Thus Spake Obama
The incompetence of our neo-monarchy
By Mark Steyn....Fortunately, at least as far as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is doing a grand job of overthrowing it all by himself.
On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.
“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former Vermont governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to “pass” a “law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.” It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it.
Surprise: Democrat Controlled Senate Won’t Vote On House “Keep Your Plan” Bill
by William Teach
Senate Democrats care so much about the plight of the American people who are losing their plans and being forced into more expensive plans with smaller networks that may not provide anything more than free birth control that they’re rushing to ignore the Upton bill.
(The Hill) Senate Democrats do not expect to vote on the ObamaCare fix the House approved on Friday with 39 Democratic votes, according to a senior Democratic aide.
The aide said there is not any pressure on the Senate Democratic leadership to bring the legislation sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to the floor.
If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Rent It... Maybe
By C Edmund Wright....And let's consider this startling confession from the smartest man, the man with the sharpest pant crease -- the most brilliant man to ever sit in the Oval Office -- or for that matter, trod the soil of this humble planet: "What we're also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy."
Shazam! Who knew?
How in the name of teleprompter malfunctions did he let that slip out? Or did he think he was delivering breaking news? We are now five years beyond his arrogant insistence that he and his Washington wizards are the only people in the cosmos astute enough to fix this supposedly broken system. Yet they are just now finding out that buying this stuff is hard? I have more breaking news for them: if you think buying it is complicated, think about designing it, getting it approved by fifty state commissions, funded, priced, printed, staffed, and marketed. It's like buying anything, like say a car, laptop, or a big screen. These can all be complicated to buy, yet they are infinitely more complicated to build and sell! (I won't even go into the green eyeshade subject of re-insurance capacity, but trust me, it is a complicating factor for companies -- and well above Obama's pay grade of comprehension.)
These complications, by the way, are why this little "fix" won't work. You can't just wave the magic wand of the munificent dictator and reconstitute programs that your law has spent five years and million words of capricious and arbitrary regulation deigning illegal.
Obamacare Contractor Linked to 20 Troubled Government Projects
By Cathy BurkeThe lead contractor on the dysfunctional Obamacare website is filled with executives from a company that mishandled at least 20 other government IT projects — including a costly and troubled effort to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers, The Washington Post reported Friday.
CGI Federal, the main Web site developer for HealthCare.gov, entered the U.S. government market a decade ago when its parent company purchased American Management Systems — and more than 100 ex-AMS employees are now senior executives or consultants for CGI Federal, the Post reported.
Do You Believe Obama This Time? How About Now? …Now?
By Amy PayneOnce upon a time, Obamacare was “settled” law that was “here to stay.” Or so President Obama said—before Obamacare failed to survive contact with reality.
The reality is that the Administration is delaying the impact of major parts of the law, including the employer mandate and now the benefit mandates for health plans.
There’s a slight problem: As the President so readily reminded us, Obamacare is still the law of the land. Without undoing the law, everything that has people up in arms—the higher costs, mandates, plan cancellations—will still happen.
And this latest one-year “fix” isn’t a given. As Heritage’s Chris Jacobs put it: “The President’s promise that his new ‘plan’ can allow people to keep their plans is just as flawed and false as his original ‘like your plan/keep it’ pledge.”
The “fix” is another Obama attempt to go outside the law and around Congress. But even the President can’t just un-cancel people’s insurance plans.
Insurance commissioners in several states have already said no, we can’t change the rules again and allow companies to un-cancel plans in our states. Two warnings from insurance officials:
Disrupting the market even further. “I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented and more significantly, its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market,” said Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler. He announced that “We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies.”
Hurting consumers. “Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of [Obamacare] could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers,” said Karen Ignagni, CEO of insurance trade association America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Heritage’s Jacobs points out that President Obama’s extra-legal “fix” could even result in the Administration offering insurers a bailout if they bring back canceled plans. It’s just one debacle after another.
People don’t trust President Obama on this anymore. And they shouldn’t. Because Obamacare is doing exactly what it was intended to do—and no amount of delays can change that.
That’s why we need a different direction for health reform that people can trust.
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