Obama's Death Panel

September 23, 2013

ObamaCare's redistribution of health and death Published by: Herman Cain The way ObamaCare works is disturbingly similar to the tax code. That is not good. Most people and businesses clearly understand, now, how ObamaCare redistributes the cost of health insurance and the cost of health care. It does it with a plethora of rules, taxes and penalties. But little attention has been given to how these same rules, penalties and taxes also redistribute health, sickness and death. Maybe it is because it's a sensitive subject, or maybe it might cause the PC police to declare a full attack on anyone who would use such provocative narrative. That's what happened, after all, when Sarah Palin was crucified by the mainstream media for correctly identifying "death panels"  in ObamaCare. Well, bring it on, PC police! The truth shall set some people free! When the "death panel" (also known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB) decides whether you are allowed a procedure or not, they are deciding whether your chance of survival  is worth the cost in their opinion. If they say no then you die sooner than maybe later. When the cost of insuring the uninsurable is spread across everybody that buys insurance,  rather than a dedicated subsidized pool, somebody's coverage is going to be denied or delayed because they are forced to buy less expensive insurance coverage if they cannot afford to pay more for their insurance. Just like minor car accident claims, people might ignore minor ailments to keep their rates from going up. In my own personal case, a minor ailment wich I thought was acidity from coffee turned out to be stage four cancer. Because I was able to get diagnosed and treated on my timetable instead of the government 's, and at the expense of my insurance coverage and my out of pocket expenses, my 30 percent chance  of survival turned into now seven years of being cancer-free! When someone is notified that their Medicare insurance will no longer cover certain medications, such as the cost of their insulin medication, that person is forced to choose between paying their bills or staying alive. Many doctors have announced that they can no longer afford to take new Medicare patients because of cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. These patients can't just find another doctor who will take Medicare  patients because chances are that they can't take anymore either. As a result, some people will not get medical assistance until their condition is an emergency from waiting too long, or until they are on their death bed. Rural communities will be especially negatively impacted by a shortage of doctors who will see Medicare patients, because rural communities tend to have more Medicare-eligible patients. A majority of Medicare  payments means most of a doctor's revenue is coming from Medicare payments made by Uncle Sam, which is not sufficient to sustain a financially viable medical practice. As a result, doctors will relocate to more lucrative areas and people living in rural areas will have to travel  farther to get medical care, or they will not be able to get treatment at all. Thus, illnesses will advance  more quickly, thus reducing survival rates. The U.S. tax code redistributes wealth and income, and one does not have to be rich to be subjected to our archaic, punitive and complex system. The more you make, the more they (the bureaucrats) take from you using the force of law. That's why we must change the law by replacing the tax code. ObamaCare works in much the same way. It confiscates the entire cost structure and dynamics of our health care and health insurance system, as well as life and death decisions that should be made by  individuals and their family members. ObamaCare also commandeers decisions that should be made by doctors, by denying payment for certain diagnostic procedures deemed unnecessary by, again, government bureaucrats. Sticker shock causes people to wake up to the truth about the cost of ObamaCare, which is nothing like the promises made by its advocates. They can buy less insurance coverage with the same dollars, as most people will be forced to do, or pay more for the same coverage, or be forced to buy more coverage with more dollars to meet minimum requirements of ObamaCare. But when people are denied or wait too long for a medical treatment due to rules, taxes and penalties, the medical condition can't be quickly reversed or cured after waiting on a bureaucrat to say yes or no. If the government says yes, a person's chances of survival are already reduced. If they say no, well, you just might die sooner rather than later.

Definition Of Insanity

QE3: The definition of insanity returns
By Herman Cain

Einstein may have been a genius, but it doesn’t take a genius to see the wisdom of one of his most famous sayings: Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity.

That’s how you know that the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve have lost it. The Fed announced last week that it plans another round of “quantitative easing,” which means keeping interest rates artificially low and printing a lot more money (technically through the buying of mortgage-backed securities - $40 billion a month’s worth).

This is known as QE3, and it follows the highly unsuccessful QE1 and QE2, but it is different in one respect: QE3 is forever. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says he will put no sunset date on this plan. The Fed will keep doing it until the economy improves, no matter how long it takes.

Bernanke’s announcement got immediate results, too, although not the type he wanted. The credit rating agency Egan-Jones immediately responded to QE3 by downgrading America’s credit rating from AA to AA-. Explaining their decision, Egan-Jones said what anyone should be able to figure out: All this pump-priming is not going to raise America’s gross domestic product, but what it will do is deplete consumer purchasing power.

Remember last year when Standard & Poors downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+? Democrats and the media insisted that Standard & Poors had taken this action solely because Tea Party Republicans had demanded budget cuts as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, thus introducing a short-term risk of default on the debt.

In fact, Standard & Poors cited the dysfunction of the policymaking process in general, and rightly so. Rating agencies don’t care how you reduce your debt – cut spending, raise taxes – they just want you to do it. What they saw is what anyone with common sense can see. Our fiscal situation is so out of control that we have to borrow money just to pay the interest on the money we’ve already borrowed. When the debt ceiling showdown resulted in no serious action on the deficit, Standard & Poors had seen enough. Even so, Democrats and their media allies did everything they could to blame the Tea Party – as if the people who want put a stop to out-of-control debt are the ones upsetting the credit agencies.

So then, how will they find a way to blame the Tea Party for Egan-Jones’s latest downgrade of the U.S., which is it second this year? The first downgrade resulted from the utter failure of Congress and the White House to deal with the debt. This time, Egan-Jones recognizes that devaluing our currency will do nothing to make the situation better. The only way to do that, after all, is to achieve robust and sustained economic growth.

So why won’t QE3 do that? In buying up all those mortgage-backed securities, they’ll certainly pump a lot of capital into financial institutions. The banks will turn around and lend it, and Main Street will suddenly be cash flush, right?

Wrong. That was the theory behind QE1 and QE2, as well. Why didn’t it work? Because of a little thing called Dodd-Frank, the “reform” through which Democrats presumed to crack down on big banks. Dodd-Frank has introduced so many new regulations and restrictions, big banks are scared to death to make risky loans of any kind. So sure, there’s going to be money, but they’re only going to lend it to the safest loan applicants – people who would almost certainly have gotten loans even without the pump-priming.

So we devalue our currency for nothing, and we’re going to do it endlessly!

I don’t know how we maintain a credit rating as good as AA- when we maintain policies like this. These people have no idea what they’re doing.