Obamacare takes from the Poor and gives to the Not As Poor

I just finished reading this article by Mary Katharine Hamm over on Hot Air, it details a troubling consequence of Obamacare.

The logic flow:

1. Obamacare takes your income eligibility and places you with a plan - if your income is low enough, it compels you to go on Medicaid.
2. If you go on Medicaid after the age of 55, the State can raid your estate (after your death) to recoup the medical costs of your care.

The details.

Obamacare relaxed the rules for people eligible to receive medicaid via two elements. First, it raised the income standard (133% of federal poverty standards) and it dispensed with the Asset test. (Chronicled here - note, this was known in 2010 and the implications haven't been examined until now)

As a result of the Obamacare exchanges - you either have to accept the subsidy presented to you (and go on Medicaid) or you have to agree to accept an unsubsidized plan. The cost between the two can be considerable. The federal poverty level for a household of 1 is $11,490 while the 133% level is $15,282. (The additional guidelines are here.) The kicker is, that an unsubsidized plan in the Obamacare exchange is between $451 and $891 a month in King County. Quite a lot of scratch for a person living on essentially ~$1000 a month.

"So what?", you say - the thing is, Medicaid can come after your assets once you are dead if you accepted medicaid assistance after the age of 55. In short, your "assistance" from the government to subsidize your health insurance essentially becomes a "loan" from the government that you have to repay from your estate.

To quote from the Daily Kos diarist (I know!) that MKH got her article from,

The kicker of it is, if you make the right amount to qualify for a subsidized health insurance plan, your costs are going to be shared and subsidized by the government. But if you go on Medicaid, you owe the entire amount that Medicaid spends on you from the day you turn 55.

Only Obamacare can take from The Poor while giving to the Not As Poor.

Bob Is A Racist

What if bad fat isn’t so bad?

What if bad fat isn’t so bad?

North Korea

Just came upon this little tidbit. North Koreans are starving and China refuses to sell rice to western aid agencies for distribution.

SPIEGEL: How many people have been affected by the food shortages?

Göken: The World Food Program estimates between 5 and 6 million. At least 400,000 tons of grain is lacking.

Then there is this, "In addition, they are also lacking modern equipment — I didn’t see any tractors in the fields. Nor can one say that there is effective crisis management on the part of the government."

Yep, socialism doesn't work and the degree to which socialism is applied only hurries the final collapse. Hopefully, for the North Korean people, the collapse will come soon, since neither the East nor the West is any hurry to bring about 'regime change'.

Starbucks makes it easier for me

OK, I don't buy into the whole Starbucks "fair trade" thingy. In fact, I saw this article in March talking about the whole Fair Trade coffee scam. Short story, "Fair Trade" is just a marketing label, that allows wealthy coffee growers to appeal to your guilt. Why do I say wealthy? because farmers have to pay a fee to have their coffee "certified" and the fee is so enormous (even accounting for the fact that the organization makes NO effort to inspect the grower) that any extra profit they might have made has to go to licensing fees.

More here and here

BUT that is not the topic tonight. This is. I am an Android user, I have a Motorola Atrix and I am always looking for ways to simplify my life.

To manage my coffee habit, I use "My Coffee Card Pro" by Birbeck. It is a widget that allows me to see how much money is on the Starbucks Gold Card and will generate a barcode to allow me to buy coffee with my phone whenever I need to satisfy my Jones. Very convenient.
Now it looks like Starbucks is about to up the ante. According to the article, the official app will allow me to order my beverage via my phone... Just another way for them to seperate me from my money... wait, they already did that. Ok, this is just for convenience then.

Mr. President, You can’t buy good test scores.

Tuesday, April 13, 2011 President Obama said the following, “If there are bright
young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go
to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see
businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean
children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing
billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on
high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a
vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on
Earth – can’t afford any of this.”

He is really irritated here, the reason is the Ryan budget proposal.
President Obama, talks about it when he says, “A 70% cut to clean
energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in
college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year.”

What President Obama doesn’t get is that if we want to buy higher test
scores it will cost $35,667 per kid, per year with no guarantee of
success. The reason is that spending on education isn’t a good predictor
for test scores, at least at the national level.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide
evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance,
performed first in 2000 and repeated every three years. It alternates
between main focus areas of Reading, Math and Science, so while Reading
has been tested each time, it has been the main focus twice so far, in
2000 and 2009.

When a politician tells you we are 15th in reading, 24th in math, or 21st in
science, the PISA test scores form the basis of that assertion.

On this graph, the US has the second highest GDP, but scores near the
average on the test. This is a linear regression model, but don’t let
the math scare you. It says is that if you want to predict what a
country’s score will be based on GDP, take the GDP, multiply it by .0004
and add it to the base score of 479. Here is the caveat, the R^2 number
of .059 means that you will likely be wrong. Actually what it shows is
that there is a very weak relationship between GDP and test scores.

The graph that sinks the Obama plan to increase spending on Education is here.
Here is the kicker: The test measures the cumulative spending on students form age 6 to age 15.
It doesn’t look at education spending per year. The US spends nearly
$105K (we’re #1 here) to educate our kids from the age of 6 to 15. That
is an average of $11,666 per school year.

The graph, however, shows a weak relationship between spending and test
scores. The linear model here is simple. To predict the score of any
country, take the spending per student, multiply it by .0002 and add it
to 476.8. If I wanted to use this model to improve the scores of
American kids to a top score of 541, the linear model tells me it would
cost $321,000 per kid - about three times what we are spending now.

Thankfully, the R^2 is very low (.09086) this means that there is a very weak
relationship between spending per pupil and test scores. That is why
Obama is wrong on this issue. The 25% cut in Federal outlays to
education actually makes sense.

If you would like to read the report, it is here. Most of the fluff in the paper makes no sense, but the graphs are very illuminating.

SUSPICIONS OF FRAUD IN NEVADA: “Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to ...

Once is Happenstance
Twice is Coincidence
Three times is Enemy Action

 

 

Sent to you by Stew via Google Reader:

 

 

SUSPICIONS OF FRAUD IN NEVADA: “Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Shar…

via Instapundit by Glenn Reynolds on 10/26/10

SUSPICIONS OF FRAUD IN NEVADA: "Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Democratic opponent, Sen. Harry Reid's name was already checked. Ferrara said she wasn't alone in her voting experience. She said her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing happen."

North Carolina: "Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said."

Related: A pattern of fraud?

And more thoughts from Stephen Green: "It's going to be a long week when the first two stories you see reflect just how big the 'margin of cheating' is going to be this year."

People need to pay attention. Desperation is going to lead to a lot of corners being cut. Make an example of 'em so they won't do it again next time.

Also: New ACORN effort is mobilizing voters, run by woman indicted for violating election laws.

UPDATE: Dallas.

Hey, I've been pushing paper ballots since 2002 for a reason.

 

 

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