My blogging was rather light this week, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t collecting links.

Sarah Palin got skewered for suggesting that ObamaCare(tm) would bring about what she called “Death Panels”.  Well, turns out that Obama’s pick for the guy to oversee government health care programs is all in favor of them.

Jobs saved and created … and created and created and created.  “Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks. The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department.”

“Unexpected” is the term the MSM uses to describe Obama’s economic failures.  We were promised it would work, and they’re shocked when it didn’t.  But’s that’s so last week.  Now the phrase is “little-noticed”, as in “a little-noticed provision of the health care bill is unexpectedly discovered.”  (Well, little-notice by the MSM.  Opponents mostly knew it already.)

And finally, some “smart” diplomacy, courtesy of Michael Ramirez (click for a larger image):

I may start doing this more often.  I collect links during the week, some I comment on here, and some just languish in Google Bookmarks.  But instead of a daily report of links like my co-blogger Mark, I’m going to save it all until the end of the week.  This installment will be a bit longer than others since I’ve got some aging links here that really want to see the light of day.  So here they are, usually, but not always, in reverse chronological order:

Coattails?  What coattails? “Some Democrats on the campaign trail have hit upon a winning campaign tactic: Run against President Obama and his agenda — especially the health care overhaul.”

Seeking asylum in the US for … homeschooling persecution? “A German Christian family received asylum in Tennessee after being severely penalized for illegally homeschooling their children in Germany.”  I’ve covered this particular situation before; here, here, here, here, here and here.

California, parts of which are boycotting Arizona for it’s new immigration law, which just enforce existing federal law, should take a look at it’s own lawbooks first.  They might find something familiar.

The economic meltdown in Greece should be a wake-up call to politicians of both parties in the US.  Otherwise, it may turn out to be, rather, a coming attraction.

ObamaCare(tm) is predicted to increase the crowding in our hospitals’ emergency rooms.  “Some Democrats agree with this assessment. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) suspects the fallout that occurred in Massachusetts’ emergency rooms could happen nationwide after health reform kicks in.”  But he still voted for this snake oil anyway.

“Economic Woes Threaten Chavez’s Socialist Vision” Only on NPR would this be news.  For the rest of this, it’s a redundancy.

Comedy Central stands on the bedrock of free speech and will mock anyone, just as long as there’s no chance of getting beheaded for it.  “The show in development, “JC,” is a half-hour about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his “powerful but apathetic father” and live a regular life in New York.”

Green energy falling by the wayside in Europe.  Seems the massive subsidies for this alleged cost-saving energy are too much for governments going through financial troubles.  Should we (will we) take note?

CBO says ObamaCare will cost $115 billion more than thought.  That is to say, if you already had a healthy skepticism of government estimates.  And those same people won’t be surprised if when this figure climbs higher.

Pity the poor folks who have been snookered by the Democrats.

From a news article on the measures Greece is taking to deal with their financial crisis.

Among the most significant features of the plan, a Greek government official said, would be a measure making it easier for the government to lay off some of the many thousands of public sector workers, whose low levels of productivity and high wages are a big contributor to Greece’s debt problem. Until now, the government has not been able to lay off civil servants, whose employment rights are in effect constitutionally guaranteed.

Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes — where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000 — and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.

What right-wing rag would point out how reducing government payrolls, and more privatization, including in the health care industry, would be useful parts of a plan to save money?

Answer below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry

Yes, some folks weren’t paying attention and thought all this "free" health care was supposed to kick in the day after The Won(tm) signed it into law.  And now buyer’s remorse has hit.

Three weeks after Congress passed its new national health care plan, support for repeal of the measure has risen four points to 58%. That includes 50% of U.S. voters who strongly favor repeal.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters nationwide finds 38% still oppose repeal, including 32% who strongly oppose it.

But while those folks may just not have been fully informed, our Congress folk should certainly have been caught off guard.  That’s what we pay them for!  And yet…

It is often said that the new health care law will affect almost every American in some way. And, perhaps fittingly if unintentionally, no one may be more affected than members of Congress themselves.

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members.

For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

To answer that question, we look to other news items.  A few weeks ago, Congress was shocked — SHOCKED — to find companies writing off millions and billions in losses over a federal prescription medicine that was going away.  Companies are, by law, required to honestly represent their revenues and liabilities, but Democrats will have none of that, if it reflects poorly on their pet project.  But now, a lot of other shoes are starting to drop.  At the SayAnything blog:

A starting revelation on the Scott Hennen Show today from Rod St. Aubyn, Director of Government Relations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota.  St. Aubyn notes that under Obamacare, all polices offered in North Dakota must be approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and that this approval process will force BCBS to reduce its insurance offerings from over fifty different policies…to four.

(Audio at the site.)  And if you do get insurance, ObamaCare may be doing nothing about its cost.

Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama’s healthcare overhaul across the finish line, but the new law does not give regulators the power to block similar increases in the future.

And now, with some major companies already moving to boost premiums and others poised to follow suit, millions of Americans may feel an unexpected jolt in the pocketbook.

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Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases.

And once you’ve paid for it, good luck finding a doctor.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

And if you do find a doctor, good luck finding a hospital.

The new health care overhaul law, which promised increased access and efficiency in health care, will prevent doctor-owned hospitals from adding more rooms and more beds, says a group that advocates physician involvement in every aspect of health care delivery.

Physician-owned hospitals are advertised as less bureaucratic and more focused on doctor-patient decision making. However, larger corporate hospitals say doctor-owned facilities discriminate in favor of high-income patients and refer business to themselves.

The new health care rules single out such hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Existing doctor-owned hospitals will be grandfathered in to get government funds for patients but must seek permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to expand.

All this and more (including increased taxes on those making less than $200,000) is summarized in a very informative Wall St. Journal op-ed.  Yeah, you can try to paint the WSJ as some right-wing editorial board, but they quote the NY Times, the LA Times; hardly bastions of conservatism. 

And so we go back to the question asked by the NY Times, "did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?"  I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t. 

A blog I used to write was just a collection of quotes I liked.  Early one was this one:

"Smokers don’t impose health care costs on society; governments that insist on paying for smokers’ health care impose health care costs on society." — Sasha Volokh, from The Volokh Conspiracy blog

(This was done while the Volokh Conspiracy was still using Blogspot.  They’ve moved to their own domain and the old one has a completely different kind of blog on it, so sorry, no link to the original post.)

It is, of course, a more wordy version of "Guns don’t kill; people kill" saying, retasked to a new subject.  Sasha’s version was written in 2003.  Seven years later, it takes on a new meaning.

I was reminded of this quote when I read this post from Bruce McQuain.  He talks about the easy slide from Nanny State to Bully State, and how the opposition go the health care bill is and always was based on freedom, and what happens when government is given a bigger and bigger share of the freedom in this country, for whatever the good intention.  He quotes a report from the Institute for Public Affairs that lists a series of assumptions governments make when they take over health decisions.

Most of the health care burden is driven by disease that results from lifestyle decisions.

Most of the health care burden is therefore, in theory, preventable.

The cost of most lifestyle-related disease is not recovered from the individuals with such diseases or from the industries whose products contribute to these diseases.

Individual autonomy cannot be the paramount value in health care.

Individual choice as a basis for health is ‘too simplistic’.

Individual freedoms may have to give way to the coercive power of the State.

Interventions, including coercive actions, to change behaviour may proceed in the absence of evidence of their effectiveness.

Individuals have a clear responsibility to refrain from lifestyle decisions that lead to disease and, consequently, treatment can be denied to those who refuse to change their behaviour.

With the passage of the health care reform bill, we’ve already slipped about halfway down this particular slope.  Never mind smokers, Sasha, the official nationalization of this sector now means that all sorts of bad habits are guaranteed to affect everyone in the country because the government insists on it.

And this is different from insurance companies charging more for smokers or young drivers or people who sky dive.  Insurance companies can’t make these choices illegal; they can only charge you more for the higher risk you are asking them to take on.  The government, however, has far, far more power at hand.

It’s about freedom, and it’s being eroded away.

We haven’t done one of these in quite some time, so here’s a chance for you to weigh in on the bill that just passed Congress.  Let us know what you think about the bill in the poll, and then toss a comment here about why you voted the way you did. 

And hey, if you’re not concerned, let’s hear that, too.

(Fake photo credit:  Chris Jamison)

So the health care "reform" bill passed last night, complete with payoffs, abortion funding and fake projections of "savings" required to try to pass it via reconciliation.  And in an entirely "unipartisan" manner.  (Even the New Deal had bipartisan support.)

So what does this mean for American politics?  Glad you asked.

• There is now a precedent for requiring Americans to buy something simply because they live here.  Automobile insurance is required in most states if you own a car.  Health insurance, however, is required, period.  Nice work if you can get it. 
• The phrase "pro-life Democrat", at least (but not limited to) as it described Washington politicians, is now known to be an oxymoron.  The executive order Obama promised the Stupak group isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.  (See here, here and here, please.)  An EO only applies to the executive branch, can be rescinded on a whim, and legislation always trumps it.  And in spite of whatever pro-life record they may have had in the past, the entire Stupak group sold its collective souls, principles and the lives of future generations for something they must know is less a fig leaf and more tissue paper.  (More on this from Betsy Newmark.  This is just unfathomable.)
• Democrats can no longer legitimately complain about polarization or the lack of bipartisanship in Washington.  No doubt they will, mind you, but they’ve completely lost the moral authority on the issue.
• Gaming the CBO system for political gain, though I’m sure it’s been done before, has, by virtue of this massive bill, been raised to a new level of legitimacy.  A former CBO head wrote on Saturday that the numbers were so manipulated that what is claimed will be a reduction in the deficit of $138 billion is really more like an increase in the neighborhood of $562 billion.  The foundation for using the reconciliation process to pass this bill was that it reduced the deficit.  So the method used to pass the bill was based on a lie.  And this is not even including a $371 billion dollar Medicare bill that’s coming down the pike. 

Everything about this legislation — above and beyond the usual sausage-making that is the political process — is absolutely awful, regardless of its actual contents.  And its actual contents, once we have it, no matter how awful it turns out to be, is now with us for good.  (Barring a repeal, which is very hard to get the political will to do in Washington.)  If it’s an abject failure, or even it if just keeps the status quo at the cost of billions every year to run in place, it will not go away.  We’re stuck with this ball and chain.

And a parting "shot", if you will, from Michael Ramirez.  (Click for a larger version.)

Word is the House is not going for the “Deem and Pass” option in spite of saying they would. My guess is that it didn’t pass the PR test.

At least we’ll get an honest vote out of this. Too bad the Democrats didn’t choose the honorable way first.

The CBO numbers for the final final health care reform bill may look good (depending on your definition of "good"), but, as I’ve noted before, the numbers are gamed.  And now, here’s more sleight of hand going on.

Democrats are planning to introduce legislation later this spring that would permanently repeal annual Medicare cuts to doctors, but are warning lawmakers not to talk about it for fear that it will complicate their push to pass comprehensive health reform. The plans undercut the party’s message that reform lowers the deficit, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.

Democrats removed the so-called doc fix from the reform legislation last year because its $371-billion price tag would have made it impossible for Democrats to claim that their bill reduces the deficit. Republicans have argued for months that by stripping the doc fix from the bill, Democrats were playing a shell game.

Remember, the CBO estimate is, for all intents and purposes, a minimum price.  As with all other big government programs, it will increase dramatically.

Remember that “lock box” that Social Security money was in?  Well government, as government is wont to do, has already raided it over the years, treating Social Security funds as its own private slush fund and left IOUs in there.

This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

The BigGovernment website, noting this, says there are 2 choices on how to raise this money; taxes and borrowing.  Those are the one mandated by law, but there is another option; change the law and renege on the promise.  (I didn’t say it was a good option.)  No one wants to do any of that, but the combination of a promise made, irresponsible spending on all sorts of “good” programs, and a down economy have combined to create this mess.  And now we’re broke, and our children are going to have to pay the price for our excesses.

All this is foreseeable with health care reform as well.  The creeping socialism of Europe has led it to insolvency as well.  Will somebody please learn from history.  Recent history?

And if you weren’t already realizing that the Democrats were gaming the numbers to make the costs look good, this report should (hopefully) jolt you into reality.

A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

We’re broke, folks, and we’re issuing a credit card to our kids, and using it to fund our own out-of-control spending.  The money’s not there.  It’s gone.  It’s long past time to wake up to this fact before we follow Europe into the black hole.

Can’t get a 60-vote majority, and reconciliation seems unobtainable?  Just play make-believe.

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

"It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill."

Why bother with a pesky Presidential signature, or an actual up-or-down vote, when keister-covering is so much more politically expedient?  Let’s just pretend the bill passed.

Shouldn’t something as massive as this have broad bipartisan support?  But not even the Democrats themselves, when they held a 60-vote majority, could get it past their own folks.  This is just wrong.

It is better to empower the people to be more charitable by letting them keep their money in order to give it than to get the government in the health care business.  It is both cheaper and more moral. 

Will people fall through the cracks if this is left up to the people?  Yes.  And it will be the same for a government program.  Don’t let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good", especially if the "perfect" is clearly known to be unobtainable. 

Trying to obtain that perfection via government will do 2 things.  First, it will not happen.  Second, it will give more power and money to a government already awash in both.  For those that already despise dealing with a more local insurance company, multiply that for dealing with the government.  (Including, yes, "death panels", just like they have in Canada, in behavior if not title.)

But will government involvement, if not perfect, be at least better than we have now?  Perhaps we could ask that cancer patient in Alberta (follow that link up there) who came to Minnesota to get lifesaving surgery.  Or you could read the article in the London Times about how the liberal Labour party hid the truth about patient neglect in their National Health Service.  If your measure of "success" is how many people have health insurance, then sure, it would be "better".  But if you factor in the quality of care, not so much.

Because our system isn’t perfect, don’t make a deal with the devil.  Our founding fathers felt government to be a necessary evil.  They were students of history that saw the natural tendency of government and tried to avoid those problems when they wrote the Constitution so that government’s power was limited.  We are "unwriting" those limits if we do this.

Nancy Pelosi:

You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other.  But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Emphasis added (by Reason magazine), and it speaks for itself.  No matter what they tell you about the bill, they’re not telling you everything.  No matter what they say it’ll cost, they won’t say all of it.  "Trust us to overhaul the health care insurance industry, with a bill made with back-room deals with unions, and bribes for votes."

Yeah, right.  It’s huge and it’s shrouded, and it’s a classic carnival huckster method.  How can people actually fall for this?