This Obamacare Letter Should Go Viral

This woman's letter ought to go viral.  What's happening to her is happening all over the country as people struggle to make their way through the Obamacare landmine only to discover they are totally screwed:

My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us. 

On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?

Read the whole thing.  It's a nightmare.

Graphic via R.J. Matson

There Is No Pleasure in "I Told You So"

I have been dumbfounded at how many people these days are shocked, shocked I tell you!, that they're being dropped from their insurance plans.

We tried to fucking tell you.

When I was political blogging every day this is almost all I talked about for two years.  I looked back into my archives and sure enough, it took about two seconds to find a post where Obama is blathering that utter bullshit about how you could keep your insurance.

It also took about thirty seconds to find comments from straight up liberal nut jobs who declare Obamacare is the best thing since sliced bread except that "it doesn't go far enough."  

It was as plain as the blue in the sky that Obamacare was going to be a nightmare and that people would find themselves dumped by their insurance plans like a litter of unwanted kittens.

Dumbasses.

While I would like to say, "I told you so!", it simply does no good (and gives me no pleasure) because most of those people still believe in unicorns and pixie dust and believe Obamacare will save the planet.

Even worse, these people in the White House are still pushing this big lie; why?  Because there are still plenty of idiotic, uninformed people out there who still want to believe it:

In the meantime, the White House site still makes the claim "If you like your plan you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law." This turned out to be a big lie by the Obama administration. 

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, tweeted, "FACT: Nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans." This is just another fairy tale.

You liberals thought Obamacare was going to make life better?  Quit trying to help me!

This is why I quit political blogging (for the most part.)  I'd been banging my head against the proverbial wall for nothing.  I ranted, railed, researched, and reported.  I typed, protested, linked, and posted until my fingers bled.  It did no good whatsoever. You can't educate a person who chooses to keep their head in the sand.

Mark Steyn today:

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period.” But the entire premise of Obamacare was that, in order to cover (some of) the uninsured and (in many cases) uninsurable, other Americans were going to have to pay significantly more. Obamacare was always intended to be the Great Disruptor: Avik Roy reports that, by 2010, administration officials knew that 93 million Americans would lose their current plans under Obamacare. Small businesses are cutting back on full-time workers; medium businesses are dumping employees’ spouses and children from their plans; and the largest businesses are eating nine-figure bottom-line increases. Delta Airlines claims that it will spend an extra $100 million on health-care expenses next year: Even with cutbacks on complimentary mini-pretzels, a tenth of a billion is a big sum to recover. Meanwhile, the Obamacare plans won’t recognize your preferred doctor, and major hospitals won’t recognize the Obamacare plans.

Oh yeah, that slippery slope that is Obamacare is about to get really interesting.

If you haven't considered just going off the grid yet, this might be a good time to invest in survival gear.

The wealthy are okay with all this; the line I keep hearing is "Oh, but we can afford to help those less fortunate.  We are so lucky and so blessed, we can afford to give more."

Okay.  Go right ahead.  Pay a shitload of money each month for your healthcare and subsidize that of the poverty ridden masses.  There are more and more of them every single day thanks to the Obama regulation nation and welfare expansion state.  Those of us in the middle are getting the proverbial finger up the ass and trying to figure out how to survive.  We aren't eligible for subsidies (even if we wanted them) and can't afford the tripling of our insurance rates.  We were told we could keep what we have, right?  Sure.

Why can't I just keep what I have?

Steyn again:

But the fact remains that nowhere in the Western world has the governmentalization of health care been so incompetently introduced and required protection by such a phalanx of lies. Obamacare is not a left–right issue; it’s a fraud issue.

Hope you are happy, lefties.

I'm going back to blogging about day trips now.


Added:

John Hinderaker at Powerline has an excellent post:  The Lies of Obamacare Documented.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Smart Power

This comment...:

"Well, I think that you're citing a study that I believe was conducted by a health insurance company that's critical of the Affordable Care Act, so that part I'm not particularly surprised about," White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said." 

...pretty much captures all that is wrong with this presidential administration.

Earnest said this in response to yet another study that predicts higher health care premiums under Obamacare.

That study, which Mr. Earnest finds fault with, was conducted by a company that doesn't toe the political line, apparently.

Yet what of all the other studies?

The Society of Actuaries predicts higher premiums.
Actuaries consulting firm Oliver Wyman predicts higher premiums.
Aetna predicts higher premiums.
Even Congress predicts higher premiums.

There are more.

The problem here though, is that this White House is soooo elite, soooo smart, sooooo intelligent, that they think the only conclusion that is correct is their own, all evidence to the contrary be damned.  (And we're not just talking health care here).

That's scary.

About ObamaCare...

Watch this...(yes, I know it's 58 minutes, but you need to see it):

On Revising (and Erasing) History

Via Instapundit, Victor Davis Hanson has penned another piece that outlines the mass of contradictions that is Barack Obama.  It is difficult not to paste the entire thing here but start with this; after noting Obama's chastisement of the Supreme Court and his warning against overturning law, Hanson writes:

I am confused: I thought we were supposed to welcome such judicial audit. Was not that the charm of the Warren Court? Did not the Obama administration go to federal court to ask justices to set aside the Defense of Marriage Act that it was entrusted to enforce — seeking judicial help not to follow a law that it chose not to seek to overturn in Congress? 

I also thought that a younger Barack Obama once had regretted that the Supreme Court had never addressed “redistributive change” and, per the U.S. Constitution, had confined itself only to defining negative liberties rather than demanding positive “rights” that legislatures were supposed to ensure — or else. And did ObamaCare really pass with broad majorities? I thought that it received no Republican votes in the House and only squeaked by. And it would have been filibustered in the Senate without the Ted Stevens pseudo-scandal and various sweetheart deals to swing senators. Or is that now inaccurate?

Of course Mr. Hanson's memory is correct; it is Obama being the revisionist in this case.  In the mind of a narcissist like Mr. Obama, events exists only as they suit his needs.  If history needs revision, well who better to do it?

There's more:

I need to go to a re-education, or perhaps a re-memorization, camp. What happened to “unpatriotic” presidents running up $4 trillion in debt in eight years, or is trumping that in three then patriotic? Was the presidentially appointed Simpson-Bowles commission the proper bipartisan way to address deficits, or were its findings coopted by the one-percenters? In December 2010, I thought suddenly raising taxes was supposedly the wrong thing to do in tough times. Was it not by March 2011?

Again, it just depends on your point of view, I guess.

E. J. Dionne had a different point of view.  He agrees wholeheartedly with Obama's blast against the Supreme Court:

So imagine the shock when President Obama decided last week to speak plainly about what a Supreme Court decision throwing out the health-care law would mean, and then landed straight shots against the Mitt Romney-supported Paul Ryan budget as “a Trojan horse,” “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
...
Progressives would be wildly irresponsible if they sat by quietly while a conservative Supreme Court majority undid 80 years of jurisprudence. Roosevelt wasn’t a wimp, and Obama has decided that he won’t be one, either. Conservatives are unhappy because they prefer passive, intimidated liberals to the fighting kind.

People like Dionne make me want to bang my head against a wall.

Hanson has the last word:

“Truth,” after all, is not the Socratic absolute, but a socially constructed commodity, defined by power and predicated on race, class, and gender, concerns that can be made to serve the greater good, if adjudicated by — well, again, fill in the blanks.

Read the whole thing.

When "On Your Own" Meant Freedom and Liberty

I've been stewing over this Obama speech since last Friday.  Did you see (or hear) this?



In a speech in Vermont, The Great Uniter takes a sharply partisan turn toward Republicans.  He sounds defensive, doesn't he?  Is he worried about something?

This is the part that just slays me:

"You know, if you're out of work, can't find a job, tough luck; you're on your own. If you don't have healthcare, that's your problem; you're on your own. If you're born into poverty, lift yourself up out of your own -- with your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots; you're on your own," Obama said in remarks before a cheering crowd in Burlington, Vt. "Hey, they believe that's how America has advanced. That's the cramped, narrow conception they have of liberty."

Wow.  Just wow.  Clearly the man has no concept of economics or of what made America great.  We did not become the greatest country in the world by cradle to grave handouts or by massive expansion of the welfare state.  Obamacare alone created yet another massive entitlement system on top of the expansion of food stamps and extensions of unemployment benefits Obama has enacted.

Republicans do not believe "you're on your own."   I'd like to see his research on conservative charitable giving.  Healthcare?  Charity hospitals and clinics abound throughout the United States.

This is the part that got me: the insinuation that if you're born into poverty the only way you can get out is by some government handout.  Think of all the people born into poverty through the decades, since the beginning of America even, who had nothing yet worked hard, studied hard, and found a way to succeed.  THAT'S what makes America great is that the opportunity is there; the grit and determination of the individual to make something of himself makes the difference.

What pride is there in doing nothing but taking government handouts?

Obama mocks the way that America has advanced?  He says we have a "narrow conception...of liberty"?

Liberty is when the government leaves us alone; when it does the job the founders enumerated and no more.

Later in the day Obama said in another speech:

"I hear politicians talking about values in an election year," he said. "Let me tell you about values. Hard work, personal responsibility -- those are values. But looking out for one another, that's a value. The idea we're all in this together, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that's a value."

He is confusing the idea of "looking out for one another" with unconstitutional mandates and government handouts. He's confusing it with cradle to grave handouts and entitlements.  He's confusing it with creating a society dependent on the federal government for its every need and whim while wrecking innovation and small business.   Let churches, neighbors, and families look out for one another.    


If Obama is truly his "brother's keeper," somebody ought to give him the number to his brother's hut in Kenya and maybe he'll leave me alone and let me worry about my own brother.


I agree with him on one thing.  Of the upcoming election, Obama said:

"I think it's going to be a clarifying election about who we are and what we stand for."

He's got that right.

Alert Al Franken: Individual Liberty is a GOOD Thing

One of the biggest lies we were told during the Obamacare debate was reiterated by Obama himself over and over and over again:

"If you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it..."

As it turns out ... wait for it.... it's not necessarily true.  Shock!  Anyone with a grain of sense knew all along that wasn't going to be true.

Via The Foundry:

Four reputable research institutions have run the numbers and found that not only is Obama’s claim false, but employees will be dropped from their current coverage by the millions. This week’s chart outlines each of the four studies.

Here's their chart:

Somebody should alert Al Franken.  This blurb showed up on my Facebook sidebar today:

Now, that's not misleading at all, right?  Republicans think your employer should decide?  As opposed to what, say....the federal government?  I certainly have a lot more options about my own health care decisions pre-Obamacare as I'm going to have when he gets done with me.  Not to mention the unintended consequences of Obamacare such as employers keeping workers at under 40 hours a week so they don't have to provide health care for them or even worse, not hiring at all.

The majority of Americans want the law over turned.

We can't stand four more years.

"People Are Just Afraid of Change" Goes Before The Supreme Court

All eyes are on The Supreme Court this week as arguments against ObamaCare begin today.  For a summary of what will be argued when, check out this post at The Foundry.  Today's 90 minutes of argument are "mostly technical" on the issue of the Anti-Injunction Act.

Tomorrow things will get interesting with two hours of argument on whether the Constitution allows Congress to compel Americans to buy a product (in this case, a "financial instrument.")

The argument on this seems ludicrous to me (emphasis mine):

"The challengers to the reform say that never before has the government forced people to buy a product," Neal Katyal, who defended the legislation in appellate courts while serving as Obama's acting solicitor general, said in an interview with AFP. "We're not forcing you to buy a product. Health care is something all Americans consume, and you don't know when you're going to consume it." Katyal added that "we are not regulating what people buy, we're regulating how people finance it." 

 That seems to be no difference at all, to me.

Neal Katyal also provides yet another example of the liberal attempt to sway the court:

Katyal also framed any decision overturning the law as judicial actvism, bordering on tyranny. "If the Supreme Court struck this down, I think that it wouldn't just be abouthealth care," he said. "It would be the Supreme Court saying: 'Look, we've got the power to really take decisions, move them off of the table of the American people, even in a democracy.'" 

Michael Hammond, writing at Red State, points out that the liberal media has a long-standing practice of attempting to intimidate the court:

The justices are only human. 

And conservatives have fallen down in failing to make a bigger issue over liberal attempts to threaten and intimidate the court -– first, in the New York Times, then in the Washington Post [“Will Conservatives save Obamacare?” by Robert Barnes, the Washington Post, March 18, 2012, page B1] -– and repeatedly by Bob Beckel and others on Fox. 

All of the threats are thinly veiled (“Roberts is protective of the court’s reputation, however, and sensitive to the perception that its decisions are politicized.”), but they are nothing more or less than disguised threats to attack the court if it doesn’t do as liberals want.

There's absolutely no point in falling down the rabbit hole trying to anticipate how the court will vote and I'm not about to try.

What IS clear is what is at stake.  The objections conservatives (and others) have to ObamaCare have been made clear and it is now up to the Court to decide.  My position has always been that this law is a huge over reach of government authority and treads on state's rights, individual liberties, and personal freedom, not to mention the staggering expense and new taxes:

Neal Katyal says the opposition to ObamaCare is just that "people are afraid of change."  I'm afraid the problem is a lot more serious than that.

I'm apprehensive and naturally pessimistic.  I'm the one who never believed Obama would get elected in the first place ("How in the world could people vote for him?  You can't elect a president on the basis on one speech!"  "He's got no record!  He's only been in the Senate for 117 days!").  I am not particularly optimistic about how this will turn out.

As the Supreme Court does not allow live-coverage you will have to wait for audio later in the day.  The Foundry will be posting updates as will others.  Jamie Dupree is inside hearing arguments and will update when he gets out.

The White House Spin Is Making Me Dizzy

This is why so many people hate politics and/or politicians.

The spin.  The doublespeak.  The lies.

Case in point.  Consider White House chief of staff Jack Lew this morning talking with George Stephanopoulos on the contraceptive issue that has been raging; it's really the same thing that grated during the Obamacare debate.  This morning Jack Lew said (emphasis mine),

You know, George, from the very beginning, the president had two important goals here. One is to guarantee that every woman has a right to all forms of preventive health care, including contraception, secondly, that we do it in a way that respects the legitimate religious differences and the religious liberties that are so important in our country. 

On Meet the Press this morning, Lew said:

We are now in a place where we can say with certainty that women are going to have the right to health care and we can say that religious institutions, including Catholic hospitals and universities, won't have to pay for or do the administrative work to provide benefits that they find objectionable.

First of all, when exactly did health care become a "right," and two, when did contraception become a "right"?  And when did I, as a woman, not have access to health care?  Sure, women at one time were denied the right to vote, but health care?  I don't remember that one.

And on the issue of contraceptives, women have managed their contraception choices for ages without the government guaranteeing their right to it.

It's all about the doublespeak.

Now all of a sudden Republicans are apparently denying women access to contraceptives because they don't want the government dictating every aspect of our daily lives.  Bullspit.

And now, the government is attempting to force insurance companies to provide it whether they want to or not.  As Rick Santorum pointed out on Meet the Press this morning:

No one's denying them access to birth control. This is, this is outrageous. I mean, the, the bottom line is that you have the federal government now saying we're going to give you a right and then saying, by the way, we're going to tell you how to exercise that right. We're going to control you, a religious, a church-affiliated group as to, you know, what you provide to your employee. And if you don't like it, tough, because our rights, our right to tell you what to do trumps your deeply held convictions about what your dollars should be spent for. And the idea that you can have the insurance company, and by the way, many and--of--a large number of Catholic social service providers are self-insured, and so the self-insured is the insurance company, they're going to be forced to still provide.

So all that compromise business about how the Catholics won't be forced to provide contraception is baloney.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

Lew went on with his spin cycle when he said on the subject of a Senate budget:

So it, it is a challenge in the United States Senate to pass legislation when there's not that willingness to work together. Congress didn't do a great job last year. It, it, it drove right to the edge of a cliff on occasion after occasion. I actually think it's unfair to blame the United States Senate for that. A lot of that was because of the extreme, you know, conservative approach taken by House Republicans.

Hunh?  It's the fault of conservatives that Harry Reid hasn't passed a budget in the Senate in over 1000 days?   When David Gregory pointed out that the Democrats control the Senate, Lew then blamed the tea party:

Yeah, but it--the positions that ended up tying the Congress in knots came out of the House. It came out of the tea party wing in the House.

Ridiculous. 

So.  According to Jack Lew (on two different programs) today,  contraceptives are a natural born right and the conservative tea party wing is to blame because Harry Reid can't pass a budget.

I'm getting dizzy. 

No wonder people hate politicians.

Is NHS Style Rationing Headed Our Way?

In case you've become so consumed by the debt debate and need something else to read about, check out this post from The Heritage Foundation.  Obama really hopes we get so distracted by all these other disasters emanating from his administration that we forget about Obamacare by the time 2012 comes along.

Not a chance.

Keep in mind that Obamacare desperately wants to be like the British NHS; Obama's Medicare Czar, Dr. Donald Berwick, was widely quoted (including on this blog) lauding the NHS. From Robert M. Goldberg's American Spectator article last year (emphasis mine):

Berwick not only has a role model picked out for a role that sounds a lot like what he would be doing at CMS, he has a soulmate: For the past 15 years he has consulted for -- or, in his words, been "starry-eyed" over -- Britain's National Health Service. In 2008, at a 60th anniversary celebration of the creation NHS, he told a UK crowd, "I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country. "
 
Berwick complained the American health system runs in the "darkness of private enterprise," unlike Britain's "politically accountable system. " The NHS is "universal, accessible, excellent, and free at the point of care -- a health system that is, at its core, like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just"; America's health system is "toxic," "fragmented," because of its dependence on consumer choice. He told his UK audience: "I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do."

With that in mind, look at the rationing currently going on in the British health care system:

* Hip and knee replacements only being allowed where patients are in severe pain. Overweight patients will be made to lose weight before being considered for an operation.

* Cataract operations being withheld from patients until their sight problems "substantially" affect their ability to work.

* Patients with varicose veins only being operated on if they are suffering "chronic continuous pain", ulceration or bleeding.

* Tonsillectomy (removing tonsils) only to be carried out in children if they have had seven bouts of tonsillitis in the previous year.

* Grommets to improve hearing in children only being inserted in "exceptional circumstances" and after monitoring for six months

Heritage points out that we now have the framework in place to go down the same dark path as Britain.

Think that health care rationing isn’t possible in America? Think again. Under Obamacare, a board of unelected bureaucrats known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is tasked with reducing the growth in Medicare spending. With the powers IPAB has under current law, the Board can make changes—without congressional input—that would indirectly reduce seniors’ access to providers and services.

We can see the writing on the wall already. Consider, just as an example, the breast cancer drug Avastin:  just last week the National Comprehensive Cancer Network voted overwhelmingly in support of Avastin as a viable therapy drug for breast cancer yet last month the FDA pulled its support of the drug.  The drug can cost up to $90,000 a year for patients.

Medicare still currently covers Avastin but how long do we realistically expect that to last given the FDA position and Berwick's love of the NHS rationing system?  The same argument applies to the drug Provenge which supposedly is a vaccine against prostate cancer at the cost of $93,000 per course.

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) has expressed concern over the potential for rationing in the power vested in the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB):

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., recently reignited the debate by saying that under the presidentially appointed IPAB, "a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy."

"I guarantee you when you withdraw that, the patient is going to die," he said. "It's rationing."

And with Berwick in charge, who can doubt that it's coming?

Drug shortages are already becoming a bigger problem than ever before.

Heritage Foundation points out:

Americans are generally appalled to hear stories of rationing, but what many don’t realize is that under Obamacare, IPAB is empowered to take actions that could lead us down that very road. There is a better way to lower health care costs and deliver a higher quality of care: introducing competition and consumer choice through the reforms outlined in Heritage’s Saving the American Dream plan.

Despite Obama's hopes that we forget the disaster that is Obamacare by 2012, we won't forget.    The rationing headed our way, however subtle, won't let us.

Update:  Related:  Health Industry Fears Double Whammy in Medicare Cuts

The White House is About to "Punk" Your Doctor's Office

Did I fall asleep and wake up in Cuba or the Soviet Union?

Not having enough on their plates already with the tanking economy, rising unemployment, rising energy prices, a bottomed out housing market and skyrocketing national debt, the Obama administration is assembling a team of prank callers to harass the few remaining doctors we still have willing to practice medicine in this looming quagmire that is Obamacare.

Straight from the New York Times:

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it. 

That's right.  You've been Punk'd!   Imagine the poor receptionists in doctors offices all over America.   "What?  You don't really want that appointment after all?  Well thanks for wasting my time and keeping me from attending to someone who actually does need medical care.  Have a nice day."

It seems the Obama administration is suddenly alarmed by the shortage of doctors.  Now, I wonder why there's a shortage? 

Last year the Wall Street Journal wrote about the looming shortage of primary care physicians:

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

The numbers tell the story, yet Team Obama wants to call and harass your doctor's receptionist just to be sure.  This snoopy survey is redundant; the WSJ article has the numbers:

Back to the NYT (emphasis mine):

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

What is this "will address" part of the equation?  What are the consequences if you're busted not accepting new patients?

It will also "try to discover" if your doctor isn't accepting Medicaid patients.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there some law that says a doctor MUST accept Medicaid patients?  Aren't we still in a free market economy where a doctor can treat whomever he wishes?  Doesn't the Hippocratic Oath bind the doctor to ethical practices?

Needless to say, doctors aren't thrilled by this new snoop scheme.  The government snoops won't be identifying themselves as snoops, of course; if you're attempting to entrap someone, you don't blow your cover right off the bat.

Here's one of the scripts they'll be using:

Mystery shopper: “Hi, my name is Alexis Jackson, and I’m calling to schedule the next available appointment with Dr. Michael Krane. I am a new patient with a P.P.O. from Aetna. I just moved to the area and don’t yet have a primary doctor, but I need to be seen as soon as possible.”

Doctor’s office: “What type of problem are you experiencing?”

Mystery shopper: “I’ve had a cough for the last two weeks, and now I’m running a fever. I’ve been coughing up thick greenish mucus that has some blood in it, and I’m a little short of breath.” 

Seriously.   And they'll be blocking their phone number so they won't be detected through caller ID.  The offices of over 4,000 doctors in nine states will be called at least twice.  Eleven percent of those will be called a third time; this time the caller will identify himself as part of the HHS, ask if the doctor accepts new, Medicare or Medicaid patients and check for discrepancies in the story.

And guess who has been contracted to do the survey?  National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.  Shocker.

What are the consequences for these doctors who refuse to accept Medicare, Medicaid, or don't feel they can take on additional patients?  Is there something in Obamacare that says they must?  Remember, you've got to pass the bill to find out what's in it.  Where does all this lead?

This all reminds me of the White House Fishy campaign of 2009 which turned out to be full of legal problems.

Call me paranoid, but it seems like a huge waste of government dollars and a whole lot like Big Brother.

Update:  There is now a Memeorandum thread on this story.

Obamacare Must Go NOW

Michael Tanner at NRO is less than impressed with the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare:

In fact, one wonders what the Republican leadership is doing to stop Obamacare. Sure, they took a vote to repeal it. But since there was no chance that a repeal bill could get through the Senate and past a presidential veto, the vote was mostly symbolic. Since then, what have Republicans done? There was another vote calling for various committees to propose an alternative health-care reform. Where is it? Where are the votes on proposals to kill some of the more unpopular aspects of the health-care law? What about the individual mandate? The employer mandate? The new taxes? What about CLASS Act, the long-term care program? Even Secretary Sebelius says that it won’t work as currently structured. Why has there been no vote to repeal that?

Cutting off funding for Obamacare now is all the more important because the administration is pushing full speed ahead on implementation. And the sad fact is that Obama is all too often being aided by Republicans.

It does, in fact seem as if little is being done beyond simple symbolic measures. 

The number of waivers has climbed to over 1,000, the mandate has been declared unconstitutional, it's already been proven that Obamacare won't lower costs or the deficit and in fact Sebelius admitted to the double counting fiasco.

I'm with Mr. Tanner on this one: it's time to get rid of Obamacare before it's too late.

Today's Must Reads on Obamacare

Karl Rove's WSJ column this week is a friendly reminder of all that is wrong with Obamacare:

*  Consider "700,000 seniors whose private Medicare Advantage insurance policy was not renewed last year because her insurance provider quit the business."

*  There will be more nonrenewals in 2011. This year's funding cuts to Medicare Advantage will be $2 billion; next year's will be $6 billion. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimate that half of those with Medicare Advantage policies—seven million seniors—will lose their coverage eventually. And 60% the doctors surveyed by the nonprofit Physicians Foundation said health-care reform would "compel them to close or significantly restrict" the number of patients in their practices, especially those on Medicare or Medicaid.

*  Providers such as Guardian Life and the Principal Financial Group are dropping their health-insurance businesses.

*  Last week Richard Foster, CMS's chief actuary, confirmed to Congress that ObamaCare's Medicare cuts couldn't be used to reduce both Medicare's unfunded liability and to pay for ObamaCare's expense.

And that's just for starters.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are in total denial, dismissing the court's decision on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare this week and continuing to insist that he nation loves Obamacare and is against repeal.  Total denial.

Read Rove's column and don't miss Peter Ferrara's piece in today's American Spectator, "The Legal Furture of Obamacare."

Must reads!

Repeal and Replace

In Bobby Jindal's book, Leadership and Crisis, he has an interesting chapter on Medicare and he writes about his time on the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare in 1997.  This is a topic with which Jindal was quite familiar having already served as head of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and had achieved an impressive record of reform there. 

As legislators such as Chuck Schumer lob accusations of hypocrisy at Republicans who accept government health care as part of their federal employee benefit, it is important to remember two things.  John McCormack points out:

The logical fallacy here is that Republicans never said that government employees--which is what U.S. congressmen and senators are--should not receive health care coverage from their employer. What Republicans did was oppose a law that raised taxes and cut Medicare by $2 trillion in order to pay for an entitlement program that greatly increases government control of health care. (They favored and favor a variety of free market reforms.) The fact that many Democrats and a few Republicans do not understand this distinction does not mean all Republicans are hypocrites. 

Further, Jindal points out that the insurance those on Capitol Hill receive is not exactly like Medicare, either.  Jindal explains:

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program...is not perfect, but it is less bureaucratic and more responsive to its enrollees than Medicare...Instead of paying for services, FEHBP allows recipients to choose from hundreds of health insurance plans, and then it pays for a large portion of the premiums.  Far from being a top-down system [as Medicare is] FEHBP encourages competition among insurers for federal employees.

This is far from what "government insurance" is under Medicare. 

Schumer's cries of hypocrisy are absurd.

On a related point, Peter Ferrara over at American Spectator has done some excellent work in the past in researching and reporting on Obamacare.  His piece this morning is revealing as well.  In explaining how Obamacare plans to phase out private insurance (remember "if you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance!" - baloney), Fererra explains exactly how HHS plans to eliminate private insurers over time:

But there is socialist method behind the madness. Obamacare raises health insurance costs by mandating that health insurers provide expensive new benefits. That is why it was so obvious that Obamacare will raise health insurance costs. But now come the federal regulators who plan to dictate to the insurers that they cannot reflect those costs in higher premiums.

And so those companies will have to be "regulated" or go out of business. And no new companies will be there to fill the void so you'll all be channeled into government run health care.  As it turns out, you WON'T be able to keep that policy you currently have.  Read the whole thing.


Many of us may have developed Obamacare "fatigue" as we railed so mightily against it, and many are just plain tired of hearing about it or talking about it.  The old "it's done" attitude.  As Republicans move into Congress today and begin the march toward repeal, we'll be hearing a lot more about Obamacare in the days to come and it's time to pay attention.  Now that we know what's in it, it's time to repeal and replace.




(Logo from Cafe Press)

Tuesday Thoughts

This is the last full week of classes; we have finals next week.  Normally, the kids are so keyed up and wild around this time that it's difficult to get anything done.  Not so this year...we are so incredibly busy in class right now that they don't have time to get off track.  We've still got two Acts of Julius Caesar to do; yesterday and tomorrow are consumed with EOC testing (End of Course), then we still have to review for finals which are Monday.  Too much to do!

After school each day I have a list of errands that must be done because our family Christmas is this weekend.  In the evening I'm baking and cooking up a storm.  Somehow in all of this the house has to be cleaned and ready for the Christmas onslaught.  I love Christmas, but it's a LOT of work!

So you can see why blogging has been light.  Traffic is in "holiday suckage" mode, too, so I guess it's all okay. 

I'd love to write about the strike down of Obamacare yesterday but one look at Memeorandum shows that everyone on the planet already has it covered.  I'll just add this: I don't think this decision will help the liberals understand that it's not that Republicans don't want health care reform - we do.  We just don't want THIS one.  We don't want the mandate (among other things.)  Liberals paint Republicans and evil, unfeeling creatures who want the poor and the suffering to continue in that condition.  They paint Republicans as wanting to keep everyone else down while lifting up the wealthy.  Obama's ire and rancor does nothing to appease this.  They'll see the same thing in this ruling as Republicans cheer this victory.  That's just not the case.

Never forget:  Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats crafted this bill behind closed doors with no Republican input and infused it with kickbacks, payoffs and a multitude of incentives for votes.  Nobody read it.  Nobody really knew what was in it.

We're a long way from repeal, still, but hopefully this decision is a first step toward a health care plan that is palatable for everyone. 

The Senate Calls a Mulligan on Part of Obamacare

The Senate will be voting Tuesday to repeal a portion of Obamacare.  Small steps!

Seriously, the onerous burden the bill  places on small businesses with regard to reporting purchases over $600 to a single vendor is about to bring a landslide of paperwork on the small business owner and no doubt would have forced more than a few out of business rather than hire some full time paper pusher to keep up with the task.

The WSJ gives an example:

Think about a midsized trucking company. The back office would have to collect hundreds of thousands of receipts from every gas station where its drivers filled up and figure out where it spent more than $600 that year. Then it would also need to match those payments to the stations' corporate parents.

And the Democrats who voted for this stupid thing are claiming now that they were blindsided and didn't understand that part.

That's just criminal, if you ask me.

Any one of those numbnuts who voted for this bill without reading it must GO.  It's bad enough if you voted for it and you DID read it, but at least you voted according to your principles (I guess.)  But to vote on such a massive power grabbing, life changing, Constitutionally questionable piece of horse manure like Obamacare without fully understanding all its implications is beyond criminal, especially when you consider the fact that said numbnuts won't be taking part in it themselves.

Amateurs.

Seniors Out of Luck Under Obamacare

This is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil; it's the kind of thing that makes me double over with dry heaves when the libs paint themselves as the party of compassion:

In his analysis accompanying the recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees, Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, noted that Medicare payment rates for doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next three years. Under the policies of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, by 2019 Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. Mr. Foster notes that by the end of the 75-year projection period in the Annual Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare payment rates will be one-third of what will be paid by private insurance, and only half of what is paid by Medicaid.

Altogether, ObamaCare cuts $818 billion from Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) from 2014-2023, the first 10 years of its full implementation, and $3.2 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033. Adding in ObamaCare cuts for Medicare Part B (physicians fees and other services) brings the total cut to $1.05 trillion over the first 10 years and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 years. 

That's via Peter Ferrara and Larry Hunter at WSJ.  There's more and it's worse.  Read the whole thing.
 
And don't expect the Medicare Czar to get all up in arms about this.  It's exactly what Dr. Death Panel would want.  And let's not forget, AARP endorsed this garbage for their members, too.

Oh and if that doesn't rock your boat, you might take note of the fact that private insurance is going up too.

Yeah.  All that crap about "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it!"  was exactly that.  Crap.  

The party of compassion doesn't care much about your mother.  Or your grandmother.  Or you, for that matter. 

Joe Wilson was right.

Obamacare is an Abomination

I've noticed several devastating articles on Obamacare lately; none of which tell me anything I didn't know already for the most part, but now that we've passed "the bill so you can find out what's in it," the rotten apples are starting to float to the top.

Consider this piece from David Freddoso at The Washington Examiner.  The highlights:

"...seniors who rely on Medicare will replace Medicaid recipients at the bottom of the health care ladder as early as 2019."

"Fees Medicare pays to providers will be slashed below Medicaid rates, which are already well below market prices."

"By 2050, 40 percent of existing health care facilities will forced to close their doors."

"The wait for care will be much, much longer."Many physicians already refuse to accept new Medicare patients. More will refuse when payments from the government fall below cost."

This last item means that 15 million senior citizens will get screwed on their coverage.

Yesterday in The American Spectator, Peter Ferrera had a devastating piece on Obamacare:

The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough.

More specifically:

The Obamacare legislation involves precisely the thorough government takeover of health care. It creates 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs to rule over health care in America. Government authorities are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will be paid and when. Government authorities will mandate exactly what health insurance with what benefits workers and employers must buy, and the Act imposes tax penalties on them if they do not comply. Government authorities will dictate to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and what they can charge.

There's much more at the link.


Obamacare is an abomination.  I hope there are more and more of these articles coming out between now and the fall elections because I believe it will weigh heavily in the minds of the voters when it's time to pull the lever in the voting booth.  Democrats are hoping we'll have forgotten by then, but many of us will absolutely never forget.  Those in Congress that voted for Obamacare sold their souls to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama; they will pay with their jobs.

Dr. Death Panel Gets a Recess Appointment

Dr. Death Panel gets a recess appointment - who is surprised?

The most transparent administration ever has decided to circumvent Senate confirmation hearings on Dr. Donald Berwick, Medicare Czar, and "deem" him confirmed, at least through next year.

Yes, it's true that presidents on both sides of the aisle have used recess appointments and by definition they are controversial.  However this country has never been faced with such a massive power grab as Obamacare and now the American people aren't going to hear Dr. Berwick answer questions about he'll administer his part of it.

Transparency!

Team Obama is concerned that confirmation hearings would reopen the health care debate right before the fall elections, as if we've forgotten, so we'll just skip that part until after the elections.  I have not forgotten.  I'll  be lots of Americans haven't forgotten.  In fact, according to Rasmussen, 60% of Americans polled favor repeal of Obamacare.

You will remember that Berwick said,

"The more I have studied it, the more I believe that less discretion for doctors would improve patient safety." He then looks down. "Doctors will hate me for saying that."

Less discretion for doctors implies MORE discretion for bureaucrats.  This is not good when you're referring to health care.

Berwick also said that

"any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.  Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."

He's a known advocate for rationing and gets starry eyed when talking about the British NHS, a system fraught with rationing, overcrowding, inferior care, and horror stories.

Berwick speaks out against private enterprise.  In fact, he criticizes "the darkness of private enterprise instead of accepting that a politically accountable system must act in the harsh and admittedly sometimes very unfair daylight of the press, public debate and political campaigning."

I guess that "politically accountable system" that "must act in the harsh and admittedly sometimes very unfair daylight of the press" and "public debate" doesn't apply to his appointment or to the Obama administration.

Danger Ahead

Glenn Reynolds points out the dangers of government health care.