Repeal Irresponsible Obamacare

You go, dude!

(Reuters) - Representative John Boehner, expected to be named the next speaker of the House of Representatives, vowed on Wednesday to repeal health care reforms pushed into law by the Obama administration.
"I believe that the healthcare bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best healthcare system in the world, and bankrupt our country," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told a news conference. "That means we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms to bring down the cost of health care.

Pray for True Justice

(Sept. 14) -- As arguments begin Tuesday in a Florida District Court where 20 state attorneys general and the National Federation of Independent Business are challenging the constitutionality of the health care law, the American people can be forgiven for feeling a bit ill at ease about the direction their country is going. James Madison would feel the same way.

Madison's vision of limited government was integral to the creation of the U.S. Constitution and its ratification, and he thought the limited nature of the federal government was so clear from the text of the Constitution itself that even the Bill of Rights should have been unnecessary.

So imagine his response if the Congress of 1789 had proposed a law like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- i.e., Obamacare. Nowhere does the Constitution grant the power to force individuals to buy a product.

One constitutional provision, the Commerce Clause, allows the federal government "to regulate commerce ... among the several States." But regulating the health of the citizenry had always been the role of state, not federal government, and the notion that medical care would be considered interstate commerce would have been shocking to Madison's contemporaries since in almost all cases the doctor and his patient live in the same state.

But the government -- and the way we view the Commerce Clause -- isn't what it used to be.

The landmark case of Wickard v. Filburn was decided in 1942 and has dramatically expanded the application of the Commerce Clause. In Wickard, the federal government wanted to apply its agricultural regulations to Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio farmer who was growing wheat for personal use on his own farm. He wasn't selling it, so it never entered commerce. And it certainly didn't cross state lines as it went from his field to his own table. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court determined that his wheat production had an incidental effect on the national market for wheat since Filburn and those like him would then not be buying their wheat in interstate commerce.

Wickard v. Filburn was crucial in clearing the way for the pathbreaking expansions of government in the New Deal. Now that our government is engaging in a renewed expansion into the lives of the American citizen, that case is becoming relevant yet again and is central to the government's case defending Obamacare against federal lawsuits brought by more than 20 states.

It claims the impact of health and health care costs on the national economy can be felt through their effect on governments and individuals who subsidize coverage for the uninsured, the costs to the economy of poorer health and shorter lifespan, and the rate of personal bankruptcies.

This argument has shocking implications for the notion of limited government, because the same reasoning could be used to expand government even further beyond its already bloated state.

As Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., queried during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court, what would prevent Congress from claiming even something as novel and intrusive as mandating individuals to consume a certain quota of fruits and vegetables affected interstate commerce?

Sponsored Links

After all, doesn't bad nutrition lead to more costs for the governments and taxpayers who subsidize health care, result in sickness and early death, and possibly contribute to the health care costs that themselves can trigger bankruptcy?

Indeed, is there any action that Congress could not argue has some effect on the economy, and if on the local economy then, by extension, on the national economy? But the health care law goes even further than that, because Congress has chosen to regulate not only actions, but inaction -- the failure to buy or provide qualifying health insurance.

Congress had no scruples in passing a bill whose constitutional basis was paper thin. President Barack Obama was proud to sign it. Now only the federal courts stand between our burgeoning federal government and the Constitution's model of limited government.

Carrie Severino is counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network and a former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Sarah Palin: The Lies of Obamacare Exposed

It’s now six months since President Obama took control of one-sixth of the private sector economy with his health care “reform,” and the first changes to our health care system come into effect today. Despite overwhelming public dislike of the bill, we were told that D.C. knows best, and there was nothing to worry about, and we’d be better off swallowing the pill called Obamacare; so, in defiance of the will of the people, the President and his party rammed through this mother of all unfunded mandates. Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass the bill so that Americans could “find out what is in it.” We found out that it’s even worse than we feared.

Remember when the president said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Not true. In Texas alone a record number of doctors are leaving the Medicare system because of the cuts in reimbursements forced on them by Obamacare! The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.”

Remember the Obama administration’s promise that Obamacare would cut a typical family’s premium “by up to $2500 a year”? Not true. In fact, fueled by reports that insurers expect premiums to rise by as much as 25 percent as a result of Obamacare, Senate Democrats are contemplating the introduction of price controls.

Remember when the president said in his address to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions”? That turned out to be yet another one of those “You lie!” moments. We found out that Obamacare-mandated high risk insurance pools set up in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico will fund abortions after all.

Remember the promise that Obamacare would “strengthen small businesses”? Not true either. The net result of Obamacare is that small businesses will face higher health care costs, new Medicare taxes, and higher regulation compliance costs, while the much-hyped health care tax credit for small businesses turns out to be almost impossible to obtain.

Remember the president’s promise that his bill would ensure “everyone [has] some basic security”? False again. Besides the great uncertainty that Obamacare hampers businesses with, companies now find it is actually cheaper to pay the $2000 per employee fine imposed by Obamacare than to keep insuring their workforce. This leaves millions of American workers at risk of losing their employer-provided health insurance.

And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all. There has to be. The reality of Obamacare is that it enshrines what the New York Times called “The Power of No” – the government’s power to say no to your request for treatment of the people you love. The fact that the president used a recess appointment to push through the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells you all you need to know about this administration’s intentions. After all, Berwick is the man who said, “The decision is not whether we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

By the way, when the administration was talking about that independent board that has the statutory power to decide which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (that, again, sounded to me like a panel of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions about your loved ones – which, again, is what I referred to as a “death panel”), it was another opportunity for Americans to hear the truth about Obamacare’s intentions.

So, yes, those rationing “death panels” are there, and so are the tax increases that the president also promised were “absolutely not” in his bill. (Aren’t you tiring of the untruths coming from this White House and the liberals in Congress?) When the state of Florida filed a challenge to Obamacare on the basis that the mandates in the bill are unconstitutional, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the suit by citing the Anti-Injunction Act, which blocks courts from interfering with the federal government’s ability to collect taxes. Yes, taxes! Once the bill was passed it was no longer politically inconvenient for the Obama administration to admit that it makes no difference whether the payment is a tax or a penalty because it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner.” The National Taxpayer Advocate has already warned that “Congress must provide sufficient funding” to allow the IRS to collect this new tax. Pretty soon we’ll be paying taxes just to make it possible for the IRS to collect all the additional taxes under Obamacare! Seems as if this is another surprise that the public found out about after the bill was rammed through.

But perhaps the most ridiculous promise of all was the president’s assurance that Obamacare will lead to “bending the curve” on health care spending. Yes, rationing is a part of the new system, and yes, Obamacare does raise taxes. But because the new government managed system is so incredibly complicated and expensive to run, health care spending will actually rise instead of fall. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s admittance that the CBO’s original estimate of the total costs of the bill were off by around $115 billion. Its new estimate is now above $1 trillion, and even that may be way too low. A more realistic figure calculated by the Pacific Research Institute puts the number at $2.5 to $3 trillion over the next 10 years! This is probably what President Obama was referring to when he admitted recently that he had known all along that “at the margins” his proposals were going to drive up costs. Give us a break! Only in this administration would they refer to a $3 trillion spending increase as “marginal.” Next time he comes to us with another one of his harebrained proposals for a budget-busting federal power grab, let’s make sure we remember the president’s admission that he was lying all along when he told us his health care plan was going to cut costs. He is increasing costs. He admits it now. Period.

Higher costs and worse care – is it any wonder why people are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing and replacing Obamacare? Politicians who have vacillated on this issue need to be fired. Candidates who don’t support “repeal and replace” don’t deserve your support. No amount of money spent on Washington’s “government-wide apolitical public information campaign” (otherwise known as “propaganda”) will convince Americans that this awful legislation is anything other than a debt-driven big government train wreck. We need to repeal and replace it, and that can only happen if we elect a new Congress that will make scrapping Obamacare one of its top priorities. We can replace it with pro-private sector, patient-oriented reform that the GOP has proposed.

On March 23, when Obamacare was signed into law, I launched my “Take back the 20” campaign, focusing on 20 congressional districts that John McCain and I carried in 2008 which are or were represented by members of Congress who voted in favor of Obamacare. They need to be held accountable for those votes. They voted for Obamacare. Now we can vote against them. We need to replace them with representatives who will respect the will of the people.

That’s why today I’m launching a new Take Back the 20 website at www.takebackthe20.com!

TakeBackthe20.com provides information about the candidates in these 20 districts who are committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. It has links to their personal websites and their donation pages. It allows you to read up on them, and then support them in their race to defeat those who gave us this terrible bill.

We have to send Washington a message that it’s not acceptable to disregard the will of the people. We have to tell them enough is enough. No more defying the Constitution. No more driving us off a financial cliff. We must repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered, results-driven, free market reform that provides solutions to people of all income levels without bankrupting our country.

It’s time to make a stand! Let’s take back the 20!

- Sarah Palin

Obamacare Gets Uglier the Closer We Look At It

from Heritage.org:

Before Obamacare was passed six months ago today, former President Bill Clinton promised a leftist horde at the Netroots Nation convention: “The minute the president signs the health care reform bill, approval will go up, because Americans are inherently optimistic.” Fast forward to last Sunday, when, after Meet the Press host David Gregory played a clip of Clinton’s promise, the former President responded: “I was wrong.”
It is rare in Washington that a politician admits they were so very, very wrong about such a huge issue, but the evidence that the American people have completely rejected Obamacare is overwhelming. Rasmussen Reports, Gallup and CNN all put opposition to Obamacare somewhere between 56% and 61%. The law is so toxic that hardcore leftists locked in tough election fights like Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) ignore the law altogether in the health care section of their campaign websites.
Anyone who has been following the news since Obamacare’s passage already knows why the law is so unpopular: billion dollar employer losses, exploding spending estimates, higher health care costs, fewer doctors, fewer choices, fewer jobs, etc. The following are just some of the specific groups that have been hit hardest by Obamacare:
Employers: The White House likes to trumpet the small business tax credits and bailouts for retiree coverage in the bill, but anyone who actually runs, or has ever run, a business is not impressed. Obamacare’s punitive employer mandates, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, and burdensome regulatory compliance regime are already thwarting our nation’s economic recovery.
Doctors: In order to make a trillion dollar new entitlement look deficit neutral, you have to game the system. Obamacare accomplished this by pretending to cut doctor Medicare reimbursement by 23%. Congress already added to the deficit by delaying these cuts through this December. But a massive pay cut is just the beginning of the pain Obamacare has inflicted on physicians. The law also makes it next to impossible for doctors to establish their own hospitals, burdens them with thousands of hours of new reporting requirements and overburdens emergency rooms. Then there is the massive expansion of Medicaid which reimburses doctors at only 56% the rate in private practice. No wonder studies show that Obamacare will be 300,000 nurses and 100,000 doctors short of what is needed by 2020.
Consumers: Remember President Obama’s promise, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan”? Don’t believe it. Do you like your health savings account (HSA) or flexible spending accounts (FSAs)? Well those provide you with too much economic health care freedom for Obamacare to work, so Obamacare regulates both out of existence. Do you like your current employer coverage? Sorry, studies show that Obamacare’s regulations are likely to incentivize employers to dump 35 million Americans out of their current health care plan. And once they are in the new marketplace, other Obamacare regulations and mandates are already sending health insurance premiums through the roof.
States: Medicaid spending already represents on average about 21 percent of the typical state budget. Obamacare will significantly expand that number. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through the welfare program, Medicaid. This impending state budget crisis was what the Cornhusker Kickback was all about. Obamacare attempted to appease states by bailing them out through 2016. But by 2017, state taxpayers will be on the hook for an ever-expanding share of Medicaid dollars. If state Medicaid spending increases by 41 percent as projected, then by next year Medicaid could end up consuming nearly 30 percent of the average state budget. Already, 44 states report that they have exceeded projected Medicaid enrollment and spending targets for this year, and Obamacare will only make those numbers worse.
Seniors: : The President’s own Medicare Actuary projects that the record-breaking payment reductions due to hit hospitals, home health agencies and nursing homes will make 15 percent of these providers unprofitable and possibly “jeopardize” seniors’ access to care. On top of that, payment cuts to Medicare Advantage plans will hit seniors especially hard. Enrollment in these plans is expected to drop from 14.8 to 7.4 million. By 2017, the average annual per-capita cuts for Medicare Advantage enrollees will be about $3,700 — a 27 percent reduction from today’s levels.
When Obamacare first passed six months ago today, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner promised: “Obamacare is today’s Intolerable Act. And just as the colonists banded together to enact change after those acts were passed, so should America respond to Obamacare. This law must be repealed.” In Heritage’s “Solutions for America,” we note that, “The easiest way to address all these grievances: repeal Obamacare.” That is why it is so encouraging to see conservatives in the House embrace the repeal cause in their new document: Pledge to America. And our sister organization, Heritage Action for America has announced bipartisan support for Discharge Petition #11 which would force a vote on repealing Obamacare. The Road to Repeal is well on its way, thankfully.

Obamacare Is Much Worse Than Even Critics Imagined!

Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill's passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:
» Obamacare won't decrease health care costs for the government. According to Medicare's actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately funded health care.
» As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama's promise that it wouldn't. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral. Supposedly, the Department of Health and Human Services will bar abortion coverage with new regulations but these will likely be tied up for years in litigation, and in the end may not survive the court challenge.
» Obamacare won't allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama's estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans.
» Obamacare will increase insurance premiums -- in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients' children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare's mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama's only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers.
» Obamacare will force seasonal employers -- especially the ski and amusement park industries -- to pay huge fines, cut hours, or lay off employees.
» Obamacare forces states to guarantee not only payment but also treatment for indigent Medicaid patients. With many doctors now refusing to take Medicaid (because they lose money doing so), cash-strapped states could be sued and ordered to increase reimbursement rates beyond their means.
» Obamacare imposes a huge nonmedical tax compliance burden on small business. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than $600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the Internal Revenue Service. Like so much else in the 2,500-page bill, our senators and representatives were apparently unaware of this when they passed the measure.
» Obamacare allows the IRS to confiscate part or all of your tax refund if you do not purchase a qualified insurance plan. The bill funds 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure Americans stay in line.
If you wonder why so many American voters are angry, and no longer give Obama the benefit of the doubt on a variety of issues, you need look no further than Obamacare, whose birthday gift to America might just be a GOP congressional majority.

Obamacare Gets WORSE the Closer We Look At It!

from Bloomberg:

One of the more illuminating remarks during the health-care debate in Congress came when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told an audience that Democrats would “pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy.”
That remark captured the truth that, while many Americans have a vague sense that something bad is happening to their health care, few if any understand exactly what the law does.
To fill this vacuum, Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, asked his staff to prepare a study of the law, including a flow chart that illustrates how the major provisions will work.
The result, made public July 28, provides citizens with a preview of the impact the health-care overhaul will have on their lives. It’s a terrifying road map that shows Democrats have launched America on the most reckless policy experiment in its history, the economic equivalent of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Before discussing what the law means for you, we have to look at what it does to government. That’s where the chart comes in handy. It includes the new fees, bureaucracies and programs and connects them into an organizational chart that accounts for the existing structure. It’s so carefully documented that a line connecting two structures cites the legislative language that created the link.
Ornate System
This clearly is a candidate for most disorganized organizational chart ever. It shows that the health system is complex, yes, but also ornate. The new law creates 68 grant programs, 47 bureaucratic entities, 29 demonstration or pilot programs, six regulatory systems, six compliance standards and two entitlements.
Getting that massive enterprise up and running will be next to impossible. So Democrats streamlined the process by granting Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the authority to make judgments that can’t be challenged either administratively or through the courts.
This monarchical protection from challenges is extended as well to the development of new patient-care models under Obama’s controversial recess appointment, Donald Berwick, whom Republicans are calling the rationer-in-chief. Berwick will run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he can experiment with ways to use administrative fiat to move our system toward the socialized medicine of Europe, which he has at times embraced.
Closer to Home
A sprawling, complex bureaucracy has been set up that will have almost absolute power to dictate terms for participating in the health-care system. That’s what the law does to government. What it does to you is worse.
Based on the administration’s own numbers, as many as 117 million people might have to change their health plans by 2013 as their employer-provided coverage loses its grandfathered status and becomes subject to the new Obamacare mandates.
Those mandates also might make your health care more expensive. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that premiums for a small number of families who buy their insurance privately will rise by as much as $2,100.
The central Obamacare mechanism for increasing insurance coverage is an expansion of the Medicaid program. Of the 30 million new people covered, 16 million will be enrolled in Medicaid. And you could end up in the program whether you want it or not. The bill states that people who apply for coverage through the new exchanges or who apply for premium-subsidy credits will automatically be enrolled in Medicaid if they qualify.
Hurting the Elderly
To pay for this expansion, the bill takes $529 billion from Medicare, with roughly 39 percent of the cut coming from the Medicare Advantage program. This represents a large transfer of resources, sacrificing the care of the elderly in order to increase the Medicaid rolls.
For all this supposed reform, you, the American taxpayer, can expect a bill to the tune of $569 billion.
Front and center among the new taxes is the 40 percent excise tax on those lucky people with so-called Cadillac health plans. The higher insurance costs that are driven by the government mandates will push many more ordinary plans into Cadillac territory.
If the idea of taxing people with coverage deemed too good doesn’t bother you, maybe the new 3.8 percent tax on investment income will. That will apply even to a small number of home sales, those that generate $250,000 in profit for an individual or $500,000 for a married couple.
In vivid color and detail, Congressman Brady’s chart captures the huge expansion of government coming under Obamacare. Harder to show on paper is the pain it will cause.

Complex and Cumbersome Is An Understatement

Link to larger pdf version of chart.

Caterpillar Says Healthcare BIll to Raise Costs $100 Million 1st Year

Dow Jones Newswires | Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would increase the company's health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.

In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan "because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees." Caterpillar, the world's largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it's particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.
The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.

"We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors," said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. "We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we've raised throughout the year."
Business executives have long complained that the options offered for covering 32 million uninsured Americans would result in higher insurance costs for those employers that already provide coverage. Opponents have stepped up their attacks in recent days as the House moves closer toward a vote on the Senate version of the health-care legislation.

A letter Thursday to President Barack Obama and members of Congress signed by more than 130 economists predicted the legislation would discourage companies from hiring more workers and would cause reduced hours and wages for those already employed.
Caterpillar noted that the company supports efforts to increase the quality and the value of health care for patients as well as lower costs for employer-sponsored insurance coverage.

"Unfortunately, neither the current legislation in the House and Senate, nor the president's proposal, meets these goals," the letter said.

The Communist Red Underbelly of Obamacare

from Canada Free Press:
If you felt a frisson of fear on news that the Senate had passed Obamacare the day before Christmas, then you now know what it was and is like to live in a dictatorship. The voice of the People was ignored in a demonstration of raw political power.
There was a time when Americans took Communism seriously. It challenged us in the form of the Soviet Union and we witnessed its takeover of China.
In Europe, uprisings against Soviet rule were crushed in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in the 1980s gave proof that only oppression can sustain this failed economic and political system. President Reagan gave voice to it when he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
The McCarthy hearings in the 1950s proved a setback for efforts to learn how thoroughly infiltrated the U.S. government had become by Communists, not because Sen. Joseph McCarthy was wrong, but because he proved a poor spokesperson for the cause. He was easily criticized for his bombast, but the declassification of the Venona papers, secret communications between Soviet spymasters and their agents, revealed he may well have underestimated the threat.
Later, the Russian Federation declassified former Soviet spy agency records that further confirmed that many Americans, dedicated Communists, were working to undermine our government.
The price America paid in part for the Great Depression of the 1930s was the undermining of faith in the Capitalist system among many Americans.
Unions arose, not just in response to worker grievances, but also because their leaders were frequently sympathetic to Communism. The FDR and subsequent administrations introduced Social Security and Medicare, tapping into the fears of those who had experienced the Depression with programs that vastly expanded the federal government, characterizing them as the ultimate “safety net.” Then Congress plundered the trusts that were supposed to fund both programs. Both programs are insolvent.
A recent study by Paul Hollander, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, was published by Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty & Prosperity. It is titled, “Reflections on Communism: Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.”
The celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier this year was attended by many world leaders with the notable exception of President Barack Obama. For a man who has visited more foreign nations in his first year in office than any previous President, the decision to avoid this significant anniversary was taken as one more signal of his true political and economic agenda.
We know that he was greatly influenced by Marxists or people who viewed Communism sympathetically, not the least of which were his grandparents who introduced him to a mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA.
Obama wrote that he was drawn to Marxists among his teachers in college. He began his political career in the home of former Weatherman Bill Ayers. These days he is praised by Communists in Cuba and Venezuela. He sided with a Leftist former president of Honduras who tried to illegally alter its constitution. The Hondurans had the courage to cast him out.
The specter of Communist subversion of the U.S. Constitution is staring us in the eye with the so-called healthcare “reform” of Medicare; it includes all manner of provisions that are unconstitutional and would expand federal government control over one-sixth of the nation’s economy. The bribery and thuggish pressures and threats against Democrat Senators and Representatives to pass the bill reveal a political leadership more devoted to ideology than the will of the People.
Specifically, President Obama’s drive for a single payer system is the direct result of the influence of Dr. Quentin Young, a retired physician with a long history of commitment to Communism. In 1995, Dr. Quentin was among those who met in the Hyde Park home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn to launch Obama’s political career.
As Prof. Hollander points out in his study, “Not only individual intellectuals but entire professional associations have expressed favorable attitudes toward communist systems” citing the Latin American Studies Association that has “repeatedly taken positions supportive of Castro’s Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua.” In 1990, the Organization of American Historians defeated a motion that expressed regret that the organization “never protested the forced betrayal of the historian’s responsibility to truth imposed upon Soviet and East European historians by their political leaders.”
The recent United Nations’ Climate Change Conference refused to take notice of the revelations that the data on which the “global warming” theory is based was falsified by a handful of meteorologists and climatologists in an effort to impose a global governing system. The interim first Secretary General of the UN was Alger Hiss, an American and secret Soviet agent
It did not escape notice that Venezuela’s communist dictator, Hugo Chavez, received a rousing ovation when he spoke at the conference or that President Obama continues to repeat the lies surrounding the discredited “global warming” fraud.
Virtually the entire agenda of American environmental organizations has been focused on an attack on private property rights and denying Americans access to their vast reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas, thus undermining U.S. growth and prosperity.
Unlike Prof. Hollander who escaped Hungary following the crushing of the 1956 revolution by Soviet forces, “Western intellectuals who remain attracted to communist ideals never had the disillusioning experience of living in an actual communist or socialist society.”
Among them we must number much of the nation’s media that has been a party to political and environmental deceptions, and the Hollywood community that has produced many films to influence public opinion about the earlier efforts to address Communist activities and later Green issues with a very Red agenda.
The Medicare “reform” expands “socialism” in America, but it is an example of naked Communism at work. It is a bill put together behind closed doors and so extensive its control of the lives of Americans literally determines who lives and who dies. It will wreck the best healthcare system in the world albeit one that has its flaws.
It is authoritarianism at work, the kind we associate with regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and everywhere else Communism has been imposed on captive nations.
Healthcare “reform” is not about uninsured Americans. It is not “socialism.” It is Communism, effectively putting the entire nation’s healthcare system under state control. It must be defeated just as past generations of Americans knew the threat of Communism and devoted the nation’s treasure and even their lives to defeat it.

The Real Purpose of Healthcare Reform

from the Market Ticker:

There are two interesting articles in the WSJ relating to the "Health Reform" bill, one by Karl Rove and the second coming from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Let's first talk about Karl Rove:

Taxes start going up now, Medicare cuts begin after next fall's election, and spending for subsidies commences in five years. The price tag is not the first decade's announced $871 billion cost: It is $2.4 trillion. That's the cost of the tax credits in insurance exchanges, and the additional Medicaid costs the reform generates, over the first 10 years it's fully up and running, according to Congressional Budget Office numbers compiled by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.

Take the partisanship out and what you have is the above, basically.  On this Mr. Rove is exactly correct.

The tax increases come now, Medicare cuts come after the next election but in point of fact the spending will come never.

I'll explain after I provide some of the second article:

The purpose of this compulsory contract, coupled with the arbitrary price ratios and controls, is to require many people to buy artificially high-priced policies to subsidize coverage for others as well as an industry saddled with other government costs and regulations. Congress lawfully could enact a general tax to pay for these subsidies or it could create a tax credit for those who buy health insurance, but that would require Congress to "pay for" or budget for the subsidies in a conventional manner. The sponsors of the current bills are attempting, through the personal mandate, to keep the transfers entirely off budget or--through the gimmick of unconstitutional taxes or penalties they dub "shared responsibility payments"--make these transfers appear to be revenue-enhancing.
This "personal responsibility" provision of the legislation, more accurately known as the "individual mandate" because it commands all individuals to enter into a contractual relationship with a private insurance company, takes congressional power and control to a striking new level. Its defenders have struggled to justify the mandate by analogizing it to existing federal laws and court decisions, but their efforts do not withstand serious scrutiny. An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented-- not just in scope but in kind--and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.
Congress has a responsibility, pursuant to the oath of all Senators and Representatives, to determine the constitutionality of its own actions independently of how the Supreme Court has previously ruled or may rule in the future. But it is very unlikely that the Court would extend current constitutional doctrines, or devise new ones, to uphold this new and unprecedented claim of federal power.

Got that second part?

Good, because here's my prediction.

Congress will somehow manage to put these two bills together and come up with something that both Houses of Congress will pass, and Obama will sign it.

The lawsuits will come immediately thereafter.

They will succeed, because there is simply no justification anywhere in The Constitution, nor can one be manufactured, to force someone under pain of federal fine and/or imprisonment to purchase something from a private party simply as a consequence of being alive.

This is so blatantly unconstitutional that nobody in The House or Senate can seriously expect it to stand.  Therefore, we must conclude that it is not intended to stand - both House and Senate fully expect that mandate to be struck.

When, not if, it is you will discover the what I have said all along is the truth purpose of this so-called "reform" - a single-payer system.

Here's how it will happen.

1. Congress will pass and Obama will sign something containing this "individual mandate."
   
   
2. This will generate immediate lawsuits which will begin their way through the system, headed for the United States Supreme Court.  That process will take several years.  Note that the so-called "benefits" of this reform will also take several years to show up.  This is not an accident.
   
   
3. Meanwhile, the taxes begin immediately.  This is exactly what happened in the 1930s by the way - taxes were raised right into the maw of an economic recession, and helped turn it into a Depression.  Such it will be this time as well.
   
   
4. Young, healthy people will pay the "fines" under protest and refuse to buy coverage (it's cheaper than complying with a $15,000/year mandate to pay the $750/year fine!) and join said lawsuits in Step #2.  This will in turn begin to force private companies out of the system (remember, there are also price controls in there!) as adverse selection will not be eliminated as promised.
   
   
5. At some point the courts will strike the individual mandate.  Free to not pay the fine or buy insurance and prevented from raising rates adverse selection will collapse the remaining private health insurers.

At this point you have:

1. Permanently higher taxes (since it is constitutional to tax!)
   
   
2. NO private health insurers left in the market.
   
   
3. The "standards and practices" remaining and impossible to remove (note the super-majority requirements in the bill - intentionally put there to prevent the removal of those standards and practices!)

What comes next?  Unable to impose mandatory individual payments to private companies The Government will then have "no choice" but to put in place a Canadian-style system.
For good or bad, you will get both rationing and a tax-funded medical system in The United States.  Private override insurance may remain available and you may be able to continue to buy health care for cash, but neither is assured - neither can be done (for the most part) in Canada, as just one example.
I do not believe this outcome will be an accident - indeed, I believe it is the intention of the Obama Administration and The Democrats all along.
Those who are ascribing some sort of partisan "liberalism" motive - that is, a desire to take over 20% of the economy - are wrong.  The real desire is to collapse health care spending to around 9-10% of GDP.
Since neither party is willing to have an honest debate and discussion with Americans relating to the amount of care we can afford to provide people, including but not limited to care as we age, for those who are unable to pay for it on their own, and since both parties have been co-opted by the medical device and pharmaceutical industry who have clamored for "more and more" of GDP (while delivering relatively small incremental "benefits" in the form of extending life, albeit at a questionable level of quality), this is what we're going to get.
Mark this Ticker and come back to it in three or five years - I'd make a fairly large wager that this is exactly what we will not only get but what is the true intent behind this "bill."