Tag Archives: health care

What’s next for ObamaCare?

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the title of a Jim Angle article on Fox News.com. RTWT, but what interests me are a couple of comments he quoted in his piece.

The first comment is this one, by John Goodman, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute:

[I]if you repeal it, you’re going to have to replace it with something. And repeal and replace is just another way of saying we’re going to change ObamaCare into something different and better.

Of course. Free market solutions would work. “Change Obamacare” into…? Sure, if keeping the name proves tactically sound, that’s fine. Calling white black in order to get the black replaced with something better may be politically necessary, but it still won’t be black anymore. I’d prefer a better collection of names for the collection of smaller policies (rather than one large policy) that should replace this monstrosity, but that can come later.

Then there’s this bigger bit of nonsense from Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center:

[Y]ou need to not only say you’re against the ACA…, but you’re going to need to have a replacement plan to show people you have a better way of providing people with health insurance coverage.

That’s partly right. The upcoming Republican Congress does need to have a replacement plan. However, it’s not government’s job to “provid[e] people with health insurance coverage.” It’s the job of the market place and the private citizens interacting in it to provide people with the coverage they want—including no coverage at all. Government has no role in this whatsoever beyond its role of ensuring an honest market place.

Democratic Party Principle

Posted on by
1

A couple days ago, one of Obamacare’s primary architects, Jonathan Gruber, said this about the need for the tactics used in order to get the thing passed.

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed…. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

Despicable as that is, though, what really bothers me are two other things.

In a subsequent interview with MSNBC‘s Ronan Farrow, Gruber had this exchange with Farrow regarding those remarks:

“Do you stand by the comments in that video?,” MSNBC host Ronan Farrow asked Gruber, referring to a video of Gruber explaining how a lack of transparency helped Obamacare pass into law.

“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” Gruber said. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”

Notice that: Gruber regrets the remarks, but he does not at all regret the underlying principle he espoused. He stands by his claim that Americans are too stupid to understand the issues at hand, and he stands by his claim that it’s entirely appropriate to lie to us in order to get his way.

The other thing that bothers me is the lack of senior Democratic Party officials’ repudiation of Gruber’s underlying principle. I’ve not seen even any rank and file Democrat repudiating it. Apparently, this is a principle of the Democratic Party at large—we’re dumb, and it’s OK to lie to us to get past the impediment to their policy enactment that our dumbness presents.

Leading from Behind

Posted on by
Reply

…and continuing the Obama administration meme of letting the “international community” dictate our foreign policy—and now our domestic policy, also.

A quarantine against travel from the Ebola-infected nations of western Africa to the United States, ideally as part of an international effort but plainly not dependent on it, is critical to mitigating the risk to the United States of the Ebola epidemic spreading to here. I’ve answered the CDC chief’s objections to a travel ban here and here. Others more knowledgeable than me also are calling for such a travel ban.

Here, though, is what Obama’s State Department—medical experts all—claim in all seriousness:

“We are not imposing any sort of ban,” a State Department official told FoxNews.com. “We need to allow for this to be a global response and make sure that there is proper care and training throughout the region.

Because, it’s not perfect, therefore mustn’t do it at all. Because, safety in numbers, especially if those numbers give cover for avoiding responsibility for error. Because, it might show initiative. Because, leading from the front is arrogant.

The most likely global response from this foolishness is an Ebola pandemic.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to accept responsibility and the personal risk that entails.

It just isn’t the Democrat way to be out front, with or without the “international community.”

It just isn’t the Democrat way actually to lead.

Another Reason for Smaller Government

Posted on by
Reply

Even with lives at stake—lives in the middle of a budding pandemic—Big Government bureaucracies are more interested in protecting turf and responsibility ducking than they are in their fundamental task of protecting American citizens’ safety from foreign problems.

Worse, one of the bureaucracies involved in this cynical ego-based Federal road block has nothing to do with the medical questions involved. First, the experts, at least by training and experience, if not by smooth performance:

The hazardous waste protocols in place for hospitals require staff to place any potentially infected substances—whether it is medical equipment or protective gear—into special hazardous waste containers. That waste then is supposed to be turned over to licensed hazardous waste companies, where it is incinerated or chemically sterilized, according to the CDC.

However, because that other Big Government agency thinks it must have something to say about handling hazardous medical waste, we get this [emphasis added]:

Due to specific Ebola-related regulations issued by the US Department of Transportation (DOT), which governs what medical waste companies can and cannot transport, the usual waste haulers or medical waste disposal companies are prohibited from accepting Ebola-contaminated waste until it has been properly packaged in accordance with DOT guidelines.

And so we get this problem, delineated by [Dr Jeffrey, National Global and Public Health Committee Chairman for Infectious Diseases Society of America] Duchin:

The medical waste companies are refusing to come and pick up the waste because of the DOT regulations, which the CDC does not agree with.

Never mind that the sole experts in the matter, the CDC, has said the Ebola waste ready for safe handling by medical waste companies.

Just to add to this ego-ridden fiasco, we also have this, demonstrating that it’s not only the Federal government that’s gotten too big, too turf-ridden, with too many egos embedded:

[A] Louisiana waste disposal facility, Chemical Waste Management Inc-Lake Charles, says it will not accept the ashes generated when Duncan’s belongings were incinerated, at least not until state officials agree that it would pose no threat to the public.

And this nonsense: The Louisiana Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell, has sued in state court to block the transportation of the waste to the Calcasieu Parish facility (the waste disposal facility in question), and a Louisiana state judge has agreed and blocked the shipment. Because these guys—a state government lawyer and the state government’s judge—know better.

These are yet others reason for shrinking government.