Tag Archives: morality

Some More re Obamacare

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The Wall Street Journal provided an interactive and a graph earlier this week in their online issue.

The Healthcare.gov Explorer, available here, allows you to quickly explore the highlights of what’s available in your county.  As I’ve mentioned before, what I can get in my little county in Texas would be vastly more expensive in terms of premiums required and deductibles to be paid by me before the health plan would begin to pay (only) some of my expenses, were I to have to replace what my wife’s employer provides due to the employer’s decision to cancel its program.

This (these) graph(s) shows the subsidies you’re paying, both in terms of additional Obamacare taxes and in terms of those higher premiums and deductibles in order to pay for someone else’s health plan.  I’ve broken the WSJ‘s single image into two parts for convenience.  Keep in mind that the example presented is for a single person (and for that person living in Ohio).  The first part gives the basis for subsidy calculations:

This second part gives the additional subsidies that are available under Obamacare:

I’ve written elsewhere about the poverty trap that is government welfare, and the rational nature of the economic decision to stay on welfare rather than take a wage increase which is that trap.  Here, we see that a person making $11,490 (a student, perhaps) who graduates and takes an entry-level job at $28,725 will see his health plan out-of-pocket costs skyrocket from $1,000/yr to $5,000 and his $100 deductible go to $1,500.  He’ll also see his monthly premium (heroically assuming that the two plans in these two graphs have identical premiums, but you get the idea) increase by $1,212 per year.  The total health plan cost increase of $6,612 per year represents nearly 40% of that wage increase—and this is before considering the other welfare subsidies which this man also loses from that wage increase.

Budget Lies

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President Barack Obama, aided and abetted by the mendacious NLMSM, is touting his latest “budget” proposal as cutting spending by $600 billion over the next 10 years.  But Scott Rasmussen, cited in The Wall Street Journal, has noted,

in the current year, the federal government is expected to spend $3,651 billion.  …the president’s budget calls for spending $3,901 billion in 2015.  That’s $250 billion more than this year.  It’s not a one-year aberration either.  Spending increases are projected every single year for the next decade and beyond.

Calling that a spending cut is an outright lie.  Even if the spending increases are smaller increases than originally planned, they’re still increases, not cuts.

As Rasmussen also pointed out, this isn’t unique to Obama, though; it’s been going on since at least the ’70s.  But it’s got to stop.  Full stop.

For Progressives, Some Lives are More Important than Others

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King Cove sits 11 miles southeast of Cold Bay in Alaska, a distance that often takes a lifetime, under current conditions, to travel.  That’s because there is no road between the two towns, only an over-water boat path, and a small airport in King Cove that’s weather-closed a third of the year.  Cold Bay has an all-weather airport, though.

The residents of King Cove want—need—a road connecting the two towns, and they’ve been fighting the Federal government for one for 30 years.  The Feds get the veto authority because the land route for the gravel road (all that the locals are asking) runs through Federal land.

Whence the need?

Cove residents say a road is necessary so they can reach an all-weather airport in Cold Bay that will transport them to Anchorage, about 625 miles away, for medical treatment.  They say that in emergency situations, it’s a matter of life and death.

According to local Aleutian elders, 19 people have died since 1980 as a result of the impossible-to-navigate weather conditions during emergency evacuations.

That’s the lifetime it takes to get from King Cove to Cold Bay under current conditions.

Never mind that; the Federal government has its own priorities.

[T]he Department of Interior announced it was rejecting plans for a proposed land swap that would allow the road to be built.  The Dec 23 decision cited the negative environmental impact on grizzly bears, caribou, and water fowl like the Pacific black brant.

“(Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s) decision on King Cove was heartless and wrong, and her message to me ever since has been that I need to ‘just get over it and move on,'” Senator Lisa Murkowski(R, AK)….

And

During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital.  But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge.

“She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,'” State Representative Bob Herron (D)….

That land swap?  Alaska had offered over 43,000 acres for the 1,800, or so, needed for the short road.

But animal welfare is more important to these Feds than human lives.

Annals of Obamacare Lies

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is spouting more of them.  And with a straight face, too; it’s like she actually believes what she’s saying.  Which would be even worse.

There is absolutely no evidence and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act.

Leaving aside the well-documented instances of reduced hours, delayed (or canceled) hiring, canceled plant expansions, and so on that are occurring as a direct result of Obamacare, Sebelius is having a negative impact on jobs with her own Departmental edicts.  She’s already ordered, for instance, the Obamacare-maximum allowed cuts to funding for home health care services.

The cuts were deep enough that officials offered a damaging prediction of the impact saying, it was estimated that approximately 40% of providers would have negative margins.

In fact, those cuts put in jeopardy 498,000 jobs of home health care workers who work just for that 40% of firms that will be forced into the red—the kind of home health workers who allow Yvonne Wightman, 98, to avoid expensive hospital or nursing home stays by getting care at home.

But it’s all good: now Ms Wightman has that lowered-cost Obamacare Plan to cover those stays.  Oh, wait….

Are We Retreating from Engagement?

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William Kristol in The Weekly Standard:

Kiev is ablaze.  Syria is a killing field.  The Iranian mullahs aren’t giving up their nuclear weapons capability, and other regimes in the Middle East are preparing to acquire their own.  Al Qaeda is making gains and is probably stronger than ever.  China and Russia throw their weight around, while our allies shudder and squabble.
…
Having withdrawn from Iraq, and seeing it now fall apart, the administration is nonetheless determined to get out of Afghanistan.  Its Russia “reset” is a joke, and its “pivot to Asia” an empty slogan.  Secretary of State John Kerry huffed and puffed when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons last year, and asserted it was a Munich moment.  How right he was! Kerry came back brandishing a piece of paper, and Assad remains in power.

Indeed.  But it’s OK, because—look! Shiny!

Kerry now says that global climate change may be the weapon of mass destruction we should most fear.

It’s going to be a hard two years.  And it’s going to be harder, for many more than just two, repairing the damage.