Destroying Health Care For The Few Uninsured

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Debt, Economy, Healthcare

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Destroying Health Care For The Few Uninsured,” now on Taki’s Magazine:

“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.

The reported numbers—between 46 and 50 million—are inflated. If CBS news says so, you can believe it …

Large-scale destruction in the purported service of the few—does that sound familiar? Last year, a bumbling Bush bailed out and nationalized large sections of the financial sector because of a few million bad mortgages. For the benefit of these bad debtors, BO has beefed-up Bush’s initial offering with a $75 billion foreclosure relief plan. Although sources cited by Foxbusiness estimate “that up to 6 million homes could be lost to foreclosure in the current economic crisis,” so far approximately four million loans have gone under, out of a total of 44.4 million mortgages countrywide. …”

Read the complete column, now up on Taki’s (“Universal Health Care Is Theft”) You can catch the weekly fare every Saturday on Taki’s Magazine too, where the reading is really good.

Slumming It On The SCOTUS

Affirmative Action, Justice, Law, Multiculturalism, The Courts

SHE’S IN. SotoSetAsides Mayor has been confirmed as a United States Supreme Court Justice. Let the deluge of original commentary vis-a-vis the history-making nature of the event commence. (For one of my older columns, read “Media’s Judicial Jiu-Jitsu For Da Big Man,” or search the blog archive for the many debates we’ve had about Sonia.

At LRC.COM, my good friend Tom DiLorenzo, comments about her worldview (sealed with Tom’s vintage humor):

“The newest black-robed deity talks the language of pop-Marxism, the fundamental belief system of the man who appointed her. Sotomayor’s now-famous comment about how she possesses special and unique legal insights by virtue of being a “Latina woman” is an expression of what used to be called “Marxian class consciousness,” that is, one’s views are determined by the social class one belongs to. In the old days the relevant Marxian classes were the working and capitalist classes. After the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late ’80s/early ’90s, the pop Marxists of academe switched their tune to a different sort of class struggle: Now it’s the White Heterosexual Male Oppressor “class” versus all of the various mascot groups of the academic left, i.e., women, minorities, homosexuals, Latinos, the transgendered, etc., etc.

P.S. A friend who is married to a Latina woman makes good use of Sotomayor’s lingo whenever his wife asks him to perform various chores around the house: He tells her that as a Latina woman she has special skills in doing the chores, and should therefore do them herself.”

That Oh-So Original Argument From Hitler

Democrats, Fascism, History, Republicans, Socialism, The State

The Argument From Hitler (TAFH) is so tired. Come to think of it, tired is a good word for the Republicans. Funny guy and host of Fox News’ late-night laugh “Red Eye” drives home the ludicrous nature of the TAFH by sealing his Gregalogues thus: “If you don’t agree with me, you’re worse than Hitler.” But then Rush Limbaugh is not smart enough to poke fun at himself. Economically, fascism and socialism are evil twins. The Republicans have more of the first in them; the Democrats more of the last. Both parties are made up of consummate statists. Ultimately Rush’s weary TAFH shuts off a more serious deconstruction of Democratic ideology. In any case, here goes Rush:

“Now what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business. They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working one of which was the Autobahn.

They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables as we all know and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized health care. I have always bristled when I hear people claim that conservatism gets close to Naziism. It is liberalism that’s the closest you can get to Naziism and socialism. It’s all bundled up under the socialist banner. There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that’s being heralded by a Hitler-like logo.”

Co-op Or Co-optation?

Barack Obama, Democrats, Healthcare, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism

As members of the two-party monopoly come together to hammer out a “compromise” on how best to send the health care we have to hell in a handcart, I thought you ought to know a bit about the co-op option; it is, after all, the buzzword being bandied about to replace the less-than soothing “public option” phrase. A co-op is “simply government-run health insurance by another name.” Over to Cato’s Michael D. Tanner:

“Now, if this was really going to be a co-op like rural electrical co-ops or your local health-food store — owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services — it would be a meaningless but harmless diversion. America already has some 1,300 insurance companies, so it’s hard to see what one more would add, but it would be unlikely to do much harm.

But these aren’t true co-ops. The members wouldn’t choose its officers — the president would. Plus, the secretary of Health and Human Services would have to approve its business plan, and thus could force it to offer whatever benefits, premiums and reimbursement schedules Washington wants. Finally, the federal government would provide start up, and possibly ongoing, subsidies.

[This is a] ‘co-op’ run by the federal government, under rules imposed by the federal government and with federal funding…

The Senate compromise also drops the job-killing employer-mandate that businesses provide their workers with health insurance or pay a penalty — and substitutes a more regressive employer mandate.

The compromise would have no specific mandate for employers to provide insurance. But any employer who failed to do so would have to pay the cost of all subsidies that the government provides his or her workers to help them pay for insurance on their own.

It is hard to see how this is different from any other employer mandate — except that it will hurt low-wage workers most.

Business owners care about the total cost of hiring a worker, not how that cost is apportioned between wages, taxes, health insurance or other benefits. If they have to pay the cost of subsidizing health insurance for their workers, employers will simply offset the added cost by lowering wages, reducing future wage increases, reducing other benefits (such as pensions), cutting back on hiring, laying off current workers, shifting workers from full-time to part-time or outsourcing.

It will ultimately be the worker who pays the subsidy’s cost. The government will be giving the worker a subsidy with one hand, and taking it back with the other. Does that make sense for any reason other than ‘compromise?'”

The complete Tanner piece here.

Michael D. Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and the author of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.