Obamacare: Still a Failure

October 12, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

When I first started writing this column, it was during Obama’s first year and the big controversy was his plan for more government control over health care.

I focused mostly on the adverse fiscal implications, but also warned that Obamacare would worsen the third-party payer problem that makes American healthcare needlessly expensive and inefficient.

So who was right, supporters or critics?

According to a new study from the Paragon Institute and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, Obamacare has been a failure. The study, co-authored by Brian Blase, Casey Mulligan, and Phil Kerpen, lists the promises and results.

James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute also looked at what Obamacare has meant.

Here are some excerpts from his article for the Dispatch. He starts by reminding readers what was in the law.

In short, after 14 years, the law that was a signature initiative of President Obama has a mixed record… While the ACA is a sprawling measure with scores of disparate provisions addressing the nation’s vast health system, its core changes were relatively few. Perhaps most notably, the law pushed states to expand their Medicaid programs…

To date, 40 states plus the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid. Among the 10 states still holding out are Texas, Florida, and Georgia. …the ACA made it much easier for less-healthy Americans to secure and retain insurance by outlawing premium adjustments based on health status. …These changes lowered premiums for people with pre-existing conditions and raised them for everyone else. …the ACA created a new premium and cost-sharing subsidy system.

He then reviews the results.

Most Americans did not benefit from the Medicaid expansion or the new premium subsidies because they were already enrolled in coverage… The ACA has increased the percentage of the U.S. population enrolled in health insurance. …

Those with budgetary concerns about the ACA were right that the spending was near certain to occur (and likely would be expande) and that the offsets were on much shakier political ground. Since 2010, many provisions in the original ACA that would have imposed more budgetary discipline have been repealed.

Congress also increased the generosity of the premium and cost-sharing subsidies and made millions of additional households eligible for assistance. These changes point clearly toward higher long-term budgetary costs.

And he has a very depressing – but sadly accurate – conclusion.

Heading into the 2024 election, …the ACA will largely look similar regardless of who wins. …On the Republican side, there is no prevailing theory of enduring cost control. Many in the party say they favor less regulation and a “free market,” but they have little appetite for actually moving in a market-oriented direction.

My two cents is that Obamacare was bad legislation, but the U.S. already had a system that was messed up by government.

Indeed, my back-of-the-envelope healthcare freedom meter only got a a little bit worse when the law was enacted.

So repealing Obamacare is part of the solution, but it won’t make much difference unless some bigger changes are enacted, primarily to deal with the problem of third-party payer.

• Block grant Medicaid to the states.
• Shift Medicare to a premium support system.
• As part of tax reform, repeal the fringe benefits exclusion.

The bottom line is that we need to move health care in the “market-oriented direction” mentioned by Mr. Capretta, even if neither Republicans nor Democrats are interested in doing the right thing.

Add DACA Healthcare to Your Monthly Bills

Dreamers set to enroll in Obamacare courtesy of the US taxpayer. 

By Leesa K. Donner @ Liberty Nation News, May 6, 2024 Tags: Articles, Good Reads, Illegal Immigration, Opinion

In the never-ending list of what American taxpayers are expected to fund comes a new scheme to allow immigrants known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to enroll in Obamacare. The Biden administration announced the plan on Friday, May 3, and it will take effect on November 1, 2024, just a few days before the big election. Is this DACA healthcare plan just a craven ploy by the president to appeal to the Hispanic voting bloc, a part of the electorate in which polls show he is losing support?

If it isn’t, a skeptic might not be faulted for thinking it certainly has that appearance. The White House announcement for the new program stated: “Dreamers are our loved ones, our nurses, teachers, and small business owners. And they deserve the promise of health care just like all of us.” Unsaid, of course, is that deserving something and being able to afford it are two different things.

This wasn’t the administration’s original proposal. Initially, it wanted to extend Medicaid benefits to the Dreamers, but White House officials claim that was scrapped “after receiving more than 20,000 comments on the proposal”, according to a report by ABC News. It has been widely reported that the administration expects approximately 100,000 DACA recipients to sign up, though it is unclear how they came to that number. (The announcement from the White House says there are currently 800,000 Dreamers in the US.) Still, Healthcare coverage for this amount of people is expected to cost in the neighborhood of $240 million for 2025 and $300 million for 2026.

DACA Healthcare – Dreaming the Dream

Dreamers are immigrants who were brought into the country as children. The entire DACA program remains in the US court system. It began under President Obama, was slated for extinction under President Trump, and has been ping-ponging across the US court landscape since then. Because of this legal tangle, The Hill reports, “the federal government is barred from adding new beneficiaries to DACA.” But that doesn’t mean the current Dreamers are going anywhere. Apparently, this doesn’t stop the president from handing out DACA healthcare, either.

Conservatives have been quite vocal about their displeasure with the plan on the social media platform X. Replying to a post by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, SamJ wrote: “Someone should tell Biden that Americans have dreams too: a secure and prosperous America ….a wealthy middle class….no ILLEGALS…” X poster David G. Miller chimed in with: “Once again the Biden regime continues to fight Against the AMERICAN TAXPAYER!!!” Someone who goes by “Restoring Our Republic” remarked, “My last check-up was over 10 years ago, and I still can’t afford healthcare, yet I get taxed to death. Lovely news.” Yet another cried, “Is this even legal?”

The short answer is, well … maybe – but in the meantime, the administration has cleverly accomplished an end run around Congress. A White House official claims additional money is not needed, which means Congress does not have to pass legislation to fund it. This could only indicate there is Monopoly money hanging around – perhaps a presidential community chest?

Although DACA was created in 2012, the status of those brought into the country as children remains in limbo. Meanwhile, those seeking asylum or having temporary protected status can get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Some may wonder why the White House pulled the trigger on the deal now. “It comes as federal health officials have pushed out a flurry of rules in recent weeks as the administration closes in on a deadline under the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to overturn recently finalized rules,” according to a Politico report.

When President Trump tried to ditch the DACA program during his tenure in office, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the administration. However, in 2018, US District Judge Andrew S. Hanen declared the memo by the Department of Homeland Security that initially created the program “exceeded its authority and violated federal procedural rules,” according to the LA Times. 

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s ruling, but it also gave the Biden administration another bite at the apple to rewrite the DHS rule. Thus, handing out DACA healthcare to a group may only gum up the works even further. Nevertheless, the injunction remains in place, as does DACA, which means this latest move by the administration is ripe to become yet another court case.

 

Read More From Leesa K. Donner

Least Surprising Headline of All Time

October 3, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

I periodically use “Least Surprising Headline” to call attention to articles citing very predictable outcomes.

• Pandemic spending being a magnet for fraud.
• European politicians finding another excuse to expand government.
• Bailouts not solving problems.
• Cost overruns on government infrastructure.

I’m going to add to that list today, but first let’s refresh our understanding of how government-caused “third-party payer” makes America’s health care system very expensive and inefficient.

The key insight is that consumers have little incentive to be smart shoppers when they perceive that other people are paying the bill. And health providers, needless to say, have little incentive to control costs when they know consumers care very little about prices.

Is this a big problem?

No, it is not a big problem. It is a giant problem. Here’s a chart, based on the federal government’s data, showing the share of health expenditures that are paid directly by consumers.

In the chart, I show the year that Obamacare was enacted. Notice that the legislation didn’t have an effect on the trendline, either the year it was enacted or in subsequent years as it was implemented.

And since Obamacare didn’t reduce the problem of third-party payer, one might guess that it didn’t solve the problem of rising health expenditures.

That guess would be correct, as shown in this column by Megan McArdle, which includes a predictably unsurprising headline.

…in 2022, the United States spent 16.6 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, while the next-highest spender, Germany, spent only 12.7 percent… As the Affordable Care Act took shape almost 15 years ago, its architects started looking for…savings… All these years later, we still haven’t found the magic money pot. …Obamacare contained a lot of elements that were expected to realize significant cost savings while actually improving the quality of care. …What this demonstrates is how hard it is to actually change the system in ways that generate major savings. …the wonks hunting for magic pots of money have mostly turned out to be chasing rainbows.

I could pat myself on the back for predicting back in 2009 that Obamacare would be a fiscal mistake.

But that would be like congratulating myself for predicting it gets dark at night.

P.S. Repealing Obamacare would be a good step, but it’s just one of many changes that are needed to enable a market-based health system.

Criminally Insane Biden Claims Catholic God Blesses Abortion

Kelly O'Connell —— Bio and Archives--May 8, 2022 

Stealing SCOTUS’ Briefs: Democrat operatives stole a Supreme Court legal summary about rolling back abortion and published it online. Now a wild-eyed, profane group of abortion absolutists are ramping up an unprecedented campaign against SCOTUS to buffalo them into leftist compliance, including pinning them down in their own homes with progressive protesters. 

Inchoate, Reptilian-Brained Socialist: Joe Biden directed his flame-haired minion Jen Psaki to state…”I don’t think we have a particular view on that,” being the SCOTUS paperwork theft and blackmailing justices into obsequiousness.  Really?!! It’s actually against the law.................

Li’l Joe, God’s Baby Killer: Joe Biden declared himself a “Child of God” while bizarrely demanding the right to conduct executions of mere human children in God’s name. Biden’s statement is actually a superb logical syllogism against abortion: “I believe I have the rights that I have, not because the government gave it to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God; I exist.” He might have just as well stated, to mock DeCartes: “I think, therefore I abort!” 

Joe & Natural Law: Joe Biden, just like Pope Frank, is a Catholic apostate rejecting Church teachings. Pope Francis quite likely has more sympathy for King Herod than Jesus, after all. Now, here is Joe Biden’s own Catholic Natural Law theory of rights applied to abortion:...........To Read More....

The Deadly Impact of Government-Run Health, Part I

April 6, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’m not a fan of the government-distorted health system in the United States.

Various laws and programs from Washington have created a massive problem with third-party payer, which makes America’s system very expensive and inefficient.

 

But it’s possible to have a system that is even worse. Americans can look across the ocean at the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.

Our British friends are burdened with something akin to “Medicare for All.”

But it’s even worse because doctors and nurses are directly employed by government, which means they have been turned into government bureaucrats.

And government bureaucrats generally don’t have a track record of good performance. That seems to apply to health bureaucrats, as captured by this Alys Denby column for CapX.

Numbers are no way to express a human tragedy, but those in the Ockenden Report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust are nonetheless devastating. The inquiry examined 1,592 incidents since 2000. It found that poor care led to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers; 94 babies suffered avoidable brain damage; and one in four cases of stillbirth could have had a different outcome. That’s hundreds of lives lost, and hundreds of families suffering unimaginable pain, all on the watch of ‘Our NHS’. …the report is strewn with examples of individual cruelty and incompetence. Bereaved parents…were given excuses, false information and even blamed for their own child’s death. The Health Secretary has said that vital clinical information was written on post-it notes that were swept into the bin by cleaners. …The NHS has a culture of arrogance, sanctimony and impunity.

And here are some excerpts from a 2021 article in National Review by Cameron Hilditch.

The NHS has proven itself comprehensively and consistently incapable of dealing with a regular flu season, something that crops up at the same predictable time of year in every country north of the equator. It has long been obvious that Britain’s single-payer health-care system isn’t fit for purpose even in normal times, much less during a global pandemic. Yet the NHS’s failures are systematically ignored. …age-standardized survival rates in the U.K. for the most common kinds of cancer are well below those of other developed countries, which translates into thousands of needless deaths… The excess deaths that the U.K. is suffering…along with the crushing physical and mental burdens borne by British doctors and nurses ultimately redound to this long-term failure of British culture. By transforming a medical institution into a cultural institution for the sake of forging a new, progressive national identity, Britons have underwritten decades of deadly failure.

This is damning information.

To be sure, mistakes will happen in any type of health system. But when government runs the show, the odds of appropriate feedback are much lower.

If you don’t believe me, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Obamacare's legacy: More spending, lower life expectancy

But former president accused Republicans of 'misinformation' 

By Art Moore April 6, 2022

When Barack Obama returned to the White House on Tuesday to a rock-star welcome that further diminished the stature of the current president, he complained that Republicans had spread "misinformation" about what he regards as his signature achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

But on the 12th anniversary of the legislation, it's clear that Obama spread "misinformation" to get the bill passed, including his promises that you can keep your health care plan and your doctor, a typical family will see an annual reduction in health care expenses of $2,500, and the bill won't add to the deficit.......To Read More.....

Strike Three for the Supreme Court on ObamaCare

by Paul Engel | Aug 10, 2021 | Constitution, Healthcare, Politics,

The constitutional problems with ObamaCare are numerous and well documented. However, the Supreme Court seems bent on twisting the law and facts to keep this abuse of our rights in place. First, the court effectively rewrote the law to shoehorn it into the taxing power of Congress. In the most recent case, the court refused to even hear the argument from over a dozen states. This is strike three for the court.

Let’s start with jurisdiction. Texas, joined by over a dozen other states and two individuals, brought suit against federal officials claiming that ObamaCare is no longer constitutional since its individual mandate has been reduced to $0. California, with 15 other states and the District of Columbia, intervened to defend the mandate. I will get into the constitutionality of ObamaCare shortly, but the one thing I want you to note is that the court’s decision, in this case, came out of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 2

Since several states are parties to this case, the Supreme Court should have had original jurisdiction, not a lower court. We are, however, so ignorant of the Constitution, I wonder how many Americans even noticed.

A Tax That is Not a Tax...........To Read More...

 

From Prohibition to Obamacare

By Alan Caruba Originally Published on Monday, December 2, 2013

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many other works of literature.

It is one of the great mysteries that, for progressives, also called liberals, the past provides no lessons, no warnings that would prevent them from repeating their errors. Progressives are always focused on a magical future in which there will be no wars, no hunger, no poverty. Their belief in the redistribution of wealth—communism—is, in Winston Churchill’s words, “the equal sharing of misery.”

Obamacare is a perfect example of the progressive inability to accept that socialism and/or communism simply does not work. It depends on coercion and in the case of communism it left hundreds of millions dead in its wake over the course of the last century. Obamacare depends on (1) the belief that human nature will change—which it will not—and (2) the lies to implement it.

The news is filled with the failure of the government, despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, to provide a working website. Even assuming that the technical problems are solved, the failure of Obamacare is built-in because Americans have always enjoyed a culture of independence, despite the creep of government programs that occurred over the last half century.

The trust in the federal government, of Congress, is at an all-time low.

Social Security is insolvent or soon will be. Medicare was rendered even more insolvent when billions were transferred to Obamacare. Medicaid will bankrupt states as thousands more sign up for this program of minimal medical service.

As I listened to and read about the Obamacare roll-out, I was reminded of an earlier program that was adopted, Prohibition. It involved a nationwide ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It was the law of the land from 1920 until 1933. When it went into effect it was hailed as a victory for public morals and health. By the time it was repealed with the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, Americans had seen the growth of organized crime, the corruption that permitted ordinary citizens to ignore it, and the loss of the taxes to fund other aspects of governance.

Wikipedia notes that “By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs” where liquor was sold. Prohibition proved nearly impossible to implement and enforce."

Barack Obama represents the high-water mark of progressives to impose communism on America. A totalitarian form of government, we have witnessed how his administration has turned the Internal Revenue Service into a political instrument to suppress its opponents and has expanded the National Security Agency into a means to spy on all Americans, accessing every piece of communication between them. Obamacare enables the government to know every bit of information about individual’s health records.

It is, as C.S. Lewis said, “tyranny exercised for the good of its victims.” Even so, the progressives ignore the failure of communism in the former Soviet Union and the decision of China to move to a capitalist economy while endeavoring to retain a single party government that is encountering increasing protests and resistance from its population.

Obamacare is being imposed at the same time that socialist healthcare programs are in retreat in Europe. In Britain, the government led by Prime Minister David Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National Health Service (NHS) in an effort to avoid the Greek-style financial meltdown that threatens the European Union member states. Cameron’s argument for the bill is that there is too much bureaucracy in the NHS system and that it interferes will patient care. NHS is based on the rationing of medical care as opposed to the free market system where costs are determined by supply.

As reported in a recent article by Arnold Ahlert on Front Page Magazine.com, “Last November, such rationing reached a scandalous level. A study by the Co-operation and Competition Panel revealed that Primary Care Trust heads were imposing arbitrary spending caps, denying patients procedures such as hip replacements and cataract removals—and that waiting times for services were seen” to be deliberately extended ‘so patients would go private or die before they were seen,’ to slash costs.”

Obamacare, as has been widely reported, has increased the costs of healthcare insurance, particularly for the young on whom the system relies to pay for the costs of caring for the elderly. It has led to the cancellation of millions of healthcare insurance plans and millions more will lose their plans.

In a November 30 Washington Times article by Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, it is reported that the inherent unconstitutionality of Obamacare will bring about its end. Cases making their way through the judicial system such as Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp v. Sebelius, Indiana v. IRS, Pruitt v. Sebelius, “may be the final nails in the coffin of Obamacare.” The first two cases cited will likely be heard in March with a final ruling in the summer of 2014. There are others such as Halbig v. Sebelius, King v. Sebelius, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, as well as the HHS employer mandate and origination clause challenges are among the many cases challenging the basis of Obamacare.

Finally, in the November 2014 midterm elections, political pundits are virtually unanimous in the prediction that Democrats will be driven from their control of the Senate and Republicans will increase their control of the House.

Obamacare is the ultimate expression of the progressive and/or liberal approach to government and it is, just as was the case of Prohibition, the increasing resistance of the American public and will be, at some point, repealed.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

 

Curious Barry's October Surprise for Hillary

William A. Levinson

Obama's legacy is crashing and burning, with Obamacare dragging down the sinking ship.
The Curious George series by Margret and H.A. Rey features as its protagonist a monkey who causes trouble by monkeying with things he knows nothing about.  In Curious George Rides a Bike, he "helps" a boy with his newspaper route by folding the papers into paper boats and then crashing the bike, after which he feeds a bugle to an ostrich at an animal show.

The tale of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is similar. The apprentice decides, in his master's absence, to enchant a broom to perform his chores only to discover that he cannot stop the broom from fetching water and flooding the entire shop.  The same theme appears in a far more terrifying form in Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, when an apprentice wizard gets far more than he bargained for when he recites a fascinating set of words from his teacher's book.  The lesson in all cases is that it is very bad judgment to set powerful forces into motion without the competence necessary to control them, which is what Curious Barry (Obama) did with the so-called Affordable Care Act.......More

Ohio’s Cheerleader for Big Government, John “Barack” Kasich

(Editor's Note:  With all this talk about Kasich being a political commentator on CNN I thought it might be useful to publish this 2013 article by Dan Mitchell.  I've had the misfortune to meet Kasich personally, and I think I can without reservation say he suffers from a serious case of weird compounded by a massive infection of hubris.  RK)

October 28, 2013 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

 

I’m glad I work for a principled and libertarian organization. At the Cato Institute, there’s never any pressure to say or do the wrong thing for partisan reasons.

When Republicans screw up, I don’t have to think twice about exposing their misdeeds.

I have repeatedly criticized President Bush (and his former top aide) for expanding the burden of government. Buying votes with other people’s money isn’t compassionate.

Incurable spendaholics?

I have excoriated former GOP Hill staffers who became lobbyists for various special interests groups looking to fleece taxpayers. Stealing is wrong, even when you get a lot of money to use government as middleman.
 

I have slammed a former Reagan Administration official for defending earmarks. I think it is morally offensive that he gets rich by facilitating the transfer of money from taxpayers to powerful interest groups.
 

I have condemned the former Senate Republican leader for defending Obamacare. I think it is disgusting that he puts his lobbying income ahead of America’s best interests.
 

I have denounced Illinois Republican legislators for killing school choice. I think it is downright nauseating that they condemn inner-city children to terrible schools in exchange for campaign contributions from teacher unions.
 

And I have pointed out that statist policies don’t become acceptable merely because they come from Republican presidential candidates. The road to serfdom oftentimes is bipartisan.
 

We now have another candidate for our “Republican Hall of Shame.” The governor of Ohio, John Kasich, is embracing Obamacare. Moreover, not only does he want bad healthcare policy, but he’s using third-world tactics and making morally reprehensible arguments.

The Wall Street Journal savages Kasich in a stinging editorial. Here’s a key excerpt that explains the overall situation.

…there are still a few disciples with faith in an ObamaCare higher power, and one of them happens to run Ohio. Governor John Kasich is so fervent a believer that he is even abusing his executive power to join the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Not to be sacrilegious, but the Republican used to know better. Now Mr. Kasich seems to view signing up for this part of ObamaCare as an act of Christian charity and has literally all but claimed that God told him to do so.

But Gov. Kasich has a slight problem. The legislature hasn’t approved this budget-busting part of Obamacare. So Kasich has decided that he can arbitrarily change policy, just like Obama did with the employer mandate and the Obamacare exemption for Capitol Hill.

The problem is that his evangelizing failed to convert the Ohio legislature, which is run by Republicans who understand the brutal budget and regulatory realities of participating in new Medicaid. So Mr. Kasich simply decided to cut out Ohio’s elected representatives and expand Medicaid by himself. …he appealed to an obscure seven-member state panel called the Controlling Board, which oversees certain state capital expenditures and can receive or make grants. …Mr. Kasich asked the panel to approve $2.56 billion in federal funding, and then he’ll lift eligibility levels via executive fiat. It’s a gambit worthy of President Obama, who also asserts unilateral powers to suspend laws that displease him and bypass Congress.

But what’s really nauseating is that Kasich equates big government and welfare spending with religious values.

Mr. Kasich really must feel like he’s guided by the Holy Spirit… “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor,” to quote one of his favorite lines.

I suppose I could make a joke about communists presumably being super religious if you use this twisted metric, but there’s a serious point to be made. I’m not a religious scholar, but I wrote several years ago that, “Doesn’t Christianity (and, I assume, Judaism and other faiths) require individuals – using free will – to act charitably? Using the coercive power of government to forcibly redistribute other people’s money, by contrast, is moral preening at best.”

Moreover, Kasich must be delusional if he thinks making government bigger is good for the poor. Redistribution traps the poor in dependency and a larger public sector hinders economic growth, making life even more difficult for the less fortunate.

Heck, just compare Hong Kong and Argentina over the past 50-plus years and ask yourself which jurisdiction afforded more opportunity for those trying to climb the economic ladder.

Fortunately, the battle isn’t over yet.

Thirty-nine House Republicans signed a formal protest and some of them are threatening to sue, and well they should. They argue that circumventing the legislature subverts the Ohio constitution’s separation of powers and exceeds the statutory legal authorities of the Controlling Board, which is supposed to “take no action which does not carry out the legislative intent of the General Assembly.”

I don’t know whether a legal case will be successful, but I can share data showing that Ohio already is in deep fiscal trouble.

• It ranks 39th in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index.
• It was the 7th-worst state on controlling spending over the past decade.
• It ranks in the bottom 10 on measures of bureaucrats to teachers.
• It was listed as one of America’s 11 states facing an economic death spiral.

And John “Barack” Kasich thinks he’ll make Ohio better by adding an additional layer of government spending to finance Obamacare expansion?!?

What makes this situation so sad is that Kasich was Chairman of the House Budget Committee in the mid-1990s, so he deserves some of the credit for restraining federal spending during that period, a very successful policy that led to better economic performance and budget surpluses.

P.S. Kasich’s push to expand Medicaid shows one of the reasons the program should be reformed.

He’s being lured by the promise that Washington will pick up the entire tab for the first few years.

Afterwards, state taxpayers will get saddled with some of the burden, but Kasich probably assumes he won’t be around to deal with that problem. This is why the entire program should be block-granted to the states. If Kasich really thinks God wants a bigger Medicaid system, he should go to Ohio voters and ask them to pay for it.

Medicare kills people, and Democrats want force everyone on it

December 22, 2018 By Jack Hellner

While Bernie Sanders and other Democrats go around the country scaring seniors and others about Republicans talking about controlling entitlement costs in the future, why aren't they confronted with the fact that President Obama and the Democrats cut Medicare funding twice during Obama's eight years?

When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they cut Medicare funding by over $700 billion  to pretend to pay for Obamacare and say it would reduce the deficit. Cutting Medicare at that time had to reduce the long-term viability of the program.

Then, in 2013, they cut Medicare spending again, and as a result, at least 30 long-term care facilities have closed. I wonder why this story isn't reported widely on networks and in print.

Democrats also act as if Medicare has no limits (as they forced private health insurance to have no annual or lifetime limits), but as the article says below, Medicare cuts rates 60% to 70%  in long-term care facilities if patients don't spend three days in a hospital before they go to the nursing homes.

I had a personal experience with these Medicare restrictions last summer. I took my 91-year-old mother to the hospital in severe pain, as she had fallen. They shot her up with morphine and other drugs to reduce the pain. They took an X-ray, and it turned out she had a broken back. They told me they probably couldn't admit her because a broken back wasn't a good enough reason to stay, but the main reason was that Medicare didn't want to pay for part of the rehab.

After nine days in the hospital, they sent her to a rehab facility. After around one month in rehab, Medicare said she was good enough to go home. Mom couldn't eat, couldn't bathe, was aspirating her food, couldn't walk, couldn't dress herself, couldn't medicate herself, couldn't go to the bathroom, and Medicare said she could go home.  They were nuts. Ten days later, she died.............To Read More....

NFIB v. Sebelius Comes Back to Bite Obamacare

Why the DOJ won’t defend the health care law in Texas v. United States.

David Catron June 11, 2018

Unless you have been vacationing in a far away galaxy, you will have heard the ululations of Obamacare apologists enraged by the Trump administration’s refusal to defend the health care law against a 20-state lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. Obamacare advocates claim that the failure to defend the ACA in Texas v. United States is an unprecedented dereliction of duty by the Department of Justice (DOJ). This is hysterical nonsense. It is indeed unusual, but the DOJ is by no means obligated to defend a law deemed unconstitutional by the President, as Attorney General Sessions explains in his notification letter to Congress:

The Department in the past has declined to defend a statute in cases in which the President has concluded that the statute is unconstitutional and made manifest that it should not be defended, as is the case here. See Seth P. Waxman, Defending Congress, 79 N.C. L.Rev. 1073, 1083 (2001).

Not coincidentally, this is the very language that erstwhile Attorney General Eric Holder used in his letter advising Congress, in February of 2011, that the Obama DOJ would not defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). That decision was cheered by the very people who now accuse the Trump administration of “lawlessness” for not defending Obamacare. Ironically, the very real threat posed by Texas v. United States has its roots in another legal travesty that these people also celebrated — the 2012 Supreme Court ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius. That decision contained the seeds of Obamacare’s destruction………..To Read More…..

McCainCare

The dishonorable Senator from Arizona.

September 25, 2017 Daniel Greenfield  67 

 

​
It’s official.  Senator John McCain won’t vote for ObamaCare repeal. He won’t vote for any health care bill that isn’t “bipartisan.” And any bipartisan bill will be ObamaCare plus something even worse.

If McCain won’t vote for a health care bill that isn’t bipartisan, he won’t vote for ObamaCare repeal.
Period.

That’s information that voters could have used when Senator McCain was running for reelection last year on a platform of repealing ObamaCare..........To Read More.....

Dem Senator: The Cassidy-Graham Bill Is Awful. Also I Haven't Read it.

Cortney O'Brien Sep 21, 2017

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has been trashing the Graham-Cassidy health care bill all over town. Introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the legislation is the GOP's last chance to repeal Obamacare. The Rhode Island Democrat seemed well briefed on what's in the bill when he spit all over it on CNN Thursday.............It sure sounded like he knew the bill like the back of his hand, until Alisyn Camerota asked him for more specifics. "I've seen reviews of it," he said, before admitting he "hasn't read the language of it."

Makes sense. We all know Whitehouse and his colleagues are experts at not reading bills.....To Read More....

Unsurprisingly, “Free” Healthcare from Government Is Very Expensive

September 15, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

In a strange way, I admire Bernie Sanders. He openly embraces big government. Back during the 2016 campaign, I frequently observed that the difference between the Vermont Senator and Hillary Clinton is that he wanted America to become Greece at a much faster rate.

Well, he just installed a turbo-charged engine and stepped on the accelerator. He’s proposed a single-payer healthcare scheme that is being called “Medicare for all.”

According to Sanders and other advocates, the government’s health system is a good role model: People pay a tax while working and they get health care when they’re old. But there’s a not-so-slight problem with that approach. For every dollar that Medicare recipients paid to the program, taxpayers are financing three dollars of spending.

That approach is workable (though only in the short run) for Medicare. But it won’t work if government is paying for everyone’s health care.

So even Bernie admits that a tax increase will be necessary. And not just any tax hike. He’s proposing the biggest tax hike in the history of the United States. Heck, it’s the biggest tax hike in world history. Here are some of the frightening details, as reported by the Washington Post.

The Medicare for All legislation backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 16 Senate Democrats does not include details on how it might be paid for. …Sanders’s Senate office released a white paper on possible ways to pay for the legislation.

He starts with a giant payroll tax of 11.5 percent (on top of the 15.3 percent payroll tax that already exists).

The taxes themselves would fall on both employers and employees. Sanders floats the idea of a 7.5 percent tax on employers… Another tax, of 4 percent, would hit individuals.

To understand what this means, just contemplate the disastrous impact of Obamacare on the job market.

Sanders also has a big class-warfare tax hike.

The next big slice of funding: higher tax rates on the very wealthy. Income…$250,000…higher…would be hit harder, on an upward sliding scale, ending at a 52 percent tax on income over $10 million.

By the way, imposing a tax is the easy part. Collecting revenue will be a much harder task, especially since Sanders wants to take the very successful experiment of the 1980s and run it in reverse. He also wants a big levy on banks (foreign financial institutions are probably praying for that outcome), an extra layer of tax on American companies competing in world markets (foreign corporations are cheering for that one), along with a huge boost in the death tax and the imposition of a wealth tax (lawyers and accountants doubtlessly are licking their chops).

Sanders imagines a tax on financial institutions worth more than $50 billion, a one-time tax on offshore profits (an idea that is continually floated then sunk in tax reform negotiations), a higher estate tax (topping out at 55 percent), and a 1 percent wealth tax on the richest 0.1 percent of households. 

That’s all the tax hikes listed in the Washington Post story, but Sanders also has some additional material on his office website.

A huge increase in the double taxation of dividends and capital gains (particularly when you consider that personal tax rates will be much higher.

…end the special tax break for capital gains and dividends on household income above $250,000, treating this income the same as income earned from working.

A restriction on itemized deductions.

…itemized deductions would be capped at 28 percent for households making over $250,000. In other words, for every dollar in tax deduction a high-income household could save at most 28 cents.

For what it’s worth, I don’t like the state and local tax deduction and the charitable deduction, and I also don’t like preferences for housing.

But I want to eliminate such distortions only if the revenue is used to finance lower tax rates, not to finance bigger government.

That being said, let’s get back to our list. Sanders has a special tax targeting small business.

…ensure that all business income of high-income people would be subject to the existing 3.8 percent tax to fund Medicare, either through the net investment income tax or the additional Medicare tax on earned income.

Last but not least, he wants to skim $112 billion over 10 years from corporations by manipulating accounting rules.

…eliminate the “last-in, first-out” (LIFO) accounting method.

The bottom line is that Sanders, in one fell swoop, would saddle America with a European-sized government. And that would mean European-level taxes. The only thing that’s missing is he didn’t propose a value-added tax.

Though I’m sure that would get added to the mix since the huge increase in the government’s fiscal burden would retard growth. And since that would mean sluggish revenue, politicians would seek another way to extract more money from the economy’s productive sector.

P.S. I’m a policy wonk rather than a political tactician, but my guess is that Bernie is misreading the mood of the American people. Yes, “free” healthcare sounds nice, but people get understandably scared when they get a price tag. This is why single-payer was repealed in Bernie’s home state. And it’s why Colorado voters rejected a similar scheme by a landslide margin.

Trump Pushing Congress to Try Obamacare Repeal One More Time

By Onan Coca September 6, 2017

You have to give it to the President, he never says “die.” A new report in Politico details the President’s continued attempts to get Congressional GOP leaders to repeal Obamacare by any means necessary. To that end Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have been writing a bill that would keep federal dollars flowing into states to cover healthcare funding. It’s obviously not a perfect bill, it may not even be a good bill, but no one on the right doubts that it would be less disastrous than continuing with Obamacare........... Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), Susan Collins (R-ME), and John McCain (R-AZ) all voted against every version of repeal that the GOP brought to the floor. Murkowski and McCain were particular villains in this process as they spent the last few years (and hard fought campaigns) railing against Obamacare and promising to repeal it if they ever got the chance.

Sadly, when push came to shove the two moderates even voted against a “skinny repeal” which would have barely touched the most onerous aspects of the Obamacare law.......To Read More.....

Obamacare Just Months Away from Total Collapse Say Experts

By Andrew West September 6, 2017

The nation was asked what they wanted in a President back in November, and they responded firmly and fiercely.

We The People were adamant about ending illegal immigration, taking more precautions regarding radical Islam, and ending Obamacare once and for all.  That last bit was non-negotiable.

The American people were being rocked by ridiculously limited health care insurance by the program, that essentially guaranteed health insurance providers would be able to charge whatever they saw fit for coverage, while simultaneously making it far more difficult for businesses to contribute to the health costs of their employees.  The entire system was a lose-lose for the American people and a huge, glaring, greedy win for the Big Pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance cartels.

Remember, Obamacare never provided health care at all; it was simply a way to fine Americans for not giving money to private companies.........To Read More.....

Republicans Wave the White Flag on Obamacare

A cadre of RINO senators and governors move toward a blueprint for surrender.

 

 

 

  David Catron September 4, 2017 Ulysses S. Grant, victor of countless fights with Democrats both on and off the battlefield, defined the difference between winners and losers thus:

“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”

This is precisely where the long twilight struggle over the “Affordable Care Act” now stands. Obamacare is clearly collapsing, the Democrats are fighting a desperate rearguard action to save it, yet some key Republicans want to capitulate. Simply because their latest repeal effort failed by a few votes, Senators like Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander are waving the white flag........Which brings us back to Ulysses S. Grant, whose opinion of people like Lamar Alexander, John Kasich, and other such trimmers he summed up as follows:

 “Cheap cigars come in handy. They stifle the odor of cheap politicians.”  

To Read More....

The Obamacare Death Spiral Is Quietly Getting Much Worse

Justin Haskins, Washington Examiner

If the current state of the health insurance market weren't so tragic, former President Barack Obama's many promises and statements about Obamacare would be laughable. Obamacare could end up being remembered as one of the greatest policy failures in modern history. Premiums and deductibles have skyrocketed, millions of people have lost their insurance and been forced to purchase a new plan (and sometimes get new health care providers as a result), and the policy's greatest "achievement," if you can even call it that, is getting tens of millions of people dependent on government via Medicaid......... To Read More.....

Judge Usurps Congressional Spending Power in Obamacare Cases

Insurers are entitled to subsidies regardless of what Congress has appropriated?

David Catron August 14, 2017

If you are one of those hidebound individuals who believe that the distribution of taxpayer funds from the U.S. Treasury is a congressional prerogative clearly delineated in Article I of the Constitution, Judge Thomas C. Wheeler of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has some bad news for you. Wheeler has handed down summary judgments ordering the government to pay two separate insurers a total of $266 million that Congress has declined to appropriate. He awarded Moda Health $214 million in February and, two weeks ago, he awarded $52 million to Molina Healthcare pursuant to Obamacare’s unfunded “risk corridor” program.

Upon what authority does Judge Wheeler order the U.S. government to pay insurers taxpayer money that Congress hasn’t appropriated? Well, his reasoning is somewhat circular. In his recent ruling in favor of Molina Healthcare, the primary precedent he cites is his own ruling in Moda Health Plan, Inc. v. The United States. This is, as it happens, not as surprising as it first appears. Wheeler is the only judge to find for the plaintiffs in any of the two dozen or so lawsuits that Obamacare insurers have brought pursuant to the risk corridor program. Several others have already been dismissed, including two by judges on the same court.............To Read More....

My Take - You may wish to read my Book Review: Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, by Mark R. Levin.