P.S.
Thanks, Frank.
Now that the Republicans caved as we all knew they would, making every bit of a stand — up to this point — entirely point-less, we have the above headline to assuage any further fears we may possess.
From the WashingtonExaminer.com:
by Paul Bedard
Many Americans shopping for better health insurance deals promised by the two-week-old Obamacare system are instead being slapped with rate shock, including savings-sapping deductibles and co-pays, according to multiple reports from around the country.
For some able to get the problem-plagued Obamacare website to work, the so-called “deals” the system is coughing up around the country include $12,600 deductibles, co-pays of up to 40 percent, zero competition, and rate hikes of 260 percent.
The huge cost increases that some Obamacare applicants are seeing are feeding the effort in Congress to change the system and delay implementation until January 2014.
But wait; didn’t Mr Obama promise we could all keep our doctors, and healthcare would be easier to acquire and less expensive as well?
This, folks, is why Mr Obama had the bill written: so he could “Cloward-Piven” the system, crash it, then start entirely over towards his goal of single-payer government-run insurance, once and for all.
BZ
P.S.
After having its Obamacare rolls open for 16 days, Delaware had its very first person sign up on Wednesday.
Going through the various internet archives, I chanced upon this little tidbit from Forbes.com, should you or others be cornered and braced for information — or perhaps I should just forward it to the GOP in DC?
Too many people conveniently ignore that in his 2007 State of the Union message President Bush proposed a sweeping health reform plan that would have replaced the current tax exclusion for employer-provided coverage with standard tax deductions for all individuals and families. The Bush plan called for a tax deduction that would have applied to payroll taxes as well as income taxes. Moreover, if one were worried about non-filers, the subsidy could easily have instead been structured as a refundable tax credit in which case even those without any income taxes would have gotten an additional amount. This is the kind of policy detail that easily could have been negotiated had the Democrats been in a cooperative mood in 2007. They were not. On the contrary, President Bush’s health plan was declared “dead on arrival” by Democrats in 2007. Yet it is Republicans who were tagged as being uncooperative and intransigent when they resisted the misguided direction that Obamacare seemed to be headed.
What’s sad is that the Bush plan actually was superior to Obamacare when it comes to providing universal coverage. Remember, Obamacare actually does not provided universal coverage. The latest figures from CBO says that when it is fully implemented in 2016, Obamacare will cut the number of uninsured by only 45%, covering 89% of the non-elderly. Even if illegal immigrants are excluded, this percentage rises to only 92%. In contrast, the Bush plan (without a mandate!) would have cut the number of uninsured by 65%. But that’s ancient history. Consider one of the newest market-oriented health reform plans put on the table by Jim Capretta and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Compared to Obamacare, this plan would cost roughly the same amount yet cover 22% more (8 million!) uninsured. If there’s a superior alternative to the slow-motion train wreck now being implemented, why wouldn’t the President and Democrats in Congress want to seriously consider it as a replacement?
Instead, Mr Obama decided it was important to completely tear apart American healthcare for 15% of people, when 85% had rather things been left in place.
BZ
From the Guardian.com:
Jonathan Kaiman visits Ankang municipality where swarms of highly venomous hornets have killed 41 people in three months
by Jonathan Kaiman in Ankang
Chen pointed with a shaky hand at the small plot of cabbage, scallions and corn where his friend Yu Yihong was stung to death by giant hornets.
“When he got to the hospital, there were still two hornets in his trousers,” says Chen, a local farmer who, like many villagers, declined to give his full name to a foreign journalist. “The hornets’ poison was too strong – his liver and kidneys failed, and he couldn’t urinate.”
Vespa mandarinia is the world’s largest hornet, around the size of a human adult’s thumb, yellow and black in colour and highly venomous. Their 6mm-long stingers carry a venom potent enough to dissolve human tissue. Victims may die of kidney failure or anaphylactic shock.
An Asian hornet (vespa mandarinia) eats a honeybee. The sting of the highly venomous giant hornet, which measures about the size of a human thumb, can dissolve human tissue and cause kidney failure. Photograph: Scott Camazine
Yu’s story is a tragic but increasingly common one in north-west China‘s Shaanxi province where, over the past three months alone, hornets have killed 41 people and injured a further 1,675. Ankang, a municipality in the province’s south, appears to be the epicentre of the scourge. While hornets infest its mountainous rural areas every year – 36 residents were stung to death between 2002 and 2005 – locals and municipal officials say this year is tantamount to an epidemic, the worst they have ever seen.
Chinese leaders, in consultation with Harry Reid, have decided that the GOP is responsible for the invasion of the giant flesh-eating and deadly hornets.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, from HuffPo:
Here’s A Tally Of Which House Republicans Are Ready To Fund The Government, No Strings Attached
WASHINGTON — In the hours since the government shut down, House Republicans have slowly but steadily been coming forward to say they’re ready to pass a bill to fund the government with no strings attached.
Who might those House GOP members be? Try:
Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Pa.), Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), Rep. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.), Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.).
It’s heartening to see that so many House Republicans are willing to give away the store for absolutely nothing in return.
It’s also invigorating to note that the east coast is well represented by GOP Surrender Monkeys in the form of Pennsylvania, Virgina, New York and New Jersey. Closer to their paychecks and pork, they realize the Demorats may not be so willing to drink heavily with them at the end of the day in various local DC watering holes.
BZ
Obama: ‘I shouldn’t have to offer anything’From the WashingtonPost.com:
By Aaron Blake, Published: September 30 at 5:23 pm
President Obama says in a new interview with NPR that he doesn’t feel the need to compromise on anything when it comes to the budget and debt ceiling debates.
“I shouldn’t have to offer anything,” he said. “They’re not doing me a favor by paying for things that they have already approved for the government to do. That’s part of their basic function of government; that’s not doing me a favor. That’s doing what the American people sent them here to do – carrying out their responsibilities.”
“I shouldn’t have to offer anything.
Because we need to recognize that Mr Obama is basically Imperial. His word simply becomes The Word.
And yet, when I check the phrase on YouTube, I get this video:
I slap my forehead in shock. No air conditioning?
I can’t write this stuff. Reality always trumps fiction. Obama is a buffoon at the most extensive and frakking best. With bushels of understanding held in reserve.
BZ