I also wrote about the Cloward-Piven Strategy, the authors of which (Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven) state that their “goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.”
Sound familiar?
ObamaKare, again as I’ve written before here and here, absolutely, positively has to happen NOW before the US electorate awakens and actually realizes: the economy isn’t getting better, none of these items will work, and each of these plans individually and collectively will bring down the nation.
THAT is why Mr Obama is so terribly strident about ramming ObamaKare down your throat, now – now – NOW!
Furthermore (here’s a shocker — hope you’re sitting down for this one) Mr Obama is lying. He says you’ll be able to keep your private insurance.
Investors Business Daily did something our politicians refuse to do: they read the proposed healthcare bill. From IBD editorials(thanks for the “heads-up,” Tom’s Place):
It’s Not An Option
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.
Gateway Pundit makes the same observation: it is about the murder of any and all private health insurance.
If you like your insurance, you can keep it . . . except it will be outlawed!”
And so Obama lies again, but is is unlikely that media will highlight this as they are too busy following the circus that is the Sotomayor confirmation hearings which we all know will end in her advancement to the Supreme Court with more than a little Republican support.
How is that our government deems it a public good, or remotely even constitutional, to effectively kill the market for private insurance?
And so the so-called “public option” soon becomes the only option as private carriers hemorrage customers to the taxpayer subsidized government plan. The costs will skyrocket, rationing of care will ensue, and you can rest assured that the wealthiest (and most powerful) among us will still get boutique care, just as they always have. And the government will plant her heavy boot further into the lives of a heretofore free citizenry.
Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy.
The newest Zogby poll indicates that by a 50–42 margin, Americans oppose the House of Representatives’ bill introduced July 14th.
Jon Kyl remarks:
I say: This bill, in concert with Cap & Tax, is the most naked and aggressive governmental power grab in the entire history of our nation.And these things in the midst of an economic recession!
41 thoughts on “ObamaKare: You Will NOT Be Able To Keep Your Private Insurance”
We would be able to keep our private health insurance, just not for very long. And a President who lies – say it ain’t so!
Our “leaders” believe that they have us over a barrel, willing to trust them because they ran on a platform of hope, change, and transparency. Nothing is farther from the truth.
The Constitution is being violated in ways that would make the Founders shudder, and the People are not being served by the Government. Instead, Government is seeking to become the power over the People, not the way this Republic was founded.
Thanks for the hat-tip.
Tom, it was my pleasure. I can only hope that EVERY Conservative blog takes up this article and plasters it from all points in the Blogosphere.
EVERYONE needs to know how Mr Obama is building his ENTIRE house but upon LIES and LIES and LIES.
And spending money he DOESN’T and never WILL have.
BZ
This is the most deceptive Presidency in U.S. History. He is literally pulling the ‘Republic rug’ right out from under us and no one realizes it yet. YES, the rug has been slipping for many years, but he is PULLING IT.. YANKING IT and fast!!
Rivka: and he has to do it NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW
Before the ignorant and obtuse actually FIND OUT.
BZ
BZ,
I know you put alot into this post but I disagree, you will be able to keep your own insurance. We give our employees the very best in Health Insurance, Blue Cross of California, 100% paid for by the company and we have been told that nothing will change unless we want it to.
I also disagree with Obama and this plan.
Rivka, What do you care? Health Insurance should not be an issue with you. Won’t God take care of all your health issues?
Not only can you not keep the private insurance but you are FORCED to paticipate in the Govt “care”. If you choose to not get insurance you will be fined the same amount as if you bought into Govt care. I dont carry insurance because I do not see the rathional in paying $3000+ a yr for something I spand about $1000 a yr on. If I need to go to the doctor, I go to a doctor NOT an emergency room. I usually get a 35% discount for NOT making the doctor go thru the paperwork that takes longer than the visit.
Ranando: if we disagree, then so be it. Both you and I know that the details are what makes a bill or a series of bills. We shall allow Life to play out.
And yet, following that, ONE of us will be able to write, in a much future post, how the other was so WRONG about their worldview.
You’re convinced it’s you.
I’m convinced it’s me.
I have no crystal ball. We’ll just have to look back in reflection.
BZ
The Democrats are fulfilling the old dream of the European aristocracy of ending rule by the common man and putting aristocrats in charge of everything like Europe was into the 18th century and are soon going to be again. Calling it socialism is dishonest. It’s Neo-Feudalism.
Shop: at your base, you may be entirely correct.
BZ
Ranando, when people get tired of paying $900 a month with a $8 K deductible and see their friends have given up their private insurance and are getting it free or FAR cheaper,where do you think Blue Shield’s going for those of us who prefer to pay for ourselves? How do they survive with far less subscribers? Will we need a government bail out of Blue Shield next?
I know doctors, very liberal Dems who voted for Obama, who are now sorry they voted for him, BIG TIME sorry. Our own very liberal doctor said “Obama’s taking us to a one-payer situation, not even two-payer like Germany and France!” He even added “Why aren’t the Republicans fighting this harder?” (i almost fainted, he hated Republicans six months ago)
It’s ALL LIES AND MORE LIES..TOM’s right, BZ, you’re right…..Shoprat’s right. Everybody’s right here and very eloquent and well informed on this… and I’m sure Ranando means well. But, it’s a LIE. Yes, for a short period of time, the private insured will hang on until there’s nothing to hang ON to anymore..no more Blue Shield, they simply couldn’t afford to stay open.
super post, BZ…it’s sickening to think we’re being RAILROADED…this is why THE LIAR needs it passed NOW: He’s afraid congress will go home for Summer break and be REMINDED that 75% of AMericans WANT TO KEEP THEIR OWN INSURANCE>
Tell me this, folks; WHY do we have to COMPLETELY OVERHAUL HEALTH CARE In America when we could fix Medicare do other things to help, why the COMPLETE and ugly overhaul and LIES? Why did we need a HUGE STimulus Bill RIGHT THIS MINUTE, when only 10% of it’s been spent…where are those SHOVEL READY jobs? (they did use a SHOVEL but it’s not JOBS they’re shoveling…)
This is all about taking us over and it has to stop.
I see from some of the stories over the past couple of days that Congress is balking on ObamaKare. No doubt, those doubters in Congress are now thinking about losing their seats on Capitol Hill. I hear that their in-boxes are filled with objections from their constituency.
If ObamaKare does pass and takes effect quickly enough, it will cost BHO the White House in 2012.
Cap & Trade is just as dangerous as ObamaKare, of course. I am quite concerned that Cap & Trade will pass. **sigh**
WMD, Sounds like you have a great plan! 🙂
No one has brought up the fact that the States offer free medical, food and mental care for the poor anyway. They are already covered. This is about control, not providing for the needy.
Keep your eyes on the ball, folks, the three issues on which Mr Obama’s pressing hard — and there needs to be RESISTANCE — are:
1. ObamaKare 2. Cap & Tax 3. ANY further “stimulus”
Each and every one need to be resoundingly DEFEATED.
Each one, individually, can kill this country if enacted. Together they GUARANTEE the country to be driven off into the ditch.
BZ
Jesus “Fucking” Christ…..
You think I have time to catch a wave or two?
That is before The United States of America goes under.
Holy Shit!
The Blue Dog Democrats have mostly been balking because the medical insurance industry has been lining their pockets with cash, as they do with Republicans.
Blue Cross and other insurance companies want to keep their high profits and near monopoly status. Competition from a lower overhead public option will drive their profits down. Government regulations that force them to provide coverage for people who are actually sick will also drive down their profits, and they don’t like that.
In this country, the only thing that separates all but the very rich from financial ruin is loss of a job and a chronic illness or injury. That’s true in the good ole USA, but not in France, or Canada, or the UK, or….
Obama is actually a moderate Democrat. For example, he has mostly excluded progressive economists from his administration. Geithner could have been appointed by a Republican, and Summers favors policies similar to Bush’s people. The Republicans complain about the stimulus, posture and make noise about seceding from the Union, at the same time they take credit for the jobs that the funds create in their home states.
Obama is not a Nazi, or a Social Democrat (which are opposites, actually), or a fascist. There is nothing extreme about his agenda at all. This is why progressives are a little unhappy with him. He is pushing center left policies, not very progressive ones. The “Republic” (whatever the hell you think that is….I was taught that we live in a representative democracy) is not in danger, his actions are not extreme or unprecedented. Your Michelle Bachman/birther/page 16/ACORN/census/government takeover/anti-climate change conspiracies are complete and utter nonsense.
Get a grip, read a book that isn’t published by Regnery Press, stop watching the bs on Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They exist so that monied conservative elites can better manipulate your fears and insecurities. If you let a little reality in, you’ll see that the sky is not falling, revolution is not coming, the fabric of society is not coming apart at the seams.
You don’t have to like the fact that Republicans lost the last election after 8 years of miserable governing. You don’t have to like what Obama wants to do. But in 7-1/2 years, when Obama is out of office, you will simply move onto being unhappy, worried and paranoid about something and somebody else, because that is what you do.
Say, if the solution is so simple then why not fix the VA health care system first? Or Medicaire?
The idea that competition from the Nation-State, that has the power to print money, will ‘encourage competition’ is ludicrous: no one can compete with that power. Which is why we limit it via Amendment IX and X.
You can read a perfectly good book from Elsevier Press about this phenomena of large corporations getting into bed with the Nation State so as to remove competition and ensure that the status of the large companies is not endangered by new upstarts. The idea that ‘health care’ is a ‘right’ has severe problems as it is not one given to the federal government and unknown to in any venue before the 20th century. That would make it an unenumerated right protected under Amendments IX and X.
Seeking to counter private concerns with State power is not ‘moderate’ by any account: it is authoritarian sliding towards totalitarian. Any Nation State that can decide what medical coverage you are due can decide your life, and that is not ‘moderate’ at all. Spending in the belief the Nation faces a liquidity problem when, in fact, it is facing a solvency problem for a very small fraction of its population, then puts the entire Nation on a course to insolvency as the government, in trying to liquify the debts then has to inflate the currency. If nothing had been done major corporations would have gone through re-organization bankruptcy, have sold off insolvent assets that would be liquidated, and the ‘crisis’ would be receding by now as the legal process would have worked out the problems in a known and understood fashion THAT WORKS. Stopping that process is neither ‘moderate’ nor wise, and is authoritarian in extreme by trying to re-craft an economy to the views of one man who is not given that power.
Who, exactly, made bureaucrates omni-comptent? Go to your local DMV and you will see competence in action… or inaction as the case may be. Image a health care system run by the DMV.. or the IRS. And the politicians who write such laws, who made them so smart? And if such things have been handed off to the ‘experts’, then why have they done such a poor job of things? If they are so smart why can’t they explain what needs to be done so it can be understood? Or aren’t experts expected to be understandable?
No, President Obama is neither moderate nor sincere in what he says. He runs from his own predictions now going horribly wrong about unemployment and economic activity. He will not own up to mistakes, to failure. His plan was NOT Bush’s fault, but his own. And that makes him a dishonorable man, being unable to take any blame for his own actions.
Getting health care is an exercise of liberty. Government interevened to subsidize it via the tax code, and now gets the problems of subsidies. Those on public health care now get the tragedy of the commons. Simple, plain economics that doesn’t take a degree to explain. Somehow the ever so smart and ever so wise just can’t see the obvious.
The public plan proposals on the table now basically do constitute an expansion of Medicare. Both Medicare and the VA work pretty well, despite chronic underfunding. They can be improved, but radical “fixing” just isn’t necessary, no matter how much the right wing plays up the scare tactics. Rising costs of care are the big problem, which won’t get fixed unless we regulate the system better. Private insurance companies do not compete with one another in any meaningful way, and what competition does exist is only for maximization of profits, not for improvement of the service provided.
Congrats to Jonah Goldberg on getting a book published by a real publishing house. But I still wouldn’t call his right wing propaganda “perfectly good”.
You live in a representative democracy. That means that the people whom you elect make decisions for you. It’s the government that the Founding Fathers of your country decided to implement. It’s the type of government we have always had. If you don’t like that, why do you live here?
The law requires that anyone who shows up at an ER be treated to the point that they are stable, regardless of their ability to pay. Given the horrendous expense, it’s simply more cost-effective to take the more socially conscious route and make sure that routine health care is available to everyone.
The tragedy of the commons concept simply doesn’t apply to health care. Countries that have universal health care (which we don’t and won’t have) provide as good or better care for less money.
FYI, there are a great many things that are not enumerated in the Constitution, because they were virtually unknown at the time. Health care, is one example. Privacy was something that you needed when you went to the outhouse. We can re-write the Constitution to include them, or we can reasonably extrapolate in the spirit of what is in the document. If you put it up for a vote, both would get written in.
Anonymous: which is why I also happen to subscribe to The Economist and The Nation and read Daily Kos. Amongst others.
There is NO denying that Mr Bush spent money like a pack of drunken sailors, not just one. There are MANY issues with which I vehemently disagreed with Mr Bush. Regnery Press? I have perhaps one or two books. Mine happen to primarily come from Random House, St Martin’s, Putnam, Little Brown, etc etc.
We got INTO this mess because we loosened up lines of credit for those we KNEW could not pay back. And BOTH SIDES got greedy — the loaner and the purchaser. And both sides got greedy because the Fed MANDATED these loans be made. Sheerest insanity. And we are paying the price.
I’m sorry, but it is ALSO the sheerest of insanity to think you can “spend” your way out of a recession which is precisely the Obama strategy. I can’t do that at home and survive; that same paradigm WON’T work in terms of government. Again, sheer insanity.
Perhaps one day you’ll wake up and see the truth. And when you finally do, and I don’t wish ill upon you, you’ll understand that government does a FEW big things properly — and even sometimes they DON’T do them well.
Government in my healthcare? Deciding my limits and my paths of treatment? Removing my private insurance? Man, mister, you are way WAY off base.
I KNOW how government works. I WORK for the government.
AJ says: “Seeking to counter private concerns with State power is not ‘moderate’ by any account: it is authoritarian sliding towards totalitarian. Any Nation State that can decide what medical coverage you are due can decide your life, and that is not ‘moderate’ at all. Spending in the belief the Nation faces a liquidity problem when, in fact, it is facing a solvency problem for a very small fraction of its population, then puts the entire Nation on a course to insolvency as the government, in trying to liquify the debts then has to inflate the currency.”
Inflation, Mr Anonymous? You’d best gird thy loins, BOHICA.
BZ
BZ, excellent post. It is so important that we defeat this Bill. Between you and your commenters here, everything is covered, so I won’t add to it except to say that Cloward-Piven is the mainstay of Obama’s administration.
One of my contributors, Jim Simpson, has done amazing research on C-P. Glen Beck asked for his material and now we are waiting to see if Jim gets an invite for the show. Let’s pray that he does. He is an impressive voice. Beck will do the country a good service if he has Jim as a guest.
The essence of health care reforms that are in play right now are to put competition into the marketplace and to ensure universal coverage.
There are about 50 million people in the US who don’t have coverage right now. Of those 50 million, about 1/3 can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions. No matter how much they are able to pay, no company will cover them.
The “page 16” issue, which is really mentioned on page 17 of the bill, is a statement that private insurance companies have a five year grace period to comply with new regulations, which include mandatory coverage for pre-existing conditions.
I know that you loons want to blow this into some massive Glen Beck style government conspiracy deal, but it’s just a list of new regulations that private companies would have to comply with. It would definitely cut into their profits to do this, but it’s hard to argue that they are not making too much money now. Moreover, they are doing it at your expense, taking money that would otherwise be in your pocket (assuming that you have health care coverage now).
This link for Representative Pete Starks’ web page summarizes the proposed requirements.
By the way, Glen Beck is a complete lunatic, and a serial lair. That can’t be said enough.
I live in a democracy that is failing due to the lack of representation via the House setting a size in 1911. By all measures of turnout at the polls, the NSDAP had a higher claim to legitimacy of support than the US does over the past 20 years. We are very close to going under 50% turnout on Presidential elections and far below that for the interim elections for Congress ever since the 1960’s. That is not a healthy representative democracy: that is a democracy losing its legitimacy by not being able to convince people it is worth voting. As a nation we have slipped from plurality government to minority government based solely on turnout at the polls.
Now, as to reading, I have multiple articles covering terrorism, organized crime, corrupt banking, drug trafficking, and connections between those figures to politicians. That cannot be compiled from a book as no one has written it: it must come from source articles across many publication globally. My sources range from Kenya to Kiev to London to DC to Bogata… and on and on. I’ve been reading about those connections for years and don’t particularly like the coziness of the figures in politics with the various underworlds. So, before trotting out lovely ‘name press’ books, try combing source material and coming to your own conclusions.
I’ve done that for health care and there is no way that any private firm can compete with an organization that can regulate the firm as it chooses. The nature of the political class in the 20th century has changed drastically towards centralizing the economy in DC, and that should be damned worrying as it is turning off people from voting as there is no competition amongst the parties to do anything different. If any party could pull in even 10% of that now 49%, or 5% of the US population, it would get a LANDSLIDE victory. That neither party can do that and that we continue to lose voters on a downwards slope since 1964 should be very, very worrying to anyone who vests legitimacy of representative government in the exercise of the franchise right. All we have seen for 20 years has been bare plurality to minority positions taken that help those vested in the political elite and have neglected the infrastructure of this nation necessary to have the economic base to support health care.
That is not ‘moderate’.
That is not wise.
That has been turning off voters for decades.
I don’t need a third party to read through source material for me: I do it on my own. I don’t need predigested pap. And I certainly don’t need nor want a government that thinks it can run health care…I am less than impressed with all Nations currently doing so including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. And how is paying for a ‘public option’ and then paying AGAIN for your own health care ‘good’? You are paying twice to get once.
And I’m the guy with a list of chronic conditions, mind you. I don’t need Glenn Beck as I have been saying these things for YEARS. And yes, I vote.
And not to BM&C but I grew up with reading Marx, Engels and De Leon at home in my formative years. In my young adult life I moved on to Antonio Gramsci, John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper and the life and times of Germany 1917-20 involving the Sparticus movement and Rosa Luxembourg. Now some of those, like Luxembourg, have scant personal writings and accounts of their polemics by contemporaries and contemporary biographers are necessary. Such is the way of revolutions. All of that before I was 25.
I find it fascinating that those saying you have to be ‘well read’ have not actually read Marx, Engels, De Leon, Gramsci and others in translation at the very least. Thus I can and do compare and contrast plain socialist ideology as given by Marx and then to later Comintern movements, Social Democratic movements, National Socialist movements and Anarcho-Syndicalist movements of thought. At base I take some pains to look at and explain that Marx was a product of 19th century thought and that there was a ‘natural end’ to the industrial state. Unfortunately all later Left movements do not look at the underpinnings of that, and thus have extreme problems in realizing that without a proper definition of end-state scenarios they cannot properly postulate how to get there.
After those I can then add in writers like de Vattel, Grotius, Locke, Adam Smith… and writings of the terrorist groups of Hezbollah, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Plus throw in Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Blackstone, readings from the Edda on the accountability of King to the people…
As for health care I have separately researched that from the ideological side (see Gramsci, Liebknecht of the SPD, Mussolini, Dewey, and others) to see that the beginnings of this concept of a ‘right’ to health care or ‘equal access’ to health care starts going back at least to Hindenburg in the 19th century as part of his social reform movement to try and undercut socialism, but which itself had socialist underpinnings due to programmatics. He, likewise, can trace intellectual lineage to Rousseau and the French Revolution… where the idea of the State subsuming all matters and controlling everything is the most recent example of authoritarianism seeking to counter individualism and the rights of man as an individual. By the time you get up to the 1920’s, the understood role was to put health care in the hands of the State so as to better control workforce size to the benefit of the State and get State-level efficiencies. What has never been demonstrated through the intervening decades, is just what State run efficiencies ARE. The Nation State is one of the most inefficient organizations to deal with local problems as it is not set up to do so: it has a manifest role in Nation to Nation interactions and a well known set of objectives it gains from that as a National government. That descriptive process starting with Socrates and through to Grotius, Pufendorf, de Vattel and Blackstone was well understood by Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and the later Anti-Federalists, to where we get the Statist version where your rights are determined by the State at the cost of Natural Rights to give you ‘social rights’.
I have done my reading on the topic, thanks. Plus work on T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and other parts of the Progressive movement one-two years if not more before Goldberg came out with his book (which is a lovely review of history if you ever bother to read it…just for the history and there is little polemic in it) and before Glenn Beck. Thus I have read the underpinnings of liberalism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, Communism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, International Law, the Law of Nations as a topic, along with the Laws of War and the Laws of Peace as a topic, plus the Law of the High Seas….
So when I criticize health care, I do have a background in examining the effects of social movements on States, Nations and individuals. Just in case this has been MISSED.
We would be able to keep our private health insurance, just not for very long. And a President who lies – say it ain’t so!
Our “leaders” believe that they have us over a barrel, willing to trust them because they ran on a platform of hope, change, and transparency. Nothing is farther from the truth.
The Constitution is being violated in ways that would make the Founders shudder, and the People are not being served by the Government. Instead, Government is seeking to become the power over the People, not the way this Republic was founded.
Thanks for the hat-tip.
Tom, it was my pleasure. I can only hope that EVERY Conservative blog takes up this article and plasters it from all points in the Blogosphere.
EVERYONE needs to know how Mr Obama is building his ENTIRE house but upon LIES and LIES and LIES.
And spending money he DOESN’T and never WILL have.
BZ
This is the most deceptive Presidency in U.S. History. He is literally pulling the ‘Republic rug’ right out from under us and no one realizes it yet. YES, the rug has been slipping for many years, but he is PULLING IT.. YANKING IT and fast!!
Rivka: and he has to do it NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW
Before the ignorant and obtuse actually FIND OUT.
BZ
BZ,
I know you put alot into this post but I disagree, you will be able to keep your own insurance. We give our employees the very best in Health Insurance, Blue Cross of California, 100% paid for by the company and we have been told that nothing will change unless we want it to.
I also disagree with Obama and this plan.
Rivka, What do you care? Health Insurance should not be an issue with you. Won’t God take care of all your health issues?
Not only can you not keep the private insurance but you are FORCED to paticipate in the Govt “care”. If you choose to not get insurance you will be fined the same amount as if you bought into Govt care. I dont carry insurance because I do not see the rathional in paying $3000+ a yr for something I spand about $1000 a yr on. If I need to go to the doctor, I go to a doctor NOT an emergency room. I usually get a 35% discount for NOT making the doctor go thru the paperwork that takes longer than the visit.
Ranando: if we disagree, then so be it. Both you and I know that the details are what makes a bill or a series of bills. We shall allow Life to play out.
And yet, following that, ONE of us will be able to write, in a much future post, how the other was so WRONG about their worldview.
You’re convinced it’s you.
I’m convinced it’s me.
I have no crystal ball. We’ll just have to look back in reflection.
BZ
The Democrats are fulfilling the old dream of the European aristocracy of ending rule by the common man and putting aristocrats in charge of everything like Europe was into the 18th century and are soon going to be again. Calling it socialism is dishonest. It’s Neo-Feudalism.
Shop: at your base, you may be entirely correct.
BZ
Ranando, when people get tired of paying $900 a month with a $8 K deductible and see their friends have given up their private insurance and are getting it free or FAR cheaper,where do you think Blue Shield’s going for those of us who prefer to pay for ourselves? How do they survive with far less subscribers? Will we need a government bail out of Blue Shield next?
I know doctors, very liberal Dems who voted for Obama, who are now sorry they voted for him, BIG TIME sorry. Our own very liberal doctor said “Obama’s taking us to a one-payer situation, not even two-payer like Germany and France!” He even added “Why aren’t the Republicans fighting this harder?” (i almost fainted, he hated Republicans six months ago)
It’s ALL LIES AND MORE LIES..TOM’s right, BZ, you’re right…..Shoprat’s right. Everybody’s right here and very eloquent and well informed on this… and I’m sure Ranando means well. But, it’s a LIE. Yes, for a short period of time, the private insured will hang on until there’s nothing to hang ON to anymore..no more Blue Shield, they simply couldn’t afford to stay open.
super post, BZ…it’s sickening to think we’re being RAILROADED…this is why THE LIAR needs it passed NOW: He’s afraid congress will go home for Summer break and be REMINDED that 75% of AMericans WANT TO KEEP THEIR OWN INSURANCE>
Tell me this, folks; WHY do we have to COMPLETELY OVERHAUL HEALTH CARE In America when we could fix Medicare do other things to help, why the COMPLETE and ugly overhaul and LIES?
Why did we need a HUGE STimulus Bill RIGHT THIS MINUTE, when only 10% of it’s been spent…where are those SHOVEL READY jobs? (they did use a SHOVEL but it’s not JOBS they’re shoveling…)
This is all about taking us over and it has to stop.
I see from some of the stories over the past couple of days that Congress is balking on ObamaKare. No doubt, those doubters in Congress are now thinking about losing their seats on Capitol Hill. I hear that their in-boxes are filled with objections from their constituency.
If ObamaKare does pass and takes effect quickly enough, it will cost BHO the White House in 2012.
Cap & Trade is just as dangerous as ObamaKare, of course. I am quite concerned that Cap & Trade will pass. **sigh**
WMD, Sounds like you have a great plan! 🙂
No one has brought up the fact that the States offer free medical, food and mental care for the poor anyway. They are already covered. This is about control, not providing for the needy.
Keep your eyes on the ball, folks, the three issues on which Mr Obama’s pressing hard — and there needs to be RESISTANCE — are:
1. ObamaKare
2. Cap & Tax
3. ANY further “stimulus”
Each and every one need to be resoundingly DEFEATED.
Each one, individually, can kill this country if enacted. Together they GUARANTEE the country to be driven off into the ditch.
BZ
Jesus “Fucking” Christ…..
You think I have time to catch a wave or two?
That is before The United States of America goes under.
Holy Shit!
The Blue Dog Democrats have mostly been balking because the medical insurance industry has been lining their pockets with cash, as they do with Republicans.
Blue Cross and other insurance companies want to keep their high profits and near monopoly status. Competition from a lower overhead public option will drive their profits down. Government regulations that force them to provide coverage for people who are actually sick will also drive down their profits, and they don’t like that.
In this country, the only thing that separates all but the very rich from financial ruin is loss of a job and a chronic illness or injury. That’s true in the good ole USA, but not in France, or Canada, or the UK, or….
Obama is actually a moderate Democrat. For example, he has mostly excluded progressive economists from his administration. Geithner could have been appointed by a Republican, and Summers favors policies similar to Bush’s people. The Republicans complain about the stimulus, posture and make noise about seceding from the Union, at the same time they take credit for the jobs that the funds create in their home states.
Obama is not a Nazi, or a Social Democrat (which are opposites, actually), or a fascist. There is nothing extreme about his agenda at all. This is why progressives are a little unhappy with him. He is pushing center left policies, not very progressive ones. The “Republic” (whatever the hell you think that is….I was taught that we live in a representative democracy) is not in danger, his actions are not extreme or unprecedented. Your Michelle Bachman/birther/page 16/ACORN/census/government takeover/anti-climate change conspiracies are complete and utter nonsense.
Get a grip, read a book that isn’t published by Regnery Press, stop watching the bs on Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They exist so that monied conservative elites can better manipulate your fears and insecurities. If you let a little reality in, you’ll see that the sky is not falling, revolution is not coming, the fabric of society is not coming apart at the seams.
You don’t have to like the fact that Republicans lost the last election after 8 years of miserable governing. You don’t have to like what Obama wants to do. But in 7-1/2 years, when Obama is out of office, you will simply move onto being unhappy, worried and paranoid about something and somebody else, because that is what you do.
Say, if the solution is so simple then why not fix the VA health care system first? Or Medicaire?
The idea that competition from the Nation-State, that has the power to print money, will ‘encourage competition’ is ludicrous: no one can compete with that power. Which is why we limit it via Amendment IX and X.
You can read a perfectly good book from Elsevier Press about this phenomena of large corporations getting into bed with the Nation State so as to remove competition and ensure that the status of the large companies is not endangered by new upstarts. The idea that ‘health care’ is a ‘right’ has severe problems as it is not one given to the federal government and unknown to in any venue before the 20th century. That would make it an unenumerated right protected under Amendments IX and X.
Seeking to counter private concerns with State power is not ‘moderate’ by any account: it is authoritarian sliding towards totalitarian. Any Nation State that can decide what medical coverage you are due can decide your life, and that is not ‘moderate’ at all. Spending in the belief the Nation faces a liquidity problem when, in fact, it is facing a solvency problem for a very small fraction of its population, then puts the entire Nation on a course to insolvency as the government, in trying to liquify the debts then has to inflate the currency. If nothing had been done major corporations would have gone through re-organization bankruptcy, have sold off insolvent assets that would be liquidated, and the ‘crisis’ would be receding by now as the legal process would have worked out the problems in a known and understood fashion THAT WORKS. Stopping that process is neither ‘moderate’ nor wise, and is authoritarian in extreme by trying to re-craft an economy to the views of one man who is not given that power.
Who, exactly, made bureaucrates omni-comptent? Go to your local DMV and you will see competence in action… or inaction as the case may be. Image a health care system run by the DMV.. or the IRS. And the politicians who write such laws, who made them so smart? And if such things have been handed off to the ‘experts’, then why have they done such a poor job of things? If they are so smart why can’t they explain what needs to be done so it can be understood? Or aren’t experts expected to be understandable?
No, President Obama is neither moderate nor sincere in what he says. He runs from his own predictions now going horribly wrong about unemployment and economic activity. He will not own up to mistakes, to failure. His plan was NOT Bush’s fault, but his own. And that makes him a dishonorable man, being unable to take any blame for his own actions.
Getting health care is an exercise of liberty. Government interevened to subsidize it via the tax code, and now gets the problems of subsidies. Those on public health care now get the tragedy of the commons. Simple, plain economics that doesn’t take a degree to explain. Somehow the ever so smart and ever so wise just can’t see the obvious.
The public plan proposals on the table now basically do constitute an expansion of Medicare. Both Medicare and the VA work pretty well, despite chronic underfunding. They can be improved, but radical “fixing” just isn’t necessary, no matter how much the right wing plays up the scare tactics. Rising costs of care are the big problem, which won’t get fixed unless we regulate the system better. Private insurance companies do not compete with one another in any meaningful way, and what competition does exist is only for maximization of profits, not for improvement of the service provided.
Congrats to Jonah Goldberg on getting a book published by a real publishing house. But I still wouldn’t call his right wing propaganda “perfectly good”.
You live in a representative democracy. That means that the people whom you elect make decisions for you. It’s the government that the Founding Fathers of your country decided to implement. It’s the type of government we have always had. If you don’t like that, why do you live here?
The law requires that anyone who shows up at an ER be treated to the point that they are stable, regardless of their ability to pay. Given the horrendous expense, it’s simply more cost-effective to take the more socially conscious route and make sure that routine health care is available to everyone.
The tragedy of the commons concept simply doesn’t apply to health care. Countries that have universal health care (which we don’t and won’t have) provide as good or better care for less money.
FYI, there are a great many things that are not enumerated in the Constitution, because they were virtually unknown at the time. Health care, is one example. Privacy was something that you needed when you went to the outhouse. We can re-write the Constitution to include them, or we can reasonably extrapolate in the spirit of what is in the document. If you put it up for a vote, both would get written in.
Anonymous: which is why I also happen to subscribe to The Economist and The Nation and read Daily Kos. Amongst others.
There is NO denying that Mr Bush spent money like a pack of drunken sailors, not just one. There are MANY issues with which I vehemently disagreed with Mr Bush. Regnery Press? I have perhaps one or two books. Mine happen to primarily come from Random House, St Martin’s, Putnam, Little Brown, etc etc.
We got INTO this mess because we loosened up lines of credit for those we KNEW could not pay back. And BOTH SIDES got greedy — the loaner and the purchaser. And both sides got greedy because the Fed MANDATED these loans be made. Sheerest insanity. And we are paying the price.
I’m sorry, but it is ALSO the sheerest of insanity to think you can “spend” your way out of a recession which is precisely the Obama strategy. I can’t do that at home and survive; that same paradigm WON’T work in terms of government. Again, sheer insanity.
Perhaps one day you’ll wake up and see the truth. And when you finally do, and I don’t wish ill upon you, you’ll understand that government does a FEW big things properly — and even sometimes they DON’T do them well.
Government in my healthcare? Deciding my limits and my paths of treatment? Removing my private insurance? Man, mister, you are way WAY off base.
I KNOW how government works. I WORK for the government.
AJ says: “Seeking to counter private concerns with State power is not ‘moderate’ by any account: it is authoritarian sliding towards totalitarian. Any Nation State that can decide what medical coverage you are due can decide your life, and that is not ‘moderate’ at all. Spending in the belief the Nation faces a liquidity problem when, in fact, it is facing a solvency problem for a very small fraction of its population, then puts the entire Nation on a course to insolvency as the government, in trying to liquify the debts then has to inflate the currency.”
Inflation, Mr Anonymous? You’d best gird thy loins, BOHICA.
BZ
BZ, excellent post. It is so important that we defeat this Bill. Between you and your commenters here, everything is covered, so I won’t add to it except to say that Cloward-Piven is the mainstay of Obama’s administration.
One of my contributors, Jim Simpson, has done amazing research on C-P. Glen Beck asked for his material and now we are waiting to see if Jim gets an invite for the show. Let’s pray that he does. He is an impressive voice. Beck will do the country a good service if he has Jim as a guest.
The essence of health care reforms that are in play right now are to put competition into the marketplace and to ensure universal coverage.
There are about 50 million people in the US who don’t have coverage right now. Of those 50 million, about 1/3 can’t get coverage because of pre-existing conditions. No matter how much they are able to pay, no company will cover them.
The “page 16” issue, which is really mentioned on page 17 of the bill, is a statement that private insurance companies have a five year grace period to comply with new regulations, which include mandatory coverage for pre-existing conditions.
I know that you loons want to blow this into some massive Glen Beck style government conspiracy deal, but it’s just a list of new regulations that private companies would have to comply with. It would definitely cut into their profits to do this, but it’s hard to argue that they are not making too much money now. Moreover, they are doing it at your expense, taking money that would otherwise be in your pocket (assuming that you have health care coverage now).
This link for Representative Pete Starks’ web page summarizes the proposed requirements.
http://www.stark.house.gov/images/stories/111/legislation/AAHCA/aahca-sectionbysection-071409.pdf
By the way, Glen Beck is a complete lunatic, and a serial lair. That can’t be said enough.
I live in a democracy that is failing due to the lack of representation via the House setting a size in 1911. By all measures of turnout at the polls, the NSDAP had a higher claim to legitimacy of support than the US does over the past 20 years. We are very close to going under 50% turnout on Presidential elections and far below that for the interim elections for Congress ever since the 1960’s. That is not a healthy representative democracy: that is a democracy losing its legitimacy by not being able to convince people it is worth voting. As a nation we have slipped from plurality government to minority government based solely on turnout at the polls.
Now, as to reading, I have multiple articles covering terrorism, organized crime, corrupt banking, drug trafficking, and connections between those figures to politicians. That cannot be compiled from a book as no one has written it: it must come from source articles across many publication globally. My sources range from Kenya to Kiev to London to DC to Bogata… and on and on. I’ve been reading about those connections for years and don’t particularly like the coziness of the figures in politics with the various underworlds. So, before trotting out lovely ‘name press’ books, try combing source material and coming to your own conclusions.
I’ve done that for health care and there is no way that any private firm can compete with an organization that can regulate the firm as it chooses. The nature of the political class in the 20th century has changed drastically towards centralizing the economy in DC, and that should be damned worrying as it is turning off people from voting as there is no competition amongst the parties to do anything different. If any party could pull in even 10% of that now 49%, or 5% of the US population, it would get a LANDSLIDE victory. That neither party can do that and that we continue to lose voters on a downwards slope since 1964 should be very, very worrying to anyone who vests legitimacy of representative government in the exercise of the franchise right. All we have seen for 20 years has been bare plurality to minority positions taken that help those vested in the political elite and have neglected the infrastructure of this nation necessary to have the economic base to support health care.
That is not ‘moderate’.
That is not wise.
That has been turning off voters for decades.
I don’t need a third party to read through source material for me: I do it on my own. I don’t need predigested pap. And I certainly don’t need nor want a government that thinks it can run health care…I am less than impressed with all Nations currently doing so including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. And how is paying for a ‘public option’ and then paying AGAIN for your own health care ‘good’? You are paying twice to get once.
And I’m the guy with a list of chronic conditions, mind you. I don’t need Glenn Beck as I have been saying these things for YEARS. And yes, I vote.
And not to BM&C but I grew up with reading Marx, Engels and De Leon at home in my formative years. In my young adult life I moved on to Antonio Gramsci, John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper and the life and times of Germany 1917-20 involving the Sparticus movement and Rosa Luxembourg. Now some of those, like Luxembourg, have scant personal writings and accounts of their polemics by contemporaries and contemporary biographers are necessary. Such is the way of revolutions. All of that before I was 25.
I find it fascinating that those saying you have to be ‘well read’ have not actually read Marx, Engels, De Leon, Gramsci and others in translation at the very least. Thus I can and do compare and contrast plain socialist ideology as given by Marx and then to later Comintern movements, Social Democratic movements, National Socialist movements and Anarcho-Syndicalist movements of thought. At base I take some pains to look at and explain that Marx was a product of 19th century thought and that there was a ‘natural end’ to the industrial state. Unfortunately all later Left movements do not look at the underpinnings of that, and thus have extreme problems in realizing that without a proper definition of end-state scenarios they cannot properly postulate how to get there.
After those I can then add in writers like de Vattel, Grotius, Locke, Adam Smith… and writings of the terrorist groups of Hezbollah, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Plus throw in Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Blackstone, readings from the Edda on the accountability of King to the people…
As for health care I have separately researched that from the ideological side (see Gramsci, Liebknecht of the SPD, Mussolini, Dewey, and others) to see that the beginnings of this concept of a ‘right’ to health care or ‘equal access’ to health care starts going back at least to Hindenburg in the 19th century as part of his social reform movement to try and undercut socialism, but which itself had socialist underpinnings due to programmatics. He, likewise, can trace intellectual lineage to Rousseau and the French Revolution… where the idea of the State subsuming all matters and controlling everything is the most recent example of authoritarianism seeking to counter individualism and the rights of man as an individual. By the time you get up to the 1920’s, the understood role was to put health care in the hands of the State so as to better control workforce size to the benefit of the State and get State-level efficiencies. What has never been demonstrated through the intervening decades, is just what State run efficiencies ARE. The Nation State is one of the most inefficient organizations to deal with local problems as it is not set up to do so: it has a manifest role in Nation to Nation interactions and a well known set of objectives it gains from that as a National government. That descriptive process starting with Socrates and through to Grotius, Pufendorf, de Vattel and Blackstone was well understood by Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and the later Anti-Federalists, to where we get the Statist version where your rights are determined by the State at the cost of Natural Rights to give you ‘social rights’.
I have done my reading on the topic, thanks. Plus work on T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and other parts of the Progressive movement one-two years if not more before Goldberg came out with his book (which is a lovely review of history if you ever bother to read it…just for the history and there is little polemic in it) and before Glenn Beck. Thus I have read the underpinnings of liberalism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, Communism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, International Law, the Law of Nations as a topic, along with the Laws of War and the Laws of Peace as a topic, plus the Law of the High Seas….
So when I criticize health care, I do have a background in examining the effects of social movements on States, Nations and individuals. Just in case this has been MISSED.
Now I shall end my BM&C session.
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