Category Archives: Healthcare

Andy Sullivan: Struggling to Stay Relevant

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, War

Like the late Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan lacks a philosophical core. Unlike Hitchens, Sullivan is not a formidable intellect, rhetorician and writer. Hitchens didn’t have to struggle to stay interesting. Sullivan does. The fruits of Sullivan’s Struggle are splayed on the latest cover of Newsweek, provocatively titled, “President Obama: The Democrats’ Ronald Reagan.”

Like any liberal who doesn’t have to worry about a pay cheque, crunchy con Sullivan is still convinced that Barack Obama can “hold his staff out” over stormy waters, and divide the sea so that the people may pass through “with a wall of water on either side.”

Obama’s “tally of achievements is formidable,” declares Sullivan, who then proceeds to praise every thing BHO has done to cripple the American economy (including extending or entrenching US hegemony abroad):

…the near-obliteration of al Qaeda, democratic revolutions in the Arab world that George Bush could only have dreamed of, the re-regulation of Wall Street after the 2008 crash, stimulus investments in infrastructure and clean energy, powerful new fuel-emission standards along with a record level of independence from foreign oil, and, most critically, health-care reform. Now look at what Obama’s second term could do for all of these achievements. It would mean, first of all, that universal health care in America—government subsidies to people so they can afford to purchase private insurance and a ban on denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions—becomes irreversible. Yes, many details of the law would benefit from reform, experimentation, and fixes—especially if Republicans help to make them. But it’s still the biggest change in American health care since the passage of Medicare in 1965.

Sullivan’s piece tells you about the degree to which neocon and left-liberal political “thinking” have converged.

On war too.

Crunchy con Sullivan’s anti-war followers should not forget what was documented in “Confess, Clinton; Say You’re Sorry, Sullivan“:

Senator Hillary Clinton and neoconservative blogger Andrew Sullivan share more than a belief that “Jesus, Mohamed, and Socrates are part of the same search for truth.” They’re both Christians who won’t confess to their sins.
Both were enthusiastic supporters of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, turned scathing and sanctimonious critics of the war. Neither has quite come clean. Both ought to prostrate themselves before those they’ve bamboozled, those they’ve helped indirectly kill, and whichever deity they worship. (The Jesus-Mohamed-and-Socrates profanity, incidentally, was imparted by Sullivan, during a remarkably rude interview he gave Hugh Hewitt. The gay activist-cum-philosopher king was insolent; Hewitt took it .)
I won’t bore you with the hackneyed war hoaxes Sullivan once spewed, only to say that there was not an occurrence he didn’t trace back to Iraq: anthrax, September 11, and too few gays in the military—you name it; Iraq was behind it. Without minimizing the role of politicians like Clinton, who signed the marching orders, pundits like Sullivan provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.

The Ass With Ears And His Ali Baba Thieves

Barack Obama, Britain, Business, Europe, Healthcare, Socialism

“The Ass With Ears And His Ali Baba Thieves” is the current column, now on RT:

IdiotCare, aka ObamaCare, kicks in once a company is 50 people strong. In a word, as the business begins to grow. The costs imposed by the healthcare mandate compel small business to duck-and-dive so as to stay alive.

In a televised interview, Kari DePhillips, the co-owner of a small PR firm, explained how the health-care law would impact her fledgling enterprise, and what she was doing to stay in business. (Small business, incidentally, is already adept at negotiating the legislative impositions of affirmative-action laws.)

DePhillips, of The Content Factory, told Fox News’ Gerri Willis that she is “scrambling” to comply with the mandate, for she must provide employees with healthcare or face fines. For this plucky woman, the year 2012 will mark the first time the cost of healthcare per employee “broke the $10,000 mark”! “Multiply that by 50,” and this entrepreneur is in hock to the tune of $500,000.

Unless she curtails her ambitions, those are the additional costs America’s Ass With Ears (Barack Obama) will be imposing on Mrs. DePhillips.

Suitably, hiring “fewer people or hiring in a different capacity” were two of the options explored on The Willis Report. The first alludes to part-time, “1099 contractors.”

Moving to the state of New Hampshire, as part of the “Free State Project”— and in the faint hope that the Granite State will nullify the Affordable Care Act—is another option DePhillips intended to explore.

Unmentioned was the incorporation option. Create a new business, at considerable costs, each time your company reaches 49. As this is hardly a viable option, it is best just to stay small.

“I’m a 1099er,” confirms a British reader. “My customers all split their businesses up years ago to stay under 50. Might’ve been the Family Leave Act along with a bunch of other legislation lumped in with it.”

Britain has morphed into a nation of sheep and shopkeepers, whose vaulting ambitions were on display during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. I am referring to the song, dance and Hosannas the host country gave to its National Health Service, or NHS.

Like the Europeans and the English, Americans will have to learn not to shoot for the sky. …

Read the complete column, “The Ass With Ears And His Ali Baba Thieves”, on RT.

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Doctors Dig In

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism

The bloggers at the Washington Post remind me of the pinheads behind the sort of “scientific” research that is often, small mercies, spoofed in the news. You know the kind. A controlled study found that men were more attracted to older women when the women were better looking than their younger counterparts. (Howard Stern before Sirius once read this “discovery” on air.)

The latest ObamaCare-related research revealed at WaPo concerns the unwillingness of doctors to be conscripted into the Gulag of ObamaCare.

The findings were published this afternoon in the journal Health Affairs. Accordingly, a state-by-state survey, looking at doctors’ willingness to accept Medicaid patients, found that “more than three in ten doctors – 31 percent – said no,” they would not be accepting new Medicaid patients.

The WaPo’s wide-eyed bloggers are shocked—shocked, I tell you—over this unintuitive outcome.

OMG.

That could mean that the states with the highest likelihood of expanding Medicaid might be those with the lower reimbursement rates – and fewer doctors willing to accept these patients by proxy.

Another Alice-in-Wonderland moment: California has a problem (really!!!). “1.8 million residents are expected to gain coverage – but fewer than 60 percent of providers accept new patients in the program.”

The WaPo’s brilliant conclusion: “Prior evidence suggests that physicians’ acceptance of Medicaid patients will increase as Medicaid payment rates increase.”

You don’t say!

WaPo, of course, is statism and cretinism personified. The solution to the lack of will to work for free: The money pot will provideth.

Not to worry. The Affordable Care Act provisions have it covered, the WaPo assures its readers. “The law increases Medicaid reimbursements for primary care doctors to match those of Medicare providers.”

As I said, it’s all in the money pot.

Since, of course, there is no bottomless money pot, interventionism invariably leads to socialization of the means of production. In the case of the physician caught in the maelstrom of ObamaCare, expect the doctor to be slowly conscripted in the service of those who claim his services for free.