Rand Paul's group discount scheme: Single Premiums: $6,251 a year; Family Premiums $17,545 a year. Cheap?

Media Swings at Republican curve balls, and miss again: Just like the discussion around the Affordable Care Act, reporters and media pundits didn't know squat about health care, and that ignorance helped Republicans spread all the lies so many people believed today.

It's happening all over again, this time with Rand Paul's bizarre "group" health insurance idea. He wants every American to leave the individual insurance market and join a group association plan, pay their dues as a member (added cost), and get a similar group policy break that big businesses get. Sweet, it doesn't simplify buying insurance, it adds a whole new mind boggling level of bureaucracy.

What a deal...but there's a bigger problem.

The inconvenient truth #1; health insurance for employers is really really expensive too (according to Kaiser Family Foundation, 2015): 

This type of coverage is commonly called a “group health insurance plan” or “employer-sponsored health insurance.” In 2015, the average premium for single coverage is $521 per month, or $6,251 per year. The average premium for family coverage is $1,462 per month or $17,545 per year (source).Sep 28, 2015.

The inconvenient truth #2; worse still, group associations don't kick in the employer contribution side of the premium they normally give to employees:

On average, employers paid 83 percent of the premium, or $5,179 a year. Employees paid the remaining 17 percent, or $1,071 a year. For family coverage, the average policy totaled $17,545 a year with employers contributing, on average, 72 percent or $12,591. Employees paid the remaining 28 percent or $4,955 a year. Feb 16, 2016.

Group associations do no such thing, since they just provide a group buying discount for it's dues paying members. And then there are the high deductibles...etc.

The above figures are from 2015, and show pretty generous employee contributions. But the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show employers shifting their costs onto their employees ("Civilian" includes both private and government):

The fact is, Rand Paul is oblivious to previous attempts to do just what he thinks is the big solution:

A version of these self-insured association health plans first became widespread in the 1980s, but they failed in droves because many were undercapitalized. More troubling, these earlier association plans had a history of becoming what the Labor Department termed “scam artists” and the Government Accountability Office reported were “bogus entities [that] have exploited employers and individuals seeking affordable coverage.” More than two dozen states reported in 1992 that these early association plans had committed “fraud, embezzlement or other criminal law” violations.

The more ominous aspect of association health plans: market destabilization.People who don’t need to cover preexisting conditions or don’t want to pay community rates gravitate to the better deals offered by associations, leaving sicker people in the regulated markets. Naturally, regulated insurance prices increase as a result, sometimes causing a death spiral that crashes the market.

So Rand Paul really doesn't know what he's talking about, and yet, he sounds so confident. Note: Not one of the 2 morning show pundits asked about these two major points, which is why I didn't include them:

Dumb Ron Johnson Admits GOP Market based Health Care Guarantee doesn't Work!!!

The GOP health care plan is actually worse than many of the experts predict because they continue to low ball premium and deductible increases. I remember how the market worked before the ACA in the individual market, and it was bad, real bad. Back around 2006, and with no health problems, my deductible was $10,500, imagine what it would be today.

Dumb Ron Johnson is Back: Paul Ryan wrongly conflates health care with a consumer product, so he can make a "free market" argument for reform. He's scamming us.

So in roars Dumb Ron Johnson comparing our bodies with "crashed" cars. But we don't keep cars our entire life, and cars can be junked...not our bodies. If it's true that guaranteeing coverage for the sick crashes as Johnson claims, than maybe that market model is wrong? That's why every other country uses a different model, some form of a universal care, and it works...no crashes:

Johnson: “We know why those premiums doubled. We’ve done something with our health care system that you would never think about doing, for example, with auto insurance, where you would require auto insurance companies to sell a policy to somebody after they crash their car.”

“States that have enacted guaranteed issue for preexisting conditions, it crashes their markets. It causes the markets to collapse. It causes premiums to skyrocket.”

So...let's go with that plan?



Rand Paul says he want to legalize "Inexpensive Insurance," basically Junk Policies: I heard one reporter say Paul is pushing "junksurance." Sure, you may be under-insured and go bankrupt, but Rand Paul is there to protect your freedom. Yeah?

Paul is apparently unaware of the role men play in women's pregnancies. So he's thinks women should pay the whole bill. "Social responsibility" and "for the greater good" are being replaced with the politics of resentment, where you can always ask, "why should I have to pay for someone else's problem."

With Republican Congress and Supreme Court, Rand Paul says Activist Judges not so bad after all.

It’s strange how power can change your entire “supposed” principled ideological philosophy. For an authoritarian based Republican Party, reversing itself for strictly strategic reasons is political opportunism at its finest.

"Activist Judges" are GOOD!!! That’s right, after decades of bashing supposed liberal activist judges for legislating from the bench, our Republican majority is rethinking that position. Rand Paul is already testing this “sales pitch;” take “activist” liberal wins like Roe v Wade and Brown v Board and show how Republicans can repeal the Affordable Care Act and fight presidential overreach with their own activism. That would appeal to the deep conservative fear that liberals are getting something they’re not from the courts.  

National Journal: Speaking at the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit, Paul … took pains to explain his own legal philosophy, and to push back against what he referred to as the "tyranny of state government." He argued that it was judicial activism that struck down "separate but equal" schooling in Brown v. Board of Education. He defined Roe v. Wade—which has its 41st anniversary next week—as a competition between the rights of a mother and her child. And, naturally, he said it would take judicial activism to strike down the Affordable Care Act at the state level.

Judicial restraint—the idea that courts should only uphold or strike down laws on the strict basis of their constitutionality—is one of the cornerstones of modern conservative thought. Justice Antonin Scalia has ... has in turn been called a judicial activist for helping to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for seemingly political reasons.

Again, here’s the rationalization...the spin we might be getting in the years to come, if they maintain their majority:

As Paul's argument goes, judicial activism can be necessary, as a check against other branches of government overstepping their constitutional authority—a break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation. So, why try to make such a tough sell—to redefine an entire concept that has been considered unpalatable to conservatives for years … Brian Darling, a spokesman for Paul, told National Journal. "I think that he's trying to educate the crowd that there's a conservative case to be made for activism, if it's tied to spreading liberty."

Judicial activism as Paul defines it is an idea he thinks conservatives can get on board with…

Wait a minute, if Obama wasn't ready to be president then...what about Rand Paul?

Has anybody else noticed how little experience Sen. Rand Paul has? And yet, Republicans just love the idea a Paul presidency? What happened to having "executive" experience? 

The GOP has been caught in yet another big lie and phony Obama attack. Rand Paul has so little experience it's laughable.  

Who's more qualified...hmm, I wonder:

Randal Howard "Rand" Paul is the junior United States Senator for Kentucky. 2008 2010 Paul was sworn in on January 5, 2011 along with his father.

Or....

Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization before earning his law degree. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, In 2004, election to the Senate in November. 

The Rand Paul plan to keep wages down.

Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim hit the nail on the head about Ron Paul's condescending comments about unemployment benefits.

Republicans are perfectly happy keeping the rate of unemployment up and cutting off benefits early so employers can keep wages very low and prospective employees desperate enough to take anything they can get.

A must see, only because it's what the GOP is all about:

Rand Paul Disaster Capitalist!!!

Detroit’s bankruptcy is an opportunist’s wet dream.

And Sen. Rand Paul smells that desperation. He wants to swoop in and install a Friedman-esque conservative utopia. If you've read or seen the movie based on Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine,” you already know such policies don't worked.

   

The crazy just keeps getting more extreme:

Bloomberg News: U.S. Senator Rand Paul, told a business crowd there that cutting taxes and luring immigrants would turn the city’s fortunes. The Kentucky Republican wants federal legislation to create “economic freedom zones” in distressed cities like Detroit … He said he would cut income taxes to a flat 5 percent in areas of the U.S. with unemployment more than 1.5 times higher than the national average. He would cut payroll taxes and eliminate capital-gains taxes.

Cutting payroll taxes anywhere in the U.S. would basically dismantle and defund Social Security and Medicare…he must know that, right? Of course.

But even more insane is Paul’s gauge of public opinion when it comes to his philosophy, after just making his idiotic proposal:

Paul said the Republican Party stands to lose more national elections unless it attracts a broader, more diverse voter base -- especially blacks -- and promotes individual liberty more than it does tax cuts.

Promoting “individual liberty” is a vacuous generality that could mean anything, by design, pushed by extremists too afraid to actually spell out their dystopian plans. 

But just as opportunist is the rotting cancer setting up shop in Detroit:

Speaking today to the Detroit Economic Club at the Motor City Casino, the libertarian-leaning Paul touted the opening of a new Republican Party office in the city. 

Finally, Paul still thinks helping the auto industry was a bad idea. The shocking thing about the Republican belief system is that never thinks it’s wrong, even when it’s painfully obvious to everyone else:

Paul drew applause when he said the government bailout of General Motors Co. (GM) and Chrysler Corp. in 2009 was a bad idea, a view he said is not popular in the city. 

Rand Paul and the Iron Fist of the Republican Party.

What’s at the heart of the Republican Party? You’ll find vengeance, authoritarianism, retaliation, punishment and getting even. I know it’s a little redundant, but I had to include each word, because that’s what tea party Republicans are all about.

   

I found this example from a few days back that pretty much makes my case:

Rand Paul wants Chief Justice Roberts, all federal workers, to enroll in Obamacare … he’s going to start pushing a constitutional amendment that goes even further.

“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too” … “And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”

That’s not adult. That’s a tantrum.

What is a Libertarian? It's what Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are pushing.

We have a new description of "libertarian."

Courier Journal: Bill Maher, host of the HBO show “Real Time,” took off on a riff about the new brand of libertarianism and essentially accusing U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of being selfish adolescents who have based their political viewpoints of a pseudo-intellectual  author.

Here’s a transcript of the “new rule:”

New rule. Libertarians have to stop ruining libertarianism. Or at least do a better job explaining the difference between today’s libertarian and just being a selfish prick.

Now many years ago on a television network far, far, away, I expressed support for libertarianism because back then it meant that I didn't want big government in my bedroom or the medicine chest or especially in the second drawer of the bed stand on the left side of my bed, and I still believe that but somewhere along the way, libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with free market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand novel called “Atlas Shrugged,” a book that’s never been read all the way through by anyone with a girlfriend.

Paul  Ryan once said Ayn Rand taught him what my value systems are and I believe him because her book has a strange appeal to people who are kind of smart, but not  really. She wrote things like “Money is the barometer of a Society’s virtue.” And, “The question isn't who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me.”

Ooh, it sounds like something a batman villain says.

Yeah, it’s all something that sounds very deep when you’re 19 years old. … About how government is a dirty trick played by  the weak  on the strong and I can see if you’re a privileged college kid, you can read that and think, “Yeah, that’s right, I don’t need anything so shut up, dad, and pay my tuition. “

And then one day, you graduate and pack up your things and realize that your copy of atlas shrugged belongs in the same milk crate as your beer helmet and the t-shirt that looks like a tuxedo and you move on, unless your Paul Ryan or Rand Paul.

Now, I know conservatives are saying, “C’mon Bill, you’re not really implying that the most influential minds in the Republican Party are intellectually stuck in their teen years?” No, of course not.  I don’t know where I would get that idea. (Paul Ryan workout photo appears beside him.) Which is not to say there aren't libertarian notions that I applaud.  Like reinstating the 4th amendment and shutting down the American empire. But to everyone who keeps trying to shame me about abandoning my libertarian moorings, my message is this, “I didn't go nuts, this movement did.”

 Like when you see a stop light, your reaction should be great, an easy way to ensure we don’t crash into each other, not how dare the government tell me when I can and cannot go. Seatbelts, I refuse to live in a nanny state, I’m an individual and I’m going to soar free as an eagle right through the windshield.

Same with meat inspectors. Who needs them? People can sniff their own meat. And if a few die, the word will get around town,  don’t order the t-bone at the Ponderosa. And then the Ponderosa closes, problem solved, thanks to the free market. 

Today’s libertarians don’t believe the government should be regulating banks, or guns or schools or civil rights, or even helping out after natural disasters and their aggressively hostile to environmental protection but I like air, and water, I’m practically addicted. Libertarians also hate medicare and social and there are problems with those programs. “But here’s the thing, it beats stepping over lepers and seeing human skeletons shit in the river and I also like not seeing those things. I’m selfish that way.

Dumb Ron Johnson and Rand Paul make America look like "powerless nation, besieged on all sides by constant threats and occupiers."

Chris Hayes made an observation last night that I've been making here for some time. Wisconsinites recently got a flavor of the rampant right wing paranoia from Dumb Ron Johnson, who went on an endless rant about the Benghazi attack. That wasn't a sign of strength, but a display of weakness by what appears to be a cowering conservative party of victims. What other small but deadly attack will they freak out about next? What a way to encourage our enemies.

Hayes: "You would think we were some small powerless nation, besieged on all sides by constant threats and occupiers, instead of the most powerful nation in the world, with the largest armed forces. Instead what you see in every question was, I'm nervous about this, I'm anxious about this, what are we going to do about this. I think it was a striking moment."

Moveon.org protester Stomped by Angry Tea Party Mob. Now that's the America I remember.

Carrying a "Republicorp" Moveon.org protest sign outside the Rand Paul/Jack Conway debate, a woman activist was pushed to the ground and manhandled by angry anti-government Paul supporters. Understandable when you consider that after just two years, Democrats have destroyed the country and threatened our freedom, by providing health care to everyone.

To give you an idea of who we're dealing with in the tea party movement, the true believers, here's a couple of responses I received on YouTube in regards to the woman in this video:

"Lauren Valle is a known street walker in Washington D.C. She is known to be infected with STDs and AIDs. Her parents could not be reached for comment as the prison was holding a count at they time they were contacted."

"She is a socialist agiprop from Moveon dot org.. "

Washington Post: The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that a female MoveOn.org supporter was attacked by backers of Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul on Monday when she attempted to approach Paul outside his final debate with Democrat Jack Conway in Lexington.

At one point, violence broke out when Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org approached Paul and tried to give him an "employee of the month award" from Republicorp. Republicorp is a fake business MoveOn created to symbolize what it says is the merger of the GOP and business interests controlling political speech. Television video shows Valle, of Washington, D.C., being pushed to the ground and at least one foot stepping down on her head.

In the video from Fox41.com, Valle is forced to the ground by a man as another man holding a Rand Paul sign steps forcefully on her head.

Here's a nine minute compilation of clips, including Moveon.org, Rand Paul, and the victim Lauren Valle that pretty much tells the whole story.



It should be noted, as Thom Hartmann wrote at his site:

I know Glenn Beck irresponsibly throws around the word "Nazi" - he did it again yesterday - to describe liberals. But it's worth noting that Hitler's early supporters, during his beer-hall days when he was running for office, were famous for beating up supporters of his political opponents.

If you read William Shirer's "Rise And Fall of the Third Reich," you'll find eerie parallels - from the authoritarian candidates like Paul and Miller, to the violent rhetoric of Palin and McCain, to the brutal supporters of these candidates - with Hitler's early unpaid volunteer supporters who proudly called themselves "the Brownshirts."

Related articles

• Watch: Rand Paul Supporter Stomps Woman's Head Outside Debate (towleroad.com)
• MoveOn Member's Head Stomped By Violent Cowards At Rand Paul Debate (crooksandliars.com)