via silverdoctors
Everybody in the United States has been focused on pretty much everything, except for healthcare.
That is to say, the Deep State is offering plenty of distraction in the United States right now, but it seems like they’re trying to avoid the issue of healthcare altogether.
For example, those who follow the mainstream news have been bombarded by (no pun intended, and in no particular order):
- The War with Iran
- The Trump Impeachment
- The 2020 Election
- The Democrat debates
- The BOOMING stock market
- The Phase One Trade Deal
Furthermore, a person could be “woke”, for whatever that’s worth, and still be confused about the true state of healthcare in the United States.
Hat tip to the reader who brought this to my attention.
What is the true state of healthcare in the United States?
Healthcare costs are skyrocketing.
Please allow me to set the stage and then to explain.
President Trump has been boasting about all of the great things he’s been doing for healthcare in the United States.
Here’s an example from 2017:
It is hard to say, on net, how good or how bad President Trump has made the healthcare system in the United States, but it is easy to see him claim to be making it for the better.
That’s a claim he makes time and time again.
Here’s an example of President Trump boasting about his plans for healthcare in the Spring of 2019:
It’s safe to say that we’re now coming into 2020 election crunch time, so we should be seeing President Trump’s “wonderful HealthCare package” on “full display” very soon.
Of course, we’re not seeing it on display just yet, and there’s a very good reason for that, and we discussed that reason in today’s Silver Doctors Live.
In the Fall of 2019, President Trump was boasting about how prescription drug prices had gone down for the first time in 50 years:
It seems as if President Trump is hard at work making healthcare better for Americans.
Only, there’s a problem.
Well, several problems.
All of the problems point to the same true conclusion: Healthcare costs are skyrocketing for Americans.
Right now.
They are.
On Tuesday of this week, the BLS just released it’s latest Consumer Price Index (inflation statistics), and the report covers the change in prices over the entirety of 2019.
Stated in simple terms, in the latest CPI, we basically found out how much prices rose (or fell) for various things from the beginning of 2019 until the end of 2019.
If you scroll down to pages 36 and 37 of the CPI linked above, we see some troubling statistics, and let’s look at just a few of them, taking them at face value, which I would not do, but will here for argument’s sake, because it has been proven time and time again that the government understates inflation.
Worthy to note is that in 2019, “medical care services” were up 5.1% on the year.
The 5.1% price increase is not exactly “skyrocketing”, but when we take into consideration the “far lower costs” President Trump said were coming, when he said that back in 2017, could it not be argued that a move from “far lower” prices, as Trump said were coming, to a more than 5.0% increase in prices is indeed a skyrocket move?
Meh.
I suppose it would be a weak argument.
However, what if we throw in a 20.4% increase in the cost of “health insurance”?
That’s another line item the Bureau of Lies Labor Statistics tracks in the CPI.
Could it not be argued that a move from “far lower” prices, as Trump said were coming, to a more than 20.0% increase in price is indeed a skyrocket move?
After all, the BLS claimed that’s how much health insurance costs went up in 2019!
I suppose it would still be a weak argument, because a 20% increase in health insurance, while huge, is not exactly a “skyrocket”, but then again, if it puts the cost of healthcare out-of-reach, then prices are absolutely skyrocketing.
Because the sky’s the limit on the creation of debt-based fiat currency, and a price that’s out of reach is a price that’s sky high.
Is it not?
Finally, if one is skeptical of my reasoning right now, I would like to make one more point.
The BLS report claims that “prescription drugs” went up 3.0% in 2019!
Curiously, what is it called when President Trump said, in the second to last month of 2019, that “we had the first prescription drug price decrease in 50 years”, but the BLS just said, on January 14th of this year, that prescription drug prices went up 3.0% on the year?
Oh.
Right.
It’s called a “lie”.
OK, “Hey Half Dollar, you don’t get it man, for President Donald J. Trump was referring to the year 2018 when prescription drug prices went down, so quit with the hating you closet leftist!”.
Nice try, but, um, yeah.
I’m neither a Trump hater, nor on the left, but more importantly, your argument doesn’t hold water.
You see, in that same BLS report, to which I’ve been referring this whole time, when taking the statistics at face value, we see that yes, prescription drug prices did go down in 2018, but they only went down by the tiny amount of 0.6%, whereas in 2019, prescription drug prices went up 3.0%, so, on net, prescription drug prices are up, not down.
And by more than the Fed’s evil, disgusting 2.0% inflation objective, as if the Fed cared about anything anyway other than enriching themselves and the other buddy buddy corrupt insiders.
At best.
And at worst?
Ah, nevermind.
We discussed the “Trump’s doing great things for healthcare” versus the “healthcare costs are surging” debate in today’s live-stream, and we covered additional things I did not include in this Friday Wrap, so please consider watching the replay of today’s Silver Doctors Live if you have not already:
YouTube demonetizing our video is another way of saying today’s Silver Doctors Live must have been spot-on!
The cost of healthcare in the United States isn’t going down.
The cost of healthcare in the United States is going up.
I would argue that healthcare costs are skyrocketing.
For now, however, one thing that isn’t skyrocketing but has plateaued, is the gold-to-silver ratio:
At a ratio of over 86, the cartel is allowing anybody interested in scoring free gold a wonderful opportunity right now.
Gold’s been finding awesome support at $1550:
Bull flag, anybody?
Nobody?
Then how about a Bull Wedge?
If for one, would not be surprised to see a break-out to the upside here.
Silver is finding awesome support at $18:
It certainly is ridiculous painting a 17-handle on the chart, here in 2020, and the cartel knows this, so they’re trying to keep it as barely pegged to an 18-handle as possible.
The question is, have we said goodbye to a 16-handle?
I think we have.
Um, palladium is, well, oh my:
Is palladium telling us that we’re ripe for a pullback, or that gold & silver are about to start taking off again?
If platinum has a say in it, the answer to the palladium question would be the latter:
Closing the week above $1000 is nice and bullish!
Copper has stayed above 2.80:
Consolidation around $2.85 would be awesome, but I’d be looking more for some sideways choppy action between $2.80 and $2.85 in the near term.
Why is that?
Because “market participants” are not yet convinced inflation is back when looking at the crude oil chart:
That chart is ugly as all heck, but we’re about to find out really quick if pain at the pump is coming before the 2020 election.
It is election crunch time, after all.
Yield on the 10-Year Note is range-bound in a sideways channel:
What, are “market participants” waiting to see what the US Government’s brand new 20-Year Bond looks like?
OK, “Hey Half Dollar, what’s this new 20-Year bond you’re talking about?”.
Just the latest offering from the US federal government, but there’s not a whole lot of detail about it just yet as specific details aren’t coming until February 5th, but either way, we also touched on the US debt and the 20-Year Bond in today’s live-stream.
OK, “Hey Half Dollar, why are you pumping your live-stream so much today?”.
First and foremost, because Iwe discussed some important things today – things that people need to know.
Additionally, I don’t think I’m pumping it, but rather, I’m letting the public know that today’s show is out there, because it was instantly demonetized, which means that it doesn’t show up in recommended feeds, for one factor, in addition to other factors, such as by being demonetized, the “views per hour” performance metric that YouTube likes to use suffers because it shows that people aren’t watching our shows, which is true, but the lack of views is the result of direct and indirect attacks from the MSM & social media in general, and YouTube specifically, and because there is a lack of views, especially in the critical first hour and first 24 hours, the view suppression (shadow banning) fees on itself, no manual intervention needed, in regards to assuring the video does not show up in potential viewers’ recommended feeds, because, at the very basic level, if videos aren’t getting many “views per hour”, they aren’t getting recommended to other viewers.
And by forcing us to appeal the demonetization via a “manual review”, google taking their sweet time in conducting the manual review further adds to the poor performance of the demonetized video.
Those are just a couple of ways we get attacked by google, but enough about the attacks and to the main point: I referred to our live-stream today because I think it was a very important show today which exposes the skyrocketing costs of healthcare in the United States.
The dollar index surged again today:
If the very near-term top is in, however, then we just painted another lower-high.
The VIX spent some time under 12 this week on more than one trading day this week:
.
Of course, why would it not after the signing of the greatest trade deal, ever?
I’ve lost count of how many record highs the stock market has put-in under President Trump:
I’m sure he’ll tell us soon if he has not already, even though he says he “doesn’t watch the stock market”.
What’s the bottom line as we find ourselves here on this beautiful and cold Friday in mid-January?
The US federal government is admitting a massive increase in the cost of health insurance.
If the government’s understating consumer price inflation, costs must be skyrocketing.
Because 20.0% is a big increase in the cost of just one of many healthcare costs.
Interestingly, President Trump repeated a single phrase many times in 2019.
It was said 19 times between December 2018 and December 2019.
I like to think of it as 19 times Trump sucker punched the USA.
And what was it that President Trump said many times?
He said this simple, tiny little two-word phrase.
And nobody calls him out on it at all.
Nobody cares about it at all.
His supporters ignore it.
It was “no inflation”.
He did say.
Why?
Stack accordingly…
– Half Dollar