Comments on the Myth of the World-Class Cuban Medical System

Michael Moore in Sicko, Jimmy Carter, Obama, and CNN, PBS, and ABC News reporters have all praised the Cuban medical system as one of the best in the world.  Most recently, Representative Keith Ellison, also Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, has made the same claim. An article by Humberto Fontova addresses these evaluations of the Cuban Medical System with some interesting observations.

In summary of the most interesting of these:

• According to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of doctors with Cuban medical degrees cannot pass the U.S. licensing exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates
• Most Cuba-certified cannot pass the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates exam for certification as physician assistants
• In 1958 before Cuba became a Communist regime, Cuba ranked 13th in the world in infant mortality.  Now, it is 43rd in the world, based on massive fraud in its reporting of infant mortality.  41.5% of pregnancies are ended with abortions, because any indication of a troubled birth results in an abortion, in order to keep the infant mortality rate low.  In addition, Cuban "doctors" are pressured to report the deaths of children younger than 1 year old as that of a child older than 1 year old.
• As in all Communist nations, the finer medical facilities so often pictured in propaganda reporting are not available to most people.

With all the calls for single-payer, a means of avoiding saying government-controlled, medical systems, we should remember every instance of incompetence or downright malignancy in examples of government-controlled medical systems.

Obama's Comrade Pants Act

I was recently commenting on the repeal of ObamaCare in response to an article on-line at the Foundation for Economic Education and said that ObamaCare was a sad case of one-size-fits all.  An anonymous pest named D G then called me stupid for not knowing that there are three plan levels in ObamaCare.  Of course, I did know that there are four plan levels, but one could say that I did somewhat exaggerate in the one-size-fits all.  But, really only a little bit as will be apparent in my discussion of how Obama, Reid, and Pelosi had planned to pass the Comrade Pants Act, but they lost control of the House and the Senate due to the reaction against ObamaCare before they could carry out their plans.

Recognizing that pants are very important to the welfare of Americans and that some people did not have pants of sufficient quality to meet the standards of Democrat politicians and bureaucrats, Obama and his party in Congress decided that something had to be done about this.  Of course they were quite busy with passing ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank so they were running badly behind schedule in pushing the Comrade Pants Act through Congress.  It was a race against time also, because they knew they were about to lose their legislative majorities, having sacrificed it to the principle that the government held ownership rights in everyone's mind and body, thus allowing them to dictate the means of maintaining everyone's mind and body.  Pants were important, but what could in principle be as important as that mind and body collective ownership principle?

So the Senate had had a thousand-page act thrown together by pants manufacturers, cloth makers, pants manufacturing equipment makers, haberdashers, egalitarian professional agitators, and their Senate staff members. None of the Senators had had time to read the act, but they knew there would be more time to do that after the act was passed.  Now there was a problem -- the act had tax penalties in it for anyone who wore pants that were not up to the standards set in the act.  Well, more precisely most of the standards were to be set up by federal government bureaucrats.  Those penalties would also have to be levied on anyone who did not purchase the required pants as well.  But constitutionally, all legislation levying taxes, tariffs, and other fees has to originate in the House of Representatives. So how could they satisfy this requirement without starting over, which time did not allow?  Simple.  They stripped out all but the bill number of a bill passed in the House to establish National Lollipop Day, changing the name of the bill to the Pant-wearer Protection and Affordable Pants Act, colloquially known as the Comrade Pants Act.  They poured the Senate act text into it and passed this act in the Senate after sufficient non-citizen votes were cast for Al Franken to allow the Senate to do so.  By then, the House did not have time to approve the act that resulted from reconciliation of the PPAPA and the National Lollipop Day texts.  Usually a reconciliation can be performed quickly, but the differences in the two texts were just a bit too much for the remaining time before recess.

While all of this legislative activity was carried out at a frenzied pace, Obama and Pelosi had been telling the American people over and over that if they liked their pants they could keep them.  It they liked their pants providers, they could keep them also.  They also said that because pant making equipment was to become standardized, as were the patterns and styles, the cost of pants would drop.  Everyone could efficiently examine them on on-line exchanges and purchase them there under competition among many pants suppliers, once they provided their social security numbers and credit card information to the government with its well-known regard for the security of their information.  People with qualifying incomes would receive subsidies for their critical pant purchases, while people with higher incomes would pay full price.  People who bought many pants with subsidies were thus supported by those who bought pants at full price, but of course those people who bought many pants must have needed them and it was recognized that need was an irrefutable claim on the labor and income of others.  Tax forms were to have a new line.  It was the shared pants responsibility line that one had to fill out proving that one had either purchased pants on-line from one of the pants exchanges or that pants from any other source met the specifications for what was deemed good pants by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Democratic Party did not want to be criticized for forcing everyone to wear a single pant size, so they set up four levels of pants that one could purchase.  The Act itself was vague about what distinguished these pants levels, but the bureaucrats anticipated the House passing the legislation and rapidly filled out the requirements.

Platinum Level: 44-inch waist, 40-inch in-seam, wool cloth, gray, pockets both front and back, six pair a year.

Gold Level:  40-inch waist, 36-inch in-seam, linen cloth, cream-color, pockets in back only, four pair a year.

Silver Level:  36-inch waist, 32-inch in-seam, denim cloth, blue, pockets in front only, 2 pair a year.

Bronze Level:  32-inch waist, 28-inch in-seam, polyester cloth, pink, no pockets, 1 pair a year.

As you can see, this is not a one-size-fits-all law.  There is all the accommodation for different needs that any comrade might reasonably have.  All you have to do is sign onto the federal pants exchange in your state and choose your bronze, silver, gold, or platinum pant plan.  What could possibly be wrong with this?

To this day there are many Democrats who bemoan the failure to pass the Comrade Pants Act.  That act was so going to address everyone's pants needs and in the process make us all a little more equal.  Of course, this was just a second step in this quest for equality.  There were many more goods and services to which the Democratic Socialist Party planned to apply the same legislative methods.

20 Feb 2017 Update:  It has recently been suggested that the government having established the right to force individuals to buy a product or service should now force the People to buy Ivanka's clothing line.  As we know from ObamaCare, this requirement must be implemented without regard for the individual's sex, age, or personal needs.  So guys, line up and select your Ivanka clothing of choice!  The choices will only diminish with time.

Making America Great and Donald Trump

America is great when the American People are free to exercise their broad and sovereign rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the pursuit of their own happiness.  There is no greater value than that of enjoying these liberties.  Donald Trump is a materialist who does not seem to have any concept of this.

I do not like Donald Trump.  I do not like how he has practiced business.  He has been a crowing crony capitalist who has used subsidies and eminent domain extensively in his business dealings.  Several of his businesses went bankrupt, though this happened just after he sold them to suckers.  His business ethics has been immoral.  His success has substantially come at the expense of others, not often enough in the form of mutually beneficial trades and too often at the expense of unwilling taxpayers.  The state of New Jersey, both under Corzine and Christie, has poured subsidy monies into the gambling industry in Atlantic City, to Trump's great benefit.  That industry is failing badly and at the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of New Jersey taxpayers.  I do not like the meanness in Donald Trump.  Decent people do not make fun of other people's afflictions.  Now, I am not politically correct, but if you do not like how someone else looks, keep it to yourself.  A man who would be President ought to be a gentleman and one can easily be a gentleman while telling the truth about the many issues that government must deal with and about the tasks it should leave to the private sector.

Trump has been in favor of a universal, government-provided health care system.  That idea is a huge assertion of collective ownership of every individual by the state.  He says he will repeal ObamaCare, but there is no mention of this on his website.

His website says he is interested in the following reforms and provides some information on what he plans to do:

• U.S. - China Trade Reform
• Veterans Administration Reforms
• Tax Reform
• Second Amendment Rights
• Immigration Reform

On U.S. - China trade reforms, what is written is not as bad as the overt trade protectionism Trump advocates on the campaign trail, but it also fails to note that the primary reason the opening of new trade markets around the world has not led to the growth of the American economy is because the American government does not allow American businesses to be competitive.  He notes the importance of corporate tax reductions, but only after implying that bad trade negotiations caused job loses in America.  The job losses in America are due to excessive taxes, paperwork, and regulations that American businesses are hobbled with, thanks to Washington.  Business expenses are very high in America compared to many other countries in the world.  To compete, we need to be free to take full advantage of our design and innovation capabilities, while shedding governmental burdens that provide no or insufficient benefits.  We should be taking advantage of our abundance of inexpensive and reliable energy, not trying to make it more expensive as Obama has done.  We should be taking advantage of our great banking and financial companies, not smothering most of them in disabling requirements under Dodd-Frank so-called reform.  We should not be raising the cost of business with governmental dictates of minimum wages, paid leave benefits, the highest corporate and personal taxes in most of the developed nations, ObamaCare, NLRB rulings favoring forced unionization, and EPA regulations based on exaggerated claims of mercury or catastrophic man-made global warming. 

The Veterans Administration certainly needs reform.  Trump would make a key correction by allowing veterans more treatment in non-Veterans Administration hospitals and doctor offices.  He does not actually note that the many ills of the VA are endemic in government operations and would be propagated to other government attempts to control medical care.

Tax Reform is horribly overdue and the Trump plan is a pretty good one, with the exception that he would exempt single people from paying any income tax if they make less than $25,000 a year and married couples if they make $50,000 or less.  This gives them no skin in the cost of government and I do not think this is a good idea.  They should pay something.  It seemed he was going to outlaw corporation inversions overseas, but upon further reading he is really saying he will make them unnecessary.  He will continue to tax corporation earnings abroad, which I think is bad, but he will give them the credit to paying taxes abroad, so the U.S. tax of 15% will actually only be paid as the difference of the foreign tax and the US 15% should the foreign tax be less than 15%.  That is not bad at all.  His tax reform would allow a great leap of growth in the American economy.

On the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.

It’s been said that the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. That’s because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms protects all our other rights. We are the only country in the world that has a Second Amendment. Protecting that freedom is imperative.

That is excellent and is the only place I know of in which Trump has spoken of individual rights and the need to maintain constitutional law.

On Immigration Reform, he is apparently not going to send the Army into Mexico to make them pay for the wall at the southern border.

Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].  We will not be taken advantage of anymore.  

But he is going to try to control immigrants seeking jobs that he claims Americans need.  Companies will have less say in who they hire under his plan. Fewer highly skilled foreign workers will be allowed to immigrate.  This is a short-sighted example of populism.

There are too many other issues he has not given a plan to treat.  I do not have great certitude in his keeping his word either, especially given his history of many changes of mind.  He comes out of a primarily Democrat Socialist New York/New Jersey background and he played those Democrat politicians to the hilt.  Perhaps he was just using them.  He does pride himself as a manipulator.  Is he also manipulating those who vote for him?  Will he turn on those who vote for him now as he has turned on the Democrat Socialists he supported a short while ago, perhaps because they were then useful to his businesses?  Perhaps his voters now are only a useful means for him acquiring great power?  Donald Trump is a vapor.  He has no consistency.  He has no substance that one can perceive in his speeches.  Will his website policy statements also become vapor when he has the power he wants?

But these few plans that are given some substance are better than I had expected.  This is good, because it is looking more and more as though this man may be the next President of the United States of America.  I still have concerns that his temperament is much more suited to that of a dictator than to the presidency of a constitutionally limited government in the U.S.A.  I also suspect that these policy positions are written by advisers who understand much more than Trump does and they may be shoved aside once he is in power. After all, he thinks he is better than anyone else, just as Obama does.  We can expect much more arrogance in the extensive use of power should Trump become President.  And how many months will it take for him as President to subject each and every one of us to is childish name-calling?

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.

Socialist Vermont Shoots Down Super-Expensive Single-Payer Health Care

Gov. Shumlin of the highly socialist state of Vermont shutdown the necessary request to the legislature for the taxes needed to fund the Green Mountain Care state health plan.  This Vermont single-payer health plan was going to require an 11.5% payroll tax on businesses and a 9.5% income tax in addition to the income tax the state already has on those making four times the poverty level income or more.  Vermont already has a top income tax rate of 8.95%, a 6% sales tax, and a 8.5% corporate income tax.  Shumlin reluctantly admitted that the state could not levy such heavy taxes without putting many businesses out-of-business and without many businesses leaving the state.  He said that given that Vermont was still feeling the effects of the Great Recession, this was a particularly bad time to implement a state-run single-payer health system.

Vermont had initially estimated an annual cost of $2.2 billion for the plan for its 627,000 citizens.  The state had received $45 million to study the implementation of a single-payer system from the Obama's Department of Health and Human Services, which hoped Vermont would pave the path to a national single-payer or totally socialized medical system.  William Hsiao of Harvard and Jonathan Gruber of MIT served as consultants.  A more careful look by Vermont accountants put the increased tax revenue needed at $2.6 billion.  Vermont's total tax revenues now are $2.85 billion, so total state tax revenues would have to almost be doubled.  Projected revenues had to be scaled back by $75 million a year due to the lingering effects of the recession.  The state realized it would get $150 million less in federal cost coverage than they expected to set up the system and that they would get another $150 million less in Medicaid assistance from the federal government than they had earlier thought they would.  Setting up the plan was estimated to cost an additional $500 million.

As I have pointed out many times, it is a fiction that the business paid payroll tax is not paid by employees.  All payroll costs are a cost of employment for employees.  They are all compensation for the labor of all employees.  The greater the payroll tax, whether it is Workman's Compensation, unemployment tax, Medicare, Social Security, a withholding tax, an ObamaCare tax, or a Green Mountain Care tax, the lower the compensation that can be offered an employee.  If an employee's addition to the company revenue is not enough to cover all of these tax costs, all of his take-home pay, and other operational costs incurred to provide him with a job, then the employee is not hired or is let go by any rational employer.  This Green Mountain Care plan in Vermont was going to require a 21% increased cost of employment for a company's most value employees minus whatever the employer might be currently paying into health care plans minus whatever wage decreases ensued.  Employees closer to the poverty level would cost somewhere between 11.5% to 21% more depending upon the progressive explicit tax on their income.

As Gov. Shumlin noted, it was particularly difficult to impose these costs given the failure to recover from the effects of the Great Recession.  What is more, any knowledgeable observer has learned that the cost estimates for new government programs are almost always too low.  They are usually much too low.

Of course, while acknowledging that there was no way to practically implement a single-payer health system in Vermont at this time, Shumlin, as a good Progressive Elitist, continued to maintain that it was the Ideal.  Progressive Elitists never actually consider the costs of their programs to be too high and they never ask what the costs displace in other options individuals might have for their time, effort, property, and money.  Their choices and dreams always take precedent over those of others and they are willing to use force to make sure that every individual accedes to that precedence.

All this for a health care system that is sure to deteriorate into another shabby equivalent of the Veteran's Administration System of an unavailable, highly rationed, low-quality, wait-forever, bureaucratic, vindictive, and dishonest morass that treats its patients like peons.  Of course, individuals who do not retain their individual rights are just that -- peons, serfs, begging servants and dependents of the state.

There must be a few individuals in Vermont who are much relieved by the failure of this Great Socialist Dream.  Indeed, Gov. Shumlin nearly lost his re-election bid to Republican Scott Milne, who ran against the Shumlin-backed Green Mountain Care.  Would Milne have won the election if the newer costs and tax estimates had been made available before the election?  Only 2,095 votes separated the two candidates for Governor.

A Clearly Rational Federal Court Decision Against the IRS Rule to Offer Subsidies on Federal ObamaCare Exchanges

Among the cases challenging the IRS rule that subsidies for individuals and tax penalties for non-complying individuals and companies would be administered in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, is the case brought by Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of the state of Oklahoma.  Oklahoma and 35 other states did not choose to establish PPACA or ObamaCare exchanges, as the PPACA law tried to get them to do by taxing every American, but only allowing individual subsidies in those states establishing an ObamaCare exchange.  Non-complying states were to be penalized with taxes and the loss of any partial return of that tax money in the form of subsidies.  That this was the intent was very clear to those who followed the progress of the PPACA legislation through Congress.

Of course, it was also very clear that PPACA was a revenue bill which violated the constitutional requirement that it originate in the House of Representatives.  It is further clear that the only justification for the collectivist claim that the collective gets to dictate how every American maintains his or her body's and mind's health is based on a claim of collectivist ownership of everyone's mind and body.  This is a very clear and certain violation of the American Principle of a very limited government dedicated only to the protection of the equal, sovereign right of each and every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I for one am exceedingly furious that the government considers me its slave by depriving me of self-ownership and the right to pursue my own happiness.

United States District Judge Ronald A. White of the Eastern District of Oklahoma ruled on 30 September 2014 that "the IRS Rule is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(A), in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. [paragraph] 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalid implementation of the ACA, and is hereby vacated."

Judge Ronald A. White provided a very rational decision, which is very much appreciated in light of the three judge panel in King v. Burwell who decided that they would not help the plaintiff destroy the PPACA by ruling in accordance with the language of the law.  No, instead they decided on the basis of how they claimed Congress intended the law to work while not considering the actual history even of constraints on Congress in forcing the states to comply with handing control over health care insurance to the federal government.  Neither did they consider the actual discussions and trades within Congress needed to acquire even sufficient Democrat votes to pass the bill.  Similarly, the dissenting judge on the three judge panel that vacated the ObamaCare subsidies and tax penalties in Halbig v. Burwell for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals exercised a similar flight of fancy in interpreting the PPACA.

The Honorable Ronald A. White read the bill as written and said that if Congress had intended the bill to operate otherwise, it would have written the bill differently.  What is more, if Congress decides that the application of the law as written is not what it wants, then Congress can readily pass legislation to change the law.  This is exactly the way a rational person would expect laws to be applied.  Neither the IRS nor the federal courts are the legislative body and neither has the constitutional power to enact or to change laws.  How the 3-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court that decided the King v. Burwell case could have decided that the law was ambiguous is incredible.  What is more, if it were ambiguous, then it is up to Congress, not the IRS, to eliminate any such ambiguity.  Ridiculous consequences would result from any other principle and the People would lose all power to control any government operating as the 4th Circuit Court ruled government should work.

Unfortunately, the entire District of Columbia Circuit Court decided to rule on Halbig v. Burwell and the Democrat appointed judges are now in the majority on that Circuit Court.  They will hear the case in December.  What is more, the decision by the Honorable Ronald A. White will be appealed to the entire 10th Circuit Court on which 7 of the 12 judges were appointed by Democrats.  The case of Indiana v. IRS is also yet to be decided.  Given the otherworldly ability of Democrat-appointed judges to misinterpret clear English and to ignore the history of the passage of this law, the People of the United States may not be relieved of the ObamaCare tyranny.

But, the state of Oklahoma, Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, and the Honorable Ronald A. White of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma have all proved themselves Heroes for in their efforts to preserve the rights of the individual in this desperate fight to protect self-ownership against the brutal onslaught of ObamaCare.

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 - Death Sentence for the Seriously Ill

Betsy McCaughey answers that fool Senator Harry Reid's claim that the many horror tales of lost coverage and degraded care under ObamaCare for those with serious illnesses are simply lies.  Her short article is well worth reading.  The Obama and Democrat Socialist Party claim that ObamaCare will improved medical care, especially for those with pre-existing conditions is found to be another of the many lies they have made.

The Obama despotic change in February 2013 to suspend the cap on out-of-pocket expenses, originally set at $6,350, for an individual which was to begin on 1 January 2014, was a betrayal of the promises made of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.  This is one of many changes and betrayals by Obama.  He had to be elected to find out what he meant by the Change and Transformation he intended to bring to America.

Obama and ObamaCare are just packed with Change and Transformation, which are more and more becoming transparent disasters for the American People.  More and more are finally understanding this.

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.

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.

It is the Job of the House of Representatives to Stop Excessive Spending and ObamaCare

The federal government is wholeheartedly engaged in excessive spending.  Most of its spending is for purposes that are not consistent with the powers of the federal government as enumerated in the Constitution.  It is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to stop such spending.  One of the most egregious examples of the government violating its enumerated power limits is ObamaCare.

The federal government has no enumerated power to either provide healthcare to Americans or to impose limits on the healthcare they are allowed to choose for themselves.  This is so clear that the the only way that it could survive review by the big government Supreme Court was by five Justices pretending it was justified as a tax, despite the claims at the time of passage by its supporters that it was not a tax.  As I have argued before, such passage of legislation on a fraudulent basis should be sufficient by itself to have a law nullified by the Court.

But most fundamentally, ObamaCare's primary premise is that the government owns every individual's body and mind.  If it did not, it would not be in a position to dictate how individuals care for their bodies and minds.  There are almost innumerable other grounds for rejecting ObamaCare as a tyrannical violation of individual rights as well.

The House of Representatives is required by the Constitution to originate tax or revenue bills.  The passage of ObamaCare itself made a mockery of this requirement since that bill really originated in the Senate.  This was a severe violation of the separation of powers.  The House was chosen as the critical point of revenue bill origination because the power to tax was much feared by the Framers of the Constitution and they knew it to be feared by the People.  They wanted the House which had the most rapid turn-over and could be most quickly punished for its misdeeds by the People to play the primary role in taxation.

Because the House must originate taxation bills, it should be especially concerned to limit spending.  This is the only way, aside from running up the nation's debts, that it can avoid taxing the People at levels which will harm them and slow the growth of the economy.  To avoid the onus of heavy taxation or irresponsible debt, the House must control spending.  ObamaCare is a huge spending bill and it is also a bill which is substantially reducing the strength of the economy and increasing the burden of spending on households, thereby reducing their ability to pay taxes.

Yet despite these natural functions and responsibilities of the House of Representatives, we are being told by people such as Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, and Obama supporters that should the House of Representatives defund the ObamaCare train-wreck and should the Senate and the President then refuse to approve the spending bill sent to them by the House, that it is the House that has shutdown the government.  According to them, it is the responsibility of the House to bow to the Senate and the President on spending and presumably on taxation no matter how irresponsible their spending is.  These opponents of defunding ObamaCare are actually depriving the House of Representatives of its constitutional mandate to be the close guardian of government taxation and spending in the interests of the People.

ObamaCare supporters imply that a bill passed by some previous Congress is binding on future Congresses and all of its spending is also binding on those future Congresses until such time as a future Congress may repeal the entire law.  This is nonsense.  The American Principle is that government should be minimal and devoted to the protection of individual rights.  If the house of Congress closest to the People, the House of Representatives, is taken out of the control of the Democrats and comes to be controlled by the Republicans in large part due to the People's anger over the passage of ObamaCare, it is the responsibility of that House to limit the damage of the rights-violating, spendthrift, and health care degrading bill.  This is the process intended by the Framers of the Constitution.  The natural and responsible way to do this is by reducing its funding or better yet by defunding it altogether.

The Senate and Obama are simply obstructionist when they require that every program they want be fully funded or they will shut down the entire government.  They are failing their responsibility to provide those few functions of the government which are actually constitutionally required of it.  ObamaCare is not actually even allowed by the Constitution, let alone required by it.  Yet the media will insist that the House must bow to the power of the Senate and Obama to spend as much as they wish, no matter what the cost is to the People.

It is time for the People to insist upon the responsible use of their hard-earned tax dollars and upon limits on future debt increases.  It is also time for them to insist in no uncertain terms that ObamaCare is damaging their ability to manage their own medical care and hence is a fundamental violation of the very right to live and of the right to pursue their own happiness.

Taxpayer Unapproved State and Local Government Debt: $7.3 Trillion

Steven Malanga, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says that state and local governments have $7.3 trillion of hidden debt.  These debts were not approved by taxpayers, despite the fact that most state constitutions and many city charters limit borrowing and require voter approvals.

• Illinois is rolling pension debt and state officials are being sued because they failed to disclose the debt and misrepresented it.
• Chicago city employees retiree health care annual expenses will increase by a factor of 5 in ten years.
• Each and every resident of Sacremento, CA is obligated with $4200 of debt they did not approve and the debt is 5.5 times the annual city budget.
• New Jersey legislators wanted $8.6 billion for school refurbishing projects and knew voters would not approve it.  So, they set up an independent borrowing commission for the purpose.  After spending $7 billion, the commission disbanded and left the taxpayers the debt.
• 95% of New York's $63 billion debt was never given voter authorization.

Malanga recommends that governments are forced to stop providing defined benefit pension plans.  Independent borrowing authorities must be denied and debts should only be allowed with voter approval.

The total state and local debt is mentioned twice in the article.  The first time it is mistakenly given as $7.3 billion.

Betrayal: Republican House Votes to Fund ObamaCare Again

Once again the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has betrayed our individual right to own our own bodies.  They have again sold our bodies to the government for momentary power for themselves.  On a vote of 267 - 151, a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year was passed.

Only 14 Republicans voted against this monstrously tyrannical act.  Many, many representatives who had pledged they would defund ObamaCare voted in favor of funding ObamaCare.  What is more, the 2010 Pledge to America to post bills up for a vote online for 72 hours was violated.  The efforts of 14 Republicans to defund or to at least keep funding from infringing upon religious freedoms was beaten down by the Republican Establishment.

This Establishment has been re-asserting itself so it can maintain control of the party in the face of efforts of the Tea Party and libertarians to make the Republican Party a true party of limited government and a defender of individual rights.  This heinous act of betrayal by the great mass of the Republican Party representation in Congress must not be forgotten or forgiven.  These unprincipled men must be replaced.

The only principled Republican Representatives were:

Justin Amash (Mich.)
Jim Bridenstine (Okla.)
Paul Broun, M.D. (Ga.)
Ron DeSantis (Fla.)
Scott DesJarlais, M.D. (Tenn.)
John J. Duncan Jr. (Tenn.)
Phil Gingrey, M.D. (Ga.)
Louie Gohmert (Tex.)
Jack Kingston (Ga.)
Tom McClintock (Calif.)
Thomas Massie (Ky.)
Bill Posey (Fla.)
Matt Salmon (Ariz.)
Steve Stockman (Tex.)

These men are heroes.

The rest of the Republicans are villains.  It was in their power to prevent the funding of ObamaUncaringTax during this critical period of its implementation.  Instead, they calculated that it was politically expedient to lay their hands upon our throats and strangle the last vestige of self-ownership until it is dead.

If we do not own our very bodies, are we not slaves?  Yes.

Is the power held by any slave-master ever legitimate?  No.

Lowest Cost of Living States -- OK the Best

The great state of Oklahoma is the lowest cost of living state in the union.  It barely edged out Tennessee for that prime spot.  As of the 4th quarter of 2012, the cost of living by state is indicated in this map provided by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.

The ranking is based upon data provided on cities and metropolitan areas on the cost of groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and a miscellaneous category.  Thus, it may not reflect the cost of living in the more rural areas of a given state.

It is worth noticing that the lowest cost of living states are all contiguous, with the exception of Idaho and Utah.  The contiguous block stretches from Ohio west to Nebraska, skipping Illinois, from West Virginia and west of the Applachian Mountains to Georgia, the only state on the Atlantic seacoast, and then west to Texas, skipping Louisiana.  The southern Great Plains states, the lower Midwest, the interior Southeast states, and the interior Mountain states are the best.

The most variable of the cost factors is the cost of housing.  In the 16 lowest cost of living states, housing is the cost with the lowest index rating.  In the 13 most expensive states and the District of Columbia, housing is the highest index value, with the exception of Alaska for which it is 2nd highest.  In Alaska the utilities index is the highest.  Housing costs are affected by the availability of land in relationship to the population.  They are affected by real estate taxes, policies to limit development and other land use controls, building codes, rent controls, contractor licensing requirements, labor and wage laws, and other cost of doing business factors.  In some areas they are also affected the extent of local federal, state, and local government ownership of land.

Utility costs are the second most variable cost.  These are a function of distance from such inexpensive and reliable resources as coal and natural gas or a lack of sufficient natural gas pipeline capacity.  Some states discourage coal electric plants or nuclear power plants.  They are also very much a function of state mandates for wind generation, solar power use, and biomass use for electricity.  In addition, many states like to attach special taxes to utility bills, especially those states so dominated by Progressive Elitists that they believe energy use is a sin.  Meanwhile, they require the consumer to subsidize so-called green energy ii obeisance to Gaia, so long as it is not in their backyard.  The worst states for utility costs are:

Alaska, index 168.4
Hawaii, index 167.7
New Jersey, index 133.9
Vermont, index 129.0
Rhode Island, index 127.3
New Hampshire, index 125.7
Delaware, index 122.8
Connecticut, index 121.0
Massachusetts, index 120.7

The third biggest variable cost is health care.  States dictate the kind and coverage of health insurance policies, restrict the building of new hospitals, license physicians and control the medical schools in their states, license pharmacists, optometrists, and registered nurses, and they meddle with regulations on x-ray equipment and other medical equipment by requiring often wasteful calibration, maintenance, and safety procedures on equipment they know nothing about.  States also have great impact on medical malpractice costs, Workman's Compensation insurance, and other medical liability costs in their courts.  The most expensive states for health care are:

Alaska, index 140.2
Connecticut, index 119.4
Massachusetts, index 119.0, home of RomneyCare
Hawaii, index 116.5
Rhode Island, index 116.3
Oregon, index 114.8
New Hampshire, index 114.2
Maine, index 113.4
Washington, index 112.9

The least expensive, and closely competitive, states in the overall ratings are:

Oklahoma, #1, index 90.5
Tennessee, #2, index 90.6
Kentucky, #3, index 91.0
Arkansas, #4, index 91.5
Indiana, #5, index 91.7
Kansas, #6, index 91.9
Texas, #7, index 92.0
Nebraska, #8, index 92.0
Idaho, #9, index 92.1
Missouri, #10, index 93.0
Alabama, #11, index 93.2
Utah, #12, index 93.2
Mississippi, #13, index 93.2
West Virginia, #14, index 93.3
Georgia, #15, index 93.7
Ohio, #16, index 93.9

The ignominious last fifteen states are not just last, but have been entirely lapped in the race:

Oregon, #37, index 107.0
Delaware, #38, index 108.2
Maine, #39, index 110.9
New Hampshire, #40, index 119.7
Vermont, #41, index 119.9
Massachusetts, #42, index 122.9
Maryland, #43, index 123.1
Rhode Island, #44, index 123.5
California, #45, index 125.6
New Jersey, #46, index 129.8
New York, #47, index 130.4
Connecticut, #48, index 132.7
Alaska, #49, index 134.5
District of Columbia, #50, index 144.8
Hawaii, #51, index 167.1

All of the 15 most expensive states have long been Democrat Socialist Party controlled with the exception of New Hampshire and Alaska.  Much of Alaska costs come from remoteness and the extreme weather.  New Hampshire while neither strongly Republican or Democrat does have a strong environmentalist factor contributing to high housing and utilities costs.  Government controls come with a big price tag which goes well beyond high taxes alone.  They are a major factor in the cost of living in that they raise of cost of many goods and services.

Favorite retirement states of Florida and Arizona fall in the undistinguished middle, but in the lower half of the states. Florida is #28 with an index of 99.0.  Arizona is a rather poor #35 with an index of 102.5.

The Oklahoma branch of my family is happily enjoying their lowest in the nation cost of living.  I, on the other hand, am most distressed by the cost of living in statist Maryland, ranked #43, with a skyhigh index of 123.1.  Earlier in life, I lived in 5 of the 16 best states and in 3 of the ignominious most expensive 8 states.

Government Suppression of Productivity in the Health Industry

Consider the non-farm business productivity growth history according to the BLS:

In comparison, the 1 - 7 December 2012 issue of the Economist in an article called Fighting fit - Start-ups in health care, claims that the health care industry accounted for 18% of the American GDP in 2010 and for 20 years has had a negative labor productivity of -0.6%!  Why is this one huge sector of the American economy performing so miserably?  The answer is mostly or entirely because this industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in America and because half of all medical bills are paid by government.

Let us have some fun with numbers.  The average labor productivity of the total non-farm private sector grew at an average rate of

[10(2.1%) + 7(2.5%) + 4(1.8%)]/21 = 2.2%

over the last 21 years.  In the last 20 years, 18% of this part of the economy a rate of -0.6% in labor productivity growth.  Without this single depression of our standard of living by government, the rest of the private sector labor productivity growth rate, r, over the last twenty years can be calculated from the equation:

2.2% = (0.82)r + (0.18)(-0.6%), so r = 2.8%.

The difference between an economy with a labor productivity rate growing at 2.2% compared to one growing at 2.8% is very significant over a generation.  It used to be that a generation was taken to be about 23 years, but that is no longer even close to the case.  A generation is equal to the average age of all mothers giving birth to children.  I have not found a good number for that in the U.S. as a whole.  The state of New Jersey says that the median age was 30.5 in 2004.  Median and average are not the same and NJ may not be entirely typical, but let us take the length of a generation to be 30 years for our purposes here.

During a generation of 30 years, the labor productivity at a growth rate of 2.2% a year has cummulatively become 1.92 times what it was at the start of that period.  But, with a labor productivity growth rate of 2.8% a year, the labor productivity is 2.29 times what it was at the end of the generation or more than 19% greater.  This also is a component causing health care costs to rise at much higher rates than do those of other sectors of our economy.

Yet the suppression of our standard of living of the last 20 years by the health industry due to government interference compared to what it could do if free is a small depression compared to what the game-changing ObamaCare or ObamaUncaringTax will do to the economy!  The story for the next 30 years will be quite miserable in terms of lost labor productivity and hence our standard of living.

Appendicitis in Nova Scotia and Single-Payer Medicine

A materials physicist friend of mine told me how his socialist sister lost her desire for a single-payer nationalized medical system.  She was on temporary business assignment in Nova Scotia, Canada and a neighbor began having severe pains.  She took her neighbor to the hospital and they entered the emergency room, where concern was expressed that her pain was caused by appendicitis.  The woman was screaming with pain.  She was told to wait for Triage and after a long wait, the examiner declared that yes, the pain was due to appendicitis.  My friend's sister assumed they would rush her to surgery.  But no, the doctor announced that she was not yet close enough to death to warrant surgery.

For 36 hours the woman screamed and writhed in pain.  My friend's sister stayed with her and helplessly listened to her screams for 36 hours.  Finally, the doctors decided she was close enough to death that they were willing to operate on her, and presumably to shove aside the many patients who had been waiting months for operations.  She did survive the operation, but my friend's sister's desire for a nationalized single-payer medical system did not.  She is now a furious opponent of single-payer nationalized health care systems.

Obama and many of his friends who want ObamaCare, really ObamaUncaringTax, to fail so it can be replaced with a fully nationalized single-payer system should have been with her.  Yes, I do understand that some of his friends are so callous that such an event would not have changed their minds, but no one can listen to a woman scream for 36 hours without at least being miserable.  At least, I cannot imagine that they would not be miserable.  But, that may be a failure of imagination on my part, because after all, they are Obama's friends.

The story above is anecdotal and scary.  Studies of larger populations are certainly useful in testing whether such stories are consistent with the Big Picture.  So, here is a Daily Mail report on the National Health Service in Great Britain:

Patients having major surgery in NHS hospitals face a much higher risk of dying than those in America, research has revealed.

Doctors found that people who have treatment here are four times more likely to die than US citizens undergoing similar operations.

The most seriously ill NHS patients were seven times more likely to die than their American counterparts.

Experts blame the British fatality figures on a shortage of specialists and lack of intensive care beds for post-operative recovery.

They also suggest that long waiting lists mean diseases are more advanced before they are treated.

Researchers from University College London and Columbia University, in New York, studied 1,000 surgery patients at the Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan, and compared them to nearly 1,100 people who had similar operations at the Queen Alexandra Hospital, in Portsmouth.

The results showed that just under ten per cent of British patients died in hospital afterwards compared to 2.5 per cent in America. Among the most seriously ill cases there was a seven-fold difference in the death rates.

The New York patients had paid for treatment through private medical insurance and were therefore likely to be "wealthier and healthier", whereas the NHS patients were from all social classes.

However, the study aimed to "iron out" these differences by rating each patient on their clinical status.

We Americans really must get rid of ObamaCare before it collapses and we get the almost inevitable rush by the Democrats to replace it with a fully nationalized single-payer system similar to that of Great Britain or Canada.

Dr. Bellar: A Succinct, Humorous Explanation of ObamaCare Folly

Dr. Barbara Bellar, a Candidate for Illinois State Senate, summed up in one sentence much of the sheer folly of the Obamacare operation.  Of course, we now know from the Supreme Court decision that the Unaffordable Care Act is better called the ObamaUncaringTax.  Dr. Bellar is not only succinct, but also quite the comedienne.  Please take the time to enjoy her video:

http://youtu.be/vdnY8r7_fLw

Making ObamaCare a Power-Luster's Dream

As the 137 agencies and panels are set up and start issuing their many rulings on who will receive health care and who will not and at what cost, the total package of power manipulations of our lives by bureaucrats and politicians will become more clear.  But we have already seen states and certain health care operations acquire special treatment for political reasons in the maneuvers to get the votes to pass the unread, unconstitutional legislation in a most unseemly rush to exert the power of the Democrat Socialist Party.

Since that time, we have seen the Obama Department of Health and Human Services grant 1,372 waivers of a provision of ObamaCare.  These waivers are for one year of the medical expense limit requirements, which are higher than those many company or union health plans now offer.  They can be applied for annually through 2014.  These waivers have been granted to hundreds of union locals, despite the unions being the most vociferous of ObamaCare supporters when it was being considered in Congress.  Apparently many union locals changed their minds when they had a chance to actually read it afterward.  Or were the unions assured ahead of time that they would be granted such waivers as they wanted, seeing as how they were such munificent contributors to the election of the Democrat Socialists?  It is hard to know with this most open and transparent group of political operatives who were running the show in the 2010 Congress and the Obama gang.  Oh, did I say open and transparent?  Sorry that must have stuck in my mind from the election campaign that put these Democrat Socialists in control of our government and they thought of our lives.  I meant to say in this closed, deep-caved, murky regime of moles and voles.

These waivers now cover 3.1 million people.  The Daily Caller reports that:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Now there are 435 Congressional districts and each has about the same number of Americans in the district.  If 204 waivers were granted equally among these districts, the distribution should average 0.47 per district.  But, somehow, surely just a statistical anomaly, the district of Nancy Pelosi, the ObamaCare prime mover through the House of Representatives, just happened to get 38 waivers or 81 times her district's equal share of waivers.  God must be loading the dice when he sees that the good people of Pelosi's district are so willing to delegate powers to the federal government that they elected this good, god-favored woman to Congress.  But I, not being much of a god-fearer, must note that this is a severe injustice in a nation of sovereign, equal individuals with full rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of their minds and bodies, and the pursuit of their personal happiness.  This is the hand of tyranny and it should be no more tolerated than when that hand was the actually lighter hand of King George III.  Under Democrat Socialist rule, there is no such thing as equal individual rights.  No, those are traded for status as either a crony to a powerful politician or the status of the Forgotten Man.  Most of us are forgotten.  I certainly am, unless I am on their enemies list.

One of the remarkable things about the companies getting waivers from Nancy Pelosi's district is that they were expensive, high-end restaurants, hotels, spas, night clubs, and car dealerships.  Apparently many other Congressional districts did not get so many waivers because they just do not have enough wealthy business establishments to compete with Pelosi's San Francisco crony mercantilism companies.  Unless maybe, just maybe, these businesses have special tutoring in how to take advantage of the overly complex and overly belligerent Washington power brokerage system that ordinary Americans will never figure out.  Of course, a call from the office of Nancy Pelosi to HHS head Kathleen Sebelius in her murky subterranean den probably does not hurt either.

Poisonous snake bites .... itself

No place in America has support for Obama and his socialism been greater than on most college campuses.  In particular, support for ObamaCare ran strong on most college campuses.  It turns out that the Democrat policy wonks who wrote the badly written 2,700 page ObamaCare health care "reform" bill harbored among their many dislikes a hatred for student health care insurance offered by colleges.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• These plans were not controlled by government bureaucrats who must exercise their power lust.
• The plans offer upperclassmen and graduate students inexpensive insurance due to the generally good health of these young people.  But under ObamaCare the young must subsidize the older and the less healthy by paying much more for insurance than their good health should require them to pay.  College health plans remove too many of these subsidizers from the national pool.
• Children will have to be carried on their parent's health insurance plans until they are 26 as a penalty for those guilty of over-populating the world.  This means only a few Ph.D. candidate graduate students will be left for campus health insurance plans anyway.  Half of them are foreigners, so only half of a college's Ph.D. candidates will need health insurance plans.
• The doctors and nurses of college health plans will be desperately needed to treat Medicare patients as ObamaCare gets underway.  So, it is important to shut college health clinics down to provide more manpower to that program to delay some of its severe rationing of services.

 The American Council of Education and a dozen other higher education groups complained to the Obama administration that ObamaCare will put an end to inexpensive campus health insurance plans.  These plans cover between 4.5 and 5.5 million college students.  The ObamaCare bill is somewhat ambiguous about how campus insurance plans will be affected.  But, it appears that the plans will have to be converted into plans more suitable to the general population, at least as seen by the Obama administration.  This will make them much more expensive.  They may also have to be kept continually open to graduates of the universities as they age and become less healthy.  The many ambiguities of the ObamaCare bill has the consequence that insurance companies are uncertain on how to price their health insurance plans for this rapidly approaching academic year and future years.  The letter to the Obama administration asks that these college allies of Obama and socialized medicine be given a waiver to be excluded from ObamaCare.

I believe at least 60% of the citizens of this land would also like to apply for a waiver from ObamaCare now!!!!  That number will go up as health insurance skyrockets in cost under the physician shortages and the increased demand for services for every sniffle.  Socialism is so strongly advocated, admired, and indoctrinated in the students of our universities that it is very fitting that the snake has been found to have sunk its poisonous fangs deep into itself.  The health care costs of college students will go up more than the health care insurance costs others in America.