Abdul emphasizes that your private health insurance goes bye-bye under Medicare For All

He's not "public option". He's Medicare For All.

Otherwise known as: Private Health Insurance For Nobody.

 

Joe Biden's national policy director for his 2020 campaign is pissed off a health care CEO gets $20 million a year while the nation's employees aren't taxed on their health insurance compensation, depriving the federal government of $500 billion a year

 That's the single largest tax loss expenditure on the list of tax loss expenditures.

Adding health insurance benefits for employees was a WWII era work-around to FDR's anti-capitalist wage controls, instituted to curb inflation.

When too many were unavailable to do the work because they were off fighting the war, the price of work sky-rocketed. Adding untaxed health insurance benefits helped employers attract and keep workers during wartime.

The untaxed health insurance benefit was & remains tax-free compensation, estimated as today's single largest tax loss expenditure at $500 billion/year.

But Biden's national policy director for his 2020 campaign goes off on a $20m CEO because high compensation earners are the easy target she only pretends are the problem instead of the one you see in the mirror every morning not paying taxes on everything you make.

She needs your votes for the public option, and isn't going to get them by telling you the truth.

The public option, to be sure, would have been superior to the Obamacare Rube Goldberg machine, and is clearly preferable to Medicare For All because the latter would end employer-provided health insurance.

But as with FDR it's still not capitalism, and if you push here something is going to pop out over there and become a problem. The iron laws of supply and demand will always assert themselves, but with capitalism the consequences are immediate, severe, and self-correcting by the market.

If you tax health insurance benefits, you will simply get less health insurance of the kind we have, accompanied by more cries for options from the marketplace for the health insurance we don't have, which if free to provide them . . . will.

Meanwhile a comprehensive federal income tax reform taxing all income at high rates above $102,230 for a single filer and $136,306 for married filing jointly as of June 2026, and at 0% below, is the place to start to reimagine fairness in the United States.

84% of individual earners made less than $100,000 in 2023. The vast majority of them would not notice that an average of $9,500 of employer provided health insurance was being counted as income under the new threshold of $102,230 because they would owe zero taxes anyway. 

We need more reality in economics and less fiddling with it, and certainly none of what Abdul is selling, which will require taxing everybody, not just the rich, much more. He is selling "free at the point of care", but nothing is free. Nothing.

 

 

No good deed goes unpunished in the Democrat Party: Diana DeGette, House leader for the public option in 2009 instead of the Senate's Rube Goldberg Obamacare, defeated in primary after 15 terms

 

 It was Speaker Nancy Pelosi who abandoned the House progressives in 2009, bowing to the Senate plan.

DeGette was progressive before progressive was cool, but now you have to pass the anti-semitic litmus test, as her opponent has, to be a real progressive.

 

 DeGette loses reelection bid to DSA challenger in major upset for Denver-based House seat 

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) lost her reelection bid to former attorney and current Ph.D. student Melat Kiros, marking the third time a democratic socialist has scored an upset in a competitive House primary this cycle, according to Decision Desk HQ. 

Kiros, who studies at the University of Denver, defeated DeGette, who’s served in Congress since 1997 — delivering a major blow to the Democratic establishment despite the fact that DeGette herself was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. University of Colorado Regent Wanda James also ran in the Democratic primary.

... Kiros was fired from her law firm after she wrote a letter directed at U.S. law firms on her Substack in November 2023 in which she disputed the notion that it was antisemitic to call for the state of Israel to be eliminated or criticize Israel’s government.

The former lawyer has also received criticism for declining to say whether or not a 2025 firebombing in Boulder, where protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas were injured, was an act of antisemitism, saying in a recent interview with 9News, “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator.” ... 

 

 

 

Obamacare's chickens have come home to roost!

David Dayen should have entitled this The Planned Failure of Obamacare Is Now Upon Us. 

The Health Insurance Cost Crisis Is Now Upon Us 

... We should be clear that this premium apocalypse is a function of returning Obamacare subsidies to where they were in the original version of the law. That was poorly designed to target the middle class with bearing the bloat in the health care system, and no work was done on basic health plans or other public options at the state level. (A federal public option was stripped from the legislation by the threat of that exemplary moderate, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, to withhold his support unless it was dropped.) Now, Democrats are effectively warning that a return to their original vision of Obamacare spells doom. (And what we’re really talking about is how much the government should send to private insurance companies, a horribly inefficient way of ensuring health for American citizens.) ... The ACA was seen as a “starter home” that could be built on, and Democrats built on it. It’s Republican neglect that is taking the wrecking ball to it, with all the political fallout on their backs. ...

Yes, Obamacare was the enemy of the middle class, making it "bear the bloat". Communists have always hated the middle class because the middle class stands in the way of the revolution. Obamacare was designed this way on purpose, by Democrats and Obama who were the communists we always said they were. Senator Max Baucus rightly called it what it was, income redistribution.

Premiums have steadily risen along with deductibles, to the point that everyone pays their premium, then pays out of pocket, no one ever reaches their deductible, and the plan never pays anything. Most people never reap any benefit under Obamacare. Now premiums will explode without the subsidies, making dropping it more attractive than ever.

And No, Republicans had no duty to "build" on Obamacare. It was rammed down their throats in the first place. No Republicans ever voted for this goddamn commie boondoggle. 

The best thing which could happen right now is for the millions imprisoned in this system to opt out of it and let Obamacare implode. That would force the Congress back into the corner it was in in 2009.

Not one more penny should be spent to prop up this system which benefits only the insurance companies. Can you say Luigi Mangione?

Obamacare should be repealed, and nothing done to replace it. It would be painful, but it is the only way.

In the aftermath, someone will start to sell real insurance again out of the ashes, and the current greedy bastards of the insurance industry will scramble to follow them as they lose business and market share. That, the capitalist option, is the only public option which makes any sense, but currently that is against the law.

Just repeal it. 

 

 

 

As much as I sympathize with this guy's tale of Obamacare woe, his timeline is pure fantasy

 The story is here:

My insurance was $185/month with a $1,000 deductible. That was for a family of 5. So I voted for Obama-Biden in 2008 based on Obamacare. ...  the cheapest insurance I could find to replace that one was $1,200 a month with a $6,000 deductible.

The guy had a great plan before Obama!

But Obamacare as he now thinks he knows it didn't even exist in 2008 for him to base his vote on it.

Obama was for something else, the public option, a government-funded health insurance plan designed to compete with private health insurance. That was also Nancy Pelosi's preference, and the preference of the US House Democrat left at the time.

The great fear was the public option would crowd out private insurance and defeat it because it would be more attractive to women and the chronically ill.

The House public option plan put forward in 2009 competed with the Senate plan, and the two proposals were at an impasse by the end of 2009. Eventually the Senate version prevailed in March of 2010.

The Senate plan was actually worse, what we now call Obamacare.

It dictated the much more expensive nature and new shape of all existing private insurance plans instead of providing a separate public option to compete with those already existing private insurance plans. It cost more to provide because it eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions, and treated men and women equally even though women's care is more costly.

It was fascism pure and simple, government dictating to the private sector what will be, and what will not be.

That's how you lost your old plan, your old doctor, and your money: Because Obama bowed to the Senate plan, instead of fighting for what he said he believed in.

If you were too poor, though, to qualify for Obamacare, you just got stuck with Medicaid, health insurance for the poor, and, failing that, with nothing at all.

The once heralded public option for everyone defaulted to Medicaid. Nearly 86 million are now stuck with that, and most are unaware of its clawback provisions.

Today only 21 million can afford Obamacare, and about 25 million non-elderly adults have bupkis, like the poor fella in the story had for ten years.

Meanwhile, 158 million have employer-provided health insurance, the cost of which climbs relentlessly. The average worker had to pay $549 a month in premiums for it in 2023.

Medicare provides coverage to about 66 million aged 65+, and costs nearly $175 a month in 2024.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

 

 

There was zero quid pro quo in the Trump-Ukraine call, but plenty of it in the Biden video at CFR

Biden 2020 is irreparably damaged goods. People are asking if that wasn't Nancy Pelosi's goal all along, in order to get Biden out of the way for Elizabeth Warren.

Remember, Pelosi threw the US House public option plan under the bus in 2009 in order to get a win for Obama with the Senate's Obamacare in 2010. She's throwing the House's reputation under again for the higher good: A better candidate than creepy Uncle Joe.

See how this works, folks? Biden creeps left, Biden crawls left, he's the epitome of moderation!

In 2009 the public option was toxic leftism. In 2019 it's the epitome of moderation compared to the other radicals running for president. Every. Damn. Election.

Creepy Uncle Joe reveals BFD 2.0

BFD 1.0 wasn't such a BFD after all then, now was it?

His proposal sounds an awful lot like the public option plan passed by Nancy Pelosi's US House in 2009, which the US Senate rejected in favor of its plan, which is what we have now, Obamacare.

The problem with the public option plan was that it threatened to undercut private insurance through unfair competition with its immediate access to the limitless deep pockets of the Federal Treasury.

Joe's a Fabian socialist, not a revolutionary, slow walking the country to the guillotine.

Story.

Gingrich Increases Delegates Over 200 Percent With Super Tuesday Wins

Here's the delegate snapshot from The Wall Street Journal, showing the new totals for each candidate after Super Tuesday.

Romney's lead is making all the headlines, but Gingrich's surge yesterday was the most significant. But can Gingrich keep it going?

Gingrich went from a total of 33 to 105, a gain of 218 percent.

Romney went from a total of 203 to 415, a gain of 104 percent.

Santorum went from a total of 92 to 176, a gain of 91 percent.

Paul went from a total of 25 to 47, a gain of 88 percent.

Gingrich is as vulnerable as Romney on the individual mandate. Newt has believed in it at least since 2006, and famously agreed with Romney in a Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas last October that they both got the idea from the so-called conservative Heritage Foundation (source of following transcript):

MR. ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.


MR. GINGRICH: That's not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.


MR. ROMNEY: Well, it was something - yeah, we got it from you and the - you - got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.


MR. GINGRICH: No, but - well, you - well, you - (inaudible) -


MR. ROMNEY: But let me - but let me just -


MR. GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true.


MR. ROMNEY: Well, I thought -


MR. GINGRICH: You did not get that from me.


MR. ROMNEY: I think you -


MR. GINGRICH: You got it from the Heritage Foundation.


MR. ROMNEY: And - and you've never - never supported -


MR. GINGRICH: I was - I agree with them, but I'm just saying what you've said to this audience just now plain wasn't true. That's not where you got it from.


MR. ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask - have you - have you supported in the past an individual mandate?


MR. GINGRICH: I absolutely did, with the Heritage Foundation, against "Hillarycare."


MR. ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?


MR. GINGRICH: Yes, sir.


MR. ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That's what I'm saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.


MR. GINGRICH: OK. Little broader. (Laughter.)


MR. ROMNEY: OK.

In 2009 Romney specifically argued for the individual mandate in this USA Today op-ed as an acceptable alternative to the public option as embodied in Nancy Pelosi's version of ObamaCare which passed in the US House. Since then Romney has flipped on this issue, claiming repeatedly that he has been against imposing a RomneyCare-like plan on the whole country.

The Senate version of ObamaCare, which eventually became the law but is now going to be challenged before the Supreme Court, represents what Romney hoped for: government compulsion in healthcare insurance which kept government out of the insurance business itself (public option) while preserving the system of private, free-enterprise, health insurance more or less as it exists.

Historically, Republicans have been against a government-sponsored health insurance enterprise because of the perception that government has an unfair advantage against which private business cannot hope to compete and succeed. A case in point today would be Fannie and Freddie, the failed government mortgage giants without whom, alas, few people today can hope to get a mortgage. If you want a vision of failed government healthcare in about ten years, consider the miserable failed condition of those GSEs today.

This is Santorum's opportunity, but many of us wonder whether he's got the right stuff to ride this issue to the presidency. And it might become a moot point after the Supremes rule on ObamaCare by this summer.

Gingrich for his part has tried to change the subject to jobs and growth viewed through the lens of energy independence. It is a good strategy, but it leaves many voters who are worried about the growth and intrusion of the State with a nagging question unanswered: how is Newt really different from Romney philosophically if he's been willing to flirt with mandates?

Romney in 2009 Openly Favored Tax Penalties To Make People Buy Health Insurance

Romney's op-ed from USA Today is reproduced here.

The relevant portion below is argued in opposition to strong efforts at the time, particularly in the US House under Nancy Pelosi, to pass a healthcare reform bill which included the public option, or government insurance.

Romney's idea, as with RomneyCare in Massachusetts, was to shun the public option in favor of mandated purchase of privately supplied health insurance, under penalty of a tax, which is what we got with the Senate version of healthcare reform now known to us as ObamaCare, under which the tax is called a fine in order for the president to be able to claim that he does not raise taxes on ordinary Americans:

"Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar."

As many have been maintaining, Romney's reasoning shows no essential disagreement with ObamaCare. Romney favors government compulsion in healthcare.

I'll Bet You Didn't Know Kentucky Repealed ObamaCare in 2003

I didn't know either. It took about ten years.

The article appeared here:

www.nationalreview.com

STEPHEN SPRUIELL

APRIL 5, 2010

Bluegrass Bummer

Does Kentucky’s experience with health-insurance overregulation hold lessons for repealing Obamacare?

In the mid-1990s, Kentucky was one of eight state governments that boldly went where the rest of the country refused to go: The commonwealth imposed Clintoncare’s restrictions on its insurance companies, even though Clintoncare had been vanquished from the national stage. In Kentucky and the other seven states, insurance premiums skyrocketed, healthy people stopped buying insurance, and insurance companies exited the market in droves. Only three of the eight were able to untangle themselves from the harmful provisions; only one, Kentucky, was able to pull off a full repeal.

Trey Grayson was elected Kentucky secretary of state in 2003, the year before Gov. Ernie Fletcher was able to finalize the repeal — you’ll note it took ten years to accomplish. Grayson, who is currently running for the Republican nomination to replace Jim Bunning in the U.S. Senate, says that those pushing to repeal Obamacare can take a few lessons from the Kentucky experience. “On the one hand it gives you some hope, because in Kentucky we were able to gradually repeal the elements that were driving up the number of uninsured, that were increasing premiums at a rate higher than the national average, that were driving insurance companies out of the state,” Grayson says. “But unfortunately it took ten years, caused rates to be higher, hurt our economy and hurt our state government from a revenue standpoint. So a lot of damage was done.”

In 1994, Democratic governor Brereton Jones strong-armed a version of Clintoncare through the Democratic-controlled state legislature over the reservations of Republicans and some conservative Democrats. Much like Obamacare, Kentucky’s House Bill 250 forbade insurance companies to deny coverage or charge higher rates based on pre-existing conditions, thus negating the point of insurance — which, properly understood, involves paying premiums to hedge against risk. Under Kentucky’s laws, as under Obamacare, you could wait until you got sick to buy coverage and still obtain it at the same rates as everyone else. (Obamacare includes a requirement that healthy people have insurance, which its proponents say will prevent the premium hikes and insurance-company flight that Kentucky experienced. But the penalty for evading this requirement is relatively small; its constitutionality is suspect; and it might not even be enforceable.)

The problem with such regulations is that healthy people make the rational decision to drop their coverage and wait until they get sick to renew it. As healthy people stop paying into the risk pool, premiums for those who remain skyrocket. If insurance companies are forbidden from increasing premiums to keep up with costs, they leave town or close down. Unsurprisingly, average premiums in Kentucky increased between 36 and 165 percent in the wake of the reforms. Within four years, over 40 insurance companies had stopped offering individual insurance coverage. The two remaining providers, Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield and a state-run plan called Kentucky Kare, teetered on the brink of insolvency (Kentucky Kare went under in 1999).

By the late 1990s, Grayson says, “If you said House Bill 250, it was a four-letter word.”

In 1998, the Kentucky legislature, still controlled by Democrats, started repairing the damage by passing a reform package that modified the insurance requirements but didn’t repeal them. In 1999, party switches gave Republicans control of the state senate, and the legislature repealed most of the harmful provisions. Finally, in 2003, Kentucky elected a Republican governor for the first time since 1967, and one of his first acts was to sign a moratorium on new insurance mandates. These reforms slowed the rise of premiums and started bringing insurance companies back to the state.

“What was interesting,” Grayson notes, “is that the repeals were done in a bipartisan manner. Democrats, many of whom voted for House Bill 250, saw the negative impact.” Rising premiums and fleeing insurance companies gave opponents of the bill a compelling story to tell. “When we had evidence, we used it,” Grayson says. “That was what convinced Kentucky voters.” The bill’s opponents armed themselves with facts, and the case against House Bill 250 grew too overwhelming to resist.

This is the first lesson proponents of repeal should take from Kentucky: Construct a narrative around all of the bill’s negative consequences. “So, for example, we’ve already had John Deere and Verizon and some other companies take charges for the next quarter,” Grayson says. “As we learn about businesses choosing to drop insurance or delay expansion plans or whatever they have to do to avoid this, I think we have to take those real-life consequences and tell the public.”

The second lesson, he says, “is that you don’t have to do a full repeal right off the bat. If you can start getting rid of some of the bad elements, try that.” Repealing the most unpopular parts of the bill — new taxes on investment, on income, on medical devices — can pave the way for repealing the spending provisions: “If those taxes have to be repealed or phased out,” Grayson says, “then you start to have a financial concern: How you are going to pay for all this stuff as the subsidies are phased in?”

Liberals are much more influential in Washington than in Kentucky’s statehouse in Frankfort: When the big problems with Obamacare start surfacing, they will push, not for repealing the bill, but for nationalizing even more of the health-care industry. They will call for a stronger penalty for not purchasing insurance or, if the Supreme Court invalidates that provision, they might push for a “public option” to offer a taxpayer-subsidized alternative to the private insurance companies they have broken. When the public option doesn’t work (and we know it won’t, thanks to another failed state experiment in Maine), liberals will argue that the only way to fix the broken system is to make the government the “single payer” for all medical costs.

Opponents of Obamacare must be prepared to make the opposite case, starting with this election cycle. The strongest lesson from Kentucky is that the longer Obamacare stays on the books, the more damage it will inflict on the economy. Conservative candidates such as Grayson can and should run on this issue. Health-care reform “is clearly on the minds of voters,” he says — it’s the second thing people want to talk to him about, after the University of Kentucky’s performance in the NCAA tournament — “and most folks I talk to are not real pleased. I think voters want us to do something about it — hopefully before the damage gets done.”

— Stephen Spruiell is an NRO staff reporter.

Obamacare: Designed To Fail To Get To Single Payer?

If so, it gets the chutzpah award of the millennium. The following appeared here:

Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff

http://www.powerlineblog.com

NON-ENFORCEMENT: A FEATURE OR A BUG?

March 29, 2010 Posted by John at 6:59 PM

The individual mandate is one of the most controversial features of Obamacare, so when it came out that the law makes no provision to enforce the mandate, many were nonplussed. Morgen Richmond, in the linked article, writes:

[W]ithout an effective mechanism of enforcing the individual mandate, the entire system is likely to collapse. (The individual mandate is the "third leg of the stool" as many a liberal has been pointing out for months.) Given that the bill also bans insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, WHY WOULD ANYONE OBTAIN INSURANCE COVERAGE PRIOR TO NEEDING IT? This was already going to be a problem with the relatively low cost of the penalty, but take away any meaningful enforcement of it and it is a complete and total joke.

The net result will be an ever increasing shift of healthcare costs on to those who remain in the insurance system (or to tax payers), and possibly even the bankruptcy of the insurance industry.

Hmm. Bug or feature? We report, you decide. A reader writes:

Absolutely essential and fundamental to the very design of the Obamacare bill is the individual mandate to require purchase of prescribed health insurance. And yet in what is an amazingly revealing feature of the bill there is literally no provision for enforcement of the mandate. While this has been known for some time -- it was discussed a few weeks ago in NRO in the context of resistance or civil disobedience to the mandate -- it is only now getting the exposure it deserves.

As the linked article makes clear, while the bill does provide for fines to enforce the mandate through the income tax system....the IRS is explicitly prevented from collecting the fines by assessments, liens or seizures, no civil or criminal penalties attach to failure to pay such fines and no interest accrues from the date the fine is due!! This is actually amazing and cries out for explanation.

In my view, this is not the result of a simple oversight or error...quite the contrary. This is a feature, not a bug. We can be sure of this because they had to go to the trouble of specifying that enforcement was prohibited; silence would have meant that the normal IRS enforcement powers were available and presumed to be used to ensure that the mandate legislated by Congress was carried out. Normally the simplest explanation would involve stupidity, incompetence, error, haste or some other ordinary failure. In this case I think the explanation has to be, since it was intentionally put in the bill, that the architects of Obamacare intend that the individual mandate will fail....and guarantee it by actually affirmatively prohibiting enforcement.

Why would they do this? One reason is that, despite all the confident left wing bluster, they may very well be afraid that, given the extraordinary implications for the vast expansion of government power, the Supreme Court may well find, as they should, such a mandate to be unconstitutional. [Ed.: Unlikely, in my view.] That would undermine the whole program and is a complication that the Obama administration I am sure would prefer to avoid. As well as avoiding nasty scenes of property seizures or wage garnishments lack of enforcement would also prevent an individual desiring to make a test case from having standing to sue. (Why the approach taken by the Attorney General in Virginia in relying for standing on conflict of state and federal laws is clever.)

The real reason, I suspect, is more insidious -- quite simply to destroy the private health insurance industry and create an irresistible demand for expansion of the program to a public option and ultimately to single payer provision. It is undeniable that guaranteed issue of insurance at ordinary rates for those with preëxisting medical conditions is popular; but forcing insurance companies to cover them at average rates cannot possibly work unless healthy younger people are forced into the risk pool at rates higher than what their risk rating would otherwise be. Without the mandate, in other words, the insurance companies cannot possibly be viable and also cover preëxisting conditions at average premium rates.

Quite simply, Obamacare has created a ticking time bomb for the insurance industry. Those with preëxisting conditions will be covered.....and demand continuation of the coverage at prescribed rates....and those who ignore the mandate, presumably anybody at all affected by it, face no consequences. As costs spiral out of control, premiums will have to rise and subsidies increase. Insurance companies would have to either fold or shift costs....to those covered by employers....becoming a perfect target for left wing demagoguery and vilification. The only way out as more and more of those covered by employers get pushed into the exchanges as costs get shifted to them and employers no longer offer insurance -- yet another intended consequence -- is the public "option" or outright nationalization through a single payer plan.

We know that a single payer nationalized health care plan is the long term objective and intention for proponents of Obamacare and has been all along. They're completely disingenuous about how "incremental" and "modest" the program is. The astonishing fact that they deliberately prohibited enforcement of a critical component of the plan tells you all you need to know. It will intentionally create a crisis...a feature, not a bug....and a crisis is something this crowd never wants to go to waste.

CPUSA Openly Aligns Itself With President Obama

President Obama, speaking to the House Republicans, on Friday, January 29, 2010, about the healthcare legislation debate:

"Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that's not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that's how you guys -- (applause) -- that's how you guys presented it."

But the Bolsheviks aren't "plotting." They're openly applauding.

From The American Thinker:

July 20, 2009

Obama and the CPUSA

Randall Hoven

I encourage you to read the latest words from Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party USA. As is the wont of communists, Mr. Webb is rather long-winded; I provide only a few interesting excerpts:

Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.

In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead.

We can visualize passing tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry, which brought the economy to ruin.

In the current political climate, the expansion of union rights becomes a real possibility.

Much the same can be said about winning a second stimulus bill, and we sure need one, given the still-rising rate, and likely long term persistence, of unemployment.

Isn't it possible in the Obama era to create millions of green jobs in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy in tandem with an attack on global warming?

The new conditions of struggle are possible only - and I want to emphasize only - because we elected President Obama and a Congress with pronounced progressive and center currents.

Yes, socialism is our objective and, according to recent public opinion polls, it is increasingly attractive to the American people. But clearly it is not on the immediate political agenda.

As for our radicalism, we should be as radical as reality itself. And reality strongly suggests that our main task is to bring the weight of the working class and other democratic forces to bear on the reform process with the aim of deepening its anti-corporate content and direction.

Let's be aware that he [Obama] has to keep a coalition together for his long-term as well as immediate legislative agenda. Let's give President Obama some space to change and to respond to pressures from below.

The Right Wing, the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies have drawn a line in the sand on health care.

The core of this struggle, whether we like it or not, turns on the inclusion of a public option in a health care bill.

Months ago it was said that the downturn could be "L-shaped" rather than "V-shaped." In other words, the crisis begins with a steep decline in economic activity followed by long period of economic stagnation.

I suspect that this is what will happen, thus making sustained government and people's intervention an imperative. In my view this should take at least three forms:

First, more economic stimulus: the economy is underperforming and nearly 30 million workers are unemployed or underemployed and that number hasn't peaked yet.

Second, restructuring is imperative. The old economic model that rested on bubble economics, cheap labor, financial manipulation and speculation, deregulation, capital outsourcing, environmental degradation, and so forth, has to be replaced by a new model that expands and restructures the productive base and is "people and nature" friendly.

Finally, the economy has to be democratized. The wizards of Wall Street and inside the Beltway failed miserably, in fact, so miserably those economic decisions that affect the welfare of millions shouldn't rest in their hands.

In the meantime, the struggle for immediate public sector jobs and relief should command our attention.

President Obama ... has expressed a readiness to engage with countries that during the Bush years were considered mortal enemies - Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and others.

In Iraq, the U.S. withdrawal plan is proceeding, with the first stage being withdrawal from Iraqi cities by July. President Obama has reiterated his intention to stick with the pullout deadlines. Even with the caveats about what U.S. forces might remain, this is a major victory for the peace movement.

If not already painfully obvious to you, let me point out a few things:

(1) Obama's policy agenda and that of the CPUSA are in perfect alignment: more stimuli; green jobs; global warming; public sector jobs; more regulation and, in fact, restructuring of the entire economy; eventual single-payer health care, with the public option being critical to any immediate plan; union-friendly legislation; cutting defense spending; engaging and normalizing relations with the US's mortal enemies like Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and the reigning mullahs of Iran; claiming victory in Iraq as their own.

(2) Obama's political approach is also in perfect harmony with that of the CPUSA's. The method is gradualism. Overall, Obama is doing pretty well at achieving CPUSA's goals under the current political circumstances. The Left should not expect immediate and radical changes. And of all things, the Left should not "define the current struggle as one that arrays the people against President Obama. That's not Marxism; it's plain stupid."

(3) Mr. Webb expects a lousy economy to continue. Specifically, he expects the "L-shaped" recovery. But this "long period of economic stagnation" will be an excuse for continued government intervention. As Lenin supposedly said, "the worse the better."

(4) Socialism is the objective.

In my view, this duck has a bill, webbed feet and feathers; quacks, walks, flies and swims; and has DNA that matches that of a duck. I'm willing to call it a duck.

The really striking thing about all this, though, is that the CPUSA can openly align itself with the President of the US, right under our noses, and it will have zero effect on public sentiment because the lapdog media studiously averts its gaze.

Of Course Obama Was For The Public Option

Lanny Davis was interviewed on the Laura Ingraham Show this morning, denying Obama ever ran on the public option, in response to Howard Dean's recent assertion that the people of Massachusetts voted for Republican Scott Brown to send a message to Obama for backtracking on it.

Lanny obviously got the talking points memo: "deny we ever ran on the public option."

As for Howard Dean, Scott Brown ran promising three things: to be the 41st vote against healthcare in the Senate, to treat terrorists like enemy combatants instead of criminals, and to cut spending and taxes. This enraged Bay State liberals so much they ran right out and voted for it.

Do we really need to review the evidence on the public option? For video go here. But remember: "JUST WORDS!"

House Healthcare Bill Nullifies 3rd, 4th and 5th Amendments

The Truth About the Health Care Act

Michael Connelly, Constitutional Law Attorney

(See http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/ for a bio on Michael Connelly)

Well, I've done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.

However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.

The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, to all of your personal healthcare and financial information, and personal information from your employer, physician and hospital: a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. There is nothing in the Health Care Bill that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax; which deprives us of property without the due process of law.

Three amendments out of the original ten in the Bill of Rights, are effectively nullified by this Health Care Act. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly, Retired Attorney

Constitutional Law Attorney

Carrollton, Texas

Insurance is for Accidents, Not Oil Changes

Political meddling in healthcare has driven up its costs and reduced choice. It's time to end that, not expand it, as yet another excellent thinker has made plain here.

November 3, 2009

The "Costs" of Medical Care: Part IV

By Thomas Sowell

What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?

Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others.

Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered.

If the government has some magic way of reducing costs-- rather than shifting them around, including shifting them to the next generation-- they have certainly not revealed that secret. The actual track record of government when it comes to costs-- of anything-- is more alarming than reassuring.

What about insurance companies denying reimbursements for treatments? Does anyone imagine that a government bureaucracy will not do that?

Moreover, the worst that an insurance company can do is refuse to pay for medication or treatment. In some countries with government-run medical systems, the government can prevent you from spending your own money to get the medication or treatment that their bureaucracy has denied you. Your choice is to leave the country or smuggle in what you need.

However appalling such a situation may be, it is perfectly consistent with elites wanting to control your life. As far as those elites are concerned, it would not be "social justice" to allow some people to get medical care that others are denied, just because some people "happen to have money."

But very few people just "happen to have money." Most people have earned money by producing something that other people wanted. But getting what you want by what you have earned, rather than by what elites will deign to allow you to have, is completely incompatible with the vision of an elite-controlled world, which they call "social justice" or other politically attractive phrases. The "uninsured" are another big talking point for government medical insurance. But the incomes of many of the uninsured indicate that many-- if not most-- of them choose to be uninsured. Poor people can get insurance through Medicaid.

Free loading at emergency rooms-- mandated by government-- makes being uninsured a viable option.

Within living memory, most Americans had no medical insurance. Even large medical bills were paid off over a period of months or years, just as we buy big-ticket items like cars or houses.

This is not ideal for everybody or every situation. But if we are ready to rush headlong into government control of our lives every time something is not ideal, then we are not going to remain a free people very long.

Ironically, it is politicians who have already made medical insurance so expensive that many people refuse to buy it. Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

In various states, medical insurance must cover the costs of fertility treatments, annual checkups and other things that have nothing to do with risks. What many people most want is to be insured against the risk of having their life's savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness.

But you cannot get insurance just for catastrophic illnesses when politicians keep piling on mandates that drive up the cost of the insurance. These are usually state mandates but the federal government is already promising more mandates on insurance companies-- which means still higher costs and higher premiums.

All this makes a farce of the notion of a "public option" that will simply provide competition to keep private insurance companies honest. What politicians can and will do is continue to drive up the cost of private insurance until it is no longer viable. A "public option" is simply a path toward a "single payer" system, a euphemism for a government monopoly.