It’s Not Planned Parenthood that is Broken!

Through the expansion of Medicaid and a number of other provisions intended to drive both access and affordability in to healthcare insurance, beginning on January 1, 2014 all Americans were mandated to have healthcare insurance as stated in the ObamaCare law.  Also stated in the ObamaCare law, all insurance plans must include an essential healthcare benefits package of which includes comprehensive healthcare for women.

As it is illegal to utilize federal monies to fund abortions, Planned Parenthood essentially became obsolete when the ObamaCare mandated for all to have healthcare insurance kicked in, at least from a federal funds standpoint.  So why is it then, that there is such a pushback, from Democrats, to keep funding in place for Planned Parenthood, so much so that they would allow the government be shutdown rather than end funding of a redundant program?

By funding Planned Parenthood, Democrats are sending a clear message that it is okay to penalize taxpayers for the failure of certain individuals to comply with a federal mandate to obtain healthcare insurance.  If not this then the only other explanation is that Democrats are conceding that ObamaCare has failed in its purpose to provide access to affordable healthcare to the tens of thousands of women they {Democrats} claim are still in need of the services provided by Planned Parenthood.   It has to be one or the other so, which one is it? 

Correct me if I am wrong but, as the vast majority of women who utilize Planned Parenthood are low income, by funding Planned Parenthood, taxpayers are now paying twice for the same FREE woman’s healthcare services being utilized by tens of thousands of women.  And Democrats think we should be okay with this?  Are you people starting to see what the real problem is here?

Don’t the Wealthy Already Do Enough?

Wealthy people do not use public defenders, if needed, they hire a private attorney.  The wealthy rarely call on law enforcement to deal with repeated domestic issues, to report vandalism, complain about the neighbors trashy looking yard, report gang activity, drug activity, loud parties or to make false accusations about the bimbo living next door that their husband keeps staring at.  Wealthy people are almost exclusively self-employed or under contract and therefore never become eligible for unemployment benefits.  Wealthy people are rarely in need of social services, child protective services, the DEA, ATF or most any other tax paid agency.  And wealthy people never draw from welfare or any other form of social assistance.  You’re not likely to find an EBT card in the pocket of a wealthy person either. 

The offspring of wealthy people, more often than not, attend private schools yet they still pay into the public school system, it is not an opt-out program.  As their offspring grow older they are usually not in need of college grants, government loans or tuition assistance. 

Even if they do not own a business that provides employment to others, a large percentage of the wealthy provide non-business related employment to others in the form of hiring nanny services, personal assistances, housekeeping, accountants, pool service, private tooters and legal counsel.  Indirectly the wealthy help increase employment through such things as travel agencies, vacation and resort staff, high end boutique employees, country club staff, high dollar entertainment etc. even to the valet that parks their car for them.

Statistically, the wealthy are healthier than others and also typically have far better health insurance, making them less of a burden on the already over-burdened health insurance industry.  The wealthy are not in need of, nor can they qualify for government subsidized health benefits and you’ll not likely find a wealthy person sitting in the lobby of a Free Clinic.

The wealthy do not have a special tax code that they operate under, they use the same tax code as every other citizen.  By virtue have having more money, the wealthy do invest their money in areas where the tax codes provide them incentive to do so in order to keep the money at home.  So yes, when you average all the various deductions crated by their higher spending activities, a wealthy person might pay less taxes as a percentage of their income than that a middle class person with far fewer investment/deduction opportunities but at the end of the day the wealthy person still pays significantly more in overall tax dollars.  The notion that a wealthy person pays less in taxes is absolutely absurd.

So, in a nut shell, the wealthy utilize almost no taxpayer funded social services, they create a significant number of employment opportunities and they pay far more in overall taxes than the average middle class Joe.  They do all of this while dumping exponentially more money into the economy than any low or middle class person.  And yet Liberal Democrats and those who embrace the new swing towards progressivism want the wealthy to pick up the tab for everyone that is less fortunate than they happen to be.

I do not begrudge a wealthy person for having more than my middle class self does and I certainly do not believe they should be paying my, or anyone else’s bills.  And last, I damn sure don’t believe the wealthy should be burdened with filling the budget gap.  The debt and deficit is a government spending problem driven largely by a never ending list of social entitlement programs.  The deficit is in no way a revenue problem that needs to be solved by the wealthy.

ObamaCare - Do You Remember How We Got Here?

For those millions of American’s who sing praise and support to President Obama for all the years of hard work and dedication he put into bringing affordable healthcare to those Americans who have none, you might not want to read this!

 

Back Before ObamaCare

Unlike so many rising stars of both the Democratic and Republican Party who gained their recognition through their outstanding work and service, Barack Hussein Obama's story is quite different. 

Obama was a Junior Senator who was all but unknown outside the Democratic Party and the Senate.  With a near empty resume and almost no name recognition, it was a by chance  opportunity, created by none other than John Kerry, which brought Obama to the stage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  It was through a speech he gave at the convention that Barack Obama gained his star status.  The audience found this unknown black Senator from the State of Illinois to be both captivating and inspirational.

Most outside the black community could not have told you that Obama had a book on the #1 Best Sellers list in 2006, courtesy of Oprah Winfrey.  Before becoming a household name, those familiar with Senator Obama described him as the young Senator who gave a rousing Keynote Address at the 2004 DNC.  It was at that time which Barack Obama caught the attention of a few senior Democrats who saw “marketing potential” in this young, energetic and well-spoken Senator.

Early into his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination Obama was heavily criticized by many political analysts for not having enough experience to be a serious candidate.  And it was not long before Senator Obama helped to prove that point.  It was during an early campaign speech, in front of a group of union members that his inexperience and ill preparedness was first brought to light.

The then Senator Obama had stated many times prior, his position on desiring a single payer type, Universal (government run) Healthcare system yet he had failed to delve any deeper into his stated position then his fundamental idea.  His failure to have ever formulated an actual healthcare plan caught up to him shortly after throwing his name in the hat for the 2008 democratic presidential nomination.  While speaking before a group of union members at a campaign event, Senator Obama was asked to provide a few details of his proposed healthcare policy.  It was at that moment that Senator Obama realized he had not so much as even develop talking points to his vision of healthcare reform much less put together its actual framework.  The fundamental transformation of the nation’s healthcare system was to be one of the key platform items of his candidacy run and what would become the cornerstone of his platform during his run for the presidency.  But at that moment Obama  had to ad-lib which created an embarrassing moment for both himself and the Democratic Party.

Amid their busy campaign schedule, candidate Obama (or more likely members of his staff) hastily threw his healthcare platform together and in late May of 2007 he unveiled his Universal HealthCare Plan.

 

Obama and Hillary Debate

Healthcare reform was a hot topic of discussion between Clinton and Obama while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.  The fundamental difference between their two healthcare plans was the “individual mandate”.  Ironically, the individual mandate was not part of candidate Obamas plan at the time but was however included in Hillary’s.  When questioned on his thoughts regarding an individual mandate, candidate Obama rebuked the idea stating that it would “force” everyone to buy healthcare insurance.  Throughout their campaigns, the individual mandate was a favorite target of Senator Obama’s, stating regularly that if you chose Hillary’s plan you would be forced, by the government, to purchase healthcare insurance while with his plan your freedom would remain intact.

Senator Obama went on to win the Democratic presidential nomination and then the presidency in large part due to the promises he made to transform the healthcare system to a non-intrusive and highly affordable one.

 

Creating ObamaCare

Immediately after changing his residence to the White House, President Obama instructed congress to get to work on a Universal Healthcare plan that he wanted signed into law while in his first year in office.  The house floated several bills but it was the Senate bill, with its bi-partisan support, that stuck to the wall best with Democrats.  This early Senate bill became the framework for Obama’s healthcare transformation.

The first real hurdle came when Senate Democrats, at the advice of health policy experts, had to persuade the President to adopt a number of congressional proposals the most significant of which was the individual mandate, something that the President and vehemently opposed throughout his campaign.  But politics as they are, the President traded promise and integrity for political posturing as the more liberal healthcare reform ideals he campaigned on would not likely survive a filibuster.  It must be noted that the particular industry expert that pushed the President to adopt the Individual mandate was none other than Jonathan Gruber.  Yea that guy that the President, Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats who were involved in creating the ObamaCare legislation not so long ago claimed they had hardly a recollection of who he was and also stated that he played a very small role in the shaping of ObamaCare.

The flip flop on the individual mandate would be the first of nearly a dozen political manipulations and stunts pulled by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the President’s Executive Pen in hand.

 

We’ve Got This (at any cost)

At this point it became blatantly clear to Republicans that there was going to be nothing bi-partisan about the Affordable Care Act.  The bill would ultimately be crafted by a few key democrats in the Senate who had long dreamed of pushing their vision of Universal Healthcare and this was their big chance.

The individual mandate led to what would become the most telling of Democratic political plays, the “it’s a tax, it’s not a tax” individual mandate flip flop.  Early on, to appease certain congressional lawmakers, democrats were adamant in their position that the individual mandate was absolutely not a tax.  In certain courts, Democrats argued that the individual mandate was a tax while in other courts they argued that it was not, it just depended what Democrats needed the mandate to be for the particular fight they were engaged in.  In the final make-or-break battle, Democrats needed the Supreme Court to rule that the individual mandate was in fact a tax.  This was the final hurdle Democrats needed to clear in order to pass ObamaCare in to law and as we know, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate was in fact a tax.

Maybe the most controversial yet media downplayed of antics that took place to secure the necessary votes for ObamaCare was the conviction of Alaska’s U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R), a conviction that was later dismissed due to gross prosecutorial misconduct and the withholding of evidence.  Even though Stevens was dismissed of all charges, the damage was done both to Stevens political career and of course the removal of the vote that would have blocked the ObamaCare bill from being past in the Senate as Stevens would have surly voted against it.  There were two other highly controversial Senate seats lost that would have surly been a thumbs down vote for ObamaCare but without the support of the media, it is impossible to gain public attention to possible misconducts and we all know were the allegiance lies with the majority of the media.

Budget impropriety also had its place in the crafting of ObamaCare.  In an effort to avoid breaking certain budget rules that would have forced Democrats to engage in budgetary proceedings that would have without a doubt taken away their super majority, some savings claims of the bill were double counted while certain spending were mislabeled so as not to be included in the tally of the bills projected cost.  This was all revealed after the fact but as we know, after the fact means absolutely nothing.

Pro-life Democrats got the shaft as well although only through their own ignorance.  To circumvent their concerns of public funds being used to conduct abortions, President Obama convinced those pro-lifers that through Executive Order, he had the power to influence the intent of the law.  And so, with a quick sweep of the executive pen, it was made so.  However, in the end, Obama’s executive action had no effect on the law.

And there were many more such tumultuous manipulations and maneuvers along the journey to the final passage of the Affordable Care Act!

 

Selling their Souls and Selling Out the American People

The crafting of the ObamaCare bill in such a way that it could not be opposed by Republicans became an ugly process.  While the bill, in most accounts, appeared to be within the law it certainly pushed politics far beyond the boundaries of moral and ethical conduct, even for politicians.  From the start, it was evident that the guaranteed passage of healthcare bill held far more importance to Democrats than the actual content of the bill, which kept the president largely disengaged from the process.  Democrats were making history here for Pete’s Sake!

For a piece of legislation as significant as a national healthcare bill, one would think that the Will of the People would have been deserving of much more consideration than given by the Democrats who willfully ignored the very loud calls of opposition across the nation.  As well, in the decision process of signing a bill of this magnitude in to law, who would have ever imagined that a president would even consider putting pen to paper when not so much as a smidgen of bipartisan agreement existed?  But such was not the case with ObamaCare, a bill which no House or Senate Republican support nor ever held the support of the majority of the American people.

President Obama and the entire Democratic Party know full well why ObamaCare is so strongly opposed by the majority of American people as well as by small businesses; large corporations; unions and their Republican counterparts, but they simply do not nor have they ever cared.  From the start, Democrats have been so deeply invested in ObamaCare that it has made it impossible for them to admit any degree of the laws failure regardless of circumstance.

US Census Report Reveals Net Negative Insured Rate in Healthcare Exchange Enrollment for 2014

It has proven all but impossible to pin down the effect that the Individual Mandate had on reducing the number of uninsured in 2014.  But despite the efforts put forth by the Obama Administration to withhold specific enrollment information, a report just released by the US Census Bureau has provided a much clearer understanding of how the Individual Mandate influenced enrollment through the healthcare exchanges in 2014.

Back in February of this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed that in 2014, 10.75 million individuals gained healthcare coverage through the Medicaid and CHIP programs.  From the CMSreport:

 

Looking at the additional enrollment since October 2013 when the initial Marketplace open enrollment period began, among the 49 states reporting both December 2014 enrollment data and data from July-September of 2013, over 10.75 million additional individuals are enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP as of December 2014, approximately an 18.6 percent increase over the average monthly enrollment for July through September of 2013.

 

Fast forward to earlier this month, the US Census Bureau released its report on health insurance coverage in the United States in 2014.  The report concluded that compared to 2013, the number of uninsured individuals in the United States decreased by 8.8 million.  From the USCensus Bureau report:

 

The uninsured rate decreased between 2013 and 2014 by 2.9 percentage points. In 2014, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire calendar year was 10.4 per­cent, or 33.0 million, lower than the rate and number of uninsured in 2013 (13.3 percent or 41.8 mil­lion).

 

These two reports cannot make it any clearer.  The number of uninsured dropped by 10.75 million through Medicaid/CHIP enrollment in 2014 yet the overall drop in the number of uninsured in the nation fell by a lesser 8.8 million over the same period.  In other words, more people gained healthcare coverage through Medicaid/CHIP than the overall drop in the number of uninsured.  This means that someplace 1.95 million insured America’s were lost and that someplace is through the healthcare insurance exchanges.

That’s right, according to the data provided by these two respected government sources (yes we are using their numbers), at the end of the 2014 open enrollment period there was a net negative number of people insured from the pool of non-Medicaid qualified individuals with 1.95 million fewer having a healthcare plan than when the healthcare insurance exchanges opened for the first time six months earlier.  Not a great testament to the success of the Individual Mandate now is it.  And keep in mind, this 1.95 million does not represent the entire pool of formerly insured who dropped out of the insurance marketplace in 2014. 

While we do not know the exact figure, various industry sources estimate the number of long term uninsured individual who purchased and maintained a qualified healthcare plan through the exchanges in 2014 to be someplace in the neighborhood of 1.0 and 1.5 million.  Whatever that figure actually is, there were the same number of formerly insured who dropped out of the insurance marketplace in 2014.  In other words, to support the US Census Bureau’s reported 8.8 million reduction in the uninsured, for every long term uninsured individual that purchased and maintained a healthcare insurance plan in 2014, one formerly insured individual had to drop out of the insurance marketplace.  So if 1.5 million of the nation’s long term uninsured did in fact purchase and maintain a qualified healthcare plan through one of the state and federal healthcare exchanges in 2014 then 3.45 million formerly insured individuals would have had to drop their insurance plans (1.5 million to offset new enrollees plus the 1.95 million overall reduction in the number of insured prior to the opening of the exchanges) to maintain the 8.8 million reduction reported by the US Census Bureau.

A dropout rate of this size is not at all inconceivable.  We do know that at the same time the 2014 open enrollment period opened, millions of individual healthcare plans were canceled for non-ACA compliance.  The actual number of cancelation notices sent out by insurers is highly debated, the most accepted number being 4.7 million as reported by the Associated Press.  We do not know how many of those who had their insurance plans canceled purchased a new ACA compliant plan nor do we know how many who did not receive a cancelation noticed dropped out of the marketplace voluntarily, but we know many did.      


So What Does This Mean?

What this means is in its inaugural year, ObamaCare proved to be nothing more than an incredibly expensive social entitlement program.  That’s right, in 2014 ObamaCare managed to provide 10.75 million low income individuals access to taxpayer funded, lesser quality healthcare while at the same time managing to increase the number of the uninsured who were qualified to purchase healthcare plans through the state and federal healthcare exchanges by nearly 2 million rather than shrinking they pool by 7 million as President Obama claimed the individual mandate would, during its first year.

In the minds of most liberal democrats, having the affordability driven out of healthcare plans purchased by hard working Americans, even to the extent that more lose their healthcare plans than gain them, is a justified means to fund more government dependency to an expanded level of lower income individuals.  To these same liberal democrats, the failed obligation of the law to serve the working middle class is obviously of no consequence.


How Long Will the Left Ignore the Failure?

As long as those on the left are allowed to remain willfully ignorant, the failure of the Individual Mandate will go on unabated.  So the real question that needs to be asked is how long will the left be allowed to remain willfully ignorant?  

The close of the 2016 open enrollment period is likely the answer to this question.  Once the open enrollment period closes, the start of a major Republican campaign to bring to light all the failures of ObamaCare, especially the Individual Mandate will begin.  Maybe not willfully, but Democrats will have no choice but to engage themselves in to the conversation at that time.  

Assuming that participation by the uninsured remains as anemic as it has through the first two open enrollment periods, the reduction of the pool of the uninsured who are qualified to participate on the healthcare exchanges will face a 70-80% projection shortfall.  This will leave Democrats with no means to defend the failure of the Individual Mandate and therefore they will be forced to concede that ObamaCare has truly turned out to be nothing more than a costly Medicaid expansion.

Why are we calling it the “Clinton” Email Scandal?

Had it not been for the trail of bread crumbs the various committees investigating the Benghazi tragedy followed, we likely would have never learned about Hillary Clinton’s unique email arrangement she had with herself, an arrangement she set up at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State.  But we did learn about her private email account and server and since that time the Clinton Email Scandal has been in the news cycle almost 24/7. 

At the very least, Hillary is responsible for doing some very stupid and possibly even illegal acts pertaining to the handling of her emails and the use of a private server, but should Hillary be the one to bare the burden of her email indiscretions? 

Sworn in as the 67^th Unite States Secretary of State on Jan 21, 2009, Hillary on that same day began to use her newly installed email server and account to conduct all of her official government business on.  Senior officials inside the State Department were most certainly aware of her unique email arrangement, it would have been impossible for them not to be.

At no point during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State did she use a government email account to conduct State Department business, in fact, she was never even issued a state.gov email account, the issuance of which is assumed to be normal protocol for any new staff members joining the State Department.  Normal protocol was likely to also include someone responsible for distributing Hillary’s email address to the appropriate officials and aids inside the State Department and other individuals who would be in the Secretary’s normal chain of communication, including the President, Vice President and the president’s Chief of Staff just to name a few.  Distribution of her email address may have included foreign officials as well.  The email that would have been distributed would of course have been Hillary’s clintonemail.com email account.

Not long after Hillary’s arrival to the State Department the National Archives and Records Administration issue regulations requiring agencies which allowed employees to conduct official business on nonofficial email accounts to ensure those records were preserved “in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”  Certainly the appropriate department within the State Department received notice of this new regulation however, no record of Hillary’s email correspondence, outside of her private server, was ever preserved.  Someone within the State Department made the conscious decision keep the Secretary’s emails out of the department’s archives.  Even if it were Hillary Clinton herself that made this decision, others within the State Department would have been well aware of this fact.  Hillary did not do her own secretive IT work, heck, according to her, she can hardly manage two portable electronic devices at once.

Then there are the FOIA requests.  Throughout Hillary Clinton’s time served in the State Department, and beyond, there have been countless FOIA requests pertaining to email records of the Secretary’s, that have all gone unanswered.  These requests have come from a number of news agencies including one from the Associated Press which dates back over 4 years and the subject of a pending lawsuit.  As it turns out, these FOIA request were ignored by the State Department due to the simple fact that they did not have any of the requested documents in their possession.  Officials within the Stated Department knew exactly where they were however.

Congressional oversight faced a similar fate as many news agencies did, in collection emails from the former Secretary.  One such account was that of the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations which after failing to receive any requested documents pertaining to Benghazi and linked to Hillary, the chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, sent a letter directly to Secretary Clinton asking for "all information” related to the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.  At the time of her departure from the State Department on February 1, 2013, Secretary Clinton had not responded to the chairman’s request.  And in the final reports released by three of the congressional oversite committees tasked with investigating certain aspect of the Benghazi tragedy, they each included harsh criticism of the State Department for their lack of cooperation in providing requested documents.

As Hillary neared the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, the National Archives and Records Administration took a second shot a preserving her email record.  Officials from the National Archive were in communication with the State Department discussing a plan on how they were going to go about obtaining a copy of the Secretary’s email record, so that they could be preserved in the archive.  The evolution of preserving the former Secretary’s email records never came to fruition.
And nearly two years after Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State ended, on October 28, 2014, the State Department finally requested that Hillary turn over her email records pertaining to her time served as Secretary of State.  However, this request came only after facing legal action, against the State Department, for failing to respond to a number of FOIA request.

Not intending to suggest any lack of culpability on the part of Hillary Clinton but it seems as though the major cuprite in this email scandal is actually the State Department.  Judging from the department’s willingness to ignore countless FOIA requests and demands from congressional oversight for documents pertaining to Benghazi, the State Department has been less than forthcoming with the fact that they never possessed the Clinton record nor is there any indication that they ever attempted to collect the record prior to the October 2014 request to which Hillary Clinton complied. 

This also raises the question as to whose idea it was to turn over hard copies of the email record rather than electronic copies.  Providing electronic copies of her emails would have been a simpler evolution.  As well, electronic copies of her mails it would have made the efforts to “key word” search documents much simpler.  Keyword searches of Hillary’s emails is now a manual and incredibly timely process.  Just imagine the effort it would take to search through 50,000 pages of email document to weed out a particular key word or phrase.  The difficulty created by providing hard copies of the record seems almost intentional and falls in line with the past history of the State Departments efforts to make compliance to requests of the former Secretary’s records as difficult as humanly possible.

We should also keep in mind that this obstructionist behavior of the State Department continued on after the changing of the guard.  Secretary of State John Kerry is fully aware of the accusations of feet dragging and obstructionism made against his State Department, in regards to the Clinton emails, and has done absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.

It still remains uncertain as to why Hillary Clinton chose to operate her own private email system but it certainly was not done without the knowledge and consent of the State Department.  This is not to suggest some type of grand conspiracy exists and certainly there is no link to the private server and Benghazi other than the existence of the server may have providing both Hillary and the State Department the ability to keep the Secretary’s record of the Benghazi incident out of public record. 

All this begs that question, “Has Hillary Clinton become the media’s sacrificial lamb?” 

Has the purpose which prompted Hillary to install a private email system grown in to something much more sinister?  Has the main stream media thrown Hillary under the bus in order to keep a lid on the greater failures from within the State Department?  It was in fact the media who originally named Hillary’s email woes the “Clinton” Email Scandal.  But as we learn more, it is clear that the State Department is deeply entrenched in whatever has and is going on with Hillary’s emails making it seem more fitting to be calling this mess the “State Department Email Scandal”.

Scoring the 6 Major Provisions of ObamaCare

There are literally hundreds of provision contained within the ten titles that make up the 2700 plus pages of President Obama’s namesake healthcare law, most of which nobody has ever heard of or even read, including many of the Democratic Lawmakers responsible for the law’s passage.

Of the many provisions that make up the ObamaCare law, there are six that specifically pertain to the delivery of healthcare to new, as in the pool of this nation’s long term uninsured, customers which of course is the primary objective of ObamaCare.  So let’s take a look at these six provision and see just how much of a bang we the people are getting for all our bucks that are finances this behemoth healthcare legislation. 

Following is a short description of each of the provisions and a brief look at the effectiveness of each compared to the goals they were set to achieve.  From this we will score each provision as either a success or a failure.


#1 Guaranteed Issue

Guaranteed issue is the provision in the ObamaCare law which prevents insurers from discriminating against an individual who suffers from a high risk/high cost medical condition.  No longer are insurers able to ask for a person’s medical history and use that information to rate a plan or deny coverage.

The guaranteed issue provision went in to effect shortly after ObamaCare was passed in to law.  It would not be until 2014 however, that individuals would be able to purchase a qualified healthcare plan through one of the health insurance exchanges.  As a stop gap, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) provision in place.

In the creation of the PCIP stop gap provision HHS projected that 375,000 individuals, suffering from a high risk/high cost pre-existing condition, would enroll on the plan.  But sadly, at its peak, only 135,000 chose to participate.  One of the primary reasons for the low enrollment was cost!  Over the next two years PCIP rates were reduced by 20% yet there was a continued decline in the programs enrollment.  By the time the health insurance exchanges rolled out, PCIP participation had dropped to roughly 108,000.

Low enrollment was not the only issue the PCIP provision faced.  The cost to operate the program also became a major issued as HHS grossly underestimated the make-up of the risk pool which consisted mainly of those with very costly conditions such as advanced heart disease and cancer.  The low enrollment issue in many was the saving grace for the PCIP provision as the 240,000 enrollment shortfall helped to offset the 250% error on cost projection and funding for the program.  In fear of running the plan out of money, in February of 2013 HHS terminated new PCIP enrollment however, this was likely an unnecessary precaution as participation was well on the decline.  At about the same time, HHS shifted more of the cost back to the customer in the way of higher premiums and out-of-pocket responsibilities.

And last, when it came time for those participated on the PCIP program to select a qualified healthcare plan and transfer over to the health insurance exchanges, only 80,000 did so over the 6 month initial open enrollment period and three granted extension periods.

When the closing bell ran, ending the PCIP program, there was a 41% loss in participation from the provisions peak to the number of those that transfer to a qualified healthcare plan through the health insurance exchanges.  That’s right, for a large percentage of those with a high risk/high cost pre-existing healthcare issue, they still found insurance too costly to purchase.  And with the price of the insurance plans having increased in 2015 and will again in 2016, it is not likely that the number of those with a pre-existing condition and still without healthcare insurance will improved any.

Considering all the shortcomings of the PCIP stop gap provision, (the low transfer rate to the health insurance exchanges and the continued rise in program cost) I don't think anyone can argue against the fact that the Guaranteed Issue provision of the ObamaCare law has fallen grossly short of its intended goal of bringing healthcare to those with a high cost/high risk pre-existing medical condition.  It is because of these factors that we can, without hesitation, score the Guaranteed Issue provision as a complete and utter FAILURE.


#2 Minimum Standard

The minimum standard is the provision of ObamaCare to which without, the law could not exist. 

Each and every healthcare plan sold, be it through an employer provided group plan; an individual plan purchased through the health insurance exchanges or a plan purchased directly from the private insurance marketplace must meet a certain minimum standard of coverage.  Labeled as the “essential health benefits” (EHB) package, the answer as to what the purpose is of this package depends on who you ask.

For those who crafted the law and its staunch proponents, the story goes that the EHB brings a higher quality of healthcare to each individual, this by making it mandatory for healthcare providers to give FREE care away as well as being sure that every form of care that could ever be needed is included in your healthcare plan.

Of course, there is a cost associated with all those “extras” in a healthcare plan which often raises the question as to why a male adult would need child dental coverage or why a women of post-child baring age would need pre-natal care coverage.  The list of unusable essential benefits goes on and on and leads us to the real purpose of minimum standard and EHB.

It would be wonderful to think that the crafters of ObamaCare bundled all the EHBs together in the best interest of all Americans but the reality is the EHB package, created to meet the minimum standard, only exists as a means to create the revenue stream needed to cover other obligations of the healthcare law, primarily the guaranteed issue.  Now that insurers are no longer able to discriminate nor charge more for those with a pre-exiting condition, they needed a new revenue stream to pick up these costs. 

The administration’s idea was to model individual healthcare plans similar to those offered to employer based, large group plans which already bundled most if not all of what was now being mandated in the EHB packages.  The problem with this approach was however, the fact that the employer based plans cover a pool nearly six times as large as the pool which participated on the individual market, thus giving the employer based plans a significantly larger universe to spread costs over.  Prior to ObamaCare, it was the insurer’s ability to offer an individual a plan, more tailored to their specific needs, that leveled the playing field and kept individual and employer provided policy costs on a parallel with one another.  With this leveling mechanism taken away from insurers, the cost of individual plans had no place to go but up and up they went, substantially.

The minimum standard provision does accomplish it objective.  However, it cannot be ignored that the Obama Administration’s intentional misrepresentation this provision as being a consumer benefit rather than the new revenue stream it actually is and for this we will have to score the Minimum Standard provision a FAILURE.


#3 Individual Mandate

With the potential to affect 25 million uninsured individuals, some would say that the individual mandate is the single most important provision of ObamaCare.

Under the individual mandate provision, everyone is now required to have healthcare insurance, with few exceptions.  For those who are not provided healthcare insurance through their employer or through a government program, they are now required to purchase their own healthcare insurance or pay a tax penalty each year which they are not in compliance of the mandate.

The logic behind the individual mandate is simple and maybe a bit naive.  The hope is that the bulk of those 25 million long term uninsured will be incented to obtain healthcare insurance now that it is federally mandated to do so and also to avoid facing a subsequent tax penalty they would incur for non-compliance.

As it turns out, the federal mandate to have healthcare insurance nor the tax penalty for non-compliance seem to have had much of an effect in incenting those 25 million uninsured to purchase a healthcare plan.  After two open enrollment periods, totaling nine months in length, the number of American’s non-elderly, long term uninsured decrease by a mere 3 million.  This equates to about a 70% shortfall from the administrations 2015 enrollment projection.

There are several reason for the lack of participation by these 25 million uninsured Americans, the largest continuing to be cost.  Despite all the campaign rhetoric and promises of lower premiums, the cost of healthcare insurance for individuals is significantly higher now than prior to the passage of ObamaCare.  Individual plan rates increased between 40 and 100 percent even before the mandate kicked in in January of 2014.  Since that time premiums have continued to rise, pricing many more out of healthcare insurance before they ever obtained it.  For the young and healthy this was especially true as, in the structuring of the insurance rates, they were burdened with the lion’s share of the load.

Even with subsidies (which we will discuss in a moment), most of the uninsured seem to find the cost of purchasing healthcare insurance too great a burden on their household finances.  For other, the cost still remains too high to make healthcare insurance obtainable.

There is a bit of irony to the individual mandate as well.  For those that followed the 2008 battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, you may recall the bitter swipes between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the differences in their healthcare plans.  Then Senator Obama strongly opposed the individual mandate, a key component of HillaryCare 2.0.  Obama made many public statements condemning the mandate, calling it a government overreach that it takes away American freedoms.  It was not until after now President Obama was told by his team that without the individual mandate they would never gain enough democratic support to pass a healthcare bill that the president fell head over heals in love with the idea of the individual mandate.

It is for this telling bit of irony and the failure to incent the uninsured into purchasing healthcare insurance that the Individual Mandate provision scores a DOUBLE FAILURE!


#4 Healthcare Insurance Exchanges

The concept of healthcare insurance exchanges is not new as several states have, in the past, tried the concept, all with less than desirable outcomes.  The success of healthcare insurance exchanges is a delicate balance that relies on the creation of strong competition amongst participating insurers which in turn will create a large and stable risk pool thus minimizing adverse selection.  This is by no means an easy feat to accomplish.

From the layman’s perspective, the healthcare insurance exchanges are little more than a portal to which customers can conveniently shop the variety of insurance plans private insurers are offering in their particular region.  It is not mandatory for individuals to purchase healthcare plans through the exchanges however, to take advantage of any tax subsidies that may be available to them, the only way to do so is through the exchanges.

For HHS and the private insurers, the exchanges play a critical role in marketing and creating competition in the small-group and individual markets.  The exchanges oversee the standardization of plan benefits and cost-sharing and also bear the burden of restraining premium growth.

On the surface, the ObamaCare healthcare insurance exchanges look quite successful with close to 12 million plans purchased through them during the 2015 open enrollment period.  Unfortunately, only about 25% of those enrollments came from the 25 million in the pool of the long term uninsured, those in which the entirety of the law is premised.   The make-up of the enrollees does not fall in favor of the healthcare insurance exchanges either with only 24% of those enrolled coming from the pool of young and healthy adults.  To avoid the perils of adverse selection, target enrollment of the young and healthy was 39%, as stated by the HHS.

Politically, the saving grace for the exchanges has been the 75% of enrollees who transferred over from the individual marketplace, most of which were recipients of policy cancelation for non-ACA compliant plans, you know, those folks that did not get to keep their plan even though they liked their plan!  Proponents of the law have used these 9 million policy transfers to claim a faux victory for the healthcare insurance exchanges.  Insurers and opponents of the law see things quit differently however.

For insurers, there incentive to participate on the healthcare insurance exchanges was the prospect of as many as 25 million new customers, 10 million of which were projected to have signed up by the close of the 2015 open enrollment period, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  But with new customer enrollment currently around 3 million, insurers are not liking what they are seeing. 

To protect themselves from loses, insurers are imposing significant rate hikes for 2016 thus dashing any hopes of the massive new enrollment surge needed to make future participation in this new insurance scheme possible.  Also, insurers soon lose their protection from losses incurred on the exchanges as the risk corridors provision expires at the end of 2016.

Opponents see a moral responsibility attached to the healthcare insurance exchanges.  Through the partisan deal brokered by Democrats, 16 million Americans are expected to have purchased a healthcare plan through the exchanges by the close of the 2016 open enrollment period.  But the exchanges thus far have fallen far short of expectations and it looks as though they will struggle to insure even half of the intended uninsured population.  This will leave millions of Americans, whom the law was intended to help, out in the cold.  Opponents believe that the American people deserve better than to settle for the significant enrollment shortcomings being experience through the healthcare insurance exchanges.

It will take nothing short of a miracle for new enrollment to achieve even half of what was projected when ObamaCare was passed in to law.  So for failing to control costs, adverse selection and most of all, leaving millions of uninsured Americans out on the cold, the Healthcare Insurance Exchange provision is scored as a FAILURE!


#5 Low Income Subsidies

Low income subsidies are an essential provision of the ObamaCare law.  They are used to drive affordability into healthcare insurance plans for those that meet the low and middle income criteria established in the law.  Distributed based on a calculation with which only the number of family members and income level are considered, the low income subsidies is not the kind of provision that can be scored as a success or failure.  As to whether or not the low income subsidies are making healthcare insurance affordable, that’s a whole other story.

Unfortunately, due to a number of missteps by the administration to accurately anticipate the physical cost of a healthcare plans that would be offered on the healthcare insurance marketplace {the Gruber affect}, even with low income subsidies millions have still found it impossible to afford healthcare insurance.  And in a sad but true bit of irony, many of those who had, for years prior to ObamaCare, purchased and paid in full for their healthcare plans, they are now paying even more despite receiving low income subsidies to offset the cost of their new healthcare plan.

Another unfortunate event tied to the low income subsidies provision is a misleading statements, made by the administration, as to how the cost associated with low income subsidies are far less than originally projected.  This statement stemmed from the release of a cost projections update report by the CBO this past March.  And while it is true that in the CBO report it stated that the low income subsidies cost 20% less than earlier projections indicated, the administration’s claim failed to include the qualifiers stated in the CBO report, the most significant being that the costs were lower due to low enrollment i.e. fewer subsidies being paid out. 

So again, by the nature of the provision, the Low Income Subsidies provision cannot be scored as a success or failure.  However, the administration’s success in creating mandates which drove the cost of healthcare insurance plans out of the reach of millions, even with subsidies, scores them one big giant FAILURE.  And the administration also scores a FAILURE for their misrepresentation of the CBOs revised cost projections for the low income subsidies, labeling them a “cost savings”.


#6  Medicaid Expansion

And last, the Medicaid Expansion provision.   The Medicaid Expansion is a provision in ObamaCare which increases the income threshold used to determine an individual’s Medicaid eligibility.  In its original form, the expansion was projected to expand healthcare access to roughly 17 million low income adults and children across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The success of the Medicaid Expansion having brought access of healthcare to millions of low income individuals and children is indisputable.  But does this mean the provision itself is a success?  Let’s look a little deeper into the provision to see if it is meeting its intended goals before we make that determination.

Dating back to the infancy stages of the ObamaCare bill, many viewed the early language of the Medicaid Expansion provision as overreaching, challenging that the Federal Government did not have the authority to force individual states to comply with such a mandate.  Those challenges fell on deaf ears and when ObamaCare was signed in to law the federal mandate for all states to expand Medicaid remained. 

The administration was adamant about having the Medicaid Expansion be a federal mandate despite the clear overreach of Federal Government authority over the States, an overreach which was of course quickly challenged.  And in June of 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the Federal Government to coerce states into compliance with the Medicaid Expansion.  The Supreme Court did however leave the Medicaid Expansion intact, making its compliance optional by the states.

Some Democratic lawmakers may have believed that there was a slim chance that the federally mandated Medicaid Expansion would go unchallenged while most of those crafting the law not only knew the expansion would be challenged but also expected it to be overturned.  None the less they went forward with the federal mandate for all states to expand Medicaid, and for good reason.  The crafters of the expansion knew that they would lose the support of several key Democrats if they left the expansion to the discretion of the States which would have likely doomed the bill from being passed.  As it was, it took every single Democratic vote that was received to pass a filibuster proof bill.

The administration also underestimated the number of individuals who would take advantage of the Medicaid expansion.  They failed to recognize that the awareness campaigns, urging individuals to take advantage of the expansion, would also draw out thousands of individuals who were already eligible but were not taking advantage of Medicaid.  As a result, Medicaid enrollment has far exceeded projections which now has the states participating in the expansion scrambling to figure out how they are going to pay for it.  With few choices, expansion states will either have to cut something out of their budget or raise taxes, maybe both.  The failure to accurately project new Medicaid participation can be attributed to little more than gross incompetence by those studying the numbers and those who signed off on them.

So, is the Medicaid Expansion provision a success of failure?  From an enrollment standpoint, of course the expansion is a success, how could it not be.  The states participating in the expansion are giving away FREE healthcare to those who qualify, this is not a real hard sell.  As for the crafting of the Medicaid expansion, we cannot be so generous. 

The approach taken by Democratic Lawmakers to sell the Medicaid Expansion was a dishonest one, both in its doomed but intentional federal overreach and in pushing bad enrollment numbers.  If the crafters of the Medicaid Expansion did not intentionally provide the states with bad enrollment projections, it was their gross incompetence that missed the figures by such a large margin which now has expansion states scrambling to figure out how to pay for it.  Lawmakers intentionally sold us a bad can of fish and it is for this reason that the Medicaid Expansion provision as scored as a FAILURE.


Adding Up the Scorecard

So, there you have it, of the six major provisions in the ObamaCare law, that specifically target the delivery of healthcare to the long term uninsured population of our nation, each has failed to achieve its intended goal.  A shortsightedness of the administration to set achievable goals can be attributed to several of the provision failures, for others it is simply a matter of the administration failing to be an honest broker. 

Regardless of reason, the results are the same and despite all the failures, the Obama Administration continues to try to convince every American that ObamaCare is one of the greatest successes stories of our time.

We Have Lost Sight as to the True Importance of Hillary’s Emails

This whole “classified email” mess that Hillary has gotten herself in to is entertaining enough and of course quite serious but it has for some time now monopolized the news cycle and taken our sights away from what got us here in the first place.

This all started back on September 11, 2012 at 10:07pm EST when, just after getting off of the phone with President Obama, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a press brief stating that the attack on the US Consulate was spurred by an internet video.  The attack was still underway at the time of this press brief release and intelligence was still being gathered however, word on the ground that the Secretary had received indicated that it was an organized attack.   It is also important to note the phone call exchange between the President and the Secretary was originally buried but later revealed, on accident, through a slip of the tongue by then White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.  The Secretary had previously been questioned as to if she had spoken with the President during that attack and her answer was no.

The story as to what happened that night in Benghazi has spiraled out of control from that point forward.  Hillary’s blaming the attack on an internet video came under immediate attack and rightly so.  Nobody could provide anyone with an explanation as to what lead the State Dept. to believe the video was the case and nobody was talking. The circumstances surrounding the press brief (the secret phone call shared with the president moments before) would not be learned until sometime later and again, only because of a slip of the tongue by Jay Carney.

The Sunday following the Benghazi tragedy was the definitive moment/day as Susan Rice made the rounds on all the Sunday morning news shows repeating a highly scripted set of talking points that backed the internet video claim.  The story simply did not add up and left many scratching their heads and wondering what really happened.

As is always is the case with any such tragedy, congressional oversight automatically kicks in and does its part by investigating the actions and activities of the various agencies to which they are responsible for.  Congressional oversight had their hands full on the Benghazi investigations however, as pieces were not fitting right from the beginning.  There were conflicts in reporting, conflicts in statements and most of all the blaming of the internet video and subsequent Sunday morning news show rounds by Susan Rice doing so just did not fit.


Let the Feet Dragging and Obstructionism Began

Some of the very first documents requested by congressional oversight were the string of emails that were used to craft the talking points used by Susan Rice that Sunday morning.  Oversight got the run around and in fact it took a letter directly to the President, and signed by a number of the oversight chairpersons to finally get this string of emails released.

The final release of these emails created more questions than answers which led to the eventual request for ANY AND ALL DOCUMENTS, from the State Department pertaining to Benghazi to be released to congressional oversight.  This request took place while Hillary was still in office and was never complied with.

The failure of the State Department to release requested documents is well documented in several of the oversightcommittees final reports on Benghazi and it is this failure, on the part of the State Department, to turn over Benghazi related documents that prompted the formulation of the Select Committee on Benghazi, a committee that has more tools in its bag to force parties and departments to comply than the standard congressional oversight committees do.  But even at that, this committee is at the mercy of the DOJ if legal action that would lead to some type of enforcement or criminal investigation were needed, such actions are outside the authority of the Select Committee.   But I digress.

Hillary’s emails became an issue when, from the few documents they were able to pry from the State Department, congressional oversight discovered that there were no emails addressed to or from Hillary Clinton.  Of course members of the committee were looking for a { .gov} email address at the time but her personal email address was not surfacing either.  But eventually a few documents passed through the hands of the oversight committee and the discovery was made that Hillary was using a private email account.  Now the State Department had no choice but to compel Hillary to turn over her email record, which up until that point she had sole custody of.


So here we are Today

While the talking point of “classified emails” on Hillary’s server is consuming all the news room discussions, the real reason we are here and digging into Hillary’s emails is because of Benghazi.

Hillary and her team have done an excellent job of hiding and obstruction anyone from getting their hands on her email record.  I’m sorry, correction, “the peoples” email record.  For two years after her departure from the State Department she held her email record in secrecy and only turned it over after being compelled to do so by the State Department which was facing legal action if it did not start producing documents requested through the FOIA and subpoena.

But Hillary did not turn over her record to the State Department, she turned over some 50,000 pages of emails to which she claims to be the full record but there is no way to verify this as she, at the time, refused to turn over the email server to which they resided.  We have no way of knowing if in fact these 50,000 pages represents her full record and Hillary has given us every reason to believe they are not.  She did conceal the record from the public for two full years before being forced to turn it over right?  As well, email documents have surfaced that are clearly part of Hillary’s record yet were not provided in the 50,000 pages that were turned over to the State Department {or the State Department did not provide them to oversite}.  So there is little confidence that Hillary is being forthcoming to her claim that she has turned over her record in full.

Hillary is without a doubt hiding something and that something may not even be related to Benghazi.  Remember, the unique email arrangement she set up for herself took place right at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State.  In regards to Benghazi, her email arrangement became a convenience which potentially has allowed her to hide troublesome documents.  But the only way we will ever know this is if her email records can be recovered from the hard drive of the email server she deliberately had scrubbed of its contents, yet another action that points to an intentional cover-up.

This is why we are here people, this is why the Select Committee pushed so hard to have her email server put in the hands of an independent 3^rd party and made available for forensic analysis so that an attempt cold be made to recover any documents that may not have been included in Hillary’s interpretation of the complete record.   

As it turns out, other entities have now gotten involved and are attempting to restore the record as well, for other reasons mind you, but the end result will be the same.  If the record is able to be restored and there are more documents related to Benghazi, they will be turned over to the Select Committee.  These documents, if any, are the final step in the Benghazi investigation and will either conclude that there is no there there or that something very bad has been covered up by senior members of our government.   We as Americans should want the answer either way.

Regarding the issue of classified information on Hillary’s email server, that’s a whole other issue and looks as though it is being dealt with accordingly. 

And let us not forget, the record of all senior level government officials should be archived for a number or reasons but if for no other, so that we have a historical account of what has gone on in our government that we can always refer back to.