As left-wing Mayor Bill de Blasio designates millions of dollars of taxpayer money to pay the lawyer fees of illegal immigrants, New York’s failing subway system is falling into greater disrepair — with a state of emergency being declared by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and one straphanger spotting that her subway train was being held together with a zip tie.
Month: June 2017
MLB Network’s Peter Gammons: Cubs Considered Having Trump Tell Former Player ‘You’re Fired’
Wednesday, the Chicago Cubs designated catcher Miguel Montero after he blamed teammate and star pitcher Jake Arrieta for allowing seven stolen bases by the Washington Nationals in a 6-1 loss the night before. According to MLB Network’s Peter Gammons, the Cubs considered having President Donald Trump use his signature “you’re fired” line on Montero while some members visited the White House. “The temptation that the Cubs’ front office had was to have [Montero] go to the White House with a few Cubs players who wanted to go and then have Trump show a modicum of humor by saying, ‘you’re fired,’” Gammons said on “The Rich Eisen Show” Thursday. He added, “But they decided against it. I know it was something they were all joking about yesterday.” (h/t SI) Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
Repeat Pedophile Sex Offender Loses Citizenship, Will Stay in Mexico
Jose Arizmendi, a 54-year-old man who had been an American citizen since 1996, lost that citizenship Tuesday after a court found he had lied on his original citizenship application.
Police Report: Tennis Star Venus Williams Caused Fatal Car Crash
Police in Florida released details about an auto accident they say was caused by tennis star Venus Williams in which one person was killed.
Jerry Springer: Trump’s Tweets ‘Beneath the Dignity’ of ‘Any Decent Man’
Jerry Springer hopped on Twitter Friday and said President Donald Trump’s recent tweets in which he blasted MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were “beneath the dignity of the Presidency” and of “any decent man.”
Remember All of Obamacare’s Broken Promises?
There were a lot of promises made in selling Obamacare—and it seems like just about all of them have been broken.
They told us if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor . . . and yet so many Americans have lost access to their doctors under new Obamacare insurance plans.
They told us if you if you liked your health insurance plan, you could keep it . . . and yet millions of Americans saw their insurance plans canceled because of Obamacare.
They promised that premiums would go down by $2,500 and that everyone in America would be covered. Here’s what President Obama guaranteed back when he was on the campaign trail:
“Our conscience cannot rest so long as nearly 45 million Americans don’t have health insurance and the millions more who do are going bankrupt trying to pay for it. I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500 a year. That’s not simply a matter of policy or ideology—it’s a moral commitment.”
Both those promises have been broken too.
Far from covering every American, Obamacare has left 28 million uninsured.
In fact, despite all the disruption and the billions in spending, as of February 2017 Obamacare’s exchanges cover just 10.3 million people. That’s less than half the number of Americans the Congressional Budget Office estimated back in 2012 would be enrolled.
And premiums didn’t go down by $2,500 for the average family—they went up by nearly $3,000!
Breaking the Beltway Mentality: Billions in New Spending Is Not a ‘Cut’
Under the healthcare bill currently being considered by the Senate, spending on Medicaid, the healthcare program that covers 75 million Americans, would increase from $393 billion this year to $464 billion in 2027—and that’s adjusting for inflation.
Yet Democrats are claiming this is a “cut” to the program. Only in Washington would anyone have the nerve to claim an 18 percent increase in government spending on top of inflation is a “cut.”
The reality is that the Senate’s healthcare bill, like the legislation passed by the House of Representatives, strengthens and reforms Medicaid.
Medicaid has seen out of control spending growth: twenty years ago, spending on the program was under $200 billion annually; within a decade, it is expected to top $1 trillion in total spending.
The Senate bill would refocus the program on the people it was designed to serve, who need the most help: the disabled, the elderly, and pregnant mothers and their children. It would give states the flexibility they need to serve those populations and come up with cost-saving, quality-improving innovations. It would also fix the flawed incentives that have driven out of control spending on Medicaid, while ensuring states have the resources they need to protect their vulnerable populations.
CBO’s Failed Obamacare Enrollment Projections
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has consistently failed to accurately predict how legislation will impact health insurance coverage. For example, in 2012, the CBO estimated that 25 million people would have coverage under Obamacare right now. According to a June 2017 report from HHS, only 10.3 million were actually enrolled. CBO’s guess was off by nearly 15 million people. And as the chart shows, CBO has consistently gotten it wrong.
The CBO’s history of inaccuracy is reason enough not to blindly trust its analysis of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). In fact, CBO’s past inaccuracies contribute to its misleading analysis of insurance coverage under the BCRA. The starting point CBO uses to score the BCRA says that 15 million people should be enrolled through Obamacare’s exchanges right now – wrong again.
The CBO was wrong when it first analyzed Obamacare in 2010. And it was wrong when it updated its projections in 2012 and 2014. Even today, the CBO is using a starting point from 2016 to predict the impact of repealing and replacing Obamacare that has already been proven, well, wrong.