Tag Archives: health care

Foolishness

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James Capretta and Lanhee Chen of American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, respectively, have a piece in a recent Wall Street Journal edition that talks about how to “nudge” uninsured Americans into getting health coverage plans.  It’s impressive in its…foolishness…(I’m being polite).

Congress can help these Americans and many others get insurance by enrolling them in no-premium, no-obligation plans from which they could withdraw if they wanted to.

No. Not only no, Hell no. No squared. We’ve enough Big Government intruding into our private lives, arrogantly presuming to make our private decisions for us, without adding this to the steaming pile.

But how to make sure people stay covered?

None of your business, and none of Big Government’s. This is an individual’s choice whether to stay.  Or even to get a plan in the first place.  Full stop.

But their [Republicans’] plan also must make sure most Americans have health insurance.

No it mustn’t. It need only ensure Americans (all, not just your “most”) have access to insurance. That access will come most broadly from a free market in which actual insurance policies are sold (not the currently available welfare coverage plans that Big Government is trying to force on us in ever diminishing variety and ever increasing cost). The decision to buy—the decision to participate at all—can only be the individual’s in a free nation.

And: keep your hands out of my pockets looking for money with which to pay for your “no-premium, no-obligation” schemes.  Of course you—and every American with two neurons to bump against each other to form a ganglion—know that your schemes won’t be free or without obligation: someone is going to pay for that stuff.

Talk about false premises.  Jeez.

Finally: when did these two AEI and Hoover Institution denizens join the Progressive-Democratic Party?

Obamacare

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As The Wall Street Journal rightly pointed out, regarding the failed Obamacare repeal and replacement effort and the failing renewed discussions between the House Republican Conference and the Freedom Caucus of No,

The fury…suggests that some Freedom Caucus opposition is more cynical than sincere. Do its members want to appear to negotiate in good faith but insist on changes that centrists can’t accept, so they can then accuse centrists of killing the reform revival?

And

…perhaps there’s still hope for health-care reform. But first Republicans have to decide if they can accept progress that is short of perfection. If they can’t, then they’ll blow their best, and maybe only, shot at repealing and replacing a failing entitlement.

Here’s the problem, though: the Freedom Caucus of No already has betrayed their constituents once through that first failure by inflicting on them continued Obamacare instead of an improved system because the improvements weren’t perfection.

For how long will the No-ers continue to betray their employers? The No-ers are carefully eliding the back half of Reagan’s remark about half a loaf: come back tomorrow for the rest. Of course, that requires accepting the first half first….

Continued Veterans Administration Failure

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Dr Dale Klein is, formally, on the Veterans Administration payroll—to the tune of a $250,000/yr salary—but he’s not employed by them, and so his pain management skills are actively denied our veterans who would benefit from them.  Klein blew the whistle on his proximate employer’s—Southeast Missouri John J Pershing VA facility—secret waiting lists and wait time manipulation practices.  Now he’s shunned by his employers and banished to a room by himself where he’s denied access to his patients and patients are denied access to him.

VA management is continuing to refuse to clean up its act, preferring to serve their employed bureaucrats rather than, and at the direct expense of our veterans.  This has to stop, and the only way is to disband VA and commit its budget—all of it, including overhead—to vouchers for our veterans with which they can see doctors, clinics, and hospitals of their choice.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

House Freedom Caucus of No

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Yesterday, the membership of the House Freedom Caucus of No forced the American Health Care Act, the first stage of a three-stage Obamacare repeal and replace program offered by the majority of the House Republican Conference, to be withdrawn from the day’s backup vote (recall that these No-ers already had forced a delay from Thursday’s vote over their demand to have their way or there could be no Act), and so there will be no AHCA.

As a result of the No-ers’ our way or nothing attitude, the American people now get nothing at all.  We’re forced to stay with Obamacare and the disastrous failure of that program. Of particular interest, included in those American people are these No-ers’ own constituents, whose interests these No-ers so loudly pretend that they’re protecting.  Yet, with their performance, they’ve ensured that their own constituents also get nothing; the No-ers have betrayed their own electorate.

I have to ask: on whose side are the No-ers; their tactics have led directly to the continuation of Obamacare?  Are they on the side of the Progressive-Democrats whose program Obamacare is?  Or are they in Congress for their own benefit?

They’re certainly not interested in the welfare of the American people, or of their own constituents.

For your reference in the 2018 election cycle, here are the members of the House Freedom Caucus of No, who put their demands ahead of the nation’s citizens’ needs:

  • Mark Meadows, North Carolina, Chair
  • Justin Amash, Michigan
  • Brian Babin, Texas
  • Ted Poe, Texas
  • Randy Weber, Texas
  • Rod Blum, Iowa
  • Dave Brat, Virginia
  • Tom Garrett, Jr, Virginia
  • Morgan Griffith, Virginia
  • Jim Bridenstine, Oklahoma
  • Mo Brooks, Alabama
  • Ken Buck, Colorado
  • Warren Davidson, Ohio
  • Jim Jordan, Ohio
  • Ron DeSantis, Florida
  • Bill Posey, Florida
  • Ted Yoho, Florida
  • Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee
  • Jeff Duncan, South Carolina
  • Mark Sanford, South Carolina
  • Trent Franks, Arizona
  • Paul Gosar, Arizona
  • David Schweikert, Arizona
  • Andy Harris, Maryland
  • Jody Hice, Georgia
  • Raúl Labrador, Idaho
  • Alex Mooney, West Virginia
  • Gary Palmer, Alabama
  • Steve Pearce, New Mexico
  • Scott Perry, Pennsylvania

Delays

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The House Republicans were forced to cancel yesterday’s scheduled American Health Care Act vote.  The Freedom Caucus, the Caucus of No, couldn’t be satisfied.  Congressmen like Jim Jordan (R, OH) and Caucus of No Chairman Mark Meadows (R, NC) refused late compromises, all the while insisting by implication from their refusals that constituents of other Congressmen, for instance Tom Cole (R, OK), worked for them and not that Cole worked for his Oklahoma constituents—and that those Oklahoma constituents might have different imperatives than those Congressmen of the Caucus.  So, no compromise from the No-ers.

Even after regulation changes that were part of Phase II of the overall three phase repeal and replace plan were offered to be brought into this Phase I AHCA, the No-ers refused.  Never mind that even the need to make such an offer displayed a monumental distrust by the No-ers of their ex-Congressional colleague, Tom Price, now Secretary of Health and Human Services and the gentleman who would have carried out those regulation rescissions of Phase II.  Even the No-ers’ plaint that they wanted those regulation removals written into law rather than merely rescinded makes no sense: that could have been legislated next year, by this same Congress, and that, as change to a done, deal would have thereby much easier to do.

Nor did a single member of the Caucus of No offer either any plan for getting the changed bill past a Senate filibuster from these too-large changes or any explanation of why their demanded changes would have permitted the bill still to go through via reconciliation and a majority-only vote.

It’s clear that the Freedom Caucus, this Caucus of No, is little more than a collection of yapping porch dogs, or alternatively just a bunch of right-handed virtue-signaling snowflakes, with little interest in actually improving our health provision system or restoring our health care to us constituents and our doctors.