Unraveling Obamacare bit by bit

Steve Breen cartoon via strangefunnies.blogspot.com

Today, Mr. Speaker Gingrich posted at Fox and to his newsletter list his assessment of the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to bring down healthcare costs, chip away at what remains of Obamacare, and gradually introduce better options for all Americans. Here is part of his posting:

President Trump has also moved beyond opposing Obamacare and has begun to develop a better system for the future. What replaces Obamacare is at least as important as voting to repeal it.

Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states. The Trump Administration and its Republican allies in Congress have been working diligently in that direction.

At the Department of Labor, Secretary Alexander Acosta issued proposed rules which would dramatically expand the availability of Association Health Plans. These plans could be national and regional, allowing for the sale of insurance across state lines, but critically still maintain state autonomy in regulating insurance – which will help police against fraud. Some of the details of the rules may need to be improved to prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy customers, but overall this represents a potentially game-changing reform that could have huge cost saving implications for small business owners and the self-employed.

The Trump Administration has also allowed insurers to continue offering “grandmothered” plans created prior to Obamacare, maintaining these lower cost plans for long-time customers. This saved many small businesses and self-employed people a lot of money and anxiety which would have been caused by the Obamacare plan to force them into the government system even if they were happy with their current plan.

In addition, the Trump Administration fixed a number of loopholes in the Obamacare enrollment rules, which some customers had been using to game the system to avoid paying their premiums and wait until they got sick to get coverage, by claiming they qualified for a “Special Enrollment Period.” This fraud drove up prices for everyone. The Trump Administration issued new rules that fixed a number of these problems.

President Trump also made it easier for people to shop for health insurance without using the Healthcare.gov website. For 2019 enrollment, customers can fully use the insurer websites, as well as aggregators like ehealthinsurance.com. All of this increases convenience, expands choice, and makes lower costs possible.

Finally, just last week, Congress enacted a key reform which flew almost completely under the media’s radar. The Continuing Resolution passed to reopen the government this week suspended the health insurance tax for one year, the device tax for two years, and delayed the Cadillac tax until 2022, all of which were part of Obamacare. All of these taxes were simply passed on to patients in the form of higher premiums, so each of these steps will save patients money.

“Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states.” So here is related news:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Concerned about soaring health care costs, Idaho on Wednesday revealed a plan that will allow insurance companies to sell cheap policies that ditch key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

It's believed to be the first state to take formal steps without prior federal approval for creating policies that do not comply with the Obama-era health care law. Health care experts say the move is legally dubious, a concern supported by internal records obtained by The Associated Press.

Idaho Department of Insurance Director Dean Cameron said the move is necessary to make cheaper plans available to more people. Otherwise, he said he fears the state's individual health insurance marketplace will eventually collapse as healthy residents choose to go uninsured rather than pay for expensive plans that comply with the federal law.

Hope to see more of this. The rest of Newt’s article is here.

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Making Christmas great again

For the past eight years, the previous administration sent out politically correct "holiday" or "Season's Greetings" cards. Bah humbug! Here's President Trump & family's 2017 Christmas card:

via Fox News Twitter

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Richard Dreyfuss on Fox

Photo credit: pinterest

 

When Fox News dumped Bill O’Reilly and 'The Factor,' it moved Tucker Carlson into the 8pm slot. While I have not watched most of his debut week, I did watch his interview with Richard Dreyfuss. This was not your usual Hollywood celebrity interview. Have a look (Dreyfuss segment starts around the 1:15 mark):

 

 

Dreyfuss's website describing the initiative to reinstate civics in school curricula is here. 

 

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About those polls: mistakes or lies?

Image credit: NowProphecy

The Hill reports that

Pollsters and election modelers suffered an industry-shattering embarrassment at the hands of Donald Trump on Tuesday night.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, had long said the polls were biased against him. His claims — dismissed and mocked by the experts — turned out to be true.

“It’s going to put the polling industry out of business,” said CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “It’s going to put the voter projection industry out of business.”

This is rich. Tapper is shocked, shocked I tell you, that the polling industry got it wrong, so embarrassingly wrong. Tapper knows full well that CNN has been in collusion with the polling industry that DELIBERATELY manipulated the numbers. Sundance has been tracking this racket for years, and today he summarized his research during the 2015-16 election cycle:

THE MEDIA DIDN’T GET IT WRONG –  The pollsters did not work from the wrong data set; the media pollsters, consultants and professional political class did not work from the wrong assumptions, or use the incorrect baselines…..  THEY LIED.

The professional media polling agents knew exactly what the truth was. They lied and manipulated their data in a concerted effort to intentionally falsify reality. There should be no doubt, EVER, in the mind of any political observer as to what took place within the expressed and broadcast polling which fueled over two years of broadcast news. The media intentionally lied.

They knew the truth. The same tools available to us, and to those who were ridiculed for truth-telling, were available to them and many more. They did not get it wrong. They chose to lie to you the American electorate. So let’s name the liars so their names can forever be dispatched from the land where credibility is of value:

• Fox News, pollster Daron Shaw, Shaw Research and associates and the Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch.
• NBC News, pollster Mark Murray, Hart Research and Associates.
• Monmouth University, pollster Patrick Murray.
• CBS News and New York Times writ large.
• ABC News and The Washington Post.
• CNN News Network and ORC Polling.
• Rasmussen and Reuters Polling Operations.

These individuals along with every single corporate national media polling outlet, which in turn contributed to -and skewed- the larger aggregate of the Real Clear Politics average of polls, were complicit in their intent to deceive the American electorate in an ideological scheme to manipulate the psyche of the American voter.

. . .

They did not make mistakes; they did not operate from the wrong assumptions.  These organizations, as part of the larger corporate objectives from those who fund their endeavors, lied. Allowing them to say they made a mistake is only dooming ourselves to the continued cycle of battered electorate syndrome.

. . .

There’s more at his blog post. And for icing on the cake, Sundance reproduces tweets and headlines from polling guru Nate Silver on Trump's candidacy. Go here and scroll down to see the composite of Silver’s propaganda. (If you want to get into the weeds to see HOW they lie, here's an earlier blog by Sundance with a detailed analysis.)

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Sheriff Clarke on inner-city dysfunction and riots

photo credit: dailymail.co.uk

In a piece titled “Hard truths about inner-city dysfunction” at  Fox News Opinion, Cal Thomas cited America’s Sheriff, David Clarke of Milwaukee County:

. . . In an appearance Monday on Fox, Clarke, who is African-American, offered his explanation for the major cause of riots in Milwaukee and other cities: “You know what encourages this? The growth of the welfare state. These are underclass behaviors. Seventy percent of the kids born in Milwaukee are born without an engaged father in their life. So I look at the progressive policies that have marginalized black dads. They push them to the side and say ‘you’re not needed.’ Uncle Sam is going to be the dad, he’s going to provide for the kids, he’s going to feed the kids. Uncle Sam has been a horrible father. Uncle Sam does not love these kids. He might keep a little food in their mouths and that is about it. But we all know the importance of an intact family, what it can do to shape the behavior of kids.”

Clarke called progressive policies “a total disaster,” not only in Milwaukee, but in Chicago, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere. “These progressive policies have hit the black community like a nuclear blast and until we reverse this government dependency, that’s what creates all of this and it encourages it by the way, along with some questionable lifestyle choices.”

His answer? “Until the black community does a self-evaluation and until they begin to self-criticize about some of the lifestyle choices they are making, this stuff is going to continue to fester.”

. . .

Why do African-Americans continue to vote for liberal Democrats who have done little to help them and, in fact, often cause more harm than good?

Again, Clarke gets it right: “Until we push back against this progressive ideology, this dangerous ideology that has been very destructive to the black community and that’s what I’m trying to do -- it’s Job One right now in terms of messaging -- this thing is only going to get worse.”

Clarke expanded on the topic in a longer piece at The Hill (h/t HotGas).

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Pastor Darrell Scott on media bias and Trump

And speaking of media bias and coverage of Donald J. Trump, here is Cleveland Heights' Pastor Darrell Scott on Fox yesterday:

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THANK YOU Cleveland Police Dept. and partners!!!

During the RNC this week, Cleveland has been crawling with paid protesters hoping to disrupt proceedings, but such efforts have been thus far mostly unsuccessful. Prior to RNC week, and having attended two meetings with presentations from law enforcement, Secret Service, and FBI, I was concerned that Cleveland was still vulnerable. This blog post is to say that no matter what happens tomorrow, Clevelanders owe an enormous thank you to the planning and preparations by Cleveland Police Dept. and its law enforcement partners.

Cleveland Tea Party’s roving photographer, Pat Dooley, took photographs today of many of the LEOs, and spoke for all of us when he thanked them for their service and efforts to keep us safe. You’ll see photographs of local and visiting police, mounted police, highway patrols, and others from Ohio State University, Cleveland Clinic, California, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, Austin TX, Florida, Georgia, Ohio National Guard, and many others. (scroll down for photographs or visit the entire album here.

THANK YOU Cleveland Police Dept. and partners!!!

UPDATE at 8:30pm: Geraldo is on O’Reilly at Fox giving credit to Gov. John Kasich for the successful security plans and measures in Cleveland. Whaaaaa  huuuhhhh??? Kasich had NOTHING to do with this! Kasich couldn’t even see his way clear to come to The Q to welcome the delegates to the Convention on Monday in his own state. It’s the Cleveland Police Dept. and FBI and Secret Service and law enforcement partners that deserve our gratitude.

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