Category Archives: regulation

Progressives Know Better

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President Barack Obama’s “fix” for his disastrous Obamacare and its ObamaMart store was intended to “allow” insurance companies to continue in force existing policies that are noncompliant with his Obamacare law.  I’ll leave aside the Constitutional aspects of his letter to states’ insurance commissioners “specifying that current plans sold to existing customers will not be considered out of compliance with the health care law in 2014[,]” even though most are, by Obamacare design, noncompliant.

The Progressives of the state of Washington have rejected Obama’s move, but for the wrong reasons.

Commissioner Mike Kreidler said on Thursday he won’t be allowing insurance companies to extend their old policies that didn’t meet the requirements of federal health care reform.

Kreidler, a Democrat, says all of them can get better coverage on the new health care exchange.  He says at least half of them will qualify for a subsidy to help them pay the premium.

This state’s Progressives Know Well that Washington’s single men and empty-nest couples need prenatal and maternity coverage.  And they need coverage to pay for the birth control that’s both a commodity and generally not needed, at least by those empty nesters.  This state’s Progressives Know Better what Washington’s citizens need than do those Washington citizens.  Especially since, by Kreidler’s own cynical admission, it won’t be Washington citizens’ money that’s paying a large portion of the added cost.

Kreidler’s move leaves some 290,000 Washingtonians stuck with ObamaMart’s poorer plans, which have higher premiums, albeit largely covered with OPM, and with higher deductibles, which won’t be covered with OPM.

Lies of my President, Revisited

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Recall President Barack Obama’s original lie, from mid-July 2009:

If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.  Period.  If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.  Period.

Then, when the insurance cancelation notices went out, and Obamacare “insurance” plans didn’t include our doctors in their networks, he lied about his lie.  He had this, for instance, through his Press Secretary Jay Carney:

What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide.  So it’s true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.

So it’s “If I like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.  Maybe.  If I like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.  Maybe.”

Then he lied with his sham apology:

I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me.

No apology for either of his prior lies, just regret that all those folks took him at his word.

And Obama thought his lies were funny at the time he made them:

So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there any—(laughter)—asteroids falling or—(applause)—some cracks opening up in the Earth.  (Laughter.)  It turned out it was a nice day.  (Laughter.)  Birds were chirping.  Folks were strolling down the Mall.  People still have their doctors.

Five million Americans, and counting don’t have their health care plans, either.

After receiving a letter from her insurer that her plan was being discontinued, Deborah Persico…found a comparable plan on the city’s new health insurance exchange. But her monthly premium, now $297, would be $165 higher, and her maximum out-of-pocket costs would double.

That means she could end up paying at least $5,000 more a year than she does now.

She’s not alone.  In California alone,

Hundreds of thousands…who purchase their own health insurance are bracing to pay more for their plans, as the cost of the federal health care overhaul lands harder on middle-class customers.

The Daily Caller estimates that the total number of Americans about whom Obama is sorry for having believed him will run to 129 million.

Fifty-three Democrats and two Independents in the Senate actively supported Obama in these lies until the cancelations started rolling in.  Now some of those are worried, not about the losses of all these Americans, but about their own political necks.  Two hundred Democrats in the House Actively supported Obama in these lies until the cancelations started rolling in.  Now some of those are worried, not about the losses of all these Americans, but about their own political necks.

And now Obama wants—dishonestly, again—to change the Obamacare law (the law of the land, remember) by Executive Order to force insurance companies to reinstate all those cancelled policies and to extend existing ones.  For a whole year.

Remember that during primary and election season this summer and fall.

Another Failure of Gun Control

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Two Gonzaga [University] students are facing possible expulsion from the University after they pulled a weapon in self defense as a six time felon attempted to get into their on campus apartment.

It seems these two students were confronted, on a recent Thursday night, by a six-time felon with an active arrest warrant on him (which, of course, the students couldn’t know at the time) who tried to force his way into their apartment, demanding money (which, of course, the students understood very clearly at the time).  It was only when one of the students brandished a pistol—for which he has a concealed weapons permit—that the thug left (to be arrested later based on the students’ subsequent report to the police).

It’s also interesting to note that the student did not fire his weapon.  There turned out to be no need to fire; the thug left on seeing it, and the restraint demonstrated the judgment of permit holders, generally.

Nevertheless, Gonzaga is holding firm to its policy of no guns at all and to its intent to discipline the students for the crime of successfully defending themselves without University oversight.

Gonzaga released a statement speaking of their long standing weapons policy that has been in effect.  The University says the policy has been in place to reduce threats to the school.

Which it took a gun to reduce….

Update:

Executive Vice President Earl Martin said Monday the university will try to turn the incident into a teachable moment by re-examining its no-weapons policy.

Yeah.  In the meantime, these young men remain on Gonzaga’s probation, and Gonzaga still has their weapons, which the University “confiscated” in the aftermath of this self defense action.  And these young men now have no defenses against the next thug to come by.

When the bad man comes, and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.  What are these two to do in those intervening minutes, after their seconds are up?

Another Wisconsin Democratic Party Threat

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Once again, the Democrats of Wisconsin are threatening—promising—thuggery, if they can’t get their minority way imposed on honest Wisconsin citizens.

When the Wisconsin Senate passed out of committee a bill that had already passed the Assembly addressing abortion, the committee voted against the Democrat minority.  State Senator Jon Erpenbach (D) promised “all out hell” if the Wisconsin Senate debates presumes to debate the matter on the floor.  Threatening Committee Chair Leah Vukmir (R), Erpenbach warned

You don’t want this headline.  You don’t want this story.  You don’t want this hassle that’s about to happen.

And

All out hell.  Seriously.

What else are you going to do, Ace?  Take your party and run away to Illinois, shutting down your government again, like you did in 2013, the last time you couldn’t get your way?

More on ObamaMart

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HealthCare.gov thinks it’s made an improvement: now we can browse—sort of—some notional health “insurance” plans and their notional premiums.  The images below (because the technology is smarter than I am, so I can’t meld them into the single image that exists at HealthCare.gov/how-much-will-marketplace-insurance-cost/) show just how meaningless this “improvement” is.

And

As you can see, the ObamaMart still is withholding any sort of idea of actual costs—explicitly, you don’t get to see deductibles and copays, and you only get to see “premiums” for two age groups—which lump together too many characteristics for these made-up numbers to be taken seriously.

We still have to give our personally identifying information to the ObamaMart doorman, we still have to open an “account” before we can get into the store and poke the shelves.

The IRS knows how to do tables of options based on income.  Adding options based on health conditions—the major factors, like heart disease history, smoking, weight vs height, and so on—for the five plan categories would make a table bigger, perhaps more complex (it might even—the horror!—require more than one table), but it’s eminently doable.  And Americans aren’t as dumb as the Progressives in the White House and HHS think—we can keep up with such a table or set of tables.

This page of notions is just mendacious.