by Claire Bernish

Outspoken critic of Big Government and former U.S. presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul, blasted the West for ignoring admonishments from deposed, late, Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who asserted prior to his death, the rise of U.S.-supported Islamic extremists would lead to attacks on Europe — years before Salman Abedi detonated an explosive device, killing 22 at a concert in Manchester.

Children, adolescents, and adults had gathered for a concert by pop superstar Ariana Grande and had begun to exit the Manchester venue when Abedi exploded a shrapnel-laden device — causing pandemonium, severely injuring scores, and killing 22 people.

Could the Manchester attack have been prevented — even long before MI5 also warned an incident may be forthcoming?

On the Liberty Report, Daniel McAdams noted:

“Gaddafi — when the radicals had started rising in Eastern Libya, when the U.S. was supporting them — he said, “I’m telling you guys, these are radical Islamists, these are terrorists, if you keep supporting them, there’s gonna be trouble.’”

McAdams and Dr. Paul cited an article from January, 2016, from the Telegraph, titled, “Colonel Gaddafi warned Tony Blair of Islamist attacks on Europe, phone conversations reveal,” in which the content of communications between the two leaders revealed how precisely the ill-fated leader of Libya prognosticated future blowback from current Western support of radicals.

Apparently lucid enough to grasp the ramifications Western support would effect throughout Europe — in the aiding terrorists to fit its own ends — on Feb. 25, 2011, Gaddafi portended the dark turn in a phone conversation with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, cautioning:

“They [jihadists] want to control the Mediterranean and then they will attack Europe.”

Gaddafi, in the half hour call, insisted repeatedly he only wished to shield Libyan civilians from an onslaught of violence wrought by al-Qaeda fighters — a battle in which government forces were unable to make headway. Quoting transcripts of Gaddafi’s comments during the call, the Telegraph continued:

“We are not fighting them, they are attacking us. I want to tell you the truth. It is not a difficult situation at all. The story is simply this: an organization has laid down sleeping cells in North Africa. Called the Al-Qaeda Organization in North Africa… The sleeping cells in Libya are similar to dormant cells in America before 9/11.

“They have managed to get arms and terrify people. People can’t leave their homes… It’s a jihad situation. They have arms and are terrorising people in the street.”

Then, in a subsequent call four hours later, he added:

“I will have to arm the people and get ready for a fight. Libyan people will die, damage will be on the Med, Europe and the whole world. These armed groups are using the situation [in Libya] as a justification – and we shall fight them.”

In fact, Abedi’s very family fought Ghaddafi during the revolt in 2011.

As Dr. Paul notes, Gaddafi’s desperate words weren’t intended as a threat, rather, as counsel to Blair on the deleterious repercussions manipulation by the U.S. and Western allies would reap — not only across northern Africa and the Middle East, but in Europe.

Gaddafi, Dr. Paul said, was “saying, ‘this could have bad consequences.’ And it turned out, he was absolutely right.”

Indeed, today saw headlines plastered with news Abedi’s family twice approached British Intelligence with concerns their loved one had begun entertaining terrorist fantasies.

“Abedi’s support for terrorism was reported this year to the security services, and friends had called,” The Times reports. “Britain’s anti-terrorist hotline five years ago with concerns about his views, it was claimed. He was reported for violent statements, including a claim that being a suicide bomber was ‘OK.’”

While it remains unclear whether Abedi garnered targeted surveillance from MI5, what has been made apparent is even direct and unequivocal warnings on specific persons of interest don’t necessitate an open and willing ear from perpetually — if ostensively, only — suspicious Western Intelligence agencies.
Abedi’s brother, now having been arrested in Tripoli, allegedly affirmed Salman and himself to be members of the pernicious, self-titled Islamic State — and that his brother told of his plans for the Manchester attack.

However, when it comes to insidious dealings of Intelligence services, the ends — and not warnings with immediacy — seem far too often to play into State decision-making.

Not long after Gaddafi’s pleas to Blair and other Western leaders, his and Libya’s tragic fates were sealed.
With his ouster and killing, plans to supplant the U.S. petrodollar with the gold-based African dinar — which could have brought the continent into economic relevance — could not come to fruition.

And his warnings of impending doom throughout Europe — resulting from years of meddling in the cultures and affairs of governments of sovereign nations, and the manipulation of terrorist groups to serve hegemonic plunder — can now only echo in the minds of those most guilty for turning a deaf ear.

by Kris S. Held, M.D.

Republicans campaigned on a pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare. The electorate responded to this promise, and Republicans now control the House, Senate, and White House. So, what’s the hold up?

The holdup is that politicians succumb to pressure from special interest groups (insurance corporations and hospital associations) that benefit billions upon billions of dollars in a convoluted system of billing, subsidizing, and taxing to the point of insanity. These third-party entities feed off a medical-industrial complex that consumes more than $3.2 trillion yearly. They want to keep their hands on this money. Individual patients and doctors, by comparison, have no power or money to influence politicians.

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, Daniel Henninger opined that the Freedom Caucus led by Congressman Mark Meadows was responsible for fracturing the Republican Party and delaying the leadership’s repeal of Obamacare. But this session has not considered a “Repeal Obamacare” bill. There was only Paul Ryan’s American Healthcare Act (AHCA)—put together in conjunction with insurance executives and hospital association lobbyists, behind closed doors with physician Senator Rand Paul knocking to no avail, and thrust on the American people with no messaging, in a take-it-or-leave-it condescending fashion.

Ryancare, AKA Obamacare 2.0, would have led to another 15 to 20 percent increase in premiums, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while leaving intact the expansive Obamacare insurance regulations that make insurance so expensive and creating yet another new government subsidy.

The Freedom Caucus, the Tuesday Group of “moderates,” and others, can trade accusations, but playing the blame game helps nothing. The goal is to make medical care in America great, accessible, and affordable, particularly in catastrophic circumstances. This requires that we make insurance affordable again, and to do this we must make insurance honest again.

One of the biggest deceptions of of all times is that the actual cost of medical care is so unfathomably expensive that no one could afford it without insurance. This myth is perpetuated by the insurance and hospital industries, because it is part of a perverse, convoluted, deceptive business plan.
Understanding this scam is essential to calling it out and fixing it.

Politicians decry huge hospital bills, and accordingly they claim they must support federal subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and even single payer, government-run medicine, recounting anecdotes of medical catastrophes. For example, a member of the Tuesday Group told how he tragically lost a child and would have been bankrupted by a million-dollar hospital bill were it not for his health insurance, and based on this he was unable to support repeal and replace of ObamaCare.

In reality, no one ever pays those huge bills. They are fabricated and inflated to maximize profit for insurance companies and hospitals. The mechanism for doing this is called the Chargemaster. Care can be and is rendered a fraction of the cost, as the Surgery Center of Oklahoma demonstrates.

Insurance companies negotiate with the hospitals to pay a percentage of the bill or a flat fee for a specific operation. This is called an “allowable.” While the bill is huge, the allowable is drastically less. Further, the insurance company pays only a fraction of the allowable because, on top of the monthly premium, the patient pays a deductible and a percentage of the allowable, called cost-sharing. The insurance company also receives government subsidies.

By overbilling and then accepting a lower payment (the allowable) from the insurer, the hospital is able to report that it has sustained a loss from providing medical care, which it calls “uncompensated care.” Then the federal government writes a check called the Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payment. The more phantom uncompensated care a hospital reports, the more subsidy money it will get from the government. DSH payments escalated from $1.3 billion in 1990 to $17.7 billion in 1992. Further, because hospitals report these manufactured phantom losses, they are deemed nonprofit and pay no taxes.

This is the hospitals’ sinister “marketing plan.” It terrifies patients when they get their bill, which is extremely difficult to understand, as if by design, and rarely itemized.

My perfectly healthy 22-year-old daughter was in a near fatal accident last year. My amazing physician and surgical colleagues saved her life. Her hospital bill for just under one week was more than $100,000.00. The insurance company paid the hospital the allowable- $40,000.00, at which the hospital actually makes a profit while claiming $60,000 in uncompensated care and receiving DSH money from the government. The hospital, being “nonprofit,” pays no taxes on all this money. My daughter paid her $3,000.00 deductible on top of $1200.00 each month in premiums, for a total of $17,400.00 last year, which means the insurance company actually paid the hospital only $22,600.00 of the $100,000.00 bill. In her prior 22 years of life she never had a claim, so the insurance company is still way ahead.  Had we been uninsured, the hospital would have billed us the full $100,000.00, I would have tried to negotiate the bill down to the Medicare rate and may have saved more money than the allowable negotiated by my insurance company. An uninsured patient should never just pay the falsely inflated hospital Chargemaster bill.

This explains why there is no transparency. Insurers don’t want patients to know about the “allowable” they have negotiated with each hospital. They want people to see only the inflated Chargemaster bill.

Politicians cannot keep their promises to bring us affordable care until they expose this dishonest and corrupt collusion.

(Kris Story Held, M.D. is a board certified ophthalmologist and ophthalmic surgeon. On October 1, 2015 her practice became completely third party free. Kris is actively developing an “alternate universe” with a group of San Antonio physicians, where physicians can practice through a direct patient care model called BridgeTwoHealth.com).