Finding and Using Health Statistics --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/usestats/index.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics and databases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics

Medicare Fraud is Rampant ---
 http://townhall.com/columnists/stevesherman/2016/02/05/medicare-fraud-is-rampant-n2115375?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Another Obama Lie Revealed
Revealed in Hillary Clinton's Long Delayed Email Release
"Hillary’s Dirty Little ObamaCare Secret:  The White House was telling her the opposite of what Obama said," by Gerald Herbert, The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2016 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarys-dirty-little-obamacare-secret-1456877391?mod=djemMER

The State Department released the last batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Monday, and the exercise has been instructive about her recklessness with classified material. But as a side note, we ought to memorialize what President Obama’s aides were telling Mrs. Clinton about the Affordable Care Act, which was the opposite of what their boss was telling the public.

Despite her duties as top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton found time to follow ObamaCare’s progress in Congress, and she received regular updates from Neera Tanden, then a White House health staffer. Ms. Tanden is now president of the liberal Center for American Progress, Mrs. Clinton’s economic policy shop.

In an Oct. 19, 2009 email, Mrs. Clinton asked Ms. Tanden, “Are you worried about the lack of cost controls in the current bills?” Ms. Tanden replied that “the dirty little secret is that we don’t have a lot of good evidence on what works—in a way that Congress has any appetite to do. I mean, cost controls, as we all know, is [sic] attacked as rationing. So everyone likes to discuss this, including the Administration, but then on the other hand, says they won’t touch the benefits. Now there is a lot of fat in the system, but some of that excess is just too much care. Yet no one really wants care to be restricted.”

Not a month earlier, the President had promised Congress that the bill would save “hundreds of billions of dollars,” according to “Democratic and Republican experts.” In March 2010 he said that “we have now incorporated almost every single serious idea from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care.”

Ms. Tanden was telling Mrs. Clinton that the truth was closer to the reverse. She wrote that “the other problem” is that the de minimis cost-control problems that ObamaCare did include “need some time to incubate because we don’t have all the evidence we need. . . . We may have oversold what these bills will (or even can) do.” Critics at the time, including us, argued that White House claims about cost control were always a bill of goods. But we’d be curious to hear what ObamaCare architects like Peter Orszag think of Ms. Tanden’s private candor, or the credulous columnists they duped.

By the way, the Clinton-Tanden correspondence is heavily redacted for some reason, and its release was delayed almost a year for interagency review—though emails about health care shouldn’t compromise national security. Perhaps they also shared a between-us laugh about the other health-care deceptions the White House was getting away with.

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on February 29, 2016

Valeant isn’t what the doctor ordered
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc.’s fundamental risks are too severe to suggest the stock is poised for a lasting rebound, writes Steven Russolillo for Ahead of the Tape. The Canadian drugmaker late Sunday said it would postpone its fourth-quarter results and conference call, originally scheduled for Monday. The move came as Valeant confirmed Michael Pearson would return as chief executive after being on leave since December due to a severe case of pneumonia and other complications.

Obamacare Fraud is Rampant
Obama Administration Breaks Law to Enrich Health Insurers ---
by Betsy McCaughey
Creaters, February 24. 2016
https://www.creators.com/read/betsy-mccaughey/02/16/obama-administration-breaks-law-to-enrich-health-insurers

The Obama administration will tell any lie and break any law to prevent the president's signature health program from collapsing. Insurance companies, such as UnitedHealthcare and Aetna, are losing billions trying to sell Obamacare plans, and the risk is they'll drop out at the end of 2016. No insurance companies means no Obamacare. In 2014, the White House tried to avert that disaster by promising insurers a bailout funded with taxpayer dollars, but public outrage and quick action by Senator Marco Rubio put a stop to it. Now the administration is at it again.

Desperate to keep insurers on board, the administration scrambled to find another source of money. Unfortunately, a big part of that money pot belongs to the public. Disregarding that fact, the administration announced on Feb. 12 that the money will be handed out to insurers — a whopping $7.7 billion this year alone. That huge handout to the insurance industry violates the law.

This is money you and everyone else who already has insurance is forced to pay, called a reinsurance fee. You pay the fee whether you buy your own plan or get covered at work, even if your employer self-insures. You may be clueless about it, but the fee is buried in your premium or taken out of your compensation.

The language of section 1341 of the Affordable Care Act, which details what this money can be used for, is clear as a bell. Some of these annual fees — adding up to billions a year — belong to the public, not the insurance companies. The law states a fixed share "shall be deposited into the general fund of the Treasury of the United States and may not be used" to offset insurance companies' losses. But the administration gave all of it to the insurance companies last year, and got away with that heist. So they're trying it again.

Anyone in the corporate world who misused funds that way would be headed to prison. This rogue administration is going to any length — including running afoul of the law — to keep insurers hooked into Obamacare.

In the words of University of Houston law professor Seth Chandler, who tried to call attention to the crime several months ago, this is an illegal "diversion of funds to enrich insurers." Last year alone, Cross Blue Shield of Texas got $549 million of these reinsurance funds, while Anthem Blue Cross of California got $401 million.

How did this fly under the radar last year? Because no one — especially members of Congress — has read the law. Insurance companies weren't about to object to getting more money than the law allows. Plus, the announcements of these payments were buried in mind-numbing federal agency releases. The latest such disclosure came late on the Friday of a holiday weekend. The business press reported the announcement but didn't go back to read section 1341 of the law and find that the payouts are illegal.

Last week, a few health scholars took notice, including Doug Badger, senior fellow at the Galen Institute. He says the illegal maneuver is "designed to keep a sinking ship from hitting rock bottom."

Congress should step in immediately and exercise its oversight duties to stop this looting. The next payments to insurers are promised for March. No time to waste.

Obamacare was sold on lies: You can keep your health plan if you like it. And you can keep your doctor if you like your doctor. Then, once it was passed, the administration resorted to a long string of lawless executive actions to keep an unworkable scheme going, despite the damage being done to employers, doctors and consumers.

The administration's diversion of public funds to its insurance company cronies is just the latest defiance of the law. The president has illegally delayed the employer mandate repeatedly. He's handing out free Obamacare plans to illegal immigrants. Statutory deadlines are routinely ignored, and funds are slyly shifted from one program to another — the law be damned.