Obamacare: Way Beyond Anything Rube Goldberg Could Have Ever Imagined

This is your health care on drugs. Does this look like it’s going to be more efficient and save money to you?

Download Chart (PDF format)

Obamacare Only Looks Worse Upon Further Review: Kevin Hassett

One of the more illuminating remarks during the health-care debate in Congress came when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told an audience that Democrats would “pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

That remark captured the truth that, while many Americans have a vague sense that something bad is happening to their health care, few if any understand exactly what the law does.

To fill this vacuum, Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, asked his staff to prepare a study of the law, including a flow chart that illustrates how the major provisions will work.

The result, made public July 28, provides citizens with a preview of the impact the health-care overhaul will have on their lives. It’s a terrifying road map that shows Democrats have launched America on the most reckless policy experiment in its history, the economic equivalent of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Before discussing what the law means for you, we have to look at what it does to government. That’s where the chart comes in handy. It includes the new fees, bureaucracies and programs and connects them into an organizational chart that accounts for the existing structure. It’s so carefully documented that a line connecting two structures cites the legislative language that created the link.

See also:
AMERICA’S NEW HEALTH CARE SYSTEM REVEALED
UPDATED CHART SHOWS OBAMACARE’S BEWILDERING COMPLEXITY
Republicans draw circles around Obama health plan
ObamaCare: A Tangled Knot Around America’s Throat
Obamacare: Read it and weep
Charting the Murky Waters of ObamaCare
Brady bashes government
Republican Chart Outlines House Democrats’ Government Takeover of Health Care
Congressman Kevin Brady
Kevin Brady

Well, I for one DO NOT welcome our new health care overlords. Hopefully, if the Republicans can at least take back the House, they can strangle this vile monstrosity to a slow death by withholding funding, assuming it can’t be straight up repealed.

/in the meantime, be afraid, be very afraid, this is idiotic craziness, far beyond sheer insane madness

Obama Lied, Your Health Care Plan Died

Remember this talking point, repeated ad nauseam?

Well, guess what, are you sitting down? Obama lied, what a shocka!

Friday night news dump: White House says 51 percent of company health plans won’t meet Obamacare guidelines

At Investor’s Business Daily, Sean Higgins and David Hogberg have a doozy of a story:

Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers.

The documents — product of a joint project of the Labor Department, the Health and Human Services Department and the IRS — examine the effects new regulations would have on existing, or “grandfathered,” employer-based health care plans.

Draft copies of the documents were reportedly leaked to House Republicans earlier in the week. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., posted them on his Web site Friday afternoon. (View the full report here.)

The Associated Press is also on the story. Even they can’t ignore the dishonesty that was used to sell the health care overhaul:

Over and over in the health care debate, President Barack Obama said people who like their current coverage would be able to keep it.

But an early draft of an administration regulation estimates that many employers will be forced to make changes to their health plans under the new law. In just three years, a majority of workers — 51 percent — will be in plans subject to new federal requirements, according to the draft.

See also:
Administration: 51% Of Companies’ Health Plans Won’t Pass Muster
Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans
Health-care rules may force some to change coverage, leaked document suggests
Draft Health Rules Set Hurdles
Keep Your Health Plan Under Overhaul? Probably Not, Gov’t Analysis Concludes
Health overhaul to force employer plan changes
ObamaCare Vindication Watch: Majority of Workers Will Have to Change Health Coverage
Interim Final Rules for Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Coverage Relating to Status as a Grandfathered Health Plan under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Well, Obama and the Democrats passed Obamacare without reading it and now we’re sure as hell finding out what’s in it and it’s getting worse by the day.

/hey, you [expletive deleted] up, you elected them

Can We Call It The Biggest Boondoggle In American History Yet?

Obama and the Democrats lied, ObamaCare is going to cost way more than if they had passed nothing? Say it ain’t so! Seriously, what sane person didn’t see this coming? The really scary part is, it’s only going to get much worse.

CBO Hikes ObamaCare Cost Estimate By $115 Billion

Better sit down, because you are in for a “shock”: ObamaCare will cost more than previously thought.

The Congressional Budget Office today released an analysis of discretionary spending in the law, and found that those costs will “probably exceed” $115 billion over 10 years.

At a stroke, that erases almost all of ObamaCare’s $143 billion in budget savings based off rushed, incomplete CBO projections given just before the decisive House vote in March.

Of course, that original forecast also assumed politically poisonous Medicare cuts and numerous other budget tricks. But, continuing to set those issues aside, the CBO suggests even its surplus forecast may prove ephemeral.

The new estimate includes the costs of administering the law by the IRS and the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and the cost of “future appropriations for a variety of grant and other program spending for which the act identifies the specific funding levels it envisions for one or more years.”

Yet there are other programs for which “no specific funding levels are identified in the legislation,” and the CBO couldn’t estimate the cost of those. The smart money says those costs will exceed $28 billion.

See also:
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, May 11, 2010
Discretionary Spending in the Final Health Care Legislation
Health overhaul law potentially costs $115B more
Health Overhaul Law Potentially Costs $115B More
CBO ups health care cost projections
CBO revises estimate on reform law costs
Republicans jump on new CBO score to blast health reform bill
Consequences of health care law coming to light

The sooner we toss out enough Democrats and elect Republicans instead, the sooner we can get rid of or at least modify this incomprehensible, money devouring mountain of [expletive deleted].

/vote like you mean it in November, this Democrat induced travesty is coming out of your wallet

Bloviator In Chief

Hoo boy.

Obama’s 17-minute, 2,500-word response to woman’s claim of being ‘over-taxed’

Even by President Obama’s loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

. . .

Even Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. He apologized — in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. “Boy, that was a long answer. I’m sorry,” he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.

But, he said: “I hope I answered your question.”

See also:
Obama’s 17 Minute, 14 Second Answer on Higher Taxes and Health Care
The great elaborator: Obama gives 17-minute answer to health-care query in N.C.
Obama’s 17-minute answer
Obama’s answer was rather loquacious
Obama Fights Adversity With Verbosity
Defensive much? Obama gives rambling, incoherrent 17 minute response to concern about being ‘overtaxed’
President Obama takes 17 minutes to answer a question

Let’s see, Obama takes 17 minutes to not answer a simple question, Alan Grayson is threatening doctors, Henry Waxman is threatening major U.S. corporations, and, a week into this new entitlement fiasco, most Americans still think Obamacare sucks.

/yeah, I see nothing but smooth sailing for Democrats going forward

Got Health Care?

/we are so [expletive deleted]

All Aboard!

House to Hold Crucial Health Care Vote Sunday

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to hold a crucial vote on Sunday on sweeping health care reform legislation. President Barack Obama has postponed his planned Asia-Pacific trip to Indonesia and Australia for a second time to be in Washington, D.C. as Congress votes on his top domestic priority after a year of debate and wrangling.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday that President Obama is confident that the health care reform legislation will soon be the law of the land in the United States.

“I think health care is going to pass the House on Sunday. I believe shortly it will pass the Senate, and the president will be able to sign all of it into law,” he said.

The president postponed his planned overseas trip until June to oversee the culmination of a year-long effort to pass health care reform legislation over the united opposition of every single Republican lawmaker in both the House and the Senate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled what Democrats hope will be the last, corrected version of a $940-billion health care reform bill, which will extend health insurance coverage to some 32 million people who are currently uninsured. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released figures Thursday estimating the legislation will reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over its first 10 years.

House Speaker Pelosi, who is still trying to nail down the 216 votes she needs for the bill to pass the House, was very pleased with the CBO numbers, which may help to win over fiscally-conservative Democrats who face tough re-election battles in November.

“For the health and well-being of American people, for the fiscal soundness of America’s budget, for seniors, for our young people, for women, for small businesses and for competitiveness we will make history and we will make progress by passing this legislation,” she said.

If it passes, the massive health care overhaul will re-structure one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and for the first time will require that most Americans carry health insurance and penalize medium-sized and large companies that don’t provide health insurance coverage for their employees. It will also place restrictions on insurance companies, for example by not allowing them to exclude people because of pre-existing medical conditions.

Democrats are using a complicated legislative process to pass the bill. First, the House will have to approve a Senate bill that many of its Democratic members strongly dislike. Then both chambers will need to quickly pass a package of corrections to the bill agreed to in negotiations with the White House.

Republican lawmakers have opposed the health care bill from the outset, saying it is too big, too expensive, and that it inserts government bureaucrats into American’s medical decisions.

House Minority leader John Boehner has vowed that Republicans will “do everything that we can do to make sure this bill never, ever, ever passes”, and some Republicans in the Senate say they have been studying Senate rules to do whatever they can to block the legislation if it arrives back in the Senate next week.

H.R. 4872 – Reconciliation Act of 2010

CBO Score

See also:
Democrats Post Health Care Bill Online, Setting Up Possible Sunday Vote
US Congress Waging Fierce Final Battle over Health Care Reform
Health-care reform debate gets more intense with possible weekend vote looming
March Madness
Obama Deploys Personal Presidential Touch in Health Care Push
Holy War Erupts Among Catholics Over Abortion Language in Health Care Bill
Republicans mock ‘tweak’ to new $940 billion health care bill
Republicans Ready Strategy to Scuttle Health Bill, as Democrats Push Forward
What happens if health care reform dies?

/Michael Ramirez

The good news is that Obama and Pelosi still don’t have the 216 votes, as of the time of this posting, and there’s still time for you to act.

Stop Obamacare now!

The bad news is that this massive trillion dollar cluster[expletive deleted] of a Democrat national debt busting boondoggle is not permanently dead yet.

/God help us all if they actually manage to pass this abomination

You May As Well Try And Read It, Your Congresscritters Probably Won’t Bother

UPDATE:

Ruh roh, chicanery time, they really are desperate to jam this through without anyone getting to read it.

The Democrats’ 2,309-page reconciliation bill was released for public viewing Sunday and will begin the mark-up process in the Budget Committee Monday at 3pm. Contrary to the Democratic pledge to post the reconciliation measure 72 hours before consideration, the bill posted is a dummy — or a “shell” as Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) put it — an early version of the House bill that cleared key committees in 2009, thus making it eligible for the reconciliation process under budget rules. Once that bill clears the the committee it will be gutted and replaced with the closed-door “fixes” agreed upon by Congressional Democrats, and appended with an unrelated student loan bill.

*****

House Democrats release bill for Budget markup Monday

House Democrats on Sunday night set into motion what they hope will be the final steps on healthcare reform.

The House Budget Committee on Sunday evening released text that will serve as the base legislation for the changes the House will seek to the Senate bill this week.

Specifically, the Budget committee released a 2,309-page effort that had been previously recommended to the Education and Labor Committee and Ways and Means Committee last year.

The measure posted online does not include the substantive changes to the Senate healthcare bill that House Democrats will seek. Those changes will be offered during the markups in the Budget and Rules committees, which the budget panel hopes to begin on Monday afternoon.

The House is expected to approve the Senate’s healthcare bill along with the package of changes. The Senate would then be expected to approve the package of changes under budget reconciliation rules.

Because the bill will be considered under budget reconciliation rules in the Senate, GOP senators will not be able to filibuster the package and Democrats will not need 60 votes to move the legislation through the Seante.

A BILL
To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202 of
the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

Oh, sure, it’s 2300+ pages, but to make any real sense of it, you’re also going to need to refer to the United States Code a lot.

Oh yeah, you’re going to need to reference the 2400+ page Senate bill too.

Have fun! Pack a lunch.

See also:
Next Steps: How The Health Bill Could Move Forward
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Health Care This Week
Democrats look for consensus on final health overhaul package
A Big Week for Health Care Reform: What Could Happen Next?
Nancy Pelosi’s strategy for passing health-care reform
The House Health-Care Vote and the Constitution
John Campbell: ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over’ on health care

Remember, it’s still not too late to make your voice heard.

/Take Action!

Not Yet

/Michael Ramirez

Dem House vote-counter lacks health care votes now

The House’s chief Democratic headcounter said Sunday he hadn’t rounded up enough votes to pass President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul heading into a make-or-break week, even as the White House’s top political adviser said he was “absolutely confident” in its prospects.

The administration gave signs of retreating on demands that senators jettison special home-state deals sought by individual lawmakers that have angered the public.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs predicted House passage this week, before Obama travels to Asia, a trip he postponed to push for the bill.

“This is the week where we will have this important vote,” Gibbs said. “I do think this is the climactic week for health care reform.”

Political strategist David Axelrod said Democrats will persuade enough lawmakers to vote “yes.” The House GOP leader, Ohio Rep. John Boehner, took up the challenge, acknowledging Republicans alone can’t stop the measure, but pledging to do “everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill.” Republicans believe they may get help from Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns.

Axelrod said it will be a struggle, taking aim at insurance industry lobbyists who “have landed on Capitol Hill like locusts” and Republicans who see being on the losing side of the vote as a political victory.

“I am absolutely confident that we are going to be successful. I believe that there is a sense of urgency on the part of members of Congress,” given recent news about insurance plan rate increases, Axelrod said.

A dose of reality came from Rep. James Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat and main vote counter. “No, we don’t have them as of this morning, but we’ve been working this thing all weekend,” said Clyburn, D-S.C.

See also:
UPDATE 1-US House Democrat says still short on health votes
House Dem whip: We don’t have the votes yet
Health Care Bill Held Up by Uncertainty, Mistrust
Axelrod: Health Care Effort Is ‘A Struggle’
Boehner determined to kill Dem health care bill
Axelrod Says Health Bill to Pass, Boehner Skeptical (Update4)
Health Care Bill ‘Still a Jump Ball,’ White House Official Says
Thousands rally at State Capitol to kill health care bill
Why Health Bill Makes No Sense

/keep up the pressure

Speaking Truth To Democrat Bull[Expletive Deleted]

Paul Ryan is the man!

See also:
Rep. Paul Ryan on health inflation at White House health summit
Paul Ryan: Obamacare Will Raise Medical Costs
Ryan on Democratic Health Care Budget Gimmicks
Health care summit: Ryan makes good point on deficit reduction
Ryan on the Attack
Healthcare summit: Medicare and the deficit
Rep. Paul Ryan makes remarks on insurance regulation at White House health summit
Ryan talks decentralization at health summit
Ryan, Obama get into “difference in philosophy”
Transcript of Thursday’s bipartisan health care meeting
A Real Man With A Real Plan

What’d I say? I told you Paul Ryan gets it, and he’s more than an intellectual match for Obama.

/now pay close attention, because there’s going to be a very important quiz in November

Obama Says You’re Gonna Get A Trillion Dollar Health Care Bill Whether You Like It Or Not

Is Obama deaf? 61% of Americans want Congress to scrap their current health care bills and start over. So what’s Obama’s plan? To cram a variation of the current legislation down your collective throats, I’m the Great Obama, suck on it bitches!

The President’s Proposal

/Michael Ramirez

Patient Is Showing No Improvement

The president has unveiled a reform plan of his own ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan summit. But it’s no better than the lousy Democratic proposals that Americans have already dismissed.

The Obama plan appears to be based on the bills that were passed last year in the House and in the pre-Scott Brown Senate. While it leaves out the public option that was included in the House legislation, it adds a wrinkle that’s just as harmful: price controls on insurance premiums.

Americans aren’t going to want this rancid stew of legislative arrogance any more than they wanted the bills that were rammed through Congress. Our own polling shows that 34% strongly oppose Congress’ overhaul plans while only 24% strongly support.

When the “strongly oppose” and “somewhat oppose” responses are combined, the poll shows 45% are against the Democrats’ proposals. Independents oppose the plans 51% to 34%.

While the administration’s proposal might get some initial support because it regulates insurance costs, the public will recognize the rest of the plan as something it’s seen and rejected.

It seems the White House is cynically using the new wrinkle to take advantage of the anger toward insurance companies. The good news is that wrinkle should smooth out once opponents explain why restrictions on premium increases will leave the public with less coverage, as insurers will have no choice but to ration benefits.

The opponents — hopefully every Republican holding elected office — could start by repeatedly pointing out that Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, not a GOP operative, said: “Price and exchange controls inevitably create harmful economic distortions. Both the distortions and the economic damage get worse with time.”

The opposition should also ceaselessly tell the public that the ultimate consequence of premium caps on health insurance — if not the ultimate goal of the Democrats — is the collapse of the industry.

Private firms will leave the market when government restrictions make it unreasonably hard to make a profit. That will happen when the caps are combined with the inevitable federal mandates outlining the wide array of conditions that insurers must pay for and the rules that govern how coverage is sold.

New York has bitter experience with coverage rules. Since the early 1990s the state has forced insurers to provide insurance to people who are already sick and required them to set premiums at the same rate for all customers despite differences in age and health.

New York’s market hasn’t yet crumbled, but only because insurers have been able to increase premiums. New York now has, at roughly $9,000 a year on average, the highest rates in the country.

Soaring premiums can’t happen in a regime in which they are capped. When caps are added to mandates, insurers have nowhere to go but out of the health insurance business.

“We are sort of a case study of what not do,” says Mark Scherzer, identified in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times as “a consumer attorney who helped lead the fight for New York’s changes in the early 1990s.”

We see nothing in the Obama proposal that makes it more acceptable than what the Democrats have already put up.

• It won’t cut costs. Its $950 billion price tag for 10 years is even higher than the federal estimates, which were insanely optimistic, for the bills that have already been passed.

• It won’t insure all the uninsured. The White House says it will cover 31 million Americans who are without coverage. That still leaves as many as 15 million or 16 million without medical insurance.

• It won’t increase Americans’ control of their health care. It will require people to buy insurance and force businesses that don’t insure their employees to provide coverage. That’s more government.

• It’s not what the people want. By more than a 2-1 margin, our IBD/TIPP poll found, Americans want Congress to start fresh with a new blueprint, not rehash what they’ve clearly rejected.

No amount of we-know-what’s-best, force-it-on-an-unwilling-public arrogance can change these facts. Yet the Democrat machine, confident its ideas are so strong that they can repeal the laws of economics, refuses to end its offensive against the people.

We are far beyond the point at which we can admire their tenacity while disagreeing with their solutions.

What we need is a clean, quick kill of a plan — an Obama course that would drive our health care system into an abyss from which it would never escape.

See also:
Obama stays on offense with health-care proposal
Obama offers new health-care reform proposal
Obama posts health blueprint
Facing headwinds, Obama offers health deal
Obama Renews Health Push
ObamaCare at Ramming Speed
Obama Rejects Advice to Shrink Health Proposal
Obama may be key part of this health care plan
Obama’s health care bill revision seeks compromise
CBO says Obama’s health plan not detailed enough to score
CBO Blog: No Cost Estimate of Obama Health Plan This Week
Plan sweetened for GOP baffles CBO
Obama’s healthcare plan gets chilly GOP reception
Can Obama Bypass Republicans on Health?
White House Sets the Table to Use ‘Reconciliation’ Rules to Finish Health Care Reform
Will Obama Health Care Plan Pass Via Reconciliation?
Charting a Course Around Filibusters
Health care has one last chance
Are the Dems really that clueless about health care?

What happened to Obama’s promise to focus on American’s top priority, jobs? Apparently, that lasted all of about a week and now it’s back to socialized health care reform, a plan already soundly rejected by the vast majority of the American public.

/Obama and the Democrats must have an insatiable political death wish, they’re going to get absolutely creamed in the 2010 midterm elections