June 29, 2012
By STEFAN MOLYNEUX | FREEDOMAINRADIO | JUNE 29, 2012
Fact 1: There Is No Law in the US Anymore.
Fact 2: Obamacare Is an Admission That All Previous Government Healthcare Programs Have Failed.
Fact 3: Cost of Already Doubled from Initial Estimates.
Fact 4: 70%+ of Healthcare Issues Results from Individual Choice.
Fact 5: The Inability to Discriminate on Pre-Existing Conditions is an Essential Driver of Healthcare Costs.
Fact 6: The Fines for Noncompliance Are Destined to Rise Enormously.
See the simple and raw truth about Obamacare explained in a philosophical, easy to understand way below:
June 8, 2012
By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | JUNE 8, 2012
The Obama administration recognizes that it may actually be handed a defeat later this month if the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate that obligates Americans to buy health insurance from a government program or worse, if the judges find Obamacare unconstitutional as a whole. While a decision is made by the Supreme Court justices, the administration is taking steps to cope with a defeat that could be decisive during an election year both politically and in the economic realm.
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius officially announced what she called contingency plans should Obamacare be rejected as unlawful by the US Supreme Court. The Court does not need to declare Obamacare illegal in order to cause chaos for the administration. A declaration that the controversial individual mandate violates individual rights, would basically and automatically defund Obamacare, because it is based on the use of government force that the Obama administration intends to finance its program.
The prospect of defeat raised awareness in the Federal Government and all responsible parties are now working extra time to mitigate the impact of a decision not to uphold Obamacare. While she was speaking at a women’s health town hall meeting held at the White House, Kathleen Sebelius said that although the government remained optimistic, they were also preparing for the worst. “We are confident and optimistic that this change within the law was well within the purview of Congress. Having said that, we’ll be ready for court contingencies,” she said. Sebelius made sure to use scare tactics in order to seek support and to put pressure on the Court’s decision. She added that if Obamacare is stroke down such a decision would have a “pretty cataclysmic impact”. Her explanation went on to say that such outcome would indeed undo what she called the “incredible changes and improvements to Medicare.
The Obama administration’s hopes are now riding on a positive decision by the Court that ratifies the healthcare law based on the premise that the judges will consider the large number of people who will allegedly benefit from socialized medicine, many of whom, Obama himself has said, cannot afford to pay for healthcare themselves. This is often added to other measures included in the legislation which allow children to remain under their parents’ health coverage and a mandate for insurance companies not to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.
The parts of the law that the Obama administration does not want the justices or the public to remember is that constitutionally, government cannot obligate an individual to buy insurance. It must be a decision made by each person. But since the success of the law depends on the financing provided by all participants, a declaration that the individual mandate is unconstitutional would effectively defund Obamacare. “What we’re doing right now is just working as hard as we possibly can to get ready for 2014,” Sebelius said, referring to the time when most of the law will actually take effect.
May 8, 2012
Food additives in raw and prepared foods and unlabeled GMO ingredients will dramatically increase the number of fat people to almost half of the population.
By NANCI HELLMICH | USA TODAY | MAY 8, 2012
A new forecast on America’s obesity crisis has health experts fearing a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring the epidemic under control.
The new projection, released here Monday, warns that 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030, and 11% could be severely obese, adding billions of dollars to health care costs.
“If nothing is done (about obesity), it’s going to hinder efforts for health care cost containment,” says Justin Trogdon, a research economist with RTI International, a non-profit research organization in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.
As of 2010, about 36% of adults were obese, which is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight, and 6% were severely obese, which is 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight.
“The obesity problem is likely to get much worse without a major public health intervention,” says Eric Finkelstein, a health economist with Duke University Global Health Institute and lead researcher on the new study.
The analysis was presented at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Weight of the Nation” meeting. The study is being published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The increase in the obesity rate would mean 32 million more obese people within two decades, Finkelstein says. That’s on top of the almost 78 million people who were obese in 2010.
Extra weight takes a huge toll on health, increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many types of cancer, sleep apnea and other debilitating and chronic illnesses.
“Obesity is one of the biggest contributors for why healthcare spending has been going up over the past 20 years,” says Kenneth Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta.
The obesity rate was relatively stable in the USA between 1960 and 1980, when about 15% of people fell into the category. It increased dramatically in the ’80s and ’90s and was up to 32% in 2000 and 36% in 2010, according to CDC data. Obesity inched up slightly over the past decade, which has caused speculation that the obesity rate might be leveling off.
Finkelstein, Trogdon and colleagues predicted future obesity rates with a statistical analysis using different CDC data, including body mass index, of several hundred thousand people. Body mass is a number that takes into account height and weight. Their estimates suggest obesity is likely to continue to increase, although not as fast as it has in the past.
Finkelstein says the estimates assume that things have gotten about as bad as they can get in the USA, in terms of an environment that promotes obesity. The country “is already saturated” with fast-food restaurants, cheap junk food and electronic technologies that render people sedentary at home and work, he says. “We don’t expect the environment to get much worse than it is now, or at least we hope it doesn’t.”
In an earlier study, Finkelstein and experts from the CDC estimated that medical-related costs of obesity may be as high as $147 billion a year, or roughly 9% of medical expenditures. An obese person costs an average of $1,400 more in medical expenses a year than someone who is at a healthy weight, they found. Other researchers have estimated the costs may be even higher.
If the obesity rate stays at 2010 levels instead of rising to 42% as predicted, then the country could save more than $549.5 billion in weight-related medical expenditures between now and 2030, says study co-author Trogdon.
Patrick O’Neil, president of the Obesity Society, a group of weight-control researchers and professionals, says that these new projections “indicate that even more people will be losing loved ones and others will be suffering sickness and living lives that fall short of their promise because of obesity.”
There’s no one-size-fits all solution to a complex problem that has been decades in the making, says Sam Kass, assistant chef and senior policy advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives at the White House. “This national conversation — this national movement — must continue. This is literally life and death we are talking about.”
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March 28, 2012
By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | MARCH 28, 2012
As the Supreme Court of the United States reviews the legality of the so called Obamacare socialist healthcare legislation, the first accounts of the justices opinions about it seem to be negative to say the least. Meanwhile, Obama supporters like James Carville are trying to win the battle already for the Democrat side. Carville has said that a loss in the Supreme Court will help democrats.
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said that Obamacare is a train wreck and that expectations are low for the legislation to survive the justices’ review. As the hours go by, some opinions from their analysis have been leaked into the media, with Justice Kennedy saying that Obamacare fundamentally changes the relationship between the people and their government. Justice John Roberts has compared the mandate too make anyone and everyone buy government sponsored healthcare to having that same government mandating that people buy a cellphone. “Can government make you buy a cell phone?” asked Roberts. Meanwhile, Justice Anthony Scalia questioned the individual mandate by asking pro Obamacare folks why was the definition of “market” so broadly represented in the text of the legislation. “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli,” Scalia said. Does government make people buy broccoli?
Given this scenario, you would think that defenders of Obamacare would be absolutely sharp when speaking in favor of the legislation. But it wasn’t the case for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who stumbled when trying to make the case for a legalized socialist healthcare system. Mr. Verrilli continuously coughed and stuttered while trying to speak about the wonders of Obamacare and justifying the government controlled healthcare scheme. But is this a doomsday sentence for Obamacare? It is also being reported that even Justice Sotomayor has expressed some doubts about some aspects of Obamacare. According to Reuters “the four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, all indicated that they believed the mandate valid under the U.S. Constitution. Two conservatives, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, were vocal in their skepticism about the requirement.”
I’ve seen rabbits being pulled out of hats before, so I would not hold my breath for a decision against Obamacare just yet. “Obamacare is in big trouble,” says Jeffrey Toobin, who has been in attendance during the review process. But just as Carville manage to paint a defeat as a victory, the main stream liberal media has orchestrated a campaign to prepare their audience for a possible loss, while at the same time lowering expectations in the minds of the rest of the public in order to take some pressure off a potential decision that upholds Obamacare as it stands. It is the typical “playing possum game”. They’ve done it before with the so-called kinetic action in Libya, the war in Iraq and a possible attack against Iran and Syria.
What are the chances that Obamacare will not pass, that it could be upheld? According to Mr. Toobin, there are 5 very solid votes to throw out this healthcare legislation out the window. But the idea that people should participate in this socialized way of delivering healthcare also has four very strong votes that support it in the four liberal Supreme Court justices. Mr. Toobin says the fifth vote, a conservative one, could decide whether or not Americans are indeed obligated — even if such obligation is unconstitutional — to purchase government healthcare. That vote comes from Justice John Roberts, who although has expressed reservations about Obamacare, has not shown a clear cut opinion about the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the law. “I think it just looks bad for this law,” says Toobin.
A popular talking point that has been circulating is that those who do not enter the government mandated healthcare system will make it that much more difficult for those who do pay for the services provided under such a system. This is a way to sort of hijack public opinion and to misguided the public to support and accept Obamacare because it is good for the ‘commonwealth’. It is the typical collectivist view that people must do what is better for the mass, as supposed to taking care of themselves first, to then help others. Those who do not support Obamacare, as we have seen since the law was brought up and discussed in mainstream American, will be ostracized and called names for not complying.
If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare as it is now, it would establish a dangerous precedent that the government can tell anyone to buy any product as supposed to people being able to choose whatever they think it’s better for them. Here is where the government telling people to buy broccoli comes in handy. What will be next? Government telling people what car to buy? What airline to fly or what supermarkets to go to purchase groceries? How about how much electricity, gas or water people should use? As explained by Mr. Toobin, who acts as a legal expert for CNN, Obamacare forces people to buy a product they may not want or that they may not need. The same is true for tax collection, for example. Although the Constitution is very clear about the ways in which government must operate, people are obligated to pay income tax. If Obamacare is thrown out due to its unconstitutional nature, couldn’t citizens also make a case for not paying income tax because of the unconstitutional way in which government forces people to pay it? How about challenges against the constitutional amendment and the way it was passed to allow the government to tax people’s income?
What happens if the individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional, but the rest of the law is not? Because Obamacare is directly dependent on the government’s ability to force citizens to buy insurance in order to finance Obamacare, it is hard to see how the rest of the program would be able to stand on its own feet. Government would have to kill Obamacare as a whole, restructure it in order to make it available without the monies collected from individuals who decide not to join the program, or raise taxes in order to finance it. It is now well-known that the actual cost of Obamacare goes way beyond the total provided by the Federal Government and that it would take more than a national consensus for everyone to join in order to keep it alive for as long as the government wants.
According to recent polls, at least 30 percent of the interviewed Americans do support a decision to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. As the system stands now, the healthcare system is 20,000 doctors short to help the number of patients who use Medicare and Medicaid. What will happen if Obamacare is upheld and many more millions of people decide to make an appointment to see their doctor? What good does it make to have free healthcare if there isn’t a doctor to visit?
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Luis Miranda is the founder and editor of The Real Agenda. For more of his stories, subscribe to our article feed. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email article ideas and insights through the Contact page.
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