What are real costs of ObamaCare? People do not know what a deductible is.
Ignorance costs. Most people do not understand  the costs associated with ObamaCare:
For example: Â Do you know what a “deductible” is?
A recent academic study published in the Journal of Health Economicsfound that just 14% of individuals who have health coverage could correctly answer all four of four basic questions about health insurance. For example, they did not know  what a “deductible†and “copay†are.
If comprehension figures are that low for the insured, analysts worry what that portends for the uninsured, especially for a program as complex as Obamacare.
Unawareness of terms like “deductible†could prove mind boggling for people.Â
No more open fires in San Francisco, CA it appears:Â
If you’re in San Francisco this Christmas, you can forget about roasting chestnuts on an open fire.
Bay Area officials issued a ban on both indoor and outdoor fires.
The ban was in effect Christmas Eve and could extend through Christmas Day, reports local news station KTVU.
A governmental body called the Bay Area Air Quality Management District released a “Winter Spare the Air Alert,†prohibiting residents from burning either wood and manufactured logs or any other solid fuels in all fireplaces.
Crime:  First-time offenders will have the option to enroll in a wood smoke awareness class to learn about the hazards of wood smoke pollution, instead of paying a $100 ticket.
The second time someone is caught heating their hands by the fire they will be fined $500. Any further violations will result in tickets demanding more than $500
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Firenze Sage, Esq. Â Wood smoke awareness college majors now have jobs,at least in San Francisco. Â jaj48@aol.com
“It’s worth the trouble. It’s going to be a glorious thing. It’s about life, a healthier life, liberty, the freedom to pursue our happiness. It honors the vows of our founders. A person can follow his or her passion and not be chained by a policy, so they could start a business, be self-employed, change jobs. It’s a very, very exciting thing. And it’s about wellness and prevention. It’s about the health of America, not just the health care for Americans. So we’re very proud of it, and our enthusiasm for it … strengthens our determination to make sure it works.â€
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Firenze Sage, Esq. Â It is almost impossible to read what this woman says and not think “unhinged”
 Python strangles and kills a Bali security guard.
The lush Indonesian island of Bali is a tropical paradise full of world-class hotels, amazing beaches and ridiculous yoga retreats. It’s also home to the occasional terrorist bombing (2002 and 2005) and, of course, killer pythons.
One of those pythons strangled a security guard to death outside the Bali Hyatt, a luxury hotel in Bali’s Sanur area on Friday, reports the Daily Mail.
The victim, 59-year-old Ambar Arianto Mulyo, was an employee at a restaurant nearby.
He managed to capture the 15-foot-long snake, which had for awhile been menacing the hotel.
Mulyo spotted the snake and successfully got his hands on the serpent’s head and tail. Then, however, he made the fatal mistake of hoisting the python on his shoulders.
The snake wrapped itself around Mulyo in a flash and suffocated him.
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Firenze Sage: Â How did he manage to get the head and tail of a 15 foot snake? Â And then he came in last in the “How to manage a snake” contest.Â
No protection for vile bigots?  “Just as the 2nd Amendment shouldn’t protect assault rifle devotees, so the 1st Amendment shouldn’t protect vile bigots.” #PhilRobertson
Firenze Sage, Esq. Â Â Piers Morgan, who purports to be a news,person, has no idea of what the 1st amendment means. Â But then he’s a Brit who takes advantage of it to utter idiocies like this. Â Â jaj48@aol.com
EPA climate fraudster lied & goes to prison. Trust his climate change data?
Leading EPA climate  fraudster did what quality job when actually on the job for the  EPA?
The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change goes  prison for at least 30 months.
John Beale lied to  to his bosses  saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan. That way,  he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.
John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade. He  will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday.
Another antic by the EPA concerns lead. In an unbelievable bit of hysteria about lead pollution, the EPA has just blocked pretty much all installations/repairs of fire hydrants? Why? Because they have a small amount of lead in their composition.
Now this would be almost, almost, just barely, defensible if there was real concern of significant amounts of lead going into the primary water mains but that’s not the issue.
They’re worried that… someone might turn on the hydrant and drink from it. Ok, in a worst case scenario there might be, might be, an annoying amount (to the EPA) of lead in the water that’s been sitting in the hydrant, namely the first couple of gallons. But if anyone’s drinking from a hydrant it’s been running for hours and thousands of gallons have washed through it.
So the fire departments have to sit back and seal up any broken units, and have to waste precious minutes and resources tapping into the next one down the block. People’s lives and properties at stake, for no good reason whatsoever.
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Firenze Sage, Esq. Â Used to be that dogs contributed the only pollution near hydrants.
The real Free Syrian Army is a mirage. The Middle East as it exists neatly laid out in the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post has little relationship to the messy realities of a region with few clean borders, only messy collections of tribes, families, ethnic groups and quarreling variations of Islam clinging to a few miles of dusty land, a handful of olive groves, some oil wells and their children and machine guns.
Out in Syria, the mirage of the Free Syrian Army, its camps full of soldiers defecting from the military to form a secular liberation force, has dissipated, vanishing into the sand. And all it took to knock down the Potemkin villages of the FSA that never existed was an attack on the only part of the Free Syrian Army that did exist—its warehouses full of American and European military aid.
The Free Syrian Army never existed. What did exist was neither free, nor Syrian, nor an army. The FSA was sold as an army of Syrian soldiers who had banded together under defecting officers to fight against the Assad government. The real FSA mostly consisted of Islamic brigades…”
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Firenze Sage, Esq. Â Poor Senator McCain lost in the desert looking for rebel democrats.
Aptos CA Safeway expansion too big, too expansive.
Aptos, CA & neighboring rural  areas  [Seacliff, Soquel, La Selva Beach] aghast at Safeway’s enormous expansion plans for  the Rancho del Mar shopping Center located near Highway #1 and the Seacliff exit.
The “one size fits all” Safeway  plans  will  destroy the rural  community 5+ miles north and south of the Highway #1 and Seacliff exit area.
As there is  no legal town” of Aptos, Soquel, Seacliff and La Selva Beach this area is governed by the County of Santa Cruz.
The most extreme positions I’ve  heard:  There’s the legal  attitude of .  “It  belongs to  Safeway Corporation and property owners  can  do what they want”  attitude.  And on the other end  there’s the  people  opposed to profit who  want private property to go away. “Ah, we just need Big Government regulations & laws  to to take the profit out of Big Business Safeway…”
Most of us are in the in the muddle of the middle:  We choose to live where we do as we like the rural, small  community.
What  can the muddle of the middle types do?   Let’s tell Safeway to pull in their Footprints to our liking — or we will take our Footprints elsewhere to shop.
And that’s a real possibility for many of us: Â Deluxe Market just south of Safeway at the Rio del Mar exit is an excellent, small, family run full market. Â Yes most of us shop also at Safeway as prices are lower for many items (paper rolls!).
There are a lot of Yahoo groups people can contact and let them know about the Safeway plans and how to connect with those who want to contain Safeway’s plans.
The “one size fits all” plans of Safeway and Big Government  must be opposed by all of us in the muddle of the middle. Let’s not allow to happen here what happened in Sabasterpol, CA and elsewhere.
Rein in Safeway akin to what is in the Carmel, CA area.
Either Safeway pulls in their Footprints to our liking  or we take our Footprints to shop elsewhere!
How Obama-Care affects a  family of 4 adult children
 How Obama-Care fails a family of 4 adult children says all that has to be said.
Here’s a real life example why ObamaCare does not, and cannot, Â work. Â
By the way, what I conclude from all this is this:   If you are young and fairly healthy and  never had a medical plan  and think you want one  — you may  get something for not much.
 However, if you are young and fairly healthy, you probably won’t  sign up for Obama-Care  because  you can always do what you did before and go to the emergency room. When you need it you can get it.
And, If you are older, successful, and for years you have paid for a medical  plan  — you will pay dearly for much poorer medical care.  From those who have made a success of their life, more will be taken so as to level everyone to the same level.  That’s Obama’s plan.
Here’s a real life example:  Maria, my y friend of many years,  is over 65. Her husband, an attorney, divorced Maria  when the youngest child was about age six.  Her ex-  choose  to re-marry and then remarry again.  Her ex- now he lives in Latin America.
As my memory recollects, my friend Maria raised the youngest two children. The two oldest finished college; Â the youngest two did not attend college. Â Such is life when fathers boogie the home. Â The kids pay.
My friend, Maria who is over 65  uses Medicare.  Her  four children:  the oldest , a male over 45, works as a successful New York based photographer. He pays for his own medical plan.  He will be one who will pay much more money for far worse medical care.  From those who have — even more will be taken.
The  next oldest child, a female in her early 40’s , was employed in high end clothing until  a few years ago. She  has a pre-existing  medical condition and has not taken care of her health issues for various reasons. She typically votes Republican.  Currently unemployed,  she will be able to access health care for someone with a pre-existing condition.  But she may find out that the care she can get now is about the same as was available to her before:  not that great. She already knows this and — my guess — she probably will not access what could be available to her.  She has already been burnt by medical care that she thinks harmed her. Why get more of the same.  So she will opt out of Obama-Care by in-action.
The third child used drugs and eventually was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now around age 40,  she receives various forms of assistance including government paid for medical care. Her mother was particularly concerned when the government took her daughter off of medications that were working and put  her on less expensive, different medications.  That daughter went down hill and had to be hospitalized for several months. She is now stabilized and lives off welfare.  She used to be an excellent artist.  Now she rides her bike and buys bike parts. She has no need for Obama-Care.  She probably does not even know what it is.
And the fourth adult child, the youngest:  he  dropped out of high school, has a hit and miss job history;  he had a tax payer paid for emergency operation  with severe complications.  That probably cost  taxpayers  about $30,000 dollars.  He did not pay a dime and has never paid a dime for that medical care.  He is back doing what he did before needing immediate emergency  medical attention.  My guess is that he knows he will get medical care if he needs it and at that time he will sign up. He will not sign up for Obama-Care until he needs it. If ever.
I asked my friend Maria  if the topic of Obama-Care came up around the diner table over Thanksgiving. She said there was no discussion.  Why should there be?  It’s a no brainer:  get it when you need it.  Avoid it when it has hurt you. Â
Oh, the oldest adult child did not come to diner.  He was off  working. Â
written by DrCameronJackson@gmail.com
Even as President Obama reluctantly granted Americans thrown off their health plans quasi-permission to possibly keep them, he called them “the folks who, over time, I think, are going to find that the marketplaces are better.” He means the ObamaCare exchanges that are replacing the private insurance market, adding that “it’s important that we don’t pretend that somehow that’s a place worth going back to.”
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with health insurance chief executives at the White House in Washington November. Reuters
Easy for him to say. The reason this furor will continue even if the website is fixed is that the public is learning that ObamaCare’s insurance costs more in return for worse coverage.
Mr. Obama and his liberal allies call the old plans “substandard,” but he doesn’t mean from the perspective of the consumers who bought them. He means people were free to choose insurance that wasn’t designed to serve his social equity and income redistribution goals. In his view, many people must pay first-class fares for coach seats so others can pay less and receive extra benefits.
Liberals justify these coercive cross-subsidies as necessary to finance coverage for the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions. But government usually helps the less fortunate honestly by raising taxes to fund programs. In summer 2009, Senate Democrats put out such a bill, and the $1.6 trillion sticker shock led them to hide the transfers by forcing people to buy overpriced products.
This political mugging is especially unfair to the people whose plans on the current individual market are being taken away. The majority of these consumers are self-employed or small-business owners. They’re middle class, rarely affluent. They took responsibility for their care without government aid, and unlike people in the job-based system, they paid with after-tax dollars.
Now they’re being punished for the crime of not subsidizing ObamaCare, even though the individual market was never as dysfunctional or high cost as liberals claim. In 2012, average U.S. individual premiums were $190, ranging from a low of $123 in North Dakota to a high of $385 in Massachusetts. Average premiums for family plans fell that year by 0.5% to $412.
Those numbers come from the 13,000 different policies from 180 insurers sold on eHealthInsurance.com, the online shopping brokerage that works. (Technological wonders never cease.) Individuals can make the trade-offs between costs and benefits for themselves. This wide variety is proof that humans don’t all want or need the same thing. If they did, there would be no need for a market and government could satisfy everybody.
That is precisely what the Obama health planners believe they can do. Regulators mandated a very rich level of “essential” health benefits that all plans in the individual market must cover, regardless of cost. This year eHealth EHTH +0.29% reported that its data show individual premiums must be 47% higher than the old average to fund the new categories in the individual market.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare’s plans are limited to essentially four. Yes, four. The law converts insurance products on the ObamaCare exchanges into interchangeable commodities that finance the same standard benefit at the same average expense over four tiers known as bronze, silver, gold and platinum.
So, for example, a bronze plan covers 60% of health-care expenses and the beneficiary pays a lower premium to pick up the remaining 40% out of pocket. Platinum carries a higher premium for a 90%-10% split. But there can be little deviation from the formulas—that is, there is little room for innovation or policy choice—to suit customer preferences.
In any case all four tiers are scrap-metal grade, because the rules ObamaCare imposes to create a supposedly superior insurance product are resulting in an objectively inferiormedical product. The new mandates and rules raise costs, so insurers must compensate by offering narrow and less costly networks of doctors, hospitals and other providers in their ObamaCare products. Insurers thus restrict care and patient choice of physicians in exchange for discounted reimbursement rates, much as Medicaid does.
Nearly half of the ObamaCare plans are tightly managed HMOs, according to a McKinsey & Co. analysis. In states like California, Missouri and New Hampshire, many networks are 40% or 45% the size of those offered for normal commercial coverage. Patients face the prospect of waiting months and driving miles to clinics and county hospitals.
Narrow networks can be a useful cost-control tool, to the extent people choose to give up medical options in return for lower premiums. But that’s rarely what people want when they’re choosing with their own money. Some 82.5% of eHealth customers in 2012 purchased preferred provider organization plans (PPOs) that are structured so patients can visit virtually any physician.
The awful irony of this new ObamaCare health system is that all adults now enjoy mandated pediatric vision benefits, even if they don’t have kids, but parents can’t take their daughter to an expensive children’s hospital if she gets really sick. Everybody gets “free” preventive checkups with no copays, but not treatment for a complex illness from specialists at an academic medical center.
If the old individual market was as bad as Mr. Obama said it was, then he shouldn’t pretend it’s a place worth going back to, even for a year’s delay. His “fix” is necessary politically because ObamaCare’s willful destruction of this alternative is the worst act of government mayhem since FDR’s National Recovery Act. The Affordable Care Act’s main achievement is turning out to be diminishing affordable care.
