ObamaCare

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We do have a problem with young voters and have to find a way to appeal to them. The first step I think we should take is annulling all student loans in default and then change the law to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy after five years – with a proviso that 25% of the discharged amount is charged back to the institutions they attended. As I’ve said for years, the student loan system is a mere scam – a subsidy for the far left. And, no, I’m not interested in making kids suffer the burden of it. They were conned. So, let’s unburden them and start to gain their trust and support…and with the charge back, start to punish our enemies in the academic left.

We lost in Arizona – and while I’m sure the Democrats did commit voter fraud in Arizona (as they do everywhere they can) the bottom line is that McSally lost. The Republican governor of Arizona got hundreds of thousands more votes than McSally did…so, she was misfiring somewhere.

That said, voter fraud is a huge problem. It looks like we stepped up in time in FL and GA to prevent the most brazen theft in history. Usually, voter fraud works around the small margins. You know – Democrat behind 400 votes on election day, and then finds just enough to win. The reason for this is that manufacturing tens of thousands of votes is a risky business. But, the Democrats seem to have tried just that in FL and GA. It just shows how completely lawless they have become – how absolutely certain they are that the laws simply don’t apply to them. One of the reasons why is neatly shown by Jeb Bush’s statement about it – he wants the Broward official in charge removed, but only after the vote is certified. In other words, old line Republican that he is, he’s ok with the theft and then merely wants the crook to quit. So it has always been – and Democrats have expected it will always be. But the new GOP has a bit of backbone…and all the Democrats may really have done here is put the issue of voter fraud on the front burner.

Latest from the incoming House Democrats is that they’re going to drop the program of impeaching Kavanaugh (maybe Schumer pointed out that this would be an insanely stupid thing to do?), but they are still saying they’ll take on Trump, even if Mueller doesn’t show any criminal behavior (and, he won’t). No one can read the future – I guess we’ll find out if the American people in 2020 will reward or punish such behavior. My view is that Trump holds the advantage here because most casual observers simply don’t care about such inside baseball stuff. And if the Democrats shut down the government over it (and they are de-facto threatening that), then it could end badly for them. But, in the event, we’ll have to see. Maybe Democrat insanity is what the American people crave? Time will tell.

If, as I expect, we do prevail in FL, it means we will have taken down four sitting Democrat Senators in 2018. Not a bad bit of work – in fact, I don’t think the out party has lost that many Senators in a midterm since the 1930’s. Democrats are, rightly, pleased at their House victory…but getting back to 51 in the Senate is going to be a difficult prospect for them. Now, if the GOP gets crushed under a landslide in 2020, lots of GOP Senators will go down with it. But if its a GOP victory or even a narrow loss, then the only GOPer really at risk is in CO. Meanwhile, the GOP has an excellent chance of recapturing Alabama that year and can at least take a shot at New Hampshire and Michigan. Moving on to 2022, the GOP will have a shot at NV, CO and NH while the Democrats really only have hope in Wisconsin. On balance, absent a meltdown by either party, the 53 Seats we’ll hold in January should be pretty tough to take from us over the next two cycles, meaning that if Trump is re-elected, he’s going to have a GOP Senate (at least) through his whole term of office. That will simply be devastating to the Democrats in the judiciary.

And now you know why the Democrats are suddenly talking up abolishing the Senate.

Another Monday Comes

Mark Noonan

We just can’t avoid them, now can we?

Seems that whole economy things still isn’t working out as well as promised.

ObamaCare – the disaster that keeps on disasting:

State-run health insurance markets that offer coverage under President Barack Obama’s health law are struggling with high costs and disappointing enrollment…

…”The viability of state health insurance exchanges has been a challenge across the country, particularly in small states, due to insufficient numbers of uninsured residents,” said a statement from the office of Hawaii Democratic Gov. David Ige, announcing last month that his state’s sign-ups were being turned over to the federal government. (emphasis added)

Insufficient numbers of uninsured residents? But, wait – weren’t we told of tens of millions of uninsured who were all going to die horrible, painful deaths unless we passed ObamaCare? Could it be that – and I’m just spit balling here – they exaggerated the numbers of uninsured in order to create a crisis which they would not let go to waste?

Finished? I Don’t Think So.

Leo Pusateri5 Comments

As Rush Limbaugh asserted on his radio show Wednesday, the Obama presidency is far from over.

The events to which we are witness presently– world unrest, trampling on personal property rights and State sovereignty, assault on affordable energy–continuous assaults on our ability to grow our economy– is all part of Obama’s original campaign promise to “..fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s an important phrase to ponder. “FUNDAMENTALLY” TRANSFORM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” Think about that. Let that short, simple, yet all-encompassing phrase sink in. First focus on the word “TRANSFORM” and then the root word of “FUNDAMENTALLY.”

To “transform” something, by definition, is to make something evolve into something radically different from what it has traditionally been. “Fundamental” by definition is a defining, basic characteristic. A building block–something foundational to its being.

Now, to “FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM” means to radically transform the United States from what it has traditionally been– the “shining city on a hill”- the land of opportunity–based on the premise of individual liberty and the affordance of self-determination–yes–to transform that– into something *fundamentally different* and thus diametrically opposed to that foundation.

The Third World Despots, the Kruschevs, the Fidel Castros, the Kim Jong Ils and Uns of the world, have given hours-long speeches about their hopes for the destruction of the Free World, but never have they been able to put it so succinctly and eloquently as has Obama in that one simple, yet profound phrase. “..We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Many people chalked that phrase to meaningless boilerplate rhetoric, as so much rhetorical fluff. But of all the promises Obama made that were broken, whether it was closing Guantanamo Bay, allowing people to ‘keep their doctors or their health plans–period,” or to decrease health insurance costs by $2500 per year, this– this seminal promise–(along with bankrupting the coal industry)–was the one he meant from the bottom of his joyless, cavernous heart.

No people. The Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama is not ended. He still has a lot of ‘fundamental transformations’ to perform.

Barack Obama’s “scorched earth” policy against America and its people has only just begun.

The Joys Of Obamacare

Cluster7 Comments

I just received the fabulous news that my premium has gone up another 31% on top of the 22% increase last year. When I called my provider, to inquire about the increase, I was told that due to mandates of the ACA this increase was necessary, and that I may actually lose my plan at the end of this year because my plan is not 100% ACA compliant. That is of course provided the President doesn’t change his mind again and make more unilateral changes as he is known to do.

Many of you may remember our President’s 2008 campaign promise:

“I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”

Well I can tell you from a personal experience, I am paying now more than $3,000 per year for my healthcare insurance. Not surprising, a recent poll indicated that:

Almost 9 in 10 respondents said Obamacare would be “important” in determining their vote, and 60 percent said debate on the health care law should not be over.

We need to get rid of this law, we need to get rid of this President, we need to electorally wipe out progressives, and we need bring back that “shining city on the hill”! So I don’t know, or care who the GOP candidate is in your district – vote for him or her, because any Democrat in any district in any state, only becomes a tool for the progressive agenda. It’s that simple.

I will also make one more obvious observation – the VA IS single payer Government Healthcare, so the problems we are seeing with that, is what we all have in store if we don’t shed ourselves of this cancer. No pun intended – well ok pun intended.

 

Hiding the Decline, ObamaCare Style

Mark Noonan16 Comments

They just get more dishonest by the day:

The Census Bureau, the authoritative source of health insurance data for more than three decades, is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.

The changes are intended to improve the accuracy of the survey, being conducted this month in interviews with tens of thousands of households around the country. But the new questions are so different that the findings will not be comparable, the officials said.

An internal Census Bureau document said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, in a test last year, produced lower estimates of the uninsured. Thus, officials said, it will be difficult to say how much of any change is attributable to the Affordable Care Act and how much to the use of a new survey instrument…

Now, you can think that this is just some honest effort by the Obama Administration – or you can be rational and understand that they want a success that Low Info Voters can believe in and so they are just going to fudge the numbers until they get it.  This is much like the way they’ve finagled around with the unemployment and labor force participation numbers – can’t create jobs?  Then just change the way we report the number of jobs!  Have a completely unworkable health care system?  Then just change the way insured and uninsured are counted until you get fewer uninsured!

Just waiting for a report just before election day about how the number of uninsured Americans is at a record low…

But, it won’t work.  The problem with ObamaCare is not in the marketing, it is the fact that people are having to pay more for health insurance than they did before.  The problem is in the millions of people who have had their policies cancelled.  The problem is in the fact that the bloody thing just doesn’t work.  Democrats will pay the ObamaCare price this November no matter how many made-up numbers Team Obama comes up with.

Sarah Palin Vindicated – There are Death Panels in Obamacare

tiredoflibbs89 Comments

Tell us something we did not already know!

The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for “death panels,” which decide which critically-ill patients receive care and which won’t, according to Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.

“It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/25/mark_halperin_obamacare_contains_death_panels.html#ooid=8zZ25waDoa-OQmTBjFMWJwiJssrg_QuXhttp:// 

MALZBERG, HOST: A lot of people said you weren’t going to be able to keep your health care, but also they focused on the death panels, which will be coming, call them what you will, rationing, is part of it…

HALPERIN: No, I agree, and that’s going to be a huge issue, and that’s something else on which the president was not fully forthcoming and straightforward.

MALZBERG: So, you believe there will be rationing, a.k.a. death panels?

HALPERIN: It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled.

Halperin went on to say that he believes the country “can’t afford to spend so much on end-of-life care,” but those judgments need to be made by individuals and insurance companies rather than the federal government.

Did he have a moment of clarity?  ”…rather than the federal government”?

Remember when Sarah Palin was trashed and mercilessly attacked by the left (typical) for revealing the fact of Death Panels?  This is more evidence by the obame administration that obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.  I am still waiting for my annual premiums to be lowered by $2500….

…. I won’t hold my breath.  Wait until the end of the year when corporate health insurance policies will be subject to the minimum federally mandated standards…. The cancellations seen at the end of last year won’t compare to those that will be cancelled this year.

“If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance.” “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.”  obame (obay me) knew the lessons learned from Hillarycare.  If people could not keep their insurance and doctors they would reject his plan like they did Hillary’s.  The need to lie was necessary to get it passed…just like the one that said “this is a penalty and not a tax”.

…. but the low information voters on the left (and they still troll this blog) will still be as ignorant as ever (voluntarily) and defend obAMATEUR while still maintaining he did not lie.

UPDATE: Obamacare continues to be the massive failure that we know it is and the pRegressive low information voters continue to deny.

The mindless drones continue to defend obamacare and regurgitate the talking point of millions have signed up.  However, signing up on a dysfunctional web-site and actually getting insurance are two different things.  Many are finding out that after signing up insurance companies through the website (when it doesn’t crash) have no records with the targeted insurance company of such an enrollment.

Now before you pRegressive drones screech about the link, notice that the article is from the Associated Press.  But we all know, you will latch onto that common pathetic tactic rather than address the real point of the post.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/09/Some-find-health-insurers-have-no-record-of-them

White House is Staging A Bloodless Coup!

Leo Pusateri21 Comments

OK, folks–here’s the deal- I don’t think too many people are realizing this:

1. We currently gather TEN TIMES the amount of revenue required to service our debt, EVERY MONTH.

2. The 14th Amendment states that WE MUST honor and service our debts; meaning that paying and servicing debt MUST COME FIRST.

3. Barack Obama has been threatening that we WILL DEFAULT on our debt if the debt ceiling is not raised in two days.

4. The ONLY way this can happen, is if Barack Obama IGNORES the 14th Amendment and REFUSES to service the debt. This means that Barack Obama MUST OPENLY DEFY the Constitution to bring about what he threatens will happen.

5. Understand also that I believe that Barack Obama FULLY INTENDS to carry out his threat. I believe that Barack Obama MEANS, in direct opposition to the 14th Amendment, to ALLOW the United States to go into default. Like a terrorist with his finger on the button of his suicide vest, he is threatening to DESTROY THE FULL FAITH AND CREDIT OF THE UNITED STATES, placing our economy in RUIN, unless Congress meets his every demand.

6. In effect, Barack Obama is staging what amounts to nothing less than a COUP– a complete usurpation of the power of the purse that IS EXCLUSIVELY THE PURVIEW of the duly and locally elected United States House of Representatives.

7. In completely and WILLFULLY ignoring his Constitutional responsibilities with respect to the 14th Amendment, Barack Obama has effectually denounced the primacy of the U.S. Constitution. He is effectively governing by EXECUTIVE FIAT.

In other words, Barack Obama HAS THROWN AWAY THE CONSTITUTION and is in effect GOVERNING AS A DICTATOR!

UNDERSTAND THIS, PEOPLE–THIS IS NOT HYPERBOLE!

ObamaCare Train Wreck Update

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Three bits of ObamaCare news today:

Half of all ObamaCare statutory deadlines have been missed.

Forever 21 is cutting the hours of some of their employees to 29.5 per week to avoid ObamaCare mandates.  These people were advised yesterday, August 18th, that their health benefits will terminate as of August 31st.

More than 100,000 New Jersey residents in a program for low-cost health insurance will lose their coverage because their plan doesn’t cover all the whistles and bells mandated by ObamaCare.  They’ll be lucky if their replacement plans only cost twice as much.

Did you vote for Obama?  Then be ashamed.  This is just a horrible thing…and it is horrible because Obama and leading Democrats cobbled together a pile of legislation and passed it without reading it or thinking through the consequences.

Revisited: The Rationing Has Already Started and obAMATEUR-CARE Is Not in Full Swing Yet….

tiredoflibbs85 Comments

We told you so……

It was estimated that 9-25 million people with pre-existing conditions were not insured.

The “high risk pools” set up under 2010 obAMATEUR-care law will be closed to new applicants by March 2nd (some states by Sunday) because funding is running low.

A sign of things to come…. We have seen this in Europe, especially in England, but warnings went unheeded to the pResident and Democrats hell bent on 1/7th of the nations wealth.

What will happen next?

Update: Following are the smear attacks by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on Republicans and Sarah Palin:

  • August 13, 2009 “Right now, the charge that’s gaining the most traction is the claim that health care reform will create “death panels” (in Sarah Palin’s words) that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave. It’s a complete fabrication, of course.”
  • August 20, 2009 “It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.”
  • February 25, 2010 “So what did we learn from the summit? What I took away was the arrogance that the success of things like the death-panel smear has obviously engendered in Republican politicians. At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right.”
  • August 30, 2009“Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?”
  • October 4, 2009 “The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.”
  • March 21, 2010: “Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/krugman-death-panels-palin/2010/11/14/id/377013#ixzz2MEa6Iss9

The New York Times columnist, economist and political advisor said that within less than 20 years the US will need to raise taxes and ration healthcare to deal with rising costs under Obamacare and yes, he said “death panels.”

Turns out to be true!! Krugman confirms RATIONING AND DEATH PANELS!

So, what’s next?

Oh yeah the ultimate goal:  Single payer system totally in the hands of the government – total control of 1/7th of the economy.  It works so well with Medicare and the VA!

 

Dystopia–In His Own Words.

Leo Pusateri15 Comments

Just prior to the 2008 elections, Barack Obama boldly stated,

“We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (October 30, 2008)

Many among my conservative friends took that to be so much fluff; pretty much liberal boilerplate consistent with his whole “Hope and Change” campaign message.  Given, however, Obama’s background, cutting his teeth with the radical leftists/communists of his day (i.e., Frank Marshall Davis, Bernadine Dorn, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) I believe I was one of the relative few that took him at his word.  Unlike most of America, conservatives such as myself and others who actually took the time to vet Obama, knew that background and worldview mattered, and that Obama’s past gave more than a glimpse of how he intended to govern in the present.

When Obama uttered those words, “.. fundamentally transform America” I knew he meant it. It was Obama himself who stated (emphases added),

“As radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least, as it’s been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the States can’t do to you; says what the Federal Government can’t do to you, but doesn’t state what the Federal government or State Government must do on your behalf.”  (Barack Obama, June 18, 2001).

There is no question that Barack Obama was unhappy with his perception of unequal distribution of wealth that America so unfairly championed, and that he wanted to transform this nation into something more ‘equitable’ in his eyes.  The question was how, and to what extent.  Just how does one “fundamentally”  transform a nation whose very basis for existence is freedom, itself?  The only feasible answer is to transform that already-free nation, into a nation with fewer freedoms.  Given Dinesh D’Souza’s brilliant insights as to Obama’s worldview engendered by his past, one knew that Obama’s absolute contempt for what he saw as America’s unequal distribution of wealth would result in his promoting policies that would necessarily stifle economic growth.   Obama’s America would no longer be one of unbridled economic opportunity; rather, America would be a nation of egalitarian outcomes, regardless of effort; to coin a phrase, to each, according to his needs; from each, according to his means.  

As a means of bringing about this transformation, America could no longer be a free nation.  No where as free, at least, as it was at the time of he assumed his presidency.  Liberties would need to be forsaken to bring about his vision of utopia.  The free market system would need to be reined in, and done so in no small measure.   Obama would have four years, eight at most, to make this happen.  This transformation would need to be done quickly, and in a big way.

Enter Obamacare, America’s first stop on its train ride to Utopia. Against the wishes of 60-70 percent of Americans, and without the vetting of congressional legislators who rammed through the legislation, the United States Federal Government took control of a full one-seventh of the American economy, which had the net effect of driving up the cost of health care for all involved,  taking away freedom of choice, relegating freedom of conscience incompatible with the party line to irrelevancy, while at the same time having the no-doubt intended effect of casting a chilling pall on America’s ability to sustain economic growth and prosperity.  For those who wish to argue regarding this latter point, how better to right the wrongs of the perceived injustice of unequally-distributed wealth than to stifle the engine that creates such wealth?

As I’ve said, Obamacare is but stop one on America’s train ride to Obama’s Dystopia.  Obama’s seeming assault on everything traditional America has held dear for centuries appears to have taken on epidemic proportions.  Remember- Obama only has three and three-quarter years left.  Those who haven’t yet felt the pinch of his “transformations,” most likely have not yet realized that they, too, have been pinched.   Obama’s willing media accomplices can only cover for him for so long before a critical mass of Americans, admittedly as dull as many of them are, will start to put two-and-two together and finally determine that the hopey-changey unicorn jockey they voted for may actually have had something to do with the plight in which they suddenly find themselves.

Then what?

When the critical mass of Americans finally wake up one morning, to find that they have been played as chumps, they are liable to get a bit–shall we say, testy. When this inevitability finally does come home to roost, The TEA party protests that grew out of Rick Santelli’s historic February, 2009 rant will no doubt look like a series of school pep assemblies.   Such civil unrest would certainly be difficult to quell, and will no doubt be yet another bump in the tracks on the way to Obama’s Dystopian dream.

What to do, what do do? You can’t just sick the military after the troublemakers. Well, you could, I suppose, but then you risk pissing off your fellow travelers who have had a history of contempt for men and women in uniform.

What to do??

Since, at least philosophy- and policy-wise, one can take Obama at his word, one may get a clue as to Obama’s plans by again, studying his own non-TelePrompter inspired rhetoric:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.  We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”   -Barack Obama, July, 2008.

Yeah- remember that phrase?  Neither did a lot of other people.  Like the rest of Obama’s sordid past and rhetoric that if brought to the light of day would have rendered his election impossible, The media (true to their sycophantic nature) pretty much glossed over that little tidbit.  A powerful Civilian security force. Remind you of anyone?

So when you see articles like this, or like this, or like this, and then think, aww–Leo–take off that tinfoil hat!  You’re just blowing smoke.  That would never really happen here.  There’s no way.

Just remember.  I didn’t put those words into Barack Obama’s mouth.

He did.