There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Premiums for Affordable Care Act plans are rising in 2026, according to new figures from 12 states.
Premiums are set to increase by thousands of dollars for the average family, according to the data, which was published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That includes a $20,700 annual jump for a 60-year-old couple in Oregon and a $32,600 annual spike for a family of four in Vermont with $130,000 annual income, according to Oct. 20 posts on X by Gideon Lukens, a senior fellow and director of research at the center.
Oregon and Vermont are also seeing premium spikes due to expiring tax credit enhancements, as their window shopping is underway for 2026 ACA marketplace plans. A typical 60-year-old Oregonian couple making $85,000 will face a $20,700 increase in annual premiums. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/2WntKbf4Dt
Some states have been allowing people to preview plans.
The federal government has not published prices for the 28 state exchanges it runs.
The higher prices stem from Congress not reaching a deal to extend broad subsidies for Obamacare, which are slated to expire at the end of 2025. The subsidies come in the form of refundable tax credits. The credits had for years been available to poorer individuals not eligible for Medicaid or other public insurance, before Congress in 2021 loosened eligibility criteria. Lawmakers extended the broadened criteria in the Inflation Reduction Act.
KFF, a nonprofit that analyzes health data, said in September that if the broadened subsidies expire, premiums would more than double on average in 2026 to $1,904 from $888.
Americans across income brackets would see increases, although those with little income would see maximum increases of about $82 a month.
The majority of the more than 24 million people enrolled in a plan currently receive the credits.
A man near an office with a sign about Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, in Miami, Fla., in an undated file photograph. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Permanently extending the enhanced credits would increase the number of people with health insurance by 3.8 million in 2035, but add $350 billion to the federal deficit in the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Congress is in the midst of a shutdown after parties failed to reach an agreement on a funding bill.
Some lawmakers have been trying to extend the Obamacare subsidies or otherwise alter the health insurance system.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate Republican majority leader, said recently he is open to discussing Obamacare with Democrats, but only if the shutdown ends.
“I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom. Period,” he said.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, told a briefing on Monday that the parties must find a way to reopen the government with an agreement that extends the Obamacare subsidies.
“In Idaho, 100,000 Americans are at risk of losing their health care if the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire because it will become unaffordable for them,” he said.
This is NOT an end-of-year issue. Open enrollment runs Nov.1 – Jan.15 for most states and window shopping begins in October. If Congress waits until Dec.31, 1.5 million more people will be uninsured in 2026 compared to an earlier extension. (4/4)https://t.co/fdcuhagfEw
The goal of the healthcare industry in the United States is to take as much money away from you as possible. I truly wish that I was exaggerating, but I am not. Can you guess which nation spends the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare? Without looking it up, you probably already know that it is us. Gigantic pharmaceutical corporations and massively bloated health insurance companies are raking in colossal mountains of cash, and yet the quality of the healthcare that we receive in return is rather quite poor. People living in Albania, Panama and Kuwait have higher life expectancy rates than we do. Residents of Belarus, Cuba and Latvia have lower infant mortality rates than we do. We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we are also one of the sickest. If the U.S. healthcare system was a country, it would have the 6th largest economy on the entire globe and yet rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes continue to soar.
The numbers that I am about to share with you are absolutely stunning. For as much money as we spend on healthcare, we should have the greatest system in the world by a wide margin.
But we don’t.
We have lost our way, and I don’t know if we will ever be able to find our way back.
At this stage, our healthcare system is completely and utterly dominated by immensely powerful money making institutions, and those institutions pour vast amounts of money into political campaigns in order to make sure that there will never be any serious reforms.
There are literally trillions of dollars pouring through our healthcare system. Those that are becoming exceedingly wealthy from this system will do whatever it takes to protect it.
So it is dangerous to even write an article like this.
Pharmaceutical corporations aren’t in the business of saving lives. What they want is for you to take their pills for as long as possible, and they want the profit margins on those pills to be as large as they can get away with.
Health insurance companies are more profitable when they provide less healthcare. Every year health insurance premiums go even higher, but when it comes time to pay out, health insurance executives will deploy their “delay, deny and defend” tactics. They will search high and low for any potential reason that will allow them to deny a claim.
But of course most Americans feel that they must have health insurance because of how absurdly high medical bills have become. Many hospitals have adopted a policy of charging “whatever they can get away with”, knowing that the vast majority of their victims will never challenge their grossly inflated bills. If you have been hit with a hospital bill that is five or six figures, you know exactly what I am talking about.
The system is broken.
Everyone knows it.
But it never gets fixed.
The following are 33 shocking facts that prove that the entire U.S. healthcare industry has become one giant money making scam…
#1 The U.S. spends about 5 trillion dollars on healthcare each year.
#2 What the United States spends on healthcare is greater than the GDP of the United Kingdom.
#3 If the U.S. healthcare system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy in the entire world.
#4 Federal, state and local governments account for nearly half of all healthcare spending in the United States.
#7 Does it seem like almost half of the commercials on television are for pharmaceutical drugs? You may not be surprised to learn that pharmaceutical companies actually spend more than 15 billion dollars on television advertising in the United States each year.
#8 According to one survey, 61 percent of U.S. adults are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug.
#9 Globally, the pharmaceutical industry brings in about 1.6 trillion dollars in revenue each year. That is more money than the Pentagon spends.
#11 According to the CDC, 1.5 million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs. 600,000 of those people are age 65 or older.
#13 In 2023, the six largest health insurance companies in the United States had combined revenues of almost 1.1 trillion dollars. That is also more money than the Pentagon spends.
#14 The profits of health insurance companies in the U.S. increased by 287 percent in a 10 year period.
#15 On average, annual health insurance premiums for family coverage have reached a total of $25,572 per year.
#16 In 2023, the CEOs of the five largest health insurance companies in the U.S. brought home approximately 75 million dollars in total compensation.
#17 The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Andrew Witty, received a total of 23.5 million dollars in compensation in 2023.
#18 One survey found that 18 percent of all insured adults in the U.S. have had a health insurance claim denied just within the past year.
#22 According to the CFPB, approximately 100 million Americans are in medical debt right now.
#23 Even though the vast majority of the population is covered by health insurance, 62 percent of the two million personal bankruptcies that are filed each year in the United States are caused by medical debt.
#33 A study that was conducted a few years ago determined that more than 90 percent of all hospital bills contain errors that can result in “overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials”.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
Do not read this article if you do not want to get angry. The “healthcare industry” in the United States has become one gigantic money making scam, and tens of millions of American families now live in great fear of illness and disease. Why are they so afraid? It is because a single trip to the hospital can ruin you financially. Even if you are covered by health insurance, medical debt can still wreck your finances. In fact, most of the people that go bankrupt due to medical bills actually have health insurance. Meanwhile, on the other side there are lots of people that are becoming fabulously wealthy from this system. Our “healthcare industry” has turned large numbers of doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives into multi-millionaires. Of course the largest shareholders in our gigantic healthcare corporations are raking in the most cash of all. The healthcare industry in the United States has become a cesspool of corruption and greed, and this has been the case for so long that we don’t even remember what a legitimate system even looks like anymore.
Many Americans truly believed that health insurance would protect them if something went terribly wrong with their health.
But then they discovered that health insurance companies will use their “delay, deny and defend” tactics to weasel out of paying what they owe any what that they possibly can.
Even if you do have a health insurance company that is relatively honest, and that is fairly rare these days, you are still just one really bad accident or one really bad illness away from bankruptcy unless you are independently wealthy.
Our healthcare system is designed to rapidly drain money out of us when we are at our most vulnerable. If you have to call for an ambulance to take you to the hospital, are you thinking about how much your care will cost at that point?
Of course not. You are just hoping that you will survive.
Today, it is so easy to rack up $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000 in medical debt in the blink of an eye and many hospitals are becoming extremely aggressive about collecting on those medical debts.
I guarantee that many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about.
One trip to the hospital can wipe out years of financial savings. But why should it cost so much? In many cases, a doctor only spends a few minutes with you.
Sadly, you discover the truth when you follow the money. There are a lot of people that are becoming exceedingly wealthy from this system, and unfortunately that does not include middle class Americans.
The following are 18 horrifying statistics about medical bills, medical debt and the healthcare industry that will make you so mad you will want to tear your hair out…
#1 According to the CFPB, approximately 100 million Americans are in medical debt right now.
#2 Even though the vast majority of the population is covered by health insurance, 62 percent of the two million personal bankruptcies that are filed each year in the United States are caused by medical debt.
#12 A study that was conducted a few years ago determined that more than 90 percent of all hospital bills contain errors that can result in “overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials”…
According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, billing errors affected over 90% of hospital bills. These errors can result in overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials, leading to financial hardship for patients.
#13 The average family premium for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States has skyrocketed to $25,572 annually.
#14 One survey found that 18 percent of all insured adults in the U.S. have had a health insurance claim denied within the past year.
#15 Since Obamacare became law, the annual profits of the five largest health insurance companies in the United States have gone up by 230 percent.
#16 In 2023, the six largest health insurance companies in the United States had combined revenues of almost 1.1 trillion dollars.
#17 In 2023, the CEOs of the five largest health insurance companies in the U.S. brought home approximately 75 million dollars in total compensation.
Will the insurance industry be able to survive tens of billions of dollars in losses from the Los Angeles fires? There have been catastrophic fires in California before, but never anything quite like this. So what is going to happen to homeowners if their insurance companies go bankrupt and cannot pay? Even the ones that do not go bankrupt are really going to struggle. I have a feeling that some of them will delay payouts for an extended period of time and will deny as many claims as they possibly can in a desperate attempt to survive. In the end, it is likely that vast numbers of homeowners that were counting on their insurance companies to bail them out will be left holding the bag.
It is being projected that total economic losses from these fires could reach 150 billion dollars, and the insurance industry will be hit with approximately 20 to 25 billion dollars of those losses…
Analysts at Evercore ISI have estimated that insurance industry losses from the Los Angeles wildfires will be in the $20 billion to $25 billion range, and also expect the fires to be treated as one event which could help primary carriers reach their reinsurance coverage.
That is going to be a really tough pill to swallow.
One expert is warning that we are literally “on the edge of a major financial crisis for the insurance industry”…
“I think we’re on the edge of a major financial crisis for the insurance industry,” says Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor, director of the university’s Resilience Studies Program and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute.
I agree with him.
I don’t see how the industry is going to avoid a historic crisis in the aftermath of these fires.
In particular, Politico is telling us that this “could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market”…
Wednesday’s firestorm in a wealthy area of Los Angeles could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market.
The state’s insurance market has been teetering on the edge of insolvency for years thanks to catastrophic wildfires that have driven many insurers to stop writing new policies and drop existing ones.
Insurance companies are generally well capitalized, but there is only so much they can take.
I think that it is probably inevitable that some insurers will not make it, and that would be extremely bad news for homeowners that are holding policies from those companies…
‘My concern is that the insurance companies won’t be able to handle all the claims and file for bankruptcy and that’s that. It’s scary,’ Los Angeles construction worker Ivan De La Torre, 32, whose uncle and sister both lost their houses in a fire that consumed half of Altadena, a suburb of some 40,000 people north of Los Angeles.
As hundreds of Los Angeles residents return to find homes reduced to ashes due to a devastating wave of wildfires, many are fearful that their insurance policies may not cover the rebuild cost and that future premiums will be astronomical.
Rebuilding costs are going to be insane.
Just think about how much it would cost to rebuild the home that you are living in right now.
If you are a homeowner, could you rebuild your home for what you originally paid for it?
In the vast majority of cases, the answer would be no.
The situation is further complicated by elevated construction costs. Both material prices and labor costs have remained high since the pandemic, which could amplify the final insurance payouts.
Insurers will also face additional living expense claims, typically capped at 30% of a dwelling’s value, and business interruption losses for commercial properties.
Of course many homeowners in the Los Angeles area did not have any insurance at all, and so now they have lost everything. Here is just one example…
The family of Chad Comey, a local musician and community organizer who’s been taking care of his disabled parents for the past several years, lost their home in Pacific Palisades to the fire.
“Chad is one of the best people I know,” wrote friend Tom Rhalter in the fundraiser he organized through GoFundMe for Comey. “Chad’s mom is paralyzed by Neuromyelitis Optica, a rare autoimmune disease, and his dad is blind.
“Chad is the best boss I’ve ever worked for and one of the kindest people I know. The fire took everything: clothes, possessions, and memories,” Rhalter continued. “His parents didn’t have insurance on the home. Chad and his family need immediate financial assistance to help recover from the fire.”
Can you imagine being in that situation?
How would you feel?
State Farm is taking a lot of heat for removing coverage from tens of thousands of homeowners last year…
State Farm said in 2023 that it would stop accepting new homeowners-insurance applications in California and then added last year that it would stop covering 72,000 homes across the state due to the growing frequency and severity of wildfires.
Comedic actor Rob Schneider ranted against State Farm last week, saying they were ‘a pile of crap for cancelling insurance policies’.
Actor James Woods, whose Pacific Palisades home was engulfed by flames and destroyed, also confirmed in a post that ‘one of the major insurance companies canceled all the policies in our neighborhood about four months ago’, an apparent reference to State Farm.
Sadly, approximately 1,600 homeowners in Pacific Palisades had their policies canceled by State Farm about six months ago…
About 1,600 policies in Pacific Palisades were dropped by State Farm in July, California Department of Insurance spokesman Michael Soller said in an Thursday email to CBS MoneyWatch. An analysis of insurance data by CBS San Francisco last year found that State Farm also dropped more than 2,000 policies in two other Los Angeles ZIP codes, which include the Brentwood, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Monte Nido neighborhoods.
State Farm has very entertaining commercials, but this is going to be a blow to their reputation that will be very difficult to recover from.
Unfortunately, this crisis is far from over.
High winds have returned to the region, and that is going to make things very challenging for those that are fighting these fires…
Ominous winds were expected to regain strength Monday, howling through fire-blackened trees, picking up plumes of ash and smoke and further tangling efforts to tamp down the explosion of fires across Los Angeles County that have killed at least 24 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses.
From a big picture point of view, this disaster is yet another devastating blow in a long series of devastating blows to the U.S. economy.
How many blows can we possibly take?
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that it won’t be too long before we find out.
Some of the images of the destruction that has taken place in the Los Angeles area are hard to believe. We are being told that approximately “75% of Pacific Palisades has been completely leveled by fires”, and the use of the phrase “completely leveled” is not an exaggeration at all. It literally looks like a nuke went off and wiped out everything. There have been plenty of fire disasters in California before, but never anything like this. At this point, Accuweather is projecting that total economic losses will be “between $52 billion and $57 billion”…
The blazes — which are ripping through some of the nation’s priciest real estate — are likely to cause between $52 billion and $57 billion in damages and economic loss, according to a preliminary AccuWeather estimate.
That may sound like a very high estimate, but JPMorgan analyst Jimmy Bhullar came up with a very similar figure…
A separate estimate from JPMorgan analyst Jimmy Bhullar also pegged total economic losses from the LA fires at close to $50 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. That total includes insured losses at more than $20 billion and “even more if the fires are not controlled,” Bhullar said.
Those losses would make the Los Angeles-area infernos the costliest wildfires in U.S. history.
Previously, the Camp Fire in 2018 was the most destructive wildfire in history — causing an estimated $12.5 billion in insured losses, WSJ said.
Read that last sentence again.
Prior to 2025, the costliest fire disaster in U.S. history caused 12.5 billion dollars in insured losses.
This disaster is going to beat that by a very wide margin.
One of the reasons why this disaster is going to be so costly is because homes are being destroyed in an area where home values are extremely high…
Some of the worst damage is located in Santa Monica and Malibu, where median home values are over $2 million, AccuWeather said.
On Thursday, multiple fires continued to spread all around Los Angeles.
Sadly, it was being reported that the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire were still zero percent contained…
Firefighters on Thursday continued to battle multiple deadly wildfires that erupted across Los Angeles, creating an apocalyptic scene as residents fled the raging infernos.
At least five fires were active in Los Angeles County, scorching more than 40 square miles across the region, according to Cal Fire. The Palisades Fire in the coastal Pacific Palisades community and the Eaton Fire, located east in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remained the largest blazes with 0% containment.
Why aren’t they able to contain these fires?
So far, over 2,000 structures have been destroyed, and more are catching fire with each passing hour…
Out-of-control blazes are still raging in Los Angeles, with firefighters unable to contain one of Southern California’s worst natural disasters in history.
Roughly 30,000 acres were on fire, and at least five people were dead early Thursday, with more than 180,000 residents ordered to evacuate, and more than 425,000 without power. More than 2,000 structures have been lost in the Pacific Palisades fire and in the Eaton fire in and around Altadena, with critical fire weather forecast through Friday night, local officials said. Forecasters said no rain is expected over the next week.
Huberman, who has 5.2 million subscribers to his health podcast Huberman Lab, took to social media platform X to share the footage, urging people to ‘call in any activity’.
He wrote: ‘People are lighting fires in otherwise non-burning urban areas of LA.
‘Saw this happen first hand in Santa Monica. Called it in & fire dept & police responded.
‘Stay safe and call in any activity ASAP. We don’t need more flames out here.’
Why would anyone do such a thing?
Have they gone completely and utterly insane?
There should be absolutely no tolerance for anyone that is attempting to set new fires in the middle of a major fire emergency such as this.
In areas where fire has already come and gone, many are discovering that there is nothing left of their homes except for a pile of ash…
Some residents ventured back to areas the fire had already swept through, where brick chimneys were left looming over charred waste and burnt-out vehicles. The remnants of a tattered and scorched American flag flapped from a pole.
“I had just come from my family home where my mother lives that was burned to a crisp … And then I came up to my home and – same thing. It’s completely dust,” said Oliver Allnatt, 36, wearing ski goggles and a filtered face mask as he took pictures of the ruins. “Basically just a chimney stack and a pile of ash. I mean, it’s something out of a movie.”
Many of these homeowners will not be able to rebuild because they had their insurance policies canceled.
One woman that was interviewed by KABC was trying to ward off the fires with a garden hose because the home where her parents have lived for more than 70 years was no longer covered by fire insurance…
Lynne Levin-Guzman stood in the front yard of her 90-year-old parents’ home in Los Angeles County, California, trying to protect it with a garden hose — because their insurance company no longer would.
“I know I’m not supposed to be here, but this is my parents’ home and they just lost — they got canceled from their fire insurance. So they’re dealing with this,” she told CNN affiliate KABC. “They’ve lived in this house for 75 years and they’ve had the same insurance and these insurance people decided to cancel their fire insurance.”
“And they wonder why people leave California,” she added.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
As I discussed yesterday, I simply do not understand why anyone would still want to live in California at this stage.
Yes, there are good paying jobs in the state and the weather is nice. But in recent years California has been hit by historic disaster after historic disaster.
Sadly, this is just the beginning.
A lot more chaos is on the way, and natural disasters will continue to be a major theme throughout the rest of 2025.
As progressive politicians and activists justify and celebrate the assassination of a health insurance CEO, they might want to consider aiming their outrage where it really belongs — at the “affordable” healthcare reform law they all championed.
Progressives have a knack for glorifying chaos, spinning destruction as some heroic step toward toppling a “corrupt system.” That’s why the left’s giddy reaction to a healthcare executive being shot in the back, allegedly by a 26-year-old coward, was predictable.
Of course, the Internet’s dark alleys often celebrate cold-blooded murder. What’s truly chilling, though, is watching American lawmakers twist Luigi Mangione’s suspected actions into a platform to demonize “profits” and nudge the U.S. closer to a full-blown federal takeover of the healthcare sector.
For instance, Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts and progressive queen bee, told the Huffington Post: “The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system.”
A “warning”? That sounds an awful lot like a thinly veiled threat — perhaps a nod to expect more public assassinations?
Warren tried to clarify but only managed to fumble into justification: “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they… start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
Basically, violence is bad, but hey, the guy had a point.
Not to be outdone, Bernie Sanders lamented that “you cannot have people in the insurance industry rejecting needed healthcare for people while they make billions of dollars in profit.”
Notice how the left’s knee-jerk reaction is always to blame capitalism. They won’t rest until a Cuba-style infrastructure lands on America’s shores.
This morally bankrupt rhetoric underscores yet another stark difference between the left and the right on political violence. Frustration with an insurance provider, no matter how valid, can never excuse mowing someone down in the street. That’s the message we should expect from elected leaders — not the kind of equivocations that embolden lunatics to start targeting corporate executives.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find that the health insurance “villains” progressives love to demonize are pawns in a much bigger game. The real culprit here is the government-created labyrinth of rules and regulations that have bloated costs, restricted access, and handed power to a few dominant players.
Remember Obamacare? That grand promise to fix everything wrong with our healthcare setup?
Fourteen years later, it’s a total disaster.
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane: Barack Obama pledged — over and over — that family premiums would drop by $2,500 a year if the “Affordable Care Act” passed. Well, the law did pass, and guess what? Premiums didn’t just fail to drop — they skyrocketed.
And who could forget this Hall-of-Fame whopper from the former president: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
Now, The Wall Street Journal has revealed even more damning stats exposing the massive bait-and-switch Obamacare pulled on the public at large:
Deductibles for the average plan now hover above $5,000 — double what they were a decade ago.
Expanded Medicaid coverage? It’s a mirage. “Low reimbursement rates” from government officials mean fewer doctors accept Medicaid patients.
And if you’re bound by a government “exchange” plan, you only have access to 40 percent of local doctors and just 21 percent of hospital physicians. Need an out-of-network doctor? That’s going to cost extra!
It gets worse.
Obamacare mandates that all insurance plans include a long list of “essential benefits” dictated by Washington — whether consumers want these add-ons or not. At the same time, insurers are prohibited from setting premiums based on health status or adjusting rates reasonably depending on a person’s age.
The results? Young, healthy individuals foot the bill for older, sicker ones.
This government-created redistribution scheme makes it impossible to find cost-effective insurance policies that protect against catastrophic events, which is the very purpose of insurance.
As the Journal bluntly put it: “If the goal were to help Americans with costly health conditions, it would have been far simpler and less expensive to boost subsidies for state high-risk pools.”
Simple and effective. And nowhere near the $2.5 trillion price tag we’re saddled with today.
But simplicity was never the point. The goal was “to turn insurers into de facto public utilities and jerry-rig a halfway house to single-payer healthcare.”
All the theatrics, the grandstanding, and the bloodlust lead to one place — a government-controlled system.
Want a glimpse of that future? Take a peek at the United Kingdom.
Guess how long the “waiting list” is to get “planned” care under their National Health Service. If you said 7.54 million people, ding-ding! You win. Let that sink in: 7.54 million folks are entitled to “free” services, but in reality, they’re buried in a massive, ever-growing backlog.
Nearly half a million Brits are waiting on something serious, like cardiovascular treatment, according to UK’s Daily Express, while 590,000 women are stuck in line for “gynecological services.” Oh, and roughly 240,000 residents have been waiting more than a year just to see a specialist. What’s the NHS solution? Aiming for an “18-week target” — yes, four months — to see a doctor. That’s what’s considered reasonable under socialized medicine.
At the same time, British health official Wes Streeting is imploring hospitals to “put patients ahead of targets” so they can cut into the bottleneck without people dying on gurneys in emergency hallways.
Imagine needing to send out that memo.
In truth, government healthcare may be “free,” but it’s useless if patients can’t use it to see a doctor or get critical treatment. Political leaders shouldn’t waste time showering the public with grandiose promises that can never be met in a world of limited resources. Instead, they should focus on expanding access to care by deregulating markets, fostering competition, and letting consumers choose what works best for them.
Obamacare did the opposite. With its mandate-frenzy approach, it prioritized red tape over real care. And we’re living with the consequences. So, if progressives are furious about the state of America’s insurance industry, maybe they should aim their outrage where it belongs — at the very law they championed.
Are we supposed to be shocked that someone was just gunned down on the streets of New York City? The truth is that this happens all the time. Violence is out of control in the Big Apple, and of course the exact same thing could be said about most of our other major cities. According to the FBI, more than 14 million crimes were committed in the United States last year. The only reason why everybody is suddenly making a big deal about this is because someone “important” got shot. Our society is dominated by large corporations, and so when the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the healthcare industry gets gunned down it is going to make news…
The CEO of UnitedHealth’s insurance division was gunned down Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown in what police called a “brazen, targeted” attack.
Brian Thompson, 50, was repeatedly shot by a masked gunman about 6:46 a.m. who had been lying in wait outside the Sixth Avenue hotel, said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target,” she said.
It definitely appears that the shooter was waiting for someone very specific.
And we are being told that all signs point to “a premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack”…
“I want to be clear at this time, every indication is that this was a premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a news conference Wednesday following the shooting.
“This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” she said, adding that the department is carrying out a full investigation.
Thompson, 50, led UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. He was on the way to UnitedHealth Group’s investor day set for Wednesday at 8 a.m. ET at the Hilton, the NYPD said. The company canceled that event after the shooting.
So why would someone want to kill the CEO of UnitedHealth’s insurance division?
As I write this article, a manhunt for the suspect is still underway, and so authorities have not been able to question him yet.
But I have a theory.
My theory is that the shooter is probably someone that had a claim denied by UnitedHealth.
UnitedHealthcare was being probed by the Department of Justice for alleged antitrust violations, while its parent company, UnitedHealthcare Group (UHG), has come under fire from angry patients who claim the insurer refused to cover their care.
UHG is the nation’s largest health insurance conglomerate. The company expected to bring in revenues of $450 billion in 2025, with Thompson believed to earn a salary in the region of $10million a year.
In July, more than 150 protesters from the People’s Action Institute campaign group gathered outside UHG’s headquarters in Minnetonka, Minnesota, in what became a fiery demonstration.
In fact, it is being alleged that the company even relies on AI to deny some claims even though there has been a very high error rate…
UnitedHealthcare was also accused of using AI to deny claims for post-acute care services in Medicare Advantage in a lawsuit slated earlier this month, according to Fierce Healthcare.
The proposed class action was filed by families of two senior Medicare Advantage members who died after the insurer allegedly used the NaviHealth platform illegally to reject care, as UHG profits ballooned.
According to the lawsuit, the technology has a ’90 percent error rate, and the company relies on patient complacency or lack of knowledge about the systems to keep using it.
Denying as many claims as possible has become a core part of the business model for many insurance companies in recent years.
When their claims are denied, many Americans do not have the resources to hire a lawyer and challenge those decisions in court.
I truly detest what has happened to our healthcare system. Greed reigns supreme, and vast numbers of Americans are not getting the coverage that they paid for month after month.
The NYPD is going to go all out to catch the shooter in this case, and that is because Brian Thompson is a big deal.
But what about the countless other victims that never have their cases solved?
The Upper West Side has devolved into a Wild West atmosphere where anything goes, terrified crime victims and neighbors begging for more cops told The Post.
Criminals are more emboldened than ever in the ritzy nabe — with robberies soaring over 30% compared to last year — and carjackers so brazen they flashed their guns without concern on consecutive Sundays in broad daylight.
“I have never felt so scared in this neighborhood the way I feel now,” one of the carjacking victims told The Post this week.
Sadly, similar conditions prevail in most of our other major cities.
“We want to be able to deliver as fast as we possibly can to every zip code across the country, however, at the same time we must put the safety of delivery drivers first,” Nantel said in a statement. “In the zip codes in question, there have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages. We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers.”
Many years ago, I would walk the streets of Washington D.C. with little fear.
Needless to say, those days are long gone.
Earlier this week, it was being reported that Secret Service agents that were assigned to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen actually shot at suspects that were attempting to break into vehicles along a D.C. street…
A Secret Service special agent protecting U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opened fire early Tuesday on people who were suspected to be trying to break into cars, authorities say. Yellen was not harmed and there’s no indication she or the Secret Service were specifically targeted.
A special agent was working “a protective assignment” on Stephenson Place NW in Washington, D.C., at about 1:30 a.m. when the agent “observed a sedan with multiple occupants who were attempting to open car doors along the street,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
That assignment was outside Yellen’s home, law enforcement sources told News4.
The only reason that story made news is because the Secret Service and Janet Yellen were involved.
When ordinary people have their vehicles stolen, nobody really cares because it is happening constantly.
In fact, one recent report found that the number of vehicle thefts in the United States each year is “approaching 1 million”…
A new report by LendingTree says the number of cars stolen yearly in the United States is approaching 1 million. The report added that vehicle thefts jumped nearly 14% nationwide from 2020 to 2022.
Of course the level of shoplifting in our country absolutely dwarfs the level of vehicle theft.
U.S. retailers collectively lose more than 100 billion dollars a year to “shrink” at this point.
When I say that we are experiencing a “crime wave”, I am not overstating things one bit.
In fact, I may actually be understating the severity of the problem.
Yes, I feel bad that Brian Thompson got gunned down. Please pray for his family.
But what about the millions of other crime victims in this country that nobody seems to care about?
When Democrats rammed through the Inflation Reduction Act during the days they controlled all of Washington, D.C., it ignited a chain reaction that led to higher Medicare costs for America’s senior citizens.
“Nearly two years after its passage, the IRA has diverted nearly $260 billion from the projected Medicare ‘savings’ to pay for special interest handouts like large tax credits for costly electric vehicles, enormous subsidies paid to big health insurer-PBM corporations, and funding health care programs for illegal immigrants,” Ron Fitzwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Missouri Pharmacy Association, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Missouri Times.
“The Biden-Harris administration is not protecting Medicare; they’re stealing from it,” he wrote.
According to Politico, the chain reaction began when the act shifted the burden of paying for prescription medicine from seniors to insurance companies.
Then came what could have been predicted: Insurance companies hiked their premiums for 2025.
Fitwater, in his Op-Ed, said increases were coming in at 179 percent.
But since that was going to hit right before the election, there was one more step – a federal bailout that has the taxpayer-funded federal treasury taking the hit for what the IRA caused.
“It’s using the federal treasury for political advantage,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said.
“This is a way for the executive branch to implement a policy which has very positive political ramifications for them, but with very sketchy legal standing,” he said.
Fitzwater estimates that “All told, that puts the entire IRA raid on Medicare at well over $330 billion.”
The IRA’s tinkering with Medicare also has impacted drug companies. A Wall Street Journal editorial explained the process.
“The IRA let Medicare ‘negotiate’ prices for 10 to 20 drugs a year and a total of 60 by 2029. Negotiate is a euphemism for extortion: Drug makers that don’t participate or reject the government’s price face a daily excise tax that starts at 186% and climbs to 1,900% of a drug’s daily revenue,” the editorial began.
“The law also requires manufacturers to pay the government rebates on medicines sold to Medicare if they raise prices more than the rate of inflation, and puts them on the hook for more of the entitlement’s Part D costs. Democrats used the resulting estimated ‘savings’ of some $160 billion to pay for the green new deal,” the editorial said.
“But subsidized solar panels won’t help if you get sick. The inevitable, albeit invisible, result of Democrats’ raid on pharmaceutical companies will be fewer new medicines,” the WSJ editorial explained.
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