. Their collection includes work by Swedish portraitist Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller who emigrated to the United States in 1794, Willem de Kooning who came here from the Netherlands in 1926, Italian sound sculptor Harry Bertoia who moved to Detroit in 1930, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy who moved to Chicago to become the director of the New Bauhaus in 1937, and more.

“We have removed or cloaked these works to demonstrate symbolically what the Davis Museum would look like without their contributions to our collections and to Wellesley College, and to thereby honor their many invaluable gifts,” the museum told CNN.

Of course, that art was created by people who entered the country legally — Walter Paepcke, the Chairman of the Container Corporation of America, invited Mr. Moholy-Nagy, for example — so Wellesley’s political statement is at best mixed.