Trump: Ironic outcome of establishment Republican obstruction

Donald J. Drumpf

Throughout the Obama Presidency, establishment Republicans in Congress did their very best to obstruct the normal functioning of the Federal Government.  They were convinced that obstruction was a winning strategy to ensure that the GOP would become victorious in the 2012 Presidential election.  Although they were somewhat victorious in the mid-term elections, the GOP lost the  2012 Presidency to a second Obama term.  They continued their obstruction of government with even more intensity in preparing for the 2016 Presidential election, all the while ignoring the impact of their obstruction on the American people and especially on the voting base of their own party.

Republican leaders ignored the data that their own post Romney party "autopsy" showed them.  That they were losing their constituents to old age.  That they were not appealing to the diverse ethnicity of America.  That they were on the wrong side of women's issues.  That they were being seen as a party of the rich and not a party of the ordinary person.  Yet they did nothing positive to improve their image.

Instead they took to underhanded and un-American actions to cheat American Democracy such as voter suppression actions, reducing voting precincts and changing voting privileges for students so they could not vote at their own campuses.  All attempts to reduce the number of Democrats who might vote.

They used their power in government committees to create artificial controversies around the Obama administration and the future most-likely to be nominee for President, Hillary Clinton.  They openly disrespected the Office of the President, calling President Obama names and falsely accusing him of not being a leader.  According to many of them in office, Russian President Putin is a better leader than our American President.  Their intentions were to make Democrats seem ineffective as leaders or untrustworthy by using insults, insinuation and disrespect.  To them, it was just another tactic to win votes in future elections.  This tactic worked on their own constituents.  It also served as a lesson to Donald Trump.  Appealing to Republican's worst nature wins their support.  If we were paying attention, we would see how closely Trump would follow this tactic in the Republican Primaries.

In this 2016 Presidential nomination process we are now seeing the decaying fruits of those actions for the GOP as a party.  Republican voters now see vitriolic rhetoric like their party's leaders used on the Obama Administration as a characteristic of a good leader.  Republican leaders led them down this path.  Voters are voting by overwhelming margins in primary elections for a narcissistic sociopathic con-man.

Donald Drumpf is riding the tides of victory in primary elections, not because he is the best person for the job.  Not because his policies ring clearly as the correct approach to governing.  Not because he will make America great again.  He is not the best person to be President and nothing good would come of his winning the Presidency.  He is simply winning because of the anger that Republican voters have.  He is now the Republican nominee for President.

Republicans are angry because they see themselves as ordinary citizens who have not benefitted from the improvement in the economy.  They believe current government policies will make them fall further.  They know things are better for some people, but not for them.  They do not understand why and need to blame someone for their situation. The confusing explanations they get from their Republican leaders are intentionally meant to mislead them.  They know Republicans in Congress are not getting anything accomplished to benefit society and are beginning to doubt them.

There is now a state of utter confusion in GOP politics.  Establishment Republicans agree that Donald Trump is not a true Republican.  But that is not the worst of his characteristics.  Secretly they believe he is not a stable individual either.  Not someone you would want in control of the nuclear codes.  How should they react to Trump's overwhelming win margins?  The GOP base obviously wants him as their new President.  Did the establishment create a monster?  If they get behind this monster, will GOP policies be advocated?

At this point, Donald is the Presidential nominee.  Republicans now must decide whether they will support him or not.  They do have some things to gain if he becomes President, such as Supreme Court appointments.  He will carry out his threats to eliminate "Obama-care," which Republican leadership has stated is the worst thing since Obama himself.

The dilemma they are faced with is whether they will give up more than they gain.  We will see in the upcoming months whether Republicans will stand behind Trump and save their party or do the right thing and save the country instead.

GOP deceptive tweet reminds us that they are the stupid party

Speaker Boehner's tweet

Today, House Speaker John Boehner found a new opportunity to demonize the Affordable Care Act and mislead his constituents.  His tweets proclaim that "Obama administration says 11 million will pay higher premium costs for their health care under ObamaCare."

Boehner's tweet derives its conclusion from a GOP  requested study from the Office of the Actuary, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which was released last Friday, the 21st of February.

The first thing that I should mention is that the population of people considered by the study is individuals who receive their health insurance through their small business employer and not through the ACA state health insurance exchanges.  So this is not about ObamaCare causing people financial harm even though Boehner interpreted it that way.

When the Affordable Care Act was created, it added requirements known as sections 2701, 2702 and 2703 to the Public Health Services Act.  These sections are intended to end discrimination by insurers on the patient population.

Section 2701 is titled "Fair Health Insurance Premium" and changes a practice called "community rating" where insurance companies used to be able to discriminate by charging higher prices for women of child bearing age; those having more health claims; or the elderly.  Now premium prices can only vary between individuals because of individual versus family enrollment; geographic area; age (but the ratio of higher premiums for the elderly is reduced from 5:1 down to 3:1); and tobacco use.

Section 2702 requires insurers to accept all applicants and is designed to prevent insurance company discrimination due to pre-existing conditions.

Section 2703 requires that group and individual health insurance must be renewable.

So, Boehner's tweet is actually attacking that part of the ACA that protects consumers from discrimination, probably because he didn't read it or perhaps because he didn't understand it.  The obvious fact is that he just read the lines in the study that supported his unreasonable view that "ObamaCare is bad" and tweeted.  This is unfortunate because there are important aspects of the study that place their own conclusions into serious doubt.  Some of this is self revealed, such as the admission that there are other studies that have found insignificant change in premiums.  Also, some parts of the study text indicate that the results are highly suspect and subject to large variations.

The study also found that the employer sponsored health insurance premium price changes would only affect small employers (100 employees or less) and the premium changes would only come from section 2701 requirements.  This is because they speculate that smaller and younger companies have younger employees who have been able to take advantage of the greater old to young ratio in premium prices allowed before ObamaCare and section 2701 requirements.  This would make those employers (only if they provide insurance for their employees) more likely to have increased premium prices after January 1, 2014.  The study also only speculates that any increase in the employers insurance costs would be passed on to their employees.

Additionally, these new requirements are only effective for employer health policies that are not grandfathered.  Grandfathered policies are any that existed on or before March 23, 2010.  So only new small businesses who provide employer sponsored health insurance and were created after March 23, 2010 should have been considered in the study.

However, the study indicates that 17 million individuals would be in this population.  This can be shown to be inaccurate by using the Business Dynamics Statistics data from the census.gov website.  One can see there that the maximum number of employees in new small businesses, using the largest employee population cited in a range for the category of small business created through all of 2010 and 2011 is about 2.3 million each year.  This calculates to 4.6 million employees.  Estimating a 20% increase year over year through 2013 adds another 6.2 million employees for a total population of 10.8 million.  This is a very high estimate since it would mean that nearly all of the increase in employment in the USA since 2010 has been from small business.   Prior government estimates of jobs created by small business is closer to 45% of the total.   A more reasonable population would be 5 million affected.  Still not a small number, but much smaller than the estimate of 17 million cited in the study.  (Even less than GOP led states have refused to provide expanded medicaid for.)

The study also speculates that about 35% of the population would receive reductions from their pre-ACA insurance premium costs.  The other 65% would receive increases that would put their 2014 premiums at about the average cost for health insurance prior to the ACA.

Additionally, the number affected is further trimmed down by the number of individuals who purchase health insurance from the ACA exchanges in their state.  The benefit is that many who earn less than 400% of the federal poverty level will receive federal tax reductions.  Hopefully, many of those people will take advantage of that and stop listening to misleading GOP rhetoric instructing them to avoid buying from the insurance exchanges.

Further the study stipulates that small businesses who currently provide health insurance may find it more advantageous for themselves and their employees to discontinue providing insurance and telling their employees to get their health insurance from the ACA state exchanges.  Again, Republican deception has made a large portion of America uncomfortable with ObamaCare, so it is not clear that employees would readily accept this idea.

The small business employer also has the option to utilize the small business health insurance exchange established by ObamaCare.  This option would allow the employer to continue providing insurance to its employees and be exempt from the section 2701 requirements.

Another option for the small business employer would be to self insure.  This would also allow them to provide insurance to their employees and be exempt from the section 2701 requirements.

The total number of employees affected by minor premium increases is likely to be less than 3 million and even that number depends on a lot of the variables mentioned which could make the number much smaller.  My suggestion for small business employees is to get your health insurance from the state exchanges.

Ultimately, if our Republican leaders would stop spreading misinformation and start to support ObamaCare, more people would benefit.  The federal government can be a valuable partner to business and individuals despite what radical GOP-ers want you to believe.