Islamic Fascist Terrorists Use Charity Work To Their Advantage In Indonesia

Click here to read an excellent front page WSJ story entitled Curfews, Obligatory Prayers, Whippings: Hard-line Islam Emerges In Indonesia.  The article not only shows how the specific Islamic goal of making Indonesia Sharia Law compliant got started but how it is rapidly progressing – something every country in the world, including America, should fear for themselves.

 

Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world.  It has a larger Muslim population than any country on Earth & makes up 12.7% of the world's Muslim population, but it is not a Muslim country despite BO, Hillary Clinton, & Robert Gibbs trying to promote it as such during BO's administration.

 

From 1967 to 1998 Indonesia, a secular nation per its Constitution, was ruled by the dictator General of the Army Hajji Suharto – himself a Muslim.  Although Indonesia had long had a hard-line Islamic fascist minority it had been held in check by the strong central government under Suharto much like Egypt had been from the 1950s until 2011 under the mighty Nasser, Anwar Sadat, & Hosni Mubarak. 

 

After Suharto resigned a group of Muslim clerics, who had been waiting their chance, established the Islamic Defenders Front or FPI (Indonesian for Front Pembela Islam).  For the past 19 years the FPI has been notorious for hate crimes & religious violence in the name of Islam in Indonesia – i.e., terrorism.

 

The FPI, along with another group, Hizb ut-Tahrir – a Pan-Islamism political movement – also @ work in Indonesia, dreams of making Indonesia part of an international Islamic caliphate.  Indonesia would be a gigantic trophy for the Islamic fascists to pick up.

 

But, as the story linked above explains, the FPI has made its best inroads in winning Indonesians over to their way of thinking by widening FPI's appeal by performing charity work. 

 

As an example, the FPI handed out food, water, & tarps in one of Jakarta's poor neighborhoods after the city government demolished homes to make room for new luxury housing units thereby displacing many residents – this was a big winner for FPI as it endeared the displaced residents to them.  These displaced workers view the terrorist group as sticking with them in times of trouble.  Now other politicians feel they have little choice but to follow FPI's lead.

 

Now charity work has historically been a proven winner for corrupt people, such as:

 

1.  Al Capone, the nation's most infamous gangster was also a respected community leader for a lot of people due to his charity work in starting a soup kitchen in Chicago that fed thousands of starving men three meals a day.  See photo below.  Some say he did more for the people of Chicago than the state did – a similar type feeling to ones being expressed by Indonesians regarding the FPI.

 

click on photo to enlarge

 

2.  In January, 2006 the terrorist group Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) – the parliament of the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank & Gaza Strip territories.  This was a surprise electoral victory for those who had not noticed Hamas's charity & community work of establishing & supporting schools, orphanages, mosques, medical centers, & food banks.  Hamas rebuilt the al-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation Hospital after Israel had destroyed it during a return attack.  Hamas distributed food, clothes, & school materials where they thought they would do the most good in promoting their cause – the destruction of Israel – much like the FPI is doing today in Indonesia.

 

3.  Martha MacCallum (FNC) reported that the Clinton Foundation donates 10% of the money raised to charity & the Daily Caller reported that just 5.7% of the 2014 Clinton Foundation budget went to actual charitable grants – the rest went to salaries, employee benefits, fundraising & "other expenses".  The donations constituted just enough charity work to make it look like the Clinton Foundation was doing something useful while hiding the appearance of corruption that is now just starting to be investigated.  IBD reports that Russian nuclear officials sent millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation after their purchase of 20% of the uranium in the U.S. – a deal that required Secretary of State Clinton to sign off on.  And the AP found that over half the private visitors Hillary received as SOS were donors to the Clinton Foundation.  Hillary & the hostile anti-American media have been masters of using a principle derived right out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals – namely, accusing their opponent of the very thing they are guilty of: in this case colluding with a possible enemy.  Hillary was trying to use the sleight of hand charity play accumulating money before running for President to a level that FPI can only dream about in Indonesia.

 

4.  The New York Times uses a natural outgrowth of the charity play by providing good sports pages & cross word puzzles to attract unsuspecting readers.  The typical sports fan or wordsmith probably doesn't realize what they have gotten into when they read the rest of the paper.  I met a woman @ a town hall meeting who was an excellent speaker & obvious patriot.  In talking to her after the meeting she mentioned how much she liked the NYT cross word puzzles – never realizing she was supporting an organization she had just railed against during the meeting.  This woman has a choice, to buy the paper or not – I asked her to find another cross word puzzle - but the people of Indonesia are finding it a harder choice to turn down charity help from the FPI – even realizing the terrorist fascist lifestyle that will come their way through the implementation of Sharia Law once the FPI takes control.

 

In addition to charity work the FPI also reaches teenagers & young men through social media.  The map below shows in red the zone of influence the terrorist FPI has in Indonesia.

 

click on map to enlarge

 

The FPI's end goal is to make Indonesia a country based on Sharia Law – the terrible individual-rights-denying laws that dominate Islamic nations.  As documented in several RTE posts over the years once Islam wraps its tentacles around a society it is hard for either side to let go – the aggressive fascists or the frightened people who are the target of the aggression. 

 

Europe is currently in the process of submitting to Islam with the pitiful examples of the United Kingdom, Germany, & France experiencing one terrorist attack after another with no intention to preemptively fight back for politically correct reasons or just plain because of the lack of will that is going to literally bury the citizenries.

 

The FPI is interested in Indonesia in what long time subscriber Economics501 refers to as SC – stealth coup that stems right out of the political correctness shown by the petrified European leaders.

 

The United Kingdom's MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5) has seen a recent dramatic uptick in Islamic fascist terrorist threats to the U.K. occurring faster than @ any previous point not only in the U.K. but all across Europe "& beyond".  What Prime Minister Theresa May & others in power do with this information, if anything, is not promising or hopeful based on previous capitulations by the U.K. to the Islamic fascists. 

 

But there are two countries that are fighting back against the politically correct mindset that allows Islamic fascists in their midst – Burma & Australia.

 

This past August Rohingya Muslim militants living in the Burmese state of Rakhine killed twelve Burmese security officers in border post attacks – ever since the attacks the Burmese military has been working to drive all (800,000) Rohingya Muslims out of Burma into Bangladesh.  Burma is a predominantly Buddhist country, whose de facto leader is 1991 Nobel Peace Prize pro-democracy laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi – who is (has been) greatly admired by Hillary Clinton.   Burma says the Rohingya Muslims are Bangladeshi & Bangladesh says they are Burmese – in short neither country wants the Rohingya Muslims.

 

But back in Indonesia Muslims show support for the Rohingya Muslims fleeing Burma.   

 

Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in Australia due to a slowing economy & global worries about terrorism like those expressed above for Europe by the U.K.'s MI5 unit.  Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has tried to raise hurdles for immigrants but has met resistance from the Australian Parliament.  Turnbull has been working since April to make an immigrant English test more difficult & implementing a test on commitment to 'Australian values'.  The idea is to have would-be immigrants prove their commitment to Australia by asking, among other things, whether the immigrant applicant thinks it is acceptable to strike one's spouse – a major tenet of Sharia Law.  Muslim leaders have taken offense with this line of questioning saying the questions were clearly aimed @ Muslims.  Whatever can the Australian Parliament be thinking? – I thought the points raised by Turnbull were what immigration control was all about in protecting a nation.

 

The story linked above shows the type of danger that the politically correct mindset of America is all too prone to surrender to.  It won't require a majority of Muslims – just a steady slide where right cannot be determined from wrong & people of substance are tricked into thinking everything they worked their entire life for is an ill-gotten gain.

Paul Harvey - "If I Were The Devil"

In 1964 national radio personality Paul Harvey wrote a prescient warning to America in a essay entitled "If I Were The Devil."  Click here to hear a 1996 updated version of the original presentation.

 

The late Mr. Harvey's point in the essay is to reveal how the enemies of America are successfully undermining our freedoms & morality that are the bedrocks of the nation's foundation – listening to the essay you can see how the deterioration of our society continued over the 53 years since the essay was first presented.

 

Every week the type of attacks Mr. Harvey was concerned about become more brazen like when football players flaunt their hatred for America in pre-game activities, or when people who have accomplished nothing in their lives demand free healthcare & free college tuition all paid for by people they don't know or have ever thought about. 

 

The ruinous politically correct mindset is promoted by a government that worries about transgender bathrooms but not sanctuary cities.  Thugs are honored as heroes while policemen who bring them to justice are vilified.  Freedom to follow one's religious beliefs in daily life becomes redefined as discrimination if bakers, florists, pizza store owners, & photographers cannot prove they are "religious enough" to avoid discrimination lawsuits after not participating in homosexual marriage ceremonies.  The government orders you to buy healthcare insurance & fines (taxes) you if you don't & the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court goes along with this twice.  Drug sniffing dogs & metal detectors @ schoolhouses & airports are accepted as a new normal to be put up with.

 

Now the above type of atrocities can only happen because Americans are not only leading busy lives & enjoying the American way of life but are taking it all for granted with little or no sense of personal or civic responsibility. 

 

How much longer can a society that is this poorly educated & misinformed - this oblivious to what Paul Harvey's devil is doing to them, exist?

 

America Can't Afford Not To End DACA & Other Politically Correct Menaces

On September 5 President Trump rescinded BO's 2012 executive order that had authorized the protection from deportation of young adults who had been illegally brought to America as children by their parents – many, if not most, of whom had also entered or stayed in the country illegally.  The program enforced under BO's executive order was known as the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) & the recipients of this leniency had already been known as Dreamers ever since legislation known as the Dream Act (Development, Relief, & Education For Alien Minors) had been introduced in Congress in 2001 where it had stalled for eleven years when BO bypassed Congress replacing their function with his pen & phone. 

 

To apply for DACA, Dreamers had to have come to the U.S. before 2007, been under the age of 16 when they arrived, & younger than 31 when DACA was created in June 2012.  They had to have a clean criminal record, be in high school, or have received a high school diploma or equivalent.  As of September 5 no new DACA applications will be accepted under Trump's executive order.

 

Accordingly, today DACA is not a program primarily for children, kids, or babies as the hostile anti-American media would have you believe. The average DACA recipient is 23 years old with the oldest being 36 – the majority are in their 20s & 30s. 

 

There are about 1.3 million people who meet the above DACA criteria but only about 800,000 of them have applied for DACA protection meaning that half a million people are outside the DACA program & will remain in immigration trouble no matter how this matter is resolved. 

 

Trump's termination of the DACA program, allows the 800,000 young unauthorized immigrant Dreamers who applied to DACA, & have a two year renewable permit, to continue to live & work in America without fear of deportation – but a phase out starts on March 5, 2018 unless Congress appropriately addresses the matter.  The phase out means the program ends for different people @ different times but the last protection from deportation ends on March 5, 2020.

 

DACA Dreamers whose two-year work permits expire between September 5, 2017 & March 5, 2018 had until October 5, 2017 to renew their permits – those who didn't are no longer protected by DACA.  The expiring permits of about 150,000 DACA Dreamers fall into this first six month window & the initial estimate is that between 30,000 & 40,000 DACA permit holders did not renew on time.  It is expected that the Department Of Homeland Security (DHS) will certify how many DACA Dreamers lost their permit protection by failing to renew by October 5.  We will learn a lot about how serious this program is if 30,000 to 40,000 DACA recipients lost their protection in the first step of the process.  There are no more renewal of permits after October 5 under Trump's executive order, unless it is revised to accommodate those who did not comply.

 

The following graphs provide a breakdown of requests for DACA protection by year & the top 10 countries of origin. 

 

The following graph from the Cato Institute gives an illustration of Cato's calculation of DACA renewals & projected expirations as described above.  Source United States Citizen & Immigration Services (USCIS).

 

Now Democrats want the DACA Dreamers legalized & Trump may very well too – but the above described predicament that DACA Dreamers find themselves in provides the framework for immigration negotiations. 

 

On Sunday October 8 Trump sent Congress a list of principles to be included in any legislation that would legalize DACA Dreamers.  Highlights from Trump's list include 1) funding of the border wall, 2) punishing "sanctuary cities" & now presumably the sanctuary state of California, 3) mandating the use of E-Verify by employers to verify the legal status of prospective workers, 4) changing the issuance of green cards to a skilled-based system rather than a family-based system, & 5) detaining asylum seekers while their cases are being considered & making the process of applying for asylum in the U.S. more difficult in order to crack down on rampant fraud & avoid the gaming of the system as an easy means of illegal entry into the U.S.

 

In the meantime DACA Dreamers have lost any sense of gratitude for people who have supported them from the beginning.  Click here to see Pelosi shouted down (with Democrat Barbara Lee no help & silent right behind Pelosi) by a group of confrontational DACA Dreamers who are combative, aggressive, & belligerent toward her for her apparent willingness in September to work with Trump – what they want is not legalization for just the 800,000 DACA Dreamers like themselves but all 11-million illegal aliens in this country.  Notice Pelosi is visibly shaken in the video.

 

Click here to hear Pelosi talk about Dreamers once she regained her composure @ a later date.  Hard to believe she is talking about the same people she walked out on after they shouted her down. 

 

So while the immigration negotiations get ready to begin between Congress & Trump with the goal of reaching a legislative solution before March 5 to @ least the DACA Dreamer situation described above the phase out of the deportation protection of DACA Dreamers will begin as approximated on the above Cato Institute graph.  DACA beneficiaries will not move to the top of ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) enforcement priorities after their work authorization permits expire solely because of the work permit expiration.  Like any illegal immigrant DACA Dreamers with no work permit under BO's executive order will be subject to enforcement action if an ICE agent encounters them in the process of following their enforcement priorities that begins with convicted criminal aliens including raids targeting their parents who brought them here in the first place.  But without DACA work protection rules in place Dreamers will be forced into the black market for jobs which raises their chances for removal when they work under the criminal activity of using a false name or borrowed identity.  

 

Long time readers of RTE know that I have always said that border walls, increased border enforcement, securing our borders or the like are not the first things to be done regarding illegal immigration.  First, we must determine if we want the illegals here – are they beneficial or a hindrance to our continued prosperity.  Certainly the way the DACA Dreamers treated Pelosi in the first video above shows they have developed an overbearing chip on their shoulders that wreaks of arrogance & entitlement meaning they look like more trouble than they are worth.

 

DACA Dreamers had the inside track to winning American sympathies when they said "they were brought here through no fault of their own as children," & if they could have just kept showing both a sincere position of remorse & the least desire for atonement they would be much further ahead than petrifying Pelosi & Barbara Lee out of their wits.  But they sure came here through somebodies' fault & that fault was their parents – people who were prepared to use their own children as pawns in anticipation of this moment when they hoped all family members tied to one illegal entry method or another would be able to stay in America.

 

Frederic Bastiat (The Law – page 62) described this situation exactly, 167 years ago, when he said the law cannot have two missions; liberty & fraternity.  The latter will destroy the former.  If fraternity is legally enforced it will destroy liberty & trample justice under foot.  The simple solution is to enforce the immigration laws that have been on the books for decades & Trump's executive order that phases out deportation protection for DACA Dreamers starting six months after issuance provides a more than fair way to resolve the matter both for the DACA Dreamers & their employers – both of whom took a chance that Hillary Clinton would be elected thereby continuing or expanding BO's executive order favoring not only DACA Dreamers but all illegal aliens.

 

The Federation Of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR) reports that illegal aliens & their kids (including DACA Dreamers when they were kids) cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion per year including higher & free education & medical & law enforcement costs – see graphs below. 

 

 Click on graphs & images below to enlarge.

 

These costs fall on state & local taxpayers by a 2:1 ratio ($89 billion state & local expenditures versus $46 billion federal expenditures).

 

 

But the taxes paid by illegals go to the federal treasury by a factor of 5:1.

 

 

And such tax payments being outweighed by benefits received by a 7:1 factor ($135 billion to $19 billion). 

 

 

It is estimated that one third of illegals work in the underground or shadow economies & have no income or payroll taxes deducted from their wages – they pay only state sales taxes & the federal embedded taxes that are inherent in every purchase of goods or services made; here is where the implementation of the FairTax would cut tax evasion significantly.

 

An argument can also be made that the FAIR report overstates the taxes received from illegal aliens – wouldn't the taxes have been paid if legal workers had been the ones employed? – in which case the wages would have been higher thereby meaning more than $19 billion in taxes would have been paid.

 

It has always been a problem for me to want to welcome people who sneak into America @ midnight in the trunk of a car – not a good foundation to build a new life on.  BO's DACA executive order also has a foundation built on quicksand in that immigration is the responsibility of Congress not the President – see the Naturalization clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 4. 

 

"Few powers are more fundamental to (a nation's) sovereignty than the control over immigration & the vesting of citizenship in aliens (naturalization)". – The Heritage Guide To The Constitution.   Of course this is why immigration, right after making people totally dependent on government – both financially through taxes & physically through universal healthcare, was BO's highest priority in undermining & trying to destroy America's sovereignty. 

 

During the Constitutional Convention James Madison preferred "to invite foreigners of merit & republican principles among us."  Madison was not referring to illegal aliens whether they came here through no fault of their own or any other means – they had to be invited & vested through the naturalization process that concluded by taking an oath to support the Constitution which is a far cry from the DACA Dreamers who chanted "here to stay" in front of the Capitol last month & then stormed the Dirksen Senate office building looking to protest Trump's executive order in specific senators offices.  See image below.

 

click on image to enlarge

 

But properly handling illegal immigration is just part of the politically correct poison threatening to ruin America that Trump was elected to remedy.  In addition to illegal immigration as described above America is in danger of not knowing right from wrong regarding Black Lives Matters, Antifa, homosexual rights, attacks & distortions by the hostile anti-American media on the First & Second Amendments, the fallacious destructive anchor baby claim to birthright citizenship, settling the incompatible relationship of Muslims who follow Sharia law taking a U.S. citizenship oath, banning people from Muslim countries where terrorism thrives from entering America until we know that immigrants & refugees from these countries are not terrorists, ending sanctuary cities & California's sanctuary state policy, & restoring the enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.

 

The urgency of settling the above list of politically correct matters & reversing the mindset that allowed them to come forth in the first place is far greater than settling issues like tax reform, healthcare, climate change, the national debt, the budget deficit, or even adequate national defense. 

 

In short, we have to start by ending DACA per Trump's executive order while simultaneously ridding ourselves of the other politically correct menaces jeopardizing our futures because we simply cannot afford not to.

 

Two-Train Timing Quiz

In deference to the good sports in the readership who enjoy participating in the quizzes I present from time to time, or just like seeing the solutions, the Two-Train Timing quiz below should be enjoyable.

 

In this case the quiz requires a small amount of math but if you set it up correctly it almost solves itself.

 

I found the quiz on the National Museum of Mathematics website (www.MoMath.org) after it appeared in the WSJ.

 

Please let me know how you work the problem.  I will post all correct answers or alternatively will send the solution privately to anyone who requests it if no one figures it out.

 

Two-Train Timing Quiz

 

How long does it take a 1.25-mile-long freight train going 30 miles an hour to pass a 0.25-mile-long passenger train going 60 miles an hour in the opposite direction, from the time that the engines first reach each other to the time that the last cars just clear each other?

 

Premium Support Phase-In Leads To The Solution To America's Healthcare Cost Problems

After the Senate once again failed this past week to repeal ObamaCare with its latest repeal & replace iteration – the Graham-Cassidy bill – ObamaCare will continue as the law of the land until it collapses under its own weight or a Republican president can find a Republican Congress that can successfully fulfill its seven year old campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare which is not likely any time soon.

 

Since it was recognized early on that Democrats would not cooperate with any items whatsoever on the Trump agenda the strategy of the Republican controlled Congress, starting with their first meeting in January, had been to use the Senate process known as budget reconciliation to repeal ObamaCare – actually, more precisely to repeal & replace ObamaCare or in the mind of my Congressman Leonard Lance to repair ObamaCare – the long forgotten original campaign promise was to repeal ObamaCare.

 

Under Senate rules, once legislation being considered qualifies for budget reconciliation it only requires a simple 51 vote majority to pass rather than the usual 60 votes normally required to move legislation forward.

 

In order to use Senate budget reconciliation rules Republicans had to first pass a fiscal year 2017 budget bill (three months after the fiscal year started on October 1, 2016) that instructed two committees to begin work on healthcare reform legislation with the goal of saving federal revenue – this is considered a fiscal goal that qualified any resultant healthcare reform bill to come under the budget reconciliation process, but only for the remainder of fiscal year 2017 – hence Saturday's deadline that lapsed with no repeal of ObamaCare.

 

Senate budget reconciliation rules only allows one legislative priority @ a time to be considered so if the Senate wanted to continue with healthcare reform they certainly could but this effort would preclude the tax reform legislation that will be addressed under budget reconciliation rules once a fiscal year 2018 budget bill has been passed.

 

In summary, the Senate can only consider ObamaCare repeal or tax reform under budget reconciliation – but not both simultaneously.

 

BTW – During the 112th (2011 – 2012) & 113th (2013 – 2014) Congresses the Republican-led House passed 54 bills that would have repealed ObamaCare in whole or in part.  The Senate remained under Democrat control until the 114th (2015-2016) Congress so there was much less repeal activity in the Senate than in the House.  We know from research done in writing previous RTE posts that many centrist Republicans were deceitful & disingenuous when, in January 2016, they supported sending BO a clean repeal-only bill (HR 3762) that they knew BO would veto – Susan Collins is the only current Republican sitting Member of Congress to vote against this repeal-only bill.  But not just these congressional centrist Republicans are the problem - this latest episode, under Graham-Cassidy, repeats the pretense of responsibility when we learn that ten governors, led by aspiring national stars John Kasich (Ohio) & Brian Sandoval (Nevada), sent a letter to McConnell in the heat of debate on September 19 asking the Senate to not consider Graham-Cassidy thereby preventing the possibility of block grant money coming their way that would have given governors, like themselves, the final decision on how to manage healthcare in their states – this after years of calling for block grants to do exactly what Graham-Cassidy specified.  In other words do your own extensive homework before you believe that any elected representative really has your interest @ heart rather than his own cushy job with autocratic authority over everyone & accountability to no one.  See referenced post below for list of congressional names.

 

But while ObamaCare is on the road to collapse with large premium increases & many insurers withdrawing from the exchanges so that 50% of the counties in America will have only one insurance company selling ObamaCare policies in 2018 & another 30% of counties will have only two, the much larger employer healthcare insurance market, that covers about half of Americans, is also seeing large premium increases as well as more & more companies drop coverage for their employees.  See the graph below that shows the healthcare insurance cost portion of employee total compensation is increasing every year explaining why wage growth has been smaller than expected in this tight labor market – employees' healthcare insurance contributions have also been increasing, as shown on the graph below, thereby wiping out much of whatever wage increases are received.

 

As a point of reference – in the 1990s U.S. car companies spent as much or more money on employee healthcare insurance than they did on steel that went into their cars; today the annual premiums cost more than many new cars with the cost split between workers & employers.

 

 

click on graph to enlarge

 

In 2017, the percentage of small businesses (3 to 49 workers) that offered healthcare insurance dropped for the first time to 50%.  Five years ago 59% of companies in the 3 to 49 worker category offered healthcare insurance.  Source – Kaiser Family Foundation.

 

But a large part of the solution to the nation's growing healthcare cost problem, both employer-sponsored plans & Medicare, that threatens to overwhelm the country's finances & federal budget respectively was also revealed in 2017 – namely, 16% of small businesses that did not provide specific healthcare insurance policies did give their employees some money toward purchasing their own plan themselves.

 

In January 2012 I presented four points (solutions) that highlighted the change in mindset needed to return America to the excellence envisioned & originally followed by our Founders. 

 

The first point pertained to Medicare but can equally be applied to the employer-sponsored market today.

 

The idea is to replace the current Medicare plan with one of premium support where the government provides a demogrant for beneficiaries to purchase private insurance – just like the 16% of small businesses did this year in the open market.  Currently 75% of Medicare Parts B & D are funded by the federal government which compares to 70% of employee healthcare premiums that are paid for by employers as shown on the graph above.

 

In fact it is more than just the one in six small businesses that have started this premium support system.  In 2012 Michigan stopped offering retiree healthcare to new employees but instead, in a form of premium support, contributed an additional 2% of salaries to new employee 401(k) plans with the idea that this money could be used for healthcare needs in retirement.  Michigan's retiree healthcare liabilities dropped about $20 billion since the program started.

 

As of 2015 U.S. states had a combined retiree healthcare shortfall of @ least $645 billion in addition to $1.1 trillion pension liabilities so the sooner the states start with a premium support system the better.  Source of liabilities – Pew Charitable Trust.

 

But most important, ever since the early 1990s many companies, such as IBM, ConocoPhillips, Delta Airlines, & Coca Cola, set ceilings on how much money they would ever pay for retiree healthcare costs.  Younger employees can see that their employers will be providing less & less healthcare benefits each year as inflation keeps increasing their share but not their employers'.

 

The setting of a ceiling approach is the key to applying premium support most efficiently in replacing Medicare.  See graph below that shows the projected cost curves for several scenarios – only the Ryan Plan – Price indexing plan bends the Medicare cost curve down over time.

 

click on graph to enlarge

 

But the premium support Medicare replacement cost curve bends down even faster than the Ryan Plan – Price indexing curve shown on the above graph if the government follows the same approach as IBM & the other companies listed above – namely freezing the demogrant in nominal dollars – unadjusted for inflation into the future.  In this way, just like IBM retirees, future retirees will have time to plan for the changes in cost allocation of the premium support system that replaces the current Medicare system thereby once again bringing their own healthcare decisions under their own control.

 

For the past 40 years Medicare spending per capita has been growing @ twice the rate of our economy – see blue line on above graph labeled Current path, GDP + 2%.  All of the other lines on the graph represent various proposals but all of them, except the one labeled Ryan plan – Price indexing, keep Medicare expenses growing until some point when the cost is unsustainable.  The Ryan plan – Price indexing curve indexes the premium support cost to the CPI which will bend the curve down because the CPI rate is less than the rate @ which Medicare has been growing for decades.

 

Freezing the demogrant @ the start of the replacement premium support program that is figured to be ten years hence will give people under 55 years old (no change in the Medicare program for people over 55) time to adjust to the phase in of the premium support program.  As each year goes by the nominal dollar demogrant will buy less & less insurance or medical treatment so younger people will start to rely on it less & less.  Someone like my 14 year old nephew will not rely on it @ all thereby breaking the dependence on government provided healthcare insurance.  The demogrant freeze premium support curve will bend down faster than the bottom curve shown on the above graph.

 

As explained above many companies have moved to such a premium support type system in providing healthcare assistance for their retired employees.  Retirees receive a set amount of money to do with as they like regarding medical needs including purchasing insurance or otherwise covering medical & dental costs.  Retirees have the ability to make whatever changes they deem necessary in their own personal medical program as their needs change as opposed to a government one size fits all program with government calling all the shots.

 

I have participated in such a premium support system for several years & have seen first hand all the benefits I mention in this post.

 

Reference Posts: 

 

HR 3762 Provides Clearest Litmus Test Ever To Identify RINOs - But Probably To Little Or No Avail

 

The Solution To America's Healthcare Problems