More Obamacare Numbers and Less Understanding

Remember the surge in Iraq and the one that followed in Afghanistan.  Yesterday the feds announced another surge.  This time they told us that enrollment in Obamacare had surged in January.  Of course, that was false as their own numbers show.  There were 1.1 million people who selected policies on the federal and state exchanges during the months of January.  That is only about 60% of the number who selected policies during the previous month.  Only the Obama administration could describe a 40% drop in numbers as a "surge" with a straight face.  Truth simply seems not to matter to them.

So, putting aside the phony description, let's take a look to see what the actual figures tell us.  The biggest riddle right now is determining how many people gained coverage under Obamacare.  There may have been 3.3 million who have selected policies so far, but how many of these were people who did not previously have coverage.  The government claims not to know, but one study done a month earlier put the figure at 11%.  That would mean that at most there were 350,000 people with new coverage under Obamacare.

This may not sound like an important number to some, but it is the key to whole structure of Obamacare.  The basic idea of the law is that millions upon millions of people will get insurance for the first time since they are required to do so by the individual mandate.  The premiums that these millions of newly insured folks pay are supposed to cover the costs of the older, sicker patients who also get insurance.  What has happened instead is that millions of people have seen their insurance cancelled and the replacement policies costing much much more than the old ones.  As a result, only some of the people who were insured have gotten replacement coverage.  We know this because there were over 7 million policies cancelled and only 3.3 million who have signed up for new ones.  On top of this, people who are older and sicker are signing up; my guess is that they are nearly all the newly insured.  That makes the net effect more sicker people with insurance and fewer healthy ones in the same situation.  There will not be excess premiums generated to pay for the additional costs.  Instead there will be major shortfalls.

One last note is also in order.  I have pointed this out repeatedly, but the Obamacrats still announce numbers for people who have put a plan into their shopping basket rather than the number who have actually purchased and paid for the insurance.  We do not know by how much this inflates the figures, but the announced figures could easily be twice as high as the actual number who bought a new plan.  At least in one state, that is what a careful review showed.

Sadly, the government is not giving us all the figures that it has.  I guess it is just too bitter a pill for the Obamacrats to swallow.

 

The Field Gets Bigger

One of the most insightful experts on the political scene is Michael Barone.  He knows more about political facts than nearly anyone else.  Today, he is out with a column that discusses something that has been overlooked to date.  In his column Barone talks about the chances that the Republicans are putting many new seats in play in the House.  For essentially all last year, we heard about how the Democrats were trying to retake the House after losing it in 2010.  Then that chatter stopped and the focus moved to Republican efforts to retake the Senate.  That is where nearly all the talk now centers.  Barone, however, has moved further.  He is now shifting to a review of how many and which seats the Republicans can win so as to add to their majority.  Barone is quick to point out that many things can shift between now and November, so he is not predicting any particular outcome.  Still, Barone is someone who does not talk about these subjects for partisan purposes.  If he discusses the potential increase in Republicans in the House, he is not trying to help that to happen.  when it comes to politics and voting trends, Barone is about the straightest shooter around.

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens as 2014 unfolds and the horrors of Obamacare keep hitting more and more and more people.  My expectation has been that things would get so bad that the Democrats would cave and join the GOP to repeal Obamacare.  Of course, I has assumed that president Obama would obey the Constitution, something that would prevent him from changing the law every other Tuesday to try to help politically (as he has done).  Obama is making it more difficult for the repeal to take place, but he is doing no favors for the Democrats.  If that party goes into the November elections with Obamacare still in place, the Democrats will face a disaster in my opinion.  After leading his party to a loss of the Senate and further losses in the House, it will be hard even for Obama to do much of anything in his last two years. 

 

Something Good For a Change

I know that few of you will be as happy with this news as I am, but here it is anyway:  Sky, a wire haired fox terrier, won the best in show at Westminster.  I can't help it.  I love wire fox terriers.  I had one when I was growing up, and it is a great breed of dog.  They are very energetic; okay, they run around and are constantly up to something.  They are beautiful animals and great pets.  Congrats to Sky!

And for those of you who think it odd that I would concern myself with the results of a dog show, all I can say is this:  Were you to busy watching curling matches at the Olympics to pay attention?

 

Obama and Beyonce?

A French news source is reporting that the Washington Post is about to break the story of an affair between president Obama and Beyoncé.  The WaPo denies the report.  I assume that it is completely untrue.  Nevertheless, if it turns out that president Obama and Beyoncé have been seeing each other, at least it might explain where Obama went on September 11, 2012 when the consulate in Benghazi was under attack.

 

It Has Gotten Past The Point Of Crisis

President Obama is going to delay the start of the employer mandate of Obamacare for the second time.  This delay is going to apply to employers who have between 50 and 99 employees who will be treated differently from those with 100 or more workers.  The larger companies will have to meet the mandate one year earlier, although Obama is also relaxing the conditions which must be met to comply with the mandate.

There is no other way to say this:  what Obama is doing is totally illegal and a clear violation of the Constitution.  Indeed, this latest move is something that would have been unthinkable prior to the Obama administration (or should we call it the reign of Barack I).  The president has not right to treat smaller companies in one way that is different from how large companies are treated.  Only Congress can make a law that creates such a distinction, and Congress has not acted here.  Remember, the Constitution provides that all individuals and companies are entitled to equal protection of the laws.  Those who are tasked with enforcing the laws cannot create distinctions to use which lead to differing treatment under the law.  Imagine the FBI deciding that the importation and sale of drugs will only be prosecuted if the perpetrator is African American but not otherwise.  Dealing with white and black individuals on a different basis is patently illegal and unconstitutional; the law says that no individual of any race may import and sell drugs, and the FBI cannot change this.  Suppose that the IRS decided that it would not audit women even if clear evidence of tax fraud is discovered and that it would only audit men on that basis.  Again, that would be clearly illegal and unconstitutional; the law deals with both sexes and cannot be changed by the executive branch of the government.  Now suppose that OSHA announced that it would only inspect businesses in states that voted for Romney but not in states that voted for Obama.  It would be yet another illegal and unconstitutional move.  The same thing is true with Obamacare.  According to the statute, the employer mandate applies to all businesses with 50 or more full time employees.  There is no distinction between businesses with 50-99 employees and those which are larger.  Obama may think himself the emperor of America, but he is the president and he cannot change laws passed by Congress.

If Obama persists in this ridiculous move, it will mean that any large company will be able to get a court to relieve it from the burden of the employer mandate.  The feds simply cannot enforce the law in an unconstitutional, selective manner.  Obama is destroying his own law.

Even worse, however, is the reason why Obama is making this move.  We have been told repeatedly that millions of workers were likely to have their coverage cancelled next October because of the employer mandate with the bulk of those cancellations concentrated among companies in the 50 -99 employee range.  Obama is delaying enforcement just to try to help the Democrats in the November election.  What will he come up with next?  Will the Justice Department station election monitors are various polling places in states with close elections in order to dissuade Republicans from voting?  Will the president authorize payment of cash to undecided voters in exchange for voting Democrat?  We all know that such moves would be illegal, but will that stop Obama?  Who can know?  Obama is the first president to so completely disregard the requirements of his office and the Constitution. 

This must stop!

What More Can One Say?

Here are the first two paragraphs in an article in the Jerusalem Post today:

The commander of Iran's navy ratcheted up the Islamic Republic's recent rhetoric against the United States, threatening the Americans with major losses at sea should they chose to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

“The Americans can fully expect that their warships [and] aircraft carrier will be sunk with all 5,000 crew aboard, in combat against Iran, and they could find its hulk in the depths of the sea,” Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi was quoted as saying by semi-official Iranian Fars News on Sunday.

What more could one say?  The truth is that the Iranians have been making these sorts of threats only since they realized that president Obama was not going to take any action against them and their nuclear program.  It does not hurt to threaten a strong response to something that you know will never happen. 

 

It's Just Too Small

In the New York Post today, there is an opinion piece by Arthur Herman with a very interesting premise.  Herman says that the power and influence of Russia is going to decline dramatically in Europe because of large natural gas discoveries under the Mediterranean in Israel.  Right now, according to Herman, the Russians supply one quarter of European gas needs and it gives them a strangle hold on the continent's energy supply.  Herman expects that within a few years natural gas exports from Israel will reduce the ability of Russia to use its natural gas exports to control other countries in Europe.  The truth, however, is something quite different.

First of all, the Israeli deposits are huge for a small country like Israel, but they are not large enough to supply Europe.  To put this in context, the total gas in the two large Israeli field discovered so far are just about one fifth of the recoverable gas found in just one American field, the Marcellus Shale.  Herman might respond by pointing out that Israel does not have to supply the entire continent; it needs only replace a significant part of the Russian supply.  Nevertheless, the Europeans will continue to get a large quantity of gas from Russia, no matter what the Israelis and others do.  Putin's days as energy tsar of Europe are far from over.