Obamacare

We addressed the systemic ills of U.S. healthcare, a.k.a. sickcare most recently here. Nobody likes any of the practical solutions because everyone wants unlimited care and unlimited choice. Expectations in a system where the government can just borrow another $1+ trillion to pay the bills are high, and the feedback from reality, i.e. price, has been eliminated in the cartel/fiefdom system that is sickcare. Everyone talks about "reform," but real reform is impossible in a bought-and-paid-for "democracy" like ours. There is no one solution to something as complex and costly as healthcare; the solution is to let 100 solutions blossom and compete openly for citizens' money and trust.

The State has monopolized all authority, giving it essentially unlimited power to make things worse. Since concentrations of centralized capital, authority and power does not relinquish control easily, if ever, the Status Quo will have to decay and implode before authority can be pushed down to more responsive, appropriate levels.

Instead of asking the endless question of "who should pay for healthcare?" Time magazine's cover story this week by Steve Brill asks a much more sensible - and disturbing question - "why does healthcare cost so much?" While it will not come as a surprise to any ZeroHedge reader - as we most recently noted here - this brief clip on the outrageous pricing and egregious profits that are destroying our health care quickly summarizes just how disastrous the situation really is.  A simplified perspective here is simple, as with higher education costs and student loans: since all the expenses incurred are covered by debt/entitlements, there is no price discrimination which allows vendors to hike prices to whatever levels they want. From the $21,000 heartburn to "giving our CT scans like candy," Brill concludes "put simply, with Obamacare we’ve changed the rules related to who pays for what, but we haven’t done much to change the prices we pay."

With polls blacked out in Italy, the hope and hype is that Berlusconi doesn't get in, banish austerity, and bring the European OMT-inspired 'confidence' party crashing to the ground. While extremely low volume - and famously entirely wrong about Obamacare - the current Intrade odds favor Bersani massively at an 85% probability of becoming PM with comedian Beppe a mere 0.3% - even though it is somewhat ironic that he can still muster such support (for someone with a criminal record... umm Berlusconi?).

Sickcare is unsustainable for a number of interlocking reasons: defensive medicine in response to a broken malpractice system; opaque pricing; quasi-monopolies/cartels; systemic disconnect of health from food, diet and fitness; fraud and paperwork consume at least 40% of all sickcare funds; fee-for-service in a cartel system; employers being responsible for healthcare, and a fundamental absence of competition and transparency. If you set out to design a corrupt, inefficient, wasteful, unfair, deranged and unreformable system, you would arrive at U.S. healthcare. The neutron bomb has gone off, unseen by politicos and the Elites who wrote the bill.

We recently received the good news via an advert that we can buy healthcare insurance for as little as $3.16 a day. Wow, that's only $95 a month. Since my we are paying $1,136 a month for stripped-down, minimal coverage with one of the nation's non-profit care providers, imagine our delight at this revelation. Wow, this Affordable Care Act (ACA) a.k.a. Obamacare is already working! The advert doesn't provide any details on restrictions and exclusions, so we have taken the liberty of providing some typical fine print...

The big story this past week, besides the annual State of the Delusion speech by Barack “It won’t add a cent to the deficit” Obama, was the fate of the passengers on the Carnival Triumph as their skyscraper sized ship was left adrift at sea for days without power. The ordeal at sea of the Carnival Triumph and the leadership displayed by the Carnival management and executive officers is a microcosm of our declining empire. Rather than deal with our reality, Obama chose the Carnival Cruise Line method of public relations - misinformation, denial and delusion. He has embraced the Big Lie concept as if he had created it. Our cruise of illusions and delusions is headed for troubled water. The math challenged citizens on this ship have been enjoying the 24 hour pizza buffet without the labor required to pay for the bounty. This voyage is reaching an end and the bill is coming due. The engine is on fire but the captain is telling us all is well. Eventually, everyone will know the captain lied.

Bottom line? $100 an hour is the minimum wage for a person with a family in NY. The Prez is offering $9.

The economic collapse is not a single event.  The economic collapse has been happening, it is is happening right now, and it will continue to happen.  Yes, there will be times when our decline will be punctuated by moments of great crisis, but that will be the exception rather than the rule.  A lot of people that write about "the economic collapse" hype it up as if it will be some huge "event" that will happen very rapidly and then once it is all over we will rebuild.  Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works.  We are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and once it completely bursts there will be no going back to how things were before. But other than that, everything is rainbows and lollipops, right?

It is only logical that the catalyst that has pushed the entire market higher, that would be the "all critical" Spanish Service PMI which soared very credibly a few short hours ago, would be doubled down when its US cousin came out. Sure enough, moments ago the Institute for Supply Management revealed that the February non-manufacturing ISM declined from 55.7 to 55.2, but was just above the expected 55.0, which was enough to send the headline scanners into full blown liftathon mode and the S&P to intraday highs. Ignored was that the key New Orders series actually declined from 58.3 to 54.4, yet offset by a jump in Employment from 55.3 to 57.5. What was amusing was the jump in New Export Orders to 55.5 from a contractionary reading. We can't wait to learn just whom the US is exporting its mission critical services to these days. Finally, and perhaps most relevant, was one of the healtcare related respondents who said the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on the issue of Obamacare: "Healthcare reform causing continued slowdown and less investment." That's only the beginning.

It is not the United States of Europe but the other way around; the Europization of the United States. It is not a new game but a very old game and not played with such fervor in America since Franklin Delano Roosevelt stirred the pot which was done in an attempt to end the consequences of the Great Depression. This bouncing ball is not too tough to follow. The people with money pay higher taxes and then have less money to spend on goods and services. The corporations pay higher taxes and then have less money to spend on acquisitions, dividends or growing their business. The money flows to the people who are not in the middle class but are poorer and it gets spent on the basics of life and not on consumer durables. The rich are poorer, the middle class is poorer, the poor become better off at first and then less well off in the second instance as taxes bleed the entire economy of excess capital.

It is a well-known fact that nobody in Congress ever reads, or even skims, any law, and especially not the fine print, it passes until long after it has been enacted into law. It appears the same is just as true for the biggest pillar of support for the Obama administration: America's labor unions, whose liberal vote every election is instrumental to preserving the outflow side of America's welfare state. As it turns out, it was the same labor unions who enthusiastically supported the primary accomplishment of the Obama administration in the past 4 years, Obamacare, only to realize, long after it has become reality that, surprise, their healthcare plan costs are about to go up. And, as the WSJ colorfully summarizes, they are now "turning sour."

With eight months left until million of Americans are supposed to begin shopping at online markets created by the Obamacare 'tax' law, the insurance industry is concerned at the government's lack of readiness. Bloomberg reports that Jim Donelon, the head of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, suggested that President Obama may need to delay the implementation of the health-care overhaul or "risk chaos" when the subsidized plans go on sale later this year. While it is clear that the administration has shown no sign of seeking a delay, Donelon notes that "...to rush into implementation before it's ready would not be in the President's best interest."

After digesting the opinions of the shills, shysters and scam artists, I am ready to predict that I have no clue what will happen during 2013. The fog of uncertainty is engulfing the nation, making consumers hesitant to spend and businesses reluctant to hire or invest. Virtually all of the mainstream media, Wall Street banks and paid shill economists are in agreement that 2013 will see improvement in employment, housing, retail spending and, of course the only thing that matters to the ruling class, the stock market. Even among the alternative media, there seems to be a consensus that we will continue to muddle through and the day of reckoning is still a few years off. Those who are predicting improvements are either ignorant of history or are being paid to predict improvement, despite the overwhelming evidence of a worsening economic climate. The mainstream media pundits, fulfilling their assigned task of purveying feel good propaganda, use the 10% stock market gain in 2012 as proof of economic recovery. The facts prove otherwise... Every day more people are realizing the con-job being perpetuated by the owners of this country. Will the tipping point be reached in 2013? I don’t know. But the era of decisiveness and confrontation has arrived. The existing social order will be swept away. Are you prepared?