REP. PALLONE(Y)’S Health-Care Baloney

Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Morality, Politics

Lying is second nature to politicians, but there can be no doubt that Democrats have notched it up, becoming increasingly brazen about, well, lying. Small mercies, Fox News still provides a transcript here and there for those of us who prefer to speed READ, rather than waste time watching video clips. Read through this interview with Democrat Frank Pallone, a ghastly congressman from New Jersey. Watch him in the act, and your skin will crawl.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Joining me now, Democratic New Jersey Congressman, Frank Pallone. He’s a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee. He was one of the lawmakers questioning the Secretary today. Congressman, thank you for being here.

REP. FRANK PALLONE, D-N.J.: Thank you.

KELLY: We’re struggling to understand how Ms. Sebelius can say the president kept that promise. That specific one of if you like your healthcare you can keep it, period, I guarantee it, when we’ve seen 2 million Americans have policies cancelled so far. And the estimates are it will top 10 million.

REP. PALLONE: Well you can keep it as long as the insurance company agrees to continue to sell it. But the problem is a lot of insurance companies now have been caught because they’re selling lousy plans at a high price that are skeletal and don’t provide any benefits. So they are now cancelling those lousy plans. In which case many of them are just a scam and saying, look we’re not going to sell this anymore because nobody’s going to buy it. And therefore we’ll try to get, we’ll give you a better plan that has better benefits at a more affordable price.

So the president never said that he could stop the insurance companies from cancelling plans. This is a private market. This is a competitive market. They’re not going to sell something they can’t sell.

KELLY: Okay. But that’s only partially true. But what you’re saying is only partially true.

REP. PALLONE: What’s only partially true?

KELLY: There are some insurance companies who cancelled policies. And that’s what insurance companies–

REP. PALLONE: They cancelled the policies —

KELLY: Wait a minute, let me just, let me pose —

REP. PALLONE: They don’t have to sell them. It’s a private market.

KELLY: Let me pose the question. Then you respond. Some of the insurance companies said, all right, I’m going to cancel the policies because that happens on the insurance market.

REP. PALLONE: Right.

KELLY: But many, many other policies — in fact, according to the insurance companies the vast majority of these policies that are being cancelled are being cancelled because the regulations imposed on them by ObamaCare left them with no choice. The way the HHS —

REP. PALLONE: That is absolutely not true.

KELLY: The HHS regulations —

REP. PALLONE: They have a right to continue the policies —

KELLY: She admitted it. She admitted it today, sir.

REP. PALLONE: She did not admit that.

KELLY: She did too.

REP. PALLONE: That’s simply not true.

KELLY: She was asked about whether —

REP. PALLONE: The insurance companies can cancel the policies if they want to. They can offer policies at the same price for the same lousy benefits if they want to.

KELLY: If they change the policies in any marginal way then ObamaCare requires that they be cancelled and the people get kicked off.

REP. PALLONE: No, that’s not true.

KELLY: Yes. She was asked about this today by a $5 increase in the premium.

REP. PALLONE: It’s not true. ObamaCare —

KELLY: Let’s run the sound bite. Let’s run the sound bit, $5 change, $5 change and you’re kicked off. Watch.

REP. PALLONE: ObamaCare simply says that —

KELLY: Stand by.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WILLIAM CASSIDY: If coinsurance went up by any amount, even by a dollar according to your regulations that would not qualify as a grandfathered clause? Just to have that out there for the record. I gather even by a dollar.

HHS SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Dr. Cassidy, I want to start by the amount that you gave is not accurate. I was told $5, not a dollar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: So she’s not saying, no, you’re wrong. They can’t cancel the people if the policy changes by five dollars. She’s saying, yes you’re right. If they up your premium by $5 it’s cancelled, ObamaCare kicks in, the person gets a cancellation notice and they’re wondering where to get their insurance.

REP. PALLONE: Look the bottom line is, they tell them where they can get the insurance. Look, the bottom line is, if you are selling a lousy policy at a price that’s too high, nobody is going to buy it. And so they’re cancelling these policies because they know people can’t, won’t buy them.

KELLY: OK.

REP. PALLONE: It’s a competitive marketplace.

Mainstream press, meantime, is every bit as allergic to the truth as the pols. WaPo’s Fact Checker is being lauded far and wide for doing what it’s supposed to do: award maximum “Pinocchio’s” to “Obama’s pledge that ‘no one will take away’ your health plan.” Sad. When mainstream media detect and report facts unflattering to O, it is considered a momentous event.

The president’s statements were sweeping and unequivocal — and made both before and after the bill became law. The White House now cites technicalities to avoid admitting that he went too far in his repeated pledge, which, after all, is one of the most famous statements of his presidency.
The president’s promise apparently came with a very large caveat: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan — if we deem it to be adequate.”

MORE.

The Stupid Party Greases The Skids For Sebelius’ Success

Government, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

An MSNBC reporter is confident that Kathleen “Sebelius survived [the] Obamacare grilling” on Capitol Hill. But then the Obama lickspittles at the network also believe that “the insurance companies and not the law” are to blame for the loss of medical coverage by a million Americans, so far.

There will be foolish Americans aplenty (I’ve heard from a number of them) who’ll blame insurers for complying with Obama’s law and canceling policies that no longer comply with that law. (The idea that insurers would subject themselves to a massive, costly reorganization for no reason is insanely stupid, the very definition of a leftist ideologue.)

However, it would appear that the Health and Human Services Secretary skirted her deserved humiliation thanks to the Stupid Party.

When the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank gets something right it is usually by accident. Today is one of those accidents. Milbank has a point when he writes this:

Like the Scarecrow, whoever came up with House Republicans’ plan to deal with Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday didn’t have a brain.

It was their big chance to flambé the secretary of Health and Human Services and the person who has overseen the disastrous launch of Obamacare. Instead, they wound up casting her as Judy Garland’s Dorothy.

“In ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ there is a great line,” Barton, one of the first Republican questioners, informed Sebelius, a former two-term governor of Kansas. “Dorothy at some point in the movie turns to her little dog, Toto, and says, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Well, Madam Secretary, while you’re from Kansas, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Thus began several references, each more painful than the last, to Oz, Kansas, following the yellow brick road, pulling back the curtain, the wonderful things the Wizard does — and, for good measure, something about Chicken Little, although he did not appear in the 1939 classic.

GOPer on campus:

Explaining Austrian Economics And Much More

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, libertarianism, Liberty, Reason

“First and foremost, Austrian economics is not an empirical science as is mainstream economics, but a branch of logic.” As always, Professor Walter E. Block, friend and mentor, explains Austrian economics beautifully.

Here is the full, behind-the-scenes interview Walter did with a local, NBC affiliate, from which too few pearls were culled for the final segment.

A doff of the hat to EPJ for the story.

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Libertarian Party: Party of Isms, Not Individualism

Gender, IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Race, Ron Paul, States' Rights

When it comes to playing manipulative politics with social issues—matters of “racism,” “sexism” (blah, blah), with which government should not concern itself—there’s no daylight between left-liberals and left-libertarians.

The loser Libertarian Party is running a gubernatorial candidate (Robert Sarvis?) against one of the most libertarian attorneys general a state has had: Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. The latter has an impressive record of achievements and has taken principled positions on the issues.

For instance, Attorney General Cuccinelli’s attempts to nullify federal health insurance mandates in Virgina go as far back as March of 2010, when he launched a legal challenge to “shield Virginians from paying any penalties for not purchasing federally-approved health care.”

By Wikipedia’s telling, the Libertarian Party’s challenger, Sarvis, “supports same sex marriage and says it is a personal issue for him because his own marriage, which is biracial, was illegal in Virginia 50 years ago.”

By the same token, why not support affirmative action, on the ground that it wasn’t the law “in Virginia 50 years ago”?

Left-liberal argumentation! Sanctimonious too.

As one who believes that the state should stay out of marriage altogether, I cringe when so-called liberty lovers join Hollywood dimwits to place this issue at the forefront of the fight for freedom and beat people about the head with it. If you care about liberty, keep the state out of marriage; don’t expand its purview. Go to an attorney and solemnize your marriage through contract law.

Unsurprisingly, this Libertarian Party candidate is for open borders, framing the matter by using more sly, liberal illogic. (Here: I know immigrants, therefore immigration should proceed unfettered.)

Remember that immigration has pitted governors like Arizona’s against the Feds in a heroic fight for the right of state representatives to protect their statesmen from trespass. On immigration, left-libertarians come down foursquare on the side of the federales. You can be sure that the latest Immigration Bill will be Sarvis’s dream-come-true.

Cuccinelli, on the other hand, has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.'” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion … “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

Most telling, Ron Paul has endorsed … Cuccinelli.