Pursuit of the Perfect Will Cost the Republicans

There is a saying, "Don't let the pursuit of the perfect be the enemy of the possible." This is sound advice yet that is exactly what the Republicans are doing when it comes to repealing and replacing Obamacare. Instead of fixing it one piece at a time and making things better, they are fighting amongst themselves and accomplishing absolutely nothing and they will pay a heavy price at the polls in 2018 and 2020. This doesn't mean voters will replace them with Democrats however. No, the hapless, establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will be tossed out on their ears and replaced, not by Democrats (no one is buying what they are selling anymore) but rather by Republicans who will keep their promises.

On Monday McConnell slammed the President for not understanding the legislative "process" and having unrealistic expectations. What McConnell doesn't seem to understand is that like Trump, the people don't give a damn about the process; they want results. With control of the White House, the Senate and the House, the public doesn't believe it is too much to expect the repeal and replacement of a hated and failing Democrat healthcare bill, fixing our borders and stopping illegal immigration, reducing taxes, and passing a budget.

It shouldn't be too much to expect our legislators to keep their promises. If voters can't depend on Democrats or Establishment Republicans to do what they promised and were elected to do, trust me, the people will find someone who will. That is the process Mitch McConnell ought to be concerned about.

McCain, Baby Charlie Gard and Government Healthcare

A FB friend posted the following article on his wall:

http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/07/20/christian-pastor-just-said-democrats-pc-say-mccain-trumpcare/

The problem with this article is that it completely misses a huge point: Sen McCain and the rest of Congress exempted themselves from the ACA (aka Obamacare) because they, as elitists, have given themselves a "Cadillac" healthcare plan, the likes of which no other American will ever get. If Congress, Dems and Reps, are so dead set on government run healthcare, they and their families should first be forced to give up their special super-duper healthcare and get their care at the VA. Then that mess will get cleaned up and if they can't do that, then maybe they will rethink their approach to healthcare reform. Neither Obamacare nor Trumpcare are going to deliver anything remotely close to the level of care Sen McCain will get. Further, because the prognosis is so poor, it is likely that most govt run healthcare or single payer plans would just provide palliative care because the cost to benefit ratio is so high for treatment. You can call that by any name you like but the bottom line effect is a "death panel". This is the same situation going on currently in the UK with baby Charlie Gard. His care plan is "death with dignity".

Speaker Paul Ryan's Failed Leadership

If the Obamacare Repeal and Replace effort fails in the House tomorrow, responsibility will rest squarely on the shoulders of Speaker Paul Ryan and he should resign for gross failure of leadership. Period. There is no excuse!

An Idea for Real Healthcare Reform

One of the many flaws of the Affordable Care Act is that it increases demand for healthcare but does nothing to increase the supply of healthcare providers i.e. doctors.

An important metric of the strength of a country's healthcare system is physicians per capita which is usually given as the number of physicians/1,000 of the population. According to the CIA World Factbook and similar references, the U.S. had 2.45 physicians/1,000 population in 2011. The left loves to point to European countries as examples for the United States to emulate. For example, France has a physicians per capita of 3.19, Germany 3.89 and Switzerland 4.05. America's number is even less than Uzbekistan's 2.53. Obviously, physicians/1,000 of the population is only one indicator and doesn't tell the whole story but it is significant. 

An important factor in the shortage of doctors in the U.S. has to be the high cost of medical school. Typically, a new American doctor starts his or her career with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. To help alleviate this problem, I propose the creation of the Civilian Medical Training Corps which would be modelled after the Reserve Officer Training Corps or ROTC.

CMTC would offer promising American students a full scholarship to a civilian medical school in exchange for five years of service in an underserved region of the country or perhaps a VA hospital. After that, the doctor would be free to practice medicine anywhere they chose but would still be required to donate their time one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year just like a military Reservist. An additional benefit would be they would also be available during times of crisis such as natural disasters. The students would be selected through a national competitive exam. So how much would this program cost? A quick check of the numbers follows.

In order to increase the physicians per 1000 to 3 it would require an additional 170,500 doctors. To do this in 10 years means 17,050 doctors per year at a cost of $3.41 billion which is a little less than 4% of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $87.4 billion annual discretionary budget. To raise the physicians per 1000 to 4, the cost would be $9.61 billion or about 10% of the annual discretionary budget. This seems to me to be a worthy use of HHS funds.

Would this proposal significantly improve the healthcare system in America? I guaran-damn-tee you it will have a more positive effect than Obamacare's fiddle farting around with the insurance system!

Justice Roberts Got It Right But Still Got It Wrong

Regardless of whether or not you are in favor of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare was a disaster for the rule of law in the United States.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said, "The ACA was passed to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them." thus he concluded that the intent of Congress in their wording that subsidies would only apply to those who purchased their insurance through exchanges, "Established by a state" had to mean both federal and state exchanges because otherwise the Act would be a failure. He reasoned that Congress would not have written the law to fail. That might have been avoided had they not had to "Pass the law in order to know what's in it." but that is beside the point.  So John Roberts got it right in that Congress wouldn't have written the law so that it would fail but he got it wrong when he concluded that allowing subsidies only for those who got their health insurance though state exchanges would result in the ACA failing. What Justice Roberts misses is that Congress saw this wording as a way to make the Act succeed not fail. According to Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the law, subsidies only for state established exchanges was a key provision because it was seen as a way to pressure states to establish their own exchanges. State exchanges, not federal subsidies, were seen as the key to success for the ACA.  Liberals gambled that citizens in the various states would insist that their state legislatures set up exchanges so they could receive the subsidies. Like so many other shenanigans associated with this law, this backfired and once again Justice Roberts saved a poorly constructed law, written by a lazy, conniving Congress. This is a terrible precedent for the rule of law. It should not be up to the Court to find ways to save bad laws yet once again this is exactly what the Supreme Court did for a second time with regard to the ACA. As a result, Congress will continue to pass overly complex, poorly conceived, self-contradicting laws written by staffers and lobbyist, and they can count on the Courts to rule on what the law should have said rather than what it does say. What this does is abdicate Congress' Constitutional role of writing law as the duly elected representatives of the people to 9 unelected men and women in black robes who are appointed for life and accountable to no one. The result is the death of the rule of law in America.

With over 2800 pages, one can only wonder what future harm this abomination of a law will do to America and our system of laws. What will Justice Roberts and the rest of the justices do when Congress figures out that allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance until they are 26 destroys one of the major premises of the ACA - namely that the mandatory insurance premiums of young, healthy Americans will pay for the insurance of older, less healthy citizens. Did Congress really mean that children can stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26? I guess we will have to wait and see what John Roberts says Congress meant.

Democrat High Fives All Around for Meaningless ACA Enrollment Number

There is an old military saying, "When you are up to your ass in alligators, it's easy to forget that the original mission was to drain the swamp." For the Affordable Healthcare Act this seems very apropos. The liberals won't remind you but the original goal of healthcare reform was to insure the alleged 40 million Americans who didn't have health insurance. Now for a little math: 7.1 million divided by 40 million is 17.8%. Would most reasonable people consider this success? This is just one of the many ACA "alligators". Even if one believes the number provided by the Obama Administration, there is no way to draw any real conclusions from the enrollment number reported Monday following the end of the first open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) but that didn't stop the President and his fellow Democrats from crowing and doing a victory dance at a press conference. Funny how Mr. Obama didn't take any questions from the media - as if they would have asked any tough ones. In order for the number to have any meaning, we need to know the details. How many of the 7.1 million didn't previously have health insurance and how many of that number had to replace the insurance that they had and were happy with but lost because the new law 'declared' it inferior? Well the Administration won't tell us. There are many reports that millions of Americas were in this situation. Rand, the highly respected think tank, has determined that 6.3 million Americans lost their insurance due to the ACA. That would mean that only about 900,000 of the 7.1 million are actually newly insured. And how many of those who had to replace their insurance now have higher premiums and higher deductibles? Uh, well we don't know. How many of the supposed newly insured have actually paid their first premium? Again, we don't know but can one really be consider enrolled if you haven't paid? What about the percentage of the 7.1 million enrollees are having their new insurance subsidized by the government or how many people have been added to the Medicaid rolls? Again, no answers are forthcoming. Why not? When you have a program that encompasses one sixth of the U.S. economy, it is essential to set up a mechanism to accurately assess its effectiveness. You need metrics and getting those metrics would have been easy to get, if they had only asked these questions on the website but they didn't? Why? The answer is because they didn't want to know. This is precisely why conservatives hate big government programs like this. One would have to be ignorant, profoundly stupid or an ideological zealot to believe that the enrollment figure is any indication of success at all. If you are among the believers, you now have the facts, so you are down to two choices. So which one are you?

Clinton's Lie Forgivable- Obama's Is Not

When Bill Clinton finally had to admit he lied about Monica Lewinsky, most of America was willing to forgive him. After all, it was just about sex and a CYA lie to avoid personal embarrassment. I don't personally subscribe to that rationalization but many did. With President Obama's healthcare lie, I don't think Americans will be as forgiving as they were with Clinton. The reason is simple: Mr. Obama deceived the American people and his lie fooled them into voting for him over something that they wouldn't have otherwise agreed to. Furthermore, it is causing huge swaths of them personal harm. Tens of millions of Americans who previously had healthcare coverage that they were perfectly happy with may ultimately lose that coverage because of the new Obamacare insurance requirements. The polls are bearing this assertion out. The president's approval rating has dropped to 37% and some polls even show that many of those who voted for him would vote for Mitt Romney if they held the election today. Ouch! Talk about buyer's remorse. Can you blame them? If LT Dan were a real person instead of a fictional character, he would probably lose his healthcare because it doesn't cover podiatry care.

"But you ain't got no legs Lieutenant Dan."

[Sigh] "Yes, I know that.[Forrest]"

And Obamacare is No Exception

Modern liberalism or progressivism or whatever one choses to call it is nothing more than Utopian socialism. This philosophy has its roots in Plato's Republic and was later described in 1516 by Sir Thomas More in his book, Utopia, and still later it was the basis for Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Each of these works openly admit that Utopianism must be predicated on an initial "necessary" or "benevolent" lie - the idea that, if you can just overlook the initial falsehood of the premise, the result is everything that follows will be better. Unfortunately, we have to learn time and time again that something that has an untruth as its foundation will never bring about some ultimate greater good.

Margarette Thatcher once famously said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. While this may be true from a purely practical sense, from a moral and logical standpoint, the "necessary" or "benevolent" lie required in order for socialism to work is its true fatal flaw.  Further, socialism is a philosophy that tries to force itself on reality as opposed to capitalism which is a philosophy that attempts to describe reality.

If one begins a mathematical proof with the false premise that 2+2 = 5, everything else that follows is doomed to failure. Regardless of the hoped for ultimate good, any program built on a lie cannot succeed and President Obama's "benevolent" lie, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan, etc...." and Obamacare is no exception.

No Lifeline for the Democrats Over Healthcare

After being called all sorts of terrible names over the gov't shutdown asking for the very same thing the Dumocrats have now realized is necessary with regard to Obamacare, the Republicans should now sit on their hands. No way should they throw them the lifeline they are now groping for. This ugly baby is 100% the spawn of liberal Democrats' (I guess liberal is unnecessary) ideological loins and they need to pay the political child-support (in 2014 and 2016). The media, unwittingly, created a 2 week x 24/7 video documentary of the fact Republicans had absolutely nothing to do with this disaster. Working with them now is stupid, foolish, self-defeating, etc. Expect Sens McCain, Graham, and the other "Gang of Whatevers" to run out in their usual "battered political spouse"/Stockholm Syndrome manner to support their tormentors. Crazy!!!

Fox Business's Cavuto Tells It Like It Is

As opposed to all the hyperbole, screaming and name calling for the liberal media, Fox Business anchor and commentator, Neil Cavuto, provides some measured criticism of President Obama and the new healthcare law. Liberals will hate this...because it is undenialable and the truth hurts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDdmtJCEWPA&feature=youtu.be

The Shutdown's Silver Lining

One thing is for certain, Dems, liberals, RINOs and the media scored a major victory over the shutdown. However, all sides better observe caution. Repubs, Tea Party, and conservatives should avoid too much self-flagellation and the left would be well-advised to resist the urge to gloat or perform too many end-zone dances. Remember 1992? Geo H.W. Bush had a 89% approval rating in 1991 following the Gulf War and went on to lose less than a year later. People tend to over analyze the importance of political victory and confuse winning battles for winning the war. Timing will mean a lot here. Repubs and conservative might actually benefit from these short-term set-backs in the following way:

1. Had the Repubs been able to roll-back Obamacare, liberals could have said, “Well it would have worked but those mean-spirited, racist, bigoted, homophobe Republicans kept us from being able to give you your free healthcare.” It might actually be better to allow the train wreck and then be legitimately be able to say “See we told you so. We tried to prevent this but we weren’t successful. Don’t blame us.”

2. All politics is local especially with regard to Congressional Representatives. Those who think that the Tea Party candidates will be voted out by the very constituents who sent them to Washington to do exactly what they did are kidding themselves. Purple district candidates might be vulnerable but then again, they always are.

3. Unlike with the economy where liberals were able to make a convincing but in my opinion false argument that this bad economy is still all Bush’s fault, there is no way that if Obamacare turns out to be the disaster conservative predict (and so far is on track to be) it can be blamed on the Republicans. Dems and liberals own this one “Lock, stock and barrel” and they spent the last 2 weeks providing a 24/7 video record of it. When people become truly pissed because they lose their jobs, are forced to go part-time, have their health insurance premiums skyrocket, deductible shoot up to $5000+, employer coverage is dropped, etc, etc, etc. Democrats will be politically bludgeoned to death like baby fur seals by their own words captured on video by their media lackeys.

Time will tell but the future is anything but certain. Upcoming milestones: 01Jan 14 mandatory enrollment begins; 15 Apr 14 first impacts of tax penalties hit; 04 Nov 2014 mid-term elections; 08 Nov 2016 next Presidential election!

Reader comments are encouraged. Be the first to comment by clicking on "No Comments" and add your thoughts.

Should Have Used GoDaddy

First impressions are important and I think it is safe to say that www.healthcare.gov blew it. Whether or not you are a fan of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the roll out of the government health insurance exchange website certainly gives one reason for concern. So far, America's initial contact with the system via the website has been an unmitigated disaster. The ability to use the site has been very frustrating even to the numerous liberal TV journalists who have tried to access the system on air! In interviews yesterday and today, John McAfee, the founder of McAfee, Inc (the big software security company) said, "The site is hacker's wet dream!" He went on to predict that thousands of Americans may have their identities stolen due to security vulnerabilities in the www.healthcare.gov website. Another interview I heard with a software designer, said the site appears to be poorly designed, badly implemented, and apparently not tested prior to launch. In fairness, the government only had 3 years to have the site built. All this for the incredibly low price of only $394 million according to this morning's Washington Post. Maybe they should have just used GoDaddy.com?

Who Will Liberals Blame Healthcare Problems on Then?

The Republican House sent a bill over to the Senate that funded the entire government but contained language that defunded Obamacare. The Senate could vote to approve the bill and avoid a government shutdown but instead they most likely will strip out the defunding portion of the bill and send it back to the House. This would force the House to either accept funding of a disastrous program that 70% of Americans are firmly against, most of those in Congress who voted for it hadn't read (and probably still haven't) and could only get jammed through using a parliamentary procedure trick or can allow the government to shut down. If this happens, of course the Republicans will be blamed. Obamacare is universally acknowledged to be a train wreck in the making. It is already causing people to lose their current coverage, pay more for coverage, and work fewer hours as employers make them go part-time to avoid having to pay for the very expensive government mandated coverage. Except for a handful of States, health insurance premiums are expected to increase an average of 24%. The graph below by the Society of Actuaries gives another revealing view of the coming increases.

So much for the president’s promise that the average family will save $2500 a year!

When this legislation was passed, not a single Republican voted for it because no one was given an opportunity to read, let alone try to understand the 2800+ page behemoth. This program is riddled with problems that are causing all sorts of unforeseen negative consequences. It is a jobs killer. It is going to cost billions more than what we were promised. It is going to cause a doctor shortage as doctors retire or leave the field of medicine in order to not have to deal with the government bureaucracy. The system will be bogged down as thousands of new patients flood the system for their free healthcare for every sneeze or sniffle. "Why not? Don't cost nothin'?" The president has already (and illegally I might add) delayed implementation for his pals in "Big Labor" because the program isn't ready. Before it has even been fully implemented, Obamacare has missed 41 of its 82 legally required deadlines according to the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service. And yet, liberals insist on pushing forward with this ill-conceived law. So liberals, I ask you: When your medical insurance premiums skyrocket; when you have to wait months for routine procedures; when your 401K tanks because the economy is in ruins; when you lose your job because your employer can’t make a decent return on their operations because of the high cost of their mandated employer provided healthcare; when your kid can’t get the operation or medicine she needs because the government has decided her chances of survival doesn’t merit the expense or when you have to figure out how to live on a part-time salary because your hours get cut back to below 30 hours a week, who are you going to be able to blame? You won’t be able to blame the Republicans!

If Obamacare is so good...

If Obamacare is so good, why:

    Did the president delay implementing it - oh but only the employer mandate - the average "Joe
    Smo" has to buy health insurance which in most cases has gone way up in price;

    Is everyone is calling it a "train wreck" even Democrat members of the House and Senate;

    Did members of Congress quietly exempted themselves and their staffers before going on August
    recess;

   Did presidents of 3 of the largest unions - the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the United
   Food and Commercial Workers International Union and UNITE-HERE, a union representing hotel,
   airport, food service, gaming, and textile workers - write President Obama a letter urging him to
   delay implementing it;

  Does the non-partisan CBO (the Congressional Budget Office) continue to estimate the cost of the
  program will skyrocket, and

  Did they have to change the wording on the official Affordable Healthcare Act website from "if you
  like your current doctor, you can keep your current doctor" to "if you like your current doctor, you 
  may be able to keep your current doctor." and "if you like your current healthcare plan, you can
  keep your current healthcare plan" to "if you like your current healthcare plan, you may be able to
  keep your current healthcare plan".

If this is only a train wreck, America will be very lucky!

The IRS Debacle Widens and My Paranoia Grows

I'm sure many readers of my last posting where I closed by raising a concern that the IRS will be the agency enforcing parts of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare were thinking, "Mac has gone paranoid on us. There's no reason to think anyone will be treated differently." However, today we learned that Sarah Hall Ingram, the same IRS official who was in charge of the IRS division responsible for vetting tax exempt status applications during the period when it improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for unfair, unusual, and illegal additional scrutiny has since moved on to be the head of the IRS division responsible for enforcing the individual mandate of Obamacare. Those under her will determine, among other things, who gets fined for not buying health insurance. I kid you not! Now who's paranoid?

IRS Scandal Just Another Example of Lack of Leadership

The IRS scandal which we are learning more and more about despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration to downplay it and blame 'low-level' employees is yet another window into Barrack Obama's lack of leadership ability. IRS employees in the Cleveland, Ohio office reportedly were delaying the approval of tax exempt status for groups they believed to be Conservative. It is also alleged that they passed confidential tax return information on to liberal groups to use as political ammunition. The story itself is significant and I will opine on that as well as the other major scandals that have all come to light in the last week soon but for now, the leadership implications are what I would like to address.

What was our first clue that our president and his fellow travelers don't understand what leadership is all about? For me, it was their claim that the president was 'leading from behind'. Unless one is a dogsled musher in the Iditarod, there is no such thing as leading from behind. Another indicator that Obama and those around him know little about leadership is their 'go to' response whenever they are faced with a problem: "We just learned about (insert the name of the latest scandal here) from news reports and it appears to be the actions of a few low-level employees." They say this as if it somehow absolves them from responsibility or accountability. I can only assume their logic is 'We can't be held accountable for every single person in our charge and you can't expect us to know everything that goes on in such a large organization.' Unfortunately that isn't how leadership works. As many a commanding officer in the Navy have found out much to their chagrin, the leader is responsible for the actions of subordinates, not only as a result of the direct orders they are given by their commander, but also for the implied direction that results from the 'command climate' established by the person in charge. If the leader has made their opinion on a matter clear to their subordinates or presented a position of indifference on a subject and a problem occurs as a result of an underling acting on the superior's perceived desires, then it is indeed the leader's fault - period!

From the minute he emerged onto the national political stage, Barrack Obama has demonized those who disagree with him politically. He has referred to political opponents as enemies and has falsely accused Republicans, Tea Party members, Conservatives and those for smaller government of wanting to starve children, throw granny over the cliff, let kids with autism fend for themselves - not to mention wanting dirty air and dirty water. When coupled with liberals' propensity for an 'Ends Justifies the Means' approach to governance based on their sense of moral superiority, it is easy to imagine an entrenched 'true believer' bureaucrat confusing the command attitude for policy and singling out 'enemies' for special attention. That may very well be what happened in this case but as one can see, the leader is responsible just as sure as if a direct order was given. This may also explain but not forgive the second part of their standard excuse. Since subordinates believe they are doing the bidding of their leader, when there is a problem, it never gets reported up the chain of command. Why would it? It is policy from the top, right? Or perhaps is doesn't get reported out of fear of being thrown 'under the bus' by those in charge. There are certainly enough examples of this to make it a legitimate concern.

If the scope of the problem remained confined to just those few employees in Cleveland and the president accepted responsibility and took action right away instead of trying the pass the blame, this incident wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, as we learn more, we are finding out this isn't the case. Hundreds of people and organizations are now reporting that they received similar unfair treatment, making the Administration's low-level employee claim appear to be not only the result of poor leadership but also the intentional actions of scores of leftist at multiple levels in the IRS 'doing the right thing.'

Is it any wonder why Conservatives are concerned that the IRS is the government's enforcement agency for Obamacare? Could information from your tax return (e.g. what charities you donate to - an indicator of your politics) determine whether you get treatment or that pain pill candidate Obama talked about?