Tag Archives: Obamacare

The Numbers Just Keep Growing

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about the number of people who were enrolled in ObamaCare without their knowledge.

The article reports:

In exchange for gift cards, millions of Americans were unwittingly signed up for Obamacare by brokers who scalped their vital information and enrolled them in plans where premiums were paid by the American people, a research group says.  

“The government was sending massive checks to insurance companies who were making windfall profits on behalf of people who didn’t use any health care,” Brian Blase, president of Paragon Health Institute, a healthcare policy group told Just The News.

A 2021-2022 expansion of Affordable Care Act subsidies, passed through budget reconciliation, made coverage fully subsidized for individuals claiming incomes in a specific range. Paragon Health Institute investigated and estimated that by 2025, at least 6.4 million more people were enrolled in these zero-premium plans than were actually eligible.

Zero premium means the enrollee did not pay for the plan — it was paid via subsidies funded by taxpayers.

The money went to the insurance companies who never had to deal with claims from people who didn’t know they were signed up!

The article notes:

Many of the enrollees never realized they had coverage because the government paid the full premium directly to insurers, which in turn paid substantial commissions to the enrolling entities. In 2024, 40% of people in fully subsidized plans used no healthcare services at all—2.5 times higher than typical rates—resulting in significant government payments to insurers for largely unused coverage.

Making matters worse, the insurance companies aren’t even providing value, says Blase. “85% of all the [insurance company] revenue now comes from the taxpayer, so they don’t have incentives to offer products that are low-priced, that appeal to patients.”

“Their primary client now is the United States Treasury, and they’re so dependent on the federal government for their revenue source, that’s why insurance companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to continue this gravy train of these enhanced Obamacare subsidies.”

The article concludes:

One remedy for Medicaid, as well as other programs, is to shut off the federal spigot. According to Blase, “It’s the essential step. The federal government is bankrolling the fraud, waste and abuse in the states, and as long as states can draw on an open checkbook from Washington, they don’t have incentives to make sure that dollars are appropriately spent.”

Referencing the daycare fraud unfolding in Minnesota, Blase criticized the federal government’s lack of oversight. “We shouldn’t have to rely on amateur investigators going into daycare finding out that there’s no children there. The government has access to this data, they know where there are areas that have seen explosive spending.” 

Blase also sounded the alarm on states like New York and California. In New York, there has been an unprecedented spike in Medicaid-funded home health aides, who are often family members taking care of relatives, which, Blase says, also creates fertile ground for fraud. In California, fraud has found a home within the hospice care industry. 

We need a thorough audit on every dollar the federal government sends to the states and to insurance companies.

Why Americans Don’t Trust The Mainstream Media

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On Wednesday, The American Thinker posted a list of questions the mainstream media never asks Democrats.

Here are the some of questions:

What do you think of Arctic Frost where the Biden administration’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, illegally appointed Get Trump special counsel Jack Smith and Judge James Boasberg secretly issued subpoenas to target over 400 Republicans and groups, including Senators, to see what they said about the 2020 election and protest?

…Isn’t it legal to protest an election and have private conversations about it?

Isn’t it weaponization of the Justice Department when they use it in this fashion to target political opponents?

What would the reporting have been if Democrats had been targeted in this fashion after they protested the 2000, 2004, and 2106 elections? I am sure there would have been absolute outrage and wall-to-wall reporting. 

Didn’t Trump ask on Jan. 6 that the protesters march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol?

Why have those words been buried in most reports?

How is that fomenting violence and an insurrection? 

Do you believe that people and families who make over $200,000 should have their health care paid for by taxpayers?

Isn’t that many of the people you are fighting for when you hold the country hostage and keep the government closed?

Why should the rest of us support people and families who make more than almost all of us?

Didn’t Democrats vote that these subsidies would be temporary and end on Dec. 31, 2025 when they passed them and said that COVID was the reason?

Why are they going back on their promise? 

Why do Democrats continue to claim that Obamacare has made health care more affordable when prices have skyrocketed since the bill passed in 2010?

Should mentally and physically able people be required to work or volunteer to get government benefits? If not, why not? After all, Democrats voted for that in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president.

Isn’t it better for people to start moving up the economic ladder instead of being relegated to poverty for their entire lives by being dependent on the government? 

Isn’t capitalism the best method to reduce poverty instead of socialism?
It is a shame that young people have been taught that socialism is a good system.

Didn’t poverty hit record lows during Trump’s term with lower taxes, fewer regulations, low energy prices, and low inflation?

Why do Democrats continue to lie that Trump’s tax rate cuts only helped the rich and cost the government trillions when the facts show the opposite is true? 

Please follow the link to the article for the rest of the questions. I would love to hear the answers!

Misleading The Public About The Shutdown

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On Friday, Chris Bray posted an article at Substack about the misleading reporting on the current government shutdown.

The article shows an X post from Senator Amy Klobuchar:

The article explains:

The Galls are among roughly 22 million ACA marketplace enrollees — about 92% of all enrollees — who face the prospect of higher premiums in 2026, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.

Democrats are pushing Republicans to extend the enhanced subsidies that make enrollees’ health premiums cheaper, as part of a deal to end the federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1. Republicans have said they want to negotiate any extension of ACA subsidies outside of legislation that would reopen the government.

See the premise? Subsidies “make enrollees’ health premiums cheaper.”

The article points out that the subsidies don’t go to the people paying for the health insurance premiums–they go to the insurance companies (who oddly enough make donations to candidates’ campaign funds).

The article explains:

They (subsidies) make enrollees’ health premiums divided, splitting the cost between the person paying for the insurance and the taxpayers who fund the subsidy, but they flatly don’t make the premiums cheaper. It’s like you go to the supermarket and buy filet mignon, and it only costs you a dollar — wow, filet mignon is so affordable now! — but the supermarket bills the federal government for $25 every time you make that purchase, and the government gets the $25 from you as taxes. The thing costs what it costs. Subsidies don’t make it cheaper. They just hide the expense at the point of purchase. Subsidies shift and obscure.

Why should insurance companies work to be more efficient when the government will support them? This is very similar to what happened to college tuition when student loans became the norm.

The article concludes:

The ACA subsidies are only $91 billion a year, though, so it’s practically nothing.

See also this 2023 CBO report, which projects explosive growth in federal healthcare costs over the next decade.

We’re not having a debate about giving money to Bill and Shelly so they can enjoy their early retirement. We’re having a debate about how much money the federal government — meaning you, if you pay taxes — is going to give to private corporations. Congressional Democrats are servicing their corporate clients.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”

Using Their Time Wisely

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about how Republicans are using the time they have during the government shutdown.

The article reports:

Republicans have begun to articulate the beginnings of a healthcare reform plan as Democrats keep the government shut down with the nominal aim of addressing rising costs. 

The shutdown itself is nearing a record and shows no signs of ending in the near future. Republicans have accused Democrats of seeking to reinstate funding for illegal immigrant healthcare while Democrats have insisted they want to lower costs for all Americans.

While the Democrats’ gambit does not appear poised to pay off in the form of tangible concessions, it does seem to have pressured the GOP into at least developing the beginnings of a reform plan.

“This is a funding fight, not a healthcare fight,” House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted this month on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “But there’s the Obamacare COVID-era subsidies that expire December 31 and there’s a lot of heated debate that we’ve got to have in the House and Senate to figure out what to do about that.”

The article concludes:

“So they are, you know, indicative of the super-sized business model and pushing small businesses […] out of business,” he said. “Getting small business back into the marketplace is both smaller insurance companies and making sure that your hometown physician and your hometown pharmacist are able to service their citizens, is one of the best things to do.”

So far, however, talk of reform appears contingent on an end to the government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., for his part, stated this month that he was willing to discuss healthcare reform with Democrats, but would not do so under budget duress.

“I’m not sure how much clearer I can be, but let me give it a try: I am willing to sit down with Democrats to discuss the growing unaffordability and unsustainability of Obamacare,” he posted on X. “It’s a system they created, but I’m happy to hear them out. Heck, I’m even willing to give them a vote. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. You name it. But there’s one condition: End the Schumer Shutdown. I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom. Period.

Frankly, Obamacare needs to go away, and the government needs to get out of healthcare. Obamacare was designed to fail and lead us to a single-payer healthcare system similar to Britain and Canada. There is a reason many Canadians come to America for their healthcare needs.

One Possible Solution To The Cost Of Health Insurance

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On Wednesday, Stephen Moore posted an article at The Patriot Post about the healthcare aspect of the current government shutdown.

The article notes:

The government shutdown has focused debate on the vast sum ($136 billion in 2025, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office) that the federal government spends to annually subsize continually skyrocketing Obamacare health insurance premiums. The Wall Street Journal reports that regardless of how that fiscal tug-of- war turns out, health insurance premiums paid by Americans are expected to rise another 8% or 9% next year.

The mega-health insurers are leading the charge for more subsidies because this money lands right in their pockets. Their profits and stock values have been soaring while the rest of us struggle to pay the rising tab.

One reason health care costs are rising at two to three times the cost of everything else is that the entire insurance market is dysfunctional. Most Americans pay high monthly premiums (or the government pays for them) for coverage they often don’t use.

In 2024, 11.7 million people, more than one-third of those covered by Obamacare, had no medical claims. They, or taxpayers, paid a lot in premiums — for nothing.

But the whole idea of insurance is to protect your family from major expenses — not minor ones. That’s why we have fire insurance on our homes — to protect against the risk of the total loss of your property.

We need a system much more sensible and less costly for patients and taxpayers. We should be encouraging insurance plans with low premiums that cover major “catastrophic” medical expenses but leave smaller expenses — like checkups or minor surgery — to be paid by policyholders directly.

Such policies — known as catastrophic health insurance plans — have been available for several decades. Most of us would be better off financially if we signed up for these plans. With low premiums and coverage for major medical expenses, they are a win-win for families.

Even as regulated by Obamacare, this coverage charges premiums that are only about half the amount of other Obamacare plans. For example, Forbes recently analyzed the premiums of “77 catastrophic health plans nationwide.” The average premium for a 50-year old member is $443 per month, or $5,316 per year, compared to almost $10,000 for the average Obamacare plan, according to Paragon Health Institute calculations.

The article notes that Obamacare makes catastrophic health insurance plans illegal. Many in Congress are quite happy to move Americans to government healthcare and government insurance (as long as they can have their private insurance).

The article concludes:

Sometimes in life the best solution is the simplest one: Stop the hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful subsidies, the skyrocketing premiums and the “one size fits all” plans that so many of us do not use, want or need — and instead legalize pro-growth catastrophic health insurance plans for all. Stop fattening the checks of the fat and happy health insurance conglomerates like UnitedHealth, who resist paying honest claims but force you to write monthly checks for insurance you don’t use or need.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The Real Purpose

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On Monday, Newsbusters posted an article about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which has turned out to be anything but affordable.

The article reports:

Hold on to your britches because you’re not going to believe this one. The Washington Post Editorial Board just admitted that the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” one the most notorious pieces of Obama-era legislation foisted upon consumers by legislators and the liberal media as the saving grace of American health care, turned out to be an expensive mess.

The Post tried to play both sides of the fence in the ongoing government shutdown stand off with Republicans and Democrats, the latter of which demanded “Republicans agree to extend the Covid-era insurance subsidies without proposing any way to pay for it.” Then The Post ran one of the biggest plot twists ever to hit American politics in the last 15 years: “The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] was never actually affordable.”

Nope, your eyes didn’t deceive you. The architects of former President Barack Obama’s 2010 “signature achievement,” wrote The Post, “assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.”

Gee, that’s an awfully different tone than the liberal rag was striking in 2024 when the editorial board celebrated how “Obamacare is working brilliantly — for now.” That’s despite the fact that premiums for individual market plans doubled in costs and “the per enrollee cost of Medicaid expansion is nearly 60 percent greater than what experts projected,” as the Paragon Health Institute summarized in an October 2024 study.

The article concludes:

But now, the years of nonstop pro-Obamacare gaslighting and narrative-twisting that got spewed out of The Post’s printers seems to have been undone by, er, The Post itself:

This is how entitlement programs work. Once you habituate people to some generous government handout, they grow dependent on it. And it becomes politically perilous, if not impossible, to fully claw it back.”

That is how the Democrat Party works. Install entitlement, blame Republicans when anyone tries to limit it in any way.

Obamacare was never supposed to work–its purpose was to bring America closer to government-controlled (and allocated) healthcare. Why should Americans be able to get surgery quickly when needed when Britain and Canada wait months and sometimes years for necessary surgery. We knew someone in Britain that died during his second year of waiting for heart surgery. We don’t want that in America.

What Has Happened To Health Care Costs?

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Economist Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” We have seen what the government takeover of the student loan program did to the cost of college tuition. Now we are seeing what the government takeover of healthcare has done to healthcare and healthcare insurance costs.

On September 29th, The American Thinker reported:

In 2009, when the average cost of an individual health policy was under $100 and family coverage was under $400, democrats decided that health insurance cost too much, and too many didn’t have coverage.

Therefore, without any Republican support, they wrote a 1,000-page bill. They called the bill the “Affordable Care Act,” a misnomer intended to mislead the American people into supporting the bill. The mostly compliant media went along and chastised those who dared question the bill.

…In fact, the bill took away freedom of choice and reduced competition. It got rid of lifetime and annual limits, so small and medium-sized companies couldn’t afford the risk. There was also no incentive for medical providers to control costs.

As prices soared, instead of limiting the scope of their promises about how the government would fix healthcare costs, the Democrats have instead worked to increase subsidies and increase the income levels of individuals and families who can get the subsidies. They needed more people to sign up to make it seem as if the ACA is popular and necessary. This just increased premiums even more and made insurance more unaffordable.

Something the Democrats intentionally left out of the bill that could have potentially reduced premiums and medical costs was any limits on punitive, not compensatory, damages in lawsuits. They left it out because Democrats receive significant sums of money from trial lawyers. Consider that Democrats put severe limits on profit margins for insurers, reducing the number of competitors, but they refuse to put any limits on lawsuits. The potential of unlimited lawsuit damages clearly raises prices.

The article notes the results of this law:

After 15 years of the ACA or Obamacare, the average cost of individual coverage is over $600 per month, up over 500% and family coverage is up to over $2,000 per month, which is up over 400%. Meanwhile, overall inflation was 41.60% for this time period, even including the disastrous Biden years.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. It’s time to get the government out of healthcare and let doctors do their jobs.

A Necessary Step

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There were a lot of reasons for the number of people illegally crossing our southern border during the Biden administration. Among the illegals were people fleeing violence in their home countries, people simply looking for a better, more peaceful life, people looking to take advantage of America’s social safety net, and people simply looking for work to earn money to send home. America’s social safety net was a part of what drew people here, but it was not all of the reason. President Trump decided to do away with at least that reason.

On Wednesday, Chronicles Magazine reported the following:

The Trump White House has successfully flooded the zone in its first 30 days, flummoxing its opponents with a pace and scale even the most ardent anti-Trumper could not have expected. Among all the moves Trump has taken to combat illegal immigration, however, one executive order signed last week stands out and could be the game changer the country so desperately needs.

President Trump’s  order to end federal spending on those here illegally is one of the most meaningful steps taken to end America’s long-running problems with illegal immigration.

“The surge in illegal immigration, enabled by the previous Administration, is siphoning dollars and essential services from American citizens while state and local budgets grow increasingly strained,” the order states. “With this Executive Order, President Trump is ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interests of American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

How many dollars are there in question? A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last year targeted federal expenditures on illegal aliens during the four years of the Biden administration. The CBO claimed that that the federal government spent $177 billion in benefits for adult illegal aliens and their children who were admitted under Biden. Add that to another $101 billion of other federal spending on illegals, and CBO’s figure comes to $277 billion.

The report further specified where that money goes. Among the biggest categories were Obamacare premium tax credits ($59 billion), Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit ($43 billion), Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP ($40 billion), and food stamps ($15 billion). This only includes federal spending. A study in 2023 found the annual net cost of illegal immigration to the United States at the federal, state, and local levels, is $150.7 billion.  

Is there any question that this needs to stop now?

The Damage To Our Economy That Is Still Possible

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President Biden will spend the last five months of his presidency as a lame duck. That is if he is not forced out by the 25th Amendment (which I consider highly unlikely). Because he remains as President, he can still do considerable financial damage to America by promoting certain policies.

On July 15th, The Federalist posted an article about the Biden administration’s latest healthcare proposal. The Biden administration proposal would extend a “temporary” increase in Obamacare subsidies, create new federal spending and undermine the current healthcare system. The higher subsidies were part of the Democrats’ partisan “stimulus” bill in early 2021. These subsidies were then extended for three years in 2022. These subsidies will expire at the same time the Trump tax relief package expires.

The Congressional Budge Office (CBO) reports that this increase in subsides would result in a “3.5 million decrease in enrollment in employment-based coverage.” The budget office explained that “the decline in employment-based coverage would be larger under a permanent [subsidy] extension,” because “more employers would change their offers of health insurance if the policy became permanent.” In other words, if you like your plan, tough luck — your employer could cancel it for you.

The article at The Federalist also notes the although extending the subsides would increase the number of insured Americans by 3.4 million, under the proposal 3.5 million Americans would lose employer-based coverage.

The article further notes that from the Exchanges’ launch in 2014 through 2021, only households with incomes under four times the poverty level ($124,800 for a family of four this year) qualified for subsidies.This year that 750 percent-of-poverty threshold stands at $112,950 for an individual, and $234,000 for a family of four.

The administration has also allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to qualify for subsidies. You don’t even have to be an American to get money from the government! The DACA policy will cost $9 billion in the coming decade plus $1.6 billion in interest costs.

Congress needs to say “NO” to any Biden administration proposals that increase the deficit. Any members of Congress that agree to spending more money during the end of this lame duck presidency need to be voted out of office.

How Obamacare Works

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Today, The Washington Examiner posted an article about Obamacare. Yes, it is still with us thanks to the duplicity of the Republican Congress.

This is the current status of Obamacare:

Americans have until Jan. 15 to secure healthcare coverage through the Obamacare exchanges. This year’s open enrollment period has resulted in more people signing up than ever before.

More than 11.5 million people have enrolled in the exchanges as of Dec. 15, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s an 18% increase from the same time last year. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra boasted that the “unprecedented results” were the result of “unprecedented investments” in the program. Those “investments” include billions of dollars worth of new subsidies that have lowered what people have to pay out of pocket for coverage. But those subsidies simply mask the underlying cost of coverage, which has been rising for years. Ultimately, future taxpayers will foot the bill.

As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which was signed into law in March 2021, Democrats made Obamacare subsidies more generous and extended them to enrollees making more than 400% of the federal poverty level — about $111,000 for a family of four — for the first time. Those expanded subsidies were scheduled to sunset at the end of 2022, but the Inflation Reduction Act extended them until Dec. 31, 2025. Last year alone, these more generous subsidies cost taxpayers $30 billion — about 50% more than the Congressional Budget Office originally estimated.

The article concludes:

In other words, the “unprecedented” number of signups during this open enrollment period isn’t a function of the affordability or quality of Obamacare plans. It’s a function of Democrats paying just about anyone to sign up.

Obamacare was the Democrats’ step toward socialized medicine. Socialized medicine results in poor care and long waits. Many Americans understand that and would not support a transition to socialized medicine, thus, Obamacare. We need enough people in Congress who care about the American people and their medical care to get rid of this abomination. That will probably take at least one more election.

It’s Time To Return To Single-Issue Bills

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Yesterday Townhall posted an article about some of the items included in the coronavirus relief bill proposed by the Democrats. The bill is 591 pages long, and needless to say, is not all relevant to coronavirus relief.

The article lists some of the items:

The 591-page document includes another round of stimulus checks. Individuals making less than $75,000 will receive a $1,400 check. Couples earning less than $150,000 will receive a combined $2,800. As an individual or couple’s income increases, their stimulus amount decreases.

Of the $1.9 trillion, $350 billion will go towards states and local governments. Unemployment benefits will provide Americans with $400 a week on top of their state-issued benefits.

Under this bill, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is replenished with $7 billion in additional funding. The Emergency Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program will also receive $15 billion.

In addition, the bill ups the child tax credit to $3,600 for children six and under. That credit drops to $3,000 for kids ages seven to 17.

There are, however, a number of questionable liberal wishlist items in the bill. If passed and signed into law, the federal minimum wage – which currently sits at $7.25-an-hour – would increase to $15-an-hour over the next five years.

…Democrats set aside $50 million for “family planning.” As of now, the Hyde Amendment is in place, which bars taxpayer funds from being used for abortion. This, however, could set the stage for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment down the road. If this bill is passed and Congress later repeals Hyde, money that was funded in this relief bill could theoretically be used for abortion.

…Although higher education has teetered because of the virus, Howard University is the only higher education facility that would be given money to recoup funds lost during the pandemic. Gallaudet University is listed in the bill, but it’s a specialized university for students who are hard of hearing.

It is important to note that Vice President Kamala Harris is an alumna of Howard University, which is an unlikely coincidence.

…Another $135 million would be allocated for the arts and humanities, likely museums that received funding during the CARES ACT.

It is time to bring back legislation that deals with one issue at a time. Some of the items in this bill will actually do damage rather than solve problems. For instance, the $15 a hour minimum wage is likely to result in the closure of any small business that was not closed by the government shutdowns. This relief bill is looking like the Obamacare bill which became law in 2010. That law cost the Democrats their majorities in Congress. If this relief bill is passed without Republican votes, the result will probably be the same.

 

We’ve Seen This Play Before

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the plans the Biden administration has to get immigration reform through Congress. This is not common-sense immigration reform, which would be welcomed by both parties–this is reform that will seriously hurt Americans economically.

The article reports:

Beware… it is likely the JoeBama amnesty plan will pass through the Senate in exactly the same way as Obamacare.  Through manipulation of the budgetary reconciliation process.

According to numerous outlets the JoeBama amnesty legislation has been created by the White House for congressional approval.

The House will likely pass such a proposal along party lines, just like ObamaCare; and then it goes to the Senate where Chuck Schumer will likely do the same reconciliation process to pass amnesty with a simple majority.

By stripping out a budget bill of substance, or using a COVID relief bill, the Senate amnesty bill will be inserted. It will pass along party lines and then be reconciled with the same amnesty bill from the House. The conniving leftists will do anything regardless of public support.

Watch carefully for them to move the execution of this up right after the House sends the impeachment article to the Senate. They will use the period between receiving the article and the February 8th trial to pull-off this amnesty scheme when everyone is distracted. It’s how they roll. Remember, at the time Harry Reid passed Obamacare (Dec ’09 reconciled in 2010) it was opposed by 74% of the voting electorate. They did it anyway… Expect the same here.

The bill is the US Citizenship Act of 2021. It is summarized in four pages (here). Some of the highlights include such things as creating a roadmap to citizenship for illegal aliens, making it easier for foreign graduates of American universities that have advanced STEM degrees to stay in the country, and keeping families together (while expanding the definition of family in order to make it more hospitable to LGBTQ+ families). The summary of the bill sounds very benign, but I suspect that as the details come out, that may not be the case. The fact that the Democrats feel the need to jam it through without any Republican votes is very telling. Republicans are much more likely to support bad laws written by Democrats than Democrats are likely to support bad laws written by Republicans.

 

 

Where Your Tax Money Goes

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Just the News posted an article today about ‘improper payments’ made by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2019.

The article reports:

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just the News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s. 

This week, our award goes to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for spending $106.7 billion on improper payments during 2019.

Improper payments are defined under federal law as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.”

The article continues:

According to a new report from Open the Books, improper payments from the Medicaid and Medicare programs have increased significantly in the past decade, in part due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act — also called Obamacare. In 2011, when the act was signed into law, Congress declared it would help pay for the expensive plan by rooting out waste, fraud and corrupt spending within the Medicare and Medicaid sections of the agency.

Health and Human Services is the leading source of improper payments in the entire U.S. government, dwarfing by a magnitude of multiples the second-worst offender, which in 2019 was the Department of Treasury.

You would think that if they realized that they were ‘improper payments’, they would be able to get the money back. You would be wrong, but you might think that.

The article explains:

Once the taxpayer money is mistakenly spent, it is very hard for the government to claw it back. Of the $106.7 billion HHS squandered on improper payments in fiscal year 2019, it has been able to identify for recovery only $14.1 billion, or about 13.2% of the total. Of that $14.1 billion, the department has been able to “recapture” about $12.1 billion.

We need to put a bunch of accountants in charge of our government. Maybe they could straighten this mess out.

 

Critiquing The Debate

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On Friday, Breitbart posted a list of the eleven biggest lies Joe Biden told during his debate with President Trump. I am simply posting the list. Please follow the link to the article to read the details.

The list:

  1. No One Lost Their Insurance Under ObamaCare
  2. America was Cozy with Hitler
  3. I Never Opposed Fracking
  4. I Didn’t Oppose Trump’s China Travel Ban
  5. Illegal Aliens Show Up For Asylum Hearings After Being Caught and Released
  6. Raising the Minimum Wage Does Not Hurt Anyone
  7. No One Brought Up Biden’s Troubling Ukraine Conflicts of Interest During Impeachment
  8. Trump Never Told Putin to Stop Meddling in American Elections
  9. Hunter’s Emails are Part of a “Russian Plan”
  10. Trump Refused to Take ‘Responsibility’ for the Coronavirus
  11. Trump Has Alienated ‘All’ Our Allies

Politicians need to remember that in the age of the Internet, it is very easy to compare current comments and policy positions with past comments and policy positions. Some of these lies can be researched easily with a quick Internet search. Some of these lies simply go against common sense. At any rate, the truth seemed to elude Joe Biden during the debate.

 

The Misuse Of The Hearings

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Yesterday CNS News posted an article about a statement by Senator Dick Durbin on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

The article reports:

“Take a look at the composition, the Republican composition, on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Durbin said on Sunday:

Let’s start with Texas. Senator Cornyn is in a very tight race for re-election. He’s also in a state where there are 1.7 million people who will lose their health insurance when Amy Coney Barrett votes to eliminate that program, another 12 million who have pre-existing conditions.

Now you just go down the table there. I should have started with the Chairman, Lindsey Graham, in the state of South Carolina. He has 242,000 who will lose their insurance if Amy Coney Barrett eliminates the Affordable Care Act and 2 million who have pre-existing conditions.

Iowa, Joni Ernst, 187,000 will lose their insurance. North Carolina (Sen. Tillis), 500,000 will lose their insurance.

So you want to know the point we’re going to make? We’re making a point that this not only has an impact on the lives of so many innocent Americans, it could impact the members of this committee.

…And what we’re trying to drive home to the American people is this makes a difference in your life as to whether or not you have health insurance, whether or not, with a preexisting condition you can afford health insurance.

And we believe that, once the Republican voters across this country wake up to the reality of the strategy, many of them are going to say to their senators, listen, this is not what we bargained for. We may be conservative, but we’re not crazy. Our family needs health insurance protection,” Durbin said.

I mean, it’s understandable people are skeptical of the Republican message and are fearful of what’s going to happen if this Supreme Court nominee goes through and threatens their very health insurance.

There are a few problems with these statements. First of all, if the Supreme Court is making laws, then the legislative branch has neglected its responsibilities. Secondly, a confirmation hearing is not the appropriate place to grandstand and play politics. Senators have a job to do. They need to do it without a lot of political posturing. Thirdly, the confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice should not be about specific issues–it needs to be about the qualifications of the nominee.

Just for the record, there is a replacement for ObamaCare. It includes taking care of people with pre-existing conditions.

Just a note about the Affordable Care Act that the Democrats seem so intent on defending. In 2017 Forbes reported:

The data allow us to break down the pre- and post-ACA changes by age, individual vs. family, and plan type. Overall, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) premiums actually decreased 4.6% in the four years before the ACA reforms came into effect (that is, from 2009 to 2013), but increased 46.4% in the first four years under the ACA. Point-of-Service (POS) premiums decreased 14.9% before the ACA, and increased a whopping 66.2% afterwards. Premiums for the more common Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans increased 15% in the four years before the ACA, and 66.2% afterwards.

Why in the world would we want to continue that?

 

President Trump And Health Care

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Yesterday Dr. Ben Carson posted an opinion piece at Fox News about President Trump’s policies regarding healthcare.

Dr. Carson notes:

The Trump administration has an impressive story to tell on health care. For nearly four years, President Trump has championed policies that brought desperately needed reforms to American health care.

Despite the media’s refusal to attribute proper credit, the president has delivered tangible health care results on behalf of the American people – resulting in better care, more choice, and lower costs.

The historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act removed the widely unpopular individual mandate tax penalty in ObamaCare. The ObamaCare mandate forced Americans into buying health insurance.

Unfortunately, this mandate disproportionately harmed middle-class and lower-income Americans for years, coercing those individuals into purchasing care that they did not want.

As a result of President Trump’s substantial reforms to ObamaCare, premiums declined over the last two years for the first time since the flawed law was enacted.

A staple of President Trump’s approach to health care reform is rooted in returning the choice to individuals as opposed to government bureaucrats.

One of the prime examples of this is President Trump expanding health care options for terminal patients. Every year more than 1 million Americans die from a terminal illness.

In 2018, President Trump signed “Right to Try” legislation, allowing certain experimental drugs to be administered to the terminally ill who exhausted all other options. President Trump moved the government out of the way and gave Americans who had seemingly no hope a chance to survive.

Over the summer, President Trump worked to solve a problem that had sadly proved too difficult for his predecessors – lowering prescription drug prices. The president signed an executive order ensuring the United States pays the lowest price available in economically advanced countries for Medicare Part B drugs.

This order is finally reducing the inflated prices that so many Americans pay for Part B medications. Even before that specific action, prescription drugs saw their largest price decrease in over a half century in 2018 thanks to President Trump’s commonsense approach – his executive order will only bolster that progress. Where previous administrations ran into the same old obstacles, President Trump cleared them out of the way and delivered for the American people.

Obamacare did not work. If you liked our doctor or our insurance plan, you couldn’t keep them, despite what President Obama promised. Heath insurance premiums skyrocketed. The penalty for not having health insurance hurt people financially. The worse part of ObamaCare was requiring people to pay for healthcare options they neither needed nor would use–young men in their twenties were paying for pediatric dental care and women in their sixties were paying for pre-natal care. The only people who profited were the insurance companies  who helped write the bill (their numbers would go up because everyone would be required to have insurance). Obamacare was a failure, and President Trump is beginning to repair some of the damage it caused. Look for Joe Biden to praise Obamacare at the debate tonight.

Who Is Writing The Democrat Party Platform?

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Bernie Sanders is not the Democrat presidential candidate. He might have been, but the Democrat political establishment has blocked his nomination twice with backroom deals. However, the proposed party platform seems to have a lot of his ideas included. The Democrats blocked his nomination because they felt that his ideas were too far out of the mainstream for him to be elected, so now they are sneaking his ideas into a platform that very few people will actually read. Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about that platform.

The article reports:

The proposed Democrat platform would expand asylum for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, freeing them into the interior of the nation while they await their hearings. Gallup research from 2018 finds that nearly 160 million migrants around the world would move to the U.S. if given the opportunity — five million of which are located in Central America.

Likewise, the plan ends construction of the border wall, halts deportations for illegal aliens, ends all travel bans on national security-risk nations, China, Europe, Brazil, and Iran, ends agreements between the U.S. and Central America to reduce illegal immigration, and ends most federal detention of illegal aliens.

The plan also calls for:

    • Restarting DACA for young illegal aliens
    • Restraining DAPA for the illegal parents of DACA illegal aliens
    • Rescinding Trump’s “national emergency” at the border
    • Increasing refugee resettlement
    • Gives Obamacare to DACA illegal aliens
    • Forces Americans to subsidize welfare-dependent legal immigration
    • Expands the scandal-plagued U visa program
    • Restarts employment-based green card system

The massive expansion of illegal and legal immigration — in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and more than 2.5 million legal immigrants and foreign workers added to the U.S. population every year — would come as more than 35 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.

This is not a recipe for American success. This is a recipe for creating a permanent underclass of people who will be forever dependent on the government and eventually bankrupt the country (see Cloward-Piven Strategy). Every illegal alien that enters the country depresses the wages of Americans in low-skilled jobs. A country needs to have control of its borders in order to protect the rights and futures of those who live there.

Who is writing the Democratic Party platform, and what is their goal?

This Decision Does Not Protect Women

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Yesterday The National Review posted an article about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding Louisiana’s law regarding doctors at abortion clinics. The law in question required doctors at abortion clinics to have hospital admitting privileges. Because women can die from legal abortions, hospital admitting privileges are important. The Supreme Court struck down this requirement, putting the lives of women at risk. Chief Justice Roberts was the deciding vote on the issue, disappointing many Americans who expected him to be a conservative voice on the Court.

The article reports:

The conservative legal establishment has long been particularly enamored of this ideal: the umpire calmly calling balls and strikes. It is a very important virtue. But it is not the first virtue. An umpire who can be cowed by the crowd will not call the same strike zone for both teams. Without courage, good ideas about the law are just empty words on a page. Without courage, even the clearest-written rights are empty promises, the plainest limitations on power are easily overwhelmed, and the entire project of rule by written law becomes just another hollow formality.

Two of today’s Supreme Court decisions, on abortion and separation of powers, are further evidence of this. Chief Justice John Roberts has yet again shown the absence of courage that has so often undermined his Court. Roberts’s repeated demonstrations of lack of courage are rapidly becoming a threat to the Court itself, and to the conservative legal project.

First up, we have June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo, which by a 5–4 vote struck down a Louisiana abortion-clinic regulation challenged by the clinics. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch would have upheld the Louisiana law, but Chief Justice Roberts sided with the Court’s four liberals, claiming that his hands were tied by precedent.

In the 2016 case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the Court ruled 5–3 against a Texas abortion law that required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. States routinely impose such requirements on the practice of medicine, especially invasive or surgical procedures. As Justice Gorsuch observed, the Louisiana law “tracks longstanding state laws governing physicians who perform relatively low-risk procedures like colonoscopies, Lasik eye surgeries, and steroid injections at ambulatory surgical centers.” The Court in both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical ruled that “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right” to an abortion. Yet what the Court defines as an “unnecessary” requirement would be uncontroversially legal for any other medical procedure under the sun, and the “constitutional right” itself is, of course, nowhere even vaguely mentioned in the actual Constitution.

Chief Justice Roberts has been a disappointment almost from the beginning. His ruling on Obamacare was questionable at best. Please follow the link to the article to read further details regarding the contradictions between the decision on the Louisiana law and the previous opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts

Rewriting History One Campaign Stop At A Time

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a recent statement by former Vice-President Joe Biden.

The article reports:

Former Vice President inaccurately claimed on Saturday that he helped convince Republicans to vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act.

Biden, who has a history of embellishing his political accomplishments, made the claim while boasting about his ability to forge bipartisan consensus during a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas.

Evidently he was not all that great at forging bipartisan consensus–no Republicans voted for the Affordable Care Act! In fact, Scott Brown, after winning a special election in Massachusetts, somehow was delayed in taking his seat while waiting for the Massachusetts authority to certify the election. Instead of newly-elected Senator Brown being able to vote on the Affordable Care Act, a Democrat appointed by a Democrat state governor was able to cast his vote. I guess the former vice-president forgot all that..

The article notes:

The former vice president said:

The fight ahead of us is not about just what we have planned, its about … whose going to take on and get these things passed. We need someone with proven ability to bring people together and do the hard work of getting legislation passed. I’ve done that, I’ve done that before. Finding Republican votes for … Obamacare.

Stay tuned. I am sure there will be more to come.

We Need To Celebrate This

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Issues & Insights posted an article today about the change in the number of Americans dependent on Government since President Trump took office.

The article includes a chart showing the change:

Here are some of the highlights listed in the article:

Disability. The number of workers on Social Security’s Disability Insurance program has sharply declined as well. It went from 88 million in January 2017 to 84.9 million as of May. That’s the lowest it’s been since August 2011.

…Medicaid. Enrollment in Medicaid also has dropped sharply since Trump took office — despite the fact that Virginia decided to expand its program under Obamacare, which added some 300,000 to its Medicaid rolls over those years.

As of this March, the total number of people on Medicaid and CHIP — the health insurance program for children — was down by 2.5 million.

Obamacare. The number enrolled in Obamacare has declined every year since Trump took office as well, and is now 1 million below where it was at the end of 2016.

Welfare. The number of those collecting welfare — either on the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or what are called “separate state programs” — has dropped by more than 800,000 under Trump.

The article concludes:

In a less biased news media world, the decline in government dependency would be front-page news.

Instead, when they’re acknowledged at all, these enrollment drops are treated as bad news by the Left, which treats any declining benefit programs as a problem that needs to be fixed — usually by expanding these programs. Thus, you have every Democratic candidate for president talking about trillions upon trillions of new benefit programs, which are designed to ensnare as many as possible in the net of government dependency.

They have it exactly backward. The goal should be to have zero people collecting government benefits — because they are gainfully employed and don’t need them. Anything else should be treated as a failure.

One of the reasons that it is so difficult to shrink government programs is that in addition to the people they serve, they provide employment for government workers. These workers understand that if assistance programs shrink drastically, then there will be fewer staff members needed to oversee the programs. It is definitely a reverse incentive to cut dependence on the government.

We Need To Get Healthcare Right

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Yesterday Issues and Insights posted an article about ObamaCare 10 years out.

The article reports:

Based on polling data, Obamacare has been a miserable failure, and Obama will be far from the last president to grapple with this issue.

The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that health care is at the top of the nation’s priority list, with 24 percent of respondents listing it as their top priority for the federal government. Next on the list is immigration, at 18 percent, and after that, economic growth at 14 percent. 

The poll also found that 42 percent list health care as either their first or second choice on the priority list.

Back in June 2008, when Obama was running for president, only 8 percent rated health care as a top priority, just 20 percent as their first or second priority. Of course, the economy was in a recession and the country at war with Iraq, both of which weighed heavily on the public’s mind at the time.

But even in earlier years when the economy was doing well, health care ranked far lower on the list of priorities than it does today. In June 2006, only 14 percent ranked it as No. 1 on their list. A year later, 15 percent said it was their top priority.

The public has not been impressed with ObamaCare:

An ongoing Gallup survey finds that the public was actually more satisfied with their own coverage and quality of health care in 2007 than they were in 2018. Other surveys find cost remains a major complaint.

The article lists a few problems with ObamaCare:

It has done nothing to slow, much less reverse, the rising cost of health care. In fact, Obamacare itself caused premiums in the individual market to more than double in its first four years.

…National health spending, which was 16.3 percent of GDP in 2008, is now 17.9 percent and is slated to hit 19.4 percent by 2027. Per-capita spending on healthcare jumped from $7,898 to $10,739 over those years.

Far from driving the deficit down, Obamacare is pushing federal red ink up. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that repealing Obamacare would cut the deficit by some $473 billion in the first 10 years. 

Rather than admit failure, the Democrats simply want to throw more money at it.

The article concludes:

Naturally, because of these failures, the Democrats’ answer is to dump even more taxpayer money into government-run health care programs, with most now favoring a $32 trillion plan developed by socialist Bernie Sanders to have the government nationalize the entire health insurance industry.

Only in government, and only among fans of big government, are massive failures like Obamacare rewarded with still more government. 

Games The Media Is Playing

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The media’s job is to report events, investigate questionable actions by those in power, and inform Americans about what their government is doing. It is not to follow Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals number 13. That rule states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That rule is currently controlling the American media, and their target is Donald Trump. If you want to know what is actually causing the division in this country, look no further than the media. They have the power to bring us together. They have chosen not to do that.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about how The Washington Post has put its finger on the scale in the way it fact checks the President.

The article names five ways The Washington Post skews the results of its fact checking:

1. Bias by target selection. Did the Post have a database of President Obama’s false or misleading claims? No. Would the Post have a database of President Hillary’s false or misleading claims if she had won? Don’t be ridiculous. These people parse every sentence in Trump speeches, interviews, and tweets. They’re not doing that for anyone else, especially the Democratic candidates now running for president.

2. Nitpicking. Are they checking facts, or spin? Kessler & Co. fuss that Trump can’t say they’re building a wall at the border. Trump tweeted a picture of a wall being built. It’s clearly a border wall under construction. But Kessler says the money (and the plans) came before Trump, so it’s not “his” wall.  Kessler also cried False when Trump said he had “nothing to hide” from the Russia probe “but refused to testify under oath.” Kessler is spinning, not fact-checking.

3. Bias by multiplying nitpicking times 100. Once the Post throws a Pinocchio rating like the border-wall squabble, every time Trump says “we’re building the wall,” it’s counted as a false statement (160 times). Kessler repeatedly threw the False flag when Trump said there was “no collusion” with Russia. Which side was False on that one?

4. Lack of transparency. The Posties have dramatically increased the rate of the “false claims” they are finding. In announcing their 10,000 number, they claimed the president “racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days,” April 25 to 27.  They admit that’s a bigger number than they used to find in a month.

They claimed it was literally a falsehood a minute. They counted 45 in a 45-minute Sean Hannity interview, 17 falsehoods in a 19-minute Mark Levin interview, and 61 false claims in the president’s Saturday night rally in Green Bay.  But they don’t list them individually, so you can check their work.

5. Pinocchio forgiveness. Kessler also has a weird habit of skipping Pinocchios for Democrats when they call him on the phone and admit they fudged it. They just found Kamala Harris wrongly stated in a CNN town hall that a majority of women earn the minimum wage. Kessler concluded “Regular readers know that we generally do not award Pinocchios when politicians admit error, and we certainly give an allowance for a slip of the tongue during a live event. We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.”

Unless you’re Trump. Then you get 10,000 Gotchas.

Where were these people when President Obama told us that if we liked our doctor we could keep him and that the cost of health insurance would go down under ObamaCare?

Good News On Healthcare

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The Daily Signal posted an article today about President Trump’s plan to reform healthcare (which obviously starts with the removal of ObamaCare).

The article reports:

A look at his fiscal year 2020 budget shows that the president has a plan to reduce costs and increase health care choices. His plan would achieve this by redirecting federal premium subsidies and Medicaid expansion money into grants to states. States would be required to use the money to establish consumer-centered programs that make health insurance affordable regardless of income or medical condition.

The president’s proposal is buttressed by a growing body of evidence that relaxing federal regulations and freeing the states to innovate makes health care more affordable for families and small businesses.

Ed Haislmaier and I last year published an analysis of waivers that have so far enabled seven states to significantly reduce individual health insurance premiums. These states fund “invisible high risk pools” and reinsurance arrangements largely by repurposing federal money that would otherwise have been spent on Obamacare premium subsidies, directing them instead to those in greatest medical need.

By financing care for those with the biggest medical bills, these states have substantially reduced premiums for individual policies. Before Maryland obtained its waiver, insurers in the state filed requests for 2019 premium hikes averaging 30 percent. After the federal government approved the waiver, final 2019 premiums averaged 13 percent lower than in 2018—a 43 percent swing.

The article explains that the President’s plan is similar to another proposed plan:

It closely parallels the Health Care Choices Proposal, the product of ongoing work by national and state think tanks, grassroots organizations, policy analysts, and others in the conservative community. A study by the Center for Health and the Economy, commissioned by The Heritage Foundation, found that the proposal would reduce premiums for individual health insurance by up to 32 percent and cover virtually the same number of people as under Obamacare.

It also would give consumers more freedom to choose the coverage they think best for themselves and their families. Unlike current law, states could include direct primary care; health-sharing ministries; short-term, limited-duration plans; and other arrangements among the options available through their programs.

Those expanded choices would extend to low-income people. The proposal would require states to let those receiving assistance through the block grants, Medicaid, and other public assistance programs apply the value of their subsidy to the plan of their choice, instead of being herded into government-contracted health maintenance organizations.

We can do better at healthcare. Either one of these proposals would be a great start.

Better Late Than Never

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Yesterday The Hill reported that the Justice Department has announced that it has found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

The article reports:

The DOJ previously argued in court that the law’s pre-existing condition protections should be struck down. Now, the administration argues the entire law should be invalidated.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in December that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of law is therefore invalid.

The DOJ said Monday that it agrees the decision should stand as the case works its way through the appeals process in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed,” the department said in a short letter to the appeals court.

The article concludes:

Many legal experts in both parties think the lawsuit, which was brought by 20 GOP-led states, will not ultimately succeed. The district judge who ruled against the law in December is known as a staunch conservative.

The case centers on the argument that since Congress repealed the tax penalty in the law’s mandate for everyone to have insurance in 2017, the mandate can no longer be ruled constitutional under Congress’s power to tax. The challengers then argue that all of ObamaCare should be invalidated because the mandate is unconstitutional.

Most legal experts say legal precedent shows that even if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the rest of ObamaCare should remain unharmed, as that is what Congress voted to do in the 2017 tax law that repealed the mandate’s penalty.

This is another example of the consequences of Congressional inaction. First of all, the government has no business in healthcare or health insurance. It the government wants to make a few minor rules to make sure people can obtain healthcare, that is fine, but other than that, we need to go back to free market healthcare. Our current policies have made insurance more expensive than it should be and care more expensive than it should be. We need to go back to the days of knowing how much things cost and being able to shop around for our care.