Category Archives: Healthcare

Simple-Minded Pinkos Are In For A Health Scare

Economy, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Socialism

The pinkos at Politico.com are simple souls. “[A]lready, despite the unceasing GOP campaign to sink the law, Obamacare has exceeded expectations in some significant ways,” gush two female reporters, who then proceed to celebrate the fact that the central planner has instructed insurers on how to “effectively” allocate resources. Planned economies have such a stellar history, now don’t they?!

More than 3.1 million young adults gained coverage because they could stay on their parents’ insurance; 17 million children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage; and insurers have been forced to issue more than $500 million in rebate checks to consumers because they failed to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care.

READ on, if you can tolerate the imbecility.

Pinkos generally see only one part of a complex picture. Thus, if the central-planner has legislated against service providers and in favor of consumers—why, it’s all good.

Deeply stupid liberals believe that an act of force—a law—is all it takes to make medical manna fall from the heavens.

People with insurance are already paying enormous co-pays and deductibles to cover the costs of the freeloaders … There is no free lunch.

The CBOafs On Delaying The individual Insurance Mandate

Barack Obama, Debt, Healthcare

The CBOafs (The Congressional Budget Oafs) always grossly underestimate the costs to the private, productive economy of government programs. This is their mandate.

“On July 17, 2013, the House of Representatives passed ‘H.R. 2668: An act to delay the application of the individual health insurance mandate, to delay the application of the employer health insurance mandate, and for other purposes.'”

H.R. 2668 would delay the implementation of several provisions related to the expansion of health insurance coverage established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Public Law 111-148 and the health care provisions of P.L. 111-152). Title I of H.R. 2668 would delay for one year the requirement that most residents of the United States have health insurance coverage by January 1, 2014. Title I also would shift by one year the schedule of penalties for people who do not comply with that mandate. In addition, title II of the legislation would delay for one year the imposition of penalties for certain large employers that do not offer health insurance coverage that meets the affordability standard defined in the ACA and two reporting requirements for certain large employers and health insurance coverage providers.

Just imagine the real savings generated by any delay of Health-Scare, if,

They CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting H.R. 2668 would reduce federal deficits by roughly $36 billion over the 2014-2018 period and by roughly $35 billion over the 2014-20 23 period. Those budgetary effects would result entirely from title I. Title II would not affect direct spending or revenues since it essentially codifies changes announced by the Administration and subsequently incorporated into CBO’s baseline.

About a repeal of Obamacare we can only dream.

Mum’s The Word About The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Etiquette, Government, Healthcare, Military, Morality, Republicans

Mark Levin the radio Mouth could be heard inveighing against what is surely a sickening specter: “Healthcare lobbying on K Street.” As The Hill divulged:

More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.
Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.
“When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during the signing of the healthcare law] and said to [President] Obama, ‘This is a big f’n deal,’ ” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group, “he was right.”
Veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants such as Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola, and for healthcare companies including GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

This, no doubt, is ANC-style corruption; the stuff of banana republics, carried out with considerable aplomb and within the bounds of what is considered The Law.

You won’t hear conservatives like Mark Levin protesting or even mentioning the tentacles of The Thing that enervates every corner of the American government, economy, foreign policy, you name them: the military-industrial-Congressional complex, where corruption and “influence peddling” are the order of the day.

Over to the formidable Chuck Spinney:

… SPINNEY: Right. Let’s say I’m the program manager for the F-16 in the Pentagon. I get a call from one of my wholly owned subsidiaries over on the Hill on the armed services committee. “We got it funded for you guys, but those guys in the House are gonna screw us.” So you know, “You got to do something.”

So all I have to do is I call up the program manager at the prime contractor, who I know because I work with him on a daily basis. And say, “Hey, we got a problem.

“The House is gonna kill our program. The Senate’s on board. Turn on the pressure.” Well, at that point, I don’t have to do anything in the government. The rest of it takes care of itself because the people whose future it…are at hand are gonna work overtime to solve that.

The contractors then start calling up the subcontractors. They unleash the fax attacks. They unleash the emails. And then of course they start calling the lobbyists, the Gucci shoe crowd on K Street, and say, “Hey, you got to start beating the… beating the pavement in the halls of Congress. We need some newspaper op-eds.” The whole process takes care of itself. One phone call turns it on.

MOYERS: Who gets the money?

SPINNEY: The contractors get it. The Congressmen get it, you know through… they get the power because they keep getting voted back in office. They may also get some Congressional contributions. But I think the bigger benefit is the power, the stability of their job.

And remember the people in the Pentagon that are promoting this thing are basically… they’re also creating a situation where they can roll over and get into that sector and make the big bucks. All you have to do is look at the number of retired generals working for defense contractors.

MOYERS: The revolving door?

SPINNEY: Yeah, yeah. The revolving door.

… Over in the Pentagon, we’re not holding people accountable.

I think basically here is you have in Congress the oversight committees for defense, which are essentially the armed services committee. And the defense appropriations subcommittees in both houses are so tied in to the Pentagon and the defense contractor base that essentially oversight has been displaced by what some of us call overlook. They’re basically watching the money flow out the door and encouraging it to go.

And basically it’s in members of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s best interest to keep the money flowing. It’s in the Pentagon’s best interest to keep the money flowing.

MOYERS: Because?

SPINNEY: It’s in the defense contractors’ best interest to keep the money flowing. Because it’s the military industrial Congressional complex and this is their way of life. They live on the money flow.

MOYERS: The military industrial Congressional complex?

SPINNEY: Right. Which I believe was a term that Eisenhower considered using in his speech, but he dropped the reference to Congress.

MORE WITH MOYERS.

ObamaCare for Thee, But Not for Me. Yippee.

Barack Obama, Democracy, Government, Healthcare

Despotism is upon us when “government officials write laws that apply only to us and not to them.”

Via Reuters: “When Congress passed the health reform law known as Obamacare in 2010, an amendment required that lawmakers and their staff members purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created. They would lose generous coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.”

Now:

Congress has won some partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the “Obamacare” health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago.
In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must purchase through soon-to-open exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.
The decision by the Office of Personnel Management, with Obama’s blessing, will prevent the largely unintended loss of healthcare benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives and thousands of Capitol Hill staff.

Obama Care for thee, but not for me. Yippee.

This is the law of rule, not the rule of law.