Category Archives: regulation

Negligence

Posted on by
Reply

An Obama-administration official announced that the portion of the Healthcare.gov system that would allow users to pay insurance companies with marketplace subsidies will not be available for another two months.

And yet ObamaMart was rolled out 7 weeks ago, knowing this small component wasn’t ready.

A couple of possible outcomes: an insuree might show up at the doctor’s office—or hospital—and discover he owes full freight, even though he’d “successfully” signed up, subsidies and all.  Alternatively, an insuree might show up at the doctor’s office—or hospital—and discover he’s not covered at all, yet, even though he’d “successfully” signed up.

Indeed, Henry Chao, CMS’ Deputy Chief Information Officer, has already testified in front of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce that as much as 40% of the technical systems supporting ObamaMart aren’t even built.  That sample of missing parts includes security, in addition to this matter of payment.

Holy cats.

Some Lies of Obamacare

Posted on by
Reply

It seems, now, that President Barack Obama’s administration knew of the potential for the ObamaMart failure as early as last March (but, no, not Obama himself; he only hears about things from the newspapers, not from anyone in his employ).  Then, apparently, they promptly lied about that potential ‘way back then.

Key administration officials at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services received briefings this past spring from McKinsey & Co, a private consulting firm that reviewed more than 200 documents and conducted interviews with HHS staff to identify potential problems before the Oct 1 rollout.

…including insufficient testing and evolving requirements. The report also warned that the program relied too heavily on outside contractors.

And

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Medicare Chief Marilyn Tavenner, and Gary Cohen, a Medicare and Medicaid oversight official, attended a briefing on the firm’s analysis on April 4[.]

Then

Sebelius testified at an oversight committee hearing two weeks after being briefed on the McKinsey report that the implementation of ObamaCare was on track[.]

The seeming lie nature of Sebelius’ testimony—certainly, problems identified in March could have been addressed by Rollout Date—is indicated by the fact that when Healthcare.gov ObamaMart launched, those problems, or problems very like those identified by McKinsey, remained in place, unresolved.

Free Speech, Progressive Style

Posted on by
Reply

A day after he questioned President Obama’s decision to unwind a major tenet of the health-care law and said the nation’s capital might not go along, DC insurance commissioner William P White was fired.

White did acknowledge that the Deputy Mayor who fired him didn’t specifically lay the cause off to White’s reluctance to rubberstamp Obama, but the DM didn’t give any other reason, either.  And the timing of the firing is…curious.

In a statement White issued after Obama announced his ObamaFix, White said in part,

The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate[.]

A senior city official, carefully speaking only anonymously, said White’s statement should have been sent to Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins for prior approval first.  So, the DC Mayor reserves to himself the actions of DC Health Link and he reserves to himself authority for determining the validity and legality of insurance policies sold in the district—not the insurance commissioner’s office.

Yeah.  And if the political line isn’t toed, if the political, pre-written speech is not carefully recited, you’re out.

Hmm….

Free Speech, Belgian Style

Posted on by
Reply

Didier Bellens, CEO of Belgacom (Belgium’s largest telecommunications company) has been fired.  He complained too much about government regulation and taxes.

As The Wall Street Journal described it,

Over the years, Mr Bellens has launched a number of broadsides against the government.  Friday’s dismissal comes after the latest attack, in which he asked a business club breakfast in the chic Brussels suburb of Uccle, “Who’s the worst shareholder?”  His answer: “The Belgian state.”

Yep.  The Belgian government owns 53.5% of Belgacom.  And the government disapproved of Bellens’ political—even business—speech.  Last Friday, Prime Minister Elio di Rupo fired Bellens, announcing

The repeated, accumulated outbursts have irreversibly damaged the confidence of the Belgian state in Mr Bellens[.]

There can’t even be an argument that Bellens hadn’t been performing up to snuff from a business perspective.  Stefaan Genoe, a telecommunications analyst at brokerage Petercam, had this about Bellens’ results:

Overall, Belgacom has evolved very well strategically during his tenure.  It has a very healthy balance sheet.

Dividends are still attractive, at 8 or 9%[.]

And the Progressives in our own government want to Europeanize us.

Hmm….

Should It Be?

Posted on by
Reply

Fox News asked, over the weekend, whether ObamaCare can be saved.  But the real question is whether it should be—that hasn’t been established, yet.

Indeed, the basic question is whether this country should be providing universal health welfare—which is what Obamacare attempts to do; this law eliminates any insurance aspect from its purported health “insurance” program—at all.

Obamacare, as it stands, is not what Americans want.  Poll after poll, across the three years since the law’s enactment, demonstrate this.  The law’s internal contradictions, quite apart from its masquerade as insurance, make its efficacy—its very legitimacy—nonexistent.

Obamacare has the poor subsidizing the better off: young and healthy are required to buy “insurance” they don’t need at inflated prices in order that older Americans can buy “insurance” at artificially depressed prices.

Single men and empty nesters are required to buy “insurance” that covers women’s prenatal and maternity care—as well as the extremely cheap commodity of birth control pills so that women of child-bearing and rearing age can buy these coverages at artificially deflated prices—and get their birth control pill for “free.”

Millions of Americans (5 million and counting in the private individual market, the ObamaFix notwithstanding, with small business policies to follow in a few months and the employer mandate to take effect in a year) are being forced off their insurance policies, policies for which preference has been demonstrated both by Americans’ purchase of them and the hue and cry over their loss, all so that they will be driven into the ObamaMart to buy government-approved “insurance” at much higher premiums and much higher deductibles.

The law’s design is explicit: to redistribute wealth.  Period.  This is a redistribution of wealth from those who don’t have it to those who, if not exactly wealthy, generally are better off and certainly more established.  This is a redistribution of wealth, also, from one group of sort-of-haves to a different group—government preferred—of sort-of-haves.