I Told You So: Health Care, ACA

The Democrat and Republican party — both sides of the aisle — are liars.

So are their “spokespersons” when it comes to the issues related to health care.

The most-recent component, that of Aetna deciding to exit nearly all of the ACA exchanges, is just one example.

This is what I said in 2009:

It is my opinion that we should be treating those in the health-insurance lobby, including hospitals, physicians and health-insurance providers, as co-conspirators in a racketeering scheme that effectively trades on the fear of disease and imminent bankruptcy to bamboozle and screw the population, while waving around their “hippocratic oath” – something better described as the “hypocritic oath.”

Well?

The talking heads have been out claiming that Medicare and Medicaid spending has “gone down” — some of them have claimed this on a “per-capita” basis, others just generally.

That’s a lie, it’s a documented lie, and yet no member of the media has challenged these bald-faced lies despite the numerical facts being available to literally anyone with no more than 30 seconds of effort.

In the most-recent Treasury Statement (which is canonically correct when it comes to government spending) this fiscal year to date Medicare and Medicaid have spent $1,034,867 (millions); that is, $1.035 trillion.  The entire government spent $2,869,374, so this amounts to more than one-third of the total, 36% to be exact.

Last year to the same point in the fiscal year these two programs consumed $950,861.

That is, this fiscal year spending increased 8.83% on a comparable period basis.

Last full fiscal year (September 2014-2015) said spending rose 9.25%.

The prior fiscal (September 2013-2014) said spending rose 6.63% and the year prior to that it rose 5.74%.

There has been no “decrease”; in point of fact it has accelerated by approximately one third in the last two years over the previous two!

This could have been determined in literally 30 seconds by any “journalist” that cared to look.

Nobody cared from either side of the political and media aisle.

This rate of acceleration will, as I have repeatedly pointed out, bankrupt the Federal Government within the next administration’s term.  It will in fact exceed all current federal spending within the next 10 years.  Neither of these events will actually come to pass because you cannot have a government when you can’t pay the light bill in Washington DC.

There is exactly one way to stop this from happening and that is to start prosecuting and imprisoning, right now, each and every instance of price-fixing (Sherman/Clayton), attempts to monopolize markets (Sherman/Clayton again), pricing discrimination of like kind and quantity for goods (forbidden under Robinson-Patman) and failure or even refusal to provide a price before services and goods are rendered (various consumer protection laws within the states, as well as unfair business practice regulations within the FTC), including such facially-outrageous practices as setting price based on the GDP or “ability to pay” (extort) within a given nation while enforcing same through the passage of laws that are facially unlawful as said practices violate 15 USC.

Until and unless that action is taken the outcome is certain.

This is the issue that will first “get us” and yet it is just one of literally thousands of examples where the Rule of Law is ignored with impunity by not only politically-connected people but also those in the corporate world who have economic power.

There is simply no point to either entrepreneurship or for that matter making any sort of effort at all beyond enjoying what little time we have left in this nation under what we consider “reasonable and ordinary” economic and social conditions until and unless the people of this nation rise and demand that this crap stop, for if we do not, as a body politic, our government and social order will collapse.

This is a matter of arithmetic, not politics.

Since you won’t get off your ass politically and are far more interested in whether Ellen told a racist joke than whether you’ve been screwed blind by both sides of the political aisle for decades, you ought to read this article — because when, not if, this part of our economy collapses (and it will in just a few years) if you’re dependent on the “health” system you’re going to die, and it’s not going to be in a pleasant way either.  Your literal only other option is to not need anything from said part of our economy — and you’re running out of time to make that change.

The Market Ticker