Category: Health Care

Stand By For GOP Disaster On ObamaCare

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by Smitty

Pardon the pessimism, but the GOP seems to differ with the Administration more on style than substance, as Hayward notes at Breitbart:

…indications are that the Republicans are backing away from ObamaCare, or at least from efforts to kill it. Jon Terbush at The Week delivered the news in an article entitled “It’s Official: The Republicans Are Done Trying to Kill ObamaCare.” Actually, the body of the article makes it sound more like the GOP leadership still wants to repeal, or mostly repeal, ObamaCare and replace it with a Republican alternative proposal, which is more a change of tactics than strategy.
“In that light, simply saying that an official GOP alternative is on the way is a big step away from the nihilistic rhetoric of the past,” writes Terbush.
But their rhetoric was never entirely nihilistic; that’s a false Obama talking point echoed robotically by the media. There have been solid GOP alternatives since Day One of the ObamaCare disaster. It sounds as if the Republican leadership wants to bring the entire party together behind something they can officially brand as The Republican Alternative ™ and push with a united effort. Until now, some strategists have suggested that would be a mistake, because it would give the Democrats and their media allies a target to demolish, drawing attention away from ObamaCare’s failure. It sounds like the time for standing back and letting Americans get a taste of the nightmare souffle whipped up by the Administration’s gremlins – supposedly with nearly zero oversight from the Smartest President In History – is over, and the GOP wants an alternative they can run on.
The troubling thing about Terbush’s article are the indications that groups like the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce are giving up the fight and making their peace with ObamaCare as a permanent tumor in the American system.

The over-arching, fundamental, intrinsic problem with ObamaCare is that it was Ever. The. Government’s. Constitutional. Job. To. Pull. This. Stunt.

This country is riddled with little brain-dead proto-Commies who think “liberty” means getting the government out of the womb and into the wallet. Wow, that sentence looks stupid, but it seems a fair assessment of the idiocy under consideration.

Getting into blogging a half decade ago was about joining the chorus of Buckley wannabees, standing athwart history asking: “Why’re they calling me a thwart? And why’s Obama prescribing the IRS as a treatment for thwarts?”

Five years on, the question has morphed into: “After years of hearing about ‘Constitution this’ and ‘Founding principles that’ from the Repubulican Party, where is the reformer attitude that the thwarts thought they were supporting?”

Not only is ObamaCare a dead parrot, the whole New Deal has completely run out of gas. I do not want to hear another godforsaken word about trying to shore up these entitlements. I want to hear about the transition plan that protects both those who’re locked into these bad ideas from total loss, and also protects the young from increased abuse from the bureaucracy.

If the Vichy GOP doesn’t get that the New Deal is dead, and wants to try to keep ObamaCare afloat, it’s got another thing coming.

The ObamaCare ‘Death Spiral’ Debate

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ObamaCare is exactly the kind of policy failure its opponents predicted, although it has also failed in a few unpredicted ways. The only way anyone can call ObamaCare a “success” is in a political sense, i.e., it helped re-elect Obama. We might also say ObamaCare is a “success” in the sense that its unmistakable failure will likely be leveraged as an argument for a single-pay government takeover of health care in some future Democrat administration, but we have not yet reached that point. Where we are now is Ezra Klein and other liberals trying to pretend that ObamaCare’s failure is not yet certain:

Ezra Klein is back in line. The Journolist founder, who now runs Wonkblog for the Washington Post, took some flak from other left-liberal journalists last year when he acknowledged that the ObamaCare exchanges had serious technical flaws. But now, as we move into Phase 3 of the ObamaCare failure — the unraveling of its economic assumptions — Klein and his wonkblogger staff are in full denial.

James Taranto’s recounting of the arguments is amusing, with Ezra Klein in the role of the Monty Python pet shop owner who insists that the Norwegian Blue is merely “pining for the fjords.”

 


New York Times Plays the Koch Card, Reporting Democrat ObamaCare Panic

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The free market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) opened the 2014 campaign early, running ads targeting vulnerable senators who voted for ObamaCare, as I have previously reported:

AFP is one of the largest grassroots organizations in America, with thousands of supporters and contributors, but notice how the New York Times emphasizes a certain name in this article:

Democrats are increasingly anxious about an onslaught of television ads hitting vulnerable Senate and House candidates for their support of the new health law, since many lack the resources to fight back in the early stages of the midterm campaign.
Since September, Americans for Prosperity, a group financed in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, has spent an estimated $20 million on television advertising that calls out House and Senate Democrats by name for their support of the Affordable Care Act. . . .
Some Democrats are open about calling for help from allies and supporters of the health care law who may be biding their time.
“Democrats need money at this early stage in order to fight back against the limitless spending from the Kochs,” said Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “As we get closer to the election, we will have the resources to introduce their Tea Party candidates before they have an opportunity to define themselves for voters, but right now the limitless spending from the Kochs means we need Democratic donors to step up in a bigger way immediately.”

Why do the Koch brothers deserve mention in the second paragraph of this article, whereas the word “ObamaCare” does not appear until the 19th paragraph? The article doesn’t even name President Obama, who is thereby a sort of ghost haunting this article which is, after all, about the failures of his signature legislation.

The status of the New York Times as a Democrat Party propaganda organ has never really been in doubt, so it’s very encouraging to see this evidence that Harry Reid has hit the panic button. Meanwhile, AFP has launched new ads targeting vulnerable House members who voted for ObamaCare, including this one against Rep. Gary Peters (D-Michigan):

You Can Click Here to Contribute to
AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY

What a bargain: For $25, you’re like an honorary Koch brother.

 


Obama Still Hasn’t Responded to Republican Offer to Discuss Health Care

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A Republican congressman says it’s been nearly a month since he and 33 colleagues offered to meet with President Obama to discuss health care reform, and they still haven’t heard back from the White House.

“In the wake of Obamacare’s numerous failures, President Obama said that if Republicans had better health care reform ideas, they should say so,” Arkansas Rep. Tim Griffin said in a statement Wednesday. “That’s why 33 of my colleagues and I sent him a letter that included a list of nine proposals that would help build an open and innovative healthcare system, expand access, increase choice, and lower costs.  So far, our request for a meeting to discuss these ideas has been met with silence.  I hope President Obama meant what he said and will meet with us.  It’s not too late for a fresh start, so we can get real health care reform right.”

On Dec. 3, Obama challenged critics of his program: “If you’ve got good ideas, bring them to me. . . . [If] you still think this law is a bad idea then you’ve got to tell us specifically what you’d do differently to cut costs, cover more people, make insurance more secure.”

A week later, on Dec. 10, Griffin and 33 other GOP House members responded with a letter to the President highlighting nine separate areas of reform on which Republicans agree. “We appreciate your offer to discuss alternative proposals,” the letter said, “and we look forward to meeting with you at your earliest convenience.”

So far, apparently, that “earliest convenience” hasn’t arrived.

 


What The Flu-Shot Is A “Federal Dollar”?

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by Smitty

Great article over on Town Hall by Conn Carroll about ObamaCare. Worth reading in full, but I’d like to pick up where he ends for a bit of a rant on a fundamental conceptual flaw that cuts across so much of our jacked-up contemporary thinking (emphasis mine):

We already see this happening in Massachusetts where all of Obamneycare’s cost containment claims have been exposed as complete frauds. Yes, almost everyone in Massachusetts does have health insurance, but the state simply can’t afford it. Don’t believe me? Just ask Obamacare architect Donald Berwick who is running for governor. His website explains:

In the Massachusetts state budget, almost every key line item has gone down by 20%, 30%, or 40% in real terms since 2000 except health care, which has gone up by 60%. In 2013, 43% of state expenditures are for health care – that’s more than double what we spend on education.

Berwick’s solution? “It is time to explore seriously the possibility of a single payer system in Massachusetts,” Berwick writes.
And that is where the only common ground will ever be on health care policy in Washington: allowing states to choose their own health care futures. If California, Massachusetts, and New York want to become single-payer health care systems, fine, let’s reform Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare to let them do that.
But, if Indiana wants to provide their citizens more freedom, and use federal dollars to set up health savings accounts for the uninsured, then Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare ought to be reformed to let them do that, too.

Our “dollar” shows up in Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution. But it’s Just. A. Dollar. Sure, we’ve blown off our original requirement for solid metal backing for the currency. See Ron Paul for pertinent rants.

And, yes, I do understand the intent of this common usage. The point of this rant is to underscore the problem with accepting artificial distinctions like “federal”, “state”, and “local” dollars. No. There is only one currency, the dollar. Dollars expended by government are ultimately taxpayer dollars, and, sooner or later, overtly through taxation, or covertly through opportunity costs, are going to come from those taxpayers, sure as the wool comes from the sheep.

The term of art “federal dollars” is just a ruse to quell fears that, somehow, the pain is going to fall on voters, who might punish their collection of rodeo clowns at election time. We’ve pretty much seen that there is no other feedback loop in the system; no amount of wanton jackwagonry on ObamaCare (or Fast & Furious, or Benghazi, &c) can trigger any laxative effects at the White House.

Let’s start a campaign to let the dollar be the dollar, reform the Federal Reserve, have budgets, and otherwise quit living this Peter Pan Progressive Pot Party. Extremist, I know. Can’t help it.

New Ads Target Senators: ‘It’s Time to Be Honest: ObamaCare Doesn’t Work’

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Three vulnerable incumbent Democrat senators are the targets of a new advertising campaign by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) that takes aim at the unpopular ObamaCare program. “It’s the ‘Lie of the Year,’ and Senator Shaheen kept telling it,” says the AFP ad targeting New Hampshire Sen. Jane Shaheen. “The truth is, thousands have already had their insurance canceled. Families are paying more for expensive health plans and facing hour-long drives just to see a doctor. . . . Tell Senator Shaheen: It’s time to be honest. ObamaCare doesn’t work.”

Similar ads are airing against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Sen. Kay Hagen (D-North Carolina) in a three-week campaign.

“President Obama repeatedly promised Americans that they could keep their current health care plans and doctors if they chose, but millions have found out the hard way that this was the Lie of the Year,” said AFP president Tim Phillips. “We’re putting pressure on senators who repeated that lie and doubled down on ObamaCare even as it became obvious that the law was hurting millions of Americans. The story of ObamaCare is one of less choice, rising premiums, and broken promises. AFP is committed to a long-term effort to stop this law.”

You can learn more at AmericansForProsperity.org or follow them on Twitter at @AFPhq.

 

‘The Central Prob. of Obamacare Will Not Yield to Technical or Rhetorical Solutions’

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by Smitty

Thus asserts Micheal Gerson in the WaPoo.

The central problem of Obamacare will not yield to technical or rhetorical solutions. President Obama sold it to Americans as a plan with no losers. But it is a redistribution program, creating both winners and losers. And many of the losers in Obamacare consider themselves middle class. This realization may eventually lead a number of elected Democrats to favor serious revisions.

Two challenges I have with the first sentence in this paragraph:

  1. That anybody thinks the federal government should have this task at all is nuts. The best defense of ObamaCare is that it was the final step in the lemming march off the cliff of Progress.
  2. That anybody thinks the government ‘solves’ anything, ever, is daft. Government maintains problems; the actual solutions are in the glove compartment of Godot’s car, which, regrettably, has been delayed.

Progressivism is an old man, stricken with Alzheimer’s, on the cusp of dementia, that cannot grasp the reality of his time having passed. ObamaCare’s swath of economic destruction is going to continue to claim victims. As the year drags on, the employer mandate is going to loom, the Democrats are going to lie, and the codpiece media is going to protect them. Wash, rinse, repeat. That old man isn’t going to the retirement home easily.

The central problem for the GOP is a split political personality. For congressional Republicans, ideological timidity is a reasonable, short-term electoral strategy. For Republicans concerned about retaking the presidency in 2016, it is wholly insufficient. There is an urgent need to reposition the party among minorities, women and the young. Pointing and laughing at the failures of Obamacare will not be a sufficient governing vision.

Gerson has the right of it. That old Progressive coot needs to be put out to pasture. It’s time for reform. The inability to offer something, anything, in the way of reform, I would argue, has been the real driver in depressing conservative turnout in the last two Presidential elections. We need this ObamaCare horse boiled down for glue; the suspicion was that Romney was going to get his veterinarian on.

Don’t stand there holding the coats while the IRS stones the Tea Party, GOP: either

  1. have your Road to Damascus moment, and get on the reform bandwagon, or
  2. stand by to join the ObamaCare horse at the glue factory.

Jake Tapper reports that 40k new laws are kicking in today. I know some incumbents needing kicked out in November if that death-by-red-tape situation isn’t improved.

REVEALED: Who Was On The Boat That Called The German Coast Guard?

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by Smitty

The mayday is clearly a joke:

But the joke is really the Obama Administration:

White House adviser Phil Schiliro said on Tuesday that the oft-cited seven million Obamacare enrollment target “was never our target number.”

Ah, yes. The target number for the enrollment is written on a balloon that keeps rotating as it deflates, hiding more zeros, as the crew of the S.S. Obama Minnow, on its three hour strategy session tour in the North Atlantic, radios in for help.

Wasn’t the Affordable Care Act supposed to be the insurance policy for the Progressive Project? That, hopefully, will prove the ultimate cancellation as this debacle moves onto its submarine phase. At the helm of the Obama Minnow, the ghost of Ted Kennedy was heard yelling “This is not what I meant when I said ‘Take me to the bridge!'”

Happy New Year everybody. Gird your loins, and keep your debt low. 2014 promises to be a doozy.