AOC's goal goes far beyond becoming president: It's single payer healthcare

 “They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat, and my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Presidents come and go … elected officials come and go, but single-payer healthcare is forever.”

More. 

When you have to write articles like this with eight weeks to go lol

 How Kamala Harris Can Prove She’s Not a Flip-flopping Phony

Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

Kamala Harris’s effort to depict herself as a candidate of safe but forward-looking change (as opposed to the decidedly unsafe and reactionary change represented by Donald Trump) has unsurprisingly spurred a host of GOP attacks on a cherry-picked assortment of unpopular or at least questionable-sounding policy positions from her past, ranging from support for a single-payer health-care system and sympathy for undocumented immigrants to opposition to fracking and to aggressive policing tactics.

 

Is Chris Cillizza, formerly of CNN, WaPo, Meet the Depressed, and PMSNBC cherry-picking?

 

I mean, most of these lists are incomplete because Harris' has left a LONG trail demonstrating her extreme leftism in speeches, interviews, tweets, policy statements from 2019, et cetera, and it's a daunting task to list them all. Any list of them will show an editor's bias about what's important in the editor's opinion.

But the idea from James Carville endorsed by Kilgore that Harris can just say she learned in the White House that spending $800 billion over ten years in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act to reverse climate change was good enough when in 2019 she said it would take $1 trillion PER YEAR for ten years is just laughable.

 

LAUGHABLE.

That's hardly going to fly with the climate change left, let alone anyone else.

 

Ed Kilgore's just pretending that isn't the case. He's an enabler of Harris' silence in the face of the flip-flops.

 

 

 

 

Biden in the cat bird seat: Just as Bernie tanked after promising criminals will get to vote, Warren has tanked after hedging on Medicare for all

Ezra Klein, here:

One lesson of the past few weeks is that the Medicare-for-all debate has become a minefield for Democrats — and it’s not clear that any candidate has a safe path through it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has dropped 14 points since October 8, when she briefly led the Democratic field in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Most attribute her decline to her handling of Medicare-for-all — the financing plan she released made her the target of attacks from the moderates, and then the transition plan she released, which envisions a robust public option in the first year of her presidency and only moving to Medicare-for-all in year three, left single-payer advocates unnerved about her commitment to the cause.

The Democrat left has been its own worst enemy.

In addition to alienating working people by going soft on crime, the people who bear the brunt of it, Bernie has notably lost ground with the working class by flipping on immigration restriction. Every new immigrant drives down their wages when immigrants are not taking their jobs outright.

For her part, on top of hedging on Medicare for all, Warren has rolled out a veritable cornucopia of crazy in this campaign, including a ban on all fracking in the US and ending the Electoral College. Combined with the recent lying about the little details of her life, voters justifiably doubt her sincerity on these larger issues and suspect that she cares about little except getting the power into her hands.

Hence the default candidate still on top, Joe Biden.

America's political institutions are still so structured that even when radicals like Obama do win, those institutions frustrate their aims. The upside of this is that harmful radicalism is usually stopped in its tracks. The downside is that mediocrities and grotesques are produced.

Just as Obama was content to let his Clinton retreads handle the Great Financial Crisis resulting in the still poor full time employment, moribund GDP, unaffordable housing and low interest rates catastrophic to income portfolios of the present time, Obama provided zero leadership on healthcare reform. This resulted in the competing Democrat House and Senate versions which consumed his first year in office, and eventually produced the Affordable Care Act camel, a horse designed by a committee. He sure did enjoy watching basketball in the private residence, though, and went on to make the Bush tax cuts permanent after winning re-election in 2012. Some radical, huh?

The same thing has happened with Trump. Although promising us the moon about immigration, healthcare reform and foreign wars, he instead delivered tax reform mostly for the corporations and huge spending increases for the military industrial complex, which is the basic consensus of the Republican caucus in Congress, foolishly hoping that they would give him a little somethin' somethin' in return.

Nothing doing. Even trade realignment will disappear when Trump does.

Trump's problem is that he never had a political faction holding any seats in Congress to drive his agenda. He just assumed the existing members would adopt his positions, which is pretty damn naive considering how he attacked and alienated them all throughout 2015-2016. Instead, Trump has steadily moved away from his own positions and adopted theirs, for his own political survival.

Trump's porous bollard fencing instead of the real wall he promised is simply the most public symbol of this, going back as it does to the George W. Bush administration.

The only radical realignment we have seen is the realignment of the radicals with their respective parties, and Election 2020 will be the same old, same old fight between them.

Those who won't realign get discarded.

This is the tyranny of the legislative. And the only way to remedy this is to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the great mistake of 1951. Only the threat of a Trump or an Obama perpetually in the White House will restore the balance of power between the three branches of government and advance the interests of the people who vote for the president.

As things stand, the best we can hope for is a president desperately stacking the courts to increase his power in a tyranny of the judiciary, which is hardly the remedy intended by the founders and is unacceptable to Americans loyal to the constitution and the nation as founded. The three stooges of the law schools on display at the impeachment hearing yesterday are proof enough of that. 

Support for single payer healthcare has fallen since 2017, opposition to it has risen, country is divided

I thought Obamacare was supposed to have fixed everything?

You mean it didn't?

Somebody get Obama on the phone.

Investors Business Daily thinks no one noticed Obama's recent public embrace of Bernie's radical socialism

Here.

We noticed. We just didn't mention it because we've been pointing out Obama's socialism for nine years already. Yawn.

But Obama was only a fair weather friend of socialism for most of that time because most of the Democrat Party remained neoliberal. Nothing points up his lackluster leadership and servile character throughout that time better than his constant fear of a backlash from the neoliberal wing of a party he supposedly led. Actually it led him. Obama was relieved to wash his hands of the economic crisis and delegated fixing it to Bill Clinton's neoliberal retreads. The guy couldn't even take the socialist baton of Pelosi's single payer plan for crying out loud, or embrace a Paul Krugman approved properly sized stimulus spending bill. And making the Bush tax cuts permanent? That was hardly the work of the leader (in his head) of world socialism.

Freed from the strictures of politics, Obama is now free to advance his fanciful sympathies without consequences, as long as the wind is blowing in that direction. My guess is the left wing of his party sees this as nothing more than his feeble attempt to be relevant again when to them he had already become an object of contempt by the end of 2009.

The author of Dreams from My Father is just dreamin', that's all. All he ever did.

Peter Morici: Republican opposition to regulating prices will bring Medicaid-like single payer to USA

Here.

Noted cardiologist predicts Republican healthcare reform will fail and lead to single payer

Here.

Krauthammer thinks Trump might go for single payer in the end, in which case Americans should get it, good and hard

Think of it as socialism with Republican characteristics.

Krauthammer, here:

Obamacare may turn out to be unworkable, indeed doomed, but it is having a profound effect on the zeitgeist: It is universalizing the idea of universal coverage.

Acceptance of its major premise — that no one be denied health care — is more widespread than ever. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan avers that “our goal is to give every American access to quality, affordable health care,” making universality an essential premise of his own reform. And look at how sensitive and defensive Republicans have been about the possibility of people losing coverage in any Obamacare repeal. ...

As Obamacare continues to unravel, it won’t take much for Democrats to abandon that Rube Goldberg wreckage and go for the simplicity and the universality of Medicare-for-all.

Simplicity? Draco's laws were simple. The penalty for every crime was death.

I wonder if Krauthammer has a clue what he's talking about.

Total Medicare outlays in 2015 came to $632 billion.

Total Medicaid outlays in 2015 came to $552 billion country wide (read the Notes).

Total Social Security and Disability outlays in 2015 came to $897.1 billion.

That is a total of $2.0811 trillion from 2015 total net compensation of $7.4158 trillion, or 28%, without even talking about "universal coverage" yet.

Yet all your typical American pays now for this is 10.63%:

6.2% in Social Security tax and 1.45% for Medicare, plus whatever taxes are paid at the state and local level toward Medicaid, which federal law mandates must account for at least 40% of program revenues. So $221 billion from 160.8 million wage earners across the country in 2015 represents another 2.98% paid by them at the state level.

The status quo therefore is funded only 38% by its beneficiaries, at best. I say "at best" because many beneficiaries pay NOTHING because they don't work and never have. But I digress.

So bring about Krauthammer's revolution, for that is what he's talking about, and reset the table as follows.

Total healthcare outlays in the United States in 2015 came to $3.2 trillion. Add in $897.1 billion for Social Security and Disability, and you now have a "universal" obligation bloated to $4.097 trillion, which represents 55% of net compensation that year.

That's your tax.

You've become France, Germany, Denmark or some other Western European paradise which depends on the United States for its defense.

And that's before even talking about funding the $1.2 trillion part of the federal budget which is discretionary, like defending ourselves against that little fat kid playing with hydrogen bombs in North Korea.

Of course there's another chunk of money out there being made in the United States apart from net compensation, about $8 trillion in 2015. The recipients of this income typically pay the lower capital gains tax rates, not the payroll and income tax rates which are for the chumps.

It's a nice little system which isn't paying its fair share for socialism in the United States, even though it is rich guys who typically shout the loudest on behalf of it. They do this because they know it will keep the little guy down, from whom they don't want the competition some day. But tax that system equally to net compensation and you cut that 55% tax in half, to say 27.5%. That, however, means a big fat tax increase on the rich, and on everybody else. I doubt they'll stand for that any more than they open their checkbooks now to make patriotic voluntary donations to the US Treasury.

We live in a fantasy land where no one wants to pay what it costs for anything.

We think we can have our cake and eat it too.

We want infrastructure spending, and a tax cut dammit.

Senator Ben Sasse, race-baiting, lying liberal suck-up who believes in amnesty for illegal aliens

Interviewed here:

CHUCK TODD: I believe you are the only Republican [senator] right now who was said you will not vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances...

SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): . . . This guy believes in abortion on demand, this guy says that he hates the concept of guns, this guy's been for single-payer health care, he's for a $6 trillion tax increase. ... [W]hen you listen to Donald Trump, all you really hear is more Donald Trump, more tear it down, and a lot of praise of foreign dictators. ... [Y]ou did a great service to people by talking about the history of the Whigs and the Republicans. This is, in some ways, an 1860 moment. ... [I]f this becomes the Donald Trump/David Duke party, there are a lot of us who are out.

Mark Levin's Conservative Review gives Ben Sasse an "A" rating:

Sasse also supports legal status for illegal immigrants. 

Obama Remains A Small Man Without The Courage Of His Socialist Convictions

Here The New York Times matter of factly displays Obama the socialist, longing to be free like the character Bulworth ("Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word - SOCIALISM!"):

In private, he has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

“Probably every president says that from time to time,” said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama’s movie-inspired aspiration. “It’s probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.”

Ingenious Fascists At HHS Change Name Of Healthcare "Exchanges" To "Marketplaces"

The national socialists presiding over the failure of the healthcare "exchanges" under ObamaCare have decided, in the wake of the refusal of Republican governors to implement them, to change their name.

That's the story from TheHill.com, here:

The Health and Human Services Department suddenly stopped referring to insurance “exchanges” this week, even as it heralded ongoing efforts to prod states into setting up their own. Instead, press materials and a website for the public referred to insurance “marketplaces” in each state. The change comes amid a determined push by conservative activists to block state-based exchanges in hopes of crippling the federal implementation effort. Dean Clancy, the director of healthcare policy at FreedomWorks, said HHS’s decision to ditch the “exchanges” label shows that opponents of the healthcare law are succeeding. ... Changing the name to “marketplaces” won’t make any difference, Clancy said. “They could call them motherhood or apple pie, but it wouldn’t change our feelings about them,” Clancy said. “We're encouraged that they're showing signs of desperation. I think that it’s too late in the game to try to start calling this something different. And [we’re] not going to spend a lot of effort fighting over a word.”

Oh, but it will make a difference, mon ami. Blaming the free market is what these people are all about. Americans aren't going to be flocking to the exchanges to buy insurance because it will simply be cheaper to pay the penalty knowing that it's cheaper to do so, with the certain knowledge that guaranteed issue when they need it means they can put off getting insurance until it's absolutely necessary. The result is that more people, not fewer, will be without health insurance under ObamaCare. And that failure will be blamed on the free market's "marketplaces" when the time comes for the statists to argue openly for single payer, which has been the goal all along.

George Orwell would be impressed.

Progressive Lefties At TNR Recognize Senate Deal Is "Crappy" For Them

So says Tim Noah, here:

"Nevertheless, this is still a crappy deal, and Democrats should still reject it--or be quietly pleased if House Republicans reject it (as they're threatening to do)."

I agree that the deal is crappy for Democrats, really crappy, but the objective of Obama is only political. What's good for the country is meaningless. He's counting on the right in the House to reject the deal, doing for Obama what he cannot do by himself. It is the extremists of both the left and the right which cannot see how Obama is playing them. If the House had any brains they'd take the tax deal, but I don't think they will, unlike how under Pelosi the House progressives swallowed hard and took the Senate healthcare plan instead of opposing it. Better than anyone they know that ObamaCare is not the end game, but the next step to the single payer idea for which they originally stood.

Politically Obama needed to look like a compromiser, and appear reasonable and "balanced", to match his rhetoric played out over a long period, which is now very familiar to everyone. Later he can use the political capital gained thereby to appear like a genuine savior when he swoops in to offer a tax cut to the poor to relieve these unfortunate souls victimized by Republican "intransigence" over spending cuts. Obama has been telegraphing this for what seems like forever. This lousy deal for Democrats gives all the appearance of compromise, but it is intended rather to go to the heart of the split between the more conservative House Republican caucus and the more liberal Senate Republican caucus.

Once those two groups are split publically over a vote on a bill which will wreck the lives of millions, Obama is in the strongest position ever to appear the benefactor of "the middle class", the group he most wants out of his way in his attempt to level American society. In order to really screw them, he's got to get their complete confidence first. To do so he'll throw them a tax cut bone, which the doofusses will be very thankful for and will repay their master for with grateful support when he goes after their real enemy, the rich. You know, the Romneys and Buffetts of the world who look like the guys who fire them from their jobs.

The problem with true believers is that they are true. It blinds them to the way power shifts, which is why they never succeed.

Community College Cuts Part-Timers' Hours To Avoid ObamaCare Costs

The Cheerleaders Against ObamaCare

The Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania will cut 400 part-timers' hours to less than 30 hours per week to save $6 million in costs mandated by ObamaCare.

Story here.

Companies everywhere are in revolt against ObamaCare, which mandates coverage be offered when full-time workers exceed 49 in number, but full-time now "redefined" as 30 hours worked on average per week instead of 34 or 35. Leftism is nothing if not based on constant redefinition of reality.

So the path is clear if you're an employer: reduce full-time positions to 49 and part-time everyone else to no more than 29 hours per week. The result in America will be fewer and fewer full-time jobs and inadequate part-time jobs for more and more people, many of whom will be unable to afford to buy insurance through one-size-fits-all ObamaCare and will be thrown into state Medicaid programs where they will receive healthcare which you wouldn't wish on Fido or Morris.

ObamaCare is an ugly war on jobs, and is reminiscent of nothing so much as Stalin's war on the Kulaks of Ukraine, whom he starved to death when collectivization failed to produce the "mandated" amount of wheat. People will not begin to appreciate the comparison I suppose until our government decides the size threshold of companies must be lowered to, say, 39 full-time employees from 49 to get ObamaCare to "work", and to, say, 20 hours per week from 29 to mandate "more coverage". But by then business will already be flat on its back and the size of the proletariat will have swelled. Single payer can't be far behind.

They are saying out there that Romney lost because he focused on too many numbers, but Obama is using mandated numbers to slowly crucify you.

UGLY.

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.

You Can't Opt Out, You Can't Buy Cheap, And Healthcare Will Be Rationed

The following was posted here:

March 25, 2010

The Reality of Obamacare

By Jonah Goldberg

First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You've definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us, too. But hey, you won. Bubbly for everyone.

Simply, you have nationalized health care by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington and our lives! These giant corporations will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when health-care costs rise - and they will - Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame, and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.

That's what Obama always had in mind. During the now-legendary health-care summit, Obama, who loves to talk about "risk pools," "competition," "consumer choice," and the like, let it slip that he actually doesn't believe in insurance as commonly understood. The notion that Americans should buy the health-care "equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car" seemed preposterous to him. "I'm buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation," he explained. "Otherwise, I'm just paying out of pocket. I don't go to the doctor. I don't get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don't go bankrupt." Apparently, people are just too stupid to go to the doctor - or maintain their homes - if they have to pay much of anything out of pocket.

The endgame was to get the young and healthy to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want. "Expanding the risk pool" and "spreading out the risk" by mandating - i.e., forcing - young people to buy insurance is just market-based spin for socialist ends. A risk pool is an actuarial device where a lot of people pay a small sum to cover themselves against a "rainy day" problem that will affect only a few people. Such "peace of mind" health insurance is gone. What we have now is health assurance. With health assurance, there are no "risk pools" really, only payment plans.

Under the new law, all the exits from the system are blocked. You can't opt out or buy cheap, high-deductible Acme car-type insurance, even if that's what you need. Ultimately, even that coercion won't be enough to make the whole thing work, because the "cost curve" will not be bending.

Profit-hungry insurance companies were never the problem. (According to American Enterprise Institute economist Andrew Biggs, industry profit margins are around 3 percent, and the entire industry recorded profits of just $13 billion last year, close to a rounding error in Medicare fraud estimates.) Rather, health-care costs have been skyrocketing because consumers treat health insurance like an expense account. Putting almost everyone into one "risk pool" doesn't change that dynamic; it universalizes it. And eventually, the only way to cut costs will be to ration care.

In September, Obama got into a semantic argument with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who noted that requiring all Americans to pay premiums for a government-guaranteed service sounds an awful lot like a tax. "No. That's not true, George," Obama said. "For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is . . . that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you."

Stephanopoulos invoked a dictionary definition of a tax: "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes." Obama laughed off the idea that a dictionary might outrank him as the final arbiter of a word's meaning: "George, the fact that you looked up . . . the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition."

Okay, put aside your dictionaries. The legislation allocates $10 billion to pay for 16,500 IRS agents who will collect and enforce mandatory "premiums." Does that sound like the private sector at work to you?

Imposing A Century-Old Urge To Regiment Reality

Don't let the beginning fool you. The passage of just a few hours time has changed things, but not enough of them. By the time you get to the end of the article, you'll be running to find your pitchfork and a torch.

One of the finest writers around anywhere, Patrick McIlheran in "Health Care Designed in a Rug Bazaar" found here puts his finger on the wealth redistribution which is fundamental to the healthcare reform:

Congressional accountants say the cost of health care subsidies will rise 8% a year. ...

[T]he bill will mask this fundamental problem by taking money from some Americans - for instance, by more heavily taxing investments, and isn't that how to grow an economy? - and giving it to others. Families making $80,000 a year would get subsidies. By its design, the plan enshrines the idea that you consume health care someone else buys, the very mechanism leading to spiraling costs.

This plan is not single-payer, but it's not the improved market that backers claim. It is a parody of a market. You cannot choose to buy coverage but must buy it. Washington will design the plans - low-cost, high-deductible coverage, for instance, will be practically impossible. The prices will be controlled. The doctors will be told how to practice.

Your government will command, prohibit or direct every move in the belief that you're an incorrigible slob and your doctor is a fool. This plan does not build a single-payer hell, but pervasive bureaucratic control amounts to grading the site for it.

None of this is even new. By backers' own admission, they're doing what Teddy Roosevelt wanted to do 100 years ago. This is the imposition of a century-old urge to regiment reality. Previous half-steps toward that got us the mess we're in now, so how will this bring anything but disaster?

Follow the link for the rest.

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.

On the Dangers Posed by Libertarians

Consider this popular and influential enthusiast for Ron Paul.

He appears to favor a single payer system of federalized healthcare, an enormous interference in the personal liberties of individual Americans, many of whom freely eschew health insurance, from students in their twenties to the rich and successful like Rush Limbaugh. This from the same guy who wants to end the Federal Reserve because of its role in debasing the currency. It should bother him that he would swap debased healthcare for debased currency, but it doesn't.

He realizes, quite rightly, that a single payer system implies rationing of health care. But he's all for that, which means government will most certainly deny services when you desperately need them:

The press seemed concerned with a fear of rationed health care. Some republicans have raised the issue as well.

Mr. President I am concerned there will be no rationing of health care. . . .

Mr. President, unless something is done to rein in costs taxpayers will be footing the bill for a lot of things they shouldn't. In every country that has a single payer system, there is some degree of rationing.

Somehow you have us believe benefits will not be reduced, everything will be covered for everyone, there will be no rationing and somehow health care will cost less because of reduced paperwork. Mr. President, no one believes that, not even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Mr. President, to prevent costs from spiraling out of control rationing is mandatory. Unfortunately, you do not have the courage to admit it. Yet until you do, it can't happen.

(Mike Shedlock, 7/23/09)

Then fast forward a few months and he considers it a flaw in the Senate version of the bill that abortions will not be covered (which happens not to be true). Sounds like rationing to me. Yet he's clearly upset abortion will not be paid for:

The bill does allow states to opt out of paying for abortions. This is folly given the huge ongoing costs of unwanted births.

(Mike Shedlock, 12/26/09)

Suddenly the advocate for personal liberty is transformed into a statist potentially as dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the crew of clowns now infesting Washington, D.C.

My Stand? I am all in favor of the right to die.

(Mike Shedlock, 12/31/09)

Liberty is not all. When it is, it becomes license, not liberty, and exposes one and all to the whims of the powerful, who make it all up as they go. In our time its young victims already approach 50 million since 1973. Now ask yourself how many elderly and infirm are in the gun sights of the rationers of today?

No, law and order must exist before there can be any semblance of liberty, and the sources of our law are too deep, ancient, and complex to be sacrificed to the caprices of the simplifiers of our age.

Health Care Reform by Legal Insurrection, Literally

By William A. Jacobson:

Saturday, December 19, 2009

This Is Why I Named This Blog "Legal Insurrection"

I was in the car most of the day, so I haven't had a chance to post on the Ben Nelson sellout. So here are some initial thoughts:

Yes, it is that bad. The Democrats are about to put in place the legislative, regulatory and bureaucratic infrastructure for a complete government takeover of health care. Just read the comments from the supporters and you will see a common theme -- this is just the beginning. They know it, we know it, and Ben Nelson knows it but doesn't care because he scored some pork for his home state, just like Mary Landrieu

This is the worst of Washington. Payoffs, lies, deceit, and deception. Oddly enough, I've come to have more respect for the left-wing advocates of single-payer than the so-called moderates who will sell their principles for money. At least the left-wing has principles, even if I disagree with those principles. The moderates like Nelson and Landrieu have no principles, at least none that cannot be sold.

Where is Evan Bayh? His silence has been deafening.

How amazing is the number of circumstances which caused this perfect storm, without any one of which we wouldn't be on Obama's precipice: Massachusetts changes its rules for a second time to allow appointment of a Democrat in Kennedy's place rather than having to wait for the special election; Al Franken outmaneuvers and out-litigates Norm Coleman to steal the Minnesota race; Rahm Emanuel recruits "blue dog" Democratic wolves in sheep's clothing and people fall for it; the media covers up the Obama agenda during the campaign, portraying Obama falsely as a moderate; [added] George Allen says "Macaca," and so on.

Democrats do not care about the 2010 election cycle, or 2012. Obama has said it. He'd rather get his restructuring of society in place and be a one-term president, than be a two-term president and not succeed in perfecting our imperfections.

There is a slight, slight chance this legislation can be stopped in the House, so don't give up until the last vote is taken.

This perfect storm likely never will be repeated. But it only takes one storm to wreak havoc and cause damage which will take years or decades to undo, if it can be undone.

The only ray of hope is that most of the provisions will not kick in until well after November 2010. I've said it before, this is the political fight of our lives for the future of the country.

Rescinding Obamacare needs to be the organizing theme of the 2010 election. And throwing out the bums who voted for it.

Now I remember why, as I saw the Obama wave rising last fall, I named this blog Legal Insurrection. That's what's needed, now more than ever.

Update: A couple of commenters correctly have pointed out that I should have included Ted Steven's defeat as another element in the perfect storm. Remember that Steven's conviction later was dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct, but the Democrat who won the election remains in office, as I posted previously, Ted Stevens Conviction Reversed, But What About The Election? I noted the implications in that post: "Without the Begich vote, Obama would have a much more difficult time passing his agenda."

And, now we know why Evan Bayh was relatively silent in public. Behind the scenes, Bayh was a moving force in closed meetings to put the plan together:

Lawmakers who attended a private meeting between Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats at the White House on Tuesday pointed to remarks there by Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, as providing some new inspiration.

Mr. Bayh said that the health care measure was the kind of public policy he had come to Washington to work on, according to officials who attended the session, and that he did not want to see the satisfied looks on the faces of Republican leaders if they succeeded in blocking the measure.