As much as I sympathize with this guy's tale of Obamacare woe, his timeline is pure fantasy

 The story is here:

My insurance was $185/month with a $1,000 deductible. That was for a family of 5. So I voted for Obama-Biden in 2008 based on Obamacare. ...  the cheapest insurance I could find to replace that one was $1,200 a month with a $6,000 deductible.

The guy had a great plan before Obama!

But Obamacare as he now thinks he knows it didn't even exist in 2008 for him to base his vote on it.

Obama was for something else, the public option, a government-funded health insurance plan designed to compete with private health insurance. That was also Nancy Pelosi's preference, and the preference of the US House Democrat left at the time.

The great fear was the public option would crowd out private insurance and defeat it because it would be more attractive to women and the chronically ill.

The House public option plan put forward in 2009 competed with the Senate plan, and the two proposals were at an impasse by the end of 2009. Eventually the Senate version prevailed in March of 2010.

The Senate plan was actually worse, what we now call Obamacare.

It dictated the much more expensive nature and new shape of all existing private insurance plans instead of providing a separate public option to compete with those already existing private insurance plans. It cost more to provide because it eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions, and treated men and women equally even though women's care is more costly.

It was fascism pure and simple, government dictating to the private sector what will be, and what will not be.

That's how you lost your old plan, your old doctor, and your money: Because Obama bowed to the Senate plan, instead of fighting for what he said he believed in.

If you were too poor, though, to qualify for Obamacare, you just got stuck with Medicaid, health insurance for the poor, and, failing that, with nothing at all.

The once heralded public option for everyone defaulted to Medicaid. Nearly 86 million are now stuck with that, and most are unaware of its clawback provisions.

Today only 21 million can afford Obamacare, and about 25 million non-elderly adults have bupkis, like the poor fella in the story had for ten years.

Meanwhile, 158 million have employer-provided health insurance, the cost of which climbs relentlessly. The average worker had to pay $549 a month in premiums for it in 2023.

Medicare provides coverage to about 66 million aged 65+, and costs nearly $175 a month in 2024.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

 

 

83 million still on Medicaid

 Down from 94 million but up from 65 million before the pandemic.

Story.

As usual the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are portraying the House Republican bill which lifts the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion as a bill with "big spending cuts"

This is how NPR, who else?, frames the issue from the beginning:

The House of Representatives has narrowly approved a Republican bill to raise the debt limit. However, it ties the ability to raise that debt ceiling to big spending cuts. And this House bill rolls back several of President Biden's key policies.

The House Republican bill, now languishing in the Senate, rolls back spending levels to pre-COVID levels. That's not a spending cut. That's saying, as Biden himself says, the emergency is over.

If the emergency is over, the emergency spending should end, too.

Outlays in fiscal 2020 and 2021 ballooned because of the new pandemic spending. Deficits for just those two years soared to almost $6 trillion. Republicans seek to roll that spending back. Democrats want that spending to form the new baseline. If Democrats succeed, Katy bar the door. The national debt will absolutely explode.

NPR knows this. It just chooses to hide the facts about it all, how the pandemic spending created these massive deficits, and how that spending which flooded the economy with money contributed to the new inflation:

So it raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or through March of 2024, whichever comes first. It also sets spending levels for federal programs to those that were in place two years ago. It limits the growth of spending going forward to 1% annually. But as you said, it also targets a list of the president's policies. It repeals the president's student loan forgiveness program, which is tied up in the courts. It claws back unspent COVID relief money and rolls back key energy provisions that were in the Inflation Reduction Act. It also puts in place new work requirements for adults without children who receive federal assistance like food stamps or Medicaid.

Meanwhile The Grauniad can't decide whether record STDs constitute a crisis which is serious or waning

While neglected, the STI crisis presents a serious public health problem. ...

But Harvey warns that a coordinated effort by national health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is needed to combat the waning STI crisis.

Here.

You can always count on THE GRAUNIAD to be clear as mud.

Atlantic article totally soft-peddles how Obamacare's architects made millions vulnerable to estate recovery under Medicaid

The only reason Obamacare can be called successful reasonably is that it threw millions onto Medicaid, except that what is spent on you in life for your healthcare under Medicaid ends up coming out of what's left of what you owned after you die, if anything, including from the sale of your house, and even from the sale of granny's hand-me-down quilts.

America's first black president, Bill Clinton, signed estate recovery into law, and the second one then sold that bill of goods to millions of America's uninsured poor. He just bought himself a $15 million mansion to celebrate. 

Medicaid’s Dark Secret:

For many participants, the program that provides health care to millions of low-income Americans isn’t free. It’s a loan. And the government expects to be repaid. ...

One lawyer in Tennessee recalled a case in which a woman went to her late mother’s Medicaid auction to buy back quilts that had been passed down for generations. ...

One of the few times estate recovery has made headlines was earlier this decade, during the rollout of the Obama administration’s Medicaid expansion. As more Americans considered Medicaid as a health-insurance option, more came across the fine print. At least three states passed legislation to scale back their recovery policies after public outcry.

Obama stole neo-liberal healthcare mandate from Hillary, who stole it from "conservative" Heritage Foundation

There is no difference between forcing you to buy health insurance and taking your money to pay for Medicaid and Medicare.

Everyone is for tyranny.

Police find many more infant bodies in another Detroit funeral home as scandal expands

This story is the macabre bookend to the grisly Kermit Gosnell infanticide case in Philly.

63 remains of fetuses removed from Perry Funeral Home in Detroit:

[T]wo attorneys said they believe many more infants’ remains may be found in the improper possession of the Perry Funeral Home, perhaps as many as 200, based on their research of log books kept by the Wayne State University School of Mortuary Science. The funeral home routinely deposited infant remains at the WSU school’s morgue, then failed to follow up with parents’ wishes for the remains to be used in research by the WSU School of Medicine, they said.

“I’m really wondering where all the rest of them are,” Cieslak said late Friday. The lawsuit filed by the two charges that Perry may have fraudulently billed Medicaid, as well as the Detroit Medical Center, for burials it never performed. The lawyers said they can’t estimate how much money might be involved, “but it must be significant,” Parks said.

"We already have people calling us, after seeing the news, saying 'this happened to me,'" he said.

Tucker Carlson says there's nothing free about this market, falls short of calling it an expression of global fascism

But who knows, maybe his forthcoming book connects the dots between the multinational corporations and their revolving door governments, and the central banking system which mediates the operation.

Here:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.

Same with the Waltons. The Walton family founded Walmart. Collectively they’re worth about $175 billion. That’s more than the entire gross domestic product of Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf state. The Waltons could certainly afford to be generous with their workers. Instead, they count on you to take up the slack. In 2013, taxpayers sent more than $6 billion to Walmart’s workers, for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.

And if you think that’s shocking, meet Travis Kalanick. He’s the youthful founder of Uber. His personal fortune is close to $5 billion. His drivers, by contrast, often make less than minimum wage. One recent study showed that many Uber drivers lose money working for the company. That’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason it continues is because of your generosity. Because you’re paying the welfare benefits for Uber’s impoverished drivers, child billionaires like Travis get to keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes. He’s someone else who definitely owes you a thank you note.

If you can think of a less fair system than that, send us an email. We’d love to hear it. It’s indefensible. Yet almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Conservatives, like us, support the free market, and for good reason. Free markets work. But there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that, just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite. They’re the backbone of the left. Pick a leftwing cause that you think is hurting the country. Check the donor list, and you’ll find the name of some corporation. Often many corporations. Corporate America enables the progressive lunacy you see every night on this show. They’re funding the revolution now in progress.

That’s why liberals say nothing as oligarchs amass billions by soaking the middle class. Because they’ve been paid off. For example, you probably assumed the people who founded Walmart were conservative. Most of their customers certainly are. Yet the bulk of the Walton family backed Hillary Clinton in the last election. They gave the Democratic Party more than $700,000 during the 2016 cycle. Almost every billionaire in Silicon Valley did the same. In return, they got immunity from criticism, and you got to keep paying their employees. Not a bad deal for them.

There is one person in Washington who’s offended by this arrangement, and we’re sorry to say he’s wrong on pretty much everything else. But this is a weird moment, so you take allies where you can find them. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is trying to get your money back from Jeff Bezos. This is especially amazing since Bezos is on Bernie’s side on most things. They’re both leftwing activists. But on this question, Bernie’s right. He’s planning legislation that would force big corporations to return the taxpayer-funded welfare benefits you’ve paid to their workers. It’s not a perfect solution, and it probably won’t pass. No matter what they claim in public, liberals in Congress would never support something like that. Their loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to Uber and Jeff Bezos. But at the very least it might awaken a sleepy population to the new reality of activist corporate America. And that’s a good thing.

America has changed enormously in the last 20 years. A lot of people you thought were your allies are in fact working against your interests. They have contempt for you and your family, your customs and your faith. Included in this group, I’m sorry to say, are a lot of big corporations. They have no use for you or the country you grew up in. Stand in their way, and they’ll crush you. It’s all shocking enough that I recently wrote a book about it. It’s called “Ship of Fools,” and it explains what happened and who did it. The book is out in a month, the first week of October, but you can preorder a copy now, and I hope you will.

47% of legal aliens in US receive at least one form of public welfare, compared with 32% of the native born

Mostly in the form of Medicaid.

The story is here.

Peter Morici: Republican opposition to regulating prices will bring Medicaid-like single payer to USA

Here.

Medicaid enrollment increases, the number with private coverage decreases

“The danger is that the previously insured are now at risk of becoming the new uninsured,” reports Jarrett Stepman for The Daily Signal.

Drug overdoses soar in Medicaid expansion states under Obamacare

Your government Medicaid doctors are drug pushers.

Story here.

Ted Cruz concluded Mitch McConnell is a liar in 2015, now Ron Johnson appears to be doing the same

The Ted Cruz incident with McConnell involved the Export-Import Bank (story here).

Now, Ron Johnson is reportedly concluding McConnell committed a breach of trust by privately telling moderate senators that the Medicaid cuts in the healthcare bill won't actually occur, as reported here.

The current Republican bill in the Senate appears dead as four senators in the Republican caucus have said they don't support it. With a 2-seat majority, only 3 defections are tolerable (the tie-breaker vote is cast by the Vice President, Mike Pence).

When all is said and done we might find out that the loss of support is all intentional and orchestrated in order to save the Senate from having to vote on the issue again at all. The nay-sayers may be handsomely rewarded at some future date while getting to please their constituencies.

Remember, Republicans generally don't believe in anything except for what is. In other words, maintaining the status quo is their objective. They are pragmatists who are willing to accept progressive creations once passed, like the income tax, Social Security, Medicare and now Obamacare, and will defend those programs no matter how they became law.

Lighting their hair on fire for anything is completely out of the question, including for the constitution.

The only thing that will save us now is a meteor strike on the Senate chamber while they are all in session.

Infections kill 380,000 in nursing homes annually, mostly Medicaid recipients

Forget dying in the streets, they already drop like flies on Medicaid and no one gives a rat's rear end.

From Betsy McCaughey, here:

The real threat to seniors isn’t Medicaid funding levels. It’s that Medicaid officials tolerate substandard nursing-home care, when they could use the program’s market clout to demand better conditions. About 66 percent of long-term patients are paid for by Medicaid.

John Batchelor: The professors are lying about the Medicaid "cuts"

Here, where we learn that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion actually was UNFAIR because it is far more generous, by 100%, to childless, non-disabled, non-elderly adults earning less than $16,000 a year than it is to poor children, the disabled and seniors who were already on Medicaid.

The Republican Senate plan cuts that back 50%, equal to the existing, traditional reimbursement for poor children, the disabled and seniors on Medicaid.

Equality. It's a bitch brought to you by Republicans, not Democrats. 

Obama expanded Medicaid on the backs of taxpayers who also buy health insurance, making them pay twice

Betsy McCaughey, here:

Who's picking up the tab for this vast Medicaid expansion? You. Worse, you pay twice -- once as a taxpayer, and then again as an insurance consumer. Families with private insurance pay $1,500 to $2,000 or more in added premiums yearly already to keep Medicaid afloat. The more Medicaid expands, the higher their premiums will go. That's because Medicaid shortchanges hospitals and doctors, paying less than the actual cost of care. They make up for it by shifting the costs onto privately insured patients. Ouch.

How to reform Medicaid before Obamacare is even repealed and save $48.3 billion: Kick out all the illegal aliens

We don't need no stinkin' Medicaid

CIS estimates that 51% of illegal aliens are enrolled in Medicaid, here.

That's 6.12 million illegals receiving Medicaid out of 70 million total receiving Medicaid in 2015.

Medicaid outlays in 2015 came to $552 billion, or $7,886 each. 

There's no way Republicans will take away Medicaid from 25 million people, 11 million or whatever

Just a fact, not a statement of approval.

Economic reality: Budgets in 33 states face shortfalls now or next year, some from Obamacare-related Medicaid costs

From the story here:

A recent Associated Press survey found that more than half of the states — 33 — are currently dealing with a budget shortfall or expect to confront one in the coming fiscal year. Experts say state economic growth has been slower than expected, with revenue in some places failing to meet projections or keep up with rising spending needs. ... Medicaid costs are contributing to budget gaps in Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New York and Rhode Island. Other states are dealing with increasing spending demands in education and health care.

Wake up, dummies, using Medicaid means your estate is subject to recovery when you die