Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Health Care | Tags: How Soon Will it Fail?, The Mess of ObamaCare, This is Big Government
(click to enlarge)
Michael D. Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, in a Capitol Hill briefing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act noted that: “The main bill the so-called Senate bill, was 2,409 pages long, about 477,920 words, or about $1.2 million per word. We also had the reconciliation package, which added 153 pages and 34,000 words.
“As a result of all that work, here is the new American health care system. There are about 99 new boards and commissions and agencies that are established under the health care bill, but that’s not all of it. A Congressional Research Service report found that it is impossible to estimate how many boards, commissions, and agencies will be created, because in many places they’re authorized to create more agencies and commissions and boards; a sort of infinitely expanding federal bureaucracy.”
There is, of course, much more to the briefing which you can watch here. But I am including only this part to emphasize the enormous malevolent bureaucracy they are creating to manage and control every aspect of American health. You, as a patient, are represented by the cream-colored star in the lower left-hand corner. Your doctor is represented by the cream-colored cross in the lower right-hand corner. Enlarge even more by changing the percentage and zooming in.
Some study of the chart and its legend will reward your understanding of ObamaCare. Each of those circles and squares and boxes represents a whole office full of people who will theoretically have some input on whether or not you get the care you need.
The United Kingdom, population around 61 million, is trying desperately to return their failing National Health System to a doctor—patient relationship. Canada, with a population a little more than half that of the UK, is trying to return their system to a doctor — patient relationship. Massachusetts, population 6,500.000, which was the model for ObamaCare began failing after only 3 years, and now has the highest insurance premiums in the country, many doctors have left the state and bankruptcy is not far off. And the United States, population over 300 million, has this mammoth bureaucracy installed in order to insure maybe 50 million who are without health insurance (not without care, without insurance) but there will still be something like 23 million still uninsured in 2019.
The law hasn’t even really taken effect and Secretary Sebelius has already missed 1/3 of required deadlines. They’re projecting a shortage of 63,000 doctors by 2015. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it?
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Heartwarming, Humor | Tags: A Rebuke to the Rest of Us., A Well-trained Dog, An Impressive Trainer
So you have a dog. Does he or she Sit? Come? Stay? How about Fetch? Always and every time? No chewing up shoes or old socks? Sneaking treats off the table? Uh huh. Look at what is possible, and weep.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Foreign Policy, Law, Progressivism | Tags: Blaming the People, Leadership and Management, The Pain of Failed Expectations
When a new president takes office, he or she is expected to take charge of the executive branch of the government of the United States. The problems of the country become his problems to solve. The world situation is what it is. The Congress is composed of those who were carried over and those newly elected. A new president chooses those whom he wants to advise him and those whom he feels will most satisfactorily run the various departments.
He doesn’t get to choose the state of the world nor the state of the country. He must lead and manage to the best of his ability, with the assistance of those whom he has selected as valued advisers.
It has long seemed to me that Barack Obama didn’t get that simple fact. He has been complaining ever since January 20, 2009 about the country that was left for him. It wasn’t fair. He expected a country in good shape. He had plans to fundamentally transform America, and neither the time nor the inclination to deal with a lousy economy and people out of work. As he told an audience of well-to-do liberal donors at a Massachusetts fundraiser this weekend:
And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.
The country’s sour mood was a result of this trauma, by which he meant the financial panic and the recession, not the two years of spending and takeovers and bailouts of liberal governance. But he is blaming the economy that he was elected to fix for the anti-Democrat reactions of Americans.
Politicians are always apt to look for someone or something else to blame. New Presidents usually enter office with things that they hope to accomplish, and sometimes they do manage to get some of them done. Voters are a little more cynical about campaign promises, for they know them to be ephemeral. But they do expect the newly elected president to take charge and do his best.
Obama, instead, had a country to fundamentally transform, so he turned the hard stuff over to an eager Congressional leadership anxious to wield power. That is why he has been so ready to blame his predecessor for the unwanted challenges that faced him. He was sure that the world could be transformed by simply asserting at last that America was no longer a bully and no longer exceptional and eager to please. So he has blamed George W. Bush, and he has blamed the Republicans in Congress, and now he is blaming the people and blaming his base. It’s all just so damned unfair.
American Elephants 