Motor-mouth was avoiding his job again, touring on a bus instead, promoting his plan for a new government rating system for colleges and universities tying the rankings to billions of dollars in federal student aid.
And perhaps the reason he didn’t want to be around the place he was supposed to be, the White House, can be found in article by Jeffrey H. Anderson of The Weekly Standard via Drudge.
It seems that, during the incumbent’s economic recovery, ”typical American household income has not only dropped—it has dropped more than twice as much as it did during the recession.
New estimates from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey by Sentier Research indicate that the real (inflation-adjusted) median annual household income in America has fallen by 4.4 percent during the "recovery," after having fallen by 1.8 during the recession.
During the recession, the median American household income fell by $1,002 (from $55,480 to $54,478). During the recovery—that is, from the officially defined end of the recession (in June 2009) to the most recent month for which figures are available (June 2013)—the median American household income has fallen by $2,380 (from $54,478 to $52,098).”
That means typical American households make almost $2,400 less per year than four years ago, when the incumbent’s "recovery" began.
But, then it gets worse because at the same time, according to John Merline, of Investor’s Business Daily “The average employer-provided family health insurance premiums have climbed $2,976 since 2009, according to an annual Kaiser Family Foundation survey released this week. They're up $3,671 compared with the year before President Obama took office. That's despite Obama's repeated promises that the health care reform law he championed would cut premiums by $2,500 in his first term.”
Statistics also show that annual premium increases have actually moderated over the past two years, but that’s due to trends in the insurance market largely unrelated to ObamaCare. And, the new health care tax could, unfortunately, reverse that trend as well.
Because of the sluggish economy, Joseph Antos, a health care expert at the American Enterprise Institute says that “The failure of the economy to bounce back as quickly as it has after past recessions has prolonged [a] dampening effect on health spending." There has also been a broader shift underway for years toward higher-deductible plans that provide consumers with a stronger incentive to economize on health spending.
So, if the economy was better, and people weren’t so budget conscious, they’d have spent more on health care which, in turn, would cause all the costs to rise.
Consequently, I guess you could then make the point that killing the economy is justifiable and actually good for the population. Because since folks have less in their pockets, they’re spending less on health care then they would have, making the numbers look far better than they really are.
Which means that once again, to get to the truth you have to obtain and study all the data carefully. Because if you don’t, folks like those in the administration will bury you in misinformation and distorted facts. All of which can be very confusing to those who don’t know for sure which corners the mirrors are in.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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