Who am I staying away from this election? It’s a much easier question than one that asks, “Who is looking good for consumers?”As experienced voters, we’re all looking for something.
For me, fresh off the not-yet-ended misery inflicted on the middle class by President Obama, I’m very wary of any of the Loophole Louies. I will avoid these know-it-all candidates, those who can be described as “too clever by half,” a phrase used to describe a person who is likely to overreach because of confidence in their intelligence, whose use of the word “I” should be a glaring warning to the American people.
To me, President Obama is such a leader. An expert at the ins-and-outs of governmental administrative workings and an advocate of the government class, we’ve experienced how the I-attitude can be used against the majority of the American people, specifically the middle class, when a Loophole Louie is bent on pursuing his own agenda at any cost.
On the other hand, while former President Bush impressively stated that he didn’t know everything but would surround himself with people with the expertise required, many feel we were injured because of a failure to push him to identify the types of people he would surround himself with, perhaps even getting names out of him. Later, we experienced a presidency overrun by Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney and Carl Rove, as examples of those he would surround himself with.
Mine is a two-prong test that supports a restoration of checks and balances in our country, a candidate who evidences the ability to be a team player with an absolute acknowledgment and deference to the people who put the candidate in office AND a serious disclosure of the types of people who will be chosen as advisers and cohorts by the candidates.
President Obama is an example of one of those I-Presidents, not a team player who has behaved too clever by half, using his own agenda and his ability to work the system against the American middle class.
Similarly, Hillary Clinton is an I-presidential candidate, talking about how she’ll use her knowledge of government to go “further” on certain Obama policies. Hillary also suffers from having already proven she will use the ins-and-outs of government for her own agenda a la Obama. Another Loophole Louie whose claim to fame is that she stays JUST WITHIN THE LAW, what a degraded and pathetic presidential standard. Just as Obama bragged: I can do it when passing his amnesty executive order legally going around Congress and the American people, just as he did with his Iran deal, we are forewarned that Hillary Clinton will do the same.
There are candidates who fail the other part of the two-prong test. While appearing populist, there are warning signs that Donald Trump will seek advice from individuals who perhaps belie his claims to populism. For instance, Donald Trump has befriended Ted Cruz. For those of us worried about Ted Cruz because while bright, he is an “I-candidate” seeking to change our government drastically, Trump’s political alliance with him is worrisome.
Trump might undercut his appeal to moderates by choosing more conservative cohorts who promise even worse times for the middle class as Mitt Romney did with his choice of Paul Ryan, another I-candidate who pushed his own agenda through (the Ryan Plan) with an inflexibility and repetition that defied what the American people desired…at least twice.
The questioners during the debates must step up their game. Beyond entertainment, their job is to help us make informed decisions about the candidates. We need some real insights, not a repeat of the endless “reporting” that left most of America in the dark about Obamacare until it was already too late to address its real problems BEFORE we had to simply live with them.
If we’ve learned nothing we won’t have a middle class. If we’ve learned nothing then we’ll watch the accumulated effort of a working middle class wiped out as we reach the end of our lives as Medicare is slashed, more people are forced onto Medicaid and states are compelled by law to go after the estates of those over 55 on Medicaid for reimbursement which are both a result of Obamacare. We’ll see wages, job security, health insurance continue to disappear for the middle class as the government class uses our dollars to maintain and surpass the middle class.
What kinds of questions need to be answered? Well, let’s heed our warning from Obama’s presidency focusing on what should have been asked and answered and wasn’t regarding Obamacare and extrapolating those questions to any issue upon which the candidates speak.
First, what is the deal-breaker for you in the policy or reform you seek to pass? Obama’s ego meant that one of his main promises, that every American would have the opportunity to have health insurance as good as his family’s, the public option was thrown out early in the process as he pursued getting something, anything passed.
For those of us who understand health insurance, there never should have been an Obamacare once that was tossed because there is NO OTHER effective means of providing consumers with an option to obtain a health insurance product IF they are dissatisfied with commercial choices, especially since the law weakened consumers by FORCING us to purchase the product whether we like it or not or face a tax penalty.
Second, do you believe that failing to disclose the drawbacks of your proposed policy in favor of pointing out its benefits is lying? In other words, do you believe that lies of omission are lies?
Years after the passage of Obamacare people didn’t realize that we were forced to purchase a health insurance product, that we would be forced to choose a product that provides for coverages we don’t need and that uses those coverages to fail to provide us with what we do need (such as males not able to get free physicals each year while females are able to do so), such as single individuals paying for children’s eye and dental checkups while having to pay more for such coverage for themselves, such as male victims of domestic violence not being entitled to free counseling as females are, such as those seeking sterilization being forced to choose that the woman obtains such sterilization which is free under Obamacare but that vasectomies are not.
Third, do you believe that the provisions of your proposed reform should unequivocally apply to the government class?
As just about anyone knows by now, the government employees aren’t living with what the rest of the middle class has been forced to endure in terms of reduced benefits for employees and retirees, in terms of health insurance options, in terms of pensions and job security. The government’s own website brags: “…the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that the gap concerning benefits between the private and public sectors has been growing-in favor of the public sector,” http://gogovernment.org/government_101/benefits.php.
Fourth, when you talk about the government saving money on payment of medical expenses in entitlement programs (VA benefits, Medicare and Medicaid) is there any increased cost being passed onto consumers or reductions in illness-coverage that lead to those savings? In other words, is the middle class financing government savings?
By now unless you’re living under a rock, you know that Obamacare merely codified into federal law the old provide less coverage at higher prices to pay for the health insurance product.
Fifth, why is the government looking to increase costs to the middle class instead of tightening the process for discovering fraud (which is estimated at least at billions of dollars) and increasing penalties for such insurance fraud? Why aren’t cash rewards to consumers for discovering fraud provided?
In response to the rampant fraudulent payouts under Obamacare, “CMS admits that its contractors aren’t required to detect fraud…” (http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/071615-762040-investigators-kept-bogus-obamacare-accounts-going-for-more-than-a-year.htm)
Reporting fraud remains a you-do-the-work-and-see-no-benefit transaction as it’s always been under Obamacare.
Sixth, where will you move money FROM or what new taxes will you implement in order to finance your reform?
For Obamacare, we now know, the medical deduction formerly at 7.5 percent for individuals paying out loads of cash for medical care was raised to a 10 percent threshold requiring consumers to pay that much more out of pocket before qualifying for the deduction. The payroll tax for working Americans was raised two percent even as employees watched their benefits shrink (except public employees of the government class). An increase in the Medicare tax rate (on employers and employees). Then of course there are the increased costs to health insurers, medical device manufacturers and importers, that are naturally passed onto consumers.
