Good-bye and Good Riddance to the 111th Congress

What a mess Democrats have made of things over the last two years. It's not wrong to remind Americans what Democrats have done to them over the course of the last four years: high and long-term unemployment, reckless and pointless spending, increased job-killing regulation and more intrusion into our lives. Worse was the arrogance with which Democrats did all these monstrous things to us. This Wall Street Journal piece sums it up nicely:

For today's left, the main goal of politics is not to respond to public opinion. The goal is to impose the dream of an egalitarian entitlement state whether the public likes it or not. Sooner or later, they figure, the anger will subside and Americans will come to like the cozy confines of the cradle-to-grave welfare state.

Democrats are betting that once Americans start receiving "free" medical care, the demands for higher taxes on "the rich" will be overwhelming. And who knows? They might be right. When 1/2 of Americans aren't paying any income taxes at all and demanding more services, it's hard to argue that they won't want someone else to pay even more for them. My hope is that Americans truly aren't so stupid and greedy as Democrats rely on them to be.

White House: Obamacare Doesn't Reduce Costs or Deficit

We're not surprised Democrats are backpedaling on the strongest claims made about Obamacare: That it would cut the cost of medicine and improve the deficit.

Our lovable lefty Perry claimed repeatedly that the CBO said it would reduce the deficit in the first decade. This was always a sham claim, since Obamacare takes in 10 years worth of payments from taxpayers but only pays out 6 years of benefits. Even Democrats can improve costs when they aren't paying for things.

This is just the latest example of how the Democrat agenda is coming back to bite 'em in the ass, and I can't say "I told you so" enough. I'm hopeful November is just the start.

Romneycare Sucks and Obamacare Will, Too

Dysfunctional. Rationing. Limited care. No, it's not Obamacare, it's Romneycare.

One of the reasons I never supported Mitt Romney in 2008 was because of his Massachusetts health care plan, the one that forced people to buy insurance, the plan Barack Obama used to ram through Obamacare.

And guess what? If you wanna see what Obamacare is going to look like, go to Massachusetts.

In a new paper, Stanford economists John Cogan and Dan Kessler and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia find that the Massachusetts plan increased private employer-sponsored premiums by about 6%. Another study released last week by the state found that the number of people gaming the "individual mandate"—buying insurance only when they are about to incur major medical costs, then dumping coverage—has quadrupled since 2006. State regulators estimate that this amounts to a de facto 1% tax on insurance premiums for everyone else in the individual market and recommend a limited enrollment period to discourage such abuses. (This will be illegal under ObamaCare.)

Liberals tell you that it doesn't matter if costs are controlled, only that everybody has coverage. But coverage that sucks isn't really better than no coverage at all when you don't even have the option of getting your own. We're headed for a government takeover of the system most of us have liked.

Obamacare: Longer Waits

Who could have predicted this?

Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation's new health law.

That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER crowding. It would seem these patients would be able to get routine health care by visiting a doctor's office, as most of the insured do.

Who knew? Oh, yeah, we knew.

How Many More Stories Do We Have To Print on Obamacare's Broken Promises?

Keep Your Health Plan Under Overhaul? Probably Not, Gov't Analysis Concludes

Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.

About That Socialized Medicine: Canada Set to Ration to Control Costs

Of course, this isn't going to happen under Obamacare, right?

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada's provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

The rationing includes cuts to drug manufacturers and users fees, which are illegal, by the way.

"There's got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

"We can't continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

"At some stage we're going to hit a breaking point."

Seems like we've heard these arguments before in favor of Canadian-style socialized medicine.

We Were Told the Doctors Would Just Take The Patients

Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate

More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.

The largest number of doctors opting out comes from primary care, a field already short of practitioners nationally and especially in Texas. Psychiatrists also make up a large share of the pie, causing one Texas leader to say, “God forbid that a senior has dementia.”

The opt-outs follow years of declining Medicare reimbursement that culminated in a looming 21 percent cut in 2010. Congress has voted three times to postpone the cut, which was originally to take effect Jan. 1. It is now set to take effect June 1.

My doctor is one of those who isn't accepting new Medicare patients. Remember when Obamacare was going to solve all our problems? That's change we can believe in!

Republicans On the Offensive Concerning Obamacare

Republicans aren't letting us forget the abomination of Obamacare, and well they shouldn't.

Senate Republicans are poised to try to reignite the health care debate by launching a coordinated political messaging offensive to target Democrats and the White House for what they contend are the new law’s onerous consequences.



A group of Republican Senators who played key roles in the yearlong fight over health care legislation met Thursday in Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) office to discuss the strategy. Under the slogan “second opinion,” Republicans plan to communicate their message on multiple fronts, including on the Senate floor, in press conferences, via the Internet and through television and radio appearances.



A Republican Senate aide described the effort as intended “to draw attention to the consequences of the health care law that the White House hopes people miss.”

It's important to remind people of the horrendous effects of Obamacare, since most of them aren't poised to kick in until after Obama's re-election (or ouster, we hope). We're already seeing some of what was in the bill that Democrats didn't want us to see, but Americans must be reminded right up to November that Democrats passed this legislation even though a majority of Americans didn't want it.

Shocker: Employers Contemplate Dropping Insurance

Dammit, I'm getting tired of being right.

Documents reveal AT&T, Verizon, others, thought about dropping employer-sponsored benefits

The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans -- coverage they know and prize -- will react to the new law's radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we're getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

Of course,some of us would argue that Democrats want employers to drop coverage since it's the quickest way to government controlled health care.

Obamacare: If Only Someone Had Warned Us

Benefit for Uninsured May Still Pose Hurdle
Oh, wait. Somebody did. And the lapdog media, in its role as watchdog, did nothing.

About That Socialized Medicine: Woman Barred from Surgery After She Visits Private Doctor

NHS bars woman after she saw private doctor

A WOMAN has been denied an operation on the NHS after paying for a private consultation to deal with her severe back pain.

Jenny Whitehead, a breast cancer survivor, paid £250 for an appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon after being told she would have to wait five months to see him on the NHS. He told her he would add her to his NHS waiting list for surgery.

She was barred from the list, however, and sent back to her GP. She must now find at least £10,000 for private surgery, or wait until the autumn for the NHS operation to remove a cyst on her spine.

Apparently, you can't see a private physician without jeopardizing your NHS coverage. It's a good thing we don't have socialized medicine here. Yet.

So Much for not Raising Taxes on the Middle Class

JCT: Healthcare law to sock middle class with a $3.9 billion tax increase in 2019

Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — due to healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official scorekeeper.

Did anyone really believe he could promise the moon without raising taxes on the middle class?

And That's Only the Tip of the Iceberg...

Five things we learned about Obamacare after it passed

Just wait till we have time to feel the effects of this monstrosity.

The Rationale For Rationing Begins

In Medicine, the Power of No

It’s easy to come up with arguments for why we need to do so. Above all, we don’t have a choice. Giving hospitals and drug makers a blank check will bankrupt Medicare. Slowing the cost growth, on the other hand, will free up resources for other uses, like education. Lower costs will also lift workers’ take-home pay.

But I suspect that these arguments won’t be persuasive. They have the faint ring of an insurer’s rationale for denying a claim. Compared with an anecdote about a cancer patient looking for hope, the economic arguments are soulless.

The better bet for the new reformers — starting with Donald Berwick, the physician who will run Medicare — is to channel American culture, not fight it. We want the best possible care, no matter what. Yet we often do not get it because the current system tends to deliver more care even when it means worse care.

Any way they slice it, they're still calling for the rationing of health care. The economics of the situation demand it. In an age where using less is a status symbol of how "green" one is, health care rationing might look palatable. But that won't be the case.

Unlike clothes or food or shelter, there is no "basic" health care level. The basic level is to be healthy, regardless of cost. Obamacare will begin the reshaping of the American psyche to accept less health as, somehow, more, even when it obviously is not. This conditioning will teach us to accept longer wait periods to see doctors, fewer treatment options and, ultimately, death from diseases and illnesses that just a few years before would have been considered treatable. Such is the eventual result of socialized medicine.

The Tax Man Cometh...For Obamacare

IRS chief: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund

Any excuse to take your money is good enough. And they'll globalize the effort, to boot.

Paternalism By Any Other Name...

The Rise of the New Paternalism

In seminal journal articles... you’ll find a panoply of policy proposals from mild to downright intrusive. The story begins with the seemingly innocuous proposal to enroll all employees in savings plans automatically (with the ability to opt out). Then it progresses to new default rules in contracts, such as a presumption of “for cause” rather than “at will” employment, again with an opt-out. And then? Default rules that can be waived only through a cumbersome legal procedure. Then default rules with some options ruled out entirely — such as maximum hours that cannot be waived for less than time-and-a-half pay. Then cooling-off periods for high-cost purchases. Then sin taxes for fatty or sodium-rich foods. Then outright bans on ingredients like trans fats.

Not every new paternalist supports every one of these policies, and they don’t advocate them all with the same confidence. But they’re all on the list, and all justified by an appeal to behavioral economics.

Obamacare is just the beginning. But it does provide supporters with moral superiority.

Doctors Get To Have Opinions on Obamacare, Too

From my unscientific sampling of doctors, this doctor's sentiments are typical.

A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."

"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."

Doctors cannot refuse to treat patients based on race, sex, religion, disability or sexual orientation. But a doctor doesn't have to treat anyone from a different political party. Not that this one is doing that. He's just letting his patients know his feelings about this disasterous law.

In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."

Doctors have free speech rights, too.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, the Huffington Post lies about what Dr. Cassell is doing...even when he tells them he won't deny Obama supporters care.

Obamacare as Wealth Redistribution

Obamacare was mainly aimed at redistributing wealth

By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off-message. Democrats knew there was no way they could ever sell a national health care bill to a skeptical public by basing their case on income inequality. That's one reason they went to such lengths to argue -- preposterously, in the view of most Americans -- that the bill could cover 32 million currently uninsured people and still save the taxpayers money...

This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all."

No rational person could argue that only "a few" had health care, or health insurance, for that matter. 85% of Americans have health insurance they enjoy. And everyone can get care. But in arguing that only a privileged few are getting something everyone else is left out of, Dems appealed to the basest of human instincts: greed and envy.

Rainbows and Unicorns

The Rich Won't Pay for Obamacare

President Obama and Democrats planned to pay for Obamacare with a series of accounting tricks and new taxes on the rich. The problem, as Alan Reynolds points out, is that this trick won't work.

n short, the evidence is clear that when marginal tax rates go up, the amount of reported incomes goes down. Economists call that "the elasticity of taxable income" (ETI), and measure it by examining income tax returns before and after marginal tax rates claimed a bigger slice of income reported to the IRS.

It's amazing how self-interest works. Basically, everybody (or most people) is willing to pay some taxes. But there's a threshhold over which no one willingly pays their taxes. Finding that sweet spot, where tax revenues are their highest, is every politician's greatest problem.

Of course, liberals don't bother looking for the sweet spot where they'll actually get the most tax revenue. For them, redistribution demands the highest tax rates and harshest penalties for "the rich" imaginable. That such tactics often have the opposite effect on revenues seems to escape them. We've been through this before, but apparently, Democrats are slow learners.