Reflections From a Murky Pond

In the course of President Obama and his Liberals’ ongoing war to nationalize the health insurance industry we Americans have been subjected to countless rants about how those “evil insurance giants” keep denying people’s insurance claims and withholding coverage from them in the “selfish” pursuit of shareholder value.

To the Leftists only a Public Option will save us.

So let’s look at the data provided by the American Medical Association (AMA) itself in order to see which health insurance providers seem eager to deny patients’ claims:

Much like President Obama’s lies about ObamaCare covering abortions and illegal immigrants, his and his followers’ sob stories and angry rantings about insurance companies denying patients’ claims veer very far from a true and objective account of the situation.

Medicare, America’s best known nationalized health insurance program, denies a higher percentage of claims than any other health insurance provider monitored by AMA in their annual National Health Insurer Report Card (NHIRC).

This is not something that the Liberals, enamored as they are of government controlled, administered, and regulation healthcare, want Americans to hear. Their agenda can’t survive the truth.

At first glance it would seem that the private  health insurance company, Aetna, runs a sadly close second in denying people’s health insurance claims. A slight bit of research in the AMA’s 2008 NHIRC shows that this initial opinion is wrong though. 65.7% of the claims that Aetna denied were denied because the benefit for the service was already included in the payment for another service or procedure that had already been adjudicated. If one factors out these duplicate claims, Aetna’s overall percentage of denied claims is only  4.47%.

Medicare’s claim denial figures have no similar amelioration to be found within the AMA’s annual scorecard. Indeed, the top 5 reasons – which together total 76.8% of the total denied claims – Medicare has given for denying patients’ claims are far less than soothing.

Paperwork errors, flat-out denial of coverage, and the inability to identify and track enrollees – these are the government’s primary reasons for denying healthcare benefits to the American citizenry.

…And yes, this is exactly the sort of Hope and Change that Obama threatened America with during his campaign for the Presidency. Americans’ were duly warned of the Reconstruction.

Judging by how the federal government administers Medicare, ObamaCare would be, “A medical system with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service, and the financial solvency of the Social Security system.” That is something that Americans can and should do everything and anything within their power to prevent from happening to us, our children, and our children’s children.

The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories

The Atheists really hate this book because it scientifically approaches Intelligent Design and the statistical improbability of evolution of cellular life by random chance. This is especially true of Eugenie Scott, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and their ilk, who are theologically invested in a Godless universe.

But why do these Atheists hate the work of the authors: Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley,  Roger L. Olsen so much? They hate and despise their work, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, because in it these three scientists show the inherent  implausibility of life spontaneously arising from non-life. Atheists like Scott, Meyer, and Dawkins are far more comfortable attacking religions and religious beliefs than they are defending their pet theories and postulates against scientific inquiry.

This book offers an excellent scientific analysis of important data related to the theory of evolution. It is – or should be – a seminal work for the theory of intelligent design since it scientifically critiques the Atheists’ prevailing paradigmatic theories of chemical evolution. It doesn’t so much criticize Darwinism as it does criticize the very underpinning of the initial evolution of life on Earth, something that is a prerequisite for the Darwinian mechanism of evolution to happen.

The volume as a whole is devastating to a relaxed acceptance of current theories of abiogenesis. It is well written, and, though technical, much of the book is within the reach of the informed non-scientist. The book apparently has been well received by many who are working in the field of abiogenesis, such as Dean Kenyon and Robert Shapiro.

— James F. Jekel
Dept. of Epidemiology & Public Health
Yale University School of Medicine

Be forewarned though; the authors are distinguished scientists holding advanced degrees in chemistry, materials science, and geochemistry and the book, while very important and quite interesting, is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination and truly requires a firm grounding in chemistry to fully appreciate.

I suppose that it should come as no surprise that President Obama’s Stimulus Plan, the first of his attempts at a new Reconstruction of America would utilize the Union Army to further his agenda. Of course, this time it won’t be the Blue Bellies and it’s not just the South being ground under a POTUS’ jackboots.  Obama’s Union Army is made up of the federally subsidized labor Unions – aka Soviets.

Just as the Union enacted a punitive regime in the South, so too has President Obama enacted a punitive regime across all of America. That is the Hope and Change he threatened.

It seems that New Hampshire won’t be receiving very much from Obama and his Liberals’ “Stimulus” plan.  This is because funds for construction projects from this abomination and act of Generational Theft can only be distributed to union projects. Free and freedom-loving Americans need not apply.

The Administration’s decision to discriminate against successful and independent construction firms simply because New Hampshire employees choose to work in a union-free workplace and not bow down to the demands of big labor is extremely unfair to our state.  The request for bids issued by the Department of Labor requires that contractors employ a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) and requests they provide proof of completion of three prior PLA projects.  However, under these conditions there is not a single firm in our State that would be eligible to bid on this multimillion dollar construction project.  In a time of economic hardship, it is simply absurd to discriminate against local contractors and construction workers for the benefit of national labor unions.

— Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH)

To educate the masses, a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) is is when the government awards contracts for public construction projects exclusively and solely to unionized firms. A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) mandates that all contractors, whether or not they are unionized, to subjugate themselves and their employees to unionization in order to work on a government-funded construction project. This is done by including a union collective bargaining agreement in a public construction project’s bid specifications. In order to receive a contract, a contractor must sign the agreement and submit itself and its employees to union control.

Worse but not surprisingly, President Obama and his Liberals aren’t satisfied with “merely” requiring that only workers’ soviets get Stimulus funds; they are mandating that any company or contractor must have a history of submission by mandating that these American companies must have proof of having knuckled under to the unions at least three (3) times in the past.

Since only 8.7% of New Hampshire’s construction workforce has voluntarily surrendered their right to work, this means that essentially no New Hampshire building firm can bid on any of the Stimulus-funded construction projects.

Hope an Change? Yeah; hope for Obama’s soviet army, and change as expressed by a 2nd Reconstruction of America – this time into something recognizably foreign, failed, and evil.

Of course, historically only approximately 15% of construction trades workers in all of America were union members or working under union-coerced contracts.  Since there are approximately 9.6 million construction trades workers in the US, 1.9 million of which are self-employed,  only 1.44 million – likely none of the self-employed – could benefit from the Stimulus-funded projects.

This explains why so little of Obama and his Liberals’ Stimulus monies have been spent to date.  They have to wait until the “negotiators” from the various unions / soviets can convince Americans to enlist. It takes time – and possibly a carefully managed increase in unemployment rates – in order to coerce Americans to surrender their values and freedoms in order to feed, cloth, and house their children.

~*~

Obama’s Union Army – if you’re an American construction trades worker, contractor, or employer, you’ll see them coming to a job site near you…to take projects and wages that could have fed American families.

Christians believe that their God is omnipotent and omniscient, both all-powerful and all-knowing. I’m sure that faith gives them both great comfort and great trepidation and various disparate times during their lives – comfort when they desire Divine help and trepidation when they recount their various misdeeds. 😉 Sadly, their faith is based on a false premise. While it is possible that their God is omnipotent, He is not quite omniscient.

There are – at a minimum – three things the Christians’ God does not know:

1. How many congregations of religious women there really are;
2. How much money the Franciscans actually have stashed away;
3. What the Jesuits are truly thinking.

Of course, after having studied under Jesuits, I think it’s asking too much, even of a God, to know what they’re really thinking. 😆

President Obama and his family, and a large retinue – with Oprah Winfrey and Chicago’s Mayor, Richard Daley, tagging along – put critical foreign and domestic issues on hold to travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to convince, cajole, or coerce the International Olympic Committee (IOC) into granting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games to the crime-ridden and economically depressed city of Chicago, IL.  They failed.

From the St. Louis Business Journal:

Chicago is out as a host city for the summer Olympics in 2016.

The International Olympic Committee gave Chicago the boot in its first round of voting Friday in Copenhagen.

My fellow Americans, the Ego has landed – face down and in failure.

The IOC voted Chicago out of the running mere hours after President Obama’s plea, which the 100-plus committee members sat through in silence.  Air Force One was actually still in the air when OIC’s verdict against the Obamas’ adopted home was rendered.

Apparently the First Lady, Michelle Obama’s delegation to the IOC had been doing quite well and things were looking good for Chicago … and then her husband put aside supposedly leading the Free World and flew across the Atlantic Ocean to give yet another self-involved speech.

The president anchored the U.S. charm offensive.

He referenced his own election as a moment when people from around the world gathered in Chicago to see the results last November and celebrate that “our diversity could be a source of strength.”

“There is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family’s home and with Michelle and our two girls welcome the world back to our neighborhood,” Obama said. “At the beginning of this new century, the nation that has been shaped by people from around the world wants a chance to inspire it once more.”

After the Obamas’ comments, the U.S. delegation fielded questions from committee members, and at one point the president jumped in. He said he envisioned that the Chicago games would allow the United States to restore its image as a place that, at its best, is “open to the world.”

Perhaps President Obama should have stayed at work and let the First Lady handle things in Denmark; Chicago might have gotten the 2016 Summer Games then. Obviously a speech and commentary that boiled down to something disturbingly close to, “My election made America good again,” and “Give a Brotha a Chance!” didn’t work out so well for America this time.