Repealing ObamaCare Costs How Many People Coverage?

Those who advocate the retention of ObamaCare are claiming highly exaggerated losses of coverage due to its repeal.  They assume that no new coverage will come into play upon its repeal.  HHS Secretary Burwell cited a claim that 30 million Americans will lose their coverage.  Many others are claiming that 20 million will lose their coverage.  These exaggerations are exactly as I predicted here.

First, as I noted here, only 11.1 million people were covered for the year in 2016, though 12.7 million signed up for coverage on ObamaCare health insurance websites.  They are very trusting people to sign up and to provide their social security numbers on those very incompetent exchanges.  But I digress.  The lower 11.1 million people number is found by adding up the monthly premium payments and dividing by 12.  But you can be sure that the advocates of ObamaCare use the 12.7 million number and have no regard for the fact that the 6 million who lost coverage due to ObamaCare are now proportional to the population growth as 6.1 million who would have been happy to stay on their old plans, especially now that they will have to soon make more changes due to the many instabilities that ObamaCare has introduced.  Subtract 6.1 million whose loss of insurance the ObamaCare advocates originally did not care about from 11.1 million and one has only 5.0 million on ObamaCare of new enrollees.

The ObamaCare insurance loss alarmists count all of the new enrollees on Medicaid compared to 2013 as being covered by ObamaCare as well.  As I noted here, of the 17 million new enrollees into Medicaid in 2014, only 3.3 million were newly eligible for coverage as a result of state expansions of Medicaid benefits as a result of ObamaCare.  It is clear that the claim that 30 million will lose their insurance comes from adding 17 million added people on Medicaid to 12.7 million who paid some portion of their premiums on ObamaCare purchased insurance in 2016.  It is also clear that this is a very dishonest number.

A more honest number is that of adding the additional 5.0 million insured under ObamaCare exchanges from the fully paid premium equivalent number to the 3.3 million added due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage by states under the ObamaCare law.  That gives us 8.3 million people.  But even that is dishonest.

Why?  One of the reasons this is dishonest because in 2014 alone employers dropped the health insurance coverage of 2 million people under their employer plans.  Small businesses alone dropped coverage for 2.2 million people as a result of ObamaCare and some unknown degree of reduction due to the super-extended poor growth Obama economy, some of which is also due to ObamaCare.  What is more, prior to ObamaCare, the number of people covered under employer plans had expanded year after year, so that growth in employer coverage was lost.  So, conservatively, we subtract another 2 million from the number of people who will lose coverage due to the repeal of ObamaCare.  We are now at 6.3 million people.

But in reality, these 6.3 million people will have the option to go without health insurance after the repeal, which may be wise if they are healthy or so rich that they can reasonably be self-insured.  In 2017, the wealthy will not be able to afford to lose 2.5% of their income to ObamaCare penalties, so they will have to buy ObamaCare health insurance no matter how little they need it, unless it is repealed.  Then ending ObamaCare will bring many employers back to offering insurance plans for their employees.  Many more cost effective private plans will come into existence, once the ObamaCare straitjackets are removed.  ObamaCare requires too many doctor visits and doctors offer much less treatment per visit since it was passed.  This is the usual practice with government-controlled health care.  It becomes very inconvenient, so people use it less and get less for the cost of the coverage.  Without ObamaCare, there will be a return to competition in the medical insurance market as well.  Most areas of the country now have only one or two insurers offering ObamaCare health insurance plans.  This is not good for costs.  High costs keep many from enrolling in health care insurance.

So, if the Republicans do nothing to replace ObamaCare, the net number of people losing health insurance will be fewer than lost it when ObamaCare was put in place.  If 6 million people happy with their insurance then did not matter, how can the advocates of ObamaCare claim that the less than 6 million people dependent upon ObamaCare will matter now.  In fact, the repeal of ObamaCare does not mean that those people added to Medicaid due to its expansion in some states will not continue to be covered by Medicaid in those states.  That 3.3 million people were almost entirely the responsibility of the states after 3 years under ObamaCare in any case.  2016 was the third year. Federal subsidy payments were scheduled to plummet in 2017 anyway.  This is why many states did not allow themselves to be hooked into expanding their Medicaid rolls.  So, the repeal of ObamaCare will actually result in fewer than 3 million people losing their health care insurance relative to the before ObamaCare number.

Only Democrat Socialists can get away with pretending that fewer than 3 million people are 30 million people or sometimes only 20 million people.  These are the same people who claimed that 47 million Americans were uninsured before ObamaCare and then in 2014 stopped counting the many millions of illegal immigrants as among those uninsured to make ObamaCare look as though it was much more effective in providing health insurance than it actually was.  Tricky Dicks, these socialists.  Too bad we do not have a free press willing to keep them honest.

ObamaCare Cost Increases in 2017

The Center for Health and Economy has released a study estimating the increased costs to taxpayers through the federal government in 2017.  ObamaCare premiums will be 22% higher in 2017, but the average monthly subsidy cost will go up by 26% from $291/month to $367/month.  The subsidy percentage increase is greater since incomes are losing ground relative to the premium increase.

The study says 11.1 million people per month are on ObamaCare in 2016 and this number is expected to increase to 11.4 million a month in 2017.  Of these 9.39 million in 2016 received tax credits and 9.65 million are expected to receive tax credits in 2017.  In 2016, 84.6% of the people on ObamaCare received a tax credit subsidy.  The study expects the same percentage in 2017. Clearly if you do not qualify for the tax credit subsidy, there is little likelihood that you will buy your health insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges.

The resulting increase in federal payouts from 2016 to 2017 is $9.8 billion.  The 2016 cost of the subsidies was $32.8 billion and the expected 2017 cost will be $42.6 billion.  The federal subsidies will therefore cost 29.9% more in 2017 than in 2016.  Those states that expanded their Medicaid rolls will also see large cost increases.

As an American, your health insurance premiums will go up, your deductible will likely go up, your co-pay will likely go up, your federal government costs will definitely go up, and in many states your state government costs will go up in 2017 thanks to ObamaCare.  Obama's transformation of America leaves those of us who are not subsidized with no hope.  Does it even provide hope to those who are subsidized as peons or serfs to the state?

The Failed ObamaCare: Lost Issue of the Presidential Race

Unfortunately, the Republicans have once again chosen a presidential candidate who is unable to and uninterested in fighting a major suppression of individual rights, namely the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act known as ObamaCare.  This big government effort to claim the collective ownership of everyone's mind and body should still be a critical issue with those of us who value our liberties.

The American Enterprise Institute has produced a series of articles about the failures of parts of the ObamaCare Act.  The latest article (1 August 2016) says about the cooperatives set up by ObamaCare:

Twenty-three plans, funded with $2.4 billion in government loans, opened enrollment in 2013. By the end of 2015, 12 plans had failed, leaving $1.3 billion in delinquent loans, more than 700,000 people in 13 states scrambling for coverage, and hospitals and doctors with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses uncovered by the assets of the failed co-ops.

This result is hardly surprising. The people running the co-ops had no experience running an insurance company — co-ops were forbidden to have anyone affiliated with insurers on their boards. Their premiums were too low and their benefits too high. The failed co-ops went on to lose $376 million in 2014 and more than a billion in 2015. Only one co-op turned a profit in 2014, and all lost money in 2015. 

The complete article is here.

ObamaCare Continues to Lose Altitude with Crash Inevitable

The biggest problem with ObamaCare is the loss of the fundamental ownership of your own mind and body. ObamaCare is primarily a declaration that no one has individual rights. According to the ObamaCare philosophy one is nothing but an infinitesimal part of the Collective. Some persons in the Collective did not have health insurance or had health insurance that was not approved by the Regressive Elitists who controlled the government with a claim as benevolent caretakers for the unwashed masses  such as you and me.  That claim bears a great similarity to that of the aristocracy of medieval times to the Divine Right of Kings and Aristocrats justified by their supposed service to the People.

ObamaCare caused millions of Americans to lose the insurance they were happy with.  They were forced to pay higher premiums, higher deductibles, travel greater distances, and accept lower quality health care than they previously had. A recent Mercatus Center study reveals that qualified individual health plans had claims to premium income ratios of 1.10 in 2014, while non-qualified individual health plans had claims to premium income ratios of 0.83.  The group qualified health insurance claims to income ratio was 0.82.  To cover the cost of claims, individual qualified health insurance plans would have to have had premiums about 30% higher than they were.  Many insurers have stopped offering ObamaCare qualifying individual health insurance plans in many states due to these unsustainable losses.  Those who have continued to offer plans have done so with some combination of increased premiums, increased deductibles, and narrower and narrower networks of providers.  In many areas of the country, patients have to travel much greater distances for the limited health care their health insurance provides.

The chart above is from a Kaiser Family Foundation report of November 2015.  The average percentage of uninsured less than the age of 65 in the pre-recession years 2000 to 2007 is 16.5%.  The 2014 uninsured rate for the non-elderly population, including illegal aliens, has been reported to be down based on interviews.  In January 2014, a Gallup poll found that 16.1% were uninsured.  In September 2014, the New York Times reported that the number of uninsured fell by 8% in the first quarter of 2014 compared to 2013, which would make the percentage of uninsured about 15.4% or only 1.1% less than the pre-recession average for 2000 through 2007. A CDC study based on interviews from January to September of 2014, claimed the nonelderly uninsured rate was 13.3%.  The government has a history of exaggerating the insured rate of coverage since ObamaCare was passed and people now have reason to fear telling a government agent that they do not have qualified health insurance, so the federal interview technique may be inclined to return a low value for the uninsured. In addition, having been forced to sign-up for health insurance many do not want and do not think they can afford, many do not actually pay their insurance premiums.  The only reliable way to determine how many people are insured is after the year is over and the insurance companies report on how many they had insured, but such data does not yet seem to be available.  ObamaCare supporters often like to attribute the decrease in the uninsured due to the glacially slow recovery from the Great Recession to ObamaCare, so this reference to the fairly stable uninsured rate prior to the recession is important if one is not to overstate the effect of ObamaCare on reducing the percentage of uninsured.

Many of the newly insured are actually those wealthy enough that they had very reasonably self-insured themselves and their loved ones, but are now forced by ObamaCare tax penalties to buy the insurance they did not need.  The very small reduction in the uninsured was also accomplished in large part because the rates being charged in 2014 were much too low and unsustainable.  Premium rates went up dramatically in 2015 and again in 2016, and will go up dramatically again in 2017, even as deductibles have continued to rise for many and health insurance choices have greatly diminished.  Some large insurers in Georgia are planning 65% premium increases in 2017, while some in Pennsylvania plan increases of 38%, some in New Mexico 32%, and some in Oregon 30%.

That small 2014 decrease in the uninsured rate will not be maintained. Young and healthy people cannot continue to subsidize less healthy people by taking on ever-rising insurance premiums they cannot afford even as they cannot benefit from the insurance for many of their health needs because they have insufficient money left to also pay the ever-increasing deductibles.   Even in 2014, the young and healthy were failing to provide the support to ObamaCare that it critically needed and their rapidly rising health insurance costs will inevitably result in more and more healthy people choosing the ObamaCare tax penalty over qualified health insurance.  Meanwhile, many insurance companies are trying to sue the government to make the government cover their losses.  The only way these insurers are likely to be reimbursed their losses is if the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives.


ObamaCare was always insane and unsustainable, as programs tend to be that ignore the essential fact of the individuality of humans and their sovereign individual rights.  Just as the aristocracy of Medieval times failed most of the people most of the time, so are the Regressive Elitists of our time failing most of the people most of the time.  It is impossible for self-proclaimed elitists to competently manage the lives of those they do not even know.  Just as the aristocracy of Great Britain failed to manage the American colonies competently in the 1760s and 1770s, our hone-grown aristocratic elitists of the Obama era cannot manage the health needs or anything else essential to the American individual of today.  A real Declaration of Independence from a government dominated by a self-proclaimed aristocratic elite and their chosen special interests, such as the health insurance companies who in 2009 backed ObamaCare, is long overdue in the struggle for the interests of the individual and his much maligned sovereign rights.

Give Up Your Life Day

Well, it is once again Tax Day and once again the federal government and most state governments have confiscated many of the productive hours of each of our individual lives.  The more hours you chose to work and the more your productivity was recognized by others in trade, the more progressively the hours of your life were stolen from you.  The politicians and bureaucrats used this ill-gotten plunder to buy votes, to live the good life themselves, and to relish their success as our overlords.

Not content with just claiming many of the productive hours of our lives, this is the first year in which the claim that the government owns our minds and bodies generally has appeared on the tax forms.  See Line 61 below:

By virtue of government ownership of every American's body and mind, it claims the right to dictate how every individual will maintain their property in trust for the government, unless that individual pays tribute to the Mongol Horde in order to maintain a pretense of self-ownership.  Of course, self-ownership should mean the payment of tribute was not necessary.  So, there really is no way to maintain the exercise of one's sovereign right to self-ownership within the borders of the United States.  All payment of the tribute or the purchase of ObamaCare approved health insurance does is to cede one's right to self-ownership.  The government claims you must cede self-ownership one way of the other.

Did you know that 8 out of 10 tax filers in 2013 received a tax refund?  Did you know that in 2012 the typical tax filer received a tax refund of about $3,000?  Clearly this happens because the government provides tax tables to employers that demand over-withholding from income and few people adjust their allowances to eliminate this severe over-withholding.  It is clear that this does two things the wily government plunderers love:

• The government gets a large interest-free loan from most taxpayers.
• Most taxpayers are distracted by their refunds from the larger sum of money plucked from their hides.

Interestingly, if the taxpayer in any year should happen to owe the government $1000 or more and that sum is more than 10% of the total tax owed, the government demands an interest payment of 1.995%!  This is not a two-way, mutually respectful relationship.  It is clear that the government is the master and the taxpayer is the servant!

You might think you might just ignore the tyrannical Line 61 claim of government ownership of your body and mind, but the government will take the tribute out of your tax refund, if you have one.  I have heard it said that if you arrange to have no tax refund, unlike 80% or more of the filers, then the government cannot force you to pay the tribute, which they call a shared responsibility payment in the IRS 1040 Instruction publication.  But, the 1040 Form lumps it under the heading of Other Taxes, consistent with Chief Justice John Roberts absurd rationale for declaring ObamaCare a tax, even after it had been insisted over and over during the passage of ObamaCare that it was not at all a tax on the Middle Class.  ObamaCare was passed on the basis of innumerable lies.  This phrase "Shared Responsibility Payment" is most explicitly collectivist and makes it very clear that at most each individual owns only some portion of his own life and mind and body.  That portion is always subject to being reduced so long as the law that reduces the number of shares the individual holds in his own life is accompanied by a tax.  This is the Chief Justice John Roberts ruling.  The presence of a tax in a law allows the law to deprive the individual of any individual right, except insofar as that right is most explicitly spelled out in the Amendments to the Constitution and the courts choose to recognize that right in a reasonably broad manner.

Let us suppose you decide to ignore the abhorrent Line 61 and you have no tax refund coming or it is very small. You might think you are home free. Not necessarily. The IRS has a Catch-22 for almost anything. They may not be able to answer your phoned in question or if they do answer it, you may be more likely to be given the wrong answer than the right one and you will be 100% responsible for "your" error.  There is no sharing of responsibility in this.  But, there are a people in the IRS who are quite cunning and out to get you. So, how do they get you in this case? Did you know that the IRS may impose a penalty of $5,000 on top of any other penalties for what they deem a frivolous return? See page 92 of the Form 1040 Instructions:

"A frivolous return is one that does not contain information needed to figure the correct tax  or shows a substantially incorrect tax because you take a frivolous position or desire to delay or interfere with the tax laws.  This includes altering or striking out the preprinted language above the space where you sign." 

The IRS will brook no challenge to its role as Master.  It will not allow you the "right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" on your tax form filings.  The First Amendment is of no concern to the IRS, though we might think the IRS was a part of the Government.  But then we have all too clearly seen how this IRS does not believe in freedom of speech at all, with its vendetta against Tea Party and Constitution Education organizations.  The IRS makes it very clear that it is an enemy of the Constitution!  It is also very clear that the IRS and the Obama Regime are explicitly enemies of all of our individual rights, including the most fundamental right of all, self-ownership!

CBO Cost Estimate for ObamaCare Implies Cost of $12,780 per Year per Person Insured

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is now estimating the 10-year cost of ObamaCare at $1.993 trillion.  This is $1.093 trillion more than Obama told us it would cost over ten years.  The CBO estimates that ObamaCare will provide health insurance coverage for about 25.5 million by 2025.  It is providing insurance now for about 7.5 million people.  If the growth in the number covered is linear over the next ten years then the average number covered per year is 16.5 million people.  Some of those people will be covered for 10 years, and some for 1 year.  So for $1.993 trillion, ObamaCare provides 156 million person years of coverage.  This comes to a cost per year of coverage of $12,780 per person, all at taxpayers expense.

Given that many of the people covered will be making large contributions to paying for their insurance themselves and given that $12,776 for a private insurance plan for one person should be a Cadillac health insurance plan, which ObamaCare plans are not, one has to wonder at the ability of government to waste our money in such titanic proportions.

And remember that some of the people forced onto ObamaCare plans could perfectly well afford to be self-insured, while others were perfectly happy with plans they completely paid for themselves until ObamaCare forced insurers to cancel the plans they could not keep.

Yes, ObamaCare is a massive train-wreck.  Most of us want to get off that train, but our brutal government is forcing us to stay on it.

Congress Calls Itself Small Employer Under ObamaCare Law

The individual state and DC health insurance exchanges under the ObamaCare law allow small businesses with fewer than 50 "full-time" employees to purchase insurance for their employees on the exchanges.  The U.S. Congress purchases its health insurance under the DC health insurance exchange, which under the District of Columbia law setting it up has the ObamaCare law required limit on institutional entities that may use it of fewer than 50 full-time employees.  Under ObamaCare law, a full time employee is anyone working 30 or more hours a week.

According to the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority, at least 12,359 employees or dependents of employees of Congress are receiving their health insurance plans from the DC Exchange.  Because they are receiving their benefits from the DC exchange, many are receiving the federal subsidies offered on state exchanges.  The House of Representatives attested under penalty of law that it had 45 employees.  The Senate made the same statement that it had 45 employees.  This was revealed by Judicial Watch when it obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act.  The DC government has acknowledged that their purchases of insurance on the exchange are a breech of DC law, but has yet to do anything about it.

When the House of Representatives attested that it had 45 employees, it was under Republican control.  When the Senate made the same statement, it was under Democrat control.  Both parties engaged in patently illegal activity for the monetary gain of the 437 members of the House, the 100 Senators, and their thousands of staff employees.

These are the same reprobates who controlled the acquisition of $3.0 trillion of federal revenue in 2014, spending of $3.5 trillion, and the imposition of another $1.5 trillion in regulatory costs on the private sector in 2014.  It is insane to allow such lawbreakers and avaricious, unprincipled thieves have control of so much of the wealth produced by the hardworking taxpayers of the private sector.

They get away with this using the specious argument that they are correcting injustices of the private sector.  In fact, such injustices as there are in the private sector are mostly avoidable simply because individuals are free there to associate or not with others based on their own judgment of the fairness of their interactions.  None of us are allowed to disassociate ourselves from the government and its employees who very determinedly mistreat those of us in the private sector.  We are forced, yes forced, to submit to their myriad, complex, ubiquitous predations.  Congress and government bureaucrats spend every working hour studying and implementing ways to use their nearly unbridled power over us to their advantage and our subjugation.

The only answer to this predation is for the People to insist on the most principled and strict application of the Constitution to severely limit the actions of Congress and the federal government generally.  The size and scope of this out-of-control Big Government monster must be slashed until it performs only its legitimate role of protecting the equal, sovereign rights of the individual.

ObamaCare's False Boast: It has significantly lowered the number of uninsured

It has become common to see supporters of ObamaCare, artfully and deceitfully called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, claim that it has decreased the numbers of the uninsured from the 17.4% of Americans in 2010 when it was signed into law to the present 13.4%.

Of course the main factor affecting the percentage with health insurance is affordability.  It happens that in 2012 real dollars, 2010 was the minimum in household income for the upper limit of the lowest, the next lowest, and the middle quintiles of household income due to the Great Socialist Recession.  Even the fourth and next to the highest quintile upper limit was almost as low in that year in its worst year of 2009.  So of course one of the ways households hard-pressed due to the loss of income due to the Great Socialist Recession got by was by dropping their health insurance, especially assuming everyone in the household was in good health.

It makes more sense to compare the percentage of uninsured under ObamaCare now to the number before the Great Socialist Recession had its great depressing effect on household income.  In 2008, only 14.4% of Americans were uninsured for medical care.  That year was the maximum income year for all four lowest quintiles before the Great Socialist Recession depressed earnings, with the exception of the second quintile whose upper limit income maximized in 2007, but at a figure only $100 greater than that of 2008.  So, the great success of ObamaCare is really a 1.0% drop in the percentage of uninsured, not the 3.0% claimed by some of its advocates.

The proponents of ObamaCare want us to assume that all of that 1% is due to poor Americans obtaining insurance coverage either through Medicaid or as a result of federal government subsidy for their medical insurance coverage.  The fact that studies have shown no health advantage in being covered by Medicaid is unacknowledged by ObamaCare supporters.  The fact that more than half of the government subsidies are based on an IRS ruling that clearly violates the ObamaCare law and has been judged such by the DC Federal Court of Appeals is also ignored.

Another factor is ignored as well.  Many American households are wealthy enough to have been self-insured.  Few people understand how many are so wealthy and few people recognize that their decision to be self-insured was often a rational one, especially if members of the household were of generally good health.  Since good health is a useful attribute in achieving high incomes and in accumulating wealth, it is likely that the wealthier Americans are also commonly the healthier Americans.  Yet, the tax penalties of ObamaCare will have forced many such wealthy households to stop being self-insured, which is registered as uninsured.  Many such households had to purchase ObamaCare mandated medical insurance.  The movement of these wealthy households to being insured, is a part of the mere 1% decrease in the number of Americans uninsured.

So, how many American households might reasonably have been uninsured before the onset of ObamaCare?  In 2012, the top 5% of household income earnings exceeded $191,156 a year.  With such an income, one can easily afford the doctor's bills a relatively healthy family might incur.  But there is more.  In 2012, the total net household wealth was $80.66 trillion.  This is an average of about $659,000 per household.  Of course the median household wealth was much lower at about $120,000, actually a 2011 figure.

I do not have the wealth distribution figures for 2012, but those for 2007 are available.  Assuming about the same percentages of wealth in the wealthiest 1% and then the next wealthiest 4%, the average wealth for these groups of households in 2012 is:

Wealthiest 1%, $22,790,000 per household.

Next Wealthiest 4%, $4,495,000 per household.

So, any of these wealthiest 5% of households might well have chosen to be uninsured prior to ObamaCare.  Now, they are most likely better off being insured.  So it is clear that there is great potential for all of the 1% decrease in the uninsured since 2008 being people from the wealthiest and highest income households.

This may not be case, but until there is a complete and validated breakdown of the health care insured by income and wealth, we should not assume that the 1% decrease in the uninsured is the result of poor and maybe middle income people rushing into ObamaCare.  In addition, with the assurance of health insurance under ObamaCare for those with severe health problems, some wealthy and high income people are undoubtedly also saving money by putting unhealthy family members under ObamaCare's lower age-pooled rates.

Given the very small decrease of 1% in the uninsured since 2008 and the claims that large numbers of people have been signed up on Medicaid, it is clear that many of the people who had insurance in 2008 do not have it now.  This suggests strongly that a larger fraction of the middle income groups do not have health insurance now than did in 2008.  This is an expected effect of the large increase in the cost of insurance premiums brought on by ObamaCare for those who qualify for little or no subsidy.  It is also an expected result given the decrease in full-time employment since then due to this never-ending Great Socialist Recession.

ObamaCare - The Law of the Land Made Lawless

The Democrats of the Democrat Socialist Party have repeatedly claimed that the PPACA or ObamaCare is the Law of the Land and must be respected.  Yet, Obama has made many exemptions from the law's requirements for unions and favored businesses and has made 18 major changes in the law, mostly by delaying its provisions, without the congressional action required by the Constitution, which is the Law of the Land. 

Of course, I think that ObamaCare is clearly unconstitutional, since the government was given no power to own our bodies and minds and hence has no power to determine the means of maintaining our bodies and minds.  Any attempt by government to take over this critical life function of the individual is a fundamental violation of individual rights.

But if we ignore that paramount fact, then the many unlawful changes in ObamaCare made by Obama have clearly deprived it of any pretense of being The Law of the Land, unless Congress and the Courts become adamant in defending the law as voted on by Congress and originally signed into law by Obama.  The law is already highly blemished, indeed highly rotten, by virtue of the many provisions already violated by Obama.  Those violations of the law by Obama have not yet been opposed by Congress, making Congress complicit in this lawlessness.

The fact that this law is maintained in an ever changing form against the wishes of most of the People is a red flag slapping us in the face and shouting that this is not a democracy, however often the Democrats proclaim it to be so.  This is a clear indicator that special interests and not the People control the government.

The fact that the Democrat Socialist Party is now in such terror of the next election is a very clear result of the extremely harmful effects of ObamaCare.  The very high premium costs in most states, the high deductibles and co-pays, the poor doctor and hospital choices, the many drugs and medical services no longer covered, the severe disruptions brought to the entire medical care, medical insurance, and medical insurance policy holders, and the financial risks of entering the system negligently deprived of security guards for one's personal information, all scream that the law is highly inimical to our welfare.  The law has failed to induce the uninsured to sign-up for ObamaCare as well.  So, it is both unaffordable and unwanted.  So far, only about 10% of the uninsured have become insured and fewer of the previously insured who lost their insurance because of ObamaCare have signed on to ObamaCare.  While some uninsured with serious medical conditions have now signed on to ObamaCare, others with serious medical conditions who previously had coverage and then lost it thanks to ObamaCare are now either without insurance or have a less desirable insurance coverage.

The results of ObamaCare are so bad that it is pretty much impossible to buy into the idea that the Democrat Socialist Party ever thought that this law was consistent with the Welfare of the People.  Or if they did think so, then the Progressive Elitist claim to rule due to superior intelligence, education, and moral fiber is ridiculous.

ObamaCare Premium Changes Vary Hugely by State - How Does this Affect Control of Senate?

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has an interactive map of the US with the percentage change in health insurance premiums by gender and for ages 27, 40, and 64 years of age.  It is remarkable how much variance there is in health insurance costs by state, by gender, and by age.  The differences with respect to gender and age are clearly on very different bases from state to state.  In a few states, the rates actually fall.  In most states they increase substantially.  Sometimes they rise greatly for one demographic, while falling for another in the same state.  In some states the large increases are only for young men, in others for both young men and women, while in still others they rise most for young men and for older women.  The campaigns for the Senate need to be aware of where their candidate has advantages or disadvantages with various demographics due to the health insurance premium changes.

I have prepared a table with the Senate races of 2014 and the ObamaCare health insurance premium changes below.  Those increases which exceed 10.0% should allow Republicans to pick up votes, provided their campaigns make sure that the demographic suffering those large increases know what is hitting them.  Males 27 years old in Arkansas, where Democrat Mark Pryor is vulnerable, are facing premium increases of 250.1%, while women of that age will see increases of 110.0%.  Men aged 40 will pay 186.5% more, while women aged 64 will pay 105.4% more.  With increases as large as these, it is very hard to imagine that an informed electorate will view the Democrat Pryor as less than a monster.  But this message has to be driven home by Tom Cotton.  There are very big increases in many states, which the Republican candidate should take great care to inform the voters about.

All increases greater than 10% are in red in the table since they favor the Republicans.  Those of 5% or less are in blue since they favor the Democrats.  The party favored is not a prediction of the election outcome.  It is only to indicate which party has the advantage based on the ObamaCare premium changes.

Of course other factors are also significant, but the Republicans in many cases should and must make a big deal out of the increases in many of the contested states if they are to take over control of the Senate.  The now Democrat Senate seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and South Dakota all have very large ObamaCare premium increases which a decent Republican candidate should be able to use to win those 7 Senate seats.  In Kentucky the increases are also large, which should protect the Republican Senate seat there.  Very large increases in Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon should make it possible for a wily Republican candidate to become competitive even in those states where the Senate seat is now a Democrat seat.  Even in those states with no overall advantage to one party, a successful effort to inform a demographic hurt by premium cost increases will be a useful tool for a Republican candidate.

CBO Says 2.5 Million Jobs May Be Lost Due to ObamaCare

The Congressional Budget Office announced on 4 February that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time jobs may be lost because of the so-called Affordable Care Act.  That act offers neither affordable medical care nor incomes upon which Americans can afford to live.  It is a cruel lie to call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  It is also an insult to the intelligence of Americans.  It is a hidden tax on work, which violates Obama's claim that he would not increase taxes on the Middle Class.  It is, however, a massive redistribution scheme, which Obama told Joe the Plumber he was intent on implementing.

Many Democrat Socialists responded with claims they are celebrating the fact that many people will have much more free time.  Of course, they are really celebrating because many more people will become dependent upon Big Government.

The hardship of the People is good for Democrat Socialists, so they work hard to see more and more hardship is distributed upon the American People.  The pretense of redistributing the income earned and developed by others is a cover for this actual increase in and redistribution of hardship.  This is why the War on Poverty has not reduced poverty in decades.  It is why all the talk about improving the education of children never results in children acquiring more learning skills, problem-solving skills, a desire to learn, or acquiring factual knowledge.  This is why the economic condition of Black Americans still leaves much to be desired.  The Democrat Socialists do not want to solve the problems they claim it is their purpose to solve using Big Government as the tool.  No, their power is dependent upon these problems remaining unsolved and remaining sore points that divide Americans.  For every pretense of help, there is a greater, less publicized, harm.

Increasing Mobility of Low Income People to Higher Incomes

I am going to comment on an article by W. Bradford Wilcox posted at the American Enterprise Institute on income mobility in the United States.  He has presented some data of Harvard economist Raj Chetty, a principal investigator at the Equality of Opportunity Project, based on local variations of local income growth, the share of single mother households locally, and local government spending.  The mobility is question here was actually one with a very high bar.  A child born into a lowest quintile household has to be a highest quintile earner by age 30.  Most highest quintile earners are well into their careers and tend to be much older 30.

Wilcox has fit these data sets with linear functions.  The data are interesting, though the linear fits are problematic for two of his three plots of the data.  In light of the recent renewal of Obama's redistributionist efforts, only partially and even falsely carried out by ObamaVaporCare, this is a good time to talk about what really affects income mobility.

The first plot, which is reasonably fit with a linear function, is:

This is not surprising.  Where income growth is strong in America, labor is more valued and those who want to work hard have many opportunities to make money.  Of course Obama's anti-business policies, high energy costs, excessive regulations, and the costs of ObamaVaporCare decrease income growth and are therefore likely to decrease income mobility on the national scale.  Nonetheless, local government efforts to suppress the free market will still leave a strong imprint on local mobility variations.  There is no question that it is much easier to start a business in some areas than in others, as an example with important affects on mobility.

Another critical effect on income mobility is:

Clearly an increasing share of households run by a single mother has a very negative effect on income mobility for their children.  The linear fit here is nonsense.  The proper fit is with a hyperbolic curve, which indicates a much stronger impact of single mother households on income mobility than a linear effect.  It has long been understood that there was a strong effect, but this data makes it very clear how strong and dominant that effect is.  It is well-understood that entitlement programs tend to increase the number of single mother households, so most of Obama's likely efforts to decrease income inequality will likely make it worse.  One of the many impacts of his policies already has been to increase energy costs, which really hurts those with little income badly.  How local government welfare programs are run will have a big impact on the number of single mother households.  Generally, the more money spent on such programs, the more single mother households.

The third plot is:

The thought here was that local government spending supports education, so with better local education systems, income mobility would be increased.  There probably is some such effect in some school districts, but we also know that generally increased spending on schools does not really correlate well with greater learning.  In some school districts, the people do have a high regard for education, but in many other districts it is just another labor union entitlement program to gain the teachers union votes.  Many inner city school systems are well-funded, but horribly managed.  So it is not surprising that the data does not follow any definable dependence in this case.  The data more nearly resembles a hand print with the palm pressed firmly and the fingers splayed out and pressing lightly.  Indeed, the thumb is nearly straight up, indicating that one can get virtually any result from spending $2,000 per capita on income mobility.  Clearly, neither local government spending nor local education spending is the primary effect on income mobility.  This is not to say that real learning is not important.  That I am sure is a critical effect.  But, sad to say, real learning is not something Obama is interested in.

Income mobility depends upon the opportunity to earn a living, which is heavily dependent upon government policies not shutting down or over-regulating opportunities.  Because freedom of contract is heavily suppressed in the USA, many opportunities to earn are decreased.  One such egregious way to decrease opportunity to earn and to develop a career is to increase the minimum wage.  Doing so hurts the under-educated the most by keeping them from getting their first jobs.  This keeps them from acquiring skills and from establishing a record as a worthy employee.  It forces many to turn to crime.  The high costs of providing health insurance under ObamaCare and the minimum wage increases that took effect just before and during the start of the Great Socialist Recession have already had a disproportionate impact on ensuring the unemployment and part-time employment of those in the lowest quintile income households.  Obama has been no friend to the small businesses that often hire young people and give them their first opportunity to prove themselves.

It is another Obama farce to claim that he is going to do something to increase income mobility and to reduce income inequality.  As always, he will cause effects opposed to those he claims he will achieve.  Of course his main purpose in this income inequality rhetoric is to distract the American People from the disasters he has already caused in the economy and with our medical care.

Medicaid and ObamaCare are Racist

The Progressive Elitists have told us over and over that those of us who believe one should have to have photo identification to vote are racist.  Of course there are many actions for which a photo ID is required, such as setting up a bank account.  That is not just a bank policy, but it is actually required by law.  One is sometimes also required to show a photo ID to enter a courthouse or many a federal facility.  All apparently racist policies.

Why is it racist to require a photo ID?  Well because the poor are more likely to be of certain racial or ethnic groups and the poor are less likely to own a car or have other easy transportation.  They are also less likely to have a stable address.  Yet, ObamaCare either requires you have a computer, or go to a few sparse and undependable centers for registering, or to undergo an exchange of mailings which tends to depend upon a stable address.  It clearly discriminates against the poor by the criteria of the left.

Now many of the poor will qualify for Medicaid in those 26 states that chose to expand Medicaid under the PPACA or ObamaCare law.  How do they apply for that Medicaid once they find out they qualify for it?

• Go to your Social Security, health department, or social services office.
• Produce a birth certificate or a passport
• Produce your Social Security card
• Produce a utility bill with your address on it
• Provide a recent paycheck or a tax return
• Provide a photo ID

Now, having enrolled in Medicaid, call and travel all over tarnation trying to find a doctor who will actually treat any medical condition for the severe underpayment amount provided them by Medicaid.  Clearly, the Medicaid program does not consider those on it to be worthy of an adequate payment for their medical care and has no concern for their travel time or problems, long waits for care, or even if they can actually find care at all.

As is usual for Progressive Elitist programs for the poor, it is all a pretense and there is no actual concern for the poor.  Yet, the existence of the programs is supposed to fool everyone into believing that they care, while those of us who point out the absurdity of the programs are claimed to be uncaring and racists by criteria the Progressive Elitist laws themselves require.

• Birth certificate or passport
• A power or light bill showing your address
• Something that shows your Social Security number
• A recent paycheck or tax return

Let's see; did I forget anything? Oh, that's right… A PHOTO ID!

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/12/obama-racist-promoting-obamacare/#ep0PgVDhw432vRDE.99

24 States Expand Medicaid Under ObamaCare

The CBO predicts that 9 million more people will go on Medicaid in the next year.  Most of this increase will be in the 26 states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare.  These states are shown in gold in the map below:

The states not expanding Medicaid coverage under ObamaCare have the number of additional people they would cover with coverage to 133% of the poverty level shown on them.  This represents a huge future savings for these states after 2022 for their state budgets when the federal government stops paying 90% of the bill for the added state dependents.  Those living in the states in gold had best have piles of gold to pay the tax bills after 2022 for all of the people on Medicaid.

The CBO is predicting that ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid will add 9 million people on Medicaid by the end of 2014 and 13 million by the end of 2020.  These additions and the future large increases in state budget costs will occur in the states in the above map in gold.  Of course, Progressive Elitists will complain that the added 5 million people who might have been added in the blue-gray states have been sadly neglected in this redistribution of wealth.  In fact, they like to complain that even more of those in poverty live in many of these blue-gray states.  See the map below from one of their websites:

So the states not expanding Medicaid have an average 9.1% of their populations qualifying as below 133% of the poverty level, while the national average is 8.0% of the population.  But one thing that is overlooked is that there is one single poverty level for the 48 contiguous states and higher levels for Alaska and Hawaii.  So, this map of those below 133% of the poverty level has to be compared to one for the cost of living.  Clearly, some people at 133% of the poverty level are much better off in low cost of living areas than are others at that level in high cost of living areas.  The cost of living map:

Now we see that the states that refused to raise their Medicaid dependency levels to 133% of the poverty level are mostly states with most of their population below or at the national average in the cost of living.  Most of the states that raised the Medicaid eligibility level to 133% have most of their populations living in high or average cost of living areas.  Of the 24 states not raising the Medicaid eligibility level to 133%, Wyoming, Montana, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only ones mostly at the average or higher in cost of living.

There is a reason that Republican-dominated states tend to have lower than average costs of living.  The governments in those states mostly extract less from the private sector to use in unproductive ways in the government-sector.  Their present choice not to increase the eligibility for Medicaid in their states is a move to continue having a lower cost of living.  That means that people in those states above 133% of the poverty level will continue to be better off than will people in the expensive government states that mostly raised their Medicaid eligibility levels under ObamaCare.

After 2022, when those mostly above average cost of living states have to pick up the cost of the 13 million people added to Medicaid, their cost of living will shoot up even higher.  Their taxes will increase further and some of them will go bankrupt.  More and more people will migrate out of those states and move to the states that did not raise their Medicaid eligibility levels.  There will be a further easily seen lesson on the perils of redistribution and socialism.  Socialist transformation and change will have seriously damaged the middle class who will have to pay the bills in the mostly Democrat states that made this bad choice to expand Medicaid.

Government Continues to Lower Expectations for Pre-paid Health Care Exchanges

The federal government pre-paid medical care exchanges are supposed to be working better today.  They are supposed to handle up to 50,000 people on-line at one time now.  Since the federal exchanges are claiming you can sign-up for plans beginning on 1 January 2014 until 23 December, this means that counting today, there are 23 days to sign-up.  So far in two months, it is thought that about 150,000 have chosen plans.  At 50,000 sign-ups per day henceforth a grand upper limit total of another 1,150,000 sign-ups may occur before time has run out.  Some people will not sign-up for anything until they have been on-line over the course of several days examining the offerings and then looking into the provider networks elsewhere.  The enthusiastically socialist state of Maryland, which operates its own exchange, has a much earlier sign-up deadline of 10 December and a very confusing website.

It is not at all clear that even if one signs up by 23 December on the federally operated exchanges, that one will have an actual plan by 1 January 2014.  This is because you do not have a plan until you have paid the company offering the mandated ObamaCare pre-paid medical care plans.  The federal exchanges do not yet have a means to enable such payments.  Given their track record to-date and the methods they are using to manage the exchanges still, it seems unlikely they will have a working mechanism for making payments to the plan providers before Christmas.  So, it seems very certain that fewer than 1,300,000 plans will actually exist on 1 January 2015.

Recall that ObamaCare was passed so that 47 million Americans without health insurance would have pre-paid medical care once it was implemented.  Nothing was said about many millions of people who had insurance losing that insurance.  As it happens, to-date more than 5.55 million insurance plans have been cancelled and the federal government wants to declare success for ObamaCare if 1.3 million new plans are issued under it.  But, this is a net loss of 4.25 million insurance plans, while the supposed 47 million Americans uninsured before will all remain uninsured.  Yes, of course some of them will get ObamaCare insurance and more than 4.25 million of the newly cancelled plans will have no replacement.  The few state-run exchanges which work better than the federal government exchanges will manage to sign-up a few more of the 4.25 million lost plans, but will not sign up most of them either.

Meanwhile, throughout 2015, tens of millions more health insurance plans offered by small businesses and big businesses will be cancelled or replaced by more expensive plans with much increased employee contributions.

On 1 January 2014, many more Americans will have no health insurance and no pre-paid ObamaCare medical care than the original 47 million claimed uninsured who were the very justification for the wrenching changes to our medical care system including the loss of our doctors and hospitals, especially the better ones, the cost of much increased premiums for most of us, the increase in deductibles for most of us, the need to travel much greater distances to the health care providers for many of us, long waits to see doctors or nurse and pharmacist substitutes, a decrease in medical innovation, a decrease in covered medical procedures, more trips to medical facilities to get through a given medical procedure, decreased medical and financial privacy and security, and the many aggravations of having to choose and learn new health networks and how to do their increased paperwork.

ObamaVaporCare Website is Not All That is Vapor

So we have learned that the ability to cruise the ObamaCare federal website anonymously was yanked with false claims that it caused problems for the website in testimony to Congress.  Of course it was yanked so that people could not so easily discover that most people were going to face higher premiums and higher deductibles.  I noted with some anger that the need to give all of your personal information including Social Security number up front was to prevent you from assessing how ObamaCare was financially going to affect your family members and your neighbors and fellow countrymen.

In reality, the user has to spend much more time entering such information and then the website goes to numerous federal databases at numerous federal agencies to verify the input information.  This process puts great strains on the website and it is clearly unable to handle those strains.  In addition, when one gets all of one's information in and picks a plan, one may really only be picking it for further evaluation of the doctor and hospital network it has.  In other words, it need not be a final pick, but ObamaCare does not care.  It thinks you are committed.  Of course, the coercive planners behind ObamaCare are the ones who should be committed, though I understand we have a shortage of the needed mental health institutions since Democrats believe the mentally ill should be out on the streets voting and running ObamaCare.

Late last week, the breakdown on so-called sign-ups on the California state exchange, which works better than the federal exchange does, were announced.  Only about 16% of the 30,830 "enrollees" in October were eligible for subsidies or cost-sharing.  56% of them were of the ages from 45 to 64, though only 25% of the California population is in that age range.  So older and sicker people are 2.24 times more likely than their population to sign up for ObamaCare.  Those desirable low cost healthy people 34 or younger only signed up at a 28% rate, though they are 49% of the California population.  So, just as expected by the many rational critics, ObamaCare assumptions that many young and healthy Americans are going to happily subsidize the health care of older and less healthy Americans is already proving wrong.

Some have tried to explain this as being simply because the federally run website does not work.  They say that when it works, then the young will sign up in droves.  But the California website works better now than the federal website is likely work by the end of the year when people must sign up to have health insurance in 2014.  Yes, we shall see soon what will happen.  But, my money is on this is continuing to be a total disaster.  Health premiums for ObamaCare health insurance will be much higher for 2015 insurance.  As though it is not too high now!

In 2014, participating insurance companies are going to take a bath in cold water and many are going to drown.  Making money was posited by them on the assumption that many more people would have insurance and many of the new insurance holders would be young and healthy.  They assumed the websites would work and send them correct personal information.  Instead they are having to put much more manpower into checking that information than they expected.  This is raising their operational costs and ObamaCare put a very low upper limit on what they can spend on administrative costs.  Those insurance companies that trusted ObamaCare to deliver are going to be big losers.

We also learned late last week that there is as yet no means in the federal website for the insurance companies to be paid for policies that people might think they had signed up for.  No policy actually exists until the insurance company is paid.  The Obama Regime claims they will have this part of the software working by the end of the year.  Of course, the rational observer must have his doubts about this claim.  What is more, even if the claim comes true, can you imagine the chaos on the site as millions of such payment transactions occur within days of the start of policies beginning on 1 January.  Can you imagine the chaos at the insurance companies if they receive a flood of such payments within a few days?

It is not just the federal website that is ObamaVaporCare.  No, it is all of ObamaCare that is VaporCare.  It is exploding and releasing nothing but noxious gasses.  Unfortunately, the medical care industry will suffer, the health insurance industry will suffer, the tens of millions of Americans who are losing their health insurance will suffer, and everyone will suffer with fewer choices and lower quality medical care.

Such is the whirlwind the American People created in selecting a heavily socialist House of Representatives and Senate and President in 2008 and their failure to oust them from the Presidency and Senate in 2012.  Irrational choices have very bad consequences.

Maryland Health Connection Website Down

Maryland enthusiastically embraced ObamaVaporCare and set up its own health insurance exchange and website.  While some of the state-sponsored ObamaVaporCare websites work better than the federally-run websites, Maryland's website is not one of them.  It is down every day from 11 PM to 5 AM for repairs and fixes.  Except, tonight it was down at 10:05 PM already.

It is a good thing that no one in Maryland has a job and children to care for, because if they did, they sure would not have a chance to go on-line after putting the children to bed and sign up for a federally mandated health insurance plan.

Obama Did Not Know NSA Spied on Leaders of Other Nations

The pattern continues: Obama was ignorant of the NSA surveillance of telecommunications of the leaders of many nations, including our allies, until recently.  See the 28 October 2013 issue of the Wall Street Journal.  According to Kathleen Sebelius, he also did not know about the massive problems in the roll-out of ObamaCare until those problems were public knowledge.

So, he was ignorant of the management of his signature achievement.  He was ignorant of a keystone of his actual constitutional job to act as Commander-in-Chief to secure our national defense and security.  He is completely detached from any effort to control federal spending and the national debt.  He has no knowledge of what happened in Benghazi and no knowledge of his Justice Department sending thousands of weapons into Mexico.  He believes a trimmed budget means he should increase government spending in such a manner as to cause as many people pain as possible by erecting barriers around open-air public facilities.

Meanwhile, the NSA reports it has so many surveillance programs that it could not brief Obama on them all.  That may be so.  It should not be so.  What is more, that does not mean that the NSA should be hiding a program to spy on Angela Merkel and other leaders from Obama.  But then again, it is likely that Obama told them to keep him ignorant so he would have plausible deniability!

What we have is a con man pretending to be President who does not meet the constitutional requirement to be President, does not like the Constitution he is sworn to protect, chooses to be ignorant about key national defense and security issues, and nationalizes huge segments of the private sector and is disconnected from the management thereafter of all the resulting impacts upon our lives, including factors essential to our literal life and death.

To realize that some people actually believe Obama cares about people is to wonder about their sanity.  There never was a President who took on so many responsibilities and then so greatly and consistently neglected them.  It takes too much effort to really care.  It is more fun to be a con man.

ObamaCare Self-Immolates, but Heavily Taxes Middle Income People

The signature achievement of Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party, the fraudulently named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is undergoing an immediate self-destruction brought on by the unbelievable hubris of party hacks in believing that they could better direct the massive medical and health insurance efforts than the private sector can.  The problems run much deeper than health insurance exchanges whose website portals do not work.  That is an unsurprising problem given the nature of those in charge of setting them up, but it is only the start of the tsunami of problems being unleashed upon the American People by these preternaturally bloated Progressive Elitist's egos.

Obama told us on Tuesday, 22 October, that thousands of people are signing up for ObamaCare and saving money.  Actually, it turns out that most of those who have signed up are really signing up for expanded Medicaid benefits.  It also turns out that many who have struggled with the website problems long enough to sign up are those with pre-existing conditions who will often save money under ObamaCare.  In addition, a few states are already so heavily regulated by the state with consequent health insurance costs being forced skyhigh, that even the ObamaCare costs are lower.  Yet, the costs for all but five states are generally up and often are up by factors of two or more.  A Heritage Foundation study by Drew Gonshorowski produced these results:

Only in Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island can you find cost savings under ObamaCare.  The rest of the nation is screwed.

For 27 year olds, their rates are going up by 100% or more in the following 10 states:

Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, and Vermont.  Nobody actually knows the rates for Virginia because it appears that the ObamaCare website is giving out a number that must be wrong.

Again for 27 year olds, insurance premium rates are going up by more than 50%, but less than 100%, in the following 15 states:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Of course, ObamaCare is design to milk the healthy young to pay for the sick and older population.  Nonetheless, for adults aged 50 the rates are also generally going up.  In the following 13 states and DC, they are going up more than 50%:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

An adult aged 50 will see rates go up by more than 25%, but less than 50%, in the following 15 states:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

So, a 27 year old will see his premium rates going up by more than 50% in 25 states.  A 50 year old will see rates going up by more than 25% in 28 states and the District of Columbia.  Somehow, I suspect the claims of the Democrat Socialist Party and Obama that ObamaCare was just going to be Hunky-Dorry are ringing, or will soon ring, very hollow.  No, they will even be regarded as the lies that I have always said they were.

When ObamaCare was being pushed through Congress, the claim was that there were 47 million uninsured in the USA and desperately in need of affordable health insurance.  They said it was everyone's responsibility to see that the uninsured had their medical needs assured by ObamaCare.  Now mind you, they did not point out as I did (discussing this here, here, here, and here) that about 10 million Americans do not need insurance since they or a family member are so wealthy that they can readily be self-insured.  Maybe 12 million of that number were then illegal aliens.  Most of the remainder were healthy young people who even at the lower rates available before ObamaCare did not see a reason to insure themselves.  Clearly, ObamaCare does not address any of the needs of the wealthy, the illegal alien, and the healthy young person.  It is only addressing the needs of those who are already sick and do not have health insurance and it is doing so at incredible cost to everyone else.

Let us examine how ObamaCare is doing if thousands had actually signed up as Obama says in the first 22 days of the program.  Since it has been sold recently as covering 50 million people without insurance and since it is now estimated that about 16 million people who had insurance are losing it due to cancellations saying their policies do not meet ObamaCare mandates, there would be 66 million people who have to sign up for ObamaCare by 31 March 2014.  In that 182 day period, 362,637 people a day must sign up, despite Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day!  More refined recent claims were that ObamaCare hoped to sign up 30 million of the uninsured.  So, that makes the total number of sign-ups a mere 46 million by 31 March 2014, or a mere 252,747 a day.  In the 22 days to Obama's speech last week, the total number of sign-ups for insurance was not anywhere near even the one-day necessary average of 252,747.  In fact, so few have signed up to date that one can just as well say that 46 million sign-ups have to occur in the remaining 156 days from today, at an average rate of 294,872 a day.

Now stop and think about this.  Is it at all likely that 294,872 people a day will sign-up for ObamaCare before 31 March 2014 given the website problems, the high costs, and the high deductibles?  There is no way this will happen.  No Way!  In fact, it was never a likely development from the beginning.

I have been sure that ObamaCare was designed to fail so that a single-payer system would soon replace it.  But the facts discussed above now make it clear that the Democrat Socialist Party that is always pushing for new taxes was also trying to create a system almost no one would want a part of so they could charge tens of millions of people the penalty tax for not obtaining the prohibitively expensive ObamaCare with its low quality health care service.  This was always primarily a new and massive tax!  By clever, insidious design.

One can even understand that Obama paid no attention to the problems of launching ObamaCare because its immediate failure was the equivalent of a huge additional tax increase.  It was designed to fail either immediately or in a few years.  But the faster it failed, the bigger the tax increase!  Obama was either setting up a future single-payer completely nationalized medical care system or he was getting out of the corner he had painted himself into with his pledge not to increase taxes on the Middle Class.  It was a win-win situation for him.

ObamaCare was a pretense for an incredible and massive tax increase, which was mostly aimed at the middle class even as the Democrat Socialist Party was pledging no tax increase for the middle class and pretending to care about all the millions suffering without health insurance.  ObamaCare was directly a massive power grab over 16 to 18% of the economy and it was also a heavy tax increase to pay for the program.  People understood that some people would be hit by the penalty tax, but few understood that it was designed to be a massive tax increase to soak tens of millions of people with middle incomes.

Obama is counting on his abilities as a great con man to keep Americans from understanding this.  Eventually, the pain will be so great for so many Americans that I think enough will come to understand the perfidy that fell upon them.  They will finally see Obama and the Democrat Socialists as the malevolent liars that they are.  They will soon no longer control the Senate and in 2016 they will lose the Presidential election.  At last!

I am now reading that the ObamaCare mandated insurance has to be purchased by 31 March 2014, not by 15 March as I had earlier seen reported.  I have recalculated the necessary daily average rates of sign-up for everyone to meet the ObamaCare requirement for its approved insurance plans on 30 October.  Of course, the actual daily sign-ups since I originally posted this remain vastly lower than the necessary daily average.