http://video.foxnews.com/v/5615301810001

.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5613742711001

.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5610484192001

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liar-nObamaCare Is Still liar-nObama's

          Pitifully, a growing population turns first to the government to solve their problems, such as health insurance coverage, despite the enumerated powers laid out by the Law of the Land. Now we have a very large sector of America’s economy that is manipulated by government rules, regulation and control that standardizes inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, not to mention inflates costs.
          The good news is President Donald Trump acted last week to halt illegal subsidies paid from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies to cover their losses and, ostensibly, to keep premiums lower. Naturally, the #VeryFakeNews media has been in hyper drive to frame the narrative of the Hateful Republican President who is killing people by taking away their health care through the wrongful use of an executive order.
          Let’s apply the truth to the hyperventilating Left and the insurance companies who spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for this failed policy, and who are now trying to cover up the need for billions in taxpayer bailouts — a.k.a. in bureaucratic-ese, cost-sharing reduction payments.
          Fact: In the original “Affordable” Care Act, a risk pool of funding was created to pay insurance companies for potential losses and subsidize low-income patients. But, when the losses were totaling hundreds of millions of dollars because young, healthy individuals didn’t take the carrot/stick to pay high premiums for insurance with an enormous out-of-pocket deductible to finance the expansion of Medicaid and artificially lower premium costs for the sick, that risk pool ran dry. This explains the sky-high annual premium increases since liar-nObamaCare took effect.
          Fact: Since the risk pool was woefully inadequate to cover losses and to reimburse commercial insurance companies for the mandated low-cost premiums for some, Barack liar-nObama made an appropriation request of the Congress that was not approved. In response, he used his pen to do it anyway — an action deemed illegal by DC district court in 2016. The ruling came after a 2014 lawsuit filed by the House challenging the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments as lacking a specific, legal appropriation.
          With his phone and his pen, liar-nObama, the once-constitutional lecturer, overstepped the Constitution’s declaration that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…” The Appropriations Clause, as he should know, enumerates the power of the purse to lie in Congress, not by an imperial attempting to salvage his signature legislation.
          Fact: These cost-sharing reduction payments, being illegal, were rightfully halted by President Trump with the issue returned to Congress to address. So, despite the dripping hatred from leftists who cannot get over the loss of their coroneted queen, Trump acted in a constitutional manner to correct a wrong.
          Relentless in their aim, the Left parrots false statements to grip the GOP with fear. That includes the usual Democrat/media claims that Republicans hate poor people and are trying to kill them just as the November 1st sign-ups begin for liar-nObamaCare coverage in 2018.
          Again, the antidote to a plague of lies is a big dose of truth with the disinfectant of sunshine.
          In news accounts that began seeping into the public back in the summer as insurance companies were making premium cost projections, the “uncertainty” of the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments pushed some state insurance regulators to have commercial insurers include in their projected premium cost increases the absence of these subsidies or at least submit two projections — one with the CSR one without.
          So, another fact: According to the American Academy of Actuaries July publication, these adjusted projections to address this uncertainty attributed to much of the requested increases already made this year for next year’s premium costs. Get that? States like Tennessee approved premium increases this summer to account for the elimination of the CSR payments.
          But here’s the part that really disrupts the narrative of folks like those who penned the Oct. 12 Bloomberg editorial, “Trump’s Healthcare Wrecking Ball.” The hypoxic-inducing tantrums that Trump’s move will hurt the poor by shifting costs to the sickest patients, while schizophrenically declaring in the same article that the healthy subsidize the sick, are simply false.
          Back to the July American Academy of Actuaries, which notes, “Although those who receive premium subsidies would be insulated from the full increase in premiums, nonsubsidized enrollees would face the full increase, potentially affecting their enrollment behavior and therefore the morbidity of the risk pool” if the CSR payments were to be eliminated.
          While President Trump eliminated the illegal payments from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies, the law still demands that insurance companies offer lower premiums based on income. So, by law, insurance companies must keep prices artificially low for some with the nonsubsidized enrollees paying full price. Again, according to the Actuaries, those forced into buying government-sanctioned insurance with no subsidies “would face the full increase.”
          Let’s sum this up. A law empowering government to control health insurance is failed policy and law. Using taxpayer money to make illegal payments to private insurance companies to correct flaws in the law and has rightfully been halted with the issue returned to Congress for action. Failing liar-nObamaCare is still in place despite more than seven years of GOP promises to repeal and replace the law, and despite the president’s smart moves to inject free-market, consumer-driven controls into the health insurance market.
          liar-nObamaCare should now be called liar-nObamaScare considering the frightful tactics of the Left to attempt to affix wrongful blame. But notwithstanding attempts to hang it around Republican necks, this law will forever be the dud prize of liar-nObama and Democrats. It’s now up to Republicans to restore the order of a constitutional government and work with a president whose agenda is overwhelmingly supported by Americans to replace a failed law with effective policy.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/51886

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5615301810001

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5613742711001

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5610484192001

.

liar-nObamaCare Is Still liar-nObama's

by Robin Smith:  It’s been said that since liar-nObamaCare became law, the U.S. government is now a health insurance company that fields a military. Sadly, that’s not far off the mark and is an affront to those who understand the Constitution and personal liberty.

          Pitifully, a growing population turns first to the government to solve their problems, such as health insurance coverage, despite the enumerated powers laid out by the Law of the Land. Now we have a very large sector of America’s economy that is manipulated by government rules, regulation and control that standardizes inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, not to mention inflates costs.
          The good news is President Donald Trump acted last week to halt illegal subsidies paid from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies to cover their losses and, ostensibly, to keep premiums lower. Naturally, the #VeryFakeNews media has been in hyper drive to frame the narrative of the Hateful Republican President who is killing people by taking away their health care through the wrongful use of an executive order.
          Let’s apply the truth to the hyperventilating Left and the insurance companies who spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for this failed policy, and who are now trying to cover up the need for billions in taxpayer bailouts — a.k.a. in bureaucratic-ese, cost-sharing reduction payments.
          Fact: In the original “Affordable” Care Act, a risk pool of funding was created to pay insurance companies for potential losses and subsidize low-income patients. But, when the losses were totaling hundreds of millions of dollars because young, healthy individuals didn’t take the carrot/stick to pay high premiums for insurance with an enormous out-of-pocket deductible to finance the expansion of Medicaid and artificially lower premium costs for the sick, that risk pool ran dry. This explains the sky-high annual premium increases since liar-nObamaCare took effect.
          Fact: Since the risk pool was woefully inadequate to cover losses and to reimburse commercial insurance companies for the mandated low-cost premiums for some, Barack liar-nObama made an appropriation request of the Congress that was not approved. In response, he used his pen to do it anyway — an action deemed illegal by DC district court in 2016. The ruling came after a 2014 lawsuit filed by the House challenging the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments as lacking a specific, legal appropriation.
          With his phone and his pen, liar-nObama, the once-constitutional lecturer, overstepped the Constitution’s declaration that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…” The Appropriations Clause, as he should know, enumerates the power of the purse to lie in Congress, not by an imperial attempting to salvage his signature legislation.
          Fact: These cost-sharing reduction payments, being illegal, were rightfully halted by President Trump with the issue returned to Congress to address. So, despite the dripping hatred from leftists who cannot get over the loss of their coroneted queen, Trump acted in a constitutional manner to correct a wrong.
          Relentless in their aim, the Left parrots false statements to grip the GOP with fear. That includes the usual Democrat/media claims that Republicans hate poor people and are trying to kill them just as the November 1st sign-ups begin for liar-nObamaCare coverage in 2018.
          Again, the antidote to a plague of lies is a big dose of truth with the disinfectant of sunshine.
          In news accounts that began seeping into the public back in the summer as insurance companies were making premium cost projections, the “uncertainty” of the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments pushed some state insurance regulators to have commercial insurers include in their projected premium cost increases the absence of these subsidies or at least submit two projections — one with the CSR one without.
          So, another fact: According to the American Academy of Actuaries July publication, these adjusted projections to address this uncertainty attributed to much of the requested increases already made this year for next year’s premium costs. Get that? States like Tennessee approved premium increases this summer to account for the elimination of the CSR payments.
          But here’s the part that really disrupts the narrative of folks like those who penned the Oct. 12 Bloomberg editorial, “Trump’s Healthcare Wrecking Ball.” The hypoxic-inducing tantrums that Trump’s move will hurt the poor by shifting costs to the sickest patients, while schizophrenically declaring in the same article that the healthy subsidize the sick, are simply false.
          Back to the July American Academy of Actuaries, which notes, “Although those who receive premium subsidies would be insulated from the full increase in premiums, nonsubsidized enrollees would face the full increase, potentially affecting their enrollment behavior and therefore the morbidity of the risk pool” if the CSR payments were to be eliminated.
          While President Trump eliminated the illegal payments from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies, the law still demands that insurance companies offer lower premiums based on income. So, by law, insurance companies must keep prices artificially low for some with the nonsubsidized enrollees paying full price. Again, according to the Actuaries, those forced into buying government-sanctioned insurance with no subsidies “would face the full increase.”
          Let’s sum this up. A law empowering government to control health insurance is failed policy and law. Using taxpayer money to make illegal payments to private insurance companies to correct flaws in the law and has rightfully been halted with the issue returned to Congress for action. Failing liar-nObamaCare is still in place despite more than seven years of GOP promises to repeal and replace the law, and despite the president’s smart moves to inject free-market, consumer-driven controls into the health insurance market.
          liar-nObamaCare should now be called liar-nObamaScare considering the frightful tactics of the Left to attempt to affix wrongful blame. But notwithstanding attempts to hang it around Republican necks, this law will forever be the dud prize of liar-nObama and Democrats. It’s now up to Republicans to restore the order of a constitutional government and work with a president whose agenda is overwhelmingly supported by Americans to replace a failed law with effective policy.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/51886

by Todd Johnson:  Last week marked the 16th anniversary of the United States’ military and political involvement in Afghanistan, and sadly, there is no end in sight. The counterinsurgency operation has been at best a draw, and considering the amount of blood and treasure that has been expended, a tremendous disappointment for a nation that spends on more on its military than the next 10 nations combined.

          More distressing than the lack of tangible progress on the ground is the lack of congressional input into the decision-making process. The latest news emanates from the Senate, where the Republican-led chamber recently voted down a proposal from Senator Rand Paul to sunset the current authorizations for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
          Paul, an avowed critic of the U.S. operations in the Middle East, voiced the concerns of many Americans when he stated that the original authorizations no longer are applicable to the changing dynamics of the battlefield. He also railed against his colleagues for allowing “a perpetual war until the end of time.” His measure failed, 61-36, and was followed a couple of days later by the Senate’s 89-9 decision to fund a $700 billion dollar defense budget.
          The peculiar decision-making in Washington, DC, hasn’t been relegated only to the halls of Congress. The Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, was quoted at last week’s AUSA Conference saying, “We are training, advising, and assisting indigenous armies all over the world, and I expect that will increase and not decrease.” His statement was surprising for many reasons, primarily because the U.S. government’s (primarily the Defense Department) record of building indigenous forces in Afghanistan has been undistinguished.
          According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) report, released in September, not only was the United States government unprepared to build an Afghan army and police force in the early 2000s but its efforts in the interim have “lacked a comprehensive approach to SSA [security sector assistance] and a coordinating body to successfully implement the whole-of-government programs necessary to develop a capable and self-sustaining ANDSF [Afghan National Defense Security Forces].”
          And while it’s true that the Trump administration has underwritten a new set of rules of engagement(ROE) that allow U.S. forces to “employ air power without a requirement that the intended objects of attack be ‘proximate’ to U.S. forces or U.S. advised Afghan forces,” it isn’t clear how this new set of tactics will facilitate the American mission of building Afghan security forces capable of defending their country.
          Since Trump took office, the pace of airstrikes against the Taliban and Islamic State in Afghanistan has reached a seven-year high. However, these strikes and new ROE also make it more likely that non-combatants will die and as a result create more fighters willing to engage U.S. advisers and Afghan forces on the ground. Quite simply, the tactics aren’t nested with a cogent national strategy and that means billions of dollars will be wasted in the future.
          It is incumbent upon the president, his secretary of defense, and the rest of his national security team to be up front with the American people and explain what is at stake in Afghanistan and how we can emerge victorious, however that is to be defined. It’s important that success be achieved soon because our nation’s Armed Forces are going to be facing a critical manning issue in the very near future.
          It was recently reported that the vast majority of American 17-24-year-olds (71%) can’t meet the minimum criteria for service in today’s Armed Forces. And, according to the Army Recruiting Command, while there 33.4 million Americans between the ages of 17-24, there only 136,000 who are interested in service and meet the basic requirements. Simply put, there aren’t going to be enough people to fight “forever wars.”
          After 16 years, something needs to change, and soon. Republics weren’t meant to fight prolonged wars and if the United States wants to continue being the primary international power its leadership must either decide to go all in for the mission in Afghanistan or withdraw. Our country deserves better than to be involved in a stalemate and only time will tell if the executive branch and Congress are up to the task.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/51882