Repealing Obamacare

Repealing Obamacare is a false crusade and fixating on it is misleading.

Which is not to say that the health reform bill is the answer, but the astronomical rise in the costs of health insurance will not be solved without facing reality.

For instance, in 1985 a solo physician could have a practice and hire one employee to do all the office work. Today, that same practioner has to hire four to five people to do all the clerical work the insurance companies insist upon to see a patient. On the one hand, this creates jobs you might say. But on the other hand, the insurance companies are in control of the physician’s income, so based on this control how well can the physician pay their employees and what type of benefits could they provide? Only as much as the insurance companies allow.

The insurance companies are very inefficient. It is well known that insurance companies do not receive mail or faxes. Submitting “appeals” on denied claims is one area which demonstrates this truth. One can send in an appeal to an insurance company and then call them to ensure that they did receive it. Two weeks later, the insurance company sends a letter stating that the claim is denied because no appeal was received. Call the insurance company back, and yes, they do see where the appeal was received and they’ll have it reviewed again. All medical practioners have to hire people to deal with this nonsense. No wonder the insurance companies only spend eighty percent of premiums on medical care. The rest goes to denying claims, through made up rules enforced by them.

Another truth is monopolization. UnitedHealth Care boasts seventy million members. The population of the United States is roughly three hundred million. This means that one insurance company has almost one third of the population as customers. It’s too much control and is of great concern, because UnitedHealth Care does not tell the truth. Call them on a claim that’s not paid and they say they’ll pay it, they were wrong to deny it. A month later when the claim is still not paid, call them and they’ll say they’re not going to pay it and they never said they would pay the claim. Which means that UnitedHealth Care collected a premium but refused to pay for the medical care.

These are unethical business practices; doctors and subscribers are powerless against the immoral and monopolistic health insurance corporations and their lobbyists, who insure that laws are passed which benefit them only. This is the reality of the situation, which neither “Obamacare” nor it’s repeal addresses.

Great Corporate Control

John Boehner; Speaker of the House said, “We can't raise taxes on the very people who create jobs, and keep spending money that we don't have.”

The founders understood job creation needs start up funds and a stable banking system to encourage entrepreneurs to be the “jobs creators”, something we lack here in the US.

From the book 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson -”Alexander Hamilton believed that the government should ensure that sufficient credit was available to fund economic development and transform America into a prosperous, entrepreneurial country, and who “favored a stronger federal government that actively supported economic development.”

Today we have Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisers stating, “A lot of the especially large companies that have a lot of business overseas are looking towards their overseas markets, rather than the domestic U.S. markets to expand. As a result of that, they may be making a lot of money, but they may be putting that money to use somewhere else outside the United States.”

Lisa Lynch Dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandies University said “new entrepreneurs that come into a bank that are looking for funds to go off with some new idea that no one else has done before are encountering a lot of resistance in terms of raising that capital that they need to grow their businesses.” “And a lot of net new employment at this stage of the recovery in the past would have come from new businesses starting up and adding employees. And that's not happening either.”

What we need is a strong federal government whose main interest is a sound financial environment where entrepreneurs can flourish and create jobs. Instead, we have an economy where mega Banks are in control of the nation’s wealth and monopolistic Conglomerates are in control of the jobs. This economic and political influence renders our politicians incapable of standing up for the founding principals which made this nation one of the most prosperous in the world. Today we are seeing giant corporations creating astronomical job losses, yet Representative Boehner insists the way to stop it, is to cut taxes on these jobs exporters.

Teddy Roosevelt said in his 1901 Inaugural address that “Great corporations exist only because they are created and safe guarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions”. The economy will not improve until we reclaim our right to ensure economic harmony.

Racing for Global Profits

“The Associated Press, which released the study on CEO compensation, put it this way: In the boardroom, it's as if the great recession never happened.

CEO pay, including salaries, bonuses, and stock options, was up 24 percent last year, to a level higher than 2007, just before the recession hit. The study came a day after the Fortune 500 list was released, showing corporate profits increased by 81 percent last year, or more than $300 billion. CEO’s were rewarded because corporate profits soared in 2010 as the economy gradually got stronger and companies cut costs.”

When corporations talk of cutting costs, what they really mean is cutting the American worker, we cost too much. Corporations are raking in billions in profits overseas, they don’t even need us as customers, let alone as employees. Profits were up for companies last year and yet according to the AP “… companies could limit raises for rank and file workers because of the weak labor market.”

These global giants were made in America and exist because of our laws which at one time ensured a level playing field benefiting all Americans. Now, after decades of these megalith giants eliminating those laws and instituting their own through bought and paid for politicians, a majority of American citizens have falling wages, yet bonuses for the few “…Two-thirds of the executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big.” Meanwhile it’s debt for the rest of us due to uncontrolled price gouging for the necessities of life.

Deborah Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness said, “… you know, the issue of corporate profits, companies sitting on, you know, over $1.5 trillion, where are they investing it? Are they investing it in the United States? There is a global race for the best investment, the best high-value activity.”

Actually it’s a race to suck up the wealth and productivity of this country into the hands of the few, by cutting out the American worker in a rabid search for obscene profits.

It’s glaringly obvious what is going on; CEO pay, bonuses and perks are on the increase because they cut pay and benefits of the American worker. Corporations sit on trillions, while racing for winner-take-all in global profits.

Deborah Wince-Smith also said “you know, 80 percent of all middle-class consumers will be outside the United States by 2020.”These corporations have outsourced our way of life and our standard of living. Well, almost all of us, the American way of life won’t change for the CEO’s, it’s only changed for the rank and file, who helped make these corporations the global blood sucking giants that they are today.

It's the Entitlements Stupid

Senator Mitch McConnell said “We have over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities, that is, promises we have made that we cannot keep, to very popular things, like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, the health program for the poor, how much more do we need to know?”

A lot! For instance the Washington Spectator reports the real financial threat facing this nation is credit default swaps. A credit default swap is the swapping of risk with a third party, essentially to insure you against default. Now, because of decades of deregulation, credit default swaps and other complicated derivatives are traded without any regulation, resulting in “JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs holding more than 95 percent of derivatives exposure among the nation’s top 25 bank holding companies.”

A bank holding company isn’t just a bank, it’s a mega conglomerate and has a lot more companies under it than just banks, like insurance companies. Precisely why AIG, an insurance company who’s also a bank holding company, was included in the bank bail outs and why we’re on the hook for all those trillions in credit default swaps.

Eric Dinalo former superintendent of the New York Insurance Department stated “ in 2008 the total of private sector debt was about $16 trillion. So it appears that swaps on that debt could total at least three times as much actual debt outstanding.” Oddly enough, that’s close to $50 trillion.

The Spectator continues: “The numbers alone are terrifying. In 2008, Bear Stearns had written derivatives contracts backing credit valued at 10.2 trillion, a figure three quarters the size of the U. S. economy. When institutions with balance sheets like that go south, the entire economy goes with them.”

No wonder the Senator is “talking about trillions here, not millions -- I mean, not billions, we're talking about trillions.” It is easier to convince the populace that future debt is due to entitlements than it is to convince them it’s the bankers and their trick credit default swaps causing future debt. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s a lot more spending on Wall Street that we need to know about, but sadly all we hear is the chant: it’s ‘the entitlements stupid‘.

Counter Balancing the Budget

Paul Ryan’s budget proposal “Path to Prosperity” is being hailed as courageous, which is an understatement, because it takes a strong man to balance a lop sided budget on the backs of the old, the sick, the poor and the jobless.

The budget has been designed to benefit the defense corporations and banks over the people. Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson said, ”You need to get rid of the 250,000 contractors in the Defense Department where you can really pick up some small change…We have a defense budget now which is larger than all 14 countries. That ought to get you somewhere.” Blackwater Security makes 94 percent of its profit from the federal government, according to the book Pinstripe Patronage.

William Greider writes in the Nation magazine Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner didn’t help struggling homeowners modify their mortgages but instead gave hundreds of billions to big banks “with no strings attached”.

The reasoning behind not helping millions of Americans facing foreclosure is that the Treasury didn’t want to create moral hazard amongst the citizens by letting them think they can get something for nothing like the mega banks did.

The Republicans are concerned with lulling citizens into complacency and laziness with the humane safety net this country provides to the terminally ill, severely disabled and the jobless.

It should be clear why the budget is lop sided and laced with huge deficit deceit. But yet it isn’t, because the corporations and their minions have convinced many that they are an example of the best free market capitalism has to offer, except they didn’t get to where they are due to hard work and effort rewarded by free market capitalism; they got to where they are because they bought control of our nation’s economy and the federal budget and were allowed by our elected officials to change the rules enabling them to funnel our nation‘s wealth into the hands of the few, while creating huge deficits for the rest of us.

From the Nation magazine: “The House voted to repeal healthcare reform after taking millions of dollars in campaign contributions from medical and insurance interests. Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, along with eighteen other colleagues, introduced a Senate bill to repeal the tepid financial reform bill passed last year. Collectively, the senators backing repeal of those reforms have taken nearly $50 million in campaign contributions from the very Wall Street interests who were going to be affected by the law, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.”

No wonder their budget concern is the laziness and immorality of the common people and not the abusive crookedness of our politicians and how spending really works in Washington.

Budget Battle

Even though a government shut down has been averted for the time being, it just goes to show the how the tyranny of the minority governs us, making millions sweat it out while addressing ideological issues rather than the seriously harmful issue like trillions for perpetual war on foreign soil.

The budget battle and the threat of a government shut down is an example of the tyranny of the minority. Six hundred and thirty five legislators made millions of Americans sweat it out. Military families wouldn’t receive their pay and 800,000 government workers would be furloughed.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus stated “What the Republicans are looking for is to take the general federal-funding program for family planning known as Title X, to turn that into a block grant, to give it to states, many of which, you may recall, have Republican governors and perhaps give those Republican governors the flexibility to administer the program in a way that, guess who, Planned Parenthood, might not be able to get the funds.”

This is what they’re fighting about, exemplifying the tyranny of the minority, where keeping the government functioning turns into a battle over abortion.

And while on the subject of battles, just last week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the US might stay in Iraq if the Iraqis asked us to stay. How much more will that cost us and where is the concern to get out of that country and cut spending? There isn’t any.

At one time there were more contractors on the ground in Iraq than there were US soldiers. Contractors cost up to $250,000, so four contractors is a million dollars, eight is two million and so forth. So what does hundreds of thousands of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan cost us? Big enough to rival funding to Planned Parenthood. But this is how the minority misleads us, by attaching heated emotions to all aspects of governing.

Speaker of the House John Boehner said he’s “damn serious” about spending cuts and wants to know when the President and Congressional Democrats will get serious about cutting spending.

Yes, just when will John Boehner, and the rest of the politicians get serious about cutting trillion dollar spending on expenses like war rather than million dollar expenses like Planned Parenthood?

Controlling Food Costs

John Boehner said-“…Washington needs to do a lot more to end the uncertainty and get our economy moving again. It's clear that we need to cut spending, we need to stop unnecessary regulations, end the threat of tax hikes…. ” The Speaker has his talking point, to end uncertainty. But just whose uncertainty is he concerned with?

ExxonMobil pays nothing in taxes, yet the Speaker insists we end the threat of tax hikes. It doesn’t make sense, but neither does the fact that the oil companies are the ones receiving the pay raise Americans received from the lowered Social Security tax deductions the working class pays. Is he talking about righting this tax hike on the little people for the sake of Big Oil to get the economy going again?

Where is the end of constantly rising prices for oil and food? The Nation magazine states-“Now, with oil prices again on the rise, the price of food is likely to surpass all previous records and spark additional upheavals around the world. What we are seeing, in effect, is a vicious cycle in which rising oil prices drive up the cost of food, which triggers political disorder in the oil-producing countries, which in turn pushes oil to still higher prices, propelling food costs even higher, and so forth---with no end in sight.” And here in the U.S., food prices have risen thirty percent just since January.

And talk about spending, where is the certainty of cutting huge government subsides to Big Oil and Agri Business? According to Republicans “farm cuts’ are off the table. Whatever happened with the president’s pledge during his State of the Union Speech to cut subsidies to Big Oil? We haven’t heard a word about it, while they proclaim unbelievable profits. But we’ve heard plenty on spending cuts for the old and the sick, and those of the “Greatest Generation” living on fixed incomes. We’re just not hearing about the kind of spending cuts which could make a real difference, just the ones that harm the unprotected.

The double speak on all sides is blatant, while we’re left with the certainty that oil and food prices will continue to rise with no one wanting to stop them. All we really hear are the actors repeating their lines in a well rehearsed play. And it is a play, it’s called the history of the world; oppression rules while the actors tell the masses what they want them to hear, and what they should think.