Obamacare Implodes and the Polls Look Like Pick-Up Sticks Gone Beserk

ELECTION DAY MINUS 13. Here's what you need to know now about Polls and Obamacare. • • • POLL RESULTS. Donald Trump has a 2-point lead over Hillary Clinton, 42.6% to 40.8%, when tested in a four-way race, according to the latest IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll released Sunday. Trump also has a one-point lead in a two-way race in the poll. Investor's Business Daily (IBD) and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence (TIPP) poll has been the most accurate among 11 national polls in the past three presidential elections. The poll surveyed 783 likely voters, 282 Democrats, 226 Republicans and 259 independents. • Despite the mainsteam media (MSM) emphasis on pollsters and media pundits who predict that Hillary Clinton will win the election, one academic with a history of correctly predicting the past five presidential elections insisted to Fox News that Donald Trump will win November 8. Stony Brook University Professor Helmut Norpoth said he uses two models -- the Primary Model because it "usually turns out the candidate who does better in his party's primaries or her party's primaries beats the other guy who does less well." Norpoth explains he used the primary races in South Carolina and New Hampshire, where Trump won and performed better than Clinton did in the Democratic race, because the results in the early primaries are the best indicators for the general election. The second model is called the Swing of the Pendulum, which he told Fox & Friends : "is the tendency after two terms of a White House party being in office that there is a change...which gives a prediction that Republicans are favored this year." • Newsmax on Monday published an article by Denis Kleinfeld -- a tax and wealth protection lawyer, and widely published author and creative teacher -- in which Kleinfeld says "Trump Will Win in a Landslide." Kleinfeld says : "This presidential election cycle is unlike any other in modern times....Mr. Trump works selling things in the private sector, while Mrs. Clinton works selling government influence....Fraud is illegal in the private sector, but apparently business-as-usual in the public sector. Emails from WikiLeaks allege that the Clinton campaign is engaged in a massive vote fraud effort. Voter fraud has worked in big elections and little ones. I recall Walter Cronkite’s comments about the voting coming out of the South Side of Chicago during the Kennedy-Nixon 1960 election. The Dems have perfected their ballot-stuffing strategy since then..." Kleinfeld agrees with Professor Northrup’s “primary model” -- Trump’s supporters are more motivated than Clinton’s backers : "In the primaries, the GOP had about a 60% increase in primary voters; around 86% went to Trump, Cruz, and Carson -- anti-establishment candidates all; Mr. Trump alone got more primary votes than any Republican in history. That powerful result sent the Republican Establishment into the first stage of grief. Many have not moved on yet. The Dems had about 21% less primary voter turnout. If Mrs. Clinton and the DNC did not rig the primary election (as the WikiLeaks emails apparently prove), then Bernie Sanders would have won." Kleinfeld points out that while Hillary has overwhelming support in the mainsteam media : "voters view the MSM as having the same level of credibility as Congress. At about 11%. Effectively, the drum beat of the MSM is being discounted rather dramatically by the potential voters who think more highly of roaches than journalists. Then consider who is the audience or readers of the mainstream media. Not the millennials nor Generation X. And as to the boomers, Mrs. Clinton is not generating any excitement or motivation to come out and vote. The Dems think Trump is a low life. But they also see Mrs. Clinton as suffering from severe ethical and legal deficiencies. They don’t want to vote for Mr. Trump but find voting for Mrs. Clinton troubling. Many of the Democratic boomers are sitting this one out." But, Kleinfeld says, the primaries proved that "Trump supporters are want to come out and vote for him and against the political establishment. If the Dems cannot front-load the election vote prior to November 7, then all bets are off for Mrs. Clinton on November 8." Kleinfeld concludes : "Even President Obama is on record complaining about voter fraud. I’m convinced that if it were not for WikiLeaks and the email disclosures, then Mr. Trump would not be in a competitive position. It is not easy taking on the Democratic and Republican Establishment, the mainstream media, Wall Street, and all the other parasites that live off of the federal government’s largesse. • Denis Kleinfeld also makes several excellent 'practical politics' points : "Why would anybody vote for Mrs. Clinton when she promises to raise their taxes? And, literally 50% of the potential voters in this election cycle did not vote in the 1990s. There is no past history to draw on to predict how they will react under the circumstances of this 2016 election. The financial markets are in an asset value bubble. By November 1, the new Obamacare premium bills will come out. There is a full-fledged war in the Middle-East, and threats of war in Eastern Europe and in the South China Sea. I don’t foresee that there will be anything happening in the economy or in the foreign policy arena that could favor Mrs. Clinton. Quite the contrary....Mr. Trump’s supporters...are part of the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” crowd. Mr. Trump’s election will be the victory long sought by the voters in retaking power back from the utterly corrupt ruling political establishment class, their crony partners, and their media servants." • • • OBAMACARE UNRAVELS BIGTIME. Remember President Obama's biggest lie of all : "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold." Well, yet again premiums will go up, and sharply, next year under Obamacare, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That will fire up another Obamacare controversy days before the presidential election. Without counting taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a mid-level benchmark plan will increase an average of 25% across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less. Bottom line -- about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles. The fact is that insurance markets created by the 2010 Obamacare are on the verge of collapsing in a "death spiral." • THE OBAMACARE ENDGAME. In Colorado, where Obamacare enrollees face 20% premium hikes, voters will decide November 8 whether to create a new single payer healthcare system --the cost is estimated at $25 billion, funded by a 10% payroll tax plus various other taxes. Colorado’s entire budget is just $27 billion. And, Obama last week said the antidote to the loss of major private insurers from Obamacare is the creation of a government-backed insurer to provide competition on exchanges that have none. Nobody knows how much that would cost or if it could even be successful. Obama may be hoping that Americans have failed to notice the $330 billion in taxpayer dollars already spent on Obamacare, with zero results. In the same speech made in Miami, the President said we should regard Obamacare as “a starter home. It’s a lot better than not having a home. But over time, you hope you can make improvements.” But healthcare isn’t a starter home. Whether the nation’s health care system operates efficiently is vitally important. Millions of lives hang in the balance. Obamacare sign-up season starts November 1, a week before the presidential and congressional elections. The shocking numbers released by the Obama administration confirmed state-by-state reports that have been coming in for months. Officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise alongside premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock -- yes, with taxpayer money, let us not forget. Officials add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains -- yes, with even higher deductibles and copays and even less choice of doctors and hospitals, let us not forget. • • • LOW-INCOME AMERICANS HURT. The spike in premiums generally does not affect the employer-provided plans that most workers and their families rely on -- although these plans have seen rate increases as insurers raise private company-provided rates to cover the losses they suffer by providing Obamacare insurance. And, according to Caroline Pearson of consulting firm Avalere Health : "Enrollment is concentrated among very low-income individuals who receive significant government subsidies to reduce premiums and cost-sharing." But 5 million to 7 million people are either not eligible for the income-based assistance, or they buy individual policies outside of the health law's markets, where the subsidies are not available. The administration is urging the latter group to check out HealthCare.gov. In some states, the premium increases are eye-popping. In Arizona, unsubsidized premiums for a 27-year-old buying a benchmark "second-lowest cost silver plan" will jump by 116%, from $196 to $422, according to the administration report. Oklahoma has the next biggest increase for a similarly situated customer, 69%. Increasing lack of choice is another problem. The total number of HealthCare.gov insurers will drop from 232 this year to 167 in 2017, a loss of 28%. But, keep in mind that this number is 'fudged' because insurers are counted multiple times if they offer coverage in more than one state. So Aetna, for example, would count once in each state that it participated in. And, switching insurers may not be simple for patients with chronic conditions. Despite the Democrat 'siren song' that those with pre-existing conditions cannot be refused insurance coverage, they can be trapped in a plan whose costs and choices become an Obamacare 'prison cell.' And, Pearson explained : "Enrollees may need to change doctors or drugs when they are forced to switch insurers." • • • DEMOCRATS CAUGHT IN OBAMACARE COLLAPSE. Even Democrats are increasingly acknowledging that Obamacare (laughingly titled "The Affordable Care Act") has an affordability problem. Former President Bill Clinton said recently that people who are ineligible to get subsidies to buy Obamacare insurance are “getting killed." Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said this month that “the reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.” President Obama himself said in a speech last week that “there are going to be people who are hurt by premium increases.” Every one of these Democrats made the argument that Obamacare is working well for most people, and that the problem of rising premiums is specifically focused on a minority of consumers who earn too much money to qualify for federal subsidies -- they are talking about the part of the middle class who are refused coverage on the job because their employers have stopped offering too-expensive healthcare coverage because of Obamacare -- and the part of the middle class that Turmp and the GOP in Congress want to protect, if the Obama veto over any Obamacare change did not exist. So, Democrats are exposed. They point out that 85% of Obamacare enrollees receive financial help -- people are eligible for assistance under the health law if they make below about $47,000 for an individual. But, the other 15%, about 1.6 million people, do not receive financial help. There are also about 7 million people with individual coverage outside of the law’s marketplaces who are totally exposed to premium increases. • • • HILLARY'S SOLUTION - SPEND MORE. Hillary Clinton has fought back, saying that by repealing Obamacare, Republicans would be taking away coverage for the 20 million people who gained insurance under the law. She says repealing Obamacare would do away with protections like preventing insurance companies from denying people coverage because they are sick, which meant that in the past, some people could not get coverage at any price. Yet, even Clinton at the second presidential debate admitted to the affordability problem when a questioner complained of rising health costs under Obamacare : “I’m going to fix it, because I agree with you. Premiums have gotten too high.” Read that to mean more taxpayer subsidies, more tampering with the market for health insurance, and more efforts to move to a one-payer federal government controlled nationalized healthcare system. Meantime, Obamacare rate increases are what Democrats all over America are bracing for whne the bill qrrives in the mail of millions of Americans one week before the election : Changes in battleground Senate states -- Illinois 43% / Wisconsin 16% / Florida 14% / Indiana -3% / Missouri 18% / New Hampshire 2% / North Carolina 40% / Pennsylvania 53% / Arizona 116% / Ohio 2%. • • • GOP REPEAL AND REPLACE ELECTION CAMPAIGN PUSH. GOP incumbents are seizing on the Obamacare rate hikes in their final campaign push. Senator Roy Blunt's (R-Mo.) campaign committee released an ad Friday hitting his opponent, Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, for a "liberal agenda to expand Obamacare." The GOP message to Obama : we are not giving up the repeal fight. In a lengthy speech on Thursday, Obama urged GOP leaders to "stop pretending" they have an alternative to the law and get to work with the next President to approve some much-needed fixes. But Republicans are making clear that they remain opposed and will not accept changes in the next Congress. Donald Trump, campaigning in Tampa, Florida, emphatically declared Obamacare “over.” Trump added that Hillary Clinton "wants to double down and make it more expensive and it's not gonna work....Our country can't afford it, you can't afford it." He promised his own plan would deliver "great health care at a fraction of the cost." Trump’s running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence echoed Trump’s words, saying on Twitter : “Higher premiums, less competition & fewer choices lie ahead for ObamaCare. Hillary Clinton wants more of the same.” The Washington Examiner reported that Pence had a laugh at President Obama's comparison of his signature Obamacare law to the exploding Samsung phones. Pence, speaking at a campaign rally in Ohio Saturday, was referring to Obama's address celebrating the healthcare law's third anniversary of coming online. Obama said that when a company comes out with a smartphone has a few bugs, then they fix it or "upgrade it. Unless it catches fire, then they pull it off the market." Pence pounced on the comment, saying that if Trump is elected President "we are gonna pull [Obamacare] off the market." House Speaker Paul Ryan offered a zinger : “But at least you can return the phone. Families are stuck paying these higher premiums, and Democrats only want to double down on Obamacare. There is a better way. Republicans are offering a plan to repeal Obamacare, and replace it with real, patient-centered solutions that fit your needs and your budget. We don’t have to accept this kind of sticker shock.” Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) summed it up, urging the White House to admit that Obamacare is not working : "We’ve reached this point because Obamacare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn -- whether it’s co-ops collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing -- the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this -- it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working." • • • Dear readers, with so many key issues being ignored by the mainstream media, and Hillary Clinton's refusal to seriously discuss any of the important issues, Donald Trump announced Monday that his campaign will broadcast a nightly program on Facebook Live that will run until Election Day. The program will air at 6:30 p.m. from Trump Tower in New York City. The half-hour coverage will go live right before Trump’s 7 p.m. rallies. Trump said : “This is an HISTORIC movement. Together, we will once again make a government by, for, and of the people! Help us close out the final weeks of this campaign strong and WIN.” The Facebook Live tool is a way for the campaign to harness Trump's large social media following and bypass traditional media, which the GOP nominee and his surrogates frequently bash as dishonest and biased toward Hillary Clinton. Trump’s Facebook page gives his presidential campaign a significant platform. The campaign hosted a Facebook Live on the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas, which had 9 million viewers -- just a few minutes into the first program on Monday, more than 60,000 viewers had already tuned in. The debut of the show heats up speculation about a Trump television network. The Financial Times reported last week that Trump's son-in-law met with investors about possibly starting a network. And Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon didn't rule out the possibility of a Trump media venture if he loses the presidential race to Clinton. • And, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday emphasized the new report from The Wall Street Journal that a PAC headed by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D), a Hillary Clinton ally, directed nearly $500,000 to a Democrat candidate married to the FBI Deputy Director who oversaw the investigation into Clinton’s private email server. Giuliani called the report a “shot to the solar plexus” to Hillary. Donald Trump demanded an investigation into the revelation, calling it "shocking....We've never had a thing like this in the history of this country." According to the WSJ, Virginia Governor McAuliffe, a longtime ally of both Bill and Hillary Clinton who put up guarantees so they could buy their Chappaqua estate, donated the money to the state senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, wife of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Trump also repeated his frequent criticism of "much of" the media....Without the dishonesty and deceit of the media, Hillary Clinton would be nothing. The media isn't just against me, they're against all of you. That's really what they're against. They're not against me, they're against what we represent. Like Hillary Clinton, they look down on the hard working people of the country.... The media is entitled, condescending, and even contemptuous of the people who don't share their elitist views." Trump promised : " I am your voice. I will never let you be the forgotten people again."