Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Obamacare causes health insurance deductibles to skyrocket

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance deductibles have gone up seven times faster than the rate of inflation since Obamacare became law.

According to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, the increase brings the average deductible that workers must pay for their health insurance plans to $1,077; more than triple what it was a decade ago. As reported in the L.A. Times, “That is seven times faster than wages have risen in the same period.”

Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman said, “It’s a quiet revolution. When deductibles are rising seven times faster than wages … it means that people can’t pay their rent. … They can’t buy their gas. They can’t eat.” As a comparison, “workers’ wages increased 1.9% between April 2014 and April 2015, according to federal data analyzed by the report’s authors.” The news is also bad for family plans as, the “average family plan cost workers $4,955, up 3% from last year.”.

Obviously this is the fault of the Republicans campaigning for president. Their opposition to Obama and the Democrats is certainly the reason why Obamacare continues to be such a unmitigated disaster for Americans.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • Cotour

    This justifies it all:

    https://youtu.be/rtBvQj2k6xo

    The Pope pointed it out today in his speech to Congress today.

  • Wodun

    We won’t see stories like this forever, deductibles are capped. The first year of Obamacare, my deductible went up 222% to the cap. Now, I have to spend over $10k before health insurance picks up the tab for anything.

  • Cotour

    Mine is $6000.00 now, if I remember correctly it was $1200.00 previously, before Obamacare.

  • Edward

    These high deductibles, the high premiums that go along with them, and the 50% co-pay for anything that exceeds my deductible (up to a fairly high limit) are why I am now a scofflaw. I figured out that I break even in just about a dozen years for a $100,000 disease (if I got such a bill, the cost of the insurance and the out of pocket expenses would have come to the same amount). That calculation was last year when the Bronze Turd Plan premiums were only $7,000 (actually, a couple of hundred or so dollars more than that), before the premiums increased for this year. As premiums increase, the break even point gets shorter and shorter. It just isn’t worth it for a still-healthy person like me to start paying the high premiums.

    From the article: “If you couldn’t afford insurance before ObamaCare, this likely isn’t affordable either. At least before ObamaCare, high deductible policies had low monthly costs, and a wise consumer could save the money they weren’t spending on high premiums. But those plans aren’t ACA compliant and are no longer available.”

    It was worth it back when I could get high deductibles for low monthly costs — the money I saved on premiums went into a savings account to cover the high deductible. Now the deductibles are high, the monthly payment is high, and there is now a high co-pay even after the deductible is reached.

    *BAH!*

  • wodun

    Ya, that is about what happened to mine only its $6350 or whatever the cap is. So yours can still inch up a bit :(

  • wodun

    A responsible person who saved their premiums rather than giver them to an insurer would be better off in most cases but the key is you still have to save. I think more people would have been in favor of a HSA type of thing that mandated saving rather than the current plan that mandates spending.

    It feels like a rip off to pay in and get nothing back while you read about people whose plans are subsidized through your premiums getting massage therapy and knee reconstructions.

  • Cotour

    All of these examples demonstrate that the people of America have been captured by, well we have to now admit the leadership of both party’s in concert with activist judges on the Supreme Court. What is worse than this conspiracy in our country?

    This is what would be called “social justice” and it is quite literally a mechanism to redistribute individual American’s money and their freedom. This must not remain and or accepted.

  • jburn

    There is an obvious relationship between the “Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust” and Kaiser Permanente.

    Kaiser Permanente boasted of it’s part in crafting the AHA. In other words, huge healthcare/health insurance companies wrote the legislation which the our representatives didn’t have time to read.

    Is it any wonder our insurance costs have grown much higher.

  • Edward

    *Sigh* If only HSAs were like IRAs instead of having to go through an employer. My IRA is currently my “HSA.”

    But then, HSAs such as this would defeat the incentive to the insurance companies — the tyrannical, mandated purchase of policies. Talk about crony capitalism, this is the ultimate, creating a tyranny just to make one industry happy.

    [I had to delete the rest of this reply, because it quickly degraded into cursing — both the words and placing curses and poxes on government and certain officials within or formerly within government.]

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *