Sleepless in Midland

Correcting AP -- giving people right to opt out of Obamacare doesn't make them lose

Sunday morning's paper contained an AP article purporting to list winners and losers in the Republican tax plan. (The article, not on the morning paper's website, can be found at fox23.com -- Ultra-wealthy win in Senate tax bill, other face hikes.)

And it highlights a point made at this blog before: Lefties are masters of word manipulation.

Among the losers the article identifies were people they said would lose insurance coverage because the individual mandate would be repealed. All that means is that they have a choice. Democrats are proud to say they are "pro choice," and it's a darn shame that only applies to abortions.

Here's that particular offending paragraph in the part listing "Losers":

- An estimated 13 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage under the Senate bill, which would repeal the "Obamacare" requirement that everyone in the U.S. have health insurance. The projection comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Eliminating the fines is expected to mean fewer people would obtain federally subsidized health policies.

If people opt out of Obamacare coverage, they are not losers. They've merely opted not to use Obamacare and are freed from being punished with a tax for that decision.

P.S. There are other problems with the article. Read the whole thing if you can stand it.

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12:41 PM 11/19/2017

Mexico doing the work Americans won't do -- collaboration between public and private entities to improve health care

You've heard the refrain: Illegal immigrants do the work Americans won't do. It was repeated so often it became laughable. But here's some interesting news from Mexico in Top health industry issues of Mexico: A whole-society approach to healthcare. Excerpt from the intro:

For decades, the Mexican healthcare systems has relied on government initiatives to spark change. Now it is opening up to consumer and private industry influence. Collaborations between public and private organizations may be the key to solving some of the system’s greatest challenges: universal health coverage, chronic disease management, affordability and value-based care. PwC Health Research Institute’s report highlights the forces that are expected to have the most impact on the healthcare industry in the coming year.

(Bold added.)

Many Democrats in the U.S. are clamoring for universal health coverage which seems to imply a Medicare or Medicaid type system regardless of the stifling of the innovation for which the United States is famous. So it's interesting to see at least one country acknowledging that problem while struggling to make such a thing work.

Obamacare has been a nightmare for many, and Trump probably would have signed anything to repeal or even to make simple improvements to the thing. But he's making some progress with his executive orders. It's unfortunate that the House and Senate couldn't come to terms, but maybe that will eventually change.

In any event, the report about the state of the Mexican healthcare system is enlightening. Download the PDF at this link: Top ten health industry issues of Mexico: A whole-society approach to healthcare.

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3:04 PM 10/16/2017

Health care is a right only if the law makes it a right

Everyone has an answer to this question: Is Health Care a Right?

The writer, Atul Gawande, describes a visit to the Appalachians of Ohio. He found people who work only at gaming the system -- welfare, disability, food stamps, etc. And he found people who work at multiple jobs for minimal pay who feel like they are paying for the deadbeats' way of life with their taxes. The workers support the bums, and they don't like it. That probably occurs throughout the U.S., but it seems to be getting more notice since "Hillbilly Elegy" became so popular.

Anyway, this paragraph from the article sums up the conflict:

Understanding this seems key to breaking the current political impasse. The deal we each get on health care has a profound impact on our lives—on our savings, on our well-being, on our life expectancy. In the American health-care system, however, different people get astonishingly different deals. That disparity is having a corrosive effect on how we view our country, our government, and one another.

So is health care a right? It is if the government makes it so.

(Link comes to us via Ira Stoll's Future of Capitalism.)

Meanwhile, for those waiting for an Obamacare repeal, as long as our senators and representatives get ambivalent results from their opinion polls, we're stuck with the status quo.

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12:55 PM 9/30/2017

Could the tide be about to turn on political correctness in comedy?

Not too long ago I made the observation that TCM omitted "Blazing Saddles" from their movie selections which were supposed to pay tribute to the late Gene Wilder. Political correctness was the most obvious reason. However, the movie did show up on the small screen some time later, but no one could have convinced me that the tide had turned. Now, I don't know.

Stephen Cobert's angry, unfunny, political diatribes have probably hurt the profession as much as anything. However, his audience must eat it up. But many prominent comedians have publicly decried political correctness and how it has worked to destroy their professions -- Jerry Seinfeld, for example. So maybe there is a backlash brewing.

Mel Brooks is currently the topic of a Dailymail article, to wit: Our PC world is the death of comedy, says Mel Brooks: Veteran comedian claims society is 'stupidly politically correct' and that many of his films could not be made today. Here's an excerpt:

The producer and director said many of his films – including 1974 comedy western Blazing Saddles, which satirised racism – could not be made today.

But try to reconcile that with this one:

Brooks said he thought his 1974 comedy musical Young Frankenstein was among the few of his films that could be made now. He has turned it into a West End show, starring Ross Noble and Lesley Joseph, and said he hopes to do the same with Blazing Saddles.

Has the corner been turned? Blazing Saddles returns as a play? We can hope.

Meanwhile, they may not have killed comedy, but comedians like Jimmy Kimmel certainly seem to be trying. David Letterman lost a lot of fans when he went full bore political, and Kimmel is headed down that same road with his very personal attacks on conservatives. Kimmel helped get Adam Carolla into the biz, so there's one thing which should earn him our gratitude. But otherwise, Kimmel is just another typical Democrat.

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9:15 AM 9/23/2017

McCain can't rise above need for revenge

Senator John McCain was one of three Republican senators who voted against the Obamacare skinny repeal last week. His motive was pretty obvious: revenge.

Donald Trump was an equal opportunity insulter during the 2016 campaign. And it was inevitable that some of those on the receiving end would extract revenge when the opportunity arose. I predicted it would be Ted Cruz blocking something Trump wanted. Wrong. Cruz made the skinny repeal better and voted for it.

But John McCain couldn't rise above his hurt feelings.. And it probably didn't hurt for Joe Biden to lobby him with a tearful story about his own son. In that regard, McCain signaled that he really is no better than Donald Trump.

What will become of McCain? He's got health problems to deal with at the moment, and if he can't overcome them, then he may not be back in the Senate. Heck, maybe his brain cancer is affecting his judgment. A brain cancer diagnosis would probably cause a person to recognize his vulnerability, but not having been there myself, I couldn't say whether retribution becomes a dominate death bed driver.

In any event, those folks in the Senate are humans with their own emotions and motivations. Sometimes their emotions are so important to them that they put them over the needs of the country. That seems to be the case with John McCain.

Meanwhile, he will get to wear his Planned Parenthood superhero cape while he gets chemo. BTW, that cape looks less like a superhero cape than half a T-shirt.

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12:22 PM 7/30/2017

Senate Republicans will probably work with Dems to recraft Obamacare -- just like pollsters said people wanted

Last week we cited poll results in Repeal and replace took a big hit -- poll says 71% want Republicans to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare. The prediction in that post was that the Obamacare project in the Senate would likely fail with that poll in the minds of Senators. Sure enough, it happened -- there weren't enough Senators who favored a motion to proceed.

What comes next? Reps and Dems working together on it. What are the odds?

Hugh Hewitt may have been reading the same tea leaves. Here he is in Why Ryan and McConnell should go for a big deal with Democrats:

A “watch it fail” approach to Obamacare, when the crisis is real and the consequences for poor children are so enormous, is not just bad politics; it is also immoral.

The alternative to waiting for 2019 is a bipartisan approach — if Democrats will have it. A health-care deal could be done, leaving the fringes of both party caucuses on the outside looking in. ...

The GOP Congress has failed. Unless there’s a Lazarus-like resurrection of the health-care bill, the session is effectively over.

He concludes with this:

The 2018 prospects look bad for both parties: The GOP lacks policy victories, thanks to imprudent Freedom Caucus members and scared moderates. The Democrats are lost in Trump hatred to the point where a large part of the country thinks that they and the mainstream media are deranged. Both parties have cause for concern. We are at a crisis point where citizens are giving up on representative government en masse. So why not swing for the fences?

They'll end up doing whatever their internal polling leads them to do.

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9:00 AM 7/19/2017

Repeal and replace took a big hit -- poll says 71% want Republicans to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare

Most elected officials pay close attention to poll responses, and if this one is consistent with their own internal polls, the effort to repeal Obamacare took a big hit.

This comes to us by way of Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation, in Public wants GOP to work with Dems on health care. These days all polls should probably be suspect, but there it is.

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12:42 PM 7/12/2017

Putting more people on Medicaid was not a solution

I started talking about this long ago. Anyone who has ever tried to help someone on Medicaid get a doctor's appointment had an arduous time. Doctors simply do not want any more Medicaid patients than they already have.

So it's nice that prominent columnists are talking about it, too. See John Daniel Davidson at thefederalist.com: Let’s Stop Pretending Medicaid Saves Lives. Excerpts:

Proponents of the “thousands will die” argument cite evidence that health insurance is correlated to health outcomes, which is a fair point, as far as it goes. But they too often conflate health insurance with Medicaid coverage. That’s important for two reasons: 1) the majority of coverage gains under Obamacare have come from Medicaid expansion; and 2) Medicaid coverage isn’t the same as private insurance—not even close. When progressives talk about insurance under Obamacare, they’re mostly talking about Medicaid coverage, not private health insurance.

The distinction is important because research has shown that being on Medicaid produces no better health outcomes than being uninsured. This argument has been hammered home by conservative health care scholars like Avik Roy and others, much to the consternation of progressive health policy wonks, who insist on torturing otherwise decent studies for signs that Medicaid saves lives. ...

What accounts for these findings? Part of the answer brings us back to Deamonte Driver. Simply put, too few health care providers participate in Medicaid, so Medicaid patients often have an extremely narrow network of care—especially specialist care. That’s why they often end up in expensive and inefficient hospital ERs. ...

This flaw is built into Medicaid’s design. Like Medicare, Medicaid pays less than private insurance does, so doctors and dentists are often hesitant to take on more than a handful of Medicaid patients, which means there simply aren’t as many doctors and dentists available to see Medicaid patients as privately insured or self-paying patients. What’s more, Medicaid enrollees don’t even have the option of paying the difference between what Medicaid pays and what private insurance pays, or negotiating the kinds of payment plans most providers are happy to offer low-income patients. Federal Medicaid rules simply won’t allow it. It’s either all Medicaid, or nothing.

(Bold added by me.)

Mr. Davidson utilizes one of the tactics favored by progressive writers. He provides an anecdote that humanized the problem. The anecdote had an unhappy ending, by the way. People on the left do that all the time, and it must work because one story about someone's suffering often seems to counter a thousand statistics.

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2:40 PM 6/29/2017

Electronic medical records -- still full of bugs

It must have seemed like a good idea back in the days before we began seeing almost weekly reports of major internet hacks, massive information hijacking, and ransomware demands. Well, what do you know, here's one right here: The Latest: Pennsylvania health company restoring network.

Who could have seen this cyber-catastrophe coming? Plenty did. See How Electronic Medical Records Exploded In Doctors’ Faces And Politicians Got Off Scot-Free. That article concentrated more on government ineptitude than on cyber-crimes, although, to be fair, it's not clear which is worse.

Meanwhile, the folks at Sophos.com have a modest proposal: Is it time for cash for medical “Clunkers”?. Such a program would have the government buy up those antiquated Windows XP computers still favored among medical professionals to encourage them to upgrade their systems.

But is more government spending the answer? The medical professions seems to devote a great deal of effort in warding off or limiting malpractice suits. So maybe a few well placed lawsuits might be the factor motivating upgrades. Oh, and get the government out of healthcare, while you're at it.

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1:31 PM 6/28/2017

States' high risk insurance pools worked -- Obamacare extinguished them

I've written about this before. The Texas high risk insurance pool worked just fine to insure those who couldn't get medical insurance elsewhere. Those would be people with the infamous "pre-existing conditions."

Now comes an article penned by Ted Nickel, the insurance commissioner for the state of Wisconsin, to wit. I Ran Wisconsin's Successful High-Risk Pool Before Obamacare.. Excerpt:

Prior to the ACA, Wisconsin consumers could choose from over 20 individual insurance companies offering coverage in our state. These included for-profit and not-for-profit companies; HMO’s and PPOs; and local and national insurers. There were a variety of plan options to meet a range of coverage needs.

While these plans were underwritten, individuals denied coverage would receive coverage from Wisconsin’s high-risk pool known as the Health Insurance Risk Sharing Plan (HIRSP). HIRSP provided Wisconsin consumers with peace of mind by providing high quality, comprehensive coverage to over 20,000 of our friends and neighbors.

Unlike the current ACA market where most people must wait until open enrollment to purchase coverage, consumers could enroll in HIRSP at any time. There were no pre-existing condition limits for people signing up for coverage if they had prior coverage. If consumers had no prior coverage, they would receive coverage for most conditions, but had to wait six months for pre-existing conditions.

In contrast, with Obamacare you may have to wait up to 11 months for any coverage if you miss open enrollment.

Once enrolled in HIRSP, consumers chose from a variety of benefit plans including both high and low deductible plans. While Obamacare plans are criticized for having narrow networks, there were no network limitations for HIRSP; members were able to visit any medical provider in our state and receive coverage when traveling outside of Wisconsin. Subsidies were also available to offset premiums, deductibles and prescription drug out-of-pocket maximums for low-income members.

HIRSP benefit and administrative costs were funded by member premiums and contributions from insurers and providers. No state dollars were needed to support this program.

That program, as well as the other state programs worked. But they didn't fit the narrative for the Obamacare sales pitch.

Meanwhile, CBO says Senate bill would increase number of uninsured Americans by 22 million. Someone should conduct a serious study about how accurate those CBO predictions have been.  Here's a good start: CBO Gets ObamaCare Reform Estimates Wrong — Again.

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12:47 PM 6/27/2017

Mike Lee has a rational suggestion for the BCRA

The Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 (BCRA, i.e., Son of Obamacare) is hanging before the Senate, and as we noted the other day, five senators have come out against it. Let's take a look at one of them, Mike Lee of Utah. See The Missing Ingredient in BCRA: Humility. Here's the meat of that sammich:

And so, for all my frustrations about the process and my disagreements with the substance of BCRA, I would still be willing to vote for it if it allowed states and/or individuals to opt-out of the Obamacare system free-and-clear to experiment with different forms of insurance, benefits packages, and care provision options. Liberal states might try single-payer systems, while conservatives might emphasize health savings accounts. Some people embrace association health plans or so-called “medishare” ministry models. My guess is different approaches will work for different people in different places – like everything else in life.

When we last talked about Mike Lee he was discussing Iroquois Chief, federalism, and the founding fathers. You know, I like that cut of that guy's jib.

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12:50 PM 6/26/2017

Republicans should probably not fret too much if Son of Obamacare doesn't pass

And then there were five -- Fifth Republican Jumps Ship On Healthcare Bill. According to this, Senators Dean Heller of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin all say they won't vote for the Republican version of Obamacare as written. If the bill goes down, maybe they will take the heat off the other Republicans.

Failure of the Obamacare repeal effort isn't looking like such a bad thing. If Son of Obamacare passes with no Democrat votes the Republicans will own it.

With the MSM serving as a branch of the Democrat party, if the new law passes, the only news we'll get over the next few years will be about all the people who are suffering from it. Those suffering from Obamacare are currently in the shadows.

But you can bet your bottom dollar that if Republicans succeed in changing or repealing the law it will be presented as the worst thing to happen to people. Democrats are already proclaiming people will die. It will continue until Democrats take over the House, the Senate, the White House, or all three.

So put me in the camp of "leave it alone," and wait until enough people suffer that they will join conservatives in wanting the change.

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12:13 PM 6/25/2017

It would be nice if they helped but can you blame Democrats for not wanting to touch the Obamacare revamp?

Obamacare was signed into law without the help of any Republicans, and opinions vary as to whether Obamacare was really that beneficial. It became the law of the land, and whether citizens wanted it or not, they were stuck with it. Some polls say most people like it. But maybe that's because they really have no insurance alternatives.

In any event, calls for Democrats to help out with the revisions are falling on deaf ears. But the Obamacare architects deliberately made it hopelessly complicated. Dems don't want to touch it again. Can you really blame them?

They're more than happy to pass that hot potato on to Republicans, and they will be more than happy to criticize the results.

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2:07 PM 5/25/2017

Bring back the state high risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions

As legislators bicker over Son of Obamacare, one of the bones of contention is insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and of course, the expense of covering them. Obamacare had healthy people pay extra for their coverage so that the others would be covered, too. But there's another way, the old, pre-Obamacare way -- state sponsored high risk insurance pools. The cost was subsidized by taxpayers, not just the people who paid premiums for Obamacare insurance.

Before Obamacare became the law of the land the state of Texas had such a pool. Here's a passage from the Texas Health Pool About page:

The Texas Health Insurance Pool was created by the Texas Legislature to provide health insurance to eligible Texas residents who, due to medical conditions, are unable to obtain coverage from individual commercial insurers.  The Pool also served as the Texas alternative mechanism for individual health insurance coverage, guaranteeing portability of coverage to qualified individuals who lost coverage under an employer group plan, church plan or state plan, as mandated by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The Program served the State of Texas as an important "safety net" for individuals who had been denied health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

So when we hear Jimmy Kimmel's heart wrenching tale about the anguish he felt about his newborn son's health, we are expected to get angry at Republicans because they are tinkering with Obamacare. Sorry. While I may be sympathetic, I'm not persuaded by the partisan politics on display there.

I don't know whether Kimmel lives in New York or California, but surely two of the blueist states had some form of insurance pool prior to Obamacare which Kimmel could have used prior to Obamacare. And he'll have something similar after Obamacare. Hearing a celebrity blame Republicans for every thing that did or could go wrong is getting tiresome. But Kimmel knows his audience and apparently doesn't mind alienating people who aren't in it.

Betsy McCaughey sums it up nicely:

There is a consensus that people with pre-existing conditions should be able to get insurance. The issue is who pays the hefty price tag. ObamaCare forced healthy buyers in the individual market to foot the entire bill. That's why their premiums have doubled since the law went into effect.

The new House bill sets up a fairer way: a $130 billion pot of money, federally funded, to pay for people with pre-existing conditions. The entire nation chips in, not just people stuck in the individual market.

Yes, it would work. But the biggest stumbling block is that it doesn't fit the narrative.

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11:08 AM 5/3/2017

Obamacare -- give people a new entitlement then dare to take it away

A remarkable phenomenon that came to light this last few weeks was how popular Obamacare had become once a repeal became a possibility. Many observers have become skeptical of polling data, one reason being that so many people decline to participate in them. So they were skeptical of the new polls about Obamacare's favorable ratings.

But the polls may have been right. Customers hated it until they thought they might lose it. Steve Chapman offers some explanations in Why Trump Can’t Fix Health Care:

Only lately has it occurred to many detractors that ACA also has elements that they would rather not surrender—such as allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies until age 26, barring exclusions for pre-existing conditions, mandating free preventive care, giving subsidies to moderate- and low-income people and expanding eligibility for Medicaid.

But then this:

Trump has led voters to believe they can have all the stuff they want and none of the stuff they resent. But neither he nor anyone else has found a plausible way to accomplish that.

The mournful realities are inescapable. If you remove the individual mandate, you allow younger and healthier people to opt out, which would mean higher premiums for older and sicker ones. If you cut the cost of Medicaid, you leave a lot of poorer Americans without coverage, forced to rely on expensive emergency room care. If you eliminate the taxes, you raise the federal deficit.

This simple truism became obvious: There are no easy fixes.

3:30 PM 3/27/2017

Put them on Medicaid -- not

Just about everyone has an opinion about the Obamacare reforms put forth by Republicans. And it's difficult for most of us to decide what will be the best outcome, especially since Democrats will attempt to beat Republicans about the head with whatever they come up with.

But apparently, some people think Medicaid is a solution. Jim Geraghty eviscerates that suggestion in The Unmentioned Problems in ‘Medicaid for All’. It's good that someone is finally mentioning it. Here it is:

The “Medicaid for all” crowd also usually hand-waves away the fact that a lot of doctors don’t take Medicaid. As of 2015, only 67 percent of doctors take Medicaid, and only 45 percent of doctors take new patients on Medicaid.

Anyone who has ever tried to find a doctor for someone on Medicaid has seen this up close. Then there's this:

There’s also the inconvenient fact that the best study we have shows that Medicaid doesn’t actually improve people’s health. It makes them feel better by self-reported measures, and less financially stressed.  But it also had “no statistically significant effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, or cardiovascular risk” and “found no evidence that Medicaid caused new enrollees to substitute office visits for [emergency room] visits; if anything, Medicaid made them more likely to use both.”

Obamacare was constructed with the goal of making unraveling it too tedious and complicated to attempt. Republicans have been presented with an opportunity to demonstrate they are as smart as Jonathan Gruber.

Son of Obamacare

Obama wouldn't mind it so much if Republicans replaced Obamacare so long as they kept the name Obamacare.

Obama almost hints at that in President Obama Says 'Obamacare' Will Survive Beyond His Presidency. Excerpt:

"It may be called something else. And as I said, I don't mind. If in fact the Republicans make some modifications, some of which I may have been seeking previously, but they wouldn't cooperate because they didn't want to -- make the system work, and relabel it as Trumpcare, I'm fine with that," he said in an exclusive interview on “This Week” Sunday.

Don't believe it. He's trying too hard to feign insouciance. He has demonstrated such a great degree of narcissism that it isn't conceivable that he would be fine with it.

Meanwhile, as to the suggestion that Republicans wouldn't cooperate with him before, that's hogwash. Back before Obamacare became the law of the land several Republicans put forth better plans for reforming healthcare insurance. I took on the unrealistic task of summarizing those competing plans on this blog. But I got burned out after just two. I felt bad about not completing the task, but it wouldn't have made any difference as Democrats rammed Obamacare down our throats in spite of offers for improvement.

Now it's Democrats' turn to cooperate. They will, won't they? Hmm, maybe not, especially in the face of this: Obama urges Dems to fight GOP on ObamaCare.

Republicans, don't fall for that 3 year trap on Obamacare repeal and replace

It's a trap! It's a trap!

Prominent lawmakers proclaim that three years is a suitable time for replacing Obamacare. One would think it would be Democrats who are trying to stretch it out to three years, but no, it's Republicans. See It could take 3 years for Republicans to replace Obamacare. Excerpt:

“We’re talking about a three-year transition now that we actually have a president who is likely to sign the repeal into law,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday, according to Politico. “People are being, understandably cautious, to make sure nobody’s dropped through the cracks.”

Chuck Schumer is egging them on. To wit:

"They know they can't just repeal it, so they say we'll do it three years from now," the New York Democrat said. "They have nothing to put in its place, and believe me, just repealing Obamacare -- even though they have nothing to put in its place and saying they'll do it sometime down the road -- will cause huge calamity from one end of American to the other."

For the next two years Democrats and the main stream media will be drumming into the public consciousness how crazy Trump is and how mean Republicans are in general. Trump hysteria started during the campaign, and in the month since the election it has metastasized into full blown Trump derangement syndrome. There's obviously an audience for this. And it will get worse.

By 2018 voters will be suitably brainwashed and ready for change. And Democrats will win control of the House or the Senate. Then any chance for a repeal-and-replace will vanish.

Republicans, do it now! There's a window of opportunity that will eventually close. Democrats are counting on Republicans missing it.

Dreaming of single payer healthcare? The VA is your worst nightmare.

Mark Steyn tells what happens from time to time in Britain. A story will make the media rounds about some horrible thing that happened to a patient in a government run hospital, and the public is appropriately appalled. Then a few weeks later there will be a story highlighting some individual expressing gratitude to the service for saving his life. So it balances out, and nothing is done, and everything goes on as if the first incident didn't happen.

Part one of that scenario is happening at the Department of Veterans Affairs, our version of government healthcare. Two recent headlines:

VA dentist resigns after possibly infecting 600 veterans with HIV and hepatitis, and

4 quit after Oklahoma veteran with maggots in wound dies.

Unfortunately for the VA, there didn't seem to be anyone coming along later with a heartwarming story about how they saved his life. They didn't even try to claim the maggots were part of the healing regimen.

Godspeed to those who want to reform the department. Oh, and the same to those who want to repeal and replace Obamacare, too.

Good observation from Ira Stoll -- Republicans will be held responsible for next hike in health insurance premiums

Ira Stoll continues to amaze with his brilliant observations. His latest at NYSun.com, Jonathan Gruber Discovers ‘Stupidity’ Is Wrong Word For American Voters, reminds us how Gruber disparaged ordinary Americans when he called them too stupid to understand the complicated Rube Goldberg contraption he designed called Obamacare.

As Donald Trump and Republicans commence dismantling and replacing the bill, Mr. Stoll makes this astute observation:

If voters are going to start blaming politicians for their health insurance and medical bills, the anger in the next election could be directed at the Republicans who now hold control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Yeah. They'd better get it right, and in a hurry. Democrats lost the House of Representatives two years after Obama was elected president. Republicans have a window of opportunity. If they're smart, they'll do what they need to do while they have the power.

Dumb deplorables have better idea on health care insurance

The infamous Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was on the TV recently boasting that Obamacare was a success because it accomplished two things: One, many people who were uninsurable prior to passage of the bill are now insured; and two, Obamacare prevented cancellation of insurance because of illness.

Well, excuse me for being such a dumb deplorable. But if that's all you wanted to accomplish, you didn't have to upend the entire health care industry and insurance therefor. It seems like you could have simply addressed those two problems and come up with laws accomplishing what you wanted to do without out all the fuss.

Currently, Obamacare is a failure. But the Big Government wing of the governing establishment wants full government control -- a single payer system with the power centralized in a command and control committee. Whatever they choose to call it, it sounds a lot like socialism.

Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a simple law that will accomplish those two objectives without turning the whole industry upside with the leftist vision of utopia.

Paging Dr. Gruber -- Bill Clinton needs a lie we can believe

The Hill tells us about it in Bill Clinton goes way off message on ObamaCare. He sets the trap:

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have healthcare and then the people that are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Clinton said. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

Then he springs the trap:

He then called for more a government-driven system in which people could buy into Medicare and Medicaid. Without that option, Clinton said, the law “doesn’t make any sense” and “the insurance model doesn’t work here.”

People calling for more enrollees in Medicare and Medicaid are misleading their listeners. Many doctors won't take new Medicare patients. And even more refuse Medicaid patients. It isn't just because of the increased paper work. It's because the government price controls are so stingy with money that a doctor simply can't afford those patients.

Tough luck, progressives may say. Doctors should learn to do with less money. No one would dare point to the Veterans Affairs as an example of how it might work. But they might point to the government health care in Britain. So maybe this is what we might look forward to: Junior doctors go on strike AGAIN forcing another 5,000 operations to be cancelled during the 48-hour walk out.

Progressives might say "it couldn't happen here." Well, they've been wrong on just about everything about Obamacare, and if history repeats, they'll be wrong about this.

But if the Clintons tell their fans a lie they can believe, then we may be in the thick of it before we know what hit us.

Michelle Obama -- I need an honest man

That's not a direct quote, but it works better to highlight the absurdity.

The real headline was Michelle Obama: ‘We Need Someone Who’s Honest and Plays by the Rules’ as President. Duh, as the kids say.

It's safe to say that George W. Bush was honest and played by the rules, and that factors in the fiction invented by Democrats about lies about Iraqi weapons. The problem is that we haven't had an honest president in almost eight years. I'll leave it to readers to do their own searches for the long list of Obama lies which, of course, would be incomplete if it didn't include that whopper about being able to keep your doctor or insurance plan.

Could Ms. Obama have been making a pitch for Hillary Clinton? HA HA! That's too absurd to even contemplate. Leftists have to lie to get their agenda passed. No one in their right mind would vote for it if they understood what it involved. So they lie about lying.

The choice in November is between a loud mouth show boat or a bald faced liar.

Bernie's voters have to suspend belief if they think his healthcare plan would work

I was watching "The Americans" the other night, and there was a scene from what was supposed to be a live TV show from the 80s in which David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear then reappear. In reality, that stunt was a very large scale slight of hand trick. Viewers had to suspend belief for a while, but it was an impressive trick.

One trick magicians never promise to do is make money appear. Only politicians do that.

When we hear that Bernie Sanders wants to do away with all the existing health care insurance options and replace them with a single payer plan -- a Medicare for all -- most of us hear a magician and know it's going to be smoke, mirrors, and slight of hand. To help pull back the curtain, Investors.com editorializes:

When he released his plan, Sanders claimed it would cost about $14 trillion over 10 years. But not to worry, he said, since it would be fully paid for by the rich, and the middle class, and the working class, who would all see their taxes go up. /snip/

When you add it all up, the Urban Institute says, the price tag works out to $32 trillion over 10 years. In other words, Sanders’ plan would increase the already gargantuan size of the federal government by almost two-thirds.

Yes, state and local government, businesses and individuals will save money on premiums and out-of-pocket costs. But the idea that they’d be better off requires a suspension of disbelief that is almost impossible to maintain.

Bernie Sanders is the magician promising to make money appear.

Editor's note: Donald Trump's promises require a belief in magic, too, so they've got that in common. Robo-ed. | Hmm. We've got us a regular carnival magic show going on here.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs -- the Obamacare scheme to bail out failing insurance companies

The first part of the title is Karl Marx's famous quote. It encompasses an economic principle that has crept into our own system ever so stealthily from the progressive income tax to Obamacare. Yes, Obamacare. See HHS: Bailing out Obamacare insurers an 'obligation' of the federal government and consider this [bold added]:

At issue is a provision within the law known as the risk corridors program. Under the program, which runs from 2014 through 2016, the federal government is to collect money from health insurers doing better than expected and use those funds to provide a federal backstop to other insurers who incur larger than expected losses from rising medical claims. The idea was to provide training wheels to insurers in the first years of Obamacare's implementation, and to take away any incentive for insurers to cherry pick only the healthiest customers.

Isn't that communism? Boy. President Obama really meant it when he said he was going to fundamentally transform the United States. Whether the people have the wherewithal to counter this remains to be seen.

Mr. President and Congress, Please replace Obamacare with Scott Walker's plan

Scott Walker laid out his health care insurance plan that would replace Obamacare should congress and a president decide to repeal Obamacare. It appears to be a good, easy to understand, plan. Jonathan Gruber, eat your heart out.

There was that thing, that one thing. It was the impetus for the radical transformation of the health care system as it existed. It was the unavailability of medical insurance for people with preexisting conditions. The state of Texas and other states had health insurance pools for those people. But that option went away once Obamacare came into being. The problem would have been a simple one to fix. Instead we got an unpopular law crammed down our throats by a power hungry administration bent on making as many people as possible dependent on government.

Walker's plan, described at nationalreview.com, would retain employer based coverage. But for those without employer insurance it would provide tax credits to buy insurance on the open market.

What about that one thing, preexisting conditions? Walker says this:

No individual should fear being denied coverage, or face huge premium spikes when they get sick and then try to change jobs or insurance plans. My plan would address these concerns. It would make additional reforms to insurance coverage laws to ensure individuals with pre-existing conditions would be protected, not only when moving from employer-based plans to the individual market, but also when switching between plans. This would make insurance coverage more portable, permitting individuals to own their coverage, regardless of how or where they purchase it. Provided individuals maintain continuous, creditable coverage, no one would see their premiums jump because of a health issue or be shut out of access to affordable health insurance because of a new diagnosis or a pre-existing medical condition. Newborns, as well as young adults leaving their parents’ insurance plans and buying their own, would have these same protections.

So simple. If only Democrats had focused on solving the problem instead of trying to fundamentally transform America.

Obamacare -- how's that working out for Americans?

It was an attempt at a huge transformation of the health care industry. And while most people were scared to death of it, Democrats in control rammed it through. But it's the law of the land, its supporters constantly tell us.

So how is Obamacare working? That's the question answered by Michael D. Tanner. There are over 10 million people signed up which is only slightly below revised predictions. However, that needs to double to reach what they've predicted for enrollment in 2016. That's a big hurdle, and with all the bad news coming out, it's hard to visualize some groundswell of approval appearing miraculously.

The Obamacare enrollees are probably still suffering from the initial sticker shock. And that's going to get worse. Insurance companies are seeking permission from state agencies to hike their rates with increases ranging from 19.9 percent in Washington to 64.8 percent in Texas. For that, with cheapest Obamacare plans, customers get a deductible of about $5,180 for individuals and $10,500 for families. Ouch.

But pity the people who were dumped into Medicaid. It was hard enough for Medicaid users to find doctors before Obamacare due to poor doctor reimbursement. Now it must be a game of musical chairs for the 7 million new patients as they all scramble to get to see the few doctors who will take them.

Meanwhile, we all anxiously await a ruling in King v. Burwell. If it goes against the federal government individual rates could go up even more. Death spiral, anyone?

P.S. Given all we've learned recently about known information loss through cybercrime by the OMB, it's probably a given that eventually all of our medical records will end up in hackers' hard drives if they aren't already there.

Finally, a backwards time machine, courtesy of Obamacare

The development of a forward time machine is difficult enough. But a backward time machine is currently beyond *speculation. However, President Obama has done the impossible with his signature transformative legislation called Obamacare. Obama claims that Obamacare has reduced the rate of medical care inflation from day one of Obamacare to the present. But as David Catron kindly points out, Obamacare didn't go into effect until 2014. OK, maybe Mr. Catron wasn't so kindly. See Obamacare’s Amazing Wayback Clause. Excerpt:

The most celebrated effect of this amazing provision is its retroactive reduction of medical inflation during the years preceding the law’s implementation. Obamacare was passed in 2010. However, except for a few minor provisions, it didn’t go into effect until 2014. Yet the law’s wayback clause is such a powerful cost control tool that it has been able to traverse the time-space continuum and slow the rate of health care inflation, as the President himself has phrased it, “every single year since the law passed.” ...

Nonpartisan studies attribute the decline in health care inflation to economic factors, insisting that the recession was the most important factor in reducing growth in medical spending: “This suggests that the recent decline is not primarily the result of structural changes in the health sector or of components of the Affordable Care Act.”

Some have even suggested that considerable credit for the slowdown in health care inflation — you Obamacare advocates should sit down before reading further — must go to the policies of George W. Bush. Much of the decline has been driven, these researchers point out, by a “remarkable” slowdown in Medicare spending, particularly in the Part D prescription drug program. Specifically, they write, “Our analysis shows that Part D has accounted for over 60 percent of the slowdown in Medicare benefits since 2011.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Catron speculates that the party is already over and that health care inflation is on the rise again. Oh well, we'll probably be trying to survive in a post apocalyptic United States after Iran explodes a few EMP bombs overhead anyway. So this may someday be remembered by survivors as the good old days.

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*A backwards time machine isn't possible under currently accepted premises because Einstein's theory suggests that time slows as one's speed accelerates, so the theoretical time machine has no reverse gear. For the best treatment of time travel possibilities, see Professor Farnsworth's forward time machine.

Well of course restaurants are going to pass Obamacare costs on to their customers

Last night on the local evening TV news there was a report about a regional restaurant franchise that shocked customers with a 2% fee appearing on the bill to cover Obamacare insurance costs. (The video doesn't seem to be online, but the story can be read at Restaurants Charging Customers For Employee Health Care.)

The TV version had some customer interviews, and they were not happy about it.

The concept is simple. When government raises taxes on a business the business can either pass the expense onto the customer, cut employees' salaries, or accept a lower profit. The disappointed customers seemed to think the company should eat the cost.

If even Harvard professors didn't understand that they were going to have to pay for Obamacare, then we can't fault the typical Buffalo Wild Wing diner for not comprehending the concept. But it certainly goes a long way toward explaining how easily socialism became acceptable to so many people.

There's a silver lining. Perhaps the fee on the restaurant bill is like the monolith in the movie "2001, a Space Odyssey."  It's a dawn of enlightenment. People may be realizing for the first time that there's a cost to socialism, and they're going to pay it.

Pelosi says Schumer's remarks about Obamacare were beyond comprehension --- No Nancy, they were very easy to comprehend

Nancy Pelosi, who famously said they had to pass the Obamacare bill to see what was in it, reacted to Chuck Schumer's recent comment about the law. When Chuck remarked that Democrats made a strategic mistake by passing Obamacare, he obviously knew which direction the wind was blowing.

But Pelosi issued another Pelosi-ism when she said Schumer's remark was "beyond comprehension." Nancy, you're the only one who didn't understand it. Everyone else understands it perfectly. And while they may not be interesting in helping Democrats recover, they certainly know how much of a man-made disaster the Obamacare passage was.