Wednesday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

The Front Page Cover
 The Events of the Week -- Featuring: 
Fake Healthcare: Nancy Pulosi
and the Chocolate Factory
by Katie Kieffer
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 Top Headlines 
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Jeff Sessions (AG) and John Kelly (DHS) kick off Trump cabinet hearings today. (The Washington Times)
 
Black pastors rally for Sessions appointment. (USA Today)
 
Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner to serve as senior adviser. (Fox News)
 
Small business optimism — largest surge since 1980. (Bloomberg)
 
A majority of Americans now live under right-to-work laws. (Washington Examiner)
 
Freddie Gray prosecutor faces civil charges after conducting "independent investigation." (National Review)
 
Police Appreciation Day — Orlando police officer murdered; $60,000 reward offered. (Orlando Sentinel)
 
Yes, really: The AP runs a "fact check" on whether Meryl Streep is "over-rated." (Washington Examiner)
 
Emissions scandal aftermath: FBI arrests Volkswagen executive on fraud charges. (Reuters)
 
Nicolas Maduro raises minimum wage in Venezuela by 50%. Everyone in socialist nation still poor. (International Business Times)
 
Policy: The right way to repeal liar-nObamaCare. (The Daily Signal)
 
Policy: A sensible plea for limits on immigration. (Bloomberg View~The Patriot Post
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Missing from the Intelligence Report:
 The Word 'Podesta'
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
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{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ There is a word missing from the non-classified report issued Friday, in which three intelligence agencies assess "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election."... The FBI, CIA, and NSA elide any mention of . . . "Podesta." Seems like a pretty significant omission - not just because of how the 2016 campaign played out but also in light of the intelligence community's recent history of politicizing its analyses. The report is replete with references to Russian "cyber espionage," "covert intelligence," "false-flag," "propaganda," and "influence" operations by which Vladimir Putin is alleged to have tried to put his thumb on the electoral scale. Very sinister stuff, to be sure. But when the public hears these terms, it thinks of spies, misdirection, disinformation campaigns - i.e., schemes intended to deceive the target audience. People don't instantly think, "Oh, you mean an effort to publicize true but embarrassing information"; they don't read "covert operation" and say to themselves, "That must mean they subjected only one side of a political contest to a high level of scrutiny." That's the kind of behavior people associate with the American media, not the Kremlin...
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Palestinians: Glorifying Mass Murderers
by Bassam Tawil
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Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas mass murderer
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Palestinian youths are being urged to follow in the footsteps of Yahya Ayyash, a Hamas mass murderer who masterminded a wave of suicide bombings that killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis... Ayyash's expertise in manufacturing explosive devices earned him the nickname "The Engineer" and turned him into a hero in the eyes of many Palestinians. The bomb-maker was killed by Israeli security forces on January 5, 1996, thereby ending one of the bloodiest chapters of Palestinian terrorism against Israel. Two decades later, this arch-terrorist is still being revered as a hero and martyr. His murderous legacy and personality are being glorified not only by his Hamas supporters, but also by the "moderate" Western-funded Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas. A few years ago, the PA decided to honor Ayyash by naming a street in Ramallah after him. The street sign was posted in Ramallah, the headquarters of the PA where Abbas lives and works, and reads:...  https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9743/palestinians-glorifying-murderers
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We Now Know WHO Was Behind liar-Hillary Clinton All Along. Surprised?
{angrypatriotmovement.com} ~ In an email released by WikiLeaks, George Soros gave liar-Hillary Clinton step-by-step instructions. This included a list of people Soros thought should be official mediators sent to Albania in 2011... Days after the email was sent, someone on the list was sent as the mediator by the EU, as per Investor’s Business Daily. This past weekend, an organization called DC Leaks put up 2,500 documents from Soros’s Open Society Foundation’s servers, revealing more corruption and connections to liar-Clinton and others. The emails are from as far back as 2008. However, the mainstream media are refusing to say anything about this leak, no doubt because Soros funds them or they fear retaliation. Soros is quick to use his money to get what he wants even if that is to influence an election...  http://www.angrypatriotmovement.com/who-was-behind-hillary-clinton/
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liar-nObama to Release
Intended 9/11 Hijackers...
by Walter White
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{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ Over the past two months, President liar-nObama has been using his status as a lame duck to push his liberal agenda and hinder the incoming Trump administration in numerous ways... From banning off-shore oil drilling in large swaths of America to commuting over 100 criminals, liar-nObama has made it clear he wants to make President-elect Donald Trump’s time in office miserable. Well, with less than 3 weeks to go in office, liar-nObama may have done the worst thing imaginable, announcing that he plans to transfer 18 more Guantanamo Bay detainees, including two men who intended to be 9/11 co-conspirators...liar-nObama is a complete jerk and should be errand off every documents of the United States.
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Children At St Judes, Trump Charity,
Victims Of liar-Clinton Corruption
by Rick Wells
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{rickwells.us} ~ Judge Jeanine notes a bit of injustice that has been directed at those who least deserve it, who are already dealing with more than enough trouble and difficulties in their young lives, young kids who have cancer... She says, “Politics gets in the way of a lot, sometimes even in the way of dying kids.” She wanted to start her first show of the new year on an enthusiastic, upbeat note. She then found out about what had happened to the Erick Trump Children’s Foundation, how it’s being forced to suspend operations, she was furious. The story gets worse, as it happened on Christmas eve. She says, “Because someone was a crook, those children lost. Because someone lined their own pockets from their so-called charity, laundering money from foreign governments and oligarchs under the guise of starting a presidential library but actually seeking to pay lawyers and sexual harassment judgments, those children lost.”...  http://rickwells.us/judge-jeanine-children-st-judes-trump-charity-victims-clinton-corruption/
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Fake Healthcare: Nancy Pulosi
and the Chocolate Factory
by Katie Kieffer
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{townhall.com} ~ Forget “fake news,” America’s epidemic is fake healthcare where cancer patients can’t obtain immunotherapy while taxpayers are forced to bankroll $8,000 drugs to treat minor conditions.

Welcome to life as a sick person seeking treatment—or a healthy person seeking catastrophic health insurance—in House Democratic leader Nancy Pulosi’s America (a.k.a. Chocolate Factory).  

Republicans have one chance to repeal fake healthcare (otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act or liar-nObamacare). But, even as you read this column, Pulosi is hustling to market a new anti-healthcare reform campaign: “Make America Sick Again.”

Cry me a river. Democrats corrupted the American healthcare system even further; baited Millennials to bankroll their broken plan; and now they’re launching a campaign to blame Republicans for their mess—a mess for which not a single Republican voted.

If Republicans cower in fear as they are prone to do, Pulosi will corral the Democrats into destroying our healthcare system beyond repair. Here’s the urgent call-to-action that we need to send our congressional Republicans:

Nancy Pulosi’s Chocolate Factory

“I am addicted to chocolate,” Pulosi told the New York Times in 2006 when asked if she had “issues.” “Ice cream for breakfast,” she added, was part of her diet. Eight years later, in 2014, the Times reported: “Ms. Pulosi ate whole pints of chocolate ice cream, including for breakfast.” Actually, Pulosi has been eating chocolate and chocolate ice cream almost “constantly” since the age of five—by her own admission.

Eating pints of chocolate ice cream for breakfast for a quarter century takes its toll. Whatever the reason, Pulosi appears to be a bit ill. She almost looks like a weary, 76-year-old grandmother who should have retired from politics a decade ago. Oh. Wait…

Why should Pulosi tell young people in my Millennial generation—or even our parents, the Baby Boomers—how to be healthy when she never advanced beyond the age of five in terms of health-consciousness?

When we had a chance to “find out what is in it,” we learned Pulosi’s pet piece of legislation is really a Pandora’s box. Young people already facing high unemployment now face health insurance sticker shock—as premiums rise 50% on average and often closer to 179%. It’s no surprise that even Politico recently warned that liar-nObamacare has a “Millennial problem.”

The GOP has one solid chance to stop this woman—who is the picture of nutritional dysfunction—from telling you and me how to be “healthy.”

Buy-and-Raise: $200 Drugs for $8,000

Wall Street has a name for a dirty business practice that escalated under the liar-nObama administration wherein drug companies charge the American taxpayers fake, or inflated, prices for decades-old drugs that should retail, at most, for $200. The term is “buy-and-raise.”

Drug companies got everything they wanted in liar-nObamacare thanks to slick negotiation from big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin. liar-nObama, congressional Democrats and Tauzin collaborated to ram the unconstitutional bill through congress in 2010 without a single Republican vote. (I encourage you to learn the full story of "Pimp Daddy Tauzin" and liar-nObamacare.)

Unfortunately, drug companies gained at the price of patients. 300 doctors—whom I personally interviewed—say liar-nObamacare will raise costs and lower the quality of healthcare for young Americans.

Buy-and-raise, the Los Angeles Times reported last month, is a practice that drug companies are utilizing to inflate prices by 1,000%.

Here’s how it works: drug companies offer patients “co-pay coupons” for common drugs like a simple skin cream called, Alcortin A and a basic pain reliever, Vimovo. The drugs retailed for $189 and $115 respectively less than two years ago. Today, they retail for $7,968 and $2,061 respectively. Patients and doctors rarely see the true sticker price as the drugs are covered by many insurance plans and drug companies give patients co-pay coupons that allow them to pay a negligible amount while, as the Los Angeles Times reports: “leaving America’s health system to pick up the rest of the price.”

Taxpayers like you are picking up a hefty price indeed. Researchers from UCLA, Harvard and Northwestern recently found that drug companies have been reimbursed “as much as $2.7 billion” more “over five years” than “if the coupons were not used,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Profits from buy-and-raise tactics are padding the salaries of drug executives more often than saving patient lives. Horizon CEO Timothy Walbert’s compensation package increased by a factor of ten from 2014 to 2015 to $93.4 million. Drugs like Alcortin A and Vimovo cost drug companies little to make as they are based on ingredients discovered decades ago, but patients will not question five-figure costs that they never see.

Almost 14 million Americans have cancer. Many patients only find remission if they are lucky enough to participate in one of the small and selective immunotherapy trials taking place throughout the country. Consider that it typically costs $200,000 per person per year for an immunotherapy trial. Imagine how many more cancer patients we could help if we weren’t paying over $7,000 extra for a common rash cream.

Here’s what the GOP must do—right now.

Insurers Need Competition from Employers

If Republicans follow the lead of House Speaker Paul Ryan who passed a $1.15 trillion spending bill—outspending even Pulosi when she ran the House as a Democrat—they’ll try to “fix” liar-nObamacare by dumping more taxpayer dollars at the problem.

Republicans lose elections when they cower in the corner and spend instead of shutting down defunct aspects of the government. So if Republicans do what some reports suggest—and issue a token repeal of liar-nObamacare and then wait up to two years to implement a replacement for fear of angering those who are on liar-nObamacare—history tells us that voters will not be kind to Republicans in the 2018 midterms.

There are many sustainable ways to offer affordable and high-quality healthcare coverage to some 30 million Americans who didn’t have healthcare coverage before they joined the liar-nObamacare exchanges. One solution is to create competition for insurance companies and force them to raise their game. Employers could “compete” with insurance companies by offering health savings accounts (HSAs) to their employees instead of traditional health insurance.

HSAs would particularly benefit the portion of the population that contains a high number of uninsured individuals: Millennials. Why? Because an employee owns their own HSA, accrues funds toward their future healthcare costs while they are still healthy—and keeps their contributions if they switch employers (as Millennials often do).

“The HSA account is funded by pre-tax payroll deduction. Using 2016 contribution limits, this would amount to $128.85 deducted every 2 weeks ($3,350 per year) for an individual or $259.62 deducted every 2 weeks ($6,750 per year) for family coverage. …There are no insurance premiums to be paid, outrageous deductibles to be met, or endless co-pays at the doctor’s office. … This is an especially strong benefit for young healthy Millennials,” explains SustainableHealthcareReform.
org.

Pulosi just ordered an “ethics probe” into president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department—orthopedic surgeon Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Unlike Paul Ryan, Price scares Pulosi because he has a clear plan to repeal and replace liar-nObamacare that involves expanding HSAs, increasing tax credits and slashing “goodies” like the ability for young people to remain on their parents’ plan until they well into adulthood (26-years-old).

When you eat your dessert first, like Pulosi, you simply don’t have enough energy for the “meat and potatoes” work that Price proposes. Work that would actually reform healthcare.

Share this article with your loved ones—and tell one and all to tweet, Facebook and call their elected representatives with this message: we’re done with fake healthcare; we’re done with subsidizing Nancy Pulosi’s chocolate factory; we expect real reform.
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