Freedom Line Blog

As ObamaCare’s new mandates and costs approach, public hospitals that often constitute healthcare of last resort are closing.

Over 1,000 of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals are publicly owned, established by philanthropic contributions in order to provide free or reduced-cost care to the poor.  Unfortunately, as noted by The Wall Street Journal, these caregivers simply do not possess the scale to withstand ObamaCare:

Local officials also predict an expensive future as new requirements – for technology quality accounting and care coordination – start under the health care law enacted in March.  Moody’s Investors Service said in April that many stand-alone hospitals won’t have the resources to invest in information technology or manage bundled payments well.  Many non-profits have bad credit ratings and in a tight credit market cannot borrow money, either.  Meanwhile, the federal government is expected to cut aid to hospitals…  ‘By the nature of their small size, their independence and their political entanglements, they are poorly equipped to survive,’ said James Burgdorfer.”

So once again, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime collides with the law of unforeseen and unintended consequences, at the expense of Americans already stretched thin.

Ohhhh, so ~now~ they tell us?  White House allies are instructing operatives to abandon the claim that ObamaCare will reduce healthcare costs and the deficit.  Instead, they now seek to persuade the electorate that we can “improve it.”

According to Politico, the messaging conference call and PowerPoint presentation acknowledges the failure of the promises shamelessly fed to the public by ObamaCare advocates:

The presentation’s final page of ‘Don’ts’ counsels against claiming ‘the law will reduce costs and the deficit.’  The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.”

If this doesn’t make you angry and ready to line up at dawn to vote this November, have your pulse checked.

Even proponents of ObamaCare are now admitting that Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill.”  Those are the words of Yale University professor Jack Balkin, who actually supports the bill.

Throughout his candidacy and now into his presidency, Barack Obama solemnly promised American voters that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone earning under $250,000 per year.  Not just income taxes – he said “any form” of taxes.  When he, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid subsequently dumped their ObamaCare monstrosity upon the resistant nation, however, the bill contained an individual mandate under which Americans who failed to purchase insurance for whatever reason would be assessed a punitive tax.  When career liberal George Stephanopoulos pointed out  to Obama during an ABC News interview that this mandate constitutes a tax, even reading a straightforward definition of “tax” from a dictionary, Obama petulantly objected.

That pesky interview from September now safely behind him, however, get a load of the Obama Administration’s new position on the matter.  In its legal brief defending ObamaCare against the lawsuit to overturn it brought by fifteen different states, Obama contends that the Constitution empowers the federal government “power to lay and collect taxes.”

Thus, it appears that Obama intentionally offered two falsehoods to the American people:  (1) that he would not increase “any form” of taxes upon anyone earning less than $250,000, and (2) that he didn’t consider ObamaCare’s individual mandate a “tax.”  How much deeper can this man bury his campaign false promise of “hope” and “change?”

Dr. Donald Berwick, the Obama Administration’s nominee to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, once praised Britain at the expense of America by saying, “at last a nation where healthcare is a right and carrying a semi-automatic machine gun is a privilege, instead of the other way around.”

Dr. Berwick had worked with Britain’s National Health Service, and callously wrote in 2002 that “most people who have serious pain do not need advanced methods – they just need the morphine and counseling that have been available for centuries.”

Naturally, the Obama Administration said that Dr. Berwick’s comments were “taken out of context” in attempting to sweep the rising controversy under the rug.  The statements, however, speak for themselves.

Get a good look at the potential future under ObamaCare, America.

All politically/financially/culturally destructive things must end, and so it is that the chief of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern, will be stepping down soon.  Ostensibly, it’s because he helped shepherd comprehensive health care “reform” into law, one of his key legislative goals.  But as the New York Times points out, he didn’t achieve passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka “card check”), which eliminates the secret ballot in unionization elections.  Hard to believe that after 14 years at the helm, Captain Ahab Stern is jumping ship before landing the biggest prize for organized labor.  Could it be he’s being groomed for bigger things than a radical, labor version of a community organizer?

No wonder President Barack Obama continues to campaign for his signature domestic policy – precious few people have a clue what it does or when it does it.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.

“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

McLean said the call center had been inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage. That widespread misconception may have originated in part from distorted rhetoric about the legislation bubbling up from the hyper-partisan debate about it in Washington and some media outlets, such as when opponents denounced it as socialism.

“We tell them it’s not free, that there are going to be things in place that help people who are low-income, but that ultimately most of that is not going to be taking place until 2014,” McLean said.

But don’t worry; you’ll start paying for the benefits this year.

H/T: Miami Herald

Within days of ObamaCare’s passage, AT&T, Caterpillar and other American employers announced hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings writedowns pursuant to U.S. accounting laws.  Although Democrats falsely claim that these restatements are mere political attacks aimed at Barack Obama, the simple fact is that they are legally required to report the corporate costs of ObamaCare’s tax increase on the retiree drug benefits that they pay each year. Specifically, the Financial Standard Accounting Board’s 1990 Statement Number 106 mandates earnings restatements due to anticipated future retiree liabilities.  If these employers did not report the writedowns, they’d be prosecuted.

The most despicable reaction of all, however, may be that of two Congressmen who played a critical role in imposing ObamaCare in the first place.  Henry Waxman (D – California) and Bart Stupak (D – Michigan), those two profiles in cowardice and malevolence, have now demanded the CEOs of AT&T, John Deere, Caterpillar and Prudential appear to justify themselves before their committee.   According to their letter, “the new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern.”

In other words, who are you going to believe – Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, Barack Obama and their doctored Congressional Budget Office predictions, or your own actual bottom line and real-world numbers? Every person with a grain of sense anticipated the negative consequences of ObamaCare, but such effects seem to have blindsided ObamaCare’s advocates.

More generally, who are Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak to be hauling the CEOs of some of America’s most valuable and successful companies to Capitol Hill to explain themselves?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  How many jobs have Waxman and Stupak created in their lives compared to AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and others?  How many successful products have Waxman and Stupak contributed to the world economy and human progress?  Why aren’t the CEOs the ones hauling Waxman and Stupak to explain their retrograde economic views and the destruction that they are wreaking on America, rather than vice-versa?  Why aren’t Waxman and Stupak explaining their toxic behavior to a nationwide audience?

We live in an increasingly Orwellian era, and the sheer weight of absurdity may soon cause a snap.

Welcome to the ObamaCare hangover, America.

In his weekly Main Street column entitled “The Tax Police and the Health Care Mandate,” Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn points out a malignant paradox within ObamaCare.  Namely, that ObmaCare’s infamous individual mandate (which compels uninsured Americans to suddenly purchase insurance under penalty of prosecution) will have one of two consequences.  It will either (1) penalize poorer Americans who fail – or find themselves unable – to purchase insurance by unleashing a horde of IRS enforcers upon them;  or, alternatively, (2) remain lightly enforced in order to avoid punishing the poor, thereby escalating our collective taxpayer cost into the stratosphere.

The rationale behind the individual mandate, of course, is that many of ObamaCare’s provisions, such as forcing insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, would make its total cost unaffordable unless healthier and younger uninsured Americans were required to buy coverage.  McGurn notes that Obama was against this individual mandate before he was for it, opposing it during the 2008 Democrat primaries against Hillary Clinton, but unsurprisingly inserting it into ObamaCare’s provisions later on.  Nevertheless, enforcing the individual mandate will require new legions of IRS agents to target Americans who refuse to either purchase insurance or pay the federal tax penalty.

Which creates the paradox.  Those who consider themselves too poor to buy insurance today may still feel that way even when ObamaCare’s mandate is imposed, in which case they’ll find themselves the targets of the IRS.  If, however, federal bureaucrats in their famed mercy refrain from enforcing ObamaCare’s individual mandate in order to avoid persecuting poorer Americans (just as they do not penalize failure to return census forms), the total cost of ObamaCare will far exceed what its proponents promised us while they shoved it up our…  noses.

Nancy Pelosi was right about one thing, though.  We’re sure finding out a lot about ObamaCare now that it’s passed.

Growing up, my mother used to warn my brother and me about an impending stroke of discipline with the phrase, “You’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.”  Most of the time, we got the hint.  Consequently, we did not grow up to be Democrats.

And so I marvel at the continued tone-deafness of Democratic leaders, who are now circulating talking point packets to congressional members heading home for the Easter break.  Apparently, the town hall meetings went so well last year, that more face-to-face discussions about health care are suggested.  Hard to be believe, but these people are both cynical and crazy.  How long will it be before a Democratic congressman’s constituents tar and feather the poor bird?

American liberals love to praise supposedly superior European governance and culture, oblivious to the irony that they nevertheless continue to live in the United States.  This phenomenon became particularly visible during the ObamaCare ordeal, as liberals claimed that we must somehow join the rest of the “industrialized world” in providing unsustainable government-controlled healthcare.

Well, here’s a dose of sobering reality.  As noted on a front page story in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Europe’s Choice:  Growth or Safety Net,” Europe has stagnated economically for the past two decades compared to the United States.  Worse, this has occurred even as Europe continued its failure to carry their own weight with respectable defense expenditures.  From 1990 to 1999, Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.0%, compared to 3.3% for the U.S.  From 2000 to 2008, Europe only grew 1.7%, whereas the U.S. grew 2.2%.

Yet we’re supposed to emulate their example?  Can’t liberals just move there instead?

Here’s yet another reason to flay Andy Stern’s leadership of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  One of the biggest motivators behind the union’s support for Obamacare is the belief that requiring an individual mandate to buy insurance will create more health care jobs ripe for unionization.  Just in time, too, because SEIU is apparently incapable of adequately funding its own pension plans.

What’s the connection? The SEIU needs more new dues-paying members to pay for the retirement of current members if it is to rescue its pension plans from subpar performance. It’s a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. With many of its members employed in health care, the union believes – not illogically – that if more Americans have health insurance, the demand for health care will expand and so will employment in the health sector.

Who says the Democrats aren’t focusing on job creation?

The ongoing, excruciating, resource-draining attempt by Democrats to foist ObamaCare upon an unwilling American public (what ever happened to their promise to “focus on jobs” in 2010, anyway?) by any means necessary, legal or illegal, will obviously cause deafening reverberations in November’s Congressional elections.  With each passing day, scientific polling suggests that a Republican takeover is more and more likely.

In a brilliant commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, however, Michael Solon points out that ObamaCare’s impact may be even more dramatic than Congressional midterms, or even the 1994 Congressional elections that vaulted Republicans to majorities in both houses for the first time since the 1950s.  This is because not only are Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s majorities in jeopardy, but so are Democrat seats in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, which control Congressional district realignment following the 2010 census.  As stated by Solon:

Of all the political consequences that could flow from the national healthcare effort in 2010, the potential of the fall elections to shift 2011 redistricting to the Republicans’ advantage may be the most important.  That puts the long-term viability of the president’s healthcare reform in serious jeopardy, no matter the outcome of the 2012 elections.  While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country…  As Democratic legislators consider their choices, many are missing the impact of an electoral wipeout in 2010 on the redistricting of Congressional seats as well as those in the state legislatures.  The electoral advantage gained from 2011 redistricting would extend the short-term pain of 2010 at least through the redistricting of 2021.”

The late Thomas “Tip” O’Neil once said that “all politics is local.” But the Democrats’ suicide mission in trying to pass ObamaCare may turn O’Neil’s observation on its head and prove that not only are local politics sometimes national, but also enduring.

Conservative radio talk show host and former Reagan Justice Department Chief of Staff, Marc Levin, is planning to challenge via lawsuit Speaker Pelosi’s use of the “Slaughter Solution” to “deem” the Senate health care bill passed.  Pelosi’s maneuver would pass the bill by voting to approve a rule that introduces it.  A draft of the lawsuit can be read here (pdf).  Though it’s likely the federal courts would refuse to hear the case under the political question doctrine, it would seem to be a bedrock constitutional issue whether “deeming” a bill passed is the same as actually voting on it.  Hopefully, we won’t have to find out.

The Cato Institute’s Michael F. Cannon engages in some crisp health care “reform” myth-busting for AOL News today.  My favorite is his succinct evisceration of the claim that the Senate bill isn’t a government takeover of health care.

This legislation would force all Americans to purchase health insurance coverage. Government would control what kind of insurance you purchase, where you purchase it, how much you pay and what kind of medical care you receive. Our health care sector would be “private” in name only.

Once government controls those decisions, there will be nothing left to socialize. Make no mistake — this is a vote on socialized medicine.

Here’s proof that Jeff’s earlier post about 1/3 of current doctors leaving the profession if Obamacare passes may be just what Democratic leaders’ ordered.  According to an op-ed by two medical students, Progressives are skewing the curriculum towards promoting government-run health care.

Medical school curricula should include material on delivery of health care and provide honest viewpoints from both sides using the best data available. I can count numerous examples of the school providing a liberal perspective, but cannot cite one single example where a more conservative position was offered. This steady drumbeat of the progressive worldview is reshaping the minds of America’s future physicians. Ironically, as medical students, we are taught to hold the patient’s best interest in the highest regard. Yet, at the same time, we are taught that more government intervention between the physician and the patient is desirable. Unfortunately, history teaches us the two are often incompatible.

The assault on the time honored patient-physician relationship is happening on many fronts. But the unseen battle within the medical school classroom might be the most important of them all. Will the physicians of tomorrow even recognize the Hippocratic Oath and continue to serve the well-being of the individual patient? Or will our healers become pawns of a government-run health care system and ultimately become servants of the State?

Nationalized health care has long been the Holy Grail for the secular progressive. To reach this end, the left is now doing a textbook end-around of the American voter to achieve this prize. What is happening in the medical school classroom might render what happens in Washington meaningless, no matter how We the People vote.

H/T: Fox News Forum

It is argued that passing Obamacare with zero support from the opposing party will make Washington, D.C. a more partisan place.  Probably so.  But the real, lasting problem with the Democratic strategy of process-be-damned lawmaking is that it flips our national government’s legislative default rule on its head.

As President Obama has lamented, the US Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, which means that most of the language in the document is devoted to restraining the government to ensure the people’s freedom.  Though many hate the filibuster, it’s use relates back to fundamental premises like the separation of powers, and checks and balances.  All led to the conclusion that it should be very difficult for government to act.

Contrast that with the means used to propel Obamacare through Congress, like budget reconciliation and the “Slaughter Solution.”  There is no support  – either historically or constitutionally – for using these measures to grease the skids for substantive policy reform.  The legislative process as laid out in the Constitution is unrecognizable when it comes to Obamacare.  The Democrats who succumb to the temptation of voting for this bill, using these maneuvers, are doing much more than engaging in sharp legislative dealing.  They are irrevocably changing the rules of the game from one governed by laws, to one abused by politicians.

Today’s Washington Post carries an op-ed from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), dissecting this afternoon’s farcical “mark-up” session in the House Budget Committee.  On display will be Obamacare in the form of a “Reconciliation” vehicle.  Like all other stops on the health care “reform” debate, there is almost no chance of Republicans getting in a word, much less an amendment.

No matter.  Ryan is still promoting both his Roadmap for America’s Future and one of many pieces of targeted legislation Republicans have introduced to address the cost and quality of healthcare.  Here is a link to the Patients Choice Act, a document that simply and clearly explains the concept of health care exchanges.  The time it takes to read this brisk 13 pages will be better spent than all the detail-less drivel from breathless reporters repeating rumors of congressional whip counts.

Reports are surfacing that Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee is preparing a rule to accompany the Senate’s version of health care “reform” when it comes to the House for approval.  Already, Democratic leaders are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to bypass a Republican filibuster threat.  But first the House must pass the Senate’s bill before reconciliation can be used.  Enter the “Slaughter Solution.”

Since Speaker Pelosi doesn’t yet have the votes to pass the Senate plan, Slaughter would present a rule “deeming” the bill passed so long as a majority of House members vote for the rule.  Got that?   The geniuses on Capitol Hill are telling themselves that members up for reelection can convince voters that voting for the rule is different than voting for the bill itself, even though voting for the rule passes the bill.

No wonder D.C. is so screwed up.  If the Democratic leadership manages to nationalize one-sixth of the economy by unconstitutionally refusing to have the same bill pass both chambers before sending it to the president, then there will be hell to pay in November.

Another consequence will be an unprecedented opening for a presidential candidate to run as the wise old man of Washington in 2012.  In fact, one of his campaign commercials could feature the School House Rocks version of “How a Bill Becomes a Law.”  Along with the Tea Party movement, millions more Americans would no doubt appreciate a major politician who actually reads and understands the constitutional procedure for making binding federal law.  Heaven knows, the Democrats in Congress and the White House certainly don’t.

And he didn’t do much better with viewers either.  After building up the drama for former Congressman Eric Massa’s (D-NY) appearance on his television show, Glenn Beck ended his program with an apology to those who watched ‘til the bitter end.  “This (information shared by Massa) didn’t affect you (the American people).”

Blame Massa for blowing a golden opportunity to give dates, times, and names of specific instances where politicos crossed the line into illegal or unethical behavior.  Instead, he gave bland jeremiads about the corrupting influence of money in politics, and flipped the narrative on who’s responsible for him stepping down.  Initially, it was the White House and Democratic House Leadership who “forced” his resignation.  Now, he “owns his mistakes” and accepts full responsibility for his resignation.  Huh?  The only reason this is a story is because people were led to believe a member of Congress was ousted to ease passage of health care “reform.”  Now, it is just a story of a seemingly decent guy unable to cope with the insane demands of national politics.

But blame Beck too for not getting at least one specific instance of a date, time, and name before going on the air to ensure the hour wasn’t a waste.  He won’t forget that lesson next time.  For now, it looks like the Obama Administration – and Rahm Emanuel in particular – dodged a potentially catastrophic revelation about the practice of Big Boy politics.  Like the Rod Blagojevich smoking gun that never fired, Eric Massa had his chance to establish his credibility with specifics.  His failure to do so means that his critics will be the ones taking up the lion’s share of his fifteen minutes in the spotlight.  Too bad.

Anyone watching the British Parliament’s “Question Time” over the years knows that the one issue that will be discussed no matter which party is in power: the National Health Service.  The NHS is adept at socializing medicine but precious little else.  To hear both Tories and Labour MPs tell it, the service is chronically underfunded, and hopelessly incapable of reducing waiting times for patients to see doctors.  It is precisely the kind of rationed health care that American conservatives are warning will be inflicted on United States citizens if Obamacare is passed into law.

But battling Leviathan isn’t the only consequence of nationalizing the health industry.  As the prominence of NHS during “Question Time” shows, nationalization moves a nation’s political center irrevocably to the Left.  Why?  Because putting everyone involved with medicine on a government payroll eliminates private choices for almost all voters, and with it, the ability of markets to provide competition and choices.  Thus, like roads, utilities, and garbage collection, delays in service and controlling costs become problems for politicians – not entrepreneurs – to fix.  And so, even politicians who would otherwise oppose government control are left with arguing how to manage a failed system.

As Mark Steyn notes:

I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”). The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

This is why President Obama can push repeatedly for Democratic members of Congress to fall on their swords for a dramatically unpopular health care “reform” bill – he knows the power shift in American politics will benefit his ideology in the long run, even if it weakens his party in the short term.