Medicare under Obamacare

Medicare under Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) is in extremis, and cannot survive in its current form. It needs major reform.
This is the Medicare Trustees report : https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2011.pdf
As expected they painted a rosy picture. That prompted the Medicare Actuary to post a dissenting  report.  :  http://healthblog.ncpa.org/unprecedented-medicare-chief-actuary-disavows-trustees%E2%80%99-report-publishes-an-%E2%80%9Calternative-report%E2%80%9D/  The graph clearly spells out what will happen to Medicare. It will decline and will cross the Medicaid line in less than 10 years. Why will this happen? What Medicare recipients are blissfully unaware of is, Medicare taxes are woefully inadequate in covering Medicare expenses. This has been happening over decades. Currently Medicare taxes cover only 50% of Medicare costs. The rest is made up from general revenues.
Medicare had an unfunded mandate of $38 trillion at the time Obamacare was passed. More importantly, Medicare payments to providers do not cover costs of providing the care. This prompted Mayo Clinic Arizona to limit Medicare :  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHoYSI84VdL0 The Clinic lost $840 million on Medicare the year before. As the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) under Obamacare cuts payment to providers, fewer doctors and clinics will accept Medicare, that brings costs down, but limits access to care for seniors. The long waiting lines to see a doctor or specialist seen in socialized medicine will begin. Obamacare hastens the demise of Medicare by borrowing $800 billion from an already bankrupt Medicare, to start a new entitlement.

The minimum pay ploy.

First some facts.
Walk into any Wal Mart or fast food place. Look at who is working and talk to them. There are mainly 3 categories of people who work for minimum pay :
1.  Students working for pocket money, or working to help mitigate the cost of college education.
2. Seniors. These fall into two groups. One group needs the extra pocket money to supplement SS. The other group, believe it or not, are seniors bored stiff at home, who want to be around people and help out.
3. School drop outs, who have no skills and do not have the educational qualifications to get a higher paying job.
I am excluding the migrant workers and illegal aliens working the farms,  hotel housekeeping, landscaping, and similar jobs. That is a different category and will be addressed in another blog.
Next some definitions.
There is a subtle but distinct and important difference between minimum wage and living wage.
Minimum wages are insufficient to live and support a family on. They are not meant to be that. They are a temporary source of low income which acts as a stepping stone to better and higher paying jobs.
Minimum wage jobs are meant to be, and are, a floor. Liberals, who love to play the class war card, constantly wail about the need to increase minimum wage. They are ignorant of the fact that even if you tripled it, the minimum wage would still not be enough to support a family of 4.
It is important to understand the unintended consequences of raising the minimum wage. Dr. Walter Williams explains : http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/05/11/minimum_wages_discriminatory_effects/page/full/

Dr. Tom Sowell explains how the Davis-Bacon Act came about and why : http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_15_05_TS.html

Black economists and intellectuals like Sowell and Williams figured it out a long time ago. The Liberal Democrats actually hurt the blacks and minorities they purportedly "care" for.That is why, Sowell and Williams ceased to be Liberal Democrats and "converted" to Conservative.
Blacks in general and the Black Caucus members in Congress in particular, are starting to realize that Obama style redistribution does not work. They have been venting : http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/182209-cbc-chairman-if-obama-wasnt-in-office-we-would-be-marching-on-white-house

Why Obamanomics is failing

Obamanomics is failing because this president does not have a clue how a business is run. His economic advisers likewise were all academics with little if any business experience. Orszag, Roemer, Bernstein, and Larry Summers have now jumped a sinking ship. Obama is left with Tim Geithner who did not know how to use Turbo Tax !!!!
To understand why Obamanomics is not working one has to revisit the past. We need to see what worked and what did not.  This article explains :  http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=585083&p=1   Excerpt :  
Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on "the rich" got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73% in 1921.
On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn't actually pay those taxes.
The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year and up — equivalent to far more than a million dollars in today's money — declined from more than a thousand people in 1916 to less than three hundred in 1921. Were the rich all going broke?  More than four-fifths of the total taxable income earned by people making $300,000 a year and up vanished into thin air. So did the tax revenues that the government hoped to collect with high tax rates on the top incomes.
What happened was no mystery to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He pointed out that vast amounts of money that might have been invested in the economy were instead being invested in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds.
Read the whole article. It explains why Obama's "tax the rich" plan will not create jobs.  Obama's new Jobs Bill is more of the same. It has no chance of being passed. But then it was never his intention. He just needs to run on something. He cannot run on the failed stimulus, nor on the economy, nor on Obamacare. But he can and will run on the evil Republicans who won't pass his jobs bill.
Actually history shows that economies, particularly a free market capitalist economy like ours,  have a way of correcting themselves faster if the government just gets out of the way. This article explains :  http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/584781/201109141731/Best-Way-To-Aid-Economy-Now-Just-Do-Nothing.htm  FDR did not understand that. Neither does Obama. His Jobs Bill is not about jobs. It is all about politics. http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/584704/201109131830/How-Do-Taxes-Generate-Jobs-.htm

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme ?

Perry had the guts to call Social Security what it is, a Ponzi scheme. That won him brownie points in my book right away. Romney, the "establishment" Republican, ("Establishment Republican" is a euphemism for RINO), took exception to the Perry statement. So who is right ?
Prof. Mark Perry of  the Univ. of Michigan, has this to say on the subject  : 
"Similarly, like a Ponzi scheme, there really isn’t any actual investment going on with Social Security. While the trust fund has a $2.5 trillion balance it can call on to pay benefits, this fund won’t be of any help to the taxpayer. When Social Security goes to redeem bonds in the trust fund, the Treasury must raise taxes, cut other programs, or borrow the money—exactly the same steps as if there weren’t a trust fund at all.

Read his blog :  http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-ponzi-to-perry-truth-about-social.html

In other words it is an accounting "gimmick". Congress, (both parties), spend the SS "inflow" which goes into the general fund.  The Treasury merely records on a piece of paper, the "inflow" from SS taxes, and files it in the "lock box".  The only difference from a Ponzi scheme is, this game can go on forever. All Congress needs to do is raise taxes or cut benefits to SS recipients.  The Madoff Ponzi scheme too could have gone on forever. All he had to do was convince people to accept a 2% return instead of a 20% return.

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, opines that the $2.5 trillion in the Trust Fund  is a "loan" from SS to the government. According to him the government can pay back the "loan" and that should keep SS solvent for 26 more years. What he conveniently ignores is the fact that the government  has already spent that $2.5 trillion of our retirement money. So to "repay" that loan back to us, it has to tax us some more to pay back the loan it took from the our trust fund.  This is the Reich piece :  http://robertreich.org/post/3331762717

This recession is different

The financial guru's are all over the map. Some predict a possible double dip. The recession officially ended in June 2009.  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nbers-statement-on-recessions-end-2010-09-20   Others claim the recession never ended. Almost all seem to suggest, this recession is different. Some talk of a possible double dip as the EU disintegrates, Greece defaults, and a combination of bad monetary policy (Bernanke), and worse fiscal policy (Obama), has slowed the economy to a crawl. This link to a Global Macro Monitor  piece entitled "This time is different" makes sense to me :  http://macromon.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/this-time-is-different/  Businesses face overpowering uncertainty. They face Obama's tax hike threats, Obama care business mandates, Obama's/EPA's burdensome over regulation causing potential utility/energy cost hikes, Dodd-Frank over regulation. Businesses don't hire when there is uncertainty. The consumer, whose spending is 70% of the economy, is saving as the housing market sinks ever lower, destroying home equity.  This time it is different. We need hope and change.

Crony Capitalism

Let's face it. Crony capitalism is alive and well. The Democrats and the MSM (Main Stream Media) would like you to think that only the "party of the rich", the Republicans, practice crony capitalism. The Democrats, so the story goes, only care for the poor. Well, if you believe that.......
Obama, bought the global warming/climate change hoax hook, line and sinker. Green energy was how he and his green energy czar, Van Jones, were going to "redistribute" the wealth. The "green energy jobs of the future" according to Obama, would be low paying jobs putting up solar panels and wind turbines made in China. It was a significant part of his "stimulus" plan.
Turns out there was more than meets the eye, under the surface. http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2011/09/11/obamas_pet_billionaire_at_solyndra_make_take_white_house_down/page/full/
Then there's the other crony capitalist, Jeff Immelt of GE, who wants to sell Obama his wind turbines. He is Obama's top advisor on jobs. He just shifted whole divisions of GE to China. The X-Ray division and the Plastics division. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_June_26/ai_87773802/
Since neither Obama, nor his top economic advisers, all academic theoreticians I might add, have had any business experience, they have no clue that solar and wind cannot make it in the real world, without substantial and prolonged subsidies from the government. "Subsidies" incidentally, are a euphemism for redistribution of our money. Europe in general, and Spain in particular, found  out the hard way that "green energy" is too expensive, bankrupts the country, and never lowered the cost of utilities and energy :  http://www.thegwpf.org/energy-news/2184-spains-green-bankruptcy-investors-may-desert-after-solar-cuts.html  Over in Britain. Same story : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/06/solar-farms-threaten-green-subsidy
Notwithstanding the evidence that wind and solar as an energy source will never supply more than 5 % of our needs, Obama plans to plough ahead.

Dr. Chas. Krauthammer

Fast Facts About Dr. Charles Krauthammer , MD

Born: March 13, 1950 Birthplace: New York City, New York Raised in Montreal, Canada Attended Mc Gill University and Harvard Medical School 1972 diving accident left him paralyzed from the neck on down. Directed psychiatric research for the Carter administration Began writing career in 1981 with The New Republic Helped develop the "Reagan Doctrine" in the 80's Appointed to Presidential Council on Bioethics in 2002Dr. Charles Krauthammer , MD

  Dr. Krauthammer is frequently on the Fox News Channel. He is an M.D., a lawyer and is paralyzed from the neck down. A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in a closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st. The ramifications are staggering for us, our children and their children. 
Last Monday was a profound evening. Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment. He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views. He is a fiscal conservative, and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally.Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free....

Summary of his comments:

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!
3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada.
4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada ...God forbid!
5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he DOES, not what he says.
6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!
7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.
8.. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. Republicans are pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future... We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state's rights.
9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don't have. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The Media is givingObama, Reid and Pelosi a Pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.
10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.
11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.Do yourself a long term favor; send this to all who will listen to an intelligent assessment of the big picture. All our futures and children's futures depend on our good understanding of what is really going on in DC, and our action pursuant to that understanding!! It really IS up to each of us to take individual action!! Start with educating your friends and neighbors!!!