Archive for the ‘ObamaCare’ Category

$12.2 Billion Profit = Big Bucks, But $6 Trillion for ObamaCare = Chump Change

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that “insurance company profits are ‘way over anybody’s estimates.’ She said the five largest U.S. insurers took in combined profits of $12.2 billion in 2009, 56 percent higher than in 2008.”

Whoa, slow down there Kathy! Are you trying to tell me that five multi-billion dollar companies managed to make almost $2.5 billion each in profits in a single year? Shock! Outrage!

By way of comparison, Apple Inc. earned slightly over $8.2 billion dollars in net profit all by itself in it’s 2009 Fiscal Year, yet I haven’t heard liberals citing that as cause for nationalizing the computer industry. (OK, recently.)

For another point of comparison, those health care profits may be as little as one tenth the total cost of bailing out GM and Chrysler.

What, pray tell, do Obama and Sebelius think are “acceptable” levels of profit would be for those five companies?

This is supposed to be a supporting point in the quest to nationalize 1/6th of the American economy? Not to mention that the true government cost of ObamaCare is estimated to top 6 trillion dollars.

Compared to the total costs for ObamaCare, health insurance company profits are a rounding error.

Zombie ObamaCare Still Lurching About Capitol Hill, Seeking Brains Votes

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

You would have thought that Scott Brown’s election would have caused even the dimmest bulbs among Congressional Democrats to give up on showing ObamaCare down the throat of a nation violently opposed to it.

You’d be wrong.

Like some sort of ghastly, undead thing, ObamaCare has risen from the grave yet again, shambling mindlessly along the halls of congress, seeking trillions of taxpayer dollars and ever-more-elusive votes. In a way, this is the best possible result for Republicans. Instead of throwing ObamaCare to the hordes of rake-carrying peasants howling for their blood in November, Democrats seem determined to clasp the deformed beast to their bosoms in order to drag it over the finish line, even at the cost of their own (political) life. Indeed, they’re still scurrying around trying to protect their various backroom deals.

If you wanted to design the perfect storm for Republicans to retake control of the House and Senate this fall, you’d have them keep working on dragging ObamaCare across the finish line until right before the November election, when voters can do nationwide what they’ve already done in Massachusetts. Every day they keep trying to breathe life into the hdieous, undead thing brings us a step closer to that goal.

Socialized medicine works great…if you’re rich

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Here’s a story about how socialized medicine actually works.

National health care works great… so long as you’re rich enough to afford the premium level of government insurance and to buy multiple additional private policies; so long as you have influential relatives; and so long as you’re willing and able to brazenly bribe the doctors and bureaucrats who run the system.

And this is Japan, we everything (except the air) is amazingly clean, efficient and orderly compared to just about any American city. (Even the homeless people are neater than ours.) And socialized medicine still results in worse care for most people than ours.

Read the whole thing.

Richard Epstein says Reid’s ObamaCare Bill is Unconstitutional

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Noted Constitutional law scholar Richard A. Epstein says Harry Reid’s ObamaCare bill is unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court’s basic constitutional requirement is that any firm in a regulated market be allowed to recover a risk-adjusted competitive rate of return on its accumulated capital investment. See Duquesne Light Co. v. Barasch, 488 U.S. 299 (1988).

“The Reid Bill emphatically fails this test by imposing sharp limitations on the ability of health-insurance companies to raise fees or exclude coverage. Moreover, the Reid Bill forces on these regulated firms onerous new obligations that they will not be able to fund from their various revenue sources. The squeeze between the constricted revenue sources allowable under the Reid Bill and the extensive new legal obligations it imposes is likely to result in massive cash crunch that could drive the firms that serve the individual and small-group health-insurance markets into bankruptcy.”

I’m not even remotely enough of a Constitutional Law scholar to know if his argument is correction, but Epstein is certainly one of the heavy-hitters in that field, and his book Takings is is one of the most important works on the subject of the federal government exceeding its constitutional power in the last quarter century. And he actually appears to have read the bill, which probably puts him one up on, oh, more than half the Senators voting on it…

Spending Lots of Taxpayer Money to Accomplish Nothing

Monday, December 21st, 2009

If there’s a theme for the Obama years, and for the Pelosi/Reid legislation Obama has embraced, it’s that of spending tremendous amounts of taxpayer dollars to accomplish almost nothing. Consider:

What all three have in common?

  • All are hugely expensive. How expensive no one knows, but given the vast increase we’ve seen in the cost of Social Security, Medicare, etc., my guess would be tens of trillions of dollars over the next 30 years.
  • All are exteremly unpopular among the taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.
  • All accomplish almost nothing except increase the size of the federal government and channeling money to Obama allies like ACORN and SEIU.

The way things are going, the slaughter of Democratic incumbents in the 2010 election could make 1994 look like a picnic by comparison…

Update:

Greetings Farkers!

&#60Troy McClure&#62Hi, I’m Lawrence Person! You may remember me from such Flamewars as “ObamaCare is all about choice, or rather, taking choices away from American citizens and giving them to government bureaucrats” and “From Iran to Honduras, millions of people around the world long for freedom and democracy. And wherever those seeking freedom can be found, Obama will be there…grinding his bootheel into their face”.&#60&#47Troy McClure&#62

Come in and sit a spell. Have a beer and stretch your feet out to the toasty flamewar goodness. Feel free to buy a book or check out my other, completely non-political blog.

And, above all, Obey the Hypnotoad!

Polls for Obama, ObamaCare, continue to plunge

Friday, December 11th, 2009

61% now oppose ObamaCare.

And according to Gallup, only 47% still support Obama himself. (Quinnipiac puts it at 46%.)

And, to add insult to injury, 44% now say they’d prefer to have Bush 43 back as President rather than Obama.

OK, let’s start the pool: At what date do you predict a plurality of voters will say they would prefer Bush back as President rather than Obama? My completely unscientific guess is March 21, 2010.

ObamaCare To Cost $6 Trillion

Monday, November 30th, 2009

That’s the sort of money that would get even Dr. Evil’s attention.

Premonitions of a Democratic House Slaughter in 2010?

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Next year is shaping up as potentially disastrous for House Democrats. Especially given:

I hope to take a further look at some of the most vulnerable Democratic House members who voted for ObamaCare in greater detail at some point in the not-so-distant future.

ObamaCare Update 11/8/09

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Here’s a quick roundup of ObamaCare news and views from over the weekend:

  • Pelosi’s version of ObamaCare passes the house…barely.
  • Jobs? Who needs them? “The promise of health care reform was not what got Democrats elected. Voters tossed Republicans on their fannies for ruining the economy, not because they didn’t enact wildly expensive social programs….Democrats have learned nothing from history. During the Great Depression, each time the economy showed a spark, President Franklin Roosevelt snuffed it out with another tax increase or regulatory burden.”
  • Blue Dog Democrats who voted for ObamaCare.
  • Analysis of the ObamaCare bill passed by the Hosue: “The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton’s Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages. Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi’s new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages…. the word “regulation” appears 181 times. “Tax” is there 214 times. “Fees,” 103 times. As we all know, nothing says “affordability” like higher taxes and fees. The word “shall” – as in “must” or “required to” – appears over 3,000 times.”
  • Interesting (and lengthy) essay suggesting that maybe calling every person who protests ObamaCare or bigger government a racist isn’t a smart move on the part of liberals.
  • NRO’s Critical Condition: Democrats hope for passage of ObamaCare “largely hinge on successfully hiding two plain facts from the voters: One, the House Republicans and the Congressional Budget Office have now shown that a bill costing $61 billion can lower Americans’ insurance premiums, while bills costing $1.7 trillion cannot (and instead would raise them substantially). Two, the Democrats’ plans would be paid for only if they follow through on plans to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of already-barely-solvent Medicare, and to do so just in time for the baby boomers’ retirement. ”

On to the Senate…

ObamaCare Update 11/6/09

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Another roundup on ObamaCare, with a focus on Pelosi’s hellbound determination to bring it up for a vote on Saturday:

(Hat tips to the indefatigable Instapundit and NRO’s Condition Critical blog on ObamaCare.)