The Obamacare Doublecross

The Democrats in the House have prepared their version of the healthcare reform bill. It reads like a tax code without the entertaining graphics.

President Obama said there would be a public option or the choice of private insurance. In essence, we could all keep our own doctors and continue on with our current coverage if we liked it.

However, the language in House bill HR 3200, does not support that premise. It all but forces everyone into the public program. If you go to the text of the bill in section/page 16, you will find it there.

We all remember the Democrats stating that it was not correct that there would be rationing, but the provision to set up the advisory panel is spelled out quite clearly. These are the people who will decide if you get treated for an ailment or if you are merely made comfortable while nature takes its course.

Talk about an Orwellian approach to population control and playing God. I guess this will cancel out the Hippocratic oath for doctors.

Below is the text about 'private insurance'. Any readers with experience in Human Resources understands that health insurance is renegotiated each year. As currently written, this will end that. It stops any changes to premiums or coverage, effectively forcing employers into the public system.

16
1 SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT
2 COVERAGE.
3 (a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COV4
ERAGE DEFINED.—Subject to the succeeding provisions of
5 this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable cov6
erage under this division, the term ‘‘grandfathered health
7 insurance coverage’’ means individual health insurance
8 coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the
9 first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
10 (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
11 (A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in
12 this paragraph, the individual health insurance
13 issuer offering such coverage does not enroll
14 any individual in such coverage if the first ef15
fective date of coverage is on or after the first
16 day of Y1.
17 (B) DEPENDENT COVERAGE PER18
MITTED.—Subparagraph (A) shall not affect
19 the subsequent enrollment of a dependent of an
20 individual who is covered as of such first day.
21 (2) LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR
22 CONDITIONS.—Subject to paragraph (3) and except
23 as required by law, the issuer does not change any
24 of its terms or conditions, including benefits and
25 cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day be26
fore the first day of Y1.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf

American Repulsion With Socialism

I read a column in which the writer rejoiced because the word, "socialism," is no longer a scary bogeyman to Americans. When I Googled the writer and learned he was only 31 and graduated from Columbia, it wasn't hard to figure out how he got it all wrong.

Since he had clearly been taught our "revised" history -- the one that glosses over the 100,000,000-grave killing fields of the communists and makes high drama out of the "sufferings" of the Hollywood blacklisted and the McCarthy hearings -- he didn't have a clue about what actually happened. This Ivy-League indoctrinated writer had reached the false conclusion that Americans used to be scared down to their skives of the big bad commies, but weren't anymore.

Isn't it hard to believe that reasonably intelligent parents actually pay big bucks for those fancy degrees in ignorance.

Americans aren't scared of socialism. They find it viscerally disgusting.

One must never mistake disgusted for fear. The first is based upon reason, the latter upon emotion.

And the reasons for loathing socialism are as clear as the nose on anyone's face.

No fully-grown human being with a single ounce of self-respect ever wants to be taken care of by others. No person with dignity will tolerate being told what to do, what to think, how to work or how to be an "acceptable" person. No free man or woman will tolerate the loss of liberty in exchange for material comfort.

Many generations of Americans vehemently rejected these notions over and over again, not out of fear, but out of the kind of visceral loathing that makes a normal person wretch, gag and grab for his religion and his guns.

The Lure of the Nanny State

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C. S. Lewis

A great many Americans -- perhaps even a majority -- seem poised to hand over vast amounts of their hard-earned money and their hard-won liberties to the promised "collective redemption" being offered by Barack Obama and his socialist band of "progressives" in Congress. With the votes of nanny-state supporters from all classes among us, their utopian dreams will be put to the test on our own ground and the reach of our federal government will be expanded drastically according to their plans.

But how does this really play out?

Always and everywhere it is tried.

The Socialist's Lure

One of the simplest realities of life is that the person who pays the bill is the one who makes the decisions. When that person is you, you decide. When the payer is a state collective, the collective decides. And you obey.

This ain't rocket science. The freedom to decide is the reason all children finally leave the security of the nest and jump to the ground. It's innate. This will to be free. To decide for oneself.

Consider only these 3 areas of Obama's collective plan for the redemption of American society:

Obama wants to use a lot of taxpayer money to offer education to children from birth through college. Free to mommies and daddies. On the taxpayer dollar, rather than on the parents'.

The socialist lure: Give the state your children and the state will relieve you of the burden of educating them and teaching them values and knowledge. Parents, you're off the hook.

The result: The state then makes all the decisions about what your children will be taught, how they will be brought up, what knowledge is important and what is not. Similar to what we witnessed last week when the lefts agenda overrode parental authority. One first grade class was taken to their lesbian teachers wedding, while another school celebrated "Gay Coming Out Day" for grades K-8. Without parental consent or counsel.

Obama wants to bring the federal government's involvement into healthcare to an unprecedented level. We remember the Clinton's attempt at this. Even with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, they failed. It did pave the way for the rise of the Republicans and the 'Contract with America'.

The socialist lure: Give the state your money and the power to enforce healthcare for all, and the collective state will relieve you of your responsibility to provide this service for yourselves and your children.

The result: The state makes healthcare decisions. Healthcare is then rationed according to need, as decided by the state. Elderly or infirmed need not apply.

Obama wants to enshrine positive rights to all citizens that include a guaranteed "living wage" to all regardless of individual work. He expects the productive members of society to take up the slack for the less productive.

The socialist lure: No citizen will be without the means to live a fairly equitable life regardless of individual delinquency or extra effort.

The result: The poor and unfortunate become wards of the state and vastly increase in number. Work incentives plummet, relative to the decrease in reward.

Obama wants our politics to be nice, not mean or divisive. He wants unity. He wants us all to get along.

Another socialist lure: Peace. Harmony. Goodwill to all. No good guys and bad guys. All will be nice and we will sing Kumbayah in perfect harmony all over the world. This goes to a globalist view. Coupled with a desire of one world government.

The result: Anyone who dissents, who finds error, who sees things differently will be silenced. This is the only way collectives ever enforce their ideas of "unity."
We received a prelude to this concept when "Joe the plumber" dared to ask Obama a question. The media minions set about ignoring Obama's response of a 'redistribution of wealth', and trying to destroy Joe. This man had exercised his first amendment rights and paid a hefty price. Socialism views the 'Bill Of Rights' to be overrated when applied to them.
Progress? In the memorable words of C. S. Lewis:

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."

Freedom and individual responsibility are inseparable.

The choice we are facing in this election is simple. We have freedom only when we accept personal responsibility for ourselves and our children. If we want to divest ourselves from the responsibility to provide for ourselves, then we also forfeit our freedom to make our own decisions.

Great leaders have appeared from time to time to warn free people of the innate deceptiveness of the socialists' lures. Ronald Reagan saw the evil as clear as day. Reagan's "ten scariest words in the English language":

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

Winston Churchill expounded further on leftist ideology:

"Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programs. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world."

John McCain is a leader in the same mold as Reagan and Churchill when it comes to seeing the innate evil within the Marxist lure and its deceptive threat to real peace and any prosperity worth having. But of these three -- Reagan, Churchill and McCain -- McCain is the only one who has seen firsthand, from the inside, how it is that collective regimes may appear fair and just and unified.

McCain learned the hard way that socialist fairness is a carefully choreographed illusion, that socialist justice is a capricious commodity doled out on a whim by dictators with hard-core boots and clubs. His time in the Hanoi Hilton left a crippling impression on McCain.

Unity? Unity is obtained through coercive means and by taking children very early into indoctrination as model, happy future workers for the collective "good."

So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Obama's communist mentor was Frank Davis. As a young boy and teenager, Obama spent a lot of his formative years under the tulledge of Davis. This was where Obama was introduced to marijuana and cocaine. Obama wrote of this in his autobiography.

John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.

Obama's Socialistic Expansion Of Johnson's Failed Policies

Senator Obama has promised 'change'. However, it is not anything new, not real change. We have tried these same policies before. Under Lyndon Johnson. These policies failed to deliver there touted intentions, but Obama insists on returning the US. to an expanded version of these disasterous programs.

"Indeed, Senator Obama’s economic ideas and outlook — large expansions of federal entitlements and explicit efforts to redistribute income — look little different from the failed liberal policies of the 1960s." - James Capretta

In the aftermath of President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, Congress embarked on a period of unprecedented governmental activism. A flurry of new laws expanded welfare benefits, created two health-care entitlement programs, thrust the federal government into education financing and policy — and much, much more. To pay for these initiatives, Congress increased federal taxes substantially, including payroll taxes. Between 1965 and 1969, federal taxes increased from 17.0 to 19.7 percent of GDP.

Senator Obama’s economic plan is remarkably similar to those Johnson-era efforts in terms of its goals, even if the legislative tactics are somewhat different. Senator Obama promises to expand welfare benefits to many more households, although he would do so mainly with a series of expensive, refundable tax credits. He has proposed an unprecedented increase in federal spending on K-12 education programs. And his health-care plan would offer publicly funded insurance to nearly 50 million more people — at a time when the federal budget is already groaning under the weight of existing health-care entitlements.

Senator Obama would pay for this expansion of government with a massive tax increase. He is promising to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to nearly 40 percent. He wants to increase payroll taxes on high-income earners as well to pay for an unreformed Social Security program that will have fewer workers paying the benefits of growing numbers of baby-boomer retirees. And, according to an analysis from the independent Tax Policy Center, his plan depends on somehow finding nearly $1 trillion in revenue over ten years from as-yet-unspecified sources.

Americans are not averse to paying for government programs that genuinely help people. Indeed, many Americans would have concluded that 60s government activism was worth the cost — if it had actually worked to bring about prosperity and equality. But no reasonable observer could conclude that it did — and frequently enough, it made matters worse.

Instead of ending poverty, the Great Society ushered in an era of deepening welfare dependency and inner-city cultural decline. Well-intentioned support for single mothers and their children enabled an epidemic of fatherless families, with disastrous results. Family breakdown accelerated, and out-of-wedlock births soared. Moreover — with taxes and spending rising, the national economy fell into a decade-long period of sluggish economic growth, with high inflation and high unemployment. American businesses became less competitive. Confidence in our future fell.

Were Senator Obama’s program to be adopted, expect unintended consequences. Alex Brill and Alan Viand of the American Enterprise Institute have shown that his lavish new refundable tax credits would have the perverse effect of increasing the tax rate faced by many low-wage workers looking for better-paying jobs. The more these households earn, the less they would get from Senator Obama’s program of government-engineered financial assistance.

Similarly, Senator Obama’s plan for improving education would backfire. Increasing federal spending for K-12 education would simply allow state and local governments to cut back on their own funding commitments. The net financial gain to schools would be minimal at best. Moreover, with more federal funds comes muddled political accountability: No matter how much money is provided, it won’t stop local school administrators from claiming that their problems are due to insufficient federal support.

In addition, Senator Obama’s health-care plan would stifle job creation. Employers would be required to “pay or play,” meaning they would either have to offer government-approved insurance, or pay a new payroll tax. Such a mandate would make it more expensive for firms to hire low-wage workers. Unemployment would rise.

Moreover, many businesses that sponsor insurance for their workers today would stop doing so when faced with Obama’s expensive insurance mandates. Millions of workers and their dependents currently in private insurance would therefore end up in a government-run plan, with price controls and other regulatory red-tape. In time, increased government dominance in the health sector would undermine quality and stifle investments in those new drugs and devices which might provide breakthrough improvements in patients’ health.


And of course, Senator Obama’s marginal income-tax rate increases would reduce incentives for work and entrepreneurial activity at a time when our global competitors are moving in the opposite direction.

It took the presidency of Ronald Reagan to get things back on track after the decade-long malaise of the 1970s. Reagan understood that broad-based prosperity comes not from the government trying to engineer economic results but from the accumulated efforts of millions of individuals striving to improve their standards of living with hard work. Given the right incentives — and it’s the government’s job to get the incentives right in tax and spending policy — businesses and households will find ways to improve productivity and bring valuable innovations to the marketplace.

Even President Reagan came up short when it came to reforming the welfare state. That did not occur until Republicans took over Congress. Voters going to the polls in November would do well to recall the debate over the 1996 welfare-reform law. At the time, proponents argued that ending the entitlement to cash welfare benefits was crucial to breaking the culture of dependency so prevalent in urban America. They pushed successfully to replace the entitlement structure with a fixed block grant that states could use to provide temporary cash assistance and support services for those families trying to stay in the workforce.

Opponents of the law argued strenuously that it would produce a calamity, with millions of households getting pushed into poverty — with children starving in the streets, according to the most hyperbolic Democratic rhetoric.

What happened? Welfare caseloads fell by more than half almost overnight, from 4.6 million in 1996 to just over 2 million in 2002. And the Congressional Budget Office found that the lowest-income households experienced a 35-percent jump in their real incomes between 1991 and 2005, as rising wage income more than offset the reduction in cash welfare benefits. The 1996 welfare reform law is almost surely the most successful social-policy change in a generation.

It is instructive that Barack Obama, then a state senator in Illinois, strongly opposed welfare reform — and criticized President Bill Clinton for signing it — before claiming to have changed his mind about it during the presidential campaign.

The present moment cries out for an aggressive economic-reform agenda. Federal tax law has become a jumbled mess of excessive social engineering. Entitlement spending is set to rise dramatically over the next two decades as baby boomers head into retirement. Government agencies operate today much like they did in 1980, even though businesses have been transformed by the information-technology revolution.

I want to thank James Capretta for contributing to this post.

America Under Obama Styled Socialism

I found a decent explanation of Socialism and how Obama's brand of Socialism could change the face of America forever. The U.S. already has minor touches oF Socialism, (public transportation, social security, medicare, schools, etc) but an Obama victory will push us into an uglier realm that many Americans do not realize. We learned recently that Obama once belonged to an Socialist Party. Obama realized that in order to succeed in American politics he would have to leave the Socialist Party and join the Democrats, if he was to have a chance to really push his agenda, ideals and himself.


For conservatives opposed to an Obama presidency, the last few days have brought the wonder of the smoking gun: Obama really was a socialist. Combine that hidden paper trail with his Ayers affiliation, and it's reasonable to believe that Obama still holds these socialist political views.


Conservatives' excitement at finally having found the real socialist hiding inside that empty suit is tempered by one thing -- outside of conservative circles, nobody really seems to care. The media, of course, is very aggressive about not caring, but the malaise seems to affect ordinary Americans as well.
The only way to explain this disinterest in Obama's past and its relationship to his present is that Americans no longer consider the label "socialist" to be a pejorative. To them, it's just another content-neutral political ideology. In our non-judgmental age, it falls into the same category as Liberal vs. Conservative, or Left vs. Right. To most people, it just means Obama is a more liberal Liberal, or a leftier Lefty, and they already knew that.
Socialism is not simply a more liberal version of ordinary American politics. It is, instead, its own animal, and a very feral, dangerous animal indeed.
If it were up to me to attach labels to modern political ideologies, I would choose the terms "Individualism" and "Statism." "Individualism" would reflect the Founder's ideology, which sought to repose as much power as possible in individual citizens, with as little power as possible in the State, especially the federal state. The Founder's had emerged from a long traditional of monarchal and parliamentary statism, and they concluded that, whenever power is concentrated in the government, the individual suffers.


And what of Statism? Well, there's already a name for that ideology, and it's a name that should now be firmly attached to Sen. Obama: Socialism.
It took Marx and Engels to carry socialism to the next level, in which they envisioned the complete overthrow of all governments, with the workers of the world uniting so that all contributed to a single socialist government, which in turn would give back to them on an as needed basis. Assuming that you're not big on individualism and exceptionalism, this might be an attractive doctrine as a way to destroy want and exploitation, except for one thing: It does not take into account the fact that the state has no conscience.


Once you vest all power in the state, history demonstrates that the state, although technically composed of individuals, in fact takes on a life of its own, with the operating bureaucracy driving it to ever greater extremes of control. Additionally, history demonstrates that, if the wrong person becomes all-powerful in the state, the absence of individualism means that the state becomes a juggernaut, completely in thrall to a psychopath's ideas.
One sees the same pattern as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: individuals were instantly subordinated to the needs of the state and, as the state's needs became ever more grandiose, more and more people had to die. Current estimates are that Mao's "visionary" Great Leap Forward resulted in the deaths of up to 100 million people. The people died from starvation, or were tortured to death, or just outright murdered because of thought crimes. The same pattern, of course, daily plays out on a smaller scale in socialist North Korea.

Those are examples of hard socialism. Soft socialism is better, but it certainly isn't the American ideal. Britain springs to mind as the perfect example of soft socialism. Britain's socialist medicine is a disaster, with practically daily stories about people being denied treatment or receiving minimal treatment. Invariably, the denials arise because the State's needs trump the individual's: Either the treatment is generally deemed too costly (and there are no market forces at work) or the patients are deemed unworthy of care, especially if they're old.


British socialism has other problems, aside from the dead left behind in her hospital wards. As did Germany, Russia, and China (and as would Obama), socialist Britain took guns away (at least in London), with the evitable result that violent crime against innocent people skyrocketed.


The British socialist bureaucracy also controls people's lives at a level currently incomprehensible to Americans, who can't appreciate a state that is constantly looking out for its own good. In Britain, government protects thieves right's against property owner's, has it's public utilities urge children to report their parents for "green" crimes; tries to criminalize people taking pictures of their own children in public places; destroys perfectly good food that does not meet obsessive compulsive bureaucratic standards; and increasingly stifles free speech. (Impressively, all of the preceding examples are from just the last six months in England.)


Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.


Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.