http://freedomoutpost.com/trump-delivers-documented-evidence-of-obama-wiretaps-to-house-panel/

Trump Delivers Documented Evidence of Obama Wiretaps To House Panel

At this point in time, the public does not yet know the contents of the documents delivered by President Trump’s DOJ to the House Intelligence Committee regarding the wiretapping incident, but presumably since the documents were sent by Trump’s team, it stands to reason that whatever was delivered to the House Intelligence Committee was in favor of Trump’s claims, not the other way around.

Throughout his time in office, Barack Obama associated with many political operatives who were real lowlifes, and who often walked a tightrope between the world of what was considered legal behavior (however, unethical), and what was considered criminal behavior. There’s an old saying I’m sure you’re familiar with that goes:

‘If you hang around the barbershop long enough, you’re going to get a haircut…’

Are we about to learn next week that Obama got a haircut, and we’re all going to find out?

In the video below, Right Wing News breaks down the recent report from Young Conservatives, and compares it with an earlier report from Doug Hagmann of the Canada Free Press. Did Obama finally go to far this time? Let’s hope so. It’s long overdue!

                                                          

Young Conservatives Writes:

Last week, the House Intelligence Committee asked the Justice Department to submit any evidence it had pertaining to President Donald Trump’s claims of surveillance by the Obama administration. 

The plot thickens, as on Friday, the DOJ made its submission to the committee.

From The Hill:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sent documents to the House Intelligence Committee on Friday in response to a request for evidence backing up President Trump’s claim that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

The committee is currently reviewing the documents, an aide confirmed to The Hill.

It’s unclear what’s in the documents, which CNN reported separately had also been delivered to the Senate Intelligence Committee, though that report could not be immediately confirmed.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer clarified Trump’s original wording, saying that when he used the term “wiretapping” in quotation marks in his tweet, he was referring to surveillance in a broader sense. 

Trump also didn’t back off the claim of surveillance, even joking about it with Angela Merkel who was spied on by the Obama administration.

The House Intelligence Committee will hold an open meeting on Monday discussing Russian interference and the claims of Obama administration surveillance. 

MEET TEAM OBAMA WITH THE AMNESIA

While some have disputed the claims of surveillance, if there was no surveillance, how then were Trump’s conversations with the Presidents of Mexico and Australia picked up and the transcripts later leaked specifically to undermine him? 

The media appears to have completely suffered amnesia about those reports.

It will be fascinating to see what evidence, if anything, the DOJ submitted…

Recall the following from a post last Friday titled: Obama Wiretapping Bombshell Drops; This is as Serious as it Gets (Video):

In that article, Douglas J. Hagmann reported that President Trump had in his possession evidence of the paper trail leading to a FISA court that substantiates his assertions that Obama, obtained authorization to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign under the pretense of a national security investigation. For anyone not familiar with Douglas J. Hagmann, he has been a licensed investigator in the private sector for the last 30 years, where he’s worked on well over 5,000 cases, and he’s considered a surveillance specialist within his industry.

Often, his vast expertise has been sought out as either an informational or operational asset on various federal and state law enforcement agencies. In addition to his investigating duties, Hagmann is also an author, runs four websites, and has a successful talk radio show. Bottom line: If law enforcement agencies trust Hagmann’s investigative abilities, then I’m certainly going to trust them long before I believe a mainstream media that suffers from amnesia about the very stories THEY reported on previously.

Canada Free Press Reported:

There is a large storm brewing over Washington, DC right now – a storm that could dwarf anything ever seen in recent times. It is growing stronger by the hour as new information is being disclosed that strongly suggests that it is possible, even likely, that Obama and his Department of Justice maliciously and criminally misused the FISA process to collect intelligence on Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Additionally, Obama personally relaxed the limitations on how such information collected could be disseminated in the weeks before leaving office.

The political ramifications from this, if proved correct, could be unprecedented in scope. Once fully exposed, it would explain the curious actions of Obama as he prepared to vacate the White House. It would also explain, in context, the actions and statements of not only Barack Hussein Obama, but others in key positions of power including Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan, and others within the media.

At issue is Obama’s insistence to secure a federal wiretap warrant of Donald J. Trump, the candidate, using the federal court system as the mechanism to do so. The ostensible probable cause was alleged ties between Donald J. Trump and/or his associates with Russia.

The first warrant application was made in June 2016, according to reports published by The New York Times and elsewhere, but was rejected due to the lack of probable cause of criminal activity.

RECALL THAT THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT THE FISA COURTS…

WAS JUST DAYS AFTER THE INFAMOUS MEETING ON THE TARMAC! 

                                                                                                                   

When the request was denied in regular federal court, Obama and his Justice Department attempted an “end around” by citing the existence of a “foreign actor” and made a similar surveillance warrant application through the more specialized Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in October of 2016. According to published reports, that warrant application was rejected as well, a rare occurrence in the FISA venue, which strengthens claims that no evidence of any foreign involvement ever existed. It has been reported that the initial warrant application to the FISA court specifically named Donald J. Trump.

It is also relevant to note here that this is the type of activity that led to the creation of the infamous “Wall” that was referenced after the 9/11 attacks. Its relevance to this specific instance is explained well by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy an article linked here.

Article posted with permission from The Last Great Stand

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http://onlineathens.com/national-news/2017-03-19/republicans-odds-over-how-overhaul-medicaid?utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=OnlineAthens%20Daily%20Headlines&utm_campaign=012717%20new%20morning%20template

Republicans at odds over how to overhaul Medicaid

WASHINGTON | The House GOP health care bill has competition from other Republicans, a group of governors who’ve made their own proposal about how to overhaul Medicaid for low-income people. They’re hoping GOP senators will find their ideas more persuasive.

It’s a gradual approach, with additional options for states. It’s likely to involve more federal spending than the House bill, but also keep more people covered. In the end, though, the governors are still talking about fundamental change.

Four GOP governors are pushing the plan, saying they represent most of the 33 Republican state chief executives. There’s no inkling of any involvement by Democratic governors, and it’s hard to conceive of such major changes without them.

Medicaid is a federal-state program that covers more than 70 million low-income people, about 1 in 5 Americans. Beneficiaries range from elderly nursing home residents to newborns. Former President Barack Obama expanded the program in his health care law, to mainly help low-income adults with no children living at home. About half the 31 states that accepted the expansion have Republican governors.

The House Republican bill would start by repealing Obama’s Medicaid expansion. More significantly, it would limit overall federal spending on Medicaid going forward. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the proposal would result in a cut of $880 billion from projected Medicaid spending from 2017 to 2026. By that year, 14 million fewer people would have Medicaid coverage, and program spending would be about 25 percent lower than what’s currently projected.

The House approach “provides almost no new flexibility for states, does not ensure the resources necessary to make sure no one is left out, and shifts significant new costs to states,” Republican Govs. John Kasich of Ohio, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said in a recent letter to congressional leaders.

The future of Medicaid could become a pivotal issue as the health care debate moves to the Senate. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said his boss “shares (governors’) concerns about the need to protect the Medicaid expansion population and give governors more flexibility to ensure they can design programs that meet the needs of their states.”

Differences between the House bill and the governors’ approach would have an impact on millions of people. Here’s a look:

MEDICAID EXPANSION

Current law: States can expand Medicaid to cover people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $16,640 for an individual. The federal government picks up almost all of the cost, gradually phasing down to a 90 percent share.

House bill: Ends Medicaid expansion. States can continue to receive the higher federal rate only for those enrolled by Dec. 31, 2019.

Governors: States that expanded Medicaid can also keep receiving the higher federal rate for new enrollees into the future if they agree to make other changes to their programs.

———

MEDICAID SPENDING LIMITS

Current law: Medicaid is an open-ended entitlement program. The federal government pays a share of each state’s cost of providing care for beneficiaries. That share varies among states, but the national average is nearly 60 percent.

House bill: Federal Medicaid funds would be limited under a per-beneficiary cap that takes into account what a state has spent traditionally, adjusted for inflation. House leaders are also expected to introduce an option for states to choose a block grant.

Governors: States could pick a per-beneficiary cap, a block grant or the current system. If they choose the current system, they would lose the more generous matching funds for new beneficiaries covered by expanded Medicaid.

If states choose a per-beneficiary cap or a block grant, they would not have to take a complete plunge.

Initially such limits would apply only to spending for able-bodied adults, including people covered through expanded Medicaid. It would be up to each state to decide whether to accept caps or block grants for sensitive groups of beneficiaries, including children, pregnant women, and elderly and disabled adults.

———

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Current law: State Medicaid programs must cover FDA-approved drugs for medically accepted uses. Pharmaceutical companies pay Medicaid rebates to states under a complex formula. A costly new drug like recent ones for hepatitis C can cause havoc with state budgets.

House bill: Not addressed.

Governors: States would be able to exclude coverage for a given medication. The option to exclude a drug would give them leverage in price negotiations with drug companies.

———

ELIGIBILITY AND BENEFITS

Current law: Federal government sets threshold for eligibility. States must cover certain basic benefits, including hospitalization, doctor visits, nursing home care and health screenings.

House bill: Not addressed.

Governors: States that accept spending caps would be able to freeze or reduce enrollment, with exceptions. States could impose work requirements for able-bodied adults. States would also gain authority to redesign benefits and require beneficiaries to pay modest amounts for their care.

“The Medicaid program is complex and different (beneficiary) populations have different needs,” said Trish Riley, executive director of the nonpartisan National Academy for State Health Policy, which advises state policymakers. The governors “recognize that you can’t have a hard cap on a program that has a lot of unpredictable costs.”

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"If we insured our homes the way we insure our bodily care, we’d need to file a claim to change a light bulb. We’d then self-fund the purchase of the lightbulb (at many times today’s going price) but then smugly remind ourselves that this cost “went against my deductible.”

http://thenewamericana.com/2017/03/16/america-doesnt-have-a-healthcare-system/

America doesn’t have a “healthcare system”

Patricia Anthone•1 day ago

The healthcare industry, like every other industry in the “free” world, is a network of private individuals and entities engaged in consensual interaction on the basis of aligned interest and profit motive.

Each of the countless people and entities involved have a personal stake in the successful fulfillment of their role – their livelihood depends on it. Those who fail are quickly replaced. (No act of Congress needed.)

Our healthcare industry is not a “Healthcare System.” Unlike a school district, a highway department, postal service and other government-controlled systems, an industry or economic sector cannot and should not be thought of in terms that imply central control.

Why? Central control omits or diminishes the individual motive for consensual participation; taking merit, profit out of the mix as drivers of innovation, competition and excellence.

When someone fails in the private sector, competition sees to it that the failed entity is swiftly replaced. When a government-monopoly fails, it takes years and several acts of Congress to attempt a repair. Rather than concurrent solution-options offered simultaneously by a variety of competing concerns, you have sequential solution attempts, each hindered by the inevitable constituency every force-of-law program attracts.

No industry can be treated as a singular, centrally planned system, without gross disruption to the incentives which assure constant regeneration, renewal and innovation.

Americans used to understand this instinctively. That’s why our Constitution confines the Federal Gov’ts jurisdiction to specific, enumerated areas – none of which authorize it to control industry.

A full ObamaCare repeal had been passed by the House under Obama.

Now that Trump is in office why can we not put that very piece of legislation back through the works and have Trump sign it?

Then (and only then) we can look at removing any obstacles to allowing the private network to regenerate insurers, incent providers and restore consumer price pressure to its role in containing price escalation. Healthcare “prices” have not been subject to regular price pressure in at least a generation.

3rd-party payment so insulates us from cost that we no longer have any informed sense of value in medical care. The price of a given service has become, “whatever your insurer will allow.” Yet we act like insurance is the whole problem, focusing over a decade of legislative “solutions” on what had been a contract between private parties for the management of financial risk.

Why did this happen? It happened because the monthly insurance-premium amount has greater visibility than does any other healthcare cost. And if that’s where our attention is focused, that is where the potential “political capital” lies. So we have an entire body of law now focused on redefining health insurance.

Let’s look at the strange way we’ve come to define “health insurance.”

We’ve come to demand a “pre-paid health plan” that “covers” every conceivable service whether elective or not and whether or not the condition precipitating the need for that service pre-existed the “insurance” contract. The (natural?) result of this unreasonable demand is a ghastly-high premium on a policy that calls everything “covered” but actually pays for precious little until we exceed $4K-6K in costs – an eventuality unlikely outside of a hospitalization.

In effect, the result is that we all have “major-medical-only” coverage now (assuming “‘covered” means, “paid-for”).

If we insured our homes the way we insure our bodily care, we’d need to file a claim to change a light bulb. We’d then self-fund the purchase of the lightbulb (at many times today’s going price) but then smugly remind ourselves that this cost “went against my deductible.”

The biggest factor driving up the cost of healthcare services is the complete absence of consumer price-pressure on providers of healthcare! If individuals are covering their routine-care costs via HSA Accounts, the services rendered will once again come under the constant scrutiny of millions of Americans. That alone will force transparent and competitive pricing.

Let’s get back to common sense. The combination of HSA for funding routine care and an actual insurance policy for managing catastrophic-expense risk will put consumers back in charge.

Absent the unreasonable force-of-law demand that insurance companies transform into administrators of prepaid healthcare plans, insurers will resume constructing and offering competitive insurance products.

We have no need for a Federal Healthcare law as long as we remain a free society capable of innovating many and varied alternatives – simultaneously – without an act of Congress.

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https://www.americanactionforum.org/week-in-regulation/cra-gains-steam-senate/

CRA Gains Steam In Senate

Virtually nothing happened in the world of published regulations this week. The regulatory freeze is still largely in effect, as two lone airworthiness directives provided the only monetized figures. Total costs this week were just $39 million, with no paperwork figures. However, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) continued to work in force. The Senate disapproved four regulations this week, totaling $501 million in regulatory rescissions and 3.8 million fewer paperwork burden hours. The per capita regulatory burden for 2017 is $428.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 27
• New Final Rules: 39
• 2017 Total Pages of Regulation: 13,378
• 2017 Final Rules: $27.2 Billion
• 2017 Proposed Rules: $111.5 Billion

The American Action Forum (AAF) has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published two airworthiness directives, one proposed rule (for Boeing 737, 757, and 767 airplanes) and one final measure (for CFM engines). The total costs are just $39 million.

Tracking Regulatory Modernization

The Senate was busy this week and passed four CRA resolutions of disapproval. They repealed the Contractor Blacklisting rule ($872 million in total costs), a Resource Management measure, a regulation on Teacher Preparation Issues ($278 million in costs), and a rule on State Plans ($73 million in costs) from the Every Student Succeeds Act. The teacher preparation rule received a fair amount of bipartisan support, as eight Democrats supported the repeal. Look to those eight Democrats for any chance of passing a more comprehensive regulatory reform package this Congress. With House passage, the combined deregulatory total from Senate actions this week tops $500 million in costs and 3.8 million fewer paperwork burden hours.

As of this writing, the House and Senate have both voted to overturn seven regulations, detailed here. President Trump has signed three measures, but the recent slate of four additional CRA resolutions from this week await formal approval. Once signed, Congress and the administration will have eliminated $3.7 billion in total regulatory costs and 4.2 million paperwork burden hours.

There are seven additional House CRA approvals on which the Senate has not voted. This week, the House and Senate both introduced a resolution of disapproval to overturn an FCC privacy rule. In addition, Senator Ted Cruz introduced a measure to overturn a Department of Energy rule for “Test Procedures for Compressors.” To date, there have been 32 resolutions of disapproval introduced, with three formally approved.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $53 billion in final state and private-sector burdens and 176.9 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 74.8 million final paperwork burden hours and imposed $38.5 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $138.7 billion in compliance costs ($27.2 billion in final rules) and has cut 20.8 million paperwork burden hours (due to 24.1 million in reductions from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/14/u-s-education-dept-and-common-core-seek-to-guide-state-education-plans/

U.S. Education Dept. and Common Core Seek to ‘Guide’ State Education Plans

AP

by Dr. Susan Berry14 Mar 201724

#ESSA provides parents w/ transparent information about their children’s education & how they can help students & schools grow and improve.

— US Dept of Education (@usedgov) March 13, 2017

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Under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – which replaced No Child Left Behind – every state is required to submit its education plan for approval to the USED for the purpose of accountability for taxpayer funds.

While USED has released a “revised consolidated State plan template” that reflects Congress’s recent rollback of additional Obama-era education regulations, the department says two private groups that own the copyright of the Common Core standards may assist states with an “alternative template.”

Streamlining the #ESSA state plan template puts the individual needs of States, localities, schools and students first.

— US Dept of Education (@usedgov) March 13, 2017

In a “fact sheet” released by USED, under secretary Betsy DeVos, the department refers states to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) for assistance “to support the plan submission process.”

CCSSO and NGA are “acknowledged as the sole owners and developers of the Common Core State Standards, and no claims to the contrary shall be made,” the Core’s website states.

USED provides the new rules for state educational agencies (SEAs):

An SEA may submit a consolidated State plan using either the revised template provided by the Department on March 13, 2017 or an alternative template that addresses each requirement identified in the revised template and developed with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). If an SEA does not use the revised template provided by the Department, it must submit a table of contents or guide that indicates where the SEA addressed each requirement in its consolidated State plan. To help ensure timely submissions, the National Governors Association will be working closely with Governors, CCSSO and Chief State School Officers to support the plan submission process.

In her statement about the new guidance, DeVos said:

The updated state template will ensure states are able to better serve students with the freedom and flexibility they deserve, and which Congress requires. My philosophy is simple: I trust parents, I trust teachers, and I trust local school leaders to do what’s right for the children they serve. ESSA was passed with broad bipartisan support to move power away from Washington, D.C., and into the hands of those who are closest to serving our nation’s students.

States, along with local educators and parents, are on the frontlines of ensuring every child has access to a quality education. The plans each state develops under the streamlined ESSA template will promote innovation, flexibility and accountability to ensure every child has a chance to learn and succeed.

Though DeVos recently said ESSA “essentially does away with the notion of a Common Core,” and her statement contains “local control” language, her insistence that approval of state education plans is a “good and important role for the federal government” has drawn the concerns of many grassroots parent activists who have been battling against Common Core proponents in their states for years now.

We’re doing what’s best for children by implementing #ESSA as Congress intended, w/ the freedom & flexibility state & local leaders deserve.

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) March 13, 2017

Ohio grassroots parent activist Heidi Huber tells Breitbart News it is time for President Donald Trump to meet with parents who have been waging this fight in their states.

“For those of us who have been in the trenches of this education department reform fight for years now, we have watched this same cast of cronies repackage this top down, workforce development-data mining scheme ten times over,” she explains. “And without fail, behind every so-called door of reform lies the same Bill Gates funding machine and non-government organization apparatchiks.”

Huber points out the CCSSO has received $116,463,908 million in grants from the Gates Foundation, the primary source of private support for implementation of the Common Core standards.

“The latest DeVos ESSA regulation reduction repackage proves to be just more of the same,” she continues:

How is it that the Federal government, which only contributes 10% or less of a state’s education budget, has full authority over a state’s standards and assessments? According to DeVos’s new rules, a state can choose to use an alternative template, but guess whose blessing a state must earn under that scenario? Ah yes, the Chief Council of State School Officers (CCSSO), the same group that was a major player in coercing states into Common Core. Ohio was but one of the states which CCSSO executive director Chris Minnich testified in opposition to Common Core repeal legislation and planted lobbyists to defeat our grassroots efforts.

“President Trump needs to sit down with the anti-Common Core parents who have led the fight in their states across the country if he truly wants to understand the nature of this beast,” she urges. “And he’d be well served in the process. We are tireless, fearless, and dedicated to winning this war. We are fighting for our children. Defeat is not an option.”

American Principles Project education director Emmett McGroarty acknowledges the new guidance “eliminates the Obama Administration’s instruction as to whom a state must consult in the development of its education plan.”

“The Trump Administration rightly recognizes that such instructions are a severe intrusion into state sovereignty,” he tells Breitbart News. “In fact, it ought to issue a government-wide Executive Order recognizing this principle, and it should pursue legislation to make that rule permanent.”

McGroarty, however, also notes the contradiction built into the USED’s new guidance:

But the Administration inexplicably invites a private entity into the governance process. It advises that a state may use the template developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (one of the owners of the Common Core) to submit its education plan. Moreover, the CCSSO template incorporates the dictates of the Obama education regulations and thus appears to flout Congress’s finding that those regulations violated, or were inconsistent with, the law in 23 respects.

According to Politico, governors and groups who have grown accustomed to the long reach of the Obama administration are complaining about the Trump administration’s loosening of the requirement to reach out to certain groups – such as civil rights advocates, teachers, and the PTA – in order to complete state plans. However, the CCSSO and the NGA both appear to want to allay the fears of these groups.

“[S]tates will continue outreach they’ve been doing for about a year – and new guidelines won’t change that,” says the CCSSO.

The NGA also released a statement about the new guide:

Governors are concerned that the Department’s revised template fails to prioritize proper stakeholder engagement, even though it is a core requirement within the law. NGA has led national efforts to encourage significant input from classroom teachers, parents, superintendents, principals and school boards. We will not waver as a result of this development.

Across the country, governors like Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards will continue to provide a forum for stakeholders’ voices so states can sufficiently develop their plans and determine the future of the collective education system.

However, Ann Marie Banfield, education liaison with the New Hampshire-based Cornerstone policy and research group, encourages parents to step back to see who is doing the arguing.

“It’s interesting that the political elite in Washington D.C. are arguing over a federal law that governs our local schools,” she tells Breitbart News. “This shouldn’t be an argument at all. No one handed the federal government this kind of power. They took it and we have to sit here and watch them hammer out what we can do in our local schools.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s happening under Obama or Trump, this law is an overreach,” Banfield says about ESSA. “Those who passed this law ignored the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that’s what I think we should all be talking about.”

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of the Florida-based Education Liberty Watch, notes the USED’s new state plan template still allows states to submit to the federal government children’s “social and emotional learning” (SEL) data for accountability purposes.

“Sadly, USED’s new state plan accountability template still allows and promotes the use of extremely subjective ‘school quality or student success indicators,’ such as ‘student engagement,’ ‘teacher engagement,’ ‘school climate,’ and ‘any other indicator the State chooses that meets the requirements of this clause,’” she observes, and continues:

This opens the door for even more invasive and expensive social emotional assessments and data collection that will follow children for life and have potentially huge impacts on their future. Florida is contemplating adding “persistence” as “any other indicator” when even one of the nation’s leading experts in these types of SEL indicators, Angela Duckworth, has admitted that these assessments are extremely imprecise and not valid and these indicators should not be used in accountability schemes. Given that the law requires these indicators to be “valid, reliable, comparable, and statewide,” it is inconsistent with itself and none of these should be used. Parents and activists should oppose use of these kinds of fuzzy indicators in their state plans or in state legislation.

“Ultimately, the Administration needs to take seriously President Trump’s campaign promise to return education to local control,” McGroarty urges. “It must push for legislation to get the federal government out of the business of, among other things, evaluating state education plans and dictating when and in what subjects children must take standardized tests, how teachers are to be evaluated, and what data is collected on children.”

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http://kylewingfield.blog.myajc.com/2017/03/13/opinion-about-americans-losing-insurance-under-gop-plan/

Opinion: About Americans ‘losing’ insurance under GOP plan

Kyle Wingfield•March 13, 2017

By 

The Congressional Budget Office has released its initial estimate of the effects of the House GOP’s health-care plan, and one big takeaway is that the bill would reduce federal deficits by about $337 billion over 10 years compared with leaving Obamacare on the books. That’s worth noting, given that Democrats have spent years peddling the fiction that Obamacare somehow saves Uncle Sam money.

But you can also expect a lot of headlines about how many people would “lose” coverage if it is passed. I put “lose” in quotation marks, because it’s clear from the report that a great many of these people would actually be making a choice, not having an outcome forced on them by the government.

The report doesn’t give us an easy-to-read tally of how many people would no longer elect to buy coverage vs. those who would lose something they’d prefer to keep. But there are a couple of key references to this difference in the report’s section on “Net Effects on Health Insurance Coverage” (pgs. 19-21):

• “… in 2017, the elimination of the individual mandate penalties would result in about 4 million additional people becoming uninsured”;
• “Most of the reductions in coverage in 2018 and 2019 would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate. Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they choose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties. And some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.” (emphasis added).

Let’s put those figures in context. In 2017, the CBO says the elimination of mandate penalties — i.e., the fines for not buying insurance — would account for 4 million people no longer being uninsured. In total that year, the CBO says 4 million people would become uninsured. The implication, then, is that most if not all of these people would be choosing to become uninsured because they no longer faced a penalty for doing so. (Some of them are listed as having employer-sponsored coverage now, but the CBO report makes clear they, like people in the non-group/individual market, would be choosing not to buy the insurance their employers offer.)

In the two years following that, the number of newly uninsured would rise to 14 million and then 16 million. But again, the CBO says “most of the(se) reductions … would stem from repealing the penalties associated with the individual mandate.” In other words, “most of” the 10 million to 12 million people dropping coverage in 2018 and 2019 would be choosing to do so because they no longer face a penalty for being uninsured.

Put those figures together, and the number of people who choose to drop coverage rather than “losing” it are:

• 4 million out of 4 million in 2017 (100 percent);
• about 9 million out of 14 million in 2018 (64 percent);
• about 10 million out of 16 million in 2019 (63 percent).

That’s a rather different way to look at things.

For all the talk on both sides about replacing subsidies with tax credits, the CBO predicts that over time they will pretty much even out: In 2026, there will be only about 2 million fewer people buying insurance on the non-group market compared to the number who use the Obamacare exchanges today. That’s the same number as estimated for this year — meaning we are still mostly talking about people not buying insurance because they aren’t being forced to buy insurance.

The bad news, if you’re a Republican being asked to support this bill, is that in the meantime the CBO expects a lot of volatility in the non-group market. The number of people in that market today who become uninsured will peak between 2020 and 2022, at 8 million to 9 million. It’s unclear to me why the CBO would expect the switch from a subsidy to a tax credit to take that many people that long to adjust to, given that the tax credit has been designed to act virtually the same as a subsidy. There’s not a good answer in the report.

The biggest change in insured will come in Medicaid. But here, too, there’s some context that’s useful. More than two-thirds of the projected eventual “drop” in enrollment — 5 million out of 14 million, roughly speaking — comes from expansions in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. Confused? You should be. Essentially, the CBO is projecting these states, such as Georgia, would have expanded Medicaid eventually, but won’t now. How does the agency know that? It isn’t telling. But it is saying 5 million people will “lose” insurance — which they do not have, because those expansions have not taken place — as a result. This is deeply disingenuous.

Not all of these trends are projected to take place at the same speed, so you can’t simply add the Medicaid numbers to the private-market numbers. Still, it’s clear that, at any given moment, more than half of the people “losing” insurance under the GOP plan are either choosing to stop buying it or not receiving Medicaid which they have not been offered in the first place.

***

Keep in mind, the question of whether this is a good plan is, to some degree, an entirely different question. I tend to be underwhelmed by it.

But if you see people railing against it based on the “fact” that millions of Americans will “lose” coverage because of it, just know the real, full story is rather different.

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https://fee.org/articles/snowstorms-or-snowflakes/

Snowstorms or Snowflakes?

Lawrence W. Reed 

There are two basic prisms through which we can see, study, and prescribe for human society: individualism and collectivism. These worldviews are as different as night and day, and they create a great divide in the social sciences. That’s because the perspective from which you see the world will set your thinking down one intellectual path or another. 

No Two Alike

I think of it as the difference between snowstorms and snowflakes. A collectivist sees humanity as a snowstorm, and that’s as up-close as he gets if he’s consistent. An individualist sees the storm, too, but is immediately drawn to the uniqueness of each snowflake that composes it. The distinction is fraught with profound implications. 

No two snowstorms are alike, but a far more amazing fact is that no two snowflakes are identical either—at least so far as painstaking research has indicated. Wilson Alwyn Bentley of Jericho, Vermont, one of the first known snowflake photographers, developed a process in 1885 for capturing them on black velvet before they melted. He snapped pictures of about 5,000 of them and never found two that were the same—nor has anyone else ever since. Scientists believe that changes in humidity, temperature, and other conditions extant as flakes form and fall make it highly unlikely that any one flake has ever been precisely duplicated. (Ironically, Bentley died of pneumonia in 1931 after walking six miles in a blizzard. Lesson: One flake may be harmless, but a lot of them can be deadly).

Contemplate this long enough and you may never see a snowstorm (or humanity) the same way again. 

Dr. Anne Bradley is vice president of economic initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics. At a recent FEE seminar in Naples, Florida, she explained matters this way:

When we look at a snowstorm from a distance, it looks like indistinguishable white dots peppering the sky, one blending into the next. When we get an up-close glimpse, we see how intricate, beautiful, and dissimilar each and every snowflake is. This is helpful when thinking about humans. From a distance, a large crowd of people might look the same, and it’s true that we possess many similar characteristics. But we know that a more focused inspection brings us nearer to the true nature of what we’re looking at. It reveals that each of us bears a unique set of skills, talents, ambitions, traits, and propensities unmatched anywhere on the planet. 

This uniqueness is critical when we make policy decisions and offer prescriptions for society as a whole; for even though we each look the same in certain respects, we are actually so different, one to the next, that our sameness can only be a secondary consideration. 

Primary Uniqueness

The late Roger J. Williams, author of You Are Extra-Ordinary and Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty (as well as several articles in The Freeman), was a noted biochemistry professor at the University of Texas in Austin. He argued that fingerprints are but one of endless biological characteristics unique to each of us, including the contours and operation of our brains, nerve receptors, and circulatory systems. 

These facts offer biological bases for the many other differences between one person and the next. Einstein, he noted, was an extremely precocious student of mathematics, but he learned language so slowly that his parents were concerned about his learning to talk. Williams summed it well more than 40 years ago when he observed, “Our individuality is as inescapable as our humanity. If we are to plan for people, we must plan for individuals, because that’s the only kind of people there are.”

Proceeding one step further, we must recognize that only individuals plan. When collectives are said to “plan” (e.g., “The nation plans to go to war”), it always reduces to certain, specific, identifiable individuals making plans for other individuals. The only good answer to the collectivist question, “What does America eat for breakfast?” is this: “Nothing. However, about 315 million individual Americans often eat breakfast. Many of them sometimes skip it, and on any given day, there are 315 million distinct answers to this question.”

Collectivist thinking is simply not very deep or thorough. Collectivists see the world the way Mr. Magoo did—as one big blur. But unlike Mr. Magoo, they’re not funny. They homogenize people in a communal blender, sacrificing the discrete features that make us who we are. The collectivist “it takes a village” mentality assigns thoughts and opinions to amorphous groups, when, in fact, only particular people hold thoughts and opinions. 

Collectivists devise one-size-fits-all schemes and care little for how those schemes may affect the varied plans of real people. Any one flake means little or nothing to the collectivist because he rarely looks at them; and in any event, he implicitly dismisses the flakes because there are so many to play with. Collectivists are usually reluctant to celebrate the achievements of individuals per se because they really believe that, to quote President Obama, “you didn’t build that.”

Take individuals out of the equation and you take the humanity out of whatever you’re promoting. What you’d never personally inflict on your neighbor, one on one, you might happily sanction if you think it’ll be carried out by some faceless, collective entity to some amorphous blob on behalf of some nebulous “common good.” The inescapable fact is that we are not interchangeable. Cogs in a machine are, but people most emphatically are not. 

If this point is lost on you, then watch the 1998 DreamWorks animated film “Antz.” The setting is an ant colony in which all ants are expected to behave as an obedient blob. This is very convenient for the tyrant ants in charge, each of which possesses a very unique personality indeed. The debilitating collectivist mindset is shaken by a single ant who marches to a different drummer—namely, his own self—and ultimately saves the colony through his individual initiative.

Marx, Mother Theresa, and Lessons

Karl Marx was a collectivist. Mother Theresa was an individualist. One dealt with people in lumps. The other one treated them as individuals. The lessons in that clear-cut dichotomy are legion. They are ignored only at great peril.

So what does humanity look like to you—a snowstorm or snowflakes? 

If your answer is the latter, then you understand what the philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin meant when he wrote in 1958, “But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you—the social reformers—see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.”

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