TMR: 200,000+ Doctors Opting Out of Obamacare, TSA Confiscates Ray Gun Belt Buckle, and Man Forced to Remove NRA Hat to Vote
Welcome to your Thursday edition of.....wait for it....wait for it...that's right, it's The Morning Roar! Over 200,000 Doctors Opting Out of ObamacareThere are many reasons for the declining state of the health care in the United States. It can be traced back at least to the Flexner Report and the creation of the American Medical Association, essentially cartelizing the medical industry. Various government interventions have only served to continue to increase the cost of health care while quality declines, and Obamacare is merely the latest chapter in this progression of interventions.Many of the unintended (yet entirely predictable) consequences of this policy are coming to fruition, from individuals or families being forced off their plans (right here!) to doctors opting for early retirement over the prospect of dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare. According to a new report, many doctors that aren't outright retiring are simply opting out of Obamacare plans all together, to the tune of the hundreds of thousands.Barbara Boland of CNSNews breaks it down:
Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.Here are some of the reasons why:1. Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. "For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California's Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement byup to 40 percent."2. Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that's not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. "Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the PCPs time at lower pay," says the study.
The article goes on to explain several other reasons for doctors opting out of Obamacare, but the point remains the same. As long as the government attempts to coercively plan this already-cartelized industry, the worse things will get.Read the full article here. The silver lining is that the backlash will cause many to look to alternatives. I discussed one such alternative recently with Jeff Kanter. Check it out!TSA Confiscates Raygun Belt BuckleWhen the TSA isn't busy molesting editors-in-chief of libertarian websites, they seem to be preoccupied with confiscating items which are clearly toys because hey - as Reason correctly points out - TERRORISM! You see, the TSA can never be too cautious, so it always opts on the side of confiscating your stuff...you know, just in case.Reason's Nick Gillespie posted an email from videographer Sean Malone, explaining how TSA agents continued to exercise that caution by confiscating his...raygun belt buckle. Yup. From the email, via Reason:
Now that I'm in a restaurant in Philly, I have time to share more of the stupidity. First, they did a bag check, which happens to me every time I fly anyway, so who cares. When I walked over, the guy said, "Yeah, there's something in there that's kind of shaped like a gun," to which I replied, "Yeah. It's a belt buckle."...He pulled it out of the bag and looked at it. Yep. Belt buckle. He didn't seem like an idiot, but he called his supervisor over, who instantly made it clear to me that she was one of those petty authoritarian, logic-impaired idiots you often come to expect in positions of middling power in law enforcement. Her word was law... Even when, you know, it wasn't actually law. She said, "Listen, you can either go back out of security and put this in your check luggage (which I don't have), or we'll confiscate it."But this is honestly my favorite belt buckle, and I'm me, so - realizing I was speaking with a woman with the brainpower of a block of Parmesan cheese - I looked at her and said, "You understand that this is a belt buckle, right? It is not a danger to the safety of anyone nor is it against the law to carry. I have also traveled with this belt buckle all over the country and it's never been a problem. So please explain to me how exactly you would justify taking it."Her response was to suggest a hypothetical scenario. "What if", she postulated, "you take this object out of your bag and point it - like a gun - at a police officer? He would have no choice to assume that it was a gun, and take action against you."Now... Let's leave aside for a second that the entire premise behind this argument is that police officers are too dumb and hopped up on their own power that they can't recognize a dangerous weapon from a belt buckle in the shape of a 1950's toy ray gun. I'm glad she recognized this reality, but I don't think she really processed what it says about law enforcement in America. But leaving that aside... Why in the hell would I ever take my belt buckle and point it at a police officer?
A very good question! Unfortunately, this question falls under the purvey of "common sense", which the TSA is ill-inclined to use. Indeed, as long as the TSA maintains its coercive monopoly over air travel security, we can rest assured that continued abuse both of passengers and the theft of their personal property will continue, and logic will remain optional. Read the full email at Reason.Georgia Man Forced to Remove NRA Instructor Hat In Order to VoteRemember free speech? It's fast becoming something we just used to hear about from our grandparents, like penny candy 10 mile hikes to school. The fine folks at Ben Swann's website are reporting on a Georgia man who was forced to remove his NRA instructor hat in order to vote.
Last Friday, Bundy Cobb, a Douglasville, GA resident, was told by poll workers that he must remove his hat with the wording “NRA Instructor” on it before he would be allowed to enter the voting booth.Cobb is a certified firearms trainer through the National Rifle Association (NRA) and wears the hat in part to promote his business, True Aim Defense.The Douglas County board of elections supervisor Laurie Fulton defended the decision as a move of extra precaution and stated, “The courts have found that anything that suggests association with the NRA in many people’s perceptions is associated with the Republican party. So in an overabundance of caution Mr. Cobb was asked to remove the hat so that no one could interpret that we were playing any favoritism over one party versus the other.”Cobb obeyed the request in order to vote, but later reached out to Atlanta’s local Fox News affiliate to express his distress over the situation. Cobb stated, “It’s ridiculous, my hat advertises my business.” Cobb went on to say that the NRA has nothing to do with political parties and stated, “I know personally some Democrats who are members of the NRA.”
In a free society people could certainly form organizations and city-states in which certain rules could dictate the circumstances by which one may vote, including possibly banning wearing hats such as Mr. Cobb's. But under our current system, rules (and non-rules, in this case) are randomly forced on people who never agreed to them.While voting may not always be effective, it can be a tool people use to at least decide some of their fate within our modern system of coercive government, and given that premise, no one person should be compelled to alter their clothing - itself an expression of speech - in order to cast their vote.The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
