kanesrealm

As always when addressing the healthcare topic I begin with reminding readers there is no such thing as Obamacare. Republicans, most notably Mitt Romney in his 2012 Presidential Campaign dubbed the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare" in an effort to demonize it and turn it into a negative. Obama in a very clever political maneuver embraced it and turned it into a positive. Just a week out from the general election, the news is jam packed with all the headlines that insurance premiums are going up in the A.C.A. insurance exchanges from 22% to 25% or as much as 40% depending on whose figures you use, big discrepancy between 22 and 40, don't you think? Here are some basic facts about the increases, less than one percent of those using the exchanges will face an increase directly from their pocket. For the rest, because they can't afford it, the federal subsidies will pick up that increase. Does that mean the impact on that one percent doesn't matter? Absolutely not. It ...

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "here I go again." Two days ago Bill Clinton was on the stump and made comments about the Affordable Care Act and the problems in it. His use of "craziest thing" is all the media is talking about and so, of course is Donald Trump, who is the craziest thing to ever come along. I'll get back to the media but let's stay focused. Americans say they want to hear the truth but when it gets said by prominent political figures they either lose their minds or miss the point, largely due to a T.V. media incapable of offering a serious discussion on anything. If you've read a lot of my commentaries you know that I have honestly stated that the Affordable Care Act as it exists has major problems and must be fixed by the next President. Hillary Clinton has also said this but you probably missed it because of poor reporting. My position does not come from an elite penning op-eds from my summer home out of a sense of liberal guilt or genu...

It has been very easy to cover the Republican Presidential race this election cycle because the field is so large and so colorful in their rhetoric that they are collectively the gift that keeps giving. Now the Democratic race is truly interesting and heating up. Hillary Clinton has a big problem and his name is Bernie Sanders. Sorry Governor O'Malley but you are now irrelevant. A year ago Clinton was probably happy that so many potential Democratic Candidates were withholding their decision to run in anticipation of her believed inevitable announcement. Now I would bet she wishes a dozen had run and that the DNC had scheduled more debates. She's probably even sorry Joe Biden didn't run. The inevitable candidate is once again in danger of being Obamaed. Bernie Sanders is a serious candidate with the necessary grassroots movement to take the nomination away from Hillary Clinton. She didn't believe it at the beginning of last summer but she and her advisors believe it ...

The Chinese Stock Market takes a rapid tumble and so does ours. Which  begs the question, if China is such a rotten destructive force on us, as some politicians and Americans suggest, why do we have so much riding on their success? The first thing that needs to happen is our news media needs to take a chill pill and stop covering stock market flip flops like the Sun is crashing to Earth. Remember that as some are losing some money, there are others who swoop in and make money in a downturn. There is a difference between the gamesmanship of Wall Street and the real economy of  goods and services. The blips on a screen and shuffling of paper and manipulation by the money masters has cost our country and the world dearly. It is all illusion but accepted as real because we all agree to it. Reach into your pocket right now and pull out a one dollar bill. That piece of paper has value for acquiring goods and services because we all collectively agree it's worth a dollar. If tomorro...

The Affordable Care Act is not my favorite piece of legislation. Let's start now and work our way back. Approximately 40 million Americans have no insurance, can't afford their premium or co-pays. That's the state of healthcare in our country today. Is that acceptable to you? Why is it this way? Because we are still debating whether healthcare is a right or a privilege. We are the only first world industrialized nation to still be having this argument. Given our history and position as the most powerful nation on earth this is unacceptable and inexcusable. It only continues to be reality because of the extreme fantasies of demagogues who continue to fool people into believing that true universal single payer care is a plot to transfer our nation to communism. They say socialism but they mean big red commie. They know, I give them the benefit of the doubt here, that we already have the two biggest socialist programs in the world. Bigger than any programs implemented by actu...

This past week we heard daily about the U.S. Supreme Court hearing the latest legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. You didn't hear those three words though and this brings us to one of my pet peeves and perhaps yours too. Calling something that which it is not. Barack Obama's foes coined the phrase Obamacare as a derogatory and devisive term. Our illustrious media across the board joyfully siezed upon the word. I suspect out of laziness and ease of reference. President Obama then turned this to his favor in the 2012 election and neutralized Mitt Romney's use of it as a club. He famously said he was beginning to like the sound of it. So now every media personality and politician uses it, for both good and bad. There is no law or program in our country titled Obamacare. It would be a display of imperial arrogance to actually do such a thing regarding something so important. It is also not acceptable as a slang term, again this issue is too critical for such triviali...