Category Archives: Healthcare

The Plus Side Of The President’s Proctology (I.E., Zero Care)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Healthcare, Law

Although it might serve to plant a meaningful suggestion in American consciousness, it is somewhat meaningless for Beltway libertarians to fuss over the sundering of the U.S. Constitution under this president.

The Constitution has been a dead letter for ever.

Michael Cannon, Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies, “testified before a congressional committee about the constitutional limits imposed on the presidency and the implications of President Barack Obama’s disregard for implementing the Affordable Care Act as written.”

“The consequences of the president’s behavior were potentially grave,” warned Cannon. “… the precedent set by Obama could eventually lead to an armed revolt against the federal government.”

And that’s a bad thing?

Complacent cowering America is overdue for what Thomas Jefferson called “a little rebellion.”

“A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

Meanwhile, to a standing ovation from his staffers—who are not true users of Zero Care, because subsidized to the tune of thousands a year—“the president declared that his signature health care reform law was not going to be repealed”:

Obama said that ACA opponents’ alternative to the health care reform law is to champion repeal and going back to the health care delivery system status quo ante. He specifically cited Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who he said was asked directly for an ACA alternative and refused to provide one.
“He just repeated repeal over and over again,” Obama said. “And we heard that from a lot of folks on that side of the aisle.”
“Look, I’ve always said I will work with anybody to implement and approve this law effectively,” the president continued. “You got good ideas, bring them to me. Let’s go. But, we’re not repealing it as long as I’m president.”
With this, the attendees and the president’s staff rose to their feet and delivered a 20-second ovation for the president.

Administration Hits Gov.Con’s Tiny Target. Or So It Claims.

Business, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Internet, Technology

CNN cracks me up. Reports of “continued problems with the 2010 Affordable Care Act” they call “anecdotal.” The writer also chortles that the “website deadline” has been met. The administration promised to fix Gov.Con by November 30.

Although insurance companies dispute that the fix is in—as the latest claims-making has it, the site is working for the “vast majority” of users. It is said to “now handle its original intended volume of 50,000 concurrent users.”

(“Insurers are still getting enrollment files that are duplicative and have missing or inaccurate information,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for health insurance industry trade association group America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement to CNN. “In some cases they are not getting the enrollments at all.”)

Imagine worrying whether you’ll be able to purchase an item on Amazon or eBay when you want to, because you could be the 50,001th customer. Such commercial sites handle millions upon millions of customers all at once.

Millennials Deserve What They Get. But Are Boomers Ready For What They’ll Dish Out?

America, Debt, Elections, Family, Healthcare, Pop-Culture, Welfare

My Millennial readers are the best and the brightest. They’ll probably agree that, for the most, theirs is “a generation of idle trophy kids” (a Jennifer-Graham coinage).

Still, America worships youth, no matter how dumb. (The economically nascent Chinese do the exact opposite: revere experience.) To enhance his cool quotient, every Boommer and Gen Xer on TV has been belaboring the theme of generational theft. The country’s national debt amounts to stealing from “our children.” Obamacare sticks it to the kids.

Boohoo.

In this vein, you’ve watched John Stossel “taking toys from babies” to instantiate the burden on da babies of $280 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities.

Avik Roy at Forbes beats on breast: “Why Aren’t Millennials Marching In The Street Over Obamacare?” Roy wants to know. After all, people his age have declared war on the “generation born between 1977 and 1995.”

… by design, this law can work if and only if enough young people are willing to pay premiums far higher than are actuarially fair in order to subsidize workers my age who on average earn far more than the young workers who are subsidizing them. Even if one takes into account that Millennials in the long run eventually will become old themselves and benefit from these subsidies, Obamacare still is an extraordinarily bad deal that effectively would force today’s 18-year olds to pay 18 percent more for their medical care over a lifetime than if each generation paid its own way. Such an age-related tax is unconscionable. Imagine if sales taxes or income taxes included a surcharge for everyone who happened to be a twenty-something. If this idea sounds preposterous, welcome to Obamacare.

Highly productive, wealthy, well-employed, slightly older sorts, who’ve worked hard for what they have, are hard at work generating contempt for their kind.

Lord knows that Millenials—Ms. Graham calls them the “new American idle”—will rise to the occasion. They will dish out contempt and much more. Ask and they’ll oblige.

I sincerely hope the contempt they’ve ginned up for themselves sits well with Boomers and Gen Xers. Since Millenials are big on Obama—and thus deserve everything they get, from more debt to ZerO. Care—I’m sure they’ll also grow into the idea of rationing care for their elders (death panels).

Politically, Millennials were among Barack Obama’s strongest supporters in 2008, backing him for president by more than a two-to-one ratio (66% to 32%)

Be careful what you wish for, stupid. There is no need to teach your precious progeny still more disrespect for their elders.

The New York ‘Slimes’ Stops Slumbering. But It’s Too Late.

Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Economy, Propaganda, Socialism

Before their very eyes, millions of Americans are watching as Obama takes from them and gives to a favored constituency. Now the Johnny-Come-Latelies of the “New York Slimes” (the last is Mark Levin’s moniker) have discovered belatedly that entitlement programs are distribution programs, and that Obama care is a particularity glaring exampled of one:

Hiding in plain sight behind that pledge [“If you like your current insurance, you will keep your current insurance”]— visible to health policy experts but not the general public — was the redistribution required to extend health coverage to those who had been either locked out or priced out of the market.
Now some of that redistribution has come clearly into view.
The law, for example, banned rate discrimination against women, which insurance companies called “gender rating” to account for their higher health costs. But that raised the relative burden borne by men. The law also limited how much more insurers can charge older Americans, who use more health care over all. But that raised the relative burden on younger people.
And the law required insurers to offer coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, which eased costs for less healthy people but raised prices for others who had been charged lower rates because of their good health.
“The A.C.A. is very much about redistribution, whether or not its advocates acknowledge that this is the case,” wrote Reihan Salam on the website of the conservative National Review.

Only healthcare experts knew of this? What liars live at the NYT. Mitt Romney repeatedly told the stupid voters that the cost of their healthcare would rise under Obamacare by about $2000 to $3000 annually. (For people in the individual market it’s much more.) There were many like him. The morons refused to heed him. Americans, for the most, were bamboozled by Obama media sycophants like the “Slimes” and were smitten by BHO’s Svengali-style hypnotism.

Libertarians are the Truthers—the good ones cleave to natural justice and to the natural laws of economics. By so doing, we are able to predict what the fools at the New York Times have only just conceded. So it was that “Obama’s Politburo Of Proctologists” (June 26, 2009), one of many such columns, explained to the few who listened that,

The pit of perverse incentives Papa Obama is engineering includes leveling the insurance industry, which by definition must discern and discriminate between applicants based on their health status (largely under individual control). Under his benevolent rule, private insurers will be subjected to a host of new regulations, “including a requirement to insure all applicants and a prohibition on pricing premiums on the basis of risk …”

“Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured” (August 7, 2009) attempted the same:

If the US wasn’t already insolvent, I’d say that Obama was bankrupting the country, and sending the health care we have to hell in a handcart, for the ostensible benefit of less than ten percent of the population. But the US is already in the red, courtesy of the current president and his predecessor.

On an on.