Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Free Markets, Freedom, Health Care, Progressives, Regulation, The United States | Tags: Controlling the People, Obamacare
Along with millions of others, I’m really frustrated with Congress. When the Democrats rammed through the Affordable Care Act, most Republicans recognized instantly that it was not going to work. Way too much bureaucratic control. It was clearly a step towards single-payer health care like Britain’s National Health Service. Of course there are probably not all that many Americans who read the British papers, but the failures of the system were apparent. Physicians have become government employees, hospitals so short of money that ambulances are parked in long lines on the street, waiting their turn to dislodge their desperately ill patients, and old people dying of neglect in the hospital, from dehydration, lack of food, dirty sheets. You have to pay attention to the symptoms of failure.
I know, most people just think that the medical care establishment is just way too expensive, they can’t afford it and want the government to pay for it. The thing everyone must remember is that government has no money of its own. Congress can raise taxes, especially on the rich, but you can’t take enough money away from the rich to take care of everybody who is not rich, and in the meantime, the rich stop becoming rich. High taxes mean less economic activity, fewer people getting rich, and everybody getting a little poorer.
What should have happened is that the moment ObamaCare passed, Republicans should have started planning how to reform health care in a way that was good for the most people and did the least harm. Instead, they did regular grandstanding votes of repealing ObamaCare when there was no chance of the vote succeeding in passing Congress nor being signed by the President. So, here we are seven months into a new administration, and the Republicans said they have been working on it for 8 months, but they can’t agree on a bill. They had eight years.
Part of it is that although Republicans boast of believing firmly in the free market, when push comes to shove, they are loath to lose control. We need to remember, first of all, that we are not talking about health care — we are talking about health insurance, and who is going to pay for what, who is going to receive what under what circumstances and what the insurance companies are going to offer at what price. What medicines and treatments you can have and how much that will cost.
Here’s an example of the actions of the free market: A long established pharmacy discovered a box in a back room that was full of bottles of old pharmaceuticals. Really old. Instead of just throwing them out, someone there decided to test them for efficacy. Was it possible that any of them could still work after so many years? Most of them were still effective. Yet when a new drug is approved, it gets assigned an expiration date because they have tested for 3 or 5 years, because the rules say they don’t have to test beyond that. Must they test for longer? Do the rules prevent more realistic expiration dates? It could obviously be cheaper if they didn’t expire so soon.
In 2016, it was pointed out that when the patents expire on a medicine it means that other manufacturers can produce the medicine at a lower cost. Yet last year a few companies that acquired the rights to lifesaving medicines immediately jacked up prices, which helped make the situation far worse. Federal policies facilitate monopolies by erecting regulatory barriers to new entrants.
There are a few physicians in Congress who understand in part the flaws and failures of Government health care, but I don’t know that they understand the problems of insurance companies. And who understands the pharmaceutical industry and it’s problems? Bureaucrats want to make rules, they often believe the rules they make are sensible, protect the people, etc. but that isn’t often true.
Here’s an example of market-driven innovation—the free market at work —from 2012, about a group of doctors who posted a list of prices for 112 common surgical procedures online, founded the Surgery Center to escape from the bureaucracy of a major hospital center. A provision in ObamaCare effectively prohibits doctors from starting their own hospitals or expanding hospitals (which was widely interpreted as a give-away to the American Hospital Association.) I assume it’s still going strong, I haven’t followed through.
And here’s a fascinating article from The Atlantic, this morning, that points to new scientific studies that may lead to new medicines, that are still in stage of basic new exciting discoveries —with unknown promise. Free people and free markets can come up with amazing solutions. That’s what created the dynamic American economy, and drives innovation. Surprise —it’s not more regulation and more control.
Democrats are congenitally programmed to demand control. They are afraid of the free market, hate capitalism, and make a mess of everything they attempt to govern by that philosophy. You cannot effectively attempt to change human nature. Human nature is fixed and unchangeable. Most free market ideas we come up with will fail or never be tried, but some will succeed brilliantly and society will advance a little more.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Free Markets, Health Care, Politics, The United States | Tags: Barack Obama, Harry Reid's Senate, Obamacare
The U.S. Congress has, for the first time sent legislation to the president that repeals large portions of ObamaCare. The House of Representatives has passed bills repealing ObamaCare in every Congress since the bill was first enacted, but was unable to get them past the Harry-Reid-controlled Senate. The Senate continually blocked the bills from reaching President Obama’s desk. That he will veto the bill is certain, but the ObamaCare repeal Vote counts.
The House voted 241 to 181 to pass the “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act” which followed a Senate vote for passage of 53 to 47.
ADDENDUM: Many will ask why, when Obama is sure to veto the bill, it’s such a big deal. Most of us don’t really grasp the slow and difficult pace of getting a bill passed in both Houses of Congress. Each member has his or her own constituents to please, and important businesses and organizations within their state or district. And each of them is a cantankerous fallible human being as well. This puts Congress on record as opponents of ObamaCare, which is failing, as we said it would. And it puts the President on record with his veto.
It is worth noting that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is facing a major financial crisis. The NHS trusts have run up a deficit of almost £1 billion in just the first three months of the fiscal year. Over 9,000 people die each year needlessly because of NHS. Britain is far from being a model for ObamaCare or the single payer plan beloved by the Democrats. In Canada wait times have increased even more, and they were already bad.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Bureaucracy, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Iran, Iraq, National Security, Regulation, Russia, Terrorism | Tags: Focus on Climate, Obama Mistakes, Obamacare, The Iran Deal
President Obama remarked the other day that if he were able to run for another term he was sure he would be re-elected. I imagine that he is confident because his policies are succeeding so well that everyone would look forward to a continuation. I’m not really so sure. Some of us are onto him.
The U.S. confirms Iran launched a “missile inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.” It’s only one example of President Obama’s nuclear deal unleashing the world’s foremost terrorist regime.
In announcing that Iran violated a United Nations Security Council resolution with its Oct. 10 launch of a ballistic missile that could carry a nuclear warhead, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power promised that the U.S. would prepare a report and swiftly raise the issue with the Security Council.
“The Security Council prohibition on Iran’s ballistic missile activities, as well as the arms embargo, remain in place,” Power said.
We did mention that the Ayatollah was fairly clear that he had no intention of hewing to the strictures of Obama’s Iran Deal.
ObamaCare enrollment will flatline this next year, The sixth health insurance co-op has gone belly-up. Train-wreck is a common description. In other words, enrollment will be about half what the CBO predicted. Enrollment will have declined from where it was in March. Rate increases have been skyrocketing and some have been as much as 50 percent. The fine for not buying government-approved insurance will go up to $695 per person or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is greatest. Democrats thought the nonprofits would put downward pressure on premiums and arranged for billions ($761,947,628) in guaranteed loans to get them up and running. Obama says the program is working better than anyone expected.
Victor Davis Hanson notes that Barack Obama’s mistakes in the Middle East are so comprehensive they almost look deliberate.
How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East?Putin’s ascendancy was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate.
Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a 501 (c) (3) watchdog group, released an investigative report, Private Interests & Public Office: Coordination Between Governors, the Obama White House and the Tom Steyer-“Founded and Funded” Network of Advocacy Groups to Advance the “Climate” Agenda (and an appendix of source documents), revealing a vast, coordinated, three-track effort by public officials and private interests to promote EPA’s expansive, overreaching and economically devastating greenhouse gas rules, specifically the section 111(d) regulation to shut the nation’s fleet of existing coal-fired power plants, as well as the December Paris climate treaty President Obama is expected to sign to replace the Kyoto Protocol. …
In what is possibly the most intriguing element, seemingly out of an episode of “House of Cards,” Democratic governors’ aides repeatedly reference a plan of “creative engagement” to “compel” certain electric utilities — those subject to their jurisdiction whose businesses cross lines into states led by Republicans — to bring “red state” governors around to support the EPA rules: “[B]ecause there are key utilities whose service territories cross red and blue states Governors in these states could quietly engineer a breakthrough strategy that compels utilities in key red states to lead the charge to win over a key Governor, rather than rely on a standard NGO-shaming strategy that might not deliver.”…
“[W]hat is clear is that 1%-ers are using ‘climate’ policies to destroy politically disfavored industries in order to transfer wealth to the politically preferred,” said Craig Richardson, E&E Legal Executive Director. “The campaign by self-serving individuals must be made known to the public as policymakers consider this plan that will destroy parts of our economy and ruin the most efficient, affordable, and clean energy system ever created.”
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Health Care | Tags: A Touch of Tyranny, IRS, Obamacare
Some small businesses who reimburse their employees for the cost of the premiums for individual health insurance policies, or who pay their employees heath costs directly will be fined up to $36,500 a year — per employee — under a new Internal Revenue Service regulation that took effect July 1, 2015.
The IRS is considering an employer arrangement that reimburses or pays for employee individual health premiums to be “a group health plan” that is subject to the $100 per-employee per-day penalty. The penalty applies whether the reimbursement is considered a before-tax or after-tax contribution. This doesn’t sound like it would pass the smell test in the courts.
That penalty is enough to destroy most small businesses. This rule under which small businesses that get caught helping their workers to buy insurance or pay medical bills —can be fined 18 times more than large businesses that don’t provide coverage at all.
Under the rule, which appears nowhere in the Affordable Care Act, employers who do not offer a group health plan, but give their workers additional pay to compensate for the purchase of health insurance or direct medical expenses can be fined $100 per day, per employee. Over the course of a year that’s $36,500 per employee up to $500,000 in total. The penalty on businesses for failing to comply with the employer mandate is only $2,000 per year. …
In fact, according to NFIB research 14 percent of small businesses that don’t offer group insurance reimburse their workers instead. They think they’re doing a good thing but they’re walking into a minefield.
There is legislation in both houses awaiting action (S. 1697/H.R. 2911).
This seems to fall into the “You Will Obey” category. The EPA also goes in a big way for enormous fines designed to make people fall into line quickly. I wonder how many owners of small businesses have even heard of this regulation? Typical Obama administration act — force compliance, issue more regulations, and be completely puzzled about why the economy is still in the toilet — but brag about the success of administration policies in the marvelous recovery. Sigh.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Health Care, Politics | Tags: A Mess, Democrat lies, Obamacare, Poorly Conceived
Here is a really important article laying out just exactly why Obama Care is such a mess. Now that Chief Justice Roberts has decided that the intent, the viability of the Affordable Care Act is more legally important than its actual language, it’s worth taking a few moments to remember just how the law was passed, and why the inconsistencies and internal contradictions were not just predictable, but inevitable.
Obama keeps calling it health care and assumes that he has given millions of people who lacked health care a great gift. But he has given them only health insurance, and really poor insurance at that. The American people did not want it, and it polled poorly. The Democratic leadership, fearful that the momentum was failing decided to rush a bill through the Senate before they left for Christmas 2009.
On December 18, Majority Leader Harry Reid merged two separate pending bills into a bill to be voted on by the Senate…. To meet the self-imposed Christmas deadline, Reid provided only six days for debate. The Senate bill passed on a strict party line vote, 60-39.
Few people, including Senators and their staffs, had time to read the whole 2,700 page bill, much less note any possible weaknesses, flaws, or ambiguities. Reid and other Senate Democrats weren’t terribly worried about this. The bill was set to go to the House, then back to the Senate, then to “reconciliation” between the House and the Senate versions, and then to the president for his signature. Everyone thought there would be plenty of opportunities to make changes.
But a major impediment arose soon after the Senate bill passed. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy had died that past summer, and the January special election to replace him was won by Republican Scott Brown, who ran as a strong opponent of Obamacare. This deprived the Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and meant that the Senate would not be able to pass a revised bill. The only way to pass Obamacare at this point was to have the House vote on identical legislation to the Senate bill, while engaging in legally dubious procedural maneuvering. And that’s what the Democrats did.
They passed the bill as is and a separate reconciliation bill with minor changes, eliminating some of the most obvious flaws, but leaving the rest intact. So they passed a Senate Bill that nobody wanted and that no one had read in its entirety, and no one understood. Obama and the Democrats believed that it would become increasingly popular and Democrats would continue to control both houses of Congress. Anything wrong with it could be quickly fixed.
Didn’t work out that way. The people never liked it and Republicans took over the House and then the Senate, partly because of ObamaCare. Republicans don’t want to fix a law that they unanimously opposed. The Court, it was hoped, would realize that those who rush through a mess of a law that they haven’t read and don’t understand, with no political support from the other side have to live with the consequences. Instead the majority decided that when the law is unworkable as written they should help out the other branches.
So, you blithely promise Americans who don’t want any such thing that their cost of heath care will go down, that they can keep their doctors, that their medical care will be more efficient, add volumes of regulations and taxes, add a vast bureaucracy to manage it all and make more regulations — pay for the new bureaucracy, then add all sorts of gimmicks sure to reduce costs (that don’t work at all) wrap it up in a computer debacle that only the federal government could manage to come up with, and there you have it. Only a Democrat would believe that could work.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption | Tags: Barack Obama, King v Burwell, Obamacare
………………………………………………………………..photo by Marcus Schreiber
For the second time during his presidency, Barack Obama has ventured to instruct the Supreme Court on what he conceives to be their duty. As John Steele Gordon writes in a piece titled “Obama Instructs the Court” at Contentions:
Presidents nearly always come with fully-functional egos. After all, climbing the greasy pole of American politics requires rich reserves of self-confidence. And self-confidence is equally necessary to being an effective president. No one wants a Captain Queeg in the White House. But Barack Obama combines his egocentricity with an almost boundless intellectual arrogance. It is one of the primary reasons his presidency has been so devoid of successes and so filled with failures and disasters. Only Woodrow Wilson comes anywhere close to being in the same league. And look what happened to him.
Noemie Emery points out in the Washington Examiner that men like Obama and Wilson cannot learn from their mistakes because they cannot admit or even conceive that they can make mistakes.
The conventional view of what has gone wrong — that Obama lacked experience, and that first-term senators should be viewed with suspicion — is undercut by the fact that he has had six years of experience, and failed to learn from it. At home and abroad, Obama makes mistakes over and over, with the same result, and takes nothing from them. He disses his friends, placates aggressors and seems surprised that aggressors advance and whole regions catch fire.
His arrogance prevents him from even listening to anyone who disagrees with him.
Yesterday, at a news conference in Germany, Obama criticized the Supreme Court for a decision that it has not yet made. Essentially, he is instructing a co-equal branch of government on its duty.
The New York Times says simply that Obama is making his case for Health Law, With his usual charm he condemns opponents of his signature health care law as “cynical” partisans seeking to deprive Americans of a benefit that has become an integral part of the country’s social safety net. “This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another — this is health care in America ” he said in a speech to the Catholic Health Association, who wrote a brief asking the high court to uphold it.”It seems so cynical to want to take health care away from millions of people.”
Their lives are better, Mr. Obama said, “Americans support this new reality.” This “new reality” has caused many people to lose the health care they liked. Families are threatened with double digit increases, and huge deductibles before their new insurance pays for anything. The Affordable Care Act does not give people health care, it gives them insurance, and not very good insurance at that. Costs are skyrocketing. Patients cannot find doctors and are going to the emergency room instead.The Court is expected to rule before the end of the month on King v. Burwell.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Health Care, Regulation | Tags: Big Cost Increases, Freedom, Obamacare
The euphemistic name “The Affordable Care Act” always made people laugh. But already, it is reaching the point where “The Unaffordable Care Act” is more appropriate. The LA Times reports that large numbers of Californians enrolled in ACA plans are struggling financially under the cost.
Forty-four percent of exchange policyholders surveyed said it’s somewhat or very difficult to afford their premiums. That’s compared with 25% of adults who had employer-based or other private health insurance.
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, acknowledged that many Californians find it hard to fit health insurance premiums into their household budget, even when they qualify for generous federal subsidies.
ObamaCare exchanges have a gimmick called a “risk corridor.” The idea was that insurers who made a profit would share a portion of that profit with other insurers. If there were not enough profit makers, the taxpayers would make up the difference. Republicans added a provision that required the risk corridors to be revenue neutral, meaning insurers would no longer have access to taxpayer funds. But suggested rates for 2016 are beginning to show up.
In Oregon, five insurers on the exchange are proposing average premium increases for next year ranging from 25.6 percent to 52 percent…. Four insurance companies on Montana’s exchange are requesting average premium increases ranging from 22.4 percent to 45.1 percent.
The biggest company on Tennessee’s exchange, BlueCross/BlueShield, is proposing an average premium increase of 36.6 percent, while the co-op on the exchange, Community Health Alliance, is proposing a 32.6 percent increase. In New Mexico, Health Service Corp. is asking for a premium hike of 51.6 percent. The largest insurer on South Dakota’s exchange is Wellmark, and in Maryland it is CareFirst. They are asking for average rate increases of 42.9 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively.
Charles Krauthammer reports on what his doctor friends are reporting on the increasingly frustration conditions of clinical practice.
The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to “provider.”
“[A] never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies and lawyers … progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
Democrats have never understood the free market, nor incentives and disincentives, and they remain convinced that their brilliant friends in the federal bureaucracy can fix everything if they just have enough control. They’re working now on a study to determine how much they can narrow the window in which women can get a mammogram, so they can reduce that cost.
They added all sorts of nice-sounding benefits (free birth control pills) which add big costs, and when they are surprised by the increase, try to figure out what they can take away to compensate.
The Democrats made Obamacare their priority because they are social missionaries whose goal is to ‘fundamentally transform’ the United States of America, as Obama warned five days before the 2008 election. Creating a massive new program that would absorb one-sixth of the economy and make every American dependent on government for his health needs was the first item on the Democrats’ missionary agenda.They saw it as a milestone on the way to a brave new future. That is the way progressives think, and their opponents had better understand what that means, Progressives are not in politics to tinker with the existing system…They are in politics to transform the way Americans live. *
Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic as more people gained access to doctors and other health-care providers. Medicaid recipients are having trouble finding doctors who will accept their coverage.Naturally, to keep costs down, Progressives have tried to save money by paying doctors less. Doctors are all rich, and health care is supposed to be a service, isn’t it? So, as we warned them, Medicare recipients who cannot find a doctor wind up in the emergency room as well. which costs significantly more than were they allowed to see a doctor in the first place.
“There was a grand theory the law would reduce ER visits,” said Dr. Howard Mell, a spokesman for ACEP. “Well, guess what, it hasn’t happened. Visits are going up despite the ACA, and in a lot of cases because of it.”
The health law’s impact on emergency departments has been closely watched because it has significant implications for the public. ER crowding has been linked to longer wait times and higher mortality rates.
The very grandeur of their ambition turns progressives into zealots. They dream of using the power of the state to make everyone equal and to take care of everyone’s needs. They are going to legislate—and dictate—social equality and social justice. How intoxicating is that idea? It explains why progressives approach politics differently from conservatives. It doesn’t matter to progressives that the massive entitlement programs they created — Social Security and Medicare—are already bankrupt. They can take care of that by making wealthy people pay their “fair share.”Progressives believe that if they can appropriate enough money and accumulate enough power, they can make their glorious future work. …No Republican in his right mind thinks like this.*
Longer wait times and higher mortality rates? Where else have we heard stories like this? Oh yes, those splendid government programs the VA, Medicare, the Indian Health Service. Happened in Massachusetts Care too. You can’t make medical care more affordable by adding massive governmental departments on top and increasing regulation, like adding a tax on each piece of medical equipment. Progressives never understand that their “glorious future” has been tried and failed over and over, under various names, that always turn out to be just plain old tyranny in the end.
*David Horowitz Take No Prisoners,(New York,Regnery, 2014)
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Health Care, Law, Politics, Socialism | Tags: Daniel Hannan M.E.P., Looking Back at 2009, Obamacare
I posted this warning from Britain’s Daniel Hannan, Member of the European Parliament way back in 2009, about imitating their National Health Service. He urged us then not to copy their system. But we didn’t have a choice. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They drew it up in Congressional back rooms, behind locked doors, and passed it without a single Republican vote and without any Republican input. It’s just kind of interesting to see how far we have come since 2009.
If you remember, many on the right posted this diagram of the enormous bureaucracy that was necessary to administer ObamaCare added on top of the networks of insurance companies and the medical profession. Each of these offices and agencies and bureaus is filled with bureaucrats who have to be paid high Beltway salaries and whose healthcare and pensions have to be paid for with taxpayer dollars. They expected to pay for this by taking $500 billion out of Medicare, paying doctors and hospitals less, limiting networks of providers, and eliminating your ability to get care if you travel. ……….(click to enlarge)
American Elephants 