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The Affordable Care Act is Coming Home to Roost

Keukasmallies

By Keukasmallies
in Politics, Polls, and Pundits

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B-Man Hall of Famer

B-Man

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Hilarious.

 

 

A Phalanx of Lies Remember that health insurance you could keep?

 

By Mark Steyn

 

CNN has been pondering what they call “a particularly tough few days at the White House.” “Four out of five Americans have little or no trust in their government to do anything right,” says chief political analyst Gloria Borger. “And now Obama probably feels the same way.” Our hearts go out to him, poor wee disillusioned thing. We are assured by the headline writers that the president was “unaware” of Obamacare’s website defects, and the NSA spying, and the IRS targeting of his political enemies, and the Justice Department bugging the Associated Press, and pretty much anything else you ask him about. But, as he put it, “nobody’s madder than me” at this shadowy rogue entity called the “Government of the United States” that’s running around pulling all this stuff. And, once he finds out who’s running this Government of the United States rogue entity, he’s gonna come down as hard on him as he did on that videomaker in California; he’s gonna send round the National Park Service SWAT team to teach that punk a lesson he won’t forget.

 

Gloria Borger and CNN seem inclined to swallow the line that the president of the United States is not aware that he is president of the United States:

 

For the media, just a spoonful of bovine manure makes the Obamacare medicine go down. It remains to be seen whether the American citizenry will be so genially indulgent.

 

Hitherto, most of what the president claims to be unaware of, they are genuinely unaware of: Few people have plans to vacation in Benghazi, or shoot the breeze with Angela Merkel on her cell phone. But Obamacare is different: Whether or not the president is unaware of it, the more than 2 million Americans (at the time of writing) kicked off their current health-care plans are most certainly aware of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Obama voter's cry of despair

 

By Nathaniel P. Morris, Special to CNN

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/01/opinion/morris-obama-voter-despair/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

 

 

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B-Man Hall of Famer

B-Man

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This sounds like several of our posters.....................Prof. Althouse answers the question.

 

 

"If you believe the healthy are entitled to keep the financial benefits of their good health, then you must also believe the sick must be denied medical care."

 

Writes Jonathan Chait in a New York Magazine piece titled "Why Letting Everyone Keep Their Health-Care Plan Is a Terrible Idea."

 

Chait concedes that Obama et al. lied when they promised that people could keep their plans if they like them, but wants us to look separately at whether those who had and wanted to keep their low-cost, low-coverage plans should feel that's it's unfair not to be able to have plans like that. Can you separate these 2 things? I have 2 problems with separating these 2 things.

 

1. If, at the time, Obama et al. had said "If you have a low-cost, low-coverage plan, you'll be forced to buy a much more expensive plan," then the political dynamic would have been different, and Obamacare would almost surely not have passed. A political argument premised on the unfairness of having a plan like that was never attempted, so that's one sign that the unfairness argument isn't too persuasive.

 

2. Even now, some Obamacare proponents seem to be suggesting that the words "if you like your plan, you can keep it" ought to be interpreted in a deviously subtle way where liking your plan doesn't depend on what individuals with plans consciously feel that they like. The government's sophisticated assessment of what you should want is a truer of test of what you, at a deep level, like. Voila! Lie erased! No means yes!

 

But I'll nevertheless play Chait's game. Let's just look at whether it's fair for someone to want to buy low-cost insurance that doesn't cover a lot of day-to-day ordinary expenses and that has a high deductible. This person, who Chait thinks is asking for too much, is betting on his continued good health, willing to pay out-of-pocket for routine health things (just as he pays out-of-pocket for food, shelter, and clothing), and uses insurance as a backup in case something big happens. He only wants "catastrophic" coverage.

 

Now, go back to that quote I used for the post title, and you should see that it doesn't fit: "If you believe the healthy are entitled to keep the financial benefits of their good health, then you must also believe the sick must be denied medical care."

 

Our low-cost insurance-buyer wasn't free-loading! He was making a rational decision that did not unfairly rely on society's unwillingness to deny medical care to the sick. He opted not to pool his money with others for the day-to-day expenses that he incurs before anything big happens. What he declined to do was subsidize other people's routine health care. And he had insurance to cover him if something really expensive comes up.

 

Isn't it bad enough that this person was egregiously lied to?! You have to also brand him as a taker?!

 

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Tiberius Hall of Famer

Tiberius

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/01/nfib_obamacare_survey_more_small_businesses_will_add_health_care.html

 

It is working. And it ain't goin nowhere :)

 

 

The National Federation of Independent Business, a lobbying organization and the named plaintiff behind the Supreme Court case that upheld the individual mandate, has released a survey that says small businesses that plan to add health care coverage outnumber those planning on dropping it.

They hid the good news on page 26: "If small employers follow those plans, the net proportion of them offering would rise, breaking a decade-old trend."

B-Man Hall of Famer

B-Man

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From today's Washington Post;

 

 

HealthCare.gov: How political fear was pitted against technical needs

 

n May 2010, two months after the Affordable Care Act squeaked through Congress, President Obama’s top economic aides were getting worried. Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, and Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, had just received a pointed four-page memo from a trusted outside health adviser. It warned that no one in the administration was “up to the task” of overseeing the construction of an insurance exchange and other intricacies of translating the 2,000-page statute into reality.

 

Summers, Orszag and their staffs agreed. For weeks that spring, a tug of war played out inside the White House, according to five people familiar with the episode. On one side, members of the economic team and Obama health-care adviser Zeke Emanuel lobbied for the president to appoint an outside health reform “czar” with expertise in business, insurance and technology. On the other, the president’s top health aides — who had shepherded the legislation through its tortuous path on Capitol Hill and knew its every detail — argued that they could handle the job.

 

In the end, the economic team never had a chance: The president had already made up his mind, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. Obama wanted his health policy team — led by Nancy-Ann De­Parle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform — to be in charge of the law’s arduous implementation. Since the day the bill became law, the official said, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”

 

Three and a half years later, such insularity — in that decision and others that would follow — has emerged as a central factor in the disastrous rollout of the new federal health insurance marketplace, casting doubt on the administration’s capacity to carry out such a complex undertaking.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/challenges-have-dogged-obamas-health-plan-since-2010/2013/11/02/453fba42-426b-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html

 

 

2013-11-03.jpg

 

The Silence of the Left

By Clarice Feldman

 

There is widespread fury at the lies which were used to sell ObamaCare, a more than 2,000-page piece of legislation no one read before it was passed, a law opposed by the majority of voters which was crammed down our throats without a single Republican vote. The law essentially was a mishmash blank slate which left it to the administration's HHS head, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to write as she pleased and the president to -- by Executive order -- pay off with exemptions and special treatment those cronies and rent seekers not already paid off in the legislative and regulatory process.

 

Whether this law will continue to pass judicial scrutiny remains to be seen, but what is obvious at this early date is that the press and the public figures who promoted it are lying low as the tsunami of voter rage builds.

 

 

 

 

pic_cartoon_110213_new_A.jpg?itok=GrIV0QPY

B-Man Hall of Famer

B-Man

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WH: Yeah, about those 7 million people we needed to register for Obamacare…

 

 

...............nevermind.

 

 

 

 

Obamacare and Human Nature

By Victor Davis Hanson

 

 

Obamacare was predicated on the idea that it would be techie-driven and noble in inspiration, and therefore, presto, just had to work. But the entire program, whether one likes it or not, assumes things that simply are contrary to human nature, and therefore, unless modified, will never offer the necessary incentives for Americans. It can only operate through increasing coercion.

 

If people can’t get online, why should they continue to try? (Sort of like calling a 1-800 fix-it number, getting put on hold by someone in India, and then swearing never to do that again.) Each time an administration official assures the public that the latest glitch is about fixed, and each time that it is not, a few more hundred thousand will give up.

 

And if, for many, the penalty is cheaper than the premium and the latter can be retroactively paid after a sickness, then why pay the cost upfront? If people can get a known Medicaid package free without too much scrutiny about the actual facts of their income and status, why would they prefer to pay for an unknown Obamacare plan?

 

If younger people feel both broke and invincible, why expect them to flock to pay for something that costs and that they won’t often use? If people don’t like premium hikes coupled with reduced coverage, why should they be won over by arguments that they should pay more money for more coverage of the sort they will never use? And if some are sick and need costly care and cannot obtain insurance or afford to pay the full cost of insurance for their conditions, why would they not rush to sign up even more rapidly than their antitheses would avoid signing up?

 

If a program is said to be both superior and universal in providing excellent coverage for all, why would there be any exemptions whatsoever for anyone, especially for those who support or even helped pass the legislation?

 

If insurance companies would go broke selling life insurance of a reasonable cost to those with preexisting conditions, or affordable car insurance to those with numerous citations, why would they not do the same with Obamacare?

 

If the program was passed through coercion, noble lies, and subterfuge, and ushered in with the same, why would anyone believe it will not operate in the same spirit and practice? Why should everyone who has insurance expect to believe that he was simply given it and that everyone who doesn’t was deprived of it, when millions made difficult and costly choices not to play the odds while at least a few million others in no different circumstances embraced different choices?

 

To counter all of the above, Obamacare would have to assume that it is hip, knows best, is not worried about Neanderthal human nature, and has the power to force what it wishes anyway—and there we have what we have

 

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Nanker Hall of Famer

Nanker

Posted
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Exactly why did the Republicans think it was a good idea to delay the implementation of this thing for a year?

Seems to me the country needs to wrap it's arms around this quickly!

Forward!

 

Zero sign-ups for Obamacare in Oregon. Sweet! They must all be unionized/rich/stoned in that state.

Doc Hall of Famer

Doc

Posted
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Exactly why did the Republicans think it was a good idea to delay the implementation of this thing for a year?

Seems to me the country needs to wrap it's arms around this quickly!

Forward!

 

Zero sign-ups for Obamacare in Oregon. Sweet! They must all be unionized/rich/stoned racists in that state.

Fixed it for you.

B-Man Hall of Famer

B-Man

Posted
Posted

COMPETENCE:

 

CBS: White House warned three years ago that ObamaCare was running off the rails.

 

“Remember when you’re watching this that it pertains to the same people who now argue that they know better than you about what kind of insurance coverage you need. CBS News reports that an internal memo warned the White House three years ago that the Healthcare.gov project was turning into a disaster, and that no one with any expertise had control of the project.”

 

 

 

 

And note that this was before the 2010 elections had given the Republicans back the House, making Obama-apologists’ efforts to blame the GOP or the Tea Party movement even lamer.

3rdnlng Hall of Famer

3rdnlng

Posted
Posted (edited)

http://hotair.com/ar...n-or-something/

 

 

Remember, people, that the mainstream media stands ready to challenge the government and speak truth to power … in a Republican administration. In a Democratic presidency, we get the Paper of Record’s editorial board shielding power by offering an untruth so bald and so ridiculous that it’s practically a parody of itself. Barack Obama promised on dozens, if not hundreds, of occasions that his Affordable Care Act would not force people out of the existing plans they liked and wanted to keep. “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” Obama told people as late as the presidential debates in 2012 against Mitt Romney. “No one will force you out of your plan,” he promised on other occasions.

Now that the lie has been thoroughly exposed, did the New York Times speak truth to power? Hardly (emphasis mine):

Congressional Republicans have
with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want. That, they say, violates President Obama’s pledge that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it.

Mr. Obama clearly misspoke
when he said that. By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies. (At issue here are not the 149 million people covered by employer plans, but the 10 million to 12 million people who buy policies directly on the individual market.)

But insurers are not allowed to abandon enrollees. They must offer consumers options that do comply with the law, and they are scrambling to retain as many of their customers as possible with new policies that are almost certain to be more comprehensive than their old ones.
Edited by 3rdnlng
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