A Thought on the ObamaCare Repeal

It seems to me that "Repeal And Replace" should be the proper approach to dealing with ObamaCare (the horribly misnamed Affordable Care Act). The reason for this has nothing to do with any of the bill's primary provisions, the things that were why the bill was written. The reason is this: Nobody liked this bill when it was being pushed through the Congress. (That's actually not quite true. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the one or two other people allowed into the office to draft this bill must have liked it at least a little.) That's why the Democrat leadership had to add item after item to the bill to enable them to talk other Democrats into reluctantly voting for it. (The biggest single one of these items was probably the federal take-over of the entire student loan process.) None of these additional items was seriously or appropriately considered by Congressional committees or members — not even to the extremely limited degree allowed for the main bill. And, of course, the Democrat leadership couldn't allow anything like the normal amendment process or their entire house of cards would have collapsed.

The only way to get rid of all the extraneous garbage accretions that were used to bribe enough senators and representatives to vote for this turkey is to repeal the entire bill outright. Otherwise, even if all parts of ObamaCare get fixed perfectly, all the additional garbage will still be left in place and in effect.

Just a thought.

Democrats Admit Obamacare Failure

The official title of President Barack Obama's signature health care bill is a misnomer. It is called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

It was supposed to be a panacea. We were told it would bring health care insurance premiums down significantly. It didn't. We were told it would bring medical costs down, too. It didn't. It was supposed to help the poor most especially. It didn't.

The poor used to get their health care for free. They were uninsured, so they paid no insurance premiums. And because they were poor, the hospitals and doctors wrote off their medical care expenses.

No more. With the federal subsidies, they may not have to pay much for their medical insurance, but it's money they didn't pay before. And they are unlikely to get their costs written off when they do go to the doctor or the hospital because, after all, they have insurance. Worse, that insurance won't help them until rather late in the year because of its high deductibles.

So they get to pay for their health care, on their own, after paying for the insurance that's not helping them. The problem is severe enough that even Newsmax can see it.

After paying premiums, many low- and middle-income patients still face high costs when trying to use their coverage. There's growing concern that the value of a health insurance card is being eaten away by rising deductibles, the amount of actual medical costs that patients pay each year before coverage kicks in.

How bad is it? A Families USA study cited in the Newsmax article found that "one-quarter of the people with individual health insurance policies went without care in 2014 because they could not afford the out-of-pocket costs. The study singled out high deductibles." A Commonwealth Fund study, also cited in the Newsmax article, notes that at least 15 million had problems with medical bills or medical debt — and half of them were in this condition due to high deductibles alone.

That's bad. It's so bad that Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), one of the most liberal Democrats in the Congress, says

"We've got some 17 million more people covered ... but they can't access the care they seem to be entitled to. It costs too much to use the care. That's the deceptive part about it."

There it is. Whatever anyone thought before the bill was passed, the promises of Obamacare have turned out to be deceptive. Obamacare is a failure at virtually everything that was claimed for it in advance. Now even the most liberal, Obamacare's biggest supporters, are being forced to admit its failings. That's a big downside to "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it." It got passed, we see what's in it, and we don't like it.

And note the figures. Advocates claim Obamacare has given insurance to 17 million more people. But at least 15 million can't afford to use it.

One more thing: The White House and its supporters are making mutually contradictory statements about health care costs. Through the White House-aligned Center for American Progress, as noted in that same Newsmax article, they claim a long-term pause in the rise of health care costs as a result of Obamacare, but at the same time they claim employers have been shifting their higher medical costs onto their employees. They say "employers have been shifting a disproportionate burden of healthcare costs onto workers" and "employees and their families have not shared in the benefits of a prolonged lull in medical inflation."

Long-term pause? Prolonged lull? That's not what we see in the news reports. We have seen continuing significant increases in health care costs, including the rising deductibles mentioned in the quotation above from that same Newsmax article. And it's getting worse. In fact, the latest Consumer Price Index reports identify for January 2015 — this year — the largest rise in its medical care index since January 2007. And if the claim about employers were true, the increases in employees' medical insurance costs would be higher than the increases for those with Obamacare insurance — probably much higher. But the opposite is the case, according to the news stories. In fact, in many cases the Obamacare premiums look to be increasing at twice the rate of the employer-provided plans. (UPDATE: It's really even worse than that!) It's no wonder the White House and the Center for American Progress don't want to talk about that.

UPDATE: Investors Business Daily notes that "while ObamaCare promised access to insurance, it didn't promise access to health care." That health care is now less accessible and less affordable. In other words, you can get insurance (and you are required to do so) but it won't help.

Effectively Uninsured

People are finding out they're paying more now that they're "insured", but are getting the same or less actual medical coverage than they were before Obamacare.

One-quarter of people with healthcare coverage are paying so much for deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses that they are considered underinsured, according to a new study. An estimated 31 million insured people are not adequately protected against high medical costs, a figure that has doubled since 2003, according to the 2014 national health insurance survey by the Commonwealth Fund. Rising deductibles — even under ObamaCare — are the biggest problem for most people who are considered underinsured, according to the 22-page report.
    — Sarah Ferris, TheHill.com, May 20

Obama's Issues

President Barack Obama is being asked to deal with several issues at the same time lately. Actually, these issues have been there for a long time and just haven't been dealt with effectively.

One such issue is the Veterans Administration and its handling of health care for veterans. President Obama knew about this in his first presidential campaign, and promised to fix the problem. Instead, nothing has been done and the situation has gotten worse during his Administration.

That's bad enough on its own. But the whole country should be concerned about what it means for everyone under the horribly mis-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Part of the problem is that Obamacare does nothing in the field of health care. It is an insurance bill, not a health care bill. It does not create a single additional doctor or nurse or dentist or other health care provider. But its demands will demand more of those still working in the medical care system.

And that's before you add in all the people coming across the border. You know, the ones the Department of Homeland Security is busing (and flying) to relocation centers all over the country, those who are given a court date and released, etc. They're all going to need free lawyers, we're told, and free health care.

That's also before you add in the fact that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) isn't stable — it isn't finished. It's still being changed, both by the Department of Health and Human Services (formerly Kathleen Sebelius) and the White House (Barack Obama).

Of course, a lot of folks insist the President and his Cabinet departments don't have that kind of authority. They aren't allowed to change the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President, either by adding provisions to those laws or by declining to enforce those laws. If they do, it comes to this.

There also seem to be other differences in views between those inside the Administration cocoon and those outside it. Some of those differences are rather substantial.

Just one more. And this one may be a little snarky. But it gave me a chuckle, so here it is anyway.

The Numbers Don't Add Up

The Obama Administration says 3.3 million people have "signed up" for ObamaCare as of the end of January. Of course, the Administration "won't say" how many have actually "fully enrolled by paying for their first month's premium." Best guesses seem to be less than a third.

But let's be generous and pretend all have actually paid and are therefore genuine enrollees into the program. How many of those are among the uninsured the ObamaCare law (formally named the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") was supposed to help? Not many, it appears. The best estimates seem to say just 11% of the actual enrollees were previously uninsured; the rest lost their insurance because of ObamaCare.

That means the entire country has been put through this incredible set of problems — and will be put through so much more in the next couple of years — to aid something like just 1% (that's 1 percent — one one-hundredth) of the people the ObamaCare proponents claimed this new law was for — just something like 360,000 people if we are exceptionally generous!

In other words, the Obama Administration's ObamaCare numbers don't add up. It really sounds like this law is a complete disaster. Maybe that's why even the insurance companies may pull out from ObamaCare.

UPDATE: Actually, it's worse than that. They started out telling us we had to pass and implement ObamaCare because there were 30 million people in this country without insurance. Now the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us there will still be 30 million people without insurance after ObamaCare is fully implemented. That sounds like a complete failure to me.

And please remember the fact that giving everyone insurance doesn't necessarily help them get medical care. This bill does nothing to create one additional doctor, nurse, clinic, or hospital. In fact, it's driving many of all these out of the medical profession. That's not a success by any measure.

It's Not About Health Care

The horribly mis-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare) isn't about health care — it's about insurance. Or, to put it another way,

One of the harder realities is that health care reform is not about public health. That's the mistake people make. . . . Health care reform is public finance. And when you get into public finance, it's not about doing a study to guide policy; it's about creating a business plan.
      — Ralph de la Torre, CEO, Steward Health Care System,
          "health care's new maverick"

Some Consequences of the Roberts Decision

There will be consequences. Here's an early one.

That is an obvious consequence of this: John Roberts has conducted a judicial rewrite of the Obamacare "health care" bill (that Congress called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") to turn it into a massive tax. But, if it is a tax, then the Roberts ruling is completely improper.

1. An Obamacare tax cannot be litigated yet, due to the Anti-Injunction Act, since this tax is not yet being collected.
2. Tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives, but this bill originated in the Senate.

The Roberts decision asserts the individual mandate simultaneously both is and is not a tax. Particularly under the circumstances of this case, this finding is improper.

The view isn't better from the other side of the argument. If the individual mandate is a tax, then the White House and Congressional Democrats are guilty of perpetrating a massive fraud against us. All the more so since Obamacare absolutely would not have been passed as a tax. In fact, it would not have passed if there were any hint that it might be a tax. Indeed, as Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito noted,

the Democratic majority in Congress rejected an earlier version of the bill that became ObamaCare precisely because it imposed a tax — lawmakers intentionally substituted a mandate with a penalty for failure to comply so they could continue to contend that no one’s taxes were being raised. (emphasis in the original)

Now, Roberts asseerts Congress just inadvertently put the "wrong label" on their tax increase — changing its character after all the briefs and the oral arguments have been completed, to something even the Court's own hired outside lawyer (as well as all the parties to the case and the law and its history) said it wasn't — and that Roberts says earlier in his own decision that it was not. That, in an of itself, is an egregious violation of due process that no one would permit in a criminal case.

[Chief Justice Roberts & Co.] said the American people are not entitled to an honest legislative process, one in which they can safely assume that when Congress intentionally uses words that have very different meanings and consequences — like tax and penalty — and when Congress adamantly insists that the foundation of legislation is one and not the other, the Court will honor, rather than rewrite, the legislative process. Meaning: if Congress was wrong, the resulting law will be struck down, and Congress will be told that, if it wants to pass the law, it has to do it honestly. (emphasis in the original)

Roberts gives lip service to the idea that the Court should honor the legislative process, and then directly violates that concept. “Due process would not allow this to be done to a criminal, but the Supreme Court [Chief Justice Roberts] has decided that Americans will have to live with it.”

And that says there are also longer-term consequences.

Supreme Court Drinks the Kool-Aid

I am amazed that the US Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare, and shocked that John Roberts is the one doing this to us.

The central element of the law is the individual mandate. That is the federal government ordering everyone (apparently excepting Christian Scientists, the Amish, Muslims, and illegal aliens) to purchase insurance. I mocked this idea (using my idea of the Cheeseburger Mandate) before it was made into law. But perhaps I should not have been so quick to mock it. My mandate idea (among many others) may well be passed into law by Congress — always being sure to include a penalty for non-compliance that can be (fraudulently) characterized as a tax.

The formal name of this law — the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” — is truly Orwellian. The bill provides no care, is unaffordable, and gives no protection to patients. It does not support the training of even a single additional doctor but, according to many statements from doctors, will drive many doctors out of medical practice. This law's focus is insurance. Insurance provides no care, but does provide some payment for some care —if you can find it on your own. This law accomplishes none of its purported goals; in fact, it makes every one of those problems worse than they were before. And, while the individual mandate has taken the most fire, the Obamacare law is full of all kinds of mandates, including those in the news more recently that violate individual conscience and religious freedom.

Admirable purported goals, perhaps, resulting in close to the worst possible result.

I am dumbfounded that this law was upheld — doubly so given that the majority ruled that the individual mandate an unconstitutional expansion of the Constitution's commerce clause. What kind of sleight-of-hand and deceit is required to do that, and then to make up a way to allow it — a way that has been denied by all parties to Obamacare — supporters and opponents alike — from the beginning to now? Just as a couple of examples, Obama himself most vehemently insisted the mandate and penalty are absolutely not a tax, and his Administration's lawyer said the same thing in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. But John Roberts says Barack Obama is a liar.

Obama lied to the American people. Again. ... Obama lies; freedom dies.

John Roberts tells us all that the individual mandate and its penalty are a tax — which means Barack Obama (with assistance from Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid) has rammed through Congress the Barack Obama Tax Hike, which is the largest tax increase in US history — actually, the largest tax increase in the history of the world — and most of it falls on the middle class.

And isn't it ironic that Roberts was urged to uphold Obamacare or be attacked as illegitimate, but with this flip-flop and apparent late vote change has undermined the Court's legitimacy and demonstrated that the Supreme Court will succumb to political pressure. “[W]hile liberal critics were quick to accuse the Court of playing politics by taking seriously the Obamacare challenges, it may turn out that it was only politics that saved the ACA [a.k.a. Obamacare].”

Today's ruling effectively removes all restraints on government control of its American subjects. The result is almost the same as if the Court had ruled the mandate permissible under the commerce clause. The only difference is that now Congress will accompany each new requirement with a tax increase and/or a penalty that can be painted as a tax increase. As Justices Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia told the Court's left wing, “You've extended federal power to virtually everything.” And Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft captures today's reality:

The Supreme Court ruled Obamacare mandate UNCONSTITUTIONAL today but it Survives As A Tax!!

UPDATE: An insightful comment from before the decision was announced:

Even by a decision of five to four, the Supreme Court will throw an extraordinary spanner into the machinery of U.S. government, if significant parts of ObamaCare are struck down. Conversely, even by five to four, a decision to uphold could effectively erase the U.S. citizen’s last line of defence against absolute power.

UPDATE, TOO (from the Court):

In answering that question we must, if "fairly possible," construe the provision to be a tax rather than a mandate-with-penalty, since that would render it constitutional rather than unconstitutional (ut res magis valeat quam pereat).

But, I would say, except when such an interpretation has been explicitly disavowed in the statute itself and in its legislative history. Congress and the President have consistently and absolutely insisted the mandate penalty is absolutely not a tax. To “reinterpret” as a tax the penalty for violating the law, under these circumstances, is clearly impermissible malpractice. The Court's own record and history make this clear, too.

In a few cases, this Court has held that a "tax" imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held — never — that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress' taxing power — even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.

The Supreme Court has never rewritten a law to turn a penalty into a tax. Never until today, that is.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Justice Antonin Scalia along with Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito wrote a very impressive dissent that Chief Justice Roberts should have also joined. As the four justices said, Obamacare “exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting States all Medicaid funding.

These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and the Act’s other provisions would not have been enacted without them. In our view it must follow that the entire statute is inoperative.” With just one more vote, the entire bill would have been declared null and void as unconstitutional.

. . .

With the failure of the judicial process, the only thing left to do now is to get rid of Obamacare legislatively. Congress passed this monstrosity, and the only path to lifting it [this onerous new Obama tax increase] from the backs of the American taxpayer is through the legislative process. That means that legislators should vote again to repeal all of Obamacare.

So we have come full circle. Congress is responsible for the mess that the Supreme Court has refused to clean up, and that leaves Congress with the responsibility to clean it up. Otherwise, they can be sure that voters will be watching.

And, hopefully, the voters will, firmly, “throw the bastards out”.

Mandatory Contracts & Other Stupidities

Sometimes things just come together. The most recent is this item from the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web:

We Have Always Been at War With the Individual Mandate

The email we got yesterday from the Obama campaign is a real humdinger. Signed by campaign manager Jim Messina and carrying the subject line "Mitt Romney," it's actually an attack on Rep. Paul Ryan, this month's Emmanuel Goldstein. We especially love this point:

5. Romney [i.e., the Ryan budget] would end Medicare as we know it--replacing it with a voucher scheme that would drive profits for insurance companies by forcing seniors to purchase private insurance.

Imagine, forcing someone to buy private insurance! Oh, the horror!

That takes a lot of brass, coming from the same people that rammed down our collective throats a bill forcing everyone — not just seniors — to purchase private insurance. That's why, as already noted, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid couldn't get their bill passed without ramming it down everyone's throat, against the will of a substantial majority of the people.

Making matters even more absurd is that ObamaCare was and remains so unpopular that it could not be passed without bizarre procedural shenanigans and extreme legislative bullying. As a formal matter, ObamaCare's enactment was an exercise in representative democracy, but as a substantive one, Congress has seldom acted in a more unrepresentative way.

And now we find out that, far from being cost-effective, Obamacare is bending the medical cost curve up and will add trillions to the national debt once it comes into full effect. So Nancy Pelosi was right — they had to pass the bill so we could find out what's in it — and everything we've found out has said it's a lot worse than we thought.

Incredible Insurance Ignorance

Here's a tale from someone who is or was, as they say, "unclear on the concept". Totally.

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won't name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company -- let's call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I'd like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn't serious insurance.

Let me translate a little bit of this stupidity. "[W]hat it was set up was to meet the legal requirements." That would be the legally required liability insurance, to compensate others for damage you do. "{T}his was set up not to actually provide insurance[.]" Not intended to cover his own vehicle, under coverage he evidently did not purchase. So this guy clearly had just the legally required liability insurance coverage, and no coverage for the repair of his own car. And he didn't know the difference.

But then insurance is insurance is insurance. Right? If you have insurance of any flavor, it should take care of everything. Right?

The tale makes me wonder how anyone could get through high school, much less college, and not know such basic information? Especially since this kind of information is given routinely by every driver's training class and every auto insurance agent. (After all, the insurance agent wants to sell you the additional coverage, so it's in his interest to make absolutely sure you understand that liability coverage doesn't cover your own car at all.) How incredibly ignorant and just plain dumb does one have to be not to know something this basic? One would be tempted to put something like this down to deliberate stupidity.

And why didn't he file a claim against the other driver's liability insurance? Since he says he got rear-ended, the other driver was (probably) at fault and a claim could/should be made against that driver's liability insurance. Why did he apparently not know enough to get the other driver's insurance information so he could file such a claim? That, too, is awfully basic. Since he didn't, this tale indicates this young man never looked at any of the information provided by his insurance company — you know, the standard stuff with titles like "What to do if you have an accident". More incredible ignorance.

It turns out this individual is still as ignorant as ever. Right after telling the tale above, he got to the reason he was telling his tale, as he went on to say.

Now, it's one thing if you've got an old beat-up car that you can't get fixed. It's another thing if your kid is sick, or you've got breast cancer.

It's hard to believe anyone could possibly be this dumb-as-rocks ignorant. This must be one of those fake things that gets passed around by e-mail periodically. Except it's not. This story was told in an interview given as part of the push to get the Obamacare bill passed. The interview was on CNN. It is now on YouTube, and is linked here.

Being as charitable as possible, this level of ignorance could be real and, if so, may be at least partly responsible for this same individual repeatedly telling what turns out to be, at best, a highly misleading story about his mother's supposed difficulty getting her health insurance to pay her medical claims in her last month of terminal cancer. He keeps insisting the insurance company was trying to avoid covering his mother's medical bills, a statement that is simply not true. The only claim denied was a separate disability insurance claim, not any claim for coverage of her medical bills. It would take someone who is dumb-as-rocks ignorant, or suffering from deliberate stupidity, not to know the difference. The alternative is that he is, and has been, simply lying.

A Tale of Two Patients

Two different patients & two different doctors' offices.

Two patients limp into two different medical clinics with the same complaint. Both have trouble walking and appear to require a hip replacement.

The FIRST patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week.

The SECOND sees his family doctor after waiting 3 weeks for an appointment, then waits 8 weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn't reviewed for another week, and finally has his surgery scheduled for 6 months from then.

Why the different treatment for the two patients?

The FIRST is a Golden Retriever.
The SECOND is a Senior Citizen.

Next time take me to a vet!

This would be a funny joke if it weren't so true.

Back when President Barack Obama was trying to justify his massive takeover of the American health care system, through his Obamacare bill (a.k.a. the horribly misnamed "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", or PPACA), one of his justifications was that private insurers were denying so many claims. Of course, he failed to mention that Medicare — our national health care program for senior citizens — denied medical claims at more than twice the rate of the private insurers. More examples, more coverage horror stories, have been coming out since then. Here is one more to add to that list.

Let me introduce Mrs Erlinda Moya. She has lived more than 99 years; she will soon have her 100^th birthday. She is loved by the members of her parish, and cared for by her daughter and family. Her health has been good but, just in case of a medical need, she is covered by both Medicare and Medicaid (under the disabled and elderly waiver), as well as by Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Not long ago, Mrs Moya got an infection in a toe. It was a stubborn one, and she was hospitalized. It took a while to find an antibiotic that was effective against her infection, and the toe had to be amputated. Medicare paid for all of the medical care, and all the supplies and facilities that were needed.

The doctors said Mrs Moya would need IV antibiotics for another five weeks to completely get rid of the infection. Medicare wanted to put her in a nursing home for that five weeks to handle the IV infusions. That would keep her instutitionalized, and away from her family. The family, naturally, wanted to bring her back home instead. And they were told that, while Medicare would cover the full nursing home cost (more than $7000), Mrs Moya would have to pay $60 a day for the five weeks (a total of $2100) if the family took her home. There's no way her limited income could cover that kind of cost!

Medicare didn't want to budge. They weren't interested in saving $5000 and getting a better medical outcome by letting Mrs Moya go home to her family. (And that's assuming the $2100 is a government rate as well as a private-pay rate.) Medicare was only interested in pressuring the family into putting her in an institution. They wanted to pay $7000 unnecessarily for institutional care, or make Mrs Moya pay $2100 to be with her family. Those were their only choices.

That is bureaucratic stupidity, at best.

Fortunately for Mrs Moya, another solution was found — a solution outside the Medicare system. A caring case worker put the family in touch with Walgreen's, from which they obtained the antibiotics at a nominal cost for infusion by Mrs Moya's son. As a result, Mrs Moya is with her family, is improving, and is looking forward to her 100^th birthday.

There is a lesson to be had here. Programs don't care about people. Bureaucracies don't care. Rules and regulations don't care. But — sometimes — individual people do care. The system makes it hard for them to do so, but sometimes they do anyway. And when they do, they can sometimes find a way to force an unwilling bureaucracy to use at least a little common sense.

There is also an epilogue. Mrs Moya's tale touched Mrs Critter. As is frequently the case, she took action in response. She wrote to Senator Jeff Bingaman about it. She noted that Mrs Moya has voted for Senator Bingaman many times, and now she needs some protection from a system too big to care. What she got in return was a form letter that stated "I understand your concerns regarding the new health care reform law." and claimed major benefits for "the new health care reform law" (Obamacare) including the claim that "it significantly reduces the federal deficit by $1 trillion dollars." (At least he got the amount right - he just got the sign wrong.) Interestingly, the Senator's letter never names "the new health care reform law", either as Obamacare or as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Obamacare's formal name.

This response angered Mrs Critter, and she replied to Senator Bingaman saying

Senator and staff,

I am so frustrated at the way you waste my money!!! I wrote to you about a specific case of Mrs. Moya, a 99-year old woman who has Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross Blue Shield and her family's frustrations securing the care she needs and you respond with a FORM LETTER. She is a real live person whom YOU have failed. If you have failed her and simply fold your hands, THAT is the real answer to my concerns about how OBAMACARE will fail the nation. The health care you have imposed on us now has failed Mrs. Moya -- what a waste of taxpayer dollars!!! Obamacare will be bigger and much more expensive and will fail all but the politicians. Yes, I am angry that you respond to a real life situation with a form letter and sit on your hunches while Mrs. Moya and her family struggles with her health care situation. You are useless!!!! We should start by cutting your staff and your retirement benefits should be need-based.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

So there is no good news on the bureaucratic front. The only good news is still that Mrs Moya is with her family, is improving, and is looking forward to her 100^th birthday.

What's New In Contact Lenses

The Daily Mail (UK) led off its story this way:

It used to be that contact lenses were worn only instead of glasses. Now a new generation of lenses has transformed them into valuable health tools that can help not only with serious eye problems, but everything from migraines to diabetes.

The story particularly notes the development by esearchers at the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, of contact lenses that use nanoparticles to change the contact lenses' color to alert their wearer to changes in their blood sugar levels. The researchers note that the glucose level in tears follows that in the blood by about 30 minutes.

Other researchers have been working along similar lines. A research group in Bath, England, at a company called Smart Holograms is using a research grant to develop contact lenses with embedded holograms — read by a small hand-held device — to alert users. They believe this approach will prove to be more sensitive than the color change systems.

Whatever technology proves itself, and proves commercially viable, needs to become available as soon as possible. It will be a big help to a lot of people. By providing "early warning", it is sure to substantially reduce the incidence of more serious (and costly) medical events and crises.

These developments may be the most important since the diabetes breakthroughs reported in an earlier version of this blog.

The Daily Mail also reported that tinted contact lenses may be able to help dyslexics overcome their problems. The issue there, for about one in three dyslexics, is that perceived contrasts between some color pairs (notably black and white) make things like reading more difficult. Contrast issues more commonly show up with other color pairs.

The Damned Demcare Bill

Nothing has changed.

The Democrats in Congress say they want to reduce medical care costs, "bend the cost curve down", and cover those who don't have health insurance. They claim they will can do this in a way that will not increase the deficit, and will allow (!) those happy with their medical insurance to keep it.

To accomplish these noble goals, the Democrats have produced a "health care" bill. Their bill accomplishes none of these goals — and, in fact, makes every one of these problems worse.

You don't reduce costs by spending an extra $1 trillion. And that huge number is almost certainly a substantial understatement. Yes, the Congressional Budget Office has come out with their number for what they say this bill will cost, and their statement that the bill is basically deficit neutral. To get that deficit neutrality, the bill steals more than half a trillion dollars from Medicare and includes an additional half trillion dollars in new taxes. And even with that, the Democrats' Congressional leadership feels it necessary to lie and claim the CBO projects a large deficit reduction in the program's second decade, though the CBO report said no such thing.

Stop and think about that: The primary rationale for starting this process was that our expenditures on health care are too high and becoming unaffordable. What kind of sense does it make to pretend we are reducing health care expenditures by spending more than an additional trillion dollars?

And it's really worse than that. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi have both said in the past week that this bill will extend the viability of the Medicare program by more than ten years. That would be laughable if it weren't so ludicrous. They are actually claiming that stealing half a trillion dollars from this near-bankrupt program will make it healthier! Does anyone believe Obama and the Congress will willingly destroy Medicare? If not, and the assumptions the CBO was forced to use are false, then those "savings" are illusory (I would say fraudulent) and the deficit from the Demcare bill will be more than a half trillion dollars higher — at least. And that's assuming the cost estimates are accurate ten years out, as they never have been.

Part of that assumption is the claim repeated so often by President Obama that “If you like your current healthcare plan, you can keep it.” And it's true that, under this bill, the government will not order us to change our health insurance — it will just make it impossible for us to keep it. Another lie. Another deliberate lie.

In addition, the bill keeps costs down for the federal government by dumping them on the states. Much of the increased insurance coverage, for those not currently insured, is accomplished by adding them into the Medicaid program. That's a huge unfunded mandate — a huge additional cost for the states, who will have to raise their taxes to cover it. But that must be OK, 'cause it's not a federal cost.

This bill is just full of mandates. There are mandates on insurance companies, mandates on employers, and mandates on individuals. With this bill, the government arrogates to itself the right to tell every person in the country what they must buy. That is absolutely improper, and unconstitutional. Under our system of government, it is not allowed to interfere in individual choices to that degree. That kind of interference is only allowed under a tyranny — allowed by the tyrannical government to itself. Legitimate governments are not allowed to tell us what insurance we must buy, or how many cheeseburgers we are allowed to buy or must buy. But that's what they're doing. That's what this bill does. And it must be OK, 'cause it's for our own good.

Beyond that, there's one other huge lie behind this bill. The Democrats pretend that those without health insurance cannot get health care. This is a lie, and they know it. Everyone gets treated in the emergency room. No, it's not the best way to deliver health care. But everyone who needs health care gets it.

These are just a few of the reasons most Americans oppose this bill. Even the Rasmussen poll, which is considerably more favorable than other polls to the Democrat leadership's healthcare "reform" bill, reports a significant majority of the country opposes this bill. And Rasmussen reports that 45% of the population strongly opposes this bill. But the Democrats' leadership refuses to listen.

The process Obama and Pelosi are now trying to sell is for the House to pass the bill the Senate passed in December, before the election of Scott Brown from Massachusetts. They are telling House members they can vote for the abominable Senate bill on the promise that the Senate will accept the "fixes" produced by the House for the "reconciliation" bill. That seems to me a really dangerous game to play. Can they really trust that Senate Majority Leader Reid can deliver next week what he couldn't last year? And even if he does, .... Best bet — once the House passes the Senate bill, the whole game is over. Obama signs the Senate bill and it's done.

One final thing: If this bill is so great, as President Obama and Speaker Pelosi keep claiming, why are they completely unable to convince members of their own party to vote for it on its merits? Why are they having to rely on bribery and extortion to get the votes to pass it?

The Republicans have been right on this one. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are ideologues intent on getting this bill passed no matter how bad it is. They're gambling the Republicans and the non-extremist Democrats won't have the balls to repeal it. And no matter how good the original plan may have been, Daryl Cagle is still right about this bill.

And they're going to vote on this abomination today.

What the Obama Summit Was Really About

Trever, political cartoonist for the Albuquerque Journal hits the nail on the head. Again. This is what the Obama White House health care summit was really about.It wasn't about getting the Republicans on-board with his Obamacare 2.0 — it wasn't about the Republicans at all, except in Obama's hopes he could use the publicity to make the Republicans look bad. This summit was really about trying to get the Democrats to agree to his "compromise" plan.

Obama Lies About His Healthcare Plan

President Barack Obama claimed earlier this week that his plan gives ordinary Americans the same health care choices as the members of Congress. Presumably that also means at the same cost Congressmen pay — $503 per year for full coverage, including drugs.

For Obama to make that claim means one of two things

1. Obama hasn't a clue what's really in "his" plan.
2. Obama is telling a deliberate lie.

Whichever option is true, it shouldn't surprise anyone.

What Massachusetts' Voters Said

Once more, Trever (of the Albuquerque Journal) hits the nail squarely on the head.

Even Before the Democrats' Medicare Cuts

The Democrats — or at least their Congressional leadership — pretend their "health care" bill won't damage Medicare, even though it takes half a trillion dollars from the program. But let's take a short look at some reality.

The Medicare "savings" are to be accomplished by cutting Medicare's payments for medical services rendered by more than 20%. The Congressional Democrats claim there is this level of fraud in the Medicare program. But they make no attempt to fix that problem, to attack the fraud they claim is there, instead taking out their legislative anger on all Medicare doctors and patients.

But, as everyone already knows, Medicare is in trouble even without these new cuts. Two ways.

1. It's about to go bankrupt. It soon won't have enough money to pay its commitments.
2. It only pays doctors about half what it should — half what patient treatment costs. That's why so many doctors won't take new Medicare patients.

Both aspects will be made substantially worse by stealing half a trillion dollars from the program.

And what brings this into focus now? The Mayo Clinic — cited by Barack Obama as a model of healthcare efficiency — has made a decision. Not only will its Arizona clinic not accept new Medicare patients, its existing Medicare patients will have to pay cash to stay with their Mayo doctors. That's because the Arizona clinics lost $120 million last year treating Medicare patients. Overall, the Mayo clinics lost $840 million on Medicare patients last year, which had to be made up from their non-Medicare patients.

Can you imagine how much worse it will be for Medicare doctors and Medicare patients if the Democrats' "health care" bill becomes law? And how many doctors will have to choose between bankruptcy and turning away Medicare patients needing medical care?

Cash for Corruptocrats

This phase of the battle over the Democrat “health care” bill is over, and its finish was spectacular — and I mean that in the worst possible way. Harry Reid and his cronies demonstrated conclusively that they have no scruples whatever. Not only did Harry and his friends completely shut out the Republicans from having any input on the bill at all, but they also shut out most Democrats and even most of the Democrats’ leadership.

Even so, they only way Harry Reid could “win” was to buy off — bribe — a number of his colleagues. Actually it’s worse than ordinary, garden variety bribery. Harry Reid didn't bribe the other senators with his own money — he bribed them and purchased their votes with our money. Michelle Malkin calls Harry Reid’s vote buying program Cash for Corruptocrats.

I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if, like in the other Cash for Clunkers program, this meant they would first be disabled and then taken out to be dismantled.

Democrats' "Health Care" Bill

The Democrats in Congress say they want to reduce medical care costs, "bend the cost curve down", and cover those who don't have health insurance. They claim they will can do this in a way that will not increase the deficit, and will allow (!) those happy with their medical insurance to keep it.

To accomplish these noble goals, the Democrats have produced a "health care" bill. Their bill accomplishes none of these goals — and, in fact, makes every one of these problems worse.

Further, the Democrats pretend that those without health insurance cannot get health care. This is a lie, and they know it. They pretend that taking half a trillion dollars out of Medicare will improve it — another flagrant obvious lie. They pretend that dumping extra costs on the states is the same as reducing costs.

And that's before all the horse trading, diddling, extortion, and outright bribery conducted by Harry Reid (in back rooms excluding all Republicans and nearly all Democrats) to get the votes to pass this sack of (probably) unconstitutional crap. As a result, a small number of states will have their increased costs covered by the federal government. That means Harry Reid has arranged for the rest of us to pay all the increased costs for the states whose senators he needed to buy off as well as for our own. Among other things, that's a clear admission that the cost curve is about to be bent up, not down. And that they know it.

It also appears much of the bill is still in "conceptual language" rather than "legislative language". That means senators cannot actually determine what they are being asked to vote on. They're being asked to trust Dirty Harry Reid to fill that in later.

All of which says Daryl Cagle is right in his representation of the difference between the health plan and the health bill.
The whole thing is a fraud. And those pushing it know it is entirely fraudulent.

The Cheeseburger Mandate

The federal government is about to mandate that I must buy cheeseburgers. Indeed, it now plans to mandate not only how many cheeseburgers I must buy, but also what I may and must have on and with them. I will not be allowed to buy either more or fewer, or to change the accompaniments. I will be heavily fined if I don't buy enough cheeseburgers, and I will be heavily taxed if I buy too many.

All determinations about how many cheeseburgers I must buy, what they must look and taste like, and how much I must pay for them, will be made by unelected bureaucrats following regulations written by appointed politicians to implement mandates made by "progressives" acting "for my own good". Those "progressives" obviously know what's good for us so much better than we do ourselves. That's why they feel so free to ignore the American people's desires and wishes, and call the people thugs and terrorists for daring to express their views in opposition to the benevolent arrogance of their overlords.

I just wonder how the "progressives" think they have the right to order my commodity purchases, and where they think they get the authority to do so. If memory serves, the last time the aristocracy got this controlling, they produced a revolution.