#1
Unfortunately that was correct in my experience 81-85 in 2/75. We had a smaller percentage of blacks than the rest of the Army exclusively due to the swim test. We also had a higher percentage of “island boys” (from Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, etc.). Ranger school is a leadership course. But in a Ranger unit you wake up every day and earn your membership in the unit again no matter what your position. It was a ruthless and uncompromising meritocracy.
[VAUGHNCORDLE] The deception and trillion-dollar fraud that broke America’s health care system.
Obamacare was about power, government control, and the greatest redistribution con in American history. This exposé reveals how the Democrats’ shutdown is the latest act in that long-running fraud against the American people.
BUILT ON DECEPTION
Democrats built Obamacare on lies and passed it without a single Republican vote. Obama promised no new taxes on the middle class; the Supreme Court exposed the ruse in 2012, upholding the mandate as a tax. It hit healthy Americans hardest—forcing them to buy coverage they didn’t need or pay a fine.
Then came the next lie: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." Millions lost theirs. Insurers canceled policies that didn’t meet new federal mandates. Networks shrank. Deductibles soared. Families switched doctors just to stay afloat.
Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist behind the scheme, admitted it outright: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter... that was critical for the thing to pass."
The truth: Obamacare wasn’t about care—it was about control. Redistribution disguised as reform. Take from workers. Give to dependents. Cement the base.
THE MIDDLE CLASS PAYS THE PRICE
Affordable plans vanished under federal mandates. Premiums exploded. A 50-year-old’s bill jumped 47% in one year. Families paid more, got less. Deductibles above $7,000 made coverage useless—insurance you couldn’t afford to use.
Employer plans rose 55%; individual premiums doubled without subsidies. Billions shifted from healthy to sick, from workers to dependents. Hospitals passed costs to taxpayers through emergency Medicaid loopholes.
A 25-year-old single male saw premiums rise 77% after 2014. A young family’s plan climbed from $1,000 to $1,400 a month, with $8,000 deductibles. The "Affordable Care Act" made care unaffordable.
The math exposes the theft: Obamacare was never affordable—it was a racket. The healthy paid for the dependent. Illegals got free rides. Democrats own it all.
The numbers tell the truth politicians won’t: Obamacare drove premiums and deductibles through the roof while shifting hundreds of billions in new taxes onto working Americans. What families once paid for a mortgage, they now pay for health insurance—and the bill keeps climbing.
SUBSIDIES TO HIDE THE WRECKAGE
The con cracked early. From 2014 to 2021, premiums soared, and coverage gaps widened. Democrats patched the hole with subsidies. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act supercharged them—passed by Democrats alone. No Republican votes.
These tax credits hid the wreckage. Without them, premiums would jump 75% for many families. The system only works when taxpayers hold it up.
Fraud surged. Misreported status let illegals slip through. DACA recipients qualified. Emergency care for non-citizens added billions. States laundered funds through provider taxes. Work requirements were blocked.
Mandates forced coverage no one wanted and strangled competition, burning $300 billion a year in compliance alone. Administrative bloat devoured another 15%. Hidden pricing blinded consumers. Drug monopolies inflated costs by 10%. Obamacare banned cheap plans, doubling rates by 2019.
The result: a maze of insurers, bureaucrats, and billing traps—designed to hide prices and kill competition. Citizens can’t shop, can’t compare, can’t choose. And who profits most? The politicians bankrolled by the health industry itself.
BILLIONS FOR ILLEGALS
Obamacare’s subsidies now funnel billions to illegal immigrants through Medicaid loopholes—emergency-care billing passed to taxpayers, DACA recipients slipping through eligibility gaps, and states using provider taxes to launder federal funds for non-citizen treatment.
In California, taxpayers cover over $2 billion annually in undocumented care. New York City spends $1.5 billion. Illinois burns $800 million in Chicago-area programs; Washington State adds $600 million around Seattle. These aren’t mistakes—they’re deliberate drains concentrated in sanctuary states that punish federal taxpayers while ballooning national debt.
Medicaid jumped from $650 billion to $763 billion. Subsidies from $51 billion to $119 billion—headed toward $127 billion.
It’s a shell game. Loopholes for illegals. Bloat for insiders. Extensions dressed as reform. The trick is distraction; the goal is control—and the creation of a loyal constituency to help Democrats entrench power once non-citizens are allowed to vote.
It’s Cloward-Piven in action—create dependency, overwhelm the system, seize power. Democrats call it compassion. It’s not. It’s redistribution—from taxpayers to their political base. Biden’s open borders fed the pipeline.
THE $2 BILLION PROTECTION RACKET
Pharma’s top ten lobbyists (2020—2024) spent $529.7 million. Insurance’s top ten: $305.2 million. Combined: $834.9 million—just the tip.
Across the industries, pharma poured in over $1.4 billion, insurers over $600 million—a $2 billion lobbying machine buying protection from Congress. They write the laws, lock in monopolies, block competition, and expand subsidies—fattening shareholders while consumers bleed.
Government regulations finish the job: mandating unneeded services, shielding monopolies, and strangling price competition. The result—bloated bills, hidden costs, and a health-care system rigged against the very people who pay for it.
In the 2023—2024 election cycle, Democrats took in $75.1 million from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries—more than Republicans’ $71.8 million.
Pharma tilts blue: $40.9 million (60%) to Democrats, $26.7 million (39%) to Republicans. Insurance leans red: $45.1 million (56%) to Republicans, $34.2 million (43%) to Democrats. (Source: OpenSecrets.org)
The truth is bipartisan corruption. Both parties cash the checks. Democrats preach compassion while protecting monopolies. Republicans promise reform while shielding the same paymasters. McConnell and Schumer—two faces of the same machine, different rhetoric, same result.
Regulations and subsidies have become currency—bought, sold, and weaponized to keep voters blind and industries bloated. Americans pay the price in higher premiums, inflated drug costs, and shrinking care.
#4
What I have seen since the Clinton/Obama meddling is my Private and mandated GOV Ins, Health constantly increasing, increasing delays in seeing a doctor, and the actual end paid coverages reduced.
Plus, doctors charging $150+ for a 5-10 min appointment that is usually 25 to 30+ mins running behind.
But it is still far better than Socialist run medical care.
PLUS ER's overloaded with persons seeking normal medical care.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
