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From The Mailbag

The Ghost of "Obamacare Past," and a real healthcare system for every American.

The last thing the Trump Administration and the Republican Party should want to do is what President Trump proposed during his grassroots presidential campaign. The rhetoric sounded good for a political novice like Trump (who is becoming a political giant, but who believes the legislation he wants to simultaneously "repeal and replace," will end up as an entirely new healthcare system). Sadly, this literally can't happen because it is solely in the hands of Congress which finds the need to play politics with every bill it touches. And, sadly many of the rank and file GOP members who jumped on that band wagon early know it, and likely will resist the Ryan plan, which leans too far to the left. Add to that what appears that Ryan will do what the Democrat leadership did to the rank and file in 2010—block them out of the legislative process and allowing them, only, to vote on a packaged program that was doomed to fail.

Since 148 politicians in the US Congress are lawyers, President Trump should realize that "words" for legal wordsmiths are paramount. They mean precisely what they say—"repeal and replace" denote a continuous action" that "amends" Obamacare but will not get rid of some parts of the Affordable Care Act which amend other laws not related to Obamacare.

For example,Section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to establish medical guidelines which your doctor must follow in treating his or her patients, or face penalties and fines which include prison.

Included in those guidelines is a mandate which says that when surgical procedures and/or medications and/or other treatments are denied by the medical bureaucracy within the system (also not part of The Affordable Care Act), healthcare providers may not provide those services outside the system. (That's the reason Canadian citizens, who are denied treatment for whatever reason in Canada, come to the United States for lifesaving medical procedures. In other words, in Canada like the United States under Obamacare, when you get a real serious illness—even if it's not terminal—you're supposed to die. That way, you could say, the seniors themselves prevent the collapse of the old age benefits program.)

Looking through over 2,000-some pages of The Affordable Care Act, there appears to be a few missing pages. Missing not in the sense that pages which could be numbered 268, 417 or 932 or anything else, could be physically gone, but only in the sense that content which explains why some facets which deny care to the elderly, which one would think should be there, aren't. They were never added—at least, not in the Affordable Care Act. (That's what the tenured, non-elected, can't be fired, socialist bureaucracy does when you aren't looking—they write the mundane words and regulations in the skeletal frame of the law which either allow or deny you the care you require to live, and let you die..)

Some of those non-specific missing pages created the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Research which assigned the task of determining at what point it would be a waste of taxpayer money to treat elderly patients construed to be terminal. The Obama Death Board, whose job it is to measure medical services return-on-investment is not a part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. It was enacted a year earlier as part of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009. Before The Affordable Care Act was created, the authority to kill the elderly was already put in place—in an entirely different law that violated the Hippocratic Oath. It preceded Obamacare by a year. Which means, "repeal and replace" will not get rid of the Obamacare Death Board which caused so many of America's physicians to retire early because the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Research created Independent Payment Advisory Board which alone determines when its no longer practical from a monetary sense, for the insurer to pay benefits for procedures for elderly patients who are just going to die anyway.

If you want to see the faces of those who wrote the rules that determine the life and death decisions about America's seniors, their faces are displayed on this URL Scroll down to the bottom of that article.) Their "rules" determine why so many elderly patients find themselves on a waiting list, or were simply denied, surgical procedures which would either save, or at least prolong, their lives.

Not all of the spider web amendments that politicians plant in totally unrelated pieces if legislation need to conceal healthcare related amendments or addendum from the people who would be negatively affected by them. Most negative-impact provisions that are added to gargantuan pieces of legislation are done so by bureaucrats who simply want to hide the requested provisions by tying them to unrelated bills where they expect those provisions will never see the light of day—except by the bureaucrats whose job it is to enforce them.

For example, in the Affordable Care Act, there exists a "yellow brick road" that leads to Section 9006 that allows the Executive in the White House to seize the acquired specie [constitutional money—i.e, gold or silver] and replace it with a like amount of fiat scrip (paper money redeemable not in gold or silver, but in more debt-backed paper money which is only as good as the words coming from the mouth of the nation's leader).

Where did Barack Obama get that authority? From his Wall Street friends who borrowed the concept from Franklin D. Roosevelt. On Wed., Jan. 31, 1934,, through Presidential Proclamation 2072, FDR reduced the weight of the gold $5 coin from 25 4/5 grams to 15 5/21 grams. Gold was worth $35 ounce on Jan. 30, 1934, and on Jan. 31 is was worth $20.67— or a net loss of $14.33 per ounce.

Where did that authority come from? Congress emboldened FDR during the "national emergency" that existed on paper on March 6, 1933 when Roosevelt took office. One would logically think that the authority to artificially remove the nation from the gold standard would necessarily have to be found in a money bill—the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, which FDR signed the day before. It wasn't. Nor was it found in the Emergency Banking Relief Act of March 9, 1933 which made even more sense. Instead, it was covertly inserted in the Agriculture Adjustment Act of May 12, 1933. Why there? Who would even think to look in a farm produce bill for the authority to reduce the value of gold in order in order for the 1%ers to steal a third of the real wealth of the nation from the American people who built the nation and earned that money? No one.

So, why would anyone look in a healthcare bill for the authority of the princes of industry and the barons of banking to steal your family's gold—a second time? They wouldn't. Nobody looks for a elephant in a rabbit hole. Which is also why career politicians on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate become institutionalized, and perpetuated indebted to the princes of industry, the barons of banking and the courtesans of commerce.

Which is also why, when something as graft-riddled as the Unaffordable Care Act shows up on the menu for a "remake" to make it "affordable," the partisan GOP politicians partaking in what appears to many as a legislative feast of leftovers from the original Democrats-only banquet, are not as eager to "replace" the legislation as they are to "repair" it. Why? Because, in the first go-round in 2010, the Democrats had their war chests filled to overflowing with graft from every quadrants of the medical industry—all of whom were eager to partake in the original feast which they believed would morph into a socialist single payer plan. Today, the medical industry, which learned over the last seven years that Obamacare is a dog that doesn't hunt, is more concerned now about getting guarantees from the Republicans and President Trump that their losses under Obamacare won't continue to haunt them under the American Health Care Act [AHCA] (one of Speaker Paul Ryan's [R-WI] promises).

The Hill announced on March 10 that "...an analysis by the Brookings Institution on Thursday [...March 9...] found at least 15 million people will lose coverage under the GOP plan. A separate study from Standard & Poors put the figure at between 6 million and 10 million people losing coverage..." making it clear that the Paul Ryan [R-WI] group is progressing pretty much the way the Democrats did under the control exercised by Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel [D-IL], House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA] and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] did in 2010. In a media interview on Friday, Ryan called AHCA a "binary healthcare plan," meaning that participants had a choice between AHCA coverage or keeping what they currently have. The question is, who would want it?

By no stretch of the imagination does Ryancare meet President Trump's "repeal and replace" promise. What the Speaker is giving the American people is Fifty Shades of Obamacare Past. Instead of President Trump's "Repeal and Replace,"under Speaker Ryan, there is no repeal. There is no replace. To get where the right needs to be, what the GOP in the House needs to do is "Repeal THEN Replace!" It is only by completely repealing every dot and tittle in the spider web links from Section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act to the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009,and deleting any references to either that we get rid of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Research and the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

If all the GOP does is what Speaker Ryan is promoting: • lowering the cost (initially) by providing more healthcare choices • allowing patients to control their own plans, and • having universal access to healthcare, AHCA will be a failed alternative to Obamacare because it will co-reside with Obamacare, double-draining AHCA because as long as any part of the Affordable Care Act survives," Fox News reporter Ed Henry who was guest hosting Tucker Carlson's program on Fox News on Match 10, told Rand Paul, , that keeping the original plan intact, would :"...keep the Obamacare taxes for a year." Rand Paul continued, "...it keeps the Cadillac tax forever; [and] keeps Obamacare subsidies but renames them tax credits...[and] keeps the individual mandate—but you don’t pay a government penalty...That's the definition of Obamacare Lite."

Dr. Paul insisted that Obamacare had to be completely repealed before Congress would reasonably begin working on a replacement plan. adding that "repeal" must be completely separated from "replace." Sen. Paul proffered the bill he introduced in 2015 which actually passed in the US Senate along party lines, suggesting it would pass now on a 52 to 48 vote.

Because the polling that Speaker Ryan has done on the current House version of AHCA suggests that not only will the House version not clear the Senate hurdle, it appears it won't even clear the House—which has a much broader majority because however you count the votes, Ryan's AHCA will either alienate the centrist Republicans or the conservative right. Or both.

Sadly, Ryan's plan, or rather, Rep. Jim Jordan's [R-OH] plan) forces not one, but three opportunities for the Democrats to kill the GOP plan's staggered repeal of Obamacare between now and 2020 (which appears to me to be very stupid). No one seems to understand how to completely repeal THEN replace Obamacare on the same day without being caught in a bear trap awaiting the GOP because one part of it requires a super majority in the Senate which likely can't happen. The left argues that the GOP plan won't work because if you repeal Obamacare in one fell swoop, the system collapses and we are worse off than we were before Obamacare because now, virtually everyone is without coverage. But, wait. Perhaps not necessarily so.

We are well on our way to the fairest, most equitable healthcare system in the world the moment Congress actually repeals Obamacare, killing all of the spider tentacles that link the Affordable Care Act to the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 which created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or whatever other spider tentacles exist to other laws.

We just need to use something like Google's "Wayback Machine," to turn back the clock and, in real time, temporarily reinstate whatever health insurance program every American family had on January 1, 2009. For those who were uninsured on Jan. 1, 2009, a modified version of Sen. Marco Rubio's idea, which would provide a tax credit for the deliberately uninsured to use to buy coverage.

Myself, I prefer a slightly different idea for the uninsured to make certain that financially responsible taxpayers aren't stuck with the tab for the financially-irresponsible who choose not to be insured. Those insured under group plans at work, or individual plans they purchased, need read no farther. Only those without coverage need consider this. When the uninsured enter the hospital through the emergency room, hospitals are required to accept them (whether they are insured or not). Patients without insurance should be required to sign a Form 1099-NHC (everyone knows what a Form 1099 is. It denotes "temporary earnings" an individual receives under a temporary, non-employee contract basis. (The NHC affirms that the patient has no insurance coverage.)

Because your hospital stay is temporary, and you aren't a Medicare subscriber, or an employee of the hospital. And the hospital does not have much expectation of this bill being repaid, all you need to qualify for treatment is a valid social security number which is verifiably yours. When you are discharged from care, instead of a bill, you would then receive a 1095-NHC income statement which would be filed with the IRS when you file your income taxes in April (since that is money you now owe the IRS since the IRS is the collection agency for the Department of Health and Human Service to whom you now owe those receipts), and not Medicare, since that would require the indigent person to subscribe to that form of insurance, which would also require a premium to be paid.

Further, the amounts charged by the hospital to the non-Medicare insured patient or prescription user will be larger than those rates charged to Medicare subscribers by Medicare since this provider, in this case, would be the DHHS.

When the hospital files its quarterly federal taxes there will be a new line added to all medical care or pharmaceutical providers tax forms, just below the line signifying the provider's net taxable liability [after all normal eligible deductions] (and just above the line signifying the amount of money due). Between those two lines on the tax reform is the new line—the total amount charged to non-insured patients for services or prescriptions (not a tax, but still liable for penalties and interest if not paid within six months).

To be reimbursed by the IRS for medical services and/or prescriptions to the medical providers through the DHHS, and to all of the pharmacies and medical equipent suppliers which participate, who have signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services affirming they will not charge any NHC patient or pharmacy customer a rate higher than that paid by Medicare. The DHHS assigns a Provider Number to every medical provider and participating pharmacy. While this is a single payer system with respect to all Medicare-related subscribers, traditional indidividual and group plan health care providers revert back to the status quo which existed on Dec. 31, 2008. And the nighrtmare we know as Obamacare will no longer exist.

Creating a new national healthcare system could be that simple. The entire healthcare law could be written in less than 36 pages. And, by the way, the first Director of the American Healthcare System should be a medical doctor. I nominate Dr. Tom Price. After all, the head of the nation's medical system should be the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Well, for whatever it's worth, once again, you have my two cents worth on this subject. Until next time...