I’d say the Liberals are basically neutered. They were out of control, but totally blew everything, like Lenny and a fragile furry creature. America’s probably learned its lesson for a decade or two, unless Sarah Palin gets elected and gives the old pendulum yet another big health *kick*

I was pondering some parallels today between Bush’s decisions about the Iraq invasion and Obama on healthcare reform.

Bush’s mistake was letting some over-confident civvies dictate troop numbers per his strategy, as opposed to his old man’s approach to desert storm and shield. Bush I sent what the Generals requested. Bush II sent what Rummy thought he could get away with.

Obama took a similar approach to healthcare reform. He let some civvie non-doctors slap together the most absurdly Liberal stack of horseshit they thought they could get away with, and inadvertently gave his enemies a big heavy stick to thump on him with for the foreseeable future.

They both had a brilliant chance to do something amazing – and shitted all over it. Bush had the chance to free Iraq in a sudden and awesome way. Just think about it!!! What if they had gone in with a slightly longer-term strategy and/or an appropriate number of troops to keep the peace in Iraq. In 2002 we would be where we are NOW in Iraq. Think of the credibility Bush would have had! Afghanistan – check, Saddam – check, Iran???

Likewise, Obama could have socialized US medicine by his 8th year in office. What if he had passed a small highly popular bill for health reform in his first year? Something including Republican ideas that would tight a few of them in? Something with real benefits that would be felt within the year or next? By end of year two, or sooner, he would have had health-reform-credibility and the capital needed to easily pass another ginger step. By his second term he could have carefully constructed the real “Big Fucking Deal.”

Of course, he would have also needed to keep that cap and trade bill stuffed up the collective Liberal ass, and not pulled a recklessly irresponsible and totally thoughtless ‘stimulus’ bill. I’m not saying he should have continued the tax-cut Bush approach to bracing and patching the economy. I’m saying he would have had to constructed and passed an actual stimulus bill, not a goody-grab labeled as such.

He went the belligerent rout though, and will have been a lame-duck the second half of his presidency, assuming he doesn’t find a way to pull-off a second term.

1. Expensive Death

We spend 1/3 or more of our overall health care resources in the last year of life, often exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars, and only achieving a few months of weeks of poor quality life.

But how do we deal with this? Death panels? Will a population that doesn’t trust bureaucracy well enough to send cash in the mail trust one to manage The Plug?

What about the market? Currently, commercial insurance pays away while the family - does whatever can be done – nursing grandma along for months, or years, senile, hopeless, unaware, with a final price tag often exceeding a million dollars – an amount that if spend elsewhere might vaccinate 100 school districts and check another couple hundred for scoliosis.

Dying is scary. But we need to find a way to face death without fighting it tooth-and-nail. We need to stop using enormous amounts of resources on hopeless cases in exchange for prolonged agony. We need to let dead people die – but we won’t.

2. Heath Care is Expensive

When you buy a computer you either go shopping around, looking for a good deal on a system, or you buy a system that specifically meets your needs. Then you pay for it, either with cash right then or with a credit card and pay it off later. You don’t appear at Best Buy and expect everyone to wait on you and bring you the most advanced system available; a state-of-the-art $1500 processor, $450 for water cooling, 1200 watt $300 power supply, $200 case, $800 RAM, $800 RAID of HDs; and ignore the prices, because someone else is paying.

But that’s how we buy health care. We complain about the price of our insurance, but when we need treatment we expect space age miracles, and when we really get sick, we expect the insurance to show up at the hospital with dump-trucks loaded down with cash.

Anything treated this was is going to get expensive, as it should. We are talking about prolonging our lives and improving the quality of life. It shouldn’t cost less.

We need to accept the price of our long comfortable lives, but we won’t.

3. Chronic Illness

Why don’t we treat health insurance more like car insurance? Certain parts of health care, although sometimes expensive, aren’t unforeseen, like regular tests like cholesterol levels and simple treatments for mild illnesses like a sore throat. Why can’t we just pay for this kind of thing like we do everything else, and save insurance for the sudden horrible things no one can afford?

Regardless, chronic illness fits neither the medical insurance model nor the car insurance model. Some people, for whatever reason, are burdened with regular, constant, indefinite health care costs – disproportionate to the population, like diabetics.

We talk about poor people who don’t have access to health care resources. But that’s not the issue. The issue is sick people who don’t have access to health care resources, or don’t have access to enough. In other words, many poor people don’t worry about getting health insurance, even when it’s free, because they don’t need it, they aren’t chronically ill. While some people do have health insurance but they still struggle to get by, because they have numerous expenses due to their chronic illness.

If we want to address inequality, and fix the shortcomings of our health care system, we have to recognize the inequality of chronic illness, but we don’t.

The real F-ed up thing about the Obama administration demanding financial information from these large corporations is  it’s in a publicly owned (in terms of stock holders not govt) company’s interest to state the highest profits that it can. In other words, fluffing up those losses would in most cases directly cause those CEOs to lose income, their bonuses are based on earnings. And in all cases lower earnings reports – or large loss reports – will adversely affect stock prices and investment, essentially harming the company. Usually company officers are dragged before panels because they report dishonestly low losses or high earnings. Losses like these usually mean a CEO slot gets turned over and another vindictive pizza parlor manager is born.

The accusation is akin to accusing someone of poisoning themselves to spite someone for feeding them poison. But we all know what is really going on here. All these companies are run by white male fat-cats who can’t stand that a black man is president, don’t want sick babies to have health insurance, and know where the secret prison is that’s holding John Lenin to prevent world peace so they can keep getting rich off the war machine.

I wish we would get rid of these career jackasses.

I was watching celebrity apprentice. Rod Blagojevich is on there – or was. He’s adorable, but so totally useless unless you need to talk a paper bag into being a plastic one. He can barely use a cell phone and can’t operate a computer. Another guy opened up Word for him, and Rod took a half hour to type a paragraph.

Don’t try to apply logic to the health care bill. It degraded down from a Leftist dream-bill to an Obama political make-or-break stack of paper labeled “Healthcare Reform”. That’s it. It was called “Healthcare Reform”. Everyone knows the bill is poorly constructed, complicated, contradictory, unspecific, full of random specific chunks of Santa Clause, uses phony math and budgetary widgets, and is bristling with dangerous taxes. That’s why they had to cheat it through on reconciliation.

They’re talking about immigration reform now. I hope like hell that bunch fools can come to some reasonableagreement. Let’s hope the first thing Pelosi or Reid lets out on the floor isn’t written by a wack-job amnesty enthusiast. And let’s hope if they do bring up a rational bill there will be more than Graham on the Republican’s side ready to support it – despite their butt-hurtedness form the health reform ass raping.

Well done Esquire Dove (I still like Litigious Dove better). Logic and facts are a musical combination. That cleared up my thinking a bit.

I don’t like either path. As you point out, the power to tax path is just dishonest. A tax only applied to individuals who don’t do something – logically – is a penalty.

And as contrary as it is to initial constitutional Federal powers and State roles, according to precedence, a mandate most probably is, or will be deemed, constitutional by shoving it down the commerce clause pipe. Although, I’d keep a plunger handy, probably some old towels and news paper too. What irritates me most though is – what better exercise is there for a federation than to experiment with improving health care and access to it in 50 different ways?

And I agree: the Republicans shouldn’t get into this court business. But, at least they’re challenging a new law, which is healthy, instead of trying to make a new law through the courts after it fails in the legislature, or the other way around. It’s not a productive venture for them politically. They should be focusing on the stuff that will get them more seats in the legislature so President Palin can reform Obama’s reform. After all, she won’t be hindered by that silly old thing they used to do – filibuster I think they called it.

Also, forcing a decision in the Supreme court could turn a painful stretch in the commerce clause into an official big step – another powerful precedent on the slippery slope of precedence. And if it goes the other way, what then? For there to be coverage for all, all must invest. Which means, in this world logic demands a mandate, regardless if it’s Republican or Democrat reform.

If I were on the Republican’s side of the proverbial chess board, I’d minimize these court challenges and focus onshowing all the goofy flaws, confusion, contradictions, and other inherent problems any huge, hurried, and sloppily compromised bill like this has – and talk about REFORM or REPLACE and stop all the REPEAL talk. Then I’d be as reasonable as possible with this upcoming immigration reform and try to keep all the anti-amnesty enthusiasts calm, especially in the Teaparty. Protesting Liberal super-spending and taxing is perfectly rational. Some might argue anything but is irrational.

But I’ve got a bad feeling there are plenty of Tea Partiers who will protest anything containing anything that might be interpreted as amnesty. And sure, amnesty is wildly unpopular, but the alternatives are nothing and deportation. Those aren’t popular either. Regardless, Republicans need to treat immigration reform kindly so as not to keep frightening off the Latino vote. The Latino block and the recent-immigrant block are both such a good fit under the Conservative philosophy it would be tremendously unwise to piss them away irrationally fighting against amnesty – or whatever Obama decides to call it – and let the Dems scoop them up with their staple promises of entitlements.

Although Noisy Dove’s take on the constitutionality of the healthcare mandate made an interesting story, as Esquire Dove, I wanted to chime in on why I think the lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 14 states is likely to (and should) fail.  I do want to preface this post by admitting that I have neither read the entire healthcare bill nor the actual court papers filed in the suit at issue.  I also do not have access to the amount of legal precedent that I would like to make truly thorough arguments.  These are lay-opinions, not professional, make of them what you will.

As I understand it, the main thrust of the lawsuit (and an interesting question regardless) is that the new federal healthcare bill violates the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 10th Amendment provides that, “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states.”  Basically, the argument against the bill’s constitutionality is that the healthcare bill exceeds Congress’ enumerated powers.

I agree with Noisy Dove that the best argument for the bill’s constitutionality is that Congress has the power to regulate healthcare under the Commerce Clause.  Some commentators have argued that the bill is constitutional under Congress’ taxing and spending power, but I disagree.  Even though it may be called a “tax”, the penalty for failing to purchase healthcare is not a tax but exactly that — a penalty.  The healthcare bill applies a charge only to those who do not purchase healthcare, in other words don’t purchase healthcare and you have to pay a fine.  The fine does not become a tax simply because the amount due may be delineated based on income brackets or paid at tax time.  Accounting for income levels is no different in this case from adjusting a fine based on the gravity of the offense.  If Congress had wanted to create a tax incentive for purchasing healthcare it would have been very simple – just tax everyone for healthcare and then provide a tax credit equal to the amount of tax charged for those who purchase their own care.  This is, however, not what they did.

Nonetheless, I do believe that Congress had authority to pass this healthcare legislation under the Commerce Clause.  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution affords Congress the power, “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”  No matter what the original intent of the Commerce Clause, which I agree was probably as Noisy Dove describes, it has a long history of litigation and interpretation by the Supreme Court (seems like about one-third of my Constitutional Law course was spent on this one topic).  This has created several layers to Congress’ power that are not obvious from the text.

First, Congress may regulate wholly intrastate activities of interstate commerce.  See Shreveport Rate Cases.  Even though a person may not cross state lines to purchase his or her individual healthcare, and it is, therefore, a wholly intrastate activity, it is extremely difficult to argue that healthcare costs do not affect interstate commerce.  The Supreme Court has “identified three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under its commerce power”: (1) “the use of the channels of interstate commerce;” (2) “the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities;” (3) “those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”  United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558-59, 115 S. Ct. 1624, 1629-30 (1995) (internal citations omitted).  Hospitals, insurance companies, prescription drugs and drug companies all have profound effects on interstate commerce.

In the past fifty years, the only laws passed by Congress that the Supreme Court has ruled were not sufficiently related to interstate commerce were: (1) a law involving the carrying of handguns in school zones; and (2) parts of the violence against women act.  The regulation of healthcare and the healthcare industry has a much more direct affect upon the nation’s economy than the tangential relationship in those cases.  Under the loose standards of Supreme Court precedent, I think that Obamacare passes the test.

As to whether Congress may mandate that people purchase something, i.e. healthcare, the scope of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause is very broad.  Congress has discretion to choose its means so long as those means are “reasonably adapted” to the Constitution.  See Heart of Atlanta v. U.S..  Congress has a long history of unfunded mandates, which are often controversial, but perfectly legal.  I see this as no different.

Of course there is a powerful slippery-slope argument to be made.  For example, one could argue that if Congress can mandate that people purchase healthcare, they could also mandate that people buy GM cars (since the federal government now has a financial interest in the company).  Honestly, Congress may be able to legally mandate something along those lines, but at some point, we have to have trust that our republican form of government (not the Republican party, but our representative form of government) will prevail.  Personally, I do not think that the chances of re-election for anyone who would vote that a person must purchase a GM car would be very good, and the same may be true for those who voted for the healthcare bill.  That is the beauty of our government.  Laws are made, the people speak, and laws can be changed.  I think that there is a much greater danger in running to the courts for this type of dispute because the court is asked to interpret the United States Constitution, which is not easily changed.  Such decisions have much longer-enduring and devastating effects; just look at Roe v. Wade.  I find it extremely interesting how conservatives often complain, and in fact campaign on, “left-wing activist judges,” but yet go running to the courts to change long-established constitutional law when they lose a political battle.  Et tu?  Et tu?

Hey, wouldn’t you know, I realized today I do still have a little respect for Obama still. I thought it was all gone – beaten out of me, blood and screams – but it’s not.

I heard how Gibbs answered the question about removing the tax exemption on that subsidy big companies were getting to keep retirees on their prescription drug plan – the one that saves the gov’t money. Because those companies have to count the lose this quarter, and it’s in the hundreds of millions in loses, and hundreds or thousands of lost jobs, and so on.

lol Well, Gibbs says they just closed a ‘loop-hole’. (Right, because that’s how things should be. You get taxed on your money, you buy something with what’s left. To encourage you to buy something particular, the government gives some money, and then the government taxes that money. LOL

And then Gibbs claimed that the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs are all figureblown out of proportion. How would Gibbs or the Whitehouse have any idea? No one has given them any figures yet!

So I was pulling some veggies out of the refrigerator while I was listening to this, and though to myself, “Obama’s going to can his ass, we won’t see him in a second term, Obama’s got no excess loyalty like Bush…” Then I realized such a though would require that I trust Obama’s judgment enough to assume he’d can a child like the stammering and inappropriate Captain Weird Gibbs of the Strange Brigade. lol “Yes we’ll can.”

Be sure to check out Thursday’s post here at Noisy Dove for a great article by Esquire Dove on the constitutionality of the new health care reform bill. There is a lot of discussion of whether it can be repealed or fought in the supreme court. Our resident expert, an attorney and J.D., has an insiders view from Washington about this hotly debated topic. Find answers and get new questions on Thursday from this fascinating post. The information will be invaluable and the insight will get you really thinking. Remember, Thursday, Esquire Dove will lay it all out for us!

Verizon sent an email out to its employees recently. Here’s the important part:

[Some stuff Verizon likes about the bill…] However, due to the varying effective dates included in the legislation, we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short-term. These cost increases are primarily driven by two provisions.

The first is a provision that affects the Medicare Part D subsidy for prescription drug coverage. Because Verizon offers retiree prescription drug coverage today, the government provides a 28 percent subsidy to help offset the financial burden of offering that coverage. The subsidy was intended to help employers continue to offer prescription drug coverage for retirees so that these retirees would not have to use the Government Medicare Part D program. However, changes affecting the Part D subsidy will make it less valuable to employers, like Verizon, and as a result, may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.

Additionally, there is a provision that taxes high-value health plans expected to begin in 2018. Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the thresholds in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTk1OWNjNGNmYWJiOTIzY2E4YjYyYmJjOTJhMGQwZDg

You might remember Caterpillar being in the news a few months ago. In 2009 their business dropped by 75% and  Obama made a visit promoting the stimulus bill. Well, they’re in the news again, this time in regards to Obamacare.

Since 2003, when Medicare Part D was enacted, the senior citizens prescription drug bill, more than 3,500 companies have received a tax-free subsidy for keeping retirees on their generous private prescription drug plans. Reason being, the subsidy has saved the Medicare money because it would cost more than the subsidy to have these retirees using Medicare Part D.

Well, Obamacare fixes that somewhere in its 2700 pages, and subjects these subsidies to taxes. And in Caterpillar’s case, that’s cutting $100 million out of its earnings this quarter.

More detail: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703312504575142313494421460.html