Obama Says Profits Are Bad

In justifying the take over of the student loan business from the private sector, Obama says that billions of dollars that could have helped send more students to college went to padding the company's profits.  So profits are bad and government is good. 

Let me ask this, which do you think is higher; a company's profit margin or their corporate tax rate?  Which do you think costs the consumer more?  Considering that the federal corp tax rate is 35% I know my answer to that question.  Adding some of the state taxes of 10% in,  we now have a 45% tax rate built into the cost of our products.  But is Obama speaking out about taxes cutting into the ability to give loans?  Nope.  It's the profits, and we all know what stellar years for profits the banks have been having.

What Obama is hoping to do is rile up anger against companies for being so inconsiderate to their consumers as to actually make a profit.  Oh the horror, oh the travesty of social justice, oh the shame.  Profits I am sure have murdered innocent children, taken food from the mouths of the starving and oppressed the masses into unrelenting poverty. 

This idea that the government should take industries over so that companies aren't "padding their profits" is socialism 101.  He's unapologetic in his belief that the government should run everything and yet he wonders why we're upset and angry.

Congress is Surprised by Threats?

Let me begin by saying that I do not condone threats of violence against our Congressmen, even as much as my palms itch to smack each and every one of them into next week.  However, I find it questionable that Congress is shocked by these threats.

Nancy Pelosi even went so far as to say that "words matter" and threats have no place in our political process.  This is particularly interesting because it's the frustration with Congress not listening to the words of the people which is probably responsible for the current threats.  People are angry and frustrated and the avenue of dissent that is acceptable was ignored.  The people tried their very best to follow the accepted process and express their displeasure with the Health Care Insurance Reform bill.  They called their congressmen, they wrote letters, they sent e-mails, they showed up at protests and attended town halls.  All to no avail.  They were crying out their concerns to a Congress who had gone deaf.  Is it really any wonder that the rhetoric would ratchet up to a point that they hope will make congress listen?

Again, I do not condone this behavior, but I am also not in the least bit surprised by it.  Our voices and our votes are the only weapons we have against a government drifting towards tyranny.  When one of those weapons fail, it is only logical for people to find another.  The natural progression from rhetoric to violence when our elected officials refuse to represent the will of the people who elected them is the subject of my book, Capitol Punishment.  A people driven to extreme and violent measures by a Congress apathetic to the will of the citizenry.  Yes, I saw this coming.

Did Congress honestly believe that the people calling, writing and protesting would just shrug their shoulders and give up?  Do they really believe that we will allow our representatives to defy our will with impunity?  The vast majority of the people are satisfied with continuing to speak out and to use their vote in November to make a bigger statement, but there are always those on the edges who will take things farther. 

Is Congress shocked, or is this a poor, poor, pitiful me play by the Democrats?  I think the latter, but you decide.

Why Healthcare Reform Will Increase Premiums

Here is the reality in a nutshell.

Medicare is bankrupting the country because it doesn't collect enough in premiums to cover the benefits paid out.  Now our government is mandating that private insurance pay out more benefits.  In order to stay more solvent than Medicare, the premiums will have to increase at the same rate as the benefits paid.

One way to save Medicare is to increase the premiums to cover the benefits paid, (what a wild and crazy concept to take in more than you pay out) and then Medicare premiums would be just as high as private insurance.

Health Insurance Explained With Food

I like food - a lot - so it becomes a frame of reference for me with a lot of things, but there is a food reference which really helps to explain health insurance and why some of these new provisions have the potential to be disastrous.

An individual health insurance plan is like ordering off the menu.  You pay for what you as an individual are going to eat.  Your cost for the bill reflects what you are costing the restaurant to feed you.  The more you're going to cost them, the more you're going to pay.  A group insurance plan is like a buffet with the same price for every individual.  The buffet works because it's a balance between those who eat enough for 4 people against those who barely eat anything.  That's the insurance premium balance as well.  Those who are sick and will cost the insurance company thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars against the healthy people who cost the company nothing or next to nothing.  It balances and, as with a buffet, those who use less pay for those who use more.

However, with a buffet, everybody who uses it is paying for it.  Now imagine that the restaurant has to offer the buffet to people who can't pay for it because it's unfair that some people get the benefit of all you can eat while others do not.  Now the restaraunt has their balance thrown off and are feeding more people with no additional money coming in and no more food.  Some of these new people will also be eating in excess of the average and costing the company even more.  When this occurs, one of two things will happen at that buffet.  Either the cost will go up for those who pay for their meal, or the restaurant will be unable to cover the cost of the new eaters and go out of business.

This of course does nothing to really increase the availability of an all you can eat privilege for all.  It is still limited to how much food there is, how many seats the restaraunt has and the locations of them.  There are still those that will not be able to get all you can eat because there are simply not enough buffets to serve all of the people in the area.  Will the government then mandate that all restaraunts offer an all you can eat option thereby forcing them into bankruptcy?  Probably.

The insurance companies are all risk mitigation.  They exist to cover the cost of your health care.  If the costs you accrue rise, then the premium whose sole purpose is to cover those costs will have to rise as well.  The group policy is nothing but a buffet with the high cost of a few members being offset by the low cost of the majority of the members.  As you increase the number of high cost users without increasing the low cost members as well, the price for everybody goes up.  If you do all of this without increasing the number of doctors - and this new plan has the potential to actually decrease that number - you do nothing to improve access to health care.

What this bill does is give people access to health insurance but does nothing to give them access to health care.  It potentially has the opposite effect.  A health insurance card does nothing but take up space in your wallet if you can't find a doctor.

Deem and Pass the Buck

Congress will use any chicanery available to shove this bill down the throats of the American public.  The worst part of this whole thing is that we could have had healthcare reform if that's what they truly wanted.  Certain parts of the bill would have passed had they been voted on individually, but that's not what the Dems in Congress wanted.  They didn't - and don't - want reform.  They want a takeover.

They could still get reform if they would only do what the American public is asking them to do and step back, break the huge bill into smaller parts, and start over.  But no, they are going to revert to a policy that flies in the face of the specific instructions in the Constitution.

Representatives say that it is Constitutional, though it doesn't follow the very specific set of instructions in the Constitution, and that they've been using it since the 1930's and that it's ridiculous to believe that Congress would use an unconstitutional policy for that long.  Ridiculous? More like highly probable.  The Congress has shown so little respect for and adherence to the Constitution for so many years that the idea that they would institute policies defiant of the Constitution is the furthest thing from ridiculous.  The only reason they've gotten away with it for so long is that nobody knew about it because they've never used it on anything of this magnitude.  The idea of creating a new entitlement program which will bankrupt a country they have already relegated to the poor house and do it all without an actual vote is appalling, offensive and despicable.

And people wonder why I wrote a novel about Congress getting wiped out.

I Didn't Think It Was Possible

I thought I had reached my limit and couldn't get any more disgusted with our Government than I already was.  I was wrong.  With the Dee and Pass announcement the government has reached a new low in their shady deals and obvious belief in the stupidity of their constituents.

Generating a way to vote to pass the bill without actually voting on the bill will insulate at risk Congressmen and give them the cofidence to vote against their constiuency - or so Pelosi believes.  Do they honestly think that we will be any less irate at the passage of this pile of untreated sewage that they call healthcare reform?  Do they really believe that embattered Democrats running for re-election will be safe by saying, "well, technically I didn't vote for it."  Do they really believe that we'll sit back and shrug our shoulders as they shred the very Constitution they swore to uphold?  Unfortunately for us, perhaps too many people will. 

Our syste of governent works only as long as those in the governent adhere to the system.  It is time to kick anybody who does uphold their oath to support and defend the Constitution to the curb. 

It's time to clean House, and the Senate too!

Weiner Is a Weiner

During an interview on Fox News, Anthony Weiner, the Congressman for NY 9th District, behaved in a matter which illustrates why so many people are so frustrated with politicians.  What was the behavior .... to blatantly and willfully mislead the public about what is happening.

Weiner stated that the Republicans are refusing to vote for any healthcare reform and are blocking the legislation to side with the insurance industry.  He began his answer to every question asked with this reminder.  This is so frustrating because it has been made very clear that there are reforms that the Republicans would like to pass but that they object (as most Americans due) to the All Or Nothing /  Take It Or Leave It bill that is being forced down the throats of the American people.

Both sides of the isle do this, but I'm so disgusted with the political spin which is nothing but lies and the willfull misleading of the American populace.  Then they have the audacity and unmitigated gall to wonder why we don't trust them and don't believe anything they tell us.

Only a politician (or a crazy person) could lie to you repeatedly and then wonder why you don't believe what they are telling you this time.

Just once I would love to hear a politician attempt to make their point and sway the hearts and minds of the people WITHOUT lying about the opposition.

Obama Explaining One More Time

Poor President Obama must be horribly frustrated with his perceived stupidity of the American people.  In spite of polls, protests and outspoken citizens at town halls, the president believes that if we only understood the bill then we'd support it.  He can't even fathom that we actually do understand it and this is why we DON'T support it.  I wonder what it feels like to be the leader of a nation of people you consider to be absolute dolts.

He has thrown everything he has at a horrible healthcare reform bill that will increase spending, bankrupt the country, not cover everybody, do nothing on this urgent problem for four years after it is signed into law and will do nothing to bring the cost curve of health care down.  Gee, what's not to support?

One of my biggest problems with the bill is that analysis has already shown that 60% of every dollar for healthcare services is for administrative costs.  The fastest and most efficient way to bring down the cost of healthcare is to eliminate or at least mitigate administrative costs.  Does anybody with more than a single brain cell believe that the big government organizations which will be created as part of this bill actually decrease administrative costs for your healthcare?  I sure don't.

By failing to do adequate research around what is causing the rise in costs, they cannot effectively fix the problem.  This is proven by them increasing, via their big fix, the largest current cost in healthcare.

Insurance Companies - Don't Believe Everything You Hear

The plan for healthcare reform is to villify the insurance companies and tell all kinds of horror stories about the insurance companies' bad behavior, but you can't believe everything you hear.

If unconscionable behavior is really the issue, there is already a Department of Insurance in most, if not all, states to file a complaint.  It's one of these complaints I'm going to use as an example.  This is a true story.

A surgeon files a claim with the department of insurance stating that the insurance company denied his surgical consult as not covered when it should have been paid.  He was called in to the emergency room, he said, to determine if surgery was needed.  He decided that it was not and therefore, his claim for payment of the consult was perfectly acceptable and reasonable and the insurance company's refusal to pay was grounds for official complaint.

This sounds terrible, doesn't it.  You pull in a surgeon to see if a procedure is necessary and the insurance company won't pay for it just because the surgery wasn't performed.  Those awful, nasty, rotten and unethical insurance companies.

Unfortunately for the doctor, I dug a little deeper into this issue and found something really interesting.  On the same day, the doctor had filed a claim for a surgical procedure and been paid for it.  The consult fee is included in the payment for the procedure itself.  What was really interesting is that the surgeon was saying he deemed the procedure not necessary and that was why he should be paid for the consult.  Why then did he bill for the performance of the procedure he deemed unnecessary?

But I'm sure it was all the insurance companie's fault.

There Are More Than Two Options on Healthcare Reform

I saw Obama talking about healthcare reform again and saying if somebody wants to run on a platform against his healthcare plan (gee I wonder who he was talking about there) that it's ok.  They just have to explain to the people why they are voting for the insurance companies and the status quo. 

My cats scattered to the four corners of the earth as I began screaming at the television.

How can anybody believe the man can end the middle east conflict, fix the economy or win a war on terror when he can't even seem to grasp the concept that there are more than two options when it comes to healthcare reform?  He appears wholely inadequate to the task of viewing the healthcare debate in any way other than "my way or nothing."  Well Mr Obama, there are other options.  Lots of other options.  There are some options that would be worse, but even more options that would be much better.  Just because this is the idea that your panel of lawyers turned politicians came up with, doesn't mean it's a good plan.  You might, for just a second, consider the idea that there could be a better way to do this and that the people screaming at their representatives, booing them in public, calling, writing, faxing and begging to be heard don't necessarily want the status quo, they just don't want to make the situation even worse.

I know that the idea that there could be an option better than the one that you had to bribe Senators to vote for is a difficult for you, but try reallly hard to understand.  I know it's hard for you to see things right in front of your face considering you didn't hear anything racist or anti-american out of Rev Wright, but the country would appreciate it if you would at least try to wrap that itty bitty brain of yours around this idea.

The American people know that there are more than two options and every time you say a vote against your plan is a vote for the status quo we get more and more angry.  I can't help but wonder if your plan for transforming America is too make us all so angry with the stupidity and offensiveness of your arguments that all your detractors actually have strokes.  Is that your real healthcare reform plan.  Make the people so angry that they literally drop dead?  It's really beginning to look that way to me.

I find it amazing that you believe we have more options in how to take our coffee than we have in healthcare reform.  God save this country from the stupidity and blind ambition of it's leaders.

Another Absence of Logic

In all of the discussions about the tax on the cadillac health plans, the pervasive lack of logic in the reform plan shines through yet again.

The administration wants to levy the 40% tax on these plans in order to raise funds but that can't (not won't, can't) work.  The companies that offer these will simply stop offering them and the money will go away.  The only companies that are locked in to these types of benefits are the unions, and they've been exempted.  So the desired -- and the government says critical -- fund raising will be completely gone after the first year, if the companies don't proactively stop offering them so that the money doesn't even exist to begin with.

Obama says that these plans don't make people healthier and bend the cost curve up.  How exactly, I'm not sure.  Is it because the people who have these plans have less financial responsibility for their own care and go to the doctor more often?  If so, then what about all of the other contributors to this same situation? 

• What about people who have more than one insurance plan and coordinate benefits so that the member has no liability?  And that zero liability resulting from the coordination is a state mandate.  Are they going to tax families with more than one insurance coverage? 
• What about coordination with auto insurance which in some states is prohibited.  This means that you can have your bills paid, in full, by both your auto carrier and your medical carrier and not only have no financial responsibility for your bills but actually make money from them.  Are they going to tell the states they can't do this or levy taxes upon the auto insurance plans. 
• How about AARP and other organizations that offer Medicare supplement plans so that pick up the patient responsibility remaining after Medicare paid?  What are they going to do about those?

This is all just another example of the government attempting to legislate an area they know nothing about and a perfect example of the total absence of logic in their decision making processes. 

The State of the US Local #946 Address

Obama has given a whole new meeting to the state of the Union address.  Who would have thought that when the president addressed the union he was actually addressing the United auto works, the Service employees, the electrictians and the welders.  But based on what he has done in his first year in office, is there any quesiton on what union he'll be addressing in his upcoming speech?  The one he's delaying until health care reform passes.  Certainly not the union of the states of this great nation.

The auto companies needed bailouts and everybody suffered - except the unions.  They pretty much own the companies now.
Job summits were held and the Chamber of Commerce wasn't invited by guess who was - the SEIU
Taxes will be levied on the great benefit packages for everybody except - the unions.
Who has had a seat at every meeting - the unions
Who has been invited to every party - the unions
Whose interests are more important than anybody else's to this administration - the unions.

So why don't we just change Obama's upcoming speech to the State of the US Local #946 address.