Perhaps they are miners hedging? Pro and amateur specs/investors?
Are they followers of the Ronco school of investing? “Set it and forget it”
Authored by Michelle Malkin via Townhall.com,
Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead.
Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. It’s our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years.
Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013.
The insurer informed us that because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA),” our plan no longer met the federal government’s requirements.
Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible PPO that included a wide network of doctors for ourselves and our two children.
Our second death knell, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, tolled in August 2015.
That notice signaled the end of a plan we didn’t want in the first place that didn’t cover our kids’ dental care and wasn’t accepted at our local urgent care clinic. The insurer pulled out of the individual market in all but one county in Colorado, following the complete withdrawal from that sector by Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
Our third “notice of plan discontinuation,” again from Anthem, informed us that the insurer would “no longer offer your current health plan in the State of Colorado” in August 2016.
With fewer and fewer choices as know-it-all Obamacare bureaucrats decimated the individual market here and across the country, we enrolled in a high-deductible Bronze HSA EPO (Health Savings Account Exclusive Provider Organization) offered by Minneapolis-based startup, Bright Health.
Now, here we are barely a year later: Deja screwed times four. Our current plan will be discontinued on Jan. 1, 2018.
“But don’t worry,” Bright Health’s eulogy writer chirped, “we have similar plans to address your needs.”
Riiiiight. Where have I heard those pie-in-the-sky promises before? Oh, yeah. Straight out of the socialized medicine Trojan horse’s mouth. “If you like your doctor,” President Obama promised, “you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
Is pathological lying covered under the Affordable Care Act?
Speaking of Affordable Care Act whoppers, so much for “affordable.” Our current deductible is $6,550 per person; $13,100 for our family of four. Assuming we can find a new plan at the bottom of the individual market barrel, our current monthly premium, $944.86, will rise to more than $1,300 a month.
“What’s taking place is a market correction; the free market is at work,” says Colorado’s state insurance commissioner, Marguerite Salazar. “(T)his could be an indication that there were too many options for the market to support.”
This presumptuous central planner called federal intervention to eliminate “too many” options for consumers the free market at work. Yes, friends, the Rocky Mountain High is real.
This isn’t a “market correction.” It’s a government catastrophe. Premiums for individual health plans in Virginia are set to skyrocket nearly 60 percent in 2018. In New Hampshire, those rates will rise 52 percent. In South Carolina, individual market consumers will face an average 31.3 percent hike. In Tennessee, they’ll see rates jump between 20-40 percent.
Private, flexible PPOs for self-sufficient, self-employed people are vanishing by design. The social-engineered future — healthy, full-paying consumers being herded into government-run Obamacare exchanges and severely regulated regional HMOs — is a bipartisan big government health bureaucracy’s dream come true.
These choice-wreckers had the arrogant audacity to denigrate our pre-Obamacare plans as “substandard” (Obama), “crappy” (MSNBC big mouth Ed Schultz) and “junk policies” (Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa). When I first called attention to the cancellation notice tsunami in 2013, liberal Mother Jones magazine sneered that the phenomenon was “phony.” And they’re still denying the Obamacare death spiral. Liberal Vox Media recently called the crisis “a lie.”
I don’t have enough four-letter words for these propagandists. There are an estimated 450,000 consumers like us in Colorado and 17 million of us nationwide — small-business owners, independent contractors and others who don’t get their plans through group coverage, big companies or government employers. The costs, headaches and disruption in our lives caused by Obamacare’s meddling meddlers are real and massive.
But we’re puzzles to corporate media journalists who’ve never had to meet a payroll and don’t even know what is the individual market.
We’re invisible to late-night TV clowns who get their Obamacare-at-all-costs talking points from Chuck Schumer.
We’re pariahs to social justice health care activists and Democrats who want us to just shut up and subsidize everyone else’s insurance.
And we’re expendables to establishment Republicans who hoovered up campaign donations on the empty promise to repeal Obamacare — and now consider amnesty for immigrants here illegally and gun control higher legislative priorities than keeping their damned word.
We’re the canaries in the Obamacare coal mine. Ignore us at your peril, America. You’re next.
The Fed worries about “Low Inflation” really?
Obviously the Fed doesn’t monitor health care costs which are a joke since Obozocare began. Of course since the wife and I are getting older, more healthcare is required, but seriously, healthcare and medication are the most expensive thing we pay for – and that’s after the $6K deductible.
They must only measure gov’t employees with the best healthcare and retirement benefits money can buy.
Yeah, probably no inflation there…
Is the Fed that lame?? Some people simply won’t work for peanuts if they don’t have to. They’ll go into self employment, work off the books. They always forget the three main words, “At that price” Henry Ford paid double, and got the best employees, and zero turnover.
part:
The ultra-tight labor market, with unemployment near a 16-year low at 4.4%, was frequently cited by those surveyed as a headwind.
“Employment was held back by tight labor availability,” the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank found.
Many companies complain they cannot find enough suitable workers to fill all their empty positions. In April job openings rose to the second highest level ever.
Businesses in the Philadelphia region also complained about keeping new employees on the job.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-beige-book-says-worker-shortage-limits-hiring-2017-07-12
parts:
“Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect not only transitory factors, but also the influence of developments that could prove more persistent,”
“The minutes said “many” participants “continued to believe” that labor-market pressures would eventually show through to higher inflation.”
Comment:
Are these people serious?? They need answers?? If I have the answers, they should also have and know the answers. $1.40 minimum wages in 1967 had a LOT more purchasing power than the $7/hr or even $0, or $15/hr of today.
We here all know…the labor Dept has UNDERSTATED THE INFLATION RATE FOR DECADES. If those BOZOS really don’t have answers they are not qualified.
Perhaps they are miners hedging? Pro and amateur specs/investors?
Are they followers of the Ronco school of investing? “Set it and forget it”
six months chart shows a nice inverted head and shoulders developing.
and TGLDX is a great instrument to watch
i woke up today with no power. the lineman who came and fixed it said there was a fuse blown down by the road. his best guess is that there was a squirrel who “went to heaven in a flash of fire.” the squirrel was not to be found. …the neighborhood dogs probably got a toasted snack.
“that was delicious! can we have some more?”
of smashing PM prices in front of bullish news is seriously insane and should open the perps to serious jail time.
Because they know damn well what is going to be said in advance, so they are just pissing away billions of dollars of taxpayers money…for what ?????
There has been practically no discussion of all the camera video that Mandalay Bay has to have. They finally let us know they ‘discovered’ the alleged shooter used the freight elevator. What a joke.
THEY HAVE ON VIDEO EVERY TIME HE CAME IN, WHERE HE WENT AND WHEN, WHEN HE LEFT, WHO ELSE WAS WITH HIM, WHO ELSE WENT INTO ‘HIS’ ROOM, ETC., ETC., ETC.
Only once have I heard video mentioned, on Fox News the other night, and the guest IMMEDIATELY redirected the conversation.
One more thing — has anyone heard any mention of a time of death of Paddock? I have not. In normal cases, this is always announced. But not in these type of events. THIS IS CRITICAL INFORMATION.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-11/vegas-hotel-worker-warned-police-shooter-massacre-began
In one of the most shocking developments to emerge in the week-and-a-half since Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 others during the worst mass shooting in US history, NBC is reporting that a maintenance worker said Wednesday he told hotel dispatchers to call police and report a gunman had opened fire with a rifle inside Mandalay Bay before Paddock began firing on the Harvest country music festival below.
tell that to Puerto Rico–or Illinois..or California..to govvie pension plans etc etc
But back to Tajikistan’s oversubscribed issuance: its bonds were rated B- by S&P, with the ratings firm estimating the country’s GDP per capita at $900, putting it among the lowest of the sovereign nations it rates, but said it sees Tajikistan’s growth prospects improving gradually. Of course, that sale followed the previously discussed June bond-market debut of the Maldives, a tiny nation in the Indian Ocean that raised $200 million in a sale of five-year bonds with a 7% coupon.eAs Deutsche Bank’s chief macro strategist Alan Ruskin said earlier today…
“As we look at what could shake the panoply of low vol forces, it is the thaw in Central Bank policy as they retreat from emergency measures that is potentially most intriguing/worrying. We are likely to be nearing a low point for major market bond and equity vol, and if the catalyst is policy it will likely come from positive volatility QE ‘flow effect’ being more powerful than the vol depressant ‘stock effect’. To twist a phrase from another well know Chicago economist: Vol may not always and everywhere be a monetary phenomena – but this is the first place to look for economic catalysts over the coming year.”
Ruskin is right, of course, but where he is wrong is the assumed reaction by central bankers: having cultivated the ‘wealth effect’ for the 1% for nearly a decade, will central banks suddenly turn their backs on the capital markets, their primary “wealth expansion pipeline”, and see the fruit of their labor crushed? Judging by the record low volatility and credit spreads, and record high stocks, the market’s verdict is simple: never.
I agree it’s very fishy. Why would they announce the shooter was stopped by security or cop then it turns out it was maontaince who was shot at and before it started not after like they said. Perhaps it was they couldn’t cover up what people saw on camera. Now what do cops say about being suspicious of conflicting stories? Then the 70 minutes to break into his room. What really concerns me about that is without a clear they wouldn’t allow medical into the scene to help the victims who had to be helped out by good samaritans. So if they were up to something they had total disregard for all those people including other cops.
Well we went from the surreal to the utterly ridiculous a long time ago and it just gets crazier.
No doubt the Fed speak is PM bullish…why else the pre Hit.
Leaving platinum behind.
Guess Farmboy didn’t feel like noodling those ocean fish.
The Oklahoma Sooners laid an egg against Iowa State. Texas Longhorns game may be worse unless some injured players get back. Oklahoma State Cowboys had a bye week to heal up.
rno
just another day in the ridiculous world of pm’s and the SM
Nothing matters to either of them other than what the Fed driven algo’s want them to do.
What a joke.
or is this just the standard hit job in front of Fed mumbling.
SM now plus all round….something really scares ’em….
Timelines changing, Casino’s conflicting the police reports, knowing where the shooter was before the shooting incident started, shutting the elevators off, smoke detector that certainly listed the exact floor and a particular smoke zone, cops taking 70 minutes to breach the room. Someone having the huge balls to break into the shooters house after the FBI is combing through the most current crime scene in America. Smells like dead fish I swear. Anyone been to Vegas lately, it’s the most video’d playground in the world, hands down. Oh and also he was prescribed anti-anxiety meds, but you watch big pharma will bury the problem again. Is it the pills? Are they the root?
Maya, that coffee pot looks very similar to the one I found upon my return home from Florida. Had made a quick pot of coffee before leaving town so I could take a cup to start the road trip. Since it had an automatic turn off feature I just left about half the pot. All kinds of unknown plant life living there when I got back in town. 🙂 Nothing a bleach soak did not cure. Back in biz.
Floridagold, that fisherman was ‘catching’ fish about as fast as the Georgia Bulldogs ran up points on the scoreboard last saturday. Dawgs now 6-0. Now just wsaiting for those nasty swamp creatures to ruin our perfect season. 🙂
A shout out to Sir Richard640 for his GREAT call on the SLV Options. Sold half of my positions yesterday at a 25% gain in one day. Saved my trading account from one of those ‘Mystery Days’ when Gold and Silver were UP, but the majority of my PM Ponies were DOWN! What a crazy market we chose to trade in. If I m lucky, perhaps I can buy those calls back at a discount after today’s Fed speak. Nice job Richard, thanks for the heads up on that trade. Im a little closer to that fishing boat with two oars. Might just name her Richard’s Bet, or maybe Sierra Lima Victor (SLV). 🙂
Still find myself grappeling with the Las Vegas tradegy. Was surreal to hear about it while enjoying a beautiful day on the ocean. The insanity going on in America is beyond belief. America has always worked it’s way through ‘issues’. I HOPE we are able to return to some form of sanity before the Country slides too far off the cliff.
Busy week back on the home front with more projects and chores to take care of in the next 7 days. Thankfully the weather looks pretty decent and temps are about 10-12 degrees higher than normal for this time of year. Then its back to Florida for a couple weeks before the winter season traps me indoors in the ‘office’.
Hope all the Goldbugs are faring well. So many Blessings coming my way these days. Maybe we will hear a word from the Ole Reef Dweller before long. Hope his health is improving after making it through the hurricane. He is one tough ole salt of a seaman.
Brought back some Fresh Gulf Shrimp so cooking up a mess of Shrimp Cheese Grits for breakfast. My way of celebrating living in the South. 🙂 Grab yourself a biscuit, cup of coffee, and a bowl to kick start your day !
I see Buygold didn’t make coffee in my absence. And he’s found a new use for the coffeepot. I’m sure he’s not happy. Either that or he’s preparing herbal tea.
I gotta do it all on the night shift. And where’s my music DJ ?
Man vs Machine. Hint: The Gold Train always wins!
http://www.railpictures.net/photo/632512/