Category Archives: Healthcare

UPDATE II: Bill Getting Brave

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Government, Healthcare, Intelligence, Private Property, Race, Racism, The State, Welfare

Black and white Americans are divided over President Obama, says Bill O’Reilly, pointing to a Gallop poll according to which 88% of Black Americans support Obama; but only 38% of whites.

“A fifty point differential.”

Whites, of course, are barred from expressing racial affinities; but not blacks. Although O’Reilly neglects the black-racism element (he knows that very many blacks are racists), he nevertheless zeroes in on another important reason blacks go with Obama. White Americans fear the expansion of government and the bankrupting of the nation. [I’m not so sure of the first.] This attitude was on display, says O’Reilly, in Missouri, where 71% of the voters rejected the individual mandate to purchase insurance that ObamaCare would have imposed on them.

O’Reilly goes on to clearly state that black America has a different view of politics, in particular, blacks want a bigger federal government for the purpose of imposing social justice and carrying out distributive policies.

Blacks want a central authority “to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts” is how O’Reilly, rather directly, describes what black support for “what BHO is doing” is all about.

Fifty four percent of Hispanics support Obama, down 9 points since April. Here too the social justice issue is in operation, says O’Reilly.

O’Reilly recognizes that there are two Americas. It’s hard to decipher his solution—not when he says he support “strict oversight and fair rules,” but not the imposition of entitlements. Oversight over what? To whom a private property owner rents, sells; and who he hires and fires?

And whose property is it anyway to dispense with?

And what about “Thou Shall Not Covet”?

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbor’s.” (THE 10th COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:17)

UPDATE I (Aug. 6): We doffed a hat to Bill’s first show of whatever it was that rolled off Sarah’s word-salad producing tongue, HERE.

UPDATE II: With Bill it’s one step forward, two steps back. Why do African-Americans lag so far behind, asked one of O’Reilly’s viewers in a letter to The Factor today. Because of 100 years of slavery, replied The Sage. Pray tell, Bill, what is the reason Africa is centuries behind the West, China, Singapore, etc?

Lethal Bush Baby

Bush, Free Markets, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Socialism

Is there any surprise that one of the inconsequential females GWB sired supports the colossal health-care entitlement program BHO passed? One can hardly consider Barbara Bush’s statist father and left-liberal mother intellectual and moral role models capable of steering this brassy young woman toward an understanding of freedom.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Barbara Bush said she’s “glad” Democrats passed the massive spending measure and President Barack Obama signed it into law.
“Why do, basically, people with money have good health care and why do people who live on lower salaries not have good health care?” the 28-year old said. “Health should be a right for everyone.”
Asked specifically what she though about the president’s health care initiative, Bush replied with a smile, “That is a good question – obviously the health care reform bill was highly debated by a lot of people and I guess I’m glad the bill was passed.”

The former First Dolt is using her celebrity clout to promote the unethical idea that a medic should be conscripted to serve those in need of his services; in other words, that healthcare is a natural right, and not a service. Men and women who work in this industry thus must be conscripted by central planners, rather than left to offer their services on the free market, or as part of voluntary charities.

Speaking of private charities, Barbara Bush “runs the Global Health Corps, a nonprofit group that aims to connect ‘outstanding young leaders with organizations working on the front lines in order to promote global health equity,’ according to the organization’s website.”

From operating a successful, private, non-profits, health-care charity, Bush has taken away that the world needs more state-run care.

Grounds For A Constitutional Challenge Of H.R.4872

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, States' Rights

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Judge Andrew Napolitano outlined the grounds upon which the Supreme Court of the United States ought to repeal major portions of Obama’s overweening health care legislation:

“The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state governments,” Napolitano says. “Nevertheless, in this piece of legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants it done. …

That’s called commandeering the legislature,” he says. “That’s the Congress taking away the discretion of the legislature with respect to regulation, and spending taxpayer dollars. That’s prohibited in a couple of Supreme Court cases. So on that argument, the attorneys general have a pretty strong case and I think they will prevail.” …

The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can’t simply move in there,” Napolitano says. “And the states for 230 years have had near exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license healthcare providers whether they’re doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. The feds have had nothing to do with it.

“The Congress can’t simply wake up one day and decide that it wants to regulate this. I predict that the Supreme Court will invalidate major portions of what the president just signed into law.”…

Napolitano believes the federal government lacks the legal authority to order citizens to purchase healthcare insurance. The Congress [is] ordering human beings to purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not be able to afford, and might not want — that’s never happened in our history before,” Napolitano says. “My gut tells me that too is unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution.”

The sweetheart deals in the healthcare reform bill used that persuaded Democrats to vote for it – the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatorade Exception and others – create “a very unique and tricky constitutional problem” for Democrats, because they treat citizens differently based on which state they live in, running afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause according to Napolitano. “So these bennies or bribes, whatever you want, or horse trading as it used to be called, clearly violate equal protection by forcing people in the other states to pay the bills of the states that don’t have to pay what the rest of us do,” Napolitano says.

Exempting union members from the so-called “Cadillac tax” on expensive health insurance policies, while imposing that tax on other citizens, is outright discrimination according to Napolitano. “The government cannot draw a bright line, with fidelity to the Constitution and the law, on the one side of which everybody pays, and the other side of which some people pay. It can’t say, ‘Here’s a tax, but we’re only going to apply it to nonunion people. Here’s a tax, and we’re only going to apply it to graduates of Ivy League institutions.’ The Constitution does not permit that type of discrimination.” …

[SNIP]

In this televised interview, the Judge laid out more clearly the test for a constitutional challenge, namely that one is harmed by the legislation.

Note the comment on the impossibility of reading and making sense of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 (my experience) each section of which amends and alludes to other laws in the US Code, which in itself is large enough to fill a house with paper stacked to the ceilings.

The Cost Of Manna From Mount Olympus

Business, Economy, Healthcare, Labor, Regulation

Nancy can be seen in media photo opportunities smooching a gold-embossed copy of the bankrupting healthcare bill. You can’t expect the little woman to grasp that the regulation and confiscation of private property, what’s left of it, has costs.

Caterpillar, “the world’s largest maker of construction and earth-moving equipment, said Wednesday that the new healthcare legislation in the U.S. will cause the company to take a $100 million tax charge in the current quarter,” reported Fox News.

Caterpillar said the additional expense and higher taxes to come could damage the recovery efforts that began after the company lost 75% of its profit in 2009.

According to the Charleston Gazette, “In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies – Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy – said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.”

“With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.

Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare’s program.”

The WSJ reports that,

“AT&T Inc. plans to take a noncash $1 billion charge in the first quarter in anticipating the impact of changes brought by the nation’s health-care overhaul.”

The Dallas-based telecommunications giant is the latest—and largest—company to take a charge to account for the increased costs under the new health-care plan. Specifically, the legislation prevents corporations from deducting tax-free subsidies they receive from the government for providing retirees with prescription-drug benefits.

The company will evaluate prospective changes to its active and retiree health-care benefits, according to a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

The size of AT&T’s charge is notable. The company employs more union workers than all of the U.S. auto makers combined, and has to support a sizeable retiree base

I FULLY EXPECT to hear shortly from our insurance company as soon as it has figured out how to nudge us over onto ObamaCare.