Health Wars (9/21/09)

The more mouths you send out to spread fertilizer, the harder it gets to keep all the crap straight:

So which is it? Did Sasha have meningitis or didn't she? And was she four months old when she got sick or three months? FWIW, I'd be more inclined to believe Scheherezade's account since Sasha's daddy has had bigger fish to fry than to catalogue the details of his kids' childhood illnesses. And that, of course, is the point of sending Mrs. O out to "momize" the BarryCare BS that the public has conclusively rejected.

But as one of Ensign Ed's commenters says, so what?:

What is the point of the story anyway? That other people couldn’t take their baby to the ER if they thought she had meningitis? Of course they could . . . and it wouldn’t matter if they had health insurance, or if they could pay the bill or not. The ER would have been required by federal law to examine and treat the baby.

If this is supposed to be an example of why we need universal coverage, it’s a spectacularly bad one.

Simple: The Democrats never dared tell the truth about this abomination; they failed at lying about its substance; so now their last shot is a lot of soft, warm, gauzy, gaseous feminized hand-waving to make American moms melt and go "Awwwwwww, she's such a nice lady and her arms are so toned and her little girls are so cute - go ahead and plunder my family of our health care and life savings."

If the White House had played the vagina card three months ago, it'd probably be law already. But now? Too little, too late.

~ ~ ~

Barack Obama is scared to death of new taxes - just not in the same way you and I are:

Funny, he didn't have any problem at all containing his enthusiasm for hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes to fuel health care nationalization two years ago - when, of course, he was considered small fry doomed to be steamrolled by the Hillary Juggarnaut and nobody was paying attention to anything he was saying. But now, trapped in the amber of ferocious public opposition - which, ironically, makes it even more imperative that he keep lying right through that immaculately blinding grin of his - and dwindling popularity, he's so allergic to even the word "taxes" that Bill Clinton's one time press secretary is actually and exasperatedly driven to nail him to the metaphorical wall on it.

AP tacks on another canny observation:

Obama’s point is that people who can afford to buy insurance but don’t are gambling with house money. If they get hit by a car and run up a million-dollar hospital bill — and some of them assuredly will — you and I are forced to pick up the tab in the form of higher premiums, in which case why not make the freeloaders either buy insurance and cover their own asses or pay a “fine” to help offset the cost to the rest of us of covering the uninsured?...

Isn’t this an oddly regressive tax argument for The One to be making? Many people who can afford insurance but refuse to purchase it are kids in their twenties, whose careers are just starting and who aren’t making much money yet. People who can afford it and do purchase it tend to be older, more established in their careers, and likely a bit better off. Essentially he’s arguing that it’s unfair for these richer folk to have to pay higher premiums to cover those who can less afford it. What happened to redistribution, champ?

In this case, it flies below the bus of authoritarian pragmatism. You can't get to "universal" coverage unless EVERYBODY is in the system - whether they want to be or not. Since the underlying ideological premise is that there can be no such thing as uninsured who DON'T want coverage, the reality of several million young adults who DON'T want coverage is to be rendered "inoperable." They will officially "want" it because Barack Obama TELLS them they do. And they WILL buy it for the same reason. "Choice" - ah, the etymological irony! - will cease to exist.

If they only way to accomplish this is a little regression, that's a price I'm sure Red Barry is willing to pay.

~ ~ ~

So a tax is not a tax in False Messiah's creation. But there ARE such things as taxes in that parallel dimension. Bet you'll never guess what they are:

But the first thing we’ve got to understand is you’ve got what is effectively a tax increase taking place on American families right now. The Kaiser Family Foundation report just came out last week. Health care premiums went up 5.5% last year, at a time when the rest of the economy, inflation was actually negative. So that is a huge bite out of people’s pockets.

You read correctly, folks. The federal government FORCING you to purchase health insurance or face a stiff FINE - which even Max Baucus's version is candid enough to label an "excise tax", among others - isn't a "tax" - IS NOT IS NOT IS NOT - as far as B.O. is concerned. But private sector insurance carriers raising premiums in order to cover expanded risk pools brought about by the excessive demand encouraged by the very government-driven third-party payment defect the Democrats are loathe to do anything to fix, for fear of losing another "crisis to exploit" - and NOT "obscene profits" - and which insurers have no power to force consumers to pay - THAT is a "tax" in Obamaworld.

What an experience it must be to be so sociopathically megalamanacial that you not only don't realize you look and sound like a complete idiot, but the concept that you might even be capable of it has never, not once in your entire life, occurred to you? The individual mandate and the Baucus "cadillac plan" "revenue stream" will be enforced by the I.R. f'ing S., for crying out loud. Who does he think he's fooling with this garbage? And is he capable of ever figuring out that the answer to that question is himself?

~ ~ ~

Both the Obama presidency and its tingly Obamedia groupies are slowly dying a self-inflicted death. If either was going to emerge from its arrogance-induced stuporous coma, one would think that, as a practical matter of self-interest, it'd be the Obamedia, since, at least institutionally, they figure to be around after King Hussein has been abdicated.

Could these, then, be some green shoots?:

Whatever happened to those savings, announced with much fanfare well before Congress had written any of the costly health overhaul bills now in play? Industry groups say they’re a work in progress. Many health analysts say they’re largely speculative. …

For starters, the $2 trillion in reduced costs for care, administrative work and other medical expenses were supposed to be savings for the entire economy, not just the government.

That means that even if the savings were realized, much of it — no one knows exactly how much — would not be available to help Congress pay for its health overhaul bills. Those measures have ranged from an $856 billion bill by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Senator Max Baucus, D-MT, to House Democrats’ $1.5 trillion version, both covering ten years.

CBS also is starting to regain consciousness by flatly asserting five B.O. broken health care promises:

No individual mandate
Complete transparency
Gov’t to directly negotiate for drug prices
Allow drug importation
Lower premiums by $2500 for a family of four

Now don't misunderstand - the Assholiated Press and Columbia Barack System aren't coming at this from the administration's right flank. I'd characterize it more like the grumbling in which fans of a team that's lost a big game to its archrival always engage, with a little bit of distancing from an Obamessiah whose clay feet have reached clown shoe proportions and are becoming impossible to ignore, and maybe even a little corner pep talk to the fighter who's getting his face pounded in to go out for that final round and score the TKO that's his last shot at winning the title.

In other words, they're as confused as Dr. Chicago is. The difference is, they're grudgingly beginning to wake up to the fact. It seems increasingly unlikely that he ever will.

~ ~ ~

When a threatened people dare to resist an authoritarian regime, sooner or later comes the jackboot.

Welcome to sooner or later, Humana:

The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.

The Health and Human Services Department launched its investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from Senator Max Baucus, D-MT, a senior lawmaker usually viewed as a reliable ally of the insurance industry.

“It is wholly unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors regarding any subject — particularly on a subject as important to them, and to the nation, as health care reform,” Baucus said Monday, disclosing the HHS investigation.

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Ky., is cooperating with the investigation and stopped the mailer earlier this month, company spokesman Tom Noland said Monday.

The Senate committee that Baucus chairs — Finance — will vote this week on a sweeping health care plan that he’s proposed to expand coverage and try to control costs. It would cut Medicare and Medicaid spending by about $500 billion over ten years, but Baucus says that would lead to greater efficiency, not reduced benefits.

Baucus is an inveterate liar, just like his tin-god president. He knows disemboweling half a trillion dollars out of Medicare will be to its benefit levels like Hurricane Katrina was to New Orleans. So does Humana, which had this odd spasm of corporate responsibility to its elderly Medicare Advantage customers to warn them of what's coming if some incarnation of this "craptastic boondoggle" manages to become law.

The further into a cesspool one wades, the more one smells like crap. I don't specifically know if Max Baucus was an imperious yIntagh before this round of health care goosesteppery commenced, but the man who originally purported to be putting together his own version of BarryCare as a "bipartisan compromise" has by abusing his power to bully a company out of its First Amendment rights officially become every bit the dirty, filthy dictatorlet as Red Barry, Crazy Nancy, Dirty Harry, Nostrildamus, and the rest of the Donk Politburo.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Max? You should have stayed on the sidelines, where it was safe.