Rather, that was one of the very reasons for enacting ObamaCare in the first place.

As many of us said back in 2009, the purpose of ObamaCare was never to give health insurance to needy people who couldn’t afford it. First, that category was nearly empty:

• The deserving poor were already covered by Medicaid; and if necessary, its qualification threshold could have been temporarily lowered to allow more people to benefit — say, by expanding availability to those who had recently lost their jobs (hence health insurance) but were not yet living below the Medicaid poverty line.

• The biggest chunk of those who did not have health insurance comprised the rich (who prefer to pay for their health care as necessary, rather than buy insurance), and the young, healthy, and shortsighted, who can afford health care but choose instead to gamble that they won’t get so sick or injured that they need expensive treatment. Making such a choice, even if it turns out to be a big mistake, is part of individual liberty. The proper “solution” is to allow us that liberty, then hold individuals accountable for their own decisions; actions have consequences. (Innocents swept up in those bad decisions, such as children, can be helped separately.)

• Finally, a small percentage of the uninsured could have afforded a cheaper, stripped-down policy, but cannot afford the “Cadillac” health-care plans whose costs are driven up by government mandates and regulations.

  For those unfortunates, the easiest fix — which would have benefitted everyone else as well — was to eliminate all the government meddling the caused the problem in the first place: Requiring health insurance by law to cover a littany of specialized services; policies that make it difficult for insurance companies to offer greater variety in policies, such as a medical savings account coupled with catastrophic care (which encourage more parsimony among patients, as they must pay to refill their MSA if depleted); regulations prohibiting insurance companies from offering policies cross-state and cross-border; overly plaintiff-friendly (and especially lawyer-friendly) medical malpractice laws; and so forth.

Real problems, such as people with pre-existing conditions (the faux “casus belli” for the war against private insurance), could have been handled the same way bad drivers are handled for automobile insurance: Create an “assigned risk” pool among health insurers to spread the cost; allow a reasonable increase in rates for those with such conditions, and have a reasonably short waiting period (e.g., six months) before full coverage occurs; and allow for temporary government assistance for those who truly cannot wait and incur unpayable costs. (This isn’t laissez-faire Capitalism, of course; but it’s a reasonable and inexpensive compromise between liberty and safety net.)

Such reforms would have cost a fraction of the trillion dollars that ObamaCare expropriated from the private sector. In fact, once the lifting of government mandates and the squelching of “jackpot justice” malpractice suits lowered actual health-care costs, insurance reform might have wound up cheaper than the original system it replaced. And in any event, it would have been a move towards greater freedom of choice for employers and individuals.

But the Obamunists had precisely the opposite purpose from the beginning; rather than freedom, their ultimate goal was to put more Americans than ever before under the iron boot-heel of the government. Never was it about health insurance for the poor and uninsured; it was always about the federal government seizing control not only of the health care of individuals but also nationalizing those state and local health programs already in place. ObamaCare was, first and last, a power grab by the federal government at the expense of states, local governments, and individual Americans.

So please, let’s not imitate Captain Renault in Casablanca — shocked, shocked to discover that Barack Obama has violated our First-Amendment right to freedom of religion! In fact, that specific mandate was at the heart of ObamaCare tyranny: a frontal assault on the Catholic church in particular, which is so virulently hated by the gay-activist and feminist wings of the Left.

The only element of this policy that should shock anyone is the unbelievably hamfisted way that Obama decreed it: A politically savvy politician would have patiently held off until after the election, giving himself two years to allow the furor to die down.

Instead, the president once again mistook unanimity among his left-liberal friends for a Progressivist “consensus” among the American people; he lives in a bubble of epistemic closure, talking only to true-blue believers on the left. I formerly gave him the nickname “Lucky Lefty,” because (a) he is left handed, (b) he is left-leaning, and (c) he was extraordinarily lucky. Well he’s still (a) and (b), but not so much (c) anymore, so I can no longer call him that.

Obama’s new nickname is “Bubble Boy,” honoring his world view.

But what’s done is done and cannot be undone; Obama has ripped off the mask, and he can’t put it back into the bottle. We now see ObamaCare in all its naked savagery and unAmericanism. Thank goodness for Obamunist “dumbth!”

Cross-posted on Big Lizards…

Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. “Just level with the American people,” Gingrich growled. “You’ve been running … at least since the 1990s.”

For some reason, Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file.

Goldberg is right, but the underlying theme that voters need to be reminded of is that during so many important debates fromhealthcare, jobs, Wall Street Reform, confirmations, recess appointments, to taxes the culprits to invoke cloture or side with the Democrats typically are the same:  Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe,  and Scott Brown–the trifecta of RINOs. All from the northeast, too.  See where I’m going with this?

Frankly, Romney, who the mainstream liberal media would like to see win the nomination, has yet to unite the GOP base.  His used car salesman pitch simply rubs people the wrong way.  We’ve seen this over and over again–even John McCain pointed this out and won in 2007′s primary–and now supports him–that should speak volumes to my point.  Romney has always been dogged by this and this is why we have such a large ‘Not Romney’ camp on the right side of the aisle.

The GOP is also paying the bitter price for not having anyone in line to succeed GW Bush.  The party’s internal tug of war will be an historical teachable moment and prepare the party for future elections.  The one saving grace is that, while the Democrats have Hillary, they have no one to succeed her at this point in time.  I say Hillary because she seems to be the only power broker left untarnished by Obama–even though she is an Alinsky kinda girl.

Additionally, the GOP presidential candidate will have a two-pronged mission as the nominee:  to beat the MSM and Obama.  However, enlightened voters now know for sure the media is mostly state-controlled, Obama was never vetted, and that his radical leftist ideology drives his policies, appointments, and regulations out of the mainstream.

Furthermore, the MSM needs Romney to offset Obama.  The formula is quite simple:  RomneyCare is to ObamaCare as Obama’s rhetoric is to Romney’s rhetoric all of which cancel each other out according to how the media sees it.

I’m not buying the media hype over who can beat Obama.  The primary is the primary and the game changes in the general.  Voters are more inclined to vote with their wallets.  We have gas prices averaging at almost $4 per gallon across the country, skyrocketing food prices, record foreclosures, record number of people on food stamps, high unemployment, ObamaCare, crippling regulations, and much more.  So if the MSM thinks that the historic 2010 midterm GOP wave was a whim, think again.  The Right accomplished its key mission of splitting the Congress so that Obama’s agenda could not be rammed through anymore.  Would we have liked the Senate, sure, but in 2012, the job will be finished.  My point is that who do we really want in the Oval Office?  A northeastern Republican who disavows the GOP or not.  We already have someone who does not have the consent of the governed.  Are we really going to take that risk again?

Finally, Romney has always touted RomneyCare as a great model for all the states to implement, but the reality is, the only person who implemented RomneyCare was Obama and now we have ObamaCare.  No thanks.

Anyone, does Germany have a single payer system? No, it has a public health insurance program that covers 88% of the population.

Take Germany. They have a pretty big welfare state: pensions, health care, paid vacations, unemployment benefits equal to two-thirds of one’s income.

So that’s great and per Klein, who, like I said, wants you to believe by his vague general description, that Germany has a system like … Canada.

Don’t believe it? Well it takes that sort of implication to make a statement like this:

To bring this across the Atlantic, you could argue that the United States’s debt burden is the product of an insufficiently large welfare state — at least with regard to health care. To see a stark illustration of that thesis, head to the Web site of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and download their health-care statistics for Canada and the United States [emphasis mine].

Notice how apparently we transitioned seamlessly from a country with health insurance to a country with a single payer system without that being obvious? In reality we’ve looked at the apple, now he plans on comparing it to the orange:

As recently as 1965, the cost of those two systems competed neck-and-neck. That year, Canada spent 5.9 percent of its GDP on health care. The United States spent 5.7 percent. But around that time, Canada was transitioning to its current single-payer system. Over the next four decades, the growth of health-care costs slowed in Canada while it accelerated in the United States. By 2009, Canada was spending 11 percent of its GDP on health care — and covering everyone. The United States was spending 17.4 percent of its GDP and leaving 45 million uninsured. In dollar terms, we’re spending $3,600 more per person, per year, than Canada.

Emphasis mine. It’s a pretty ballsy attempt, I’ve got to say. Here’s another question for those paying attention. Can anyone tell me what began in 1965? Anyone? That’s right … Medicare. Per Klein, we were actually spending less than Canada until the same year that Medicare and government intrusion into the health care market was made law.

Based on that extraordinarily flawed bit of reasoning which managed to factor out or ignore a major reason for the increase in US health care costs, Klein concludes:

If the United States had Canada’s health-care system, and Canada’s per capita health-care costs, we would have a much “larger” welfare state, but we wouldn’t have a deficit problem.

Really? Seriously? You really want to run with that one, Mr. Klein?

Perhaps a less rosy look at Canada might help temper that nonsense a bit. Here’s a Canadian economic analyst speaking about the Canadian healthcare system:

“There’s got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years,” said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

“We can’t continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

“At some stage we’re going to hit a breaking point.”

It means crowding out other government services or what?

That’s right, deficits.

Well, except in Ezra Klein’s magic welfare state where one can happily spend whatever they want and there are no apparent consequences or … deficits.

I was pretty mad at Obama … I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the “h” on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, “Got nope” instead of “got hope.” I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

But then she learned about the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) created by ObamaCare, which is tailor-made for her needs as an uninsured Californian with breast cancer.

I have tremendous sympathy for this woman, who was facing breast cancer at a time when her husband’s COBRA had long since run out, and the family had been unable to afford insurance for several years.  Health insurance is very expensive in California, as a result of the state’s penchant for overregulation, public subsidies, and rent-seeking.  All insured health-care transactions in the Golden State contribute in one way or another to the gigantic state health-care apparatus, which endlessly drives up the cost of everything in the “private” sector.  (This squeeze has produced a mushrooming medical-services industry across the border in Mexico, as well as causing a growing number of practitioners in the state to operate on a cash-only basis – no insurance accepted.)

But PCIP is a superb example of how ObamaCare was frontloaded with goodies to attract constituencies.  Because if the Valley Gal were to read the fine print on PCIP, she’d discover that the program ends on 31 December 2013.

California administers the PCIP using ObamaCare funds.  Here is the information from the California PCIP website (emphasis added):

As a result of the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010, California has a contract with the federal Department of Health and Human Services to establish a federally-funded high risk pool program to provide health coverage for eligible individuals. The program will last until December 31, 2013 when the national health reform is set to begin. After that date, there will no longer be a need for high risk pools because federal rules will not allow insurers to reject persons with pre-existing conditions or charge them higher rates than those without such conditions.

The federally-funded program is called the California Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). The PCIP offers health coverage to medically-uninsurable individuals who live in California. The program is available for individuals who have not had health coverage in the last 6 months. The California PCIP is run by the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB).

California actually already had a high-risk insurance program, before ObamaCare was passed.  The Major Risk Medical Insurance Program (MRMIP) became operational in 1991, and at one time served over 27,000 Californians.  Spiraling costs (partly due to legislative increases in plan benefits) meant the plan had to increase premiums and cap the number of participants at around 14,000.  In 2002, a 36-month limit was imposed on participation in MRMIP, with the proviso that MRMIP insurance providers would guarantee the offer of insurance to termed-out “MRMIP graduates” at 110% of the cost of their MRMIP premiums.

Loosely tethered to some semblance of fiscal accounting, MRMIP is definitely more expensive than PCIP in terms of monthly premiums.  Through 31 December 2011, for example, the woman in the San Fernando Valley can get PCIP coverage for herself for $306 a month, compared to the $480 she would have to pay Kaiser Permanente under MRMIP, or the $797 for a PPO plan with Anthem or Blue Cross under MRMIP.  And in January 2012, the MRMIP premiums are scheduled to increase.  The PPO plan premiums will go up to $865, and the Kaiser Permanente premiums to $516.

But that’s just something states and private companies have to do, because they face bad consequences if they don’t exert some control, however slight, over the gap between their revenues and their expenditures.  ObamaCare is subject to no such pressures.  Hence, it was able to lower PCIP premiums for Californians by an average of 18% in August 2011, because, as explained by the California administrators, “We want to make sure that everyone who qualifies for this program has access to its benefits and is not deterred by price.”

Presumably, ObamaCare, like Obama Money, comes from Obama’s Stash. It has certainly bought an apology from a Democrat who was previously angry enough at the president to switch to Independent; it may well buy her vote next year.  But the joke on her will not be a funny one.  PCIP ends on 31 December 2013, and what will happen after that is that premiums will go up – for everyone.  But services will also be restricted, for everyone who contracts for medical care using “insurance.”  And those are just the direct, first-order consequences.

The Valley Gal will find herself increasingly subject to state bureaucrats who get to decide how much she has to pay for her health “insurance” – which will actually be a state-run health plan over which she has no discretion – based on her income and assets.  Up to now, even in the wildly overregulated health care environment we have today, middle-class householders have been able to make choices of their own by maintaining private insurance at their discretion.  But it is “insurance” itself that is being subverted:  under ObamaCare, “insurance” is not a ticket to independence but a means for the government to exert control over the middle class.

The process of subverting medical insurance began decades ago, as alert readers will no doubt point out.  But ObamaCare takes it across the finish line with the insurance mandate.  Under no circumstances is the premium-cutting, welcome-all-comers PCIP model sustainable – and without a mandate, its unsustainability will blow up all over the Obama Stash program very, very quickly.  There’s nothing behind the politically deceptive PCIP premium-cutting except the future earnings of millions of people who have other plans for their money – if they’ve even been born yet.

Will Obama get his mandate?  The Supreme Court will make one decision on that before the 2012 election.  Americans may or may not accept it, if it goes the wrong way.  But one thing is for sure: as provided by the “Affordable Care Act” itself, PCIP will cease providing access to medical care in exchange for unrealistically low premiums in a little over 24 months.  I’d strongly suggest no one build his or her life around it.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

“If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.

…[T]he state’s health insurance law…Cahill said, “has nearly bankrupted the state.”

Cahill said the law is being sustained only with the help of federal aid, which he suggested that the Obama administration is funneling to Massachusetts to help the president make the case for a similar plan in Congress… “…I would argue that we’re being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through” Congress.

Commonwealth Connector, the independent state agency established to help residents find the health insurance, has “totally failed,” to create competition and connect people with affordable insurance, Cahill said, pointing out that 68 percent of the residents it serves receive subsidized care.

“We haven’t done anything about driving down costs,” Cahill said. “We haven’t helped small business. We haven’t changed the way we pay for health care and the way we deliver it.”…

Look, if Romney somehow wins the nomination, I’ll support him without question against Barack Obama.

But we need to elect a conservative in 2012 who is 100% committed to the eradication of Obamacare. For if it isn’t wiped from the books, I fear this country may not survive.

Related: Oh, Super: Romney Consulted With Obama Mass Sterilization Expert and Science Czar John Holdren

At last Tuesday’s debate among the Republican presidential candidates, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former U.S. senator Rick Santorum both mentioned that repeal of Obamacare could be accomplished through the special budgetary procedure known as ‘reconciliation.’

Here is the relevant exchange from the debate:

SANTORUM: We need to repeal [the health care reform law] by doing it through a reconciliation process. And since I have experience and know how to do that, we’ll take care of it…

[…]

ROMNEY: Rick, you’re absolutely right. On day one, granting a waiver for all 50 states doesn’t stop in its tracks entirely ObamaCare. That’s why I also say we have to repeal ObamaCare, and I will do that on day two, with the reconciliation bill, because as you know, it was passed by reconciliation, 51 votes.

In his article, Capretta walks the reader through the process of reconciliation, though anyone who has been paying attention hardly needs a refresher. This legislative process, which allows a bill to pass in the Senate with a simple majority, usually 51 votes, was used by Senate Democrats in 2010 to pass the health care reform law.

The invidiousness of their actions was underscored by the fact that the Democrats at the time had a 60-vote supermajority but couldn’t cobble together enough support from their own party to win passage. So they resorted to what was essentially a parliamentary trick.

The process of reconciliation arose out ofthe Congressional Budget Act of 1974. It was intended to give Congress a means to fast-tracking an essential budget bill by limiting debate to twenty hours under prevailing Senate rules. By its nature, the procedure precluded filibustering.

The procedure was never meant to be exploited in the shameless fashion of the 111th Congress in March of 2010. Nor was it intended to be used in the manner currently under consideration by Messrs. Santorum and Romney.

Capretta looks for legitimacy in the move if it were to be acted on (which would require a Republican supermajority in 2012) by observing:

Obamacare is in law—with all of its trillion-dollar spending and taxes now part of CBO’s “baseline” budget projections. Reconciliation was created for the express purpose of giving Congress an expedited process for making changes to just this kind of spending and tax policy. Obamacare is thus a very ripe target for budget cutting, and that means reconciliation.

That’s the letter of the law—but it’s not the spirit. The unvarnished truth is that in so acting, Republicans would be resorting to the same dirty trick as their colleagues across the aisle. It would be gamesmanship, not statesmanship.

Don’t get me wrong. I share the widely held opinion that ObamaCare is a socialist’s dream and just about everyone else’s worst nightmare. A third of small business owners view the law as the biggest hurdle they face to hiring new workers. Americans of all stripes hate it. A September Rasmussen poll found that 56% of those surveyed favor repeal.

An expedited vote on the individual mandate by the U.S. Supreme Court may render this discussion moot. So would Republicans’ failure to win a supermajority in the Senate in the event the high court upholds the law. But if it comes down to quashing the law by using reconciliation, I urge the GOP to think twice. Otherwise, where does it all end?

Related Articles

• Appeals court strikes down individual mandate as unconstitutional
• Shared sacrifice: Cutting ObamaCare could save $2 trillion
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• Why ObamaCare needs to be repealed, not tweaked
• New survey: 65% of doctors say healthcare quality will decline under ObamaCare
• Poll: 13% of Americans approve of the health care law as written

Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

Podhoretz reprises answers from both the left (Obama veered left when he should have veered further left) and right (Obama is out to sabotage the nation) before delivering his own post mortem, which is that is precisely as advertised in 2008. Podhoretz concludes, somewhat caustically:

[Obama] is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.

I agree for the most with Podhoretz’s assessment. In fact, I gave utterance to a similar viewpoint in January of 2010, when I wrote that Obama’s having been forged in the Chicago political machine made it not just difficult but impossible for him to tack right, even when political expedience dictated that course. It is worth recalling Obama’s own words back then, when the first warning signs that the nation was on the verge of economic failure were manifest. The president told his audience at a town hall in Elyria, Ohio:

Now, here’s the message I want you to take away—and we’re going to have a lot of time for questions, but I want to make this absolutely clear. I did not run for President to turn away from these challenges. I didn’t run to kick these challenges down the road. I ran for President to confront them—once and for all.

In the next breath he explained that one of his foremost challenges was “to deal with the problem of runaway health insurance costs that are breaking family budgets and breaking business budgets and breaking our national budgets.”

The next four months in Congress were squandered on a bitter and partisan debate over making the liberal dream of socialized medicine a reality instead of focsued on repairing a broken economy. During this period, the president made occasional cameos to give Americans the illusion that he, and not Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, was spearheading the charge.

We all know how this battle played out—and what followed. By January of 2011, the imperiled housing market slumped into a full-fledged depression. More recently, America’s AAA debt security rating was downgraded mainly because of this administration’s sharing its predecessor’s appetite for profligate spending.

Yet, the president’s rigidity as a dyed-in-the-wool radical makes it impossible for him to budge. Even as the left grows weary of his speechifying (Podhoretz quotes Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen as saying he cannot “recall a soaring passage from a speech” by Obama), the president heedlessly continues to deliver grandiloquent weekly addresses. This morning’sbegins:

On Thursday, I visited a new, high-tech factory in Michigan where workers are helping America lead the way in a growing clean energy industry.

Sounds swell until you read the fine print. From Weasel Zippers:

Obama’s stimulus granted $300 million to that firm, which created 150 jobs at a cost of $2 million per job. [Emphasis added]

Richard Cohen calls Obama “the very personification of cognitive dissonance.” I say his words and deeds are no more and no less than any clear-thinking rational being expected when he was handed the keys to the country. I say he has made good on his promise to “fundamentally transform” the nation. Just don’t expect it will be that easy to change back.

Related Article

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• ObamaCare, the great job killer
• Shared sacrifice: Cutting ObamaCare could save $2 trillion
• Housing market slumps into full-fledged depression
• The question about Obama is not “Will he” but “Can he” tack right?

Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

The whole reason the mandate’s there in the first place is so that insurers have a big new pool of premiums flowing in to help offset the costs they’ll incur from now having to cover people with preexisting conditions, etc. If that pool disappears, the whole arrangement becomes financially unstable.

Stripped of the mandate, Congress would either have to scale back the other parts of the law so that it can function independently or scrap the law altogether and start over.

The suit was brought by 26 states, nearly all of them led by Republican governors and attorneys general. The Department of Justice is expected to appeal.

The decision, which was 2 to 1 in favor of striking down the individual mandate, marks the first in which a judge appointed by a Democrat has so voted. Judge Frank Hull, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, joined Chief Judge Joel Dubina, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, to constitute the majority opinion.

Writing for the majority, Judge Dubina opined:

[T]he individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power. This conclusion is limited in scope. The power that Congress has wielded via the Commerce Clause for the life of this country remains undiminished. Congress may regulate commercial actors. It may forbid certain commercial activity. It may enact hundreds of new laws and federally-funded programs, as it has elected to do in this massive 975- page Act. But what Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die.

It cannot be denied that the individual mandate is an unprecedented exercise of congressional power. As the CBO observed, Congress ‘has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.’ CBO MANDATE MEMO, supra p.115, at 1. Never before has Congress sought to regulate commerce by compelling non-market participants to enter into commerce so that Congress may regulate them. The statutory language of the mandate is not tied to health care consumption—past, present, or in the future. Rather, the mandate is to buy insurance now and forever. The individual mandate does not wait for market entry.

Some on the left are seeking to make lemonade out of the lemons embodied in this ruling by pointing to a facet of the ruling that allows severability of the individual mandate from the rest of the law. In other words, the law could remain intact except for the requirement that individuals buy health insurance. But as stated earlier, that requirement is the sole pneumatic tube through which cash was to flow into the implementation of the law. Without it, ObamaCare is dead on arrival.

Related Articles

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Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

A new study says that doing nothing would actually have been slightly less expensive. The irony is this isn’t some opposition think tank which has put up these numbers but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:

Despite President Obama’s promises to rein in health care costs as part of his reform bill, health spending nationwide is expected to rise more than if the sweeping legislation had never become law.

Total spending is projected to grow annually by 5.8 percent under Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, according to a 10-year forecast by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Thursday. Without the ACA, spending would grow at a slightly slower rate of 5.7 percent annually.

The primary reason, supporters say, is more people will have insurance.

CMS officials attributed the growth to an expansion of the insured population. Under the plan, an estimated 23 million Americans are expected to obtain insurance in 2014, largely through state-based exchanges and expanded Medicaid eligibility.

The federal government is projected to spend 20 percent more on Medicaid, while spending on private health insurance is expected to rise by 9.4 percent.

Anyone – do you know why “private health insurance costs” are expected to rise by 9.4%? Because the privately insured will be tapped to help pay the difference between what an expanded Medicaid base pays and what doctors charge. Or, in other words, they will be the victim of government intrusion and market distortion. And of course government is then going to point to the costs its distortion caused and claim it should help solve the problem it has created. And what will be eventual answer to those increased costs caused by government distortion be? Single-payer, of course.

This study doesn’t address the other real problem – you may expand Medicaid dramatically, but having that insurance doesn’t guarantee seeing a doctor. Other studies have shown that increasing the insurance base doesn’t decrease emergency room use, but instead increases it in the face of a building doctor shortage. And then, of course, there are those doctors who simply won’t take Medicaid (or any more than they now have) because of the low reimbursement rate.

So when the White House’s Nancy-Ann DeParle says:

“The Affordable Care Act creates changes to the health care system that typically don’t show up on an accounting table,” she said. “We know these new provisions will save money for the health care system, even if today’s report doesn’t credit these strategies with reducing costs.”

She’s also leaving out that part of the problem that doesn’t “show up on an accounting table” as well.

Bottom line, we were sold a lemon, a bill of goods, snake oil. All the ACA does is give the government a legal ability to intrude deeper and deeper in a market it really has no business being in at all and to distort that market even further. And that’s precisely what is going to happen. We all know that when government gets in as deep as it will be in this market, nothing ends up “costing less”.

–

Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, theWashington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX and yes, he is also Dr. Burgess) questioned Secretary Sebelius on several key factors, including the unelected 15-person panel, their potential recess appointments to avoid Senate confirmation, and the ultimate effects of this panel in reshaping the health care system.  Burgess does not let Sebelius off the hook, but pushes her on the IPAB’s power and lack of judicial oversight. The entire exchange is worth watching:

Sebelius touts that the IPAB is only a “fail-safe” and only makes recommendations if Congress does not act:

But Sebelius was defiant against claims that IPAB risks usurping the power of Congress to make changes to Medicare. “All final decisions remain in the hands of Congress,” Sebelius said in her prepared statement. “If Medicare costs are rising at an unsustainable rate, it’s Congress’s choice whether to accept those recommendations, or come up with recommendations of its own to put Medicare spending on a stable, sustainable path.” She reiterated her argument from yesterday’s Budget hearing that IPAB serves as a “backstop to ensure Medicare remains solvent for years to come.”

However, former OMB Director Peter Orszag has a quite different analysis regarding the IPAB with this interview, highlighted by Naked Emperor News for Breitbart TV:

Orszag clearly emphasizes ”[the IPAB] has an enormous amount of potential power.”  Orszag goes on to explain, “The proposals take effect automatically unless Congress, not only specifically votes them down, but Congress specifically votes them down (with 67 votes) and the President signs that bill. So, the default is now switched in a very important way.”

Orszag has repeated this in other forums stating that the IPAB was the most important part of ObamaCare (all emphasis mine):

The Medicare Commission, or Independent Payment Advisory Board, would have the power to override Congress if it rejected cuts to the entitlements programme for seniors, said Mr Orszag, a key architect of the reforms signed into law this week.

“This could well turn out to be as consequential for health policy as Federal Reserve policy was for monetary policy,” he said in an FT View from DC video interview. “The commission will put its proposals forward and if Congress does not act on them, or if it votes them down and the president then vetoes that bill, they will automatically take effect. Huge change.”

So, who is right?  Sebelius or Orszag?  My money is on Orszag. The fact is that no matter what Congress does, the IPAB will always have a way to enforce its “recommendations” and override Congress. Sebelius is intentionally misrepresenting the IPAB as being similar to the MedPAC board, which does indeed only give recommendations to Congress. Why would they need to have a duplicative board? Truth is, they are not the same and Sebelius knows it.

With the Democrats zeal to ram through ObamaCare, they created a monster and then stripped themselves of any oversight of said monster as clearly explained by Orszag.  If only the Democrats had read the original ObamaCare bill, didn’t scoff and snear at Republicans’ warnings, and didn’t believe their own rhetoric, it wouldn’t be so imperative to repeal the IPAB.  But wait, can they?

Under a premium support system, the government would pay a percentage toward the insurance premium for each individual; there would likely be more help for low-income and sicker people. And enrollees could (not required) kick in more money to get better coverage.

Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former head of the Congressional Budget Office, in 1995 were among the first to explore alternatives to Medicare’s system of paying for individual services. And in 1998, President Bill Clinton’s National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, chaired by then-Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., and then-Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La., developed a “premium support” idea, but it never became a formal recommendation. Breaux and then-Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., tried unsuccessfully to advance the plan as separate legislation.

Let’s take a look at her ‘confuzzled’ look as she was clearly caught off-guard by Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX and a physician) as seen here at the July 13 subcommittee hearings (skip to .59 to 2:16):

The Weekly Standard also  reiterates and shreds her original comment:

This, of course, is as ludicrous as it is uncouth. First, the Ryan plan (which wouldn’t affect anyone who is not yet 55 years old) would not give seniors a voucher, as Sebelius well knows. Instead, the government would provide premium support to help seniors purchase private health insurance. Seniors would pick the insurance plan of their choice, and the government would funnel the premium support directly to the insurer — just as it does for Medicare Advantage, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and the health care system for members of Congress.   

The Ryan plan would require insurers to cover any and all seniors as the condition of their being allowed to compete for seniors’ business. It would provide higher levels of premium support for less healthy and less wealthy seniors, and poor seniors would have every dollar of their care provided at taxpayer expense. The premium support would start at the average level of funding for traditional Medicare ($15,000 a year) and would rise with inflation from there. 

In truth, seniors would likely have better catastrophic coverage under Ryan’s plan than under traditional Medicare. There’s a reason why the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries buy private Medigap coverage: There’s a whole lot of care that Medicare currently doesn’t cover. Despite that fact, Medicare is going bankrupt, and it desperately needs an infusion of private competition and choice to make it more efficient, cost effective, and affordable.

In short, seniors wouldn’t “die sooner” under Ryan’s plan. But Medicare would die sooner without it.

This is just more proof that Sebelius is nothing more than a partisan mouthpiece.  Her ideology gives away her game with her wanting to insert government into the playing field, and further evidenced the day before by none other than Paul Ryan who grills Sebelius on whether seniors should have control of their own health care and choices for their drug coverage.  Sebelius stumbles at the basic principle of allowing seniors to choose their own plan, but knows that choice is good for competition, and would gladly put the government at the top of that competitive scale.  Watch to the end.

Update: This is not the first time Sebelius has been clueless.

Two of the three judges asserted that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to compel individuals’ behavior by dint of their mere existence. A requirement that citizens purchase a product — in this case, health care insurance — whether they wish to or not, has never before occurred in all of American history.

Virtually everyone will need health care services at some point, including, in the aggregate, those without health insurance. Even dramatic attempts to protect one’s health and minimize the need for health care will not always be successful, and the health care market is characterized by unpredictable and unavoidable needs for care.

It is under this rubric that the Court shreds the United States Constitution, eviscerates the Declaration of Independence and completely ignores the stated intent of the Framers in The Federalist Papers.

Because, the Judges assert, that most people will participate in the health care market, the federal government has the right to compel — with the force of law — individuals to purchase health insurance contracts of the central government’s design.

How is the health care industry segregated from other industries to prevent the federal government from encroaching upon every other segment of human activity? The judges spare but a few words on this critical issue, stating “…unlike nearly all other industries, the health care market is governed by federal and state laws requiring institutions to provide services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.”

In other words, the only “firewall” the judges construct to shield other industries from the Orwellian reach of the government is one made of cardboard. In essence, because the health care market is already regulated, the industry is said to be unique and therefore can be utterly controlled by the central government.

Consider:

All citizens will need shelter and many regulations already dictate the nature and construction of housing. Can the central government compel individuals to purchase certain minimum levels of housing and builders to offer certain services under a regime of price controls? Apparently so.

All citizens will need food and a battery of regulations at every level of government already dictate every aspect of food manufacture and distribution. Can the central government require individuals to buy certain foods — perhaps under the aegis of healthy eating — and businesses to offer a menu dictated by a central authority? Apparently so.

All citizens will require transportation and a host of regulations govern every modality of travel — by air, bus, automobile, and even bicycle. Can the central govenrment require all individuals to buy, say, bicycles under the banner of healthy living, clean energy and personal transportation? Apparently so.

Under this decision, with this Court, the destruction of our country — through its transformation into a totalitarian regime — comes one step closer to reality.

2012 may be our last chance to save this Republic, if indeed any time remains at all.

 

 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.
 

Stephen and Kevin CARE about your health!

As I was beginning to write my new best-selling book, “No He Can’t: How Barack Obama is dismantling Hope and Change” my heart grew increasingly sad. As I watched the entire health care debate in 2009, the tea-party revolt and the repeal push in 2010, and the reality of where we are now–I grew even MORE sad.

And this is why…

In all of the discussion about repeal, replace, Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, it just felt like the voice of common sense had completely died.

In my book I advocate a serious engagement by the reader into the debate of the day and the “rolling up of the sleeves” to take the process of finding solutions to problems into their own hands and to begin to leverage their abilities of thoughts, behavior, and impact to implement solutions that they find distasteful in the public arena.

It was over a year ago that Stephen and I founded XtremeCharity and through it we have been able to raise awareness and dollars for things like feeding those who were hungry, housing those who are homeless, and getting other resources to people in need.

But we didn’t have any solutions for the challenges of how people were forced to deal with their own health care. The maintenance of costs associated with staying well, or getting well, much less access to doctors that were in the least bit reasonable.

Our frustrations led us on a mission to uncover methods that could be discovered, put into place, and begin to genuinely change the look and process of taking control of one’s health. That mission culminated this morning with the announcement on national television and radio of “The Cares Project 2011.”

Combining free market principles with former top minds in the health care industry, and formulating innovative approaches with health maintenance and control of costs we are significantly reducing the expense of the process, increasing the access to medical resources, and exposing the corruption of outdated systems all at the same time.

Let me give you an example.

Even if you HAVE health insurance drug coverage, even government assistance for drug coverage, did you know that the drug manufacturers, in conjunction with pharmacies, have worked together with lawmakers to rig the prescription drug game? Even if you have a co-pay on your drug benefit–you are likely getting cheated. Here’s how:

Pharmacies are legally allowed to charge you the maximum co-pay on your policy every time you go for drugs. $25, $30, $45 – whatever your co-pay is they are legally allowed (and will) charge you that amount at almost every possible chance. Yet with the emergence of generics and the mass quantities drugs are produced at today some prescriptions will not cost the pharmacy more than $6-$12 to fill.

Well if you have a $45 co-pay and the drug is $6 – the pharmacy is allowed to pocket $39.

So step one of the CaresProject 2011 we wanted to immediately bring down the cost of your out-of-pocket cash, and with the help of a tremendous consortium of talent we have created the CaresCard. AND WE MADE IT AVAILABLE FOR FREE!

When you click and create one, take it with you to your pharmacy. It is honored at 60,000 pharmacies across the nation. There are only 62,000 or so pharmacies (not counting the 3,000 operated in prisons.)

No matter what type of feedback they give you, (positive, inquisitive, or negative) you instruct them to enter the CaresCard2011 into your prescription file into their system. The card, once entered, will automatically provide a trip wire so that if your drug is LESS than your co-pay you will never be charged the higher cost. And if you have no insurance at all it will also automatically discount generics as much as 55% and name brand drugs as much as 15-23%.

Bottom line is, you will IMMEDIATELY begin to save on every prescription you fill. And you IMMEDIATELY begin to put more money directly back into your own pocket. THIS is free market innovation, over turning the apple cart of Big Pharm, Big Government, and Big Brother.

Tomorrow on the show I will roll out the 2nd part of the CaresProject2011 and it will include a feature that will give you access to a U.S. Board Certified American doctor 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — UNLIMITED — for the entire year, for less than the cost of a single office visit.

But for now, please accept our CaresCard2011 as a personal gift from XtremeCharity and let a little hope fill your heart, that no matter how tough these times get, it will be our innovation, our determination to solve the problem, and our incredible charity towards one another as Americans that will ultimately solve the problem.

I’m Kevin McCullough, and that’s how I “Binge Think!”
I’ve been called a “MuscleHead”
And many say I’m full of “Hot Air”

In an email response, the official wrote that when Massachusetts initiated its own reform, the number of individuals with employer-sponsored insurance increased.

Indeed, the Rand study released in April noted: “The percentage of employees offered insurance will not change substantially, but a small number of employees in small firms (defined as those with under 100 employees in 2016) will obtain employer-sponsored insurance through the state insurance exchanges.”

In a Jan. 25 study, the Urban Institute said that reports of the demise of employer-sponsored insurance were “premature” and that few would stop offering.

“Our results show the opposite — the [Affordable Care Act] has little effect on overall [employer-sponsored] coverage, and overall employer spending on health care would be slightly lower under the ACA,” according to its own study.

However, one can speculate that as the law becomes better known, employers are having second thoughts about trying to cope with something most of them would just as soon lay off elsewhere. The cost and hassle just aren’t worth it and now that there are alternatives, a good percentage of them are actually interested in pursuing them:

The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch.

“At least 30% of employers would gain economically from dropping coverage, even if they completely compensated employees for the change through other benefit offerings or higher salaries,” the study says.

It goes on to add: “Contrary to what employers assume, more than 85% of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employers stopped offering [employer-sponsored insurance], although about 60% would expect increased compensation.

Health care benefits are a net loser for any company. Cost added to the requirement for staff, contracts, problems, etc. makes it a program many employers would love to ditch. But such benefits have become a part of any competitive package through the years – the better the benefits, the more attractive the offer. Now, under ObamaCare, those “Cadillac” plan are going to be taxed (well, unless you have an exemption like most unions). So there’s little incentive to continue with them. Consequently, despite promises to the contrary, employers aren’t going to pay for something that is going to be taxed at a higher rate. So you won’t get to keep your plan.

Employers, in the meantime, are looking for cost savings alternatives and dumping health care cost and the associated hassles has to be very attractive to them. So it comes as no surprise, at least to me, that 30% of those surveyed are considering exactly that. A huge “told you so” that critics pointed to prior to ObamaCare passage that was largely waived away by supporters.

So who you going believe – CBO, Urban Institute and Rand, or human nature?

Yup – me too.

–

Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

In the case of health care a health care compact would:

1) Give the states the authority to decide how to spend their federal health care dollars.

2) Would empower the states to provide health care services, including Medicare and Medicaid, for their own citizens.

3)Place the decision making authority for health care policies at state level where the legislature would be free to tailor and pilot innovative programs that would simultaneously lower costs and improve health care.

As you read this, 14 states are considering it and Georgia and Oklahoma have both signed it into law.

The point, of course, is to have both accountability (states accountable to their citizens) and the ability to innovate (the “laboratories of freedom” that the states have always been envisioned to be) with, hopefully, programs that actually produce the desired “lower costs and better care”.

Of course there are problems to be considered as well as detractors of the idea. One of the primary problems is that Congress must give its consent before any such compact can come into being. There are those who think this is an impossibility. Of course, there were many who thought the passage of ObamaCare was an impossibility – but here we are.

The second line of attack is that this is not a Constitutional nor a free-market answer to the problem. Well the Constitutional and free-market answer to the problem is repeal or having the law struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

But what if that doesn’t happen? It’s easy to make those arguments in dismissal of the health care compact, but assuming the law stands as it now does, what’s the alternative?

Wouldn’t you rather see something at state level where innovation in all sorts of different programs could be tried and shared instead of a top-down, one-size-fits-all monstrosity called ObamaCare? Certainly not the best of all worlds, but much better than the current nationalized plan.

If the money is going to be allocated because the law stands, wouldn’t you rather have it controlled and spent closer to home by politicians which are much more accountable to you than those in Washington DC?

The idea is certainly worth consideration.

–

Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

So I laughed when I received this expectation-confounding response from Pamela at one of the restaurants in question:

Hi John,

We were not aware we received a waiver, nor did we apply for one. We heard about it on the news, just like everyone else. Our management personnel did not respond to inquiries because they, like we, didn’t know what was going on. Through Google we found out our health care administrator (HRA), unbeknownst to us, applied for the waiver for all of their clients, of which we are one.

What we know about the new healthcare program is what our government knows, which I understand is nothing, only a little less.

Sincerely,
Milton Friedman

It wasn’t until the second pass that I caught the signature. Look out, Nancy, there are conservatives in your midst!

Mr. Obama said that the typical political proposal to rationalize Medicare’s gargantuan liabilities is that it is “just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse.” His own plan is to double down on the program’s price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare—which will supposedly ferret out “unnecessary spending.” Is that the same as “waste and abuse”?

Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won’t harm seniors’ care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.

I’d like to take you back in time to highlight some important pieces including this one I broke at Big Government where I warned this was being crafted by the Democrats:

The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built into the each of the health care bills and, if they fail, little-known twin bills called “MedPAC Reform of 2009” are waiting in the wings.  The bills, S.B. 1110 and H.R. 2718, craftily amend the Social Security Act and transfer the Medicare guideline and rule setting processes, from the legislative branch to the executive branch.  These bills offer cover to one another in case one doesn’t pass the House or Senate, respectively.  Remember, Democrats need to gain executive branch authority by amending the Social Security Act over Medicare regulations and physician fee schedules to transform the health care system in a single-payer, socialized system.

More importantly, Medicare’s regulations and physician fee schedules are the keystone to developing payer systems and reimbursement models across the entire health care industry.  And where Medicare goes, insurers follow.

To further reinforce my analysis, former OMB director, Peter Orszag, stated:

The Medicare Commission, or Independent Payment Advisory Board, would have the power to override Congress if it rejected cuts to the entitlements programme for seniors, said Mr Orszag, a key architect of the reforms signed into law this week.

“This could well turn out to be as consequential for health policy as Federal Reserve policy was for monetary policy,” he said in an FT View from DC video interview. “The commission will put its proposals forward and if Congress does not act on them, or if it votes them down and the president then vetoes that bill, they will automatically take effect. Huge change.”

Enter H.R 452.  With 81 Republican and Democrat co-sponsors to date, this bill would repeal the IPAB and give Congress the oversight it had before the lawmakers stupidly inadvently stripped themselves.  And now they want it back.  Now, if you remember there was a story that circulated in December 2009 that bears more coverage when discussing repealing the IPAB. The catch is the language  found in the law where it stipulates:

“It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”

Additionally, back in January 2010, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) explained that the Senate:

Would effectively be passing health-care legislation that includes a series of rules on how Congress would handle IMAB recommendations, and simultaneously will be keeping future lawmakers from changing it as they desire.
 
“We will be passing a new law,” he said, “and at the same time creating a Senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.
 
“I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a Senate rule (and not a law). I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force to – for — future Senates,” DeMint added.
 
“(T)his goes to the fundamental purpose of Senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority — or of future congresses.”
 
The subsection that cannot be repealed or changed contains a number of other stipulations on how Congress will handle the IMAB recommendations, even setting deadlines for specific committees to consider them, which DeMint said were also new rules. “These provisions not only amend certain rules, they waive certain rules and create entirely new rules out of whole cloth,” DeMint alleged.

The CNS article goes on to document an exchange between DeMint and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and is a must read; Brian Darling of Heritage also provides terrific analysis.

The money question is:  Will the Democrats enforce this section with regards to H.R. 452 or will they let this come to the floor for a vote?  Because while the whole argument went down and the Republicans warned, the Democrats basically said–hey, forget about it.

Facing questions from both parties in the Congress, the Obama Administration has now revealed how it has spent over $1.7 billion on part of the Obama health law, known as the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program.

This plan is intended to help companies pay the cost of health care for their early retirees, but lawmakers say it is wrongly benefiting companies like AT&T and General Electric, who have billions in profits on their bottom lines.

The list that follows is like a Who’s Who of big campaign donors, unions, and public employee groups. Six of the top ten recipients are pension systems for public employees. The United Auto Workers, already $3.4 richer from the auto bailout, topped the list with an award of almost $207 million. General Electric, which paid no taxes at all in 2010 and whose CEO is a darling of the White House, received $36.6 million, good for 11th place on the list.

AT&T, which placed second on the list, spent slightly under $15.4 million on lobbying efforts in 2010 and will rake in over $140 million from just this portion of Obamacare. Verizon, third on the list, will make $91.9 million on its $16.75 million 2010 lobbying investment.

Melissa Clouthier has the right of it. This has to stop. Let us set aside the obvious fact that we simply can’t afford Obamacare and focus on the message the ERRP sends. Companies now have a crystal-clear example that if they pony up a few million dollars to Washington politicians, they can expect to see their money returned to them multiplied many times. Most of us who have watched Washington politics know this has been true for a while but I can’t recall a time when our government was this blatant about paying back its corporate and union supporters. If ever there was a time for the taxpayers to push back hard against the rent-seeking and paybacks, it’s now. If not, well, we deserve everything we get.

Jimmie runs The Sundries Shack and has his own very entertaining podcast called “The Delivery”. He is also an amateur musician, an aspiring composer, an unrepentant geek and an avid fan of Twitter. This article is cross-posted there.

Early screening through mammograms and education is critical to end the suffering from this disease: 98 percent of women treated for early stage breast cancer, before it spreads, are alive five years later. The widespread use of mammography and heightened public awareness of breast cancer both contribute to these favorable statistics.

And while Komen Affiliates provide funds to pay for screening, education and treatment programs in dozens of communities, in some areas, the only place that poor, uninsured or under-insured women can receive these services are through programs run by Planned Parenthood.  emphasis mine

Now that Live Action has proved that PP does NOT provide mammography services to its clients, what is the money being used for, because clearly is not for mammography screenings?  Education, treatment?

Update:  More information provided on the PP homepage shows they clearly refer out for these mammography services:

Where Can I Get a Mammogram?

Ask your health care provider, health department, or staff at your local Planned Parenthood health center about where you can get a mammogram in your area.

Additionally, it appears that PP does provide breast exams only.  However, the Komen memo links mammography, screenings, education, and treatment of breast cancer as their list of reasons it contributes to PP.

The Komen Foundation needs to come clean on specifically what those PP contributions are designated.  I’ve added the video below.

Crossposted at The Minority Report

Complying with the records request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee “would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking” and could “implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests,” White House lawyer Robert Bauer wrote the committee. Translation: Nice try.

Before the Democrats rammed through the Obamacare bill (and don’t think for one little ol’ minute that our narcissistic President doesn’t love that branding), Obama and WH officials met with several high-profile insurance executives as the WaPo lists:

The list included George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans; Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist representing Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among other clients; Billy Tauzin, then head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby; Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association; and numerous others.

The most concerning is George Halvorson as he was the only executive to meet with Obama.  And here is why:

“There really are two Americas when it comes to health care — the fully insured, primarily white America and the disproportionately uninsured minority America,” Halvorson wrote. “More than half of the total uninsured people in this country are minority. That fact alone should make the need to cover everyone in America a pure ethical imperative. This issue is not about economics — it is about equality. Universal coverage should be the next major civil rights issue for this country to face.

Halvorson also wrote an article in 2007 equating health reform to the “unfinished business of the Civil Rights agenda.” Halvorson discusses the disparities between the races and health care coverage and states:

If we considered no other issue than racial and ethnic disparities, this nation’s leadership — like the leadership of a number of states — should be moving this country down the path to an American form of universal coverage as quickly as possible. There is no more vital or meaningful way for us to honor and extend the great legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Again, Halvorson was also the only insurance executive to meet with Obama at that time.  Why?  Is it because Obama wants a single-payer system and sees himself as finishing the Civil Rights Movement, and Halvorson has the same viewpoint and the most to gain via Kaiser Permanente?  But, hey, there’s nothing to see here, right?  Or, is it that those meetings were, as Halvorson stated:

“The real discussion this time, behind those closed doors, is about changing the way care is delivered. Not about the cost.” 

Now, that is confusing.  According to former WH Budget Director, Peter Orszag, I thought that we were on an unsustainable path, so how could costs not come up in these meetings?  So, if we now know that those meetings were about how our healthcare is to be delivered, wouldn’t that be cause enough for alarm?  Some questions that pop into my mind are: how are those changes going to be implemented, what type of practitioner has direct access to patients, who has the ability to refer to specialists, who orders advanced tests/images, who makes the medical decisions, what protocols are being set/followed and who sets them, and do patients have access to all available treatment options.

Additionally, the Washington Times article cites that the Clinton and Bush administrations thwarted such calls:

President George W. Bush’s administration beat back efforts to reveal the dealings between Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force and industry. President Bill Clinton’s administration successfully resisted demands for records of its failed push to remake the health care system, which was overseen by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

However, unlike the previous scenarios, this is now the law of the land, American taxpayers will be footing the entire bill, and will potentially ultimately have their healthcare decisions placed in the government’s control.  Doesn’t that give us the right to that information trumping the “implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests” excuse.  And since when does this administration give a hoot about costs, nullifying the argument that the compliance with the records request “would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking.”

To quote NRO’s Jim Geraghty, did the Obama administration just administer the Cee-Lo Green option on Americans?

Typo correction: I’ve corrected the WaPo citation as it should have been Washington Times.

The American people, who then as now disapproved of the plan by a double-digit margin, can’t say they weren’t warned.

Few, however, were prepared for the extent of the deception embodied in the bill, which Democrats brokered behind closed doors and to the exclusion of members of the opposing party. That became apparent on Sunday, when Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, dropped a bombshell on NBC’s Meet the Press, revealing that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains over $105 billion in health care appropriations.

“Practically no member of Congress even knew that $105 billion of funding was contained,” Bachmann repeated mantra-like despite host David Gregory’s refusal to acknowledge the point and efforts to divert the conversation back to a previous point.

The congresswoman is now demanding that the Obama administration return the appropriations to their rightful owners, the American taxpayer. She is calling upon fellow House members to “draw a line in the sand” on budget negotiations as the next deadline of March 18 approaches.

She is quoted at WorldNet Daily as saying:

We’ve been hunting and pecking to look for $61 billion in savings from the budget, and we just find out now that [top Democrats] have already appropriated much more than that? $105 billion over the next 8 years and nobody knew about it?

They took this by deception. They failed to disclose critical terms of that bill. This was a fraud when they put that though. That’s why we must insist that we will not give one red cent of funding after March 18 until they first give the money back. Then we can discuss the budget.

At issue is leverage the Republicans who now control the House thought they had over the unpopular law, which they hoped to quash by defunding. The discovery of over $105,464,000,000, discreetly spread throughout the 2,700-page bill, now leaves Republicans without remedy. Protests Bachmann:

They told no one they were prefunding the implementation. [Republicans] were all arguing that if we got the gavel in 2010 that we could effectively repeal Obamacare between now and 2012 because we could defund it. That option was taken away from us, the people’s [referendum-like vote in 2010] was neutered.

Among the more egregious provisions in the law is Section 1311(a), which gives the Health and Human Services Secretary carte blanche over the amount of taxpayer dollars that be expended toward implementation of health-care exchanges in any of the 50 states. On its face, the provision seems to be yet another example of language that runs at cross purposes with the Constitution, which uniquely assigns the capacity to allocate funds to Congress.

Related Articles

• WH has one week to appeal ObamaCare ruling, or law becomes invalid
• Second federal judge rules ObamaCare is unconstitutional
• Idaho, 6 other states, to “nullify” ObamaCare
• Why ObamaCare needs to be repealed, not tweaked
• New survey: 65% of doctors say healthcare quality will decline under ObamaCare
• Poll: 13% of Americans approve of the health care law as written

Cross-posted at the Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

The president seemed to do just that today at a bi-partisan meeting of governors in the State Dining Room of the White House. There he agreed to allow states to design their own health care plans as long as the plans fulfill the goals of his law. At first blush, it sounds as though the normally intractable Obama is finally ready and willing to make concessions.

But if you look more closely at the fine print in the president’s remarks, there are several problems with his newfound magnamity. First, the law already contains provisions that allow states to propose their own framework for health care. The only distinction the president made today is his willingness to entertain alternative proposals in 2014, rather than forcing states to wait until 2017, as specified in the law.

Second, the administration, according to Ben Smith of Politico, held an off-the-record conference call with liberal allies this morning in which it was explained that the real goal of the president’s proposal was to give left-leaning states a chance to trot out more progressive, not less expansive, approaches to health care. Writes Smith:

Health care advisers Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter stressed … that the rule change would allow states to implement single-payer health care plans—as Vermont seeks to—and true government-run plans, like Connecticut’s Sustinet.

Yet a third obstacle facing states that would prefer to opt out is that the president—who has himself expressed a preference for single-payer systems—gets to set the ground rules and serve as judge and jury. As he told the governors:

If your state can create a plan that can cover as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does, without increasing the deficit, you can implement that plan and we’ll work with you to do it.

The problem is that Obama’s own plan, which expands coverage to more than 30 million now uninsured, won’t be tested for another three years. A number of economists have already argued persuasively that spending less and getting more is pure political legerdemain. In the meantime, the administration could shoot down perfectly workable, better laws on the basis that they fail to meet the unrealistic conditions laid out in ObamaCare.

In the meantime, 28 states have filed lawsuits to overturn the individual mandate that it is the financial cornerstone of the law, and another 29 have introduced measures to amend their constitutions to nullify aspects. Following the president’s comments today, it appears as though the final arbiter of what flies in a given state may not be the president after all but the nine members of the Supreme Court.

Related Articles

• Idaho, 6 other states, to “nullify” ObamaCare
• Why ObamaCare needs to be repealed, not tweaked
• New survey: 65% of doctors say healthcare quality will decline under ObamaCare
• Poll: 13% of Americans approve of the health care law as written
• Virginia judge strikes down health care reform law as unconstitutional

Cross-posted at the Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power….However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. [emphasis added]

William Jacobson boils it down for you:

Our thoughts are now actions. There literally is nothing the federal government cannot regulate provided there is even a hypothetical connection to the economy, even if the connection at most is in the future.

Excuse me while I sit down and ponder all of that for a moment. Anytime you make a choice not to act you are "acting".  Therefore, the court has now decided, any decision to not to act (related to commerce) is an act and you can be therefore required to do what the government says you must do.

Or, more succinctly, you have no real choice regardless of what you decide, so sayeth the court.

If I decide not to buy a car, I’m acting, and if the government wanted to require me to buy a car, under this ruling, it could.

Good lord.

That’s just absurd (but Government Motors will most likely be putting together a heck of a lobbying effort to carry this ruling out to its logical end).

Oh and borrowing again from Jacobson, a little reminder of where all this “legal thought” is supposedly grounded:

The Congress shall have power…. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

It’s easy to compromise when both sides are committed to solving a problem, because the appeal of solving the the problem is enough to persuade both sides to make concessions. That’s why Democrats gave up on single payer, on an employer mandate, on a public option. But it’s impossible to compromise when one side is uninterested in solving the problem, as they lack the incentive to make any concessions. That’s where the Republicans are on this, and it’s why they’ve not been interested in joining onto a bill even when Bill Clinton moved to the right and adopted the core of Richard Nixon’s plan and Barack Obama moved even further to the right and adopted the core of Mitt Romney and Bob Dole’s plan.

It may be comforting for Klein to sit back and his party has been the soul of reason in this debate but it’s not true. Democrats didn’t move right in an effort to compromise with Republicans. Are you kidding me? Sherrod Brown moved right? Russ Feingold moved right? Jan Schakowsky moved right? No. No. And hell no!

Democrats decided prior to the election that they wanted a two-step plan that would eventually get them to the single-payer system they really wanted. It had to be a two-step plan because single-payer is wildly unpopular with the public. So Jacob Hacker was brought in to design a plan which one could “claim” was free market (the President’s mantra was “choice and competition”) even as it inevitably destroyed the private insurance market over time.

Democrats didn’t move to the right out of a noble desire to solve a problem. They made a “sneaky” strategic decision, a head fake, to the center because they understood that “at some point you have to win.” Ezra Klein understands that perfectly well, because those are his words describing the Democratic plan of attack.

The President understands it too. He is on record as a supporter of single-payer. He is also on record stating that his plan was meant to be a “transitional system.” More recently he explained to Jon Stewart that health reform, like Social Security, is just a framework that can grow in size and scope over time.

Democrats played a cynical game with health reform and, so far, they’ve lost. Reform has not become more popular over time, but less. Two judges have now ruled the funding mechanism unconstitutional. Republicans have taken the House and gained seats in the Senate in part because of the unpopularity of the two year long push for reform (which made unemployment a back-burner issue).

The bottom line is this: It was the Democrats’ ends-justify-the-means approach to reform that brought us to this point, not their desire to compromise. Klein is right about one thing though. Republicans lack any incentive to make concessions on an unpopular plan which will create a massive new entitlement we can ill afford right now. Thank goodness for that.

I was curious what caused the delay so I made some calls. Last Tuesday I spoke by phone with a media relations employees of HHS. She was not allowed to speak on the record, but after checking with folks at OCIIO who handle the ObamaCare waivers, she was able to inform me in a “not for attribution” way that the latest batch of waivers had in fact been processed. There was no specific hold-up that she could identify, they were simply running behind in getting the information on the website.

Well today, the day after the President’s State of the Union, the new waivers are up. You may recall that there were 222 such waivers approved in November. That number has now jumped to 729 through the end of December. The total number of people covered by the waivers has gone from 1.5M to just under 2.2M. The list includes the usual assortment of union locals and businesses.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that OCIIO was asked to hold this development until after the SOTU. Indeed the latest waiver approved in the list is from December 30th. There is an addendum at the bottom of the page noting that four states–Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee–have applied for waivers covering another 93,000 people. The addendum is dated 1/21/11, but I can assure you it was not there on 1/21 or even Monday.

This ever-expanding list of waivers is the direct result of ObamaCare raising the annual benefit caps on certain health plans. Obviously, a plan with higher annual limits is potentially more costly than one without them. The money to cover the difference in premiums has to come from somewhere. Without the waivers, it will come from the employer who are forced by law to upgrade to the more expensive plan. In other words, the 729 organizations who have received waivers are not seeking refuge from an unintended consequence, but from the costs associated with one of ObamaCare’s features. The real question is what these businesses will do once the waiver program comes to an end.

The doctrine, known as nullification, has its roots in the brand of governance practiced by the nation’s founding fathers. It was used as early as 1799 by then-law professor Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a response to federal laws passed amid an undeclared naval war against France that

nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts … is the rightful remedy.

As a legal theory, nullification is grounded in the assumption that states, and not the U.S. Supreme Court, are the ultimate arbiter in cases where Congress and the president have “run amok.”

In Idaho, use of the doctrine to invalidate the health care reform bill is being championed by both state Sen. Monty Pearce and Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter speech, who recently told Idaho residents, “we are actively exploring all our options — including nullification.” Pearce plans to introduce a nullification bill in the state legislature early next week.

Idaho is not the only state considering nullification as a remedy. Six others, including Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming, are also considering bills that would in essence nullify the president’s signature on the reform law.

Pearce, who has expressed optimism that the law will pass, becoming the law of the land in Idaho, is quoted by FOX as having saud:

There are now 27 states that are in on the lawsuit against Obamacare. What if those 27 states do the same thing we do with nullification? It’s a killer.

One potential fly in the ointment for Idaho and other states considering nullification is the 1958 U.S. Supreme Court decision reaffirming that federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land.” If nothing else, these moves will result in some interesting legal battles

Related Articles

• Why ObamaCare needs to be repealed, not tweaked
• New survey: 65% of doctors say healthcare quality will decline under ObamaCare
• Poll: 13% of Americans approve of the health care law as written
• Virginia judge strikes down health care reform law as unconstitutional

The House voted on Wednesday to repeal the sweeping healthcare law enacted last year, as Republicans made good on a central campaign pledge and laid down the first major policy marker of their new majority.

The vote was 245-189.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the healthcare law on the books would increase spending, raise taxes and eliminate jobs.

“Repeal means paving the way for better solutions that will lower the costs without destroying jobs or bankrupting our government,” Boehner said in remarks on the floor before the vote.

“Let’s stop payment on this check before it can destroy more jobs or put us into a deeper hole.”

The vote to roll back the president’s signature domestic achievement of the 111th Congress just 10 months after its passage underscores the deep divisions that still surround the new law. But whether House action will signal the beginning of a rapid dismantling of the healthcare overhaul or serve merely as a historical footnote remains to be seen.

Democratic leaders in the Senate have vowed to shelve the repeal bill, and Obama has said he would veto repeal if it ever reached his desk.

With those threats in mind, GOP leaders dared the Senate to take up the measure, and they promised to fight the healthcare law in other ways if repeal failed.

Harry Reid has put on a brave face, saying that a vote for repeal in the Senate would be a waste of time because it would undoubtedly fail. Not only that, but Reid claims Americans want Obamacare! Of course, if either of the above were a certainty then surely it wouldn’t matter if they voted on it in the Senate. If Americans truly love Obamacare so much, then this would be his golden opportunity to show how the radical Republicans who hate the poor are out of touch and out of control, and the Senate Democrats are the ones who really care about the country.

Reality is that there are a number of politically vulnerable Democrats in the Senate (hello, Ben Nelson?) who can’t afford to vote for Obamacare a second time. Democrats from swing states won’t necessarily feel comfortable screwing over their constituents by voting to support Obamacare for a second time, especially when they’ve got to face those constituents next year. Is it likely that an Obamacare repeal would pass the Senate? No, but it is possible, which is why Reid is probably crying into a little pink blanket somewhere right now. He’s politically in a tough spot. If Obamacare is so great and makes voters so happy, then what’s the problem with having another go-around with it in the Senate?

What is for sure is that even if the repeal were to pass in the Senate, there aren’t enough votes to overturn Obama’s veto. And Obama would veto the repeal, which is fine, because it would just make him look even more entrenched, radical, and out of touch. Republicans, meanwhile, are promising that if they can’t repeal Obamacare, they’ll defund and delay it as much as they can.

“Today we are keeping that pledge, and it is a start,” GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said.

If repeal were ultimately unsuccessful, Cantor has said, Republicans would “do everything we can to delay and defund the provisions of the bill.”

This is exactly what Republicans need to be focusing on if they want to remain in office. We need to restore some sense of fiscal sanity to Washington, and that’s what Republicans need to concentrate on doing for the next two years.

But not 32% less, along with less pleasant working conditions in which my husband is expected to perform the exact same job.

On the other hand… hey, doctors are rich, so let’s stick it to them! From Heritage:

She’s not alone. A group known as Docs4PatientCare, led by Dr. Hal Scherz, has brought together doctors across America to make the case for repealing Obamacare.

I realize that to some people, especially government employees math is hard. But healthcare is not now and has never been, anywhere in the world, FREE. It’s just a question of deciding who bears the cost for it. Some people are demanding that doctors do so. It’s only fair, they reason, that people so privileged as doctors be required to give back, besides, it’s immoral to make a profit off sick people.

They never seem to wonder exactly with what these doctors are privileged. Crushing education debt? Long hours? Incredibly high malpractice premiums? The right to have your name ruined by some yahoo looking for a quick buck when he sues you? The right to have a jury easily swayed by a convincing attorney award him the value of years worth of your labor?

Give back? That’s based on the theory they took something away from people in the first place. What did they take? No one seems to know.

But ask yourself – would you work hard and bear heavy responsibility without being well-compensated for it? At some point, wouldn’t you decide that if you’re going to be paid less anyway, you’d rather take an easier job? I would.

Doctors are already voting with their feet in Massachusetts, which has suffered under an Obamacare-type plan for several years. Sure, everyone is covered by insurance. But good luck finding a doctor.

Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.

And that’s not just in Massachusetts.

The House of Representatives will soon vote on repealing Obamacare, but the vote is largely symbolic because there’s little chance Harry Reid will permit it come to a vote in the Senate. Even if it did pass a Senate vote, President Obama would surely veto it. Obama promised that if we like our plan, if we like our doctor, we can keep them. I do like my doctor and I want to keep her. That’s why I’m doing my part to keep the heat on Congress to repeal Obamacare, and failing that, chip away at it and refuse to fund it. In other words, to stop giving her reasons to quit.

Crossposted.

To review, Powers said that President George W. Bush’s veto of the bill that included the end-of-life provision was “not true.”  I reported at Big Government, Big Journalism, and HotAir that Bush vetoed that bill which Powers, the MSM, and lefty bloggers tried to use as cover for the end-of-life provisions in the newly revamped wellness visits paid for by Medicare.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the left and MSM from continuing to use that false talking point given to them by the Obama administration as seen in The Hill’s piece:

However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

Ironically, the administration attempted to use Bush as cover, when, in fact the policy was enacted by means of a congressional veto override.  And that brings us back to our beloved Kirsten Powers and her latest.  After 4 days of knowing the truth about the veto, Powers took my advice and tweeted:

Powers cites the WSJ as her source, which did correct the story as I noted in my original post.  And I do hope that’s the case, because so many news outlets had the same narrative/talking point–which also could mean that they all got the same memo.

Additionally, The Hill and the Politico have not corrected their stories.  The Politico actually goes out of its way to further advance the bogus blame by interviewing Richard Sorian, assistant secretary of Public Affairs for HHS and allows him to spew more propaganda elaborate:

Sorian also clarified that it was the Bush administration that first implemented regulations regarding end-of-life counseling. The wellness visit began as a “Welcome to Medicare” exam, which was created by the Republican-led Congress in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. In 2008, when Democrats held the majority, Congress passed the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, which modified the exam to include end-of-life planning. The Bush administration first implemented regulations that included the end-of life planning as part of the wellness visit created in MIPPA.

B-,b-,b- but it was Bush.  Not.  It was a congressional veto override that enacted that law.  Period.  And I’m sure that Sorian knows that.  They all do.  Now, where do we go from here.  I’ll tell you.  If Kirsten Powers can issue an apology on Twitter, I’m sure the Politico and Jason Millman of The Hill can too.  So, we will wait a few more days.

Crossposted at Big Journalism (link fixed)

The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disabled. However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

“The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by [healthcare reform],” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin told The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003, Medicare added a consultation visit for seniors new to the program, according to the Journal. Another 2008 law, enacted under Bush, said the visit can include “end-of-life” planning discussions.

However, what The Hill’s Jason Millman forgot to mention in his article was that President Bush VETOED the 2008 bill and the Democrats, along with some “good-willed” Republicans OVERRODE Bush’s veto forcing him to sign the legislation into law.*  The bill dealt with doctors’ reimbursements and more, but the Democrats slipped in the end-of-life planning by opening up the Social Security Act, which I have stated many times is dangerous, because once changed, it is difficult to amend again and allows for tinkering with the Medicare fee schedule and covered services definitions and requirements.

For the record, here is the text that the Democrats changed:

(b) Revisions to Initial Preventive Physical Examination-

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 1861(ww) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395x(ww)) is amended–

(A) in paragraph (1)–

(i) by inserting ‘body mass index,’ after ‘weight’;

(ii) by striking ‘, and an electrocardiogram’; and

(iii) by inserting ‘and end-of-life planning (as defined in paragraph (3)) upon the agreement with the individual’ after ‘paragraph (2)’;

Comedy gold indeed, when Democrats blame Bush for, um, everything wrong in America, and then use him for cover on healthcare.

Updated:  *President Bush did not sign this bill into law as the congressional record mistakenly notes.  After Congress overrode Bush’s veto, President Bush was not required to sign the bill to enact it.

“Homes are investigated, water quality checked, electrical plugs checked.”

Back in 2007 I was posting about ¡Salud!, a propaganda film about Cuban healthcare that was featured at the Princeton Public Library. The film shows the medics going through a patient’s home, including rifling through furniture drawers, checking for liquor, drugs, and tobacco.

Pause for a moment and ponder whether Americans would be better off being forced to endure an investigation of their home, in exchange for a house call from a medic/doctor who’s getting paid $200 month by the government. Even then the truth evaded Suarez,

As to doctors checking on water quality and electricity outlets, the PBS reporter might be surprised to learn that most Cuban homes have no running water or power on a regular basis. This is true even in the capital. In 2006, Mr. Botín says, a government minister admitted that 75.5% of the water pipes in Havana were “unusable” and “recognized that 60% of pumped water was lost before it made it to consumers.” To “fix” the problem, the city began providing water in each neighborhood only on certain days. Havana water is also notoriously contaminated. Foreigners drink only the bottled stuff, which Cubans can’t afford. In the rest of the country the quality and quantity of the water supply is even less reliable.

Go read the rest of O’Grady’s article, and keep in mind that your taxpayer dollars pay for PBS.

Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog

…the White House will create incentives for doctors to discuss “options” for end of life care through regulation, after Congress removed the incentives from ObamaCare…

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

There is, however, something at least vaguely disturbing about a government incentivizing doctors to do so as part of an expansive regulatory program that has, as one of its primary goals, cost reduction. The process used by Obama and Kathleen Sebelius to get this into ObamaCare is more disturbing, and in a very specific way. Congress made it clear that it didn’t want this incentive as part of the new law. However, thanks to the miles and miles of ambiguity in the final version of ObamaCare, with its repetitive the Secretary shall determine language, Congress has more or less passed a blank check for regulatory growth to Obama and Sebelius.

The implication is extremely easy to understand: “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”

“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Mr. Blumenauer’s office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. “This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Moreover, the e-mail said: “We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded.”

The e-mail continued: “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

Education is the enemy of the Statist.

Unchecked power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats is precisely what our nation’s founders intended to counter with a carefully constructed Constitution.

This disastrous excuse for a health care “reform” bill must be defunded, starved and repealed.

 
Hat tip: Memeorandum. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonald’s, but also to several other firms and labor unions.

Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance. The escapees include employers of many low-wage and part-time workers whose health insurance plans would otherwise be dropped, including Darden Restaurants — the parent company of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chains, which employ some 34,000 people.

Via Michelle you can read the full list of those not having to participate here. But for me, it’s not just the swelling, raw number of groups being granted waivers, but the size and types of companies and organizations making the list. There are large numbers of small to medium businesses on there, many with less than 25 employees. Weren’t these precisely the types of businesses that Obamacare was supposed to rescue from the evil health insurance system?

But in one of the truly delicious bits of irony discovered while browsing the list of those seeking asylum from the health care overhaul, I discovered the name of New England Health Care. No, it’s not an insurance company. It’s a policy institute. Let’s dig into their mission statement a bit and see what they’re all about, shall we?

Founded in 2002, the New England Healthcare Institute – known as NEHI – is a nonprofit, independent health policy institute dedicated to transforming health care for the benefit of patients and their families.

So an institute dedicated to finding ways to reform the health care system had to apply for an exemption from the administration’s reforms to the health care system? Keep your eyes on the news next week, as I’m fairly sure that the heads of some immigration reform lobbying groups will be deported.

Our health (bi-weekly) insurance premiums are rising from $110 to $160. That’s a 45% increase. To be fair, to balance that out, the benefits are decreasing (higher co-pays, etc.).

That Obamacare is pretty awesome, isn’t it? How irrational of us not to be grateful to Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and company for shoving this down our unwilling throats. I guess we’re just not thinking clearly.

Leave a comment if you’ve gotten news similar to ours. Or worse, like JACG, whose policy is now illegal:

You are actually lucky compared to me. I can no longer purchase my policy, as it is not “obamacare approved”. I officially got the letter on Monday, but knew already that my insurance company will no longer carry my policy because the new mandates have made it too expensive. I asked if they thought anyone else would sell me the same policy and they told me that they are now illegal and I wouldn’t be able to get that policy again. They gave me three options, the least expensive of the three almost doubles my costs. It will go up about 85%. To make matters worse, I am losing all the money that is left over in my HSA, unless I use it up by the end of the year. Something that won’t happen unless there is a medical emergency that is major.

Obama lied, her coverage died.

Cross-posted at P&P.

“Federal health officials for the first time are recommending all people ages 6 months and older get flu shots this fall, instead of just those with the highest risk of serious complications.

More doses of flu vaccine are available nationwide now than ever before.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has always suggested that anyone who wants to avoid the flu should get the shot, said Paul Biedrzycki, director of disease control and environmental health for the Milwaukee Health Department.

‘But the CDC in the past branded flu season as something for the elderly,’ he said.”

The article goes on to state that because of the H1N1 “pandemic” of 2009 that Federal officials believe that:

“The first influenza pandemic in 40 years officially has ended, but the 2009 H1N1 virus is still out there. This year’s vaccine – widely available now – provides protection from three flu strains, including the pandemic H1N1, an H3N2 virus and an influenza B virus.”

The controversial H1N1 vaccine has be included in regular flu shots? All Americans encouraged to get the shot? After talk of forced vaccinations and even a comment about reeducation LINK this seems ominous.

In Washington, DC there have been reports of health care workers not informing patients until after the vaccination that it contained H1N1. Some of those patients report numbness and other discomfort. Loyola University Health System and Washington Hospital Center in DC are among the employers who have made the vaccination a condition of employment.

“Loyola University Health System (LUHS) has adopted a policy to lessen the flu risk to its patients. For the second straight year, the health system is requiring all of its 7,825 employees to get flu shots. Last year, 99.3 percent of its employees were vaccinated against the seasonal flu, among the highest percentage of any medical center in the nation.

Loyola was among the first medical centers in the nation to make the regular seasonal flu shots mandatory as a condition of employment. Exceptions were made for religious or medical reasons.”

Despite the government’s push for universal vaccinations recent reports point to a possible immunity to the H1N1 virus.

“Swine flu no longer represents a major threat in the United States because so many people are immune to the virus that caused last season’s pandemic, health officials said.

Of the 310 million people in the United States, 59 percent are believed to be immune to pandemic H1N1 flu, the researchers said. About 62 million people were vaccinated against the virus, 61 million people were infected by it and another 60 million people 57 or older carry protective antibodies to similar viruses that circulated years ago.

‘It’s very unlikely that the virus will explode in the fall,’ said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, an author of the analysis. ‘We now have evidence of that.’”

Why would the federal government advocate strongly for vaccinations when scientific research demonstrates a reduced threat level?

State and local health officials have already begun targeting children.

“The Arkansas Department of Health has begun offering seasonal flu shots to public school students statewide.

The program began Saturday with shots available at Carlisle Elementary School in central Arkansas.

The department will be going to schools across the state through Dec. 7 to offer the vaccinations to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Insurance companies will be asked to pay for those who have insurance — others will not be charged.

Seasonal flu shots are not required for children to attend school in Arkansas — but they are recommended.”

Thank goodness, they are not required – yet.

In the past, Americans trusted our government to govern and lead with our best interests at heart. In this current administration, we have seen a blatant disregard for the will of the people and witnessed outright lying from officials. All efforts should be made to educate people on the contents of this new vaccine and, it’s side effects and health officials should be ready to explain why its medically necessary when other doctors disagree.

Cross-posted from Emerging Corruption.

No, really.

What’s funny is how they say “some” want to repeal Obamacare, and they’re talking about it “on the campaign trail”. Yes, because it’s just conservative politicians who are trying to be mean! Of course, the majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed, but what does that matter? We’ve got lazy moochers to take care of!

I’m sure that the parents of these leeches are super duper proud to see their offspring brag about having to rely on Mommy and Daddy because they can’t get a job. So basically, all of us productive Americans should shoulder the burden of taking care of these unproductive spoiled brats. Nice. I bet that’ll be a really successful movement. It’s pathetic — these slackers really do just expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter, don’t they? Free health care, free jobs, free housing… but I doubt a single one of them would be willing to do the work to earn those things. They just expect it to be given to them, without the slightest comprehension of how we can afford to give them all those things.

Oh, and you know, if health care is so important, there’s an easy way to get guaranteed health care. Join the military.

But that’s just too much work, and it’s icky too, isn’t it?

–

Follow Cassy on Twitter and read more of her work at CassyFiano.com and Hard Corps Wife.

Apparently, cigarettes are the new crack cocaine. At least, that’s what New York mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to believe. After banning smoking in indoor public areas, he now wants to do the same with outdoor areas such as parks, beaches and pedestrian malls.

Like most ex-smokers, I’m vehemently anti-smoking. I always encourage people to quit; I continuously tell them that they’ll feel so much better once they do, and so on. If you ever met one of us former smokers, or if  you are one of us, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. However, I do believe some of my fellow anti-smokers can take it a step too far. They don’t understand that there’s a difference between convincing people to quit smoking and to legislate your views and force people to give it up (or, if they refuse, to become social pariahs).

We should encourage people to quit, but we must not make the mistake of treating cigarettes as the new crack cocaine; they’re not.

First published here.

Provenge, a vaccine to treat the recurrence of prostate cancer, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)… Medicare usually covers the cost of FDA-approved anti-cancer therapies. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is still reviewing whether it will cover Provenge, and at what rate.

The CMS statute states that Medicare must cover therapies that are reasonable and necessary, while the FDA is instructed to approve drugs that are safe and effective. Because of the conflicting Federal coverage and approval requirements, there are some non-FDA approved drugs (called off-label drugs) that are paid for by CMS. However, with respect to Provenge, it appears that CMS is arguing that while the treatment is safe and effective, it may not be reasonable and necessary. For the first time, an FDA approved anti-cancer therapy may not be covered by Medicare.

A life-saving cancer treatment “may not be reasonable and necessary”? Gee, that kind of decision-making by an unelected federal bureaucracy certainly sounds like a death panel to me.

Say, I thought the President said that pre-existing conditions would always be covered. Isn’t cancer a pre-existing condition?

Oh. What’s this?

Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Ovarian Cancer National Alliance Appeal to FDA and Key Lawmakers on Avastin Issue

Patient Access and the Impact on Development of New Treatments at the Heart of Komen for the Cure’s Concerns

Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA) today urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to continue to allow the use of the drug bevacizumab, commonly known as Avastin, for metastatic breast cancer patients, noting that it is effective for some patients and warning of a chilling effect on new drug development if approval is withdrawn…

…In a joint letter sent to the FDA and key Congressional lawmakers Thursday, Komen for the Cure and the OCNA wrote, “We are particularly concerned about patients who are presently receiving bevacizumab and the message that this decision sends about drug development for women with advanced breast cancer.”

…According to Komen, the decision to use Avastin should be made between a woman and her doctor after a thoughtful conversation that carefully considers the drug’s benefits and risks. Komen does not want to see access limited by Medicare and Medicaid.

Gee, and I thought no one would be denied coverage by ObamaCare.

Didn’t the President himself say, “I want seniors to know, despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits.”

That’s what President Obama told us, endlessly and repeatedly, for months on end.

Do you mean to say he was lying?

Folks, this is precisely why the cancer survival rate for the U.K. is so much lower than that of the U.S. — and, in some cases, lower than Eastern Europe’s. And why Donald Berwick’s nickname is Dr. Death.

America’s seniors are about to find out that having coverage is not the same thing as receiving care. And our seniors are about to pay the piper.

Hat tips: Valerie Ward and Mark Levin. Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

[Bob Inglis] cited a claim made famous by Palin that the Democratic health care bill would create “death panels” to decide whether elderly or sick people should get care.

“There were no death panels in the bill … and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It’s not leadership. It’s demagoguery,” said Inglis…

“I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading,” he said. “What it takes to lead is to say, ‘You know, that’s just not right.’”

As it happens that’s exactly what South Carolina voters said to Inglis when they voted more than 2-1 against him last month. Instead of praising them as leaders, though, he whipped out the race cards and whipped them around like he was dealing the world’s fastest poker hand.

Inglis said he was shocked during the health care votes as he watched protesters jeering Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who was beaten as a leading civil rights activist in the 1960s.

Inglis said he was too far away during the jeering incident to hear whether the protesters shouted racial epithets, as Lewis and other black lawmakers have claimed. But Inglis said the behavior was threatening and abusive.

“I caught him at the door and said, ‘John, I guess you’ve been here before,’” Inglis said.

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

“I love the South. I’m a Southerner. But I can feel it,” he said.

I am about sick to death of these whiny Republicans who, when ejected from office like a tomato from a catapult by voters who have had enough of their spend-happy ways, turn around and cry like a bunch of babies with soggy diapers. Like those soggy-diapered babies (and doesn’t “Soggy-Diaper Republican” have a nice ring to it?), Inglis wants everyone to cater to his whims. In his world, he gets to tell us how it’s going to be and we meekly sit back and take it. That worldview has no place at all in the Republican Party. Heck, it doesn’t have a place in America.

If Inglis really thought that “death panels” was an extreme characterization of what lay inside Obamacare, he could have fought it vigorously in the arena of ideas. He didn’t because he was too busy pushing for his very own bill that, like Obamacare, would have forced you to buy health insurance whether you wanted to or not. Inglis claimed to be “shocked” by the anger that faced at town halls but he conveniently left out the part where he stoked the anger by accusing people who disagree with him as Glenn Beck-watching drones incapable of thinking for themselves.

We’re better off being rid of Bob Inglis and his petty, sniveling sense of entitlement. Maybe he can have a little lie-down in a pastel-colored, daisy-printed room to settle his jangled nerves.

(Read this post and more from Jimmie at his blog The Sundries Shack or listen to his weekly political and pop-culture podcast, The Delivery)

Public disapproval of Congress is at record levels and the President has chosen to sell DemCare for the umpteenth time — thinking, perhaps, that the umpteenth time is a charm. It’s too late. Everyone knows that DemCare is a deficit-exploding disaster. As The Los Angeles Times reiterated last week, “Democrats in Congress fail[ed] the sales pitch.”

Consider the ramifications of DemCare:

• 26% of companies surveyed in May said they may cut hours for employees who currently work 30 or more so they can afford to stay in business after the ObamaCare forces them to pay for coverage.

• The President’s own Medicare actuary states that DemCare slashes Medicare by $575 billion to help pay for the massive new and unaffordable entitlement program.

• The medical device manufacturer Medtronic is contemplating laying off 1,000 workers to pay for DemCare’s new medical device tax.

• Large employers like AT&T — which would save $4.1 billion a year — are strongly considering dropping health coverage for employees and dumping them into DemCare.

• Senior enrollment in popular Medicare Advantage programs will be slashed in half.

• To top it all off, $250 Medicare checks — money we don’t have — will be sent to seniors to help get them addicted to the new normal. Unfortunately, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying off those $250 checks — with interest — to foreigners. Unless the whole system collapses before then.

America’s leading organization of small businesses — the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) — has joined with the Attorneys General of 20 states to sue the Obama Administration over its unconstitutional DemCare program.

Here’s a news flash for Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the National Socialist Democrats: no amount of speeches, no amount of SEIU-funded television ads, no amount of threats, no amount of bribes earmarks, no amount of payoffs to slip-and-fall lawyers, no amount of your propaganda will convince us to burn the Constitution.

We’ve got your pinko slips ready for November.
 
Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.