Health Care

The Best Thing That Trump Has Done So Far

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives finally approved a bill that would repeal and replace significant portions of the law that created Obamacare.  But it was a very close vote.  On Donald Trump’s 105th day in the White House, 217 members of the House voted in favor of the bill, and 213 members of the House voted against the bill.  Of course “Trumpcare” is far from perfect, and it actually does very little to fix our rapidly failing healthcare system, but the reason why this is the best thing that Trump has done so far is because this bill would greatly reduce federal funding for Planned Parenthood.  But first this bill must get through the Senate before it can become law, and that is looking extremely doubtful at this point.  In fact, The Hill is reporting that one Republican Senator has said that this bill has less than a 20 percent chance of succeeding in the Senate…

A senior GOP senator said the chances of getting 51 votes for legislation based on the House healthcare bill are less than 1 in 5.

The senator also put the chances that the House bill will meet Senate budgetary rules preventing a filibuster at less than 1 in 5, meaning portions of the legislation would have to be removed.

Lawmakers are keeping quiet about their concerns because they want to help Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose job they fear may be in jeopardy if the House fails again to approve an ObamaCare repeal bill.

Yes, I know that Trump and the Republicans in the House were greatly celebrating on Thursday, but there really isn’t anything to celebrate yet.

The Senate is probably going to come up with an entirely different version of this legislation, and it is likely to look far different from the bill that just passed the House.

If a bill of some sort can actually get through the Senate, and that is a huge “if”, then an attempt would be made to reconcile the differences between the two bills, and then the final version would be submitted to both the House and the Senate for an up or down vote.

The problem is that the Senate is not going to pass anything like the version that the House just came up with, and conservatives in the House are likely to balk at anything that the Senate comes up with.

So please don’t think that an Obamacare repeal is a done deal.

The truth is that it probably is not going to happen any time soon.

But for the moment, I am going to applaud President Trump and House Republicans for doing something right.  I have been very tough on them in recent weeks, and rightly so, but when they do something good I am certainly going to give them the praise that they are due.

The bill that the House just passed would greatly reduce federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and that fact alone more than makes up for all of the other flaws in it.  The following comes from CNS News…

The American Health Care Act—the Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill that the House of Representatives passed by a 217-to-213 vote this afternoon–will temporarily and significantly reduce, but not eliminate, federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

The bill will prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving funding through “mandatory” federal funding streams—primarily Medicaid—for exactly one calendar year after the president signs it.

But it does not prevent Planned Parenthood from getting “discretionary” funding through the Title X family planning program.

It is just for one year, which is far from ideal, but at least for 12 months Planned Parenthood would see their funding go down by hundreds of millions of dollars…

The pro-life bill would eliminate more than $390 million (over 86%) of over $450 million in annual federal funding to Planned Parenthood, from all mandatory spending programs. The measure also redirects funding to community health centers which outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities 20 to 1 and offer a wider array of health care services, but not abortion.

Of course this is one of the provisions in the bill that some Republicans in the Senate want to eliminate.

It is extremely unlikely that any bill that even defunds Planned Parenthood in part will ever get through the Senate, but Trump should make an all-out effort to get this accomplished anyway.

And if Republican leadership can somehow get a bill through the Senate and signed into law that at least significantly reduces federal funding for Planned Parenthood, I will officially take back all of the negative things that I have said about the Republicans so far this year.

This week President Trump also signed a landmark executive order that does a great deal to protect religious liberty…

The order, signed during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, directs the Internal Revenue Service to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion” over the so-called Johnson amendment, which prevents churches and other tax-exempt religious organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. The order also provides “regulatory relief” for organizations that object on religious grounds to a provision in Obamacare that mandates employers provide certain health services, including coverage for contraception.

All Americans, including Christians, should be free to express their political beliefs without fearing repercussions from the federal government.  The Johnson Amendment was probably always unconstitutional, and that is one of the reasons why it has never really been enforced.  Congress should go even farther and completely repeal it, and hopefully that will happen someday.

So once again I want to take this opportunity to applaud Trump for doing something right.  This is a good executive order, although it doesn’t quite go far enough.  A major war against people of faith is being waged by very powerful forces in this country, and I am thankful for a president that is at least trying to keep some of the heat off of our backs.

I tend to get criticized by both the pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps because I try to be objective.

When our politicians do things that are wrong, I am going to say that they are wrong.

And when our politicians do things that are right, I am going to say that they are right.

We lose credibility when we act as cheerleaders for politicians that are “on our side” no matter what they say or do.

In our society today, there is a desperate need for people that are willing to think critically and that are willing to cling objectively to the truth.

Because once we let go of the truth we are all in trouble…

Member Of Congress Warns Of A 1,000 Point Stock Market Crash If Obamacare Lite Does Not Pass

Obamacare LiteAre we going to see a dramatic stock market plunge if the effort to get “Obamacare Lite” through the U.S. House of Representatives ultimately fails?  On Thursday, a vote on the Republican healthcare bill was postponed once it became clear that there would not be enough votes for it to pass.  House Republican leaders are still optimistic that there will still be a vote on Friday, but that is far from certain.  Many strong conservatives in the House are balking at supporting this bill because while it does eliminate a few of the most troublesome provisions of Obamacare, it keeps many of the elements of Obama’s signature healthcare law that have proven to be popular with the American people.  In other words, this bill is much more about “tweaking” Obamacare than “repealing” it.

This is the first major legislative test for President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, and so far they are failing.  House Republican leaders have gone into panic mode, because a “no” vote could have some very serious implications outside of Washington.  In fact, one member of Congress is warning that if this bill does not pass that we could see the Dow drop 1,000 points in a single day…

It happened in real life on Sept. 29, 2008, when the House first voted on a Wall Street bailout intended to stem the financial crisis. In a swirl of uncertainty, Republican members stampeded to “no,” defeated the measure and watched the Dow tumble by more than 700 points. The same thing could happen on the GOP health bill, a veteran member told CNBC on Thursday — only bigger.

“If this goes down, we could take a 1,000-point market hit,” the member said. To be sure, traders and investors tell CNBC the market likely will go lower if there is no compromise Thursday, but the decline won’t likely come near a 1,000-point drop. That would represent a nearly 5 percent drop in the Dow, a bit less than the 7 percent decline when the index fell 777 points in September 2008.

And even if this bill does pass, we are probably headed for some sort of significant downturn anyway.  Sven Henrich has just told CNBC that he believes that “the market could see a 5 to 10 percent drop in the near term”…

The market has enjoyed a stellar bull run, but a correction is likely looming, according to Sven Henrich, also known as the “Northman Trader.”

A very long-term analysis of the S&P 500, in conjunction with a look at the CBOE Volatility Index, leads Henrich to believe the market could see a 5 to 10 percent drop in the near term.

But fixing our failing healthcare system is far more important than trying to prop up the financial markets, and so the strong conservatives in the House are quite right to stand by their principles.

Simply “tweaking” Obamacare is not going to fix anything, and it is extremely disappointing that President Trump and Paul Ryan are advocating such an approach.

Thankfully, there are a number of strong conservatives in Congress that are willing to take a stand for what is right even if it means standing up against their own party.  One of those principled conservatives is Senator Rand Paul, and he says that right now there are at least 35 Republican “no” votes in the House, and that would be enough to kill the bill…

I think there’s easily 35 no votes right now so unless something happens in the next 24 hours, I would predict they pull the bill and start over. I think if conservatives stick together, they will have earned a seat at the table where real negotiation to make this bill an acceptable bill will happen. But it’s interesting what conservatives are doing to change the debate. We went from keeping the Obamacare taxes for a year—hundreds of billions of dollars—but they’re coming towards us because we’re standing firm. So we have to stick together, and if we do stick together there will be a real negotiation on this. The main goal I have is not to pass something that does not fix the situation. If a year from now, insurance rates and premiums are still going through the roof and it’s now a Republican plan it will be a disservice to the president and all of us if we pass something that doesn’t work.

If this bill is ultimately defeated, I have an idea that might work.

Why don’t we get the government out of the healthcare business entirely?

Once upon a time when we actually let the free market determine the allocation of healthcare resources, we had the best healthcare system in the entire world.

But after decades of experimenting with socialist principles and adding mountains of rules, regulations and red tape to the system, we have a giant mess on our hands.

Either we need to go back to a true free market system, or we might as well go ahead and just socialize the entire thing.

Right now, hard working families have to pay for their own healthcare and also pay for the socialized healthcare that more than 125 million other Americans are receiving.

Yes, when you add up all of the Americans that are on Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare and other government programs, it comes to more than 125 million people.

So a lot of hard working families are scared to ever go to the hospital because their insurance deductibles are so high, and yet their taxes go to pay for all of the free healthcare that people on government assistance are receiving.

If the government is going to pay for the healthcare for nearly half the country, why should the rest of us have to pay for ours?

What we have now is such a ridiculous system, and what President Trump and Paul Ryan are proposing is not “free market” in any way, shape or form.

So I say let this horrible bill fail even if it means that financial markets will freak out for a little while.

Hopefully what transpires over the coming days will cause Republican leadership to go back to the drawing board, and a clean repeal of Obamacare would be a really good place to start.

23 Percent Of Americans In Their Prime Working Years Are Unemployed

Unemployment - Public DomainDid you know that when you take the number of working age Americans that are officially unemployed (8.2 million) and add that number to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” (94.3 million), that gives us a grand total of 102.5 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now?  I have written about this before, but today I want to focus just on Americans that are in their prime working years.  When you look at only Americans that are from age 25 to age 54, 23.2 percent of them are unemployed right now.  The following analysis and chart come from the Weekly Standard…

Here’s a chart showing those in that age group currently employed (95.6 million) and those who aren’t (28.9 million):

Americans In Their Prime Working Years Not Working

“There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. This group of non-employed individuals is more than 3.5 million larger than before the recession began in 2007,” writes the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.

Clearly, we have never recovered from the impact of the last recession.

But let’s try to put these numbers in context.

Below, I would like to share two charts with you.  They show what has happened to the inactivity rates for men and for women in their prime working years in the United States in recent years.

In order to be considered “inactive”, you can’t have a job and you can’t be looking for a job.  So this subset of people is smaller than the group that we were talking about above.  The 23.2 percent of Americans in their prime working years that are unemployed right now includes those that are looking for a job and those that are not looking for a job.

These next two charts do not include anyone that has a job or that is currently looking for a job.  These charts only cover “inactive” people in their prime working years that are not considered to be in the labor force.

As you can see in this first chart, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years exploded higher during the last recession and then continued to go up even after the recession supposedly ended.  At this point, it is hovering near all-time record highs.  Does this look like an “economic recovery” to you?…

Inactivity Rate Men

For women, we see a similar thing.  In this next chart, you can see that the inactivity rate for women in their prime working years rose during the last recession and then just kept on rising.  At this point, it remains far higher than it was during the last recession…

Inactivity Rate Women

What are we to make of all this?

For both men and women in their prime working years, the inactivity rate is significantly higher than it was during the last recession.

All of these people neither have a job nor are they looking for one.

So what in the world is going on here?

Are they independently wealthy?

Have these people found rich spouses to marry so they don’t have to work?

No, the truth is that the middle class in America is steadily eroding and poverty is absolutely exploding.  Credit card debt has soared to a new record high, and 48 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 believe that “the American Dream is dead”.

The issue isn’t that people don’t want to work.

The issue is that people cannot find enough work.

And even if you have a job, that does not mean that you are on easy street.  According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

Tens of millions of Americans are now among the ranks of “the working poor”.  So many families are watching their expenses soar while their paychecks go down or stagnate.  If you are in this situation right now, then you probably know how exceedingly stressful it can be.

Just look at what is happening to the cost of health insurance.  The following comes from Fox News…

Health insurance premiums have increased faster than wages and inflation in recent years, rising an average of 28 percent from 2009 to 2014 despite the enactment of Obamacare, according to a report from Freedom Partners.

And I am not exactly sure where they got those numbers.  Personally, I know that my health insurance rates have gone up far faster than that.

Two years ago, my health insurance company wanted to double the health insurance premiums for my family even though we never get sick.  So I switched to another insurance company that offered a policy that was only about 30 percent higher than my last one.  But then when it came time to renew, that insurance company wanted to raise my rate by another 50 percent.

Thanks to Obamacare, American families are being absolutely crippled by the cost of health care.  And of course we are seeing the rising cost of living so many other places as well.  Our paychecks are being squeezed harder and harder, and this is absolutely killing the middle class.  In fact, the middle class in America is now a minority for the first time ever.

And now for the real bad news – this is about as good as things are ever going to get in this country.  As you can see from what I have shared above, we never really had any sort of meaningful “economic recovery”, and now we have entered the early phases of the next major downturn.

So where do we go from here?  Unfortunately, our debt-fueled prosperity has provided us with a massively inflated standard of living that is not even close to sustainable.  As this bubble bursts, the economic pain is going to be absolutely unprecedented.

But it won’t be just economic pain that we are facing.  In my new book, I detail the things that I believe that are coming to this country, and I explain why the entire planet will soon be facing incredibly challenging times.  It is going to be one of the most controversial Christian books of 2016, because it directly challenges many of the things that are being taught in mainstream churches today.  My book is an ominous message of warning and an inspiring message of hope, and I truly believe that it is the most important thing that I have ever written.

No matter how you may see the future, the key is that we all learn to love one another.  The years ahead are going to be extremely challenging, and those that want to chase everyone else away and survive as lone wolves are going to have a very rough time.  We all need each other, and those that have friends, family and communities around them are going to be in a much better position to weather the coming storms.

So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst…

Obama Should Apologize For Treating Military Veterans Like Garbage For The Past 5 Years

Obama Memorial DayThis Memorial Day, Barack Obama and members of Congress will honor our veterans by wearing ribbons and laying wreaths, but what they should really do is apologize to the entire nation for treating them like human trash for the past five years.  You see, the truth is that this VA scandal is nothing new.  The problems at the VA hospitals have been documented over and over again for years.  When Barack Obama was a U.S. senator, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee.  So as he entered the White House, he was supposed to be an expert in this area.  And back in 2008, he pledged to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible“.  But of course that never happened.  And now Obama is claiming that he only learned of the “secret waiting lists” at VA hospitals by “watching television“, and his staff says that he is “madder than hell” about it.  So now that he has been publicly shamed, will Obama actually do something about it?  Because our military veterans deserve far better care than what they have been getting.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but members of al-Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay actually receive far better medical treatment than our military veterans do.  Just consider what former Pentagon spokesperson J.D. Gordon had to say about the matter…

Doctors and medical personnel are at their beck and call.  Got a cold, a fever, a toothache, a tumor, chest or back pain, mental health issues, PTSD?  No problem, come right on in. Military doctors are waiting to see you.

The VA and Gitmo eligible patient-to-health care provider ratios speak volumes.

While the Gitmo ratio is 1.5 to 1, for America’s 9 million veterans receiving VA health care and 267,930 VA employees, the ratio is 35 to 1.

Because there are not nearly enough doctors for our veterans, many of them end up waiting for months just to get an appointment with one.  It was CNN that blew the lid off this story when they reported that at least 40 military vets had died while waiting for appointments in the Phoenix area…

At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting list.

The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.

For six months, CNN has been reporting on extended delays in health care appointments suffered by veterans across the country and who died while waiting for appointments and care. But the new revelations about the Phoenix VA are perhaps the most disturbing and striking to come to light thus far.

CNN was reporting on this for months, but Obama only learned about this just recently?

Considering that he is the chief executive of the entire system, how in the world is that possible?

And of course this has not just been happening in Phoenix.  The following is an excerpt from a news story about a vet that died in Houston while waiting for the VA system to take care of him…

George Barraza love two things in this life: playing the electric guitar with all his heart and this country.

During the Vietnam War, Barraza proudly served in the U.S. Army.

But on April 16, Barraza, a father of three girls, a chef and an American veteran, died waiting for an appointment at the VA Medical Center in Houston.

At the time of his death, Barraza was battling heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer. But his problems became much worse in September when he went to the Michael Debakey VA Medical Center in terrible pain and unable to move his hands at all.

“They said, ‘Oh, that looks like it hurts, let me give you some pain medication and send you on home,'” said Barraza’s daughter, Georgia Barraza who complains the VA staff did not treat her father’s problem that day by admitting him and caring for him, but instead gave him pain medication and an appointment to come back.

You can read the rest of this incredibly sad story right here.

And here is an example from Seattle…

Donald Douglass had a small spot on his forehead when he went to the Seattle Veterans Affairs hospital in 2011.

A biopsy confirmed it was cancerous. But it was four months before the hospital scheduled an appointment for him to have it removed — and by then, it had spread, wrapping around a facial nerve and eventually getting into his blood.

The delay proved fatal, his lawyer said — and it mirrors concerns being raised about the VA system nationally.

In fact, veteran deaths like this have been documented all over the nation.  After sacrificing so much, our vets are being horribly neglected.

It is a national disgrace.

And of course the problems go far beyond waiting times.  For example, down in Miami illegal drug dealing is rampant at VA facilities…

When asked why he would risk his job and speak publicly, Detective Thomas Fiore considered the question carefully before answering.

“People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”

Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.

“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.

And what one whistleblower at a VA hospital in North Carolina says is going on is beyond repulsive…

The whistleblower, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, works at a large 250 acre VA hospital in North Carolina. He presented his credentials to us which checked out. The VA employee lifted the lid on a number of shocking details during an interview with Sgt. Joe Biggs.

“Recently there’s been a very rapid race to move records, boxes, change labels, whatever it may be, they’re putting them in rooms that nobody would look in….and there’s multiple times that I have seen in the past week or so them moving boxes….so apparently they’re hiding their tracks somewhere,” stated the VA employee, adding that the activity preceded an inspection of the facility, suggesting it was part of an effort to conceal evidence in the aftermath of the secret waiting list scandal.

Even more chilling was a warning sent out to VA employees at the facility which, according to the whistleblower, was meant to get across the message, “Do you see what happens to the people that try to get things straight around here, they’re not here anymore,” a tone the whistleblower described as “pretty telling.”

The employee also revealed the shocking attitude of one supervisor at the hospital towards older veterans, who asserted that older vets “should be taken outside and shot in the head because they’re worthless.” The individual still works at the hospital and was not disciplined for his comments.

What is happening to this nation?

How can we treat our military veterans like this?

The respect for veterans has gotten so low in this country that sometimes it takes more than a year to bury their dead bodies…

The bodies of 28 veterans at the L.A. County Morgue were finally moved Friday for burial to the Riverside National Cemetery.

CBS2/KCAL9 pressed the L.A. County Coroner’s Office Thursday to find out why the bodies had not yet received a proper burial after a source indicated there may have been as many as 60 veterans at the morgue for the past year and a half.

The morgue says the bodies were unclaimed and they don’t know how long the veterans were there.

The law states veterans are supposed to receive a proper burial.

Barack Obama is acting like all of this is a huge surprise to him.

Even though he worked on these issues as a U.S. Senator, and even though he has been the top executive in charge of the system for five years, he claims complete ignorance about what has been going on.

I find this very hard to believe.

The truth is that the news media has been reporting about these kinds of abuses for ages.

And personally, I have been writing about these things for years.  Here are some examples…

2013: “There Already Is A Government Health Care System In America And It Is The Medical Version Of Hell”

2013: “25 Signs That Military Veterans Are Being Treated Like Absolute Trash Under The Obama Administration”

2012: “Why Does The U.S. Government Treat Military Veterans Like Human Garbage?”

2010: “Memorial Day Shocker: How The U.S. Government Really Handles Veterans Benefits – Deny, Deny, Deny Until They Die”

So how is it possible that so many people could have been talking about these things for so many years and yet Obama knew nothing?

Come on.

The truth is that Obama does not want to take any responsibility for this scandal or any other scandal.

He wants to continue to be a teflon politician that nothing ever sticks to.

But now he has absolutely no excuse for not taking action.

Military veterans are dying right now, and they need medical attention.

Hopefully Obama will step up to the plate and do the right thing.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

Obama’s Secret Treaty Which Will Merge America More Deeply Into The Emerging One World Economic System

Barack Obama On The Phone In The Oval OfficeDid you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret “trade agreement” that is so sensitive that he isn’t even allowing members of Congress to see it?  The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the “NAFTA of the Pacific” and “NAFTA on steroids”, but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement.  This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more.  It will also merge the United States far more deeply into the emerging one world economic system.  Initially, twelve nations will be a party to this treaty including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.  Together, those nations represent approximately 40 percent of global GDP.  It is hoped that additional nations such as the Philippines, Thailand and Colombia will join the treaty later on.

There are some very good reasons why Obama does not want the American people to know anything about what is in this treaty.  This agreement will impose very strict Internet copyright rules on the American people, it will ban all “Buy American” laws, it will give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it will force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.

It contains a whole host of things that Obama would be unable to get through Congress on his own.  But he is hoping to spring this on Congress at the last minute and get them to agree to this “free trade agreement” before they realize all of the things that are contained in it.

The secrecy surrounding these treaty negotiations have really been unprecedented.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Kurt Nimmo…

“Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy,” Wikileaks notes in a statement on the release of the TPP draft. “Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.”

And Obama reportedly is seeking “trade promotion authority” which would give him the ability to sign this treaty before Congress even votes on it…

Normally free -trade agreements must be authorized by a majority of the House and Senate, usually in lengthy proceedings.

However, the White House is seeking what is known as “trade promotion authority” which would fast track approval of the TPP by requiring Congress to vote on the likely lengthy trade agreement within 90 days and without any amendments.

The authority also allows Obama to sign the agreement before Congress even has a chance to vote on it, with lawmakers getting only a quick post-facto vote.

This is so insidious that it is hard to find the words to describe it.

In essence, Obama is trying to make a giant end run around Congress on dozens of different issues that are addressed by this treaty.

Fortunately, there are at least some members of Congress that are waking up to this.  Earlier this week, a small group of Republicans and a small group of Democrats both sent Obama a letter condemning this “free trade” agreement…

Separate groups of House Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday condemned the Obama administration’s proposed sweeping free trade agreement with 11 Pacific nations, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Strongly worded letters to President Barack Obama Tuesday were signed by hardline tea partiers, true-blue progressives, and moderate, corporate-friendly lawmakers in both parties, indicating political trouble for a trade deal the administration had hoped to seal by year end.

This is one of the most important political issues facing our nation here at the end of 2013, and yet you hear next to nothing about this treaty on the mainstream news.  If this treaty is approved, the United States will be permanently bound by the provisions of this treaty and will never be able to change them unless all of the other countries agree…

Countries would be obliged to conform all their domestic laws and regulations to the TPP’s rules—in effect, a corporate coup d’état. The proposed pact would limit even how governments can spend their tax dollars. Buy America and other Buy Local procurement preferences that invest in the US economy would be banned, and “sweat-free,” human rights or environmental conditions on government contracts could be challenged. If the TPP comes to fruition, its retrograde rules could be altered only if all countries agreed, regardless of domestic election outcomes or changes in public opinion. And unlike much domestic legislation, the TPP would have no expiration date.

Are you starting to understand just how dangerous this treaty is?

Let me give you just one example of how this treaty could directly affect you.

Do you remember SOPA?

There was a huge public backlash when the very strict Internet copyright provisions of SOPA were revealed to the public, and the American people loudly expressed their displeasure to members of Congress.

But now the provisions of SOPA are back.  Most of them have reportedly been very quietly inserted into this treaty.  If this treaty is enacted, those provisions will become law and the American people will not be able to do a thing about it.

And according to an article in the New York Times, there are all sorts of other disturbing things that have been slipped into this treaty…

And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta — a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.

The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Are you starting to grasp why the Obama administration is so determined to keep this treaty such a secret?

In addition, this “free trade” agreement will push the ongoing deindustrialization of America into overdrive.  Every year, we buy hundreds of billions of dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  Tens of thousands of American businesses have been lost as a result, and millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas.

If you are not familiar with our “trade deficit”, you really should be.  It is one of the issues at the very heart of our economic problems.  Posted below is a short 3 minute video that briefly discusses the trade deficit and why it is so important…

Slowly merging our economy with the rest of the planet has been absolutely disastrous for America.  Just consider the following statistics…

-Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

-The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

-Back in the year 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing.  Now there are less than 12 million.

-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

-Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

-When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars.  By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

-Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year.  In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars.  That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

Once upon a time, our great manufacturing cities were the envy of the entire planet.  In fact, at one time Detroit actually had the highest per capita income in the United States.

But now Detroit is a rotting, decaying, festering hellhole that is completely bankrupt.  And there are dozens of other formerly great manufacturing cities that are heading down the exact same path.

These “free trade” agreements are neither “free” nor “fair” when you really examine them, and they are absolutely eviscerating the middle class.

Please urge your representatives in Congress to block the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  If this treaty does get approved, it is going to make a lot of our problems a whole lot worse.

10 Signs That Obamacare Is Going To Wreck The U.S. Economy

Obamacare LineIt is hard to find the words to adequately describe how much of a disaster Obamacare is turning out to be.  The debut of Healthcare.gov has been probably the worst launch of a major website in history, millions of Americans are having their current health insurance policies canceled, millions of others are seeing the size of their health insurance premiums absolutely explode, and this new law is going to result in massive numbers of jobs being lost.  It is almost as if Obamacare was specifically designed to wreck the U.S. economy.  Not that what we had before Obamacare was great.  In fact, I have long argued that the U.S. health care system is a complete and total train wreck.  But now Obamacare is making everything that was bad about our system much, much worse.  Americans are going to pay far more for health care, the quality of that care is going to go down, they are going to have to deal with far more medical red tape, and thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering getting rid of the health plans that they offer to employees altogether due to Obamacare.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate nation, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet, and now Obamacare is going to absolutely cripple it.  To say that Obamacare is an “economic catastrophe” would be a massive understatement.

Of course we were assured that it wouldn’t turn out this way.  We were promised over and over that we were going to pay less for health care, get better coverage, and be able to keep our current health plans if we were pleased with them.  The following is what Obama said at a rally in 2009…

“First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

Oh really?

That was such a dramatic lie that even NBC News is turning on him.  They discovered that Obama has known for three years that most people that rely on individual health insurance policies would not be able to keep them…

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Pretty much everything that Obama told us when he was selling us on his plan has turned out to be a lie.

So what can we expect from Obamacare moving forward?  The following are 10 signs that Obamacare is going to wreck the U.S. economy…

#1 It is being projected that millions upon millions of Americans are going to lose their current health insurance plans thanks to Obamacare.  Most will be faced with the choice of either purchasing much more expensive health insurance or going uninsured.  This will put even more stress on a middle class that is already disintegrating rapidly.  The following is from the recent NBC News investigation mentioned above…

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

#2 The health insurance premium increases that some families are experiencing are absolutely mind boggling.  According to Mike Adams of Natural News, one family in Texas just got hit with a 539% rate increase…

Obamacare is named the “Affordable Care Act,” after all, and the President promised the rates would be “as low as a phone bill.” But I just received a confirmed letter from a friend in Texas showing a 539% rate increase on an existing policy that’s been in good standing for years.

As the letter reveals (see below), the cost for this couple’s policy under Humana is increasing from $212.10 per month to $1,356.60 per month. This is for a couple in good health whose combined income is less than $70K — a middle-class family, in other words.

According to NBC News, an elderly couple in North Carolina was hit with a similar rate increase…

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was “perfectly happy” with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The “comparable” plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.

Many Americans that were formerly in favor of Obamacare are now against it after they have seen what it is going to do to their budgets.  The following is one example of this from a recent Los Angeles Times article…

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.

“She said, ‘I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'” Kehaly said.

#3 Obamacare actually includes incentives for people to work less and make less money.  The following is one example from a recent article by Sean Davis…

In California, a couple earning $64,000 a year would not qualify for health care subsidies. A bronze plan for them through Kaiser would cost them about $1,300 each month, or $15,600 a year. But if that same family earned just $2,000 less, it would qualify for over $14,000 in annual health care subsidies, dropping their premiums for that same Kaiser plan to less than $100 per month.

#4 Thankfully the employer mandate in Obamacare was delayed for a little while, but it will ultimately result in widespread job losses all over the country.  In fact, we are already starting to see this happen.  The following is from a recent article in the Economist…

BEFORE the recession, Richard Clark’s cleaning company in Florida had 200 employees, about half of them working full time. These days it has about 150, with 80% part-time. The downturn explains some of this. But Mr Clark also blames Barack Obama’s health reform. When it comes into effect in January 2015, Obamacare will require firms with 50 or more full-time employees to offer them affordable health insurance or pay a fine of $2,000-3,000 per worker. That is a daunting prospect for firms that do not already offer coverage. But for many, there is a way round the law.

Mr Clark says he is “very careful with the threshold”. To keep his full-time workforce below the magic number of 50, he is relying more on part-timers. He is not alone. More than one in ten firms surveyed by Mercer, a consultancy—and one in five retail and hospitality companies—say they will cut workers’ hours because of Obamacare. A hundred part-timers can flip as many burgers as 50 full-timers, and the former will soon be much cheaper.

You can find a very long list of some of the employers that have either eliminated jobs or cut hours because of Obamacare right here.

#5 Even if you are able to keep your job, there is no guarantee that your employer will continue to offer health insurance as an employee benefit.  In fact, it is being reported that large numbers of employers have already decided to no longer offer health insurance to their employees because of Obamacare.

#6 According to CBS News, so far the number of people that have had their health insurance policies canceled is more than three times greater than the number of people that have signed up for new policies under Obamacare…

CBS News has learned more than two million Americans have been told they cannot renew their current insurance policies — more than triple the number of people said to be buying insurance under the new Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

#7 If what is going on in New York is any indication, those that are signing up for health insurance under Obamacare are going to have a really, really hard time finding a doctor…

New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.

A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.

Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.

Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.

#8 Obamacare is turning out to be a gold mine for hackers and identity thieves.  The personal information of millions of Americans could potentially end up being compromised.  According to CNN, Healthcare.gov was found to be teeming with security holes…

The Obamacare website has more than annoying bugs. A cybersecurity expert found a way to hack into users’ accounts.

Until the Department of Health fixed the security hole last week, anyone could easily reset your Healthcare.gov password without your knowledge and potentially hijack your account.

And according to the New York Post, Healthcare.gov has been designed so badly from a security standpoint that it might have to be “rebuilt from scratch”…

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said ObamaCare’s website, already a tangled mess, might need to be rebuilt from scratch to to protect against cyber-thieves because he fears it’s not a safe place right now for health-care consumers to deposit their personal information.

“I know that they’ve called in another private entity to try to help with the security of it. The problem is, they may have to redesign the entire system,” Rep. Mike Rogers said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” political talk show. “The way the system is designed, it is not secure.”

#9 As I noted in a previous article, approximately 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical bills.  Because millions of Americans are now losing their health insurance policies and millions of others will choose to pay the fine rather than sign up for Obamacare, more Americans than ever will find themselves overwhelmed with medical bills when they get seriously sick.  This will result in even more personal bankruptcies.

#10 In the end, the burden for paying for the subsidies that Obamacare offers is going to overwhelmingly fall on the taxpayers.  This is going to cause our nightmarish national debt to get even worse.  Peter Schiff recently explained why this is going to happen…

It is also ironic that high-deductible, catastrophic plans are precisely what young people should be buying in the first place. They are inexpensive because they provide coverage for unlikely, but expensive, events. Routine care is best paid for out-of-pocket by value conscious consumers. But Obamacare outlaws these plans, in favor of what amounts to prepaid medical treatment that shifts the cost of services to taxpayers. In such a system, patients have no incentive to contain costs. Since the biggest factor driving health care costs higher in the first place has been the over use of insurance that results from government-provided tax incentives, and the lack of cost accountability that results from a third-party payer system, Obamacare will bend the cost curve even higher. The fact that Obamacare does nothing to rein in costs while providing an open-ended insurance subsidy may be good news for hospitals and insurance companies, but it’s bad news for taxpayers, on whom this increased burden will ultimately fall.

So what do you think of Obamacare?

Has it directly affected your life yet?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Thanks To Obamacare, Employer-Based Health Insurance Is Becoming An Endangered Species

Obamacare 2013Barack Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, and when it comes to health care he has definitely kept his promise.  Thanks to Obamacare, health care spending is up, health insurance premiums are up, the number of hours Americans are working is down and employer-based health insurance is becoming an endangered species.  Of course employer-based health insurance will not disappear completely any time soon, but it has been steadily shrinking for over a decade, and Obamacare will greatly accelerate that decline.  If you go back to 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  That was pretty good.  Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by employment-based health insurance, and now thousands upon thousands of U.S. employers are considering reducing the scope of the health plans they offer to employees or eliminating them altogether due to Obamacare.  If you are thinking that this sounds like a potential nightmare for millions of Americans families, you would be exactly right.

There have already been widespread reports of companies dropping health insurance, but nobody knows for sure how widespread the carnage will be.  According to Businessweek, the surveys that have been done up to this point have come up with widely varying results…

A Deloitte study last year suggested 10 percent of employers would stop offering group health plans. A widely criticized McKinsey report from 2011 put the number as high as one-third. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections suggest 8 million fewer people will be covered by employer plans five years from now under the ACA than without it. Many of them will get policies through health insurance exchanges instead.

But what everyone does agree on is that employer-based health coverage will continue to diminish.

And we are already watching this happen right in front of our eyes.  Just this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the largest security guard firm in the United States is dropping health coverage for 55,000 employees…

The nation’s largest provider of security guards plans to discontinue its lowest-cost health plans and steer roughly 55,000 workers to new government-sponsored insurance exchanges for coverage next year, in the latest sign of the fraying ties between employment and health care.

The U.S. arm of Sweden’s Securitas AB is among more than 1,200 employers that offer the kind of bare-bones health plans that must be phased out beginning Jan. 1 under the health-care law. Nearly four million people are enrolled in these so-called mini-med plans, which cap benefits to participants, sometimes at as little as $3,000 a year.

“The mini-meds go away and we’re not replacing them,” said Jim McNulty, a spokesman for Securitas’s U.S. operation. “Their option is to go to the exchanges.”

Other big employers, including Darden Restaurants Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Trader Joe’s Co., say they will stop offering health insurance to part-time workers, and will direct those employees to the state exchanges. Darden, Home Depot and Trader Joe’s previously offered mini-meds to their part timers.

Speaking of Trader Joe’s, I wrote about how they are eliminating health coverage for part-time workers the other day.  Instead of providing health insurance for their part-time workers, Trader Joe’s will be writing them a check and pushing them on to the Obamacare exchanges…

Trader Joe’s, the grocer once lauded for providing health care coverage to its part-time workers, is about to push those employees off its plan.

According to a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, the company will stop covering employees who work less than 30 hours per week.

The change is set for the start of 2014. Instead of insurance, workers instead will get a check for $500 in January.

“Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe’s, we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe’s and the tax credits available under the [Affordable Care Act (ACA)], many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you,” said Trader Joe CEO Dan Bane in the memo.

And this is a huge reason why the shift from full-time work to part-time work in America has accelerated this year.  Obamacare creates an incentive for companies to have more part-time workers and less full-time workers.  In fact, almost all of the jobs that have been “created” by the U.S. economy in 2013 have been part-time jobs.

But it is incredibly difficult to try to support a family on a part-time job.  Sadly, the quality of our jobs continues to decline rapidly and only 47 percent of all adults have a full-time job in America today.  This is only going to continue to get even worse under Obamacare.

As a result of these trends, more Americans are going to be forced to go out and buy health insurance “on the individual market”.  When they do, they are likely to be in for a really nasty surprise…

Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Ky. and their two boys are just the kind of people who should be helped by ObamaCare. But they recently got a nasty surprise in the mail.

“When I saw the letter when I came home from work,” Andy said, describing the large red wording on the envelope from his insurance carrier, “(it said) ‘your action required, benefit changes, act now.’ Of course I opened it immediately.”

It had stunning news. Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 — from $333 a month to $965.

The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.

Are you ready to have your health insurance premiums potentially double or triple?

In other cases, families are discovering that health insurance companies are simply cancelling their health insurance plans…

Across the country, insurers are sending out ObamaCare-induced health plan death notices to untold tens of thousands of other customers in the individual market. Twitter users are posting their ObamaCare cancellation notices and accompanying rate increases:

Linda Deright posted her letter from Regency of Washington state: “63 percent jump, old policy of 15 yrs. cancelled.” Karen J. Dugan wrote: “Received same notice from Blue Shield CA for our small business. Driving into exchange and no info since online site is down.” Chris Birk wrote: “Got notice from BCBS that my current health plan is not ACA compliant. New plan 2x as costly for worse coverage.” Small-business owner Villi Wilson posted his letter from HMSA Blue Cross Blue Shield canceling his individual plan and added: “I thought Obama said if I like my health care plan I can keep my health care plan.”

In fact, this even happened to one member of Congress.  U.S. Representative Cory Gardner had purchased health insurance on his own because he wanted to experience what his constituents were going through, and he recently got a letter informing him that his old plan had been “discontinued”…

“After my current plan is discontinued,” he wrote last week, “the closest comparable plan through our current provider will cost over 100 percent more, going from roughly $650 a month to $1,480 per month.” He now carries his ObamaCare cancellation notice with him as hardcore proof of the Democrats’ ultimate deception.

Is this what Obama was talking about when he promised that we could keep our old health insurance plans if we were happy with them?

In the end, millions upon millions of us are going to get pushed on to the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.

We were promised that there would be lots of competition and that prices would be reasonable.

Unfortunately, in some areas of the country it turns out that the “exchanges” are turning out to be “monopolies” where consumers will only have one company to choose from…

“Although seven insurance companies currently operate in North Carolina, under the new Obamacare exchanges, those options will dwindle down to one in the majority of counties,” Ellmers said Thursday following the disclosure of figures by federal health officials showing that more than 60 percent of North Carolina counties will have only one insurance provider option under Obamacare: Blue Cross Blue Shield.

“The whole point of an online marketplace was to provide options, so North Carolinians could go online, compare prices, and choose plans from different companies. That is how competition is supposed to work!,” Ellmers said.

Beginning October 1 under Obamacare, Blue Cross Blue Shield will be the only health insurance provider serving the entire state of North Carolina in the new Obamacare exchanges, serving all 100 of the state’s counties. Its competitor Coventry Health Care, which is owned by Aetna, will only reach 39 counties.

That leaves 61 counties, or 61 percent of all the state’s counties, in a Blue Cross Blue Shield-only zone.

Not only that, but a lot of these exchanges are not even going to be ready to function properly on October 1st.  For example, according to the Washington Post, the D.C. “health marketplace” is a complete and total mess at this point…

Just days away from launch, the District of Columbia’s health marketplace is announcing a pretty significant delay.

While the D.C. Health Link will launch a Web site on October 1, shoppers will not have access to the their premium prices until mid-November. The delay comes after the District marketplace discovered “a high error rate” in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people will use to purchase insurance on the marketplace.

The insurance marketplaces, if working as plan, are supposed to spit out an estimate for a tax credit after a shopper enters in some basic information about where she lives and how much she earns. In the District, that won’t happen next month. Instead, the eligibility determination will be made “off-line by experts” by early November.

So who is going to benefit from this new system?

Well, it turns out that the health insurance companies will greatly benefit.  Health insurance companies helped write Obamacare, and their stock prices have absolutely soared since Obamacare was signed into law.  If you doubt this, just check out the amazing charts in this article.

Not that they were hurting under the old system either.  They have been raking in gigantic mountains of cash for years while trying to provide as little health care as possible.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“.

For the rest of us, Obamacare is going to be even worse than the old system.  A 2013 Health Care Survey that polled 200 top health care professionals discovered the following about what they believe Obamacare will bring…

— 53 percent, “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.”

— 51 percent, “Quality of care will go down.”

— 49 percent, “The law is overly complicated.”

— 42 percent, “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.”

— 37 percent, “The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.”

— 32 percent, “Too complex for businesses.”

— 19 percent, “Americans will die earlier.”

So Americans are going to pay more, get worse care, have more paperwork and a more complicated system, and they are likely to die younger too?

Wow, that sounds like a great deal.

Where do we sign up?

America: Where Hard Working, Productive Members Of Society Pay For The Health Care Of Everyone Else

ObamacareEverybody in America wants health care – but most Americans seem to want someone else to pay for it.  In the United States today, the way that our system works is that the hard working, productive members of society pay for the health care of everyone else.  At least under socialism everyone gets the same benefits.  Our system of health care is a very twisted version of socialism where millions upon millions of very hard working people are forced to pay for the health care of others, but often can’t afford to purchase decent health insurance for themselves.  Personally, I don’t have a big employer paying for my health care so I have to buy it myself, and I just got a letter from my health insurance company telling me that I have another massive rate increase coming up.  Have you gotten a similar letter?  Health insurance premiums are going up all over America, and this is just the beginning.  In fact, the CEO of Aetna says that health insurance rates for many Americans will double when the major provisions of Obamacare kick in next year.

It would be bad enough if hard working Americans just had to pay for their own health insurance.  But no, they are also expected to pay for the health care of members of Congress, employees of the IRS and other federal agencies, state and local government employees, their adult kids (because they can’t afford health insurance), the elderly, the poor, and now under Obamacare they will also be expected to subsidize the health plans of tens of millions of other Americans that are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

When you add it all up, the hard working, productive members of society are at least partially subsidizing the health care of well over half of all Americans while having to pay for their own health care at the same time.

Needless to say, it isn’t too hard to see who is getting the raw end of the deal.

Members of Congress certainly don’t want to pay for their own health care.  There was panic in the halls of Congress recently when they started realizing that due to certain provisions in Obamacare they may soon be forced to pay for their own health insurance plans.  There was widespread moaning and complaining about how they would be facing “thousands of dollars in additional premium payments” every year.

Things got so bad that Barack Obama got personally involved in the effort to find a solution.  Thankfully, members of Congress can relax because a ruling is being issued that will allow the federal government to continue to subsidize 75 percent of the cost of their health plans…

Lawmakers and staff can breathe easy — their health care tab is not going to soar next year.

The Office of Personnel Management, under heavy pressure from Capitol Hill, will issue a ruling that says the government can continue to make a contribution to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides, according to several Hill sources.

A White House official confirmed the deal and said the proposed regulations will be issued next week.

And the IRS, which has been put in charge of imposing the rules of Obamacare on all the rest of us, is freaking out about the fact that some members of Congress would like to force them to personally participate in Obamacare…

The union that represents IRS employees is urging its members to write to their congressmen to help get the union out of Obamacare.

The following are some excerpts from a letter that the union that represents IRS employees sent to members of Congress…

“H.R. 1780 would put federal employees in a special class where they would be prohibited from receiving health insurance through their employer. It would treat federal employees differently from state and local government employees and most employees of large private sector companies who receive health insurance benefits through their employer. The primary purpose of the Affordable Care Act was to provide a marketplace for the sale and purchase of health insurance for those who do not have such coverage – not to take coverage away from employees who already receive it through their employers,” the letter reads.

“I work hard and am proud of the services that I provide to your constituents every day. One of the main benefits I receive as a federal employee is the ability to purchase health insurance coverage through the FEHBP with an employer contribution towards those benefits. Please let me know your views on this legislation. I look forward to hearing back from you,” the letter concludes.

This is just shameful.  If the IRS is going to impose Obamacare on the rest of America, then it should be good enough for them too.

Just check out acting IRS chief Danny Werfel begging for employees of his agency not to have to go on Obamacare…

But we have always had to at least partially subsidize the health plans of federal, state and local government workers.

The big change under Obamacare is that we will soon be subsidizing the health plans of tens of millions of our fellow Americans.

CNN says that 26 million Americans will be eligible for health insurance subsidies, but others believe that the true number is far, far higher than that.

For example, according to CNBC, a family of three in New York that earns $78,120 a year would be eligible for a subsidy of more than five thousand dollars…

In New York, a family of three whose annual income totals $78,120, would pay $12,784 for the second-lower-priced silver plan on that state’s insurance exchange. After getting a $5,363 tax credit, the family’s net cost for the insurance would be $7,421.

So who pays for that?

You and I do through our tax dollars.

And if you can believe it, Obamacare actually provides an incentive to not work too hard, because if you make too much money you could lose your health insurance subsidy…

Working more could ultimately mean thousands of dollars less for you under a quirk in the new health-care law going into effect this fall. This could prompt some people to cut back on their hours to avoid losing money.

“Working more can actually leave you worse off,” the price-comparison site ValuePenguin.com notes in a new analysis.

“It’s sort of an absurd scenario,” said Jonathan Wu, ValuePenguin.com’s co-founder. “It’s something for people to be aware of.”

In that scenario, an individual or family whose annual income surpasses maximums set by the federal government—if only by $1—will totally lose subsidies available to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

What a perverse system.

And of course Obamacare will allow young adults to stay on the health insurance policies of their parents until they reach 26 years of age.  As I mentioned the other day, 36 percent of all young adults in the 18 to 31 age bracket are currently living with their folks.  In most of those cases, the parents have to end up footing the bill for health care because the kids simply cannot afford it.

Medicaid continues to expand as well.  Certainly helping the poor is a very good thing, but unfortunately the number of poor just continues to explode.

Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Right now, there are more than 56 million Americans on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

It is going to take a whole lot of money to support 72 million Medicaid patients.

And then of course there is Medicare.

When Medicare was first established, we were told that it would cost about $12 billion a year by the time 1990 rolled around.

Instead, it actually cost the federal government $110 billion in 1990, and it will cost the federal government close to $600 billion this year.

But if you think this is bad, just wait until all of the Baby Boomers retire.  It is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from a little bit more than 50 million today to 73.2 million in 2025.  By then, we would be spending well over a trillion dollars a year on Medicare.

As you can see, under Obamacare the vast majority of all Americans will have their health care at least partially subsidized.

And it expected that our tax dollars will somehow be enough to pay for all of this.

The truth is that we have a deeply broken system.  Costs are spiraling out of control and nobody is quite sure how to fix things.  The following statistics come from one of my previous articles entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“…

–This year the American people will spend approximately 2.8 trillion dollars on health care, and it is being projected that Americans will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.

–The United States spends more on health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.

–If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.

–Back in 1960, an average of $147 was spent per person on health care in the United States. By 2009, that number had skyrocketed to $8,086.

The sad thing is that many hard working Americans in the private sector are being forced to subsidize the health care of others, but they can’t even afford decent health care for themselves.

For example, I know of one hard working couple that has a health plan that has a $1,000 deductible.  Even with that deductible, their health insurance premiums are absolutely ridiculous.  Their health care strategy is simply to avoid going to the hospital or visiting a doctor as much as possible.

And of course health insurance companies make money by providing as little health care as possible.  Many Americans have discovered that when you need them the most, some health insurance companies will try to get out of covering you any way that they possibly can.

The reality is that just because you have health insurance that does not mean that you are “covered”.

According to a study that was published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States.  Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved people that actually did have health insurance.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is the system stinks, and Obamacare is going to make things a whole lot worse.

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