You can keep…what, exactly?

Once again I’m back with a 10-minute-or-less romp through the events of the day.

I tried to keep from dealing too much with ObamaCare in this episode, having said as much as I did last episode, but this issue is just sucking the oxygen out of the news cycle. First off, I consider what the problem was that ObamaCare was supposed to solve, and realize that the solution is worse than the problem.

Global warming has “paused” for 17 years now, and a peer-reviewed study suggests it might be doing that for another 20 years or so. And it’s all due to natural, ecological cycles. (Imagine that.)

President Obama recently said that you can keep your policy if you like it, except if you can’t. That was referring to the individual, private insurance market. Kathleen Sebelius has now added that caveat to another, much larger, insurance group.

Mentioned links:

Global warming “pause†may last for 20 more years

Global warming ‘pause’ may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover

Obama: “What We Said Was You Can Keep It If It Hasn’t Changed Since The Law Passed”

Sebelius Bombshell: Employer Based Plans Will Face Same Grandfathering Caveats as Lost Individual Plans

You can listen to “Consider This!†on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes.

Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser.

The Stitcher Network is another possibility. Again, you can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis†to let them know where you heard about it.

Of course, you can always subscribe via iTunes as well. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’!

And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it.

I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend “Consider This!” to your social media audience.

Show transcript

OK, so let me get this straight. The problem that ObamaCare was trying to fix was this: uninsured people got free healthcare at emergency rooms, but this cost was borne by taxpayers.

So the solution is to subsidize their insurance. The subsidies come from their tax refund via the IRS. Where does the money come for these subsidies? The taxpayer. And for those not getting subsidies for their ObamaCare insurance, many are seeing rate increases to also offset these lower cost plans. And since the Supreme Court called this a tax, then again, the money is coming from the taxpayer.

And since those subsidized plans don’t really get subsidized until folks get the credits on their tax refund, they have to front both the cost of the plan and the cost of the often huge deductibles, until tax time. How about that? The poor give Uncle Sam a no-interest loan. How compassionate.

Here’s the bottom line: The problem was that taxpayers bore the cost of the poor getting free health care. The solution is that the taxpayers bear the cost of insurance for the poor, and the poor bear the full cost of the insurance and thousands of dollars of deductible until sometime the following year. Does that make sense to anyone?

—

In October of 2012, I mentioned an article noting that global warming had essentially stopped since 1997. Well, it’s still stopped, and Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology is taking a closer look at it.

A paper by her in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics not only explains the pause, it suggests that the scientific majority have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. This is the foundation on which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC report we keep hearing about) is built, and she’s shaking it to the core.

Imagine that; nature – the massive ecosystem that is our planet Earth – has more influence than man.

There’s a link in the show notes to an article that includes a graph of what all the various and sundry climate models have predicted, and then a line showing reality. The climate is now at a point at the bottom of the lowest prediction model. On top of that, Professor Curry says that this is likely to continue until at least 2035. She presents evidence of natural cycles that can be documents for the past 300 years in making this claim.

Now, accept or reject Professor Curry’s data or conclusions, we still are left with the nagging issue of predictions, used by the UN, that were presented with 95+% certainty. Somebody didn’t tell Mother Nature. Well, more likely, as Prof. Curry said, “The growing divergence between climate model simulations and observations raises the prospect that climate models are inadequate in fundamental ways.â€

“Inadequate.†That’s putting it mildly. Not unlike our climate, actually.

—

I tried to keep from dealing too much with ObamaCare in this episode, having said as much as I did last episode, but this issue is just sucking the oxygen out of the news cycle. But this just had to be mentioned, if for no other reason that you might not hear about it otherwise.

Remember the classic phrase, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan� Recently, the President revealed that there had been an unspoken caveat to that phrase, which he and his aides kept repeating for 3 years.

[Audio: Obama, You can keep it if it hasn’t changed.]

Well no, that’s not what you said. That’s not what you said repeatedly. So we found out, after implementation, what he really meant about the individual insurance market. Now we find out what he really mean about the employer-provided insurance market.

Kathleen Sebelius said under questioning from Republican Senator John Thune, “Employer based grandfathered plans will have the same caveats.†Well folks, brace yourselves for more cancellations, and millions more ObamaCare broken promises. When the President makes a promise, it comes with an expiration date.

Related posts:

1. 
   
2. Episode 19: Mitt-mentum in the Polls, Climate Change (Without the Change), and Selective Indignation Over Drone Strikes
   
3. Episode 65: Canadians Escaping Their Health System, American Workers Get Better Health Care From a Corporation, and How Wisconsin Got a Billion Dollar Surplus
   
4. Episode 57: Millions of ObamaCare Broken Promises