Category Archives: Health Care

Barack Obama, Health Care, Medical Costs, Obamacare, White House

MONEY WOES: Obamacare premiums will cost $536 per taxpayer household

October 27, 2016 ejistook

The average 25% Obamacare premium hikes next year are only the tip of an iceberg. Each taxpaying household will bear an average cost of $536 even if they’re not enrolled in Obamacare.

The White House pooh-poohs higher premiums by saying that the insured won’t pay the full amount; subsidies will cover part of it. But subsidies come from tax dollars and from borrowing to increase the national debt.

FOX News reports the additional subsidy cost to taxpayers will rise $8.5-billion next year, on top of the 2016 subsidy costs of $43-billion, raising the annual subsidies to $51.5-billion. The country has about 96-million households that pay federal income taxes, so this averages to $536 per household. Each year. On top of the higher premiums for the insured.

Of course, corporate taxes will cover some of the bill–but those taxes are passed along to consumers via higher prices on goods and services.

Obamacare (mis-named as the Affordable Care Act) is a vast collection of federal red tape, regulations and mandates managed by federal bureaucrats and government-paid agents.

The new premium hikes are a double-whammy: They hit those who have Obamacare coverage AND they hit every taxpayer.

Health Care, Medical Costs, Waste, Fraud & Abuse

Doctors spend 2 weeks each year on ‘obscene waste’ paperwork

October 26, 2016 ejistook

A bombshell study reveals that doctors waste almost two full work weeks each year explaining to regulators how they practice medicine.

The time spent on this paperwork robs doctors from seeing nine patients each week. One health care CEO labels it an “obscene waste,” especially because multiple reports ask for the same things. Medical staff spend even more time on the paperwork than the doctors themselves.

The Health Affairs journal study attributes the red tape to federal Medicaid and Medicare regulations, plus private insurers. But most blame was heaped on federal requirements.

Only quality control reports were studied on pancreatic cancer, not the other massive health care red tape. By themselves, the quality control reports consumed 785 hours per physician, representing $40,000 per doctor in non-productive time each year, totaling $15.4 billion nationwide.

The Physician Foundation financed the study of 394 medical clinics, focusing on cardiology, orthopedics, primary care, and multispecialty practices. The authors agree quality measurement is important, but conclude “the current system is unnecessarily costly.”

Halee Fischer-Wright, president and CEO of the Medical Group Management Association, commented, “On top of the obscene waste of billions of dollars each year on quality measures, the most alarming thing about this study is that nearly three-fourths of the groups reported that the quality measures are not even clinically relevant.”

“This study proves that the current top-down approach has failed,” Fischer-Wright said. “It serves no purpose to have over three thousand competing measures of quality across government and private initiatives. . . . the federal government needs to get out of the business of dictating patient care through wasteful mandates and create simplified systems.”

CFPB - Consumer Financial Protection Board, Consumers, Health Care, Insurance, Obamacare, OPM - Office of Personnel Management, Privacy

Privacy at-risk on HealthCare.gov website

June 16, 2015 ejistook 1 Comment

Once it met you, it won’t forget you. And you can forget your privacy.

All who shared information with healthcare.gov will be remembered forever. That Obamacare website stores information indefinitely about all who visited it, even if they did not buy their insurance through the website.

The data system is called MIDAS–Multidimensional Insurance Data Analytics System. Developing the website cost taxpayers over $2.1-billion, yet it still is not finished.

The practic is like what the Consumer Financial Protection Board does. Both government websites keep a mountain of personal data on millions of Americans. Goodbye, privacy! What will the feds eventually do with it? We have to guess.

And is either site more secure than the files of millions of federal workers, which got hacked through the Office of Personnel Management? Unlikely.

Experts told Congress that the longer the data is kept on government websites, the more likely it will be hacked and and privacy of millions will be breached.

The Associated Press writes up more details: Government data warehouse stores personal information indefinitely for all HealthCare.gov users – Red Alert Politics

Appliances, Automobiles, Climate Change, Consumers, Cost-of-Living, Electric Bills, Energy, Environment, EPA - Environmental Protection Agency, Family Budget, Food, Gasoline, Light Bulbs, Medical Costs, Transportation

Wham! Regulations sock it to consumers

June 12, 2015 ejistook

Consumer prices will increase by more than $11,000 just from 36 of the Obama Administration’s regulations, reports the American Action Forum (AAF).

It’s a wallop to the jaw for everyday people. AAF’s research finds this includes higher-priced vehicles, pricier household goods, and more expensive food. “Energy-efficiency” standards are the biggest reason for higher prices.

Of course, politicians and bureaucrats claim they’re saving us money. So ask yourself, Have YOU saved $11,000 thanks to federal regulations?

THE GIMMICKS:

Typically, agencies speculate that IF buyers keep using the mandated energy-saving products for long enough, they eventually will have a net gain. That’s IF things don’t wear out (or a light bulb doesn’t burn out).

As The New York Times researched and reported in 2012 about automobiles, projections of fuel savings often presume that consumers will keep their cars twice as long as is normal. Plus their study presumed gasoline would cost almost $4.00 a gallon. Projected “savings” also are not offset against interest paid on loans to buy more-expensive products, nor the extra repair charges to make old things last longer. Continue reading Wham! Regulations sock it to consumers →

Medical Costs, Waste, Fraud & Abuse

Federal watchdogs admit $100-billion wasted each year

June 2, 2015 ejistook 1 Comment

Our national government admits to wasting at least $100 billion a year, yet nobody gets fired for it. Bureaucrats and Congress don’t fix the loopholes; that could make some people mad and their votes might be lost.

Everyday people would be in prison if they handled their taxes the way our government handles our tax dollars. Government inefficiency is legendary.

The mis-named EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) is actually a public assistance program with 24% levels of fraud and waste, costing us almost $18-billion a year. Medicare wastes almost $46-billion annually, with a 12.7% error rate.

READ MORE DETAILS HERE:

For the government’s official list of “high-error programs, click HERE.

Agencies, Appliances, Automobiles, CEI - Competitive Enterprise Institute, CFPB - Consumer Financial Protection Board, Christmas Lights, Consumer Products & Services, Electric Bills, EPA - Environmental Protection Agency, Family Budget, Food, Gasoline, Health Care, Insurance, Light Bulbs, Medical Costs, Perfume, Privacy, Window Blinds

Family budgets wrecked by runaway regulations and red tape

May 30, 2015 ejistook 3 Comments

Runaway regulations are hurting everyday people and wrecking family budgets. It’s not big companies that suffer from the $1.88 trillion annual burden of red tape that the government imposes. They pass them along, adding the costs onto their price tags.

Unaffordable health care coverage, unaffordable electric bills, unaffordable rises in food costs, unaffordable college, and unaffordable appliances are parts of the skyrocketing burden of regulations, usually dictated from Washington.

Millions of Americans who no longer pay federal income tax nevertheless have a stake in controlling the size of government, because their family budgets are ruined by higher prices resulting from regulations. All costs of regulations are passed along by businesses owners to employees who get paid with a pay stub template software.

The average is $15,000 per household per year, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s new annual report “Ten Thousand Commandments”, with a collective cost of $1.88 trillion. Last year alone, President Obama’s hand-picked bureaucrats created $567 per person of new red tape by creating 75,000 pages of more regulations. That’s a one-year regulatory increase of over $2,000 for a household of four.

Because that overall $1.88 trillion number is too big to swallow, people need the details one bite at a time. Providing those digestible bites is the mission of Americans for Less Regulation. Many items also are posted on ALR’s Facebook site.

HOW does red tape hurt your family budget? Read more for details including:

Skyrocketing electric bills
Higher automobile prices
Phony claims of consumer savings
Appliance prices
Light bulbs
Window blinds
Federal snooping of your personal finances
Rising health care costs

Government Programs, Health Care, VA - Veterans Administration

Bureaucracy costs lives as well as dollars

April 30, 2014 ejistook

The terrible Veterans Administration scandals demonstrate how bureaucratic indifference can be fatal, as it was with 40 patients who died. Their appointments were among hundreds never scheduled, to conceal the bureaucratic backlog.

More often, red tape costs financially, as people lose control over their own budgets. Businesses have to shift funds out of productivity and into filing reports which some time can be easier to handle using a fake paystub template.

Too much regulation invites corruption

April 3, 2014 ejistook

Massive regulation breeds corruption as people and businesses look for shortcuts and loopholes. Politicians use complexity to “interpret” red tape to favor friends, reward donors, and punish enemies.

Obamacare is a prime example. There were 381,517 words in the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress. But by early 2014 the regulations “interpreting” the law surpassed 11,588,500 words.

Automobiles, Consumer Products & Services, Consumers, Food, Groceries, Health Care, Insurance, Obamacare

Regulations kill diversity. Less red tape=more consumer choice

March 26, 2014 ejistook 2 Comments

Obamacare dictates conformity–the opposite of diversity.

Even left-leaning Ben & Jerry’s offers more than 75 flavors of ice cream, so why must all health-care policies be uniform?

We prefer supermarkets with the biggest variety of fruits and vegetables, dozens of flavors of soda, multitudes of salad dressings, pre-sliced lunch meats that are smoked, baked, honey, oven-roasted, cured, mesquite, rotisserie, Black Forest, black pepper, or Cajun-style, in your choice of ham, chicken, turkey, beef, or mystery meat.

Government could “simplify” our lives in other ways. If Obamacare saves us from substandard insurance, wouldn’t “Obamacars” save us from substandard automobiles? And “Obamacurs” would make sure our pet dogs are only the very best breed.

Constitutional Rights, Obamacare

Obama argues: You forfeit Constitutional rights when you try to make a profit

December 13, 2013 ejistook

President Obama’s lawyers argue that First Amendment rights are forfeited when people try to make a profit.

They make the argument in their Supreme Court briefs in the Hobby Lobby case, which involves whether Obamacare’s birth control mandate overrides religious concerns.

If the Court adopts the interpretation, Americans could lose not only some religious freedom, but also free speech, free press and more, since all are part of the First Amendment. Breaking new ground, Obama’s appointed solicitor general creates a novel legal argument that constitutional rights are reduced whenever a profit motive is involved.

Americans for Less Regulation