Obamacare, Gay Marriage and Disparate Impact – 25 Hours Which Will Live in Infamy

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When historians look back on the collapse of the United States and seek to pinpoint the beginning of the end, they will no doubt look to the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. If they want to narrow the focus they will point to the period of his reign between 10:00 AM June 25th and 11:00 AM June 26th. Ted Cruz has charitably labeled this period as “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history”. It’s slightly more than 24 hours, but he’s spot on. In fact, he’s far too charitable, they are the simply the most destructive 25 hours in American history.

To some that is no doubt hyperbole, after all during Pearl Harbor 2,400 Americans died, on D-Day 2,500 did and on September 11th almost 3,000 Americans died. How is it even remotely possible that Supreme Court decisions giving gays the right to marry, the sick the ability to keep their healthcare subsidies and the government the power to fight discrimination could compare with the deaths of thousands of Americans? Tragically that is the question conservatives are faced with.

The answer, simply put, is that the United States Constitution is the rule of law for 320 million Americans and during one single 25 hour period last week Barack Obama and the Supreme Court cut out its very heart. They essentially eviscerated the document that has helped improve the lives of billions of people around the world over the last century and a half and provided the world with a great deal of stability and relative peace for the last 70 years.  Whether it’s American inventions or American industry or the American military, the United States has been a power for good – albeit an imperfect one – around the world because we had the strongest foundation of representative government yet established. While our Republic has been slow to react on occasion, the basic structure of individual rights protected by the Constitution and the powers ordained, assigned and limited by it have been the rock upon which the greatest nation in human history was built. On Thursday and Friday of last week the Supreme Court endorsed Barack Obama’s shredding of it.

On Thursday in King v. Burwell the Court destroyed the notion that words actually mean what they say. In the legislation that created Obamacare, Congress explicitly stated that subsidies could only go to citizens who purchased insurance on “exchanges established by the States”. When it turned out that many states refused to be coerced into creating such exchanges, Barack Obama simply decided the IRS would issue subsidies to everyone, even those who purchased insurance via exchanges not “established by the States”. Essentially the Supreme Court said “No problem”. As much of a problem as Obamacare is, this decision is far worse. Why? Because while Obamacare can be overturned, the Supreme Court has now set the precedent that the Executive Branch has the power to rewrite laws it doesn’t agree with without looking to Congress to pass constitutionally mandated legislation. That is literally a dagger into the heart of the document’s core separation of powers. Once the executive branch has the power to rewrite laws, what is Congress other than a convenient straw man target whenever a president needs to publicly justify his desire to act?

In a second case on Thursday, the Supreme Court decreed that Barack Obama can now decide where you live. Actually, that is hyperbole, but not by much. In Texas v. The Inclusive Communities Project the court decided that the president can use “disparate impact” to decide whether communities are guilty of discrimination, regardless of whether they have actually discriminated or not. (In this case seeking to protect employees or customers from convicted criminals counts as discrimination!) This literally means that the federal government can look at your community and if it doesn’t like the racial, ethnic or any other makeup, it can coerce the city or the municipality to changing it. I call it the Obamanization of your neighborhood. Let’s say you grew up in Southeast DC, a low income and high crime neighborhood of the nation’s capital. You start a business, find success and move out to McLean, a Virginia suburb of DC and one of the highest income and safest communities in the country. There aren’t many low income families in that community.  Too bad for thinking you could leave your past behind.  Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, even if no one in McLean ever perpetrated one single discriminatory act, if the feds decide the diversity isn’t quite right they can force the a change by coercing the community to build or provide low income housing or otherwise figuring out how to adjust the racial, ethnic or financial population so that it accurately reflects the government’s desires.  The government already had the power to tell employers who they must hire, they already had the power to dictate a schools’ diversity targets and now, thanks to the Supreme Court and Barack Obama they can now tell communities and neighborhoods what they must look like. After work and school, there’s not an enormous amount in life other than faith and families. How much longer before churches risk losing their tax exemptions based on their hue of their congregations and the government decides there are too many monochrome marriages taking place?

Finally there is Friday’s travesty of a decision. In Obergefell v. Hodges the Supreme Court decided there is a right to gay marriage, and in the process likely put a bull’s-eye on the back of the 1st Amendment. Essentially the Court created a fictional right that will trump a right that is explicitly protected in the 1st Amendment, and it did it while the country was in the midst of a vigorous discussion as to how to deal with the issue. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of American liberty; indeed it was the motivating factor for many of the people who founded this nation. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, that freedom is gone. Across the country we will see churches, bakers, photographers and service providers of all sorts finding themselves in jeopardy of losing their money, their businesses and in some cases their freedom simply because they are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and refusing to violate the tenants of their faiths.

And so it goes… the beginning of the end as the Constitution is shredded. Words no longer mean what they say, the government gets to decide where what our communities look like and courts get to invent new rights while deciding which others we get to exercise, even those constitutionally protected.

If one were drawing up the plans for a dictatorship based on the rule of man rather than a republic based on the rule of law, the 25 hours of Supreme Court folly last week make a pretty good foundation. That’s great when the man making the rules agrees with you… but what happens when the same freedom to act is in the hands of the guy who disagrees with you?

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Jesus spoke about the futility of building one’s life on a shaky foundation.

Dems and Liberals have been building their futures on a shaky foundation that means its latest victories are Pyrrhic victories.

Dems are behind the latest attempt to keep Greece in the EU.
Why?
Because it fits their ”narrative.”
Greece is Dem/Liberal governance on steroids.
It is a complete and utter failure.
Dems/Liberal and the Greek Leftist leaders are in deep denial of this fact.
They think printing money is the solution.
But it can’t work and won’t work.
Unemployment in Greece is over 44%.

Here in the US printing money hasn’t stopped their house of cards from starting to fall, either.

By how many votes did Puerto Rico fail to become a state?
Only a few.
Yet Dem/Liberal policies have ruined Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico cannot pay its debts.
(No state can legally be in that situation.)
Puerto Rico has an extremely high minimum wage imposed by our federal gov’t……Someone working full time for the minimum wage earns $15,080 a year, which isn’t that much less than the median income in Puerto Rico of $19,624.
Our federal gov’t also imposed lots of regulations and restrictions and a gigantic gov’t bureaucracy in Puerto Rico.
Unemployment is over 22% in Puerto Rico.

The Dem/Leftist narrative is failing everywhere it has been in effect for a while, city, state, nation.
Now we are seeing that narrative validated by a few SCOTUS decisions.
So what? In the long run it won’t make any difference.
The employer mandate takes effect in just a few months.
Soon after that the subsidy program changes drastically, dropping most people off.
With those things (if ObamaCare is even still law by then) policies MUST skyrocket as well as co-pays, deductibles and taxes.
The gay marriage decision allows all wealthy people and farm owners before they die to marry whomsoever they wish to leave their estate to thereby bypassing any and all estate taxes.

Just as with Texas v. The Inclusive Communities Project, liberals and liberal policies fail to bring the lowest up to acceptable levels, so they strive to bring the successful down closer to the lower levels. Liberalism IS failure. If fact, since changing the meanings of words is all the rage, we should change the meaning of “liberal” to “failure”.

If this is so important to liberals, why don’t they sell their expensive homes in exclusive neighborhoods and move to the poorer precincts? Their nice, new homes would raise property values and, once several liberal families (since they, above all others, think this is a wonderful idea) move in, businesses will follow, income will flow, jobs will be created, crime rates will drop, poverty will vanish and the liberal utopia will be spawned.

Come on, liberals; put your money where your mouth is and save us!!

@Bill: As the original post noted:

Thursday, the Supreme Court decreed that Barack Obama can now decide where you live……
In Texas v. The Inclusive Communities Project the court decided that the president can use “disparate impact” to decide whether communities are guilty of discrimination, regardless of whether they have actually discriminated or not.
(In this case seeking to protect employees or customers from convicted criminals counts as discrimination!)
This literally means that the federal government can look at your community and if it doesn’t like the racial, ethnic or any other makeup, it can coerce the city or the municipality to changing it.
I call it the Obamanization of your neighborhood.
…..
[I]f the feds decide the diversity isn’t quite right they can force the a change by coercing the community to build or provide low income housing or otherwise figuring out how to adjust the racial, ethnic or financial population so that it accurately reflects the government’s desires.

But it doesn’t work the other way around!!!!
That’s ”Gentrification.”
And Gentrification is BAD!
Rich people moving into poor neighborhoods, like Harlem, are committing a worse crime: they are driving up the rents!

Driving DOWN rents in once-nice neighborhoods = good.
Driving UP rents in once-run-down-slums = bad.

@Nanny G: #3

That’s ”Gentrification.”
And Gentrification is BAD!

LOL, . . . that is exactly the current mantra of San Francisco, the billionaires from the Valley are moving into once less than appealing neighbourhoods in the city. And people are pissed – nowhere to move to.

Words no longer matter. It is what we heart in our hearts that counts. There is no longer any possibility for communication. Humpty Dumpty now controls everything.
State in one section of AAPCA has one meaning, and shifts to another meaning later in the “law”.
Legislature in Texas means elected representatives in one place, and later on means “the people”. So all Contract law is out the window. All one needs is a shyster lawyer.
Forget about Magna Carta. One can do whatever one wants, without penalty. Unless, of course, one offends one of the civil masters, in which case one’s life will be hell.
And one cannot possibly know what will offend, because…well…words are so slippery, you know.
It was a great country, once.
Now it is an oligarchy.

It is rapidly appearing that the only functional portions of the Constitution in effect are the “commerce clause” and a distorted view of the 14th Amendment and both of those are used to increase federal control over every aspect of American life.

The 14th supersedes all the other Amendments on an as-needed basis – especially the 10th Amendment. The distorted view of it is that it requires discrimination to prevent discrimination.

The commerce clause is used as a catch-all for allowing the federal government to encroach anywhere and everywhere into our lives.

There is no longer a separation of powers – EVERYONE is a legislator; Congress, the Executive; the Court; the administrative state – and the one body granted with legislative powers is always being bypassed by the others.

@James raider:
Good example.
I also read where Silicon Valley homeowners are renting out their backyards for $900/month.
That’s right, a hammock or a small tent is what you get for $900 a month.
And people are lining up to get one of these deals.

Yes Nanny the SF Bay area economy is booming !! and Liberals are willing to pay extraordinarily high rents to live there. Yes this is the FREE MARKET at work and yes the poor are being pressed by it. Fortunately SF has quite strict rent regulations. So there are some protections from the FREE MARKET

Great article, but I would peg the beginning of the end of our once great nation, as the moment the SCOTUS allowed Prayer to be removed from School!

There was a neighborhood in Houston that had been built around the turn of the 20th century. Large two story homes on small lots. By the 70’s, it had turned into low income housing with many of the homes being turned in apartments. And selling one of them was a real problem.

But it was really, really close to the medical centers so young health care professionals started buying the houses and renovating them as their income allowed. And what happened? The neighborhood improved to the point where the low income people who lived there complained that because of their neighbors, their property values were increasing. They wanted people to stop buying the houses and renovating them. They whined and gritched how they were being gentrified. And they didn’t want their [black] neighborhood infiltrated with white medical professionals.

With progressives, it is never a two way street..

This country is founded on progressivism and we will not progress until the dinosaurs, pea-brains and haters on the right die off. But GREAT START, OBAMA!

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6f9f9ca1fe344f7b9b25cab54f8e4125/polygamous-montana-trio-applies-wedding-license

A Montana man said Wednesday that he was inspired by last week´s U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage to apply for a marriage license so that he can legally wed his second wife.
Nathan Collier ( a former Mormon) and his wives Victoria and Christine applied at the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings on Tuesday in an attempt to legitimize their polygamous marriage.
Montana, like all 50 states, outlaws bigamy — holding multiple marriage licenses — but Collier said he plans to sue if the application is denied. “It´s about marriage equality,” Collier told The Associated Press Wednesday.
…..

And so we slip down the slope.
And it didn’t even take a week.
Justice Roberts said in his dissenting opinion this would happen.
Pandor´s box. Once open, hard to close.
Yellowstone County chief civil litigator Kevin Gillen said, ”The law simply doesn’t provide for that …… yet.”
Utah has a case against bigamy/polygamy pending in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
By what precedent can it lead to anything but the legalization of bigamy and polygamy?
Even John Roberts said after this gay marriage case went the way it did he would have to go for polygamy.

@Lester: This country was founded on independence, freedom and resourcefulness. Obama and those like him are destroying that and turning this nation into a joke. A bad joke.

:

Why did you think that you had to misquote the ACA’s wording?

You said:

“In the legislation that created Obamacare, Congress explicitly stated that subsidies could only go to citizens who purchased insurance on “exchanges established by the States”.”

The specific wording of the law said that subsidies are for health coverage obtained on “An Exchange established by the State.”
Elsewhere: “…exchanges established by THE STATE.”
It doesn’t say “exchanges established by the states“.

See the difference?

So long as the them “state” is used in the singular sense, it might mean A state (like Iowa, for instance) and it might mean THE state, which could be either Vermont (etc.) OR the United States. The wording Congress chose isn’t quite as unambiguous as you imply. And the REST of that legislation DID imply that congress’ intent was to HELP poor people get coverage, not hinder them, a point not lost on the SCOTUS.

The ACA is flawed enough by itself, and doesn’t need your help. If you plan to take issue with the meaning of the words used in writing the ACA, at least start with the right words.

@George Wells:

PUBLIC LAW 111-148 (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.)
pg 172: (d) STATE.—In this title, the term ‘‘State’’ means each of the
50 States and the District of Columbia.
pg272-273: the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for a State that is one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia (3 times)
pg 285: the term ‘disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State’ means a State that is one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia
pg 288: For purposes of
recalculating the fiscal year 2010 allotment, in the case of one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia
pg 522: (b) SCHOOL-BASED SEALANT PROGRAMS.—Section 317M(c)(1) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247b–14(c)(1)) is amended by striking ‘‘may award grants to States and Indian tribes’’ and inserting ‘‘shall award a grant to each of the 50 States and territories and to Indians, Indian tribes, tribal organizations and urban Indian organizations (as such terms are defined in section 4 of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act)’’.
pg 665: ‘‘(E) STATE.—The term ‘State’ means each of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa.

@SouthernRoots: Oooooo….. sorry, George!

@SouthernRoots #15:

Thank you for your polite correction of my mistake regarding the MEANING of “state”.
Since the ACA text apparently answered the question (I obviously didn’t read the entire text) I still have to wonder why Vince bothered to misquote the phrase in question, and note that the partisans here didn’t bother to correct HIM.
And in the FINAL analysis, two of the conservative SCOTUS justices agreed with the four liberal ones that this point was moot when taken in the context of the rest of the legislation, begging the question of why anyone is bothering to re-litigate this in the blogosphere.

Unlike other Republicans here, I’m not perfect, and when I err, I apologize.
Thanks again.

@George Wells: There was no need for correction since, as everyone already knew, the verbage and intention was quite clear: the carrot of federally funded (briefly) subsidies was to entice greedy, if short-sighted, state governments into creating exchanges. It was also to be the stick with which to hammer those that did NOT take the “free money” and leave their citizens uninsured.

It didn’t work, so the federal government illegally pumped money into states that had no exchanges. With or without the “s”, the lie is still quite clear.

Unlike other Republicans here, I’m not perfect, and when I err, I apologize.
Thanks again.

May no mistake: 1) George is NO Republican and 2) he is also a liar. Ask him how many times he has admitted to being wrong when he lied about something Redteam or I said. Even when we have proven him wrong.

Instead, when he lies about what we have said, he repeatedly reverts back to the same lame excuse about the inadequacy of archives feature of FA or adopt the position that instead of the onus being on him to prove his claims, the onus is on us to prove him wrong.

He’s a liar and a despicable person who feels no remorse for lying about the statement of others.

@Bill #18:
“@George Wells: There was no need for correction since, as everyone already knew, the verbage and intention was quite clear.”

SouthernRoots corrected my mistake, not the ACA.
I misunderstood the law’s text.
The rest of you are idiots.

@George Wells:

misunderstood the law’s text. The rest of you are idiots.

Yeah, well I already knew what I was talking about.

@Bill:

George (and the majority of the SCOTUS) seems to have forgotten that those Democrat operatives who wrote the ACA in their own statements on the ACA insisted that their “carrot on a stick” was that; the people of said states would only receive the subsidy IF the States themselves created an exchange.

As the SCOTUS has now decided in two decisions regarding the ACA that words written in a law do not have to be taken to mean what they say, then no wording of any law can be held to mean what they say. That my friends transforms the SCOTUS into an anarchical and tyrannic mockery of what it was designed to be.

It doesn’t say “exchanges established by the states“.

Substituting the definition of State into the original sentences gives us the following:

An Exchange established by the 50 States and the District of Columbia.”
Elsewhere: “…exchanges established by the 50 States and the District of Columbia.”

@Ditto: The entire purpose of the law was to get the states to carry the burden of the cost while the federal government reaped the $250 billion a year of revenue lost due to the pre-tax health care benefits provided by employers. There is no doubt or confusion over how the law was to entice states to form those exchanges, disregarding the fact that in a few short years, the federal rug of subsidizing coverage would disappear and it would be all dumped in the laps of the state’s citizens.

Only after the failure of the law becomes exposed does it have to be defined as a tax and the exchanges provisions ignored. I would love to be in the used car business with customers that believe this is not the case.

So, take a look at the NYT admitting that the predictions of cost reductions from obamacare are turning out to be as wrong as opponents of the socialist takeover of medicine said they would be:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/us/health-insurance-companies-seek-big-rate-increases-for-2016.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.

Mind you, this is from the NYT – a prominent cheerleader of obamacare and all things anti-American/pro-socialist. But wait, there’s MORE!

The Oregon insurance commissioner, Laura N. Cali, has just approved 2016 rate increases for companies that cover more than 220,000 people. Moda Health Plan, which has the largest enrollment in the state, received a 25 percent increase, and the second-largest plan, LifeWise, received a 33 percent increase.

Jesse Ellis O’Brien, a health advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, said: “Rate increases will be bigger in 2016 than they have been for years and years and will have a profound effect on consumers here. Some may start wondering if insurance is affordable or if it’s worth the money.

So – all the leftists who swore up and down that obamacare was going to bring premiums down, and since obamacare was crammed down the national throat, that health insurance premium costs were not going up as fast as they were pre-obamacare – what is your excuse for the continued failure of obamacare to do anything other than exactly what critics predicted would happen? But wait….there is even MORE:

A study of 11 cities in different states by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that consumers would see relatively modest increases in premiums if they were willing to switch plans. But if they switch plans, consumers would have no guarantee that they can keep their doctors. And to get low premiums, they sometimes need to accept a more limited choice of doctors and hospitals

So what could possibly be better than government-controlled limitation of choice of doctors and hospitals? How about premiums so expensive that taxpayers must cover almost the entire cost:

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, said that federal subsidies would soften the impact of any rate increases. Of the 10.2 million people who obtained coverage through federal and state marketplaces this year, 85 percent receive subsidies in the form of tax credits to help pay premiums.

So wait…obamacare was forced upon the country entirely by the democrat party to get insurance from the 30-45 million people the left propagandized did not have medical insurance, but after 2 years of the program allowing individual enrollment, there are only 10.2 million counted as utilizing this horribly flawed system, and the cost is so high that over 8.5 million of these folks have to have their “affordable” government health insurance subsidized by taxpayers. But wait…there is even MORE to this leftist crapwich insanity:

“Our enrollees generated 24 percent more claims than we thought they would when we set our 2014 rates,” said Nathan T. Johns, the chief financial officer of Arches Health Plan, which covers about one-fourth of the people who bought insurance through the federal exchange in Utah. As a result, the company said, it collected premiums of $39.7 million and had claims of $56.3 million in 2014. It has requested rate increases averaging 45 percent for 2016.

The rate requests are the first to reflect a full year of experience with the new insurance exchanges and federal standards that require insurers to accept all applicants, without charging higher prices because of a person’s illness or disability.

So wait – you mean that the government cannot simply legislate away economic reality? Who could have possibly predicted such results?

In financial statements filed with the government in the last two months, some insurers said that their claims payments totaled not just 80 percent, but more than 100 percent of premiums. And that, they said, is unsustainable.

At Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, for example, the ratio of claims paid to premium revenues was more than 115 percent, and the company said it lost more than $135 million on its individual insurance business in 2014. “Based on first-quarter results,” it said, “the year-end deficit for 2015 individual business is expected to be significantly higher.”

Now – it will be obvious to those in possession of critical thinking skills that this is another breathtaking example of the outrageous hypocrisy of the NYT – and the left in general – because these results are EXACTLY what those of us who opposed the evil of obamacare said would happen, yet the socialists dismissed the criticism as nothing but selfish rightwing propaganda. So one must ask why the NYT is now so casually reporting the effects of obamacare that they had previously characterized as stupid ravings of evil conservatives who just didn’t care about “poor” people.

This is the next step in their march to have the government completely takeover medicine in the US. Again, this is what those of us who actually work in medicine said would be the deceitful left’s next move – to claim that healthcare for all is a “right”, and since the obamacare system they set up with so insane a design that it could not do anything but fail, the “only” possible solution is for the government to assume control of all medical care.

We need a giant national dose of mebendazole to cure our country of the parasitic left, before they kill off the host.

#25:

Does it surprise you to discover that so many of the previously uninsured are sicker than the average insured American?

Did you really believe for one minute that insuring an additional 10,000,000 people would somehow cost LESS than NOT insuring them?

80% of the newly insured are receiving premium assistance because they haven’t the income to pay for their own insurance. Would you prefer they be allowed to die?

Just curious.

Do you REALLY NOT want to insure those extra 10,000,000 people?

@George Wells:

Typical leftist dodge, George, along with the “feelgoodism” spin.

Anyone with any sense at all knew that having the government get even more heavily involved in medicine could not possibly lower the cost of insurance. Yet it was you obamacare cheerleaders who swore it would. Now you snidely shrug off your lies, insisting – falsely – that you never claimed it would do what you claimed regarding lowering costs. You called us liars when we warned obamacare would increase costs.

Why was it necessary to screw up every one else’s insurance coverage in order to provide ” affordable” insurance for those without it? Why has it been necessary to lie repeatedly about the effects of obamacare, both before and after the democrats crammed it down the nation’s throat in a party line vote, and why did Obama unconstitutionally delay the employer mandate beyond his time in office, if the law was so damned good?

As I have said before, reality is not swayed by silly adolescent concepts of “fairness”. The claims of the obamacare cheerleaders that there were between 30 and 45 million uninsured are now self-mocked by the fact only 10 million have obtained insurance under Obamacare, with over half having been previously insured but are now forced into the exchanges after losing their previous coverage. Add to that the huge premium increases – in spite of Obama falsely claiming rate increases would be smaller under his socialist plan – not to mention that 80% of policy holders are subsidized by taxpayers, and you have a cataclysmic failure. Why should any sensible person support such failure, simply for the sake of fooling themselves into believing they are doing something good?

When so many doctors opt out of seeing patients with obamacare plans such that the plans become more worthless than they already are, will you be in the leftist camp that demands physicians become slaves to the state to provide “free” health care?

Will you be supporting the government takeover of medicine, establish a British style NHS, in spite of the horrible example set by the VA?

Will you have the same level of pseudo-pious concern when government bureaucrats deny things like dialysis based on age, that you exhibit for people who would lose their taxpayer-subsidized obamacare plans, should we ever get this debacle overturned?

And to answer your question, specifically, I absolutely do not believe it is the government’s job to provide medical insurance, foodstamps, housing, or retirement income for the populace. The historical examples of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the current economic disasters of Greece and Venezuela show clearly what happens when a government takes over such personal responsibilities.

#27:

Thank you for one truly honest paragraph:

“And to answer your question, specifically, I absolutely do not believe it is the government’s job to provide medical insurance, foodstamps, housing, or retirement income for the populace. The historical examples of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the current economic disasters of Greece and Venezuela show clearly what happens when a government takes over such personal responsibilities.”

We simply have a difference of opinion on this question.
I prefer to keep trying to get it right, unwilling to be discouraged by the fact that a bunch of communists have so far failed to achieve the utopian perfection that their “founding fathers” promised. Human accomplishment doesn’t come from giving up. It comes from having the courage to keep trying until we get it right. I cannot accept that as a people we insist on letting our citizens reproduce unchecked, insist on NOT aborting unwanted pregnancies, and then tell every living one of us – handicapped one way or another or not – that we are entirely on our own. It just doesn’t seem humane to me.
But thanks for your honest statement. Your position is certainly easy enough to defend from a Darwinist perspective. “Survival of the Fittest” is something that has worked well enough for eons, and there is precious little to demonstrate that thwarting it in the human case would produce desirable results. It doesn’t. A Downs Syndrome baby grows up to become a Downs Syndrome adult, one who cannot usually provide responsibly for itself, and from the gene pool’s standpoint – and society’s – we’d be better off with it dead. But that cold assessment reminds me too much of Hitler’s master race – all of whom could fend for themselves adequately, no doubt. And yes, our “safety nets” have been abused – terribly – but that doesn’t mean that some support isn’t needed by some. Or just let them die, I don’t really care. I’d like to be paying less taxes just as much as the next guy, but Gee, I’d feel kind of $hitty about it.

“Anyone with any sense at all knew that having the government get even more heavily involved in medicine could not possibly lower the cost of insurance. Yet it was you obamacare cheerleaders who swore it would. Now you snidely shrug off your lies, insisting – falsely – that you never claimed it would do what you claimed regarding lowering costs. You called us liars when we warned obamacare would increase costs.”

No, not me. I never swore any of that nonsense. It WAS nonsense when the administration came up with that crap about how individual costs would go down. HOW??? We were going to insure many millions more (who really cares what the actual number is) and give the vast majority of them subsidies. There is no magic arithmetic that could ever make that profitable. Ten million, times the amount of subsidies given on average, is just the first cost among many that SOMEONE was going to have to pay, and yes, paying that took us further toward socialized medicine. What I can’t understand is that while the ACA clearly isn’t the end point in healthcare, it is a start (right direction or not) and for as long as I can remember, the GOP really didn’t have any suggestions at all about how to get better and more affordable health care to the many millions who didn’t have any – except tax-free health accounts, something that would have some value to the tax-paying employed but no one else. If you came up with something better, or even tried, that would be great. But simply voting over and over again to overturn the ACA isn’t doing the trick, now is it?

@George Wells:

Everything I write is honest, George. I am not a leftist, so I don’t believe in obfuscating or deceiving when writing my positions. See, when you really believe in your philosophy, you don’t see any need to lie about your beliefs in your efforts to persuade others on the merits of your position. Only leftists do that.

We simply have a difference of opinion on this question.I prefer to keep trying to get it right, unwilling to be discouraged by the fact that a bunch of communists have so far failed to achieve the utopian perfection that their “founding fathers” promised.

By finding any merit in the philosophy of communism, which has never been – nor will it ever be – capable of producing anything other than the misery of totalitarianism, mass human slaughter, and ideological slavery, you reveal the hallmark of immaturity that is the essence of the leftist mind. It is absolute tyrannical arrogance for anyone to take the position you have, that because YOU personally think it is sad/unfair that someone may be “poor” by some criteria, that you have the right to force everyone else under pain of government force to assuage your bad feelings. It is not charity when a gun is stuck in your face with the demand that you hand over your wallet.

I cannot accept that as a people we insist on letting our citizens reproduce unchecked, insist on NOT aborting unwanted pregnancies, and then tell every living one of us – handicapped one way or another or not – that we are entirely on our own. It just doesn’t seem humane to me.

You probably don’t even comprehend the magnitude of the arrogance of your statement, do you? You and Sanger, along with the rest of the eugenicist movement are peas in a leftist pod.

Furthermore, your tired leftist nonsequitor from the pro-abortion industry stems from the same inverted understanding of reality from which the left deems it has a right to “allow” people to have children. Take the case of St. Jude’s Childrens Hospital, which charges NOTHING for the care it provides to its pediatric patients. It receives charitable donations to cover the average $2 million per day operating expenses, and engages in the most cutting-edge pediatric disease and pediatric oncology research in the world. The Shriners Hospitals are another example of charity that helps out those who have real need. The idea that the government should get involved in this type of activity is tyranny, no matter how good you think the intentions of mandatory charity are. Over $22 trillion wasted on welfare entitlement since LBJ came up with his program to increase dependency on government and democrat voting base, yet there is no improvement in the calculated poverty rate. Moreover, we are seeing in Greece what happens when leftist economic policy (or what passes as such) reaches a point when the bills for all the mandated government entitlements come due. Simplistic, shortsighted pleas to overblown emotionalism (“It’s for the CHILL-run!”) are weak attempts to ignore the eventual results that reality imposes on leftist economic stupidity.

No, not me. I never swore any of that nonsense. It WAS nonsense when the administration came up with that crap about how individual costs would go down. HOW??? We were going to insure many millions more (who really cares what the actual number is) and give the vast majority of them subsidies. There is no magic arithmetic that could ever make that profitable.

Caring about what the number actually is, George, would be the starting point for trying to figure out a reasonable, cost-effective plan to make actual health insurance affordable. Not worrying about actual numbers is why we have things like the horrible performance of the federal obamacare website, the collapse of the Oregon, Hawaii and other state obamacare websites, resulting in hundreds of millions of wasted taxpayer dollars. Not caring about the number (especially when the number of obamacare “insured” is so inconvenient in comparision to what the proponents claimed it would do) is why we are seeing the beginning of the insurance ‘death spiral’, exactly as opponents of obamacare said would happen. 20-54% policy rate increase requests are what happens when people don’t care about actual numbers/data when designing things like insurance. Imagine an architect building a bridge or highway and saying, “Who cares how many people will potentially use what I am building?”

What I can’t understand is that while the ACA clearly isn’t the end point in healthcare, it is a start (right direction or not) and for as long as I can remember, the GOP really didn’t have any suggestions at all about how to get better and more affordable health care to the many millions who didn’t have any – except tax-free health accounts, something that would have some value to the tax-paying employed but no one else.

Same tired leftist talking point they regurgitate every time there is another obamacare failure. The GOP put forth plans for allowing insurance to be transportable across state lines. The GOP also tried to introduce plans to limit malpractice awards – which was going nowhere with the dems being paid off by the Trial Lawyers Association. There were other attempts as well, but none of them gave the government more power over medicine, nor the opportunity to enlarge government employment.

You claim you never believed obamacare would bring down the cost of health care. Fine – I haven’t read all your posts and will stipulate to your claim. So why on earth, if you knew there was no possible way for obamacare to lower medical costs and insurance premiums despite Obama and his acolytes repeatedly saying so, did you support a program that was at best economically illiterate and at worst a complete falsehood?

@George Wells:

There is no greater example of leftist totalitarianism than your quote, “letting our citizens reproduce unchecked…”

Again, you misrepresent the conservative position against government forcibly taking money from people to buy voters with government largesse by falsely characterizing it with wanting people who genuinely need help, to die. Charity is defined by willingly giving aid to those truly in need. Examples include Catholic Charities, Inc., St. Jude’s Childrens hospital, which does not charge patients for services, and provides medical care at an average cost of $2 million a day completely from charitable donations. Shriners Hospitals are also operated charitably. There are many other examples of such charity.

I will give you the benefit of that doubt that you, personally, may not have ever claimed that obamacare would reduce costs, as I do not have time to go spelunking through FA archives of all your posts on the subject. But you know very well that Obama and his ilk repeatedly made such claims in propagandizing this economic impossibility. If I take you at your word that you knew he was lying about decreasing costs, how on earth could you ever support a law based on repeated lies?

Your final leftist talking point has no truth to it either. Republicans tried to get medical insurance reforms passed, via transportability of policies between jobs and across state lines, as well as trying to reform the medical malpractice system, as well as other means of economically sound insurance reform. Reid refused to allow any of these to come up for vote in the Senate, and blocked any attempt at amending the obamacare bill by republicans. Obamacare was passed in a purely partisan vote, and now the left is demanding that republicans fix this epic failure that is wholly owned by democrats.

Where was all this leftist concern in the wailing over 10 million who would lose coverage should obamacare be repealed, when millions of people who had insurance (which Obama repeatedly promised they could keep) lost coverage under obamacare regulations?

The sheer hypocrisy of the left over the King ruling – dubiously arrived at against the clear wording of the law written, as Gruber admitted, to coerce states into setting up exchanges – when juxtaposed against Obama’s unconstitutional delaying of the employer mandate (again, in violation of the clear date of enactment of 1 Jan 2014 in the law) is a breathtaking change from the rule of law to the rule of whatever is convenient for the leftist march to totalitarianism.

Finally, I wonder if, when the insurance industry can no longer function, and the left gets its dream of a complete government takeover of medicine, will you have the same magnitude of concern you now voice for the “poor”, for people denied care by government bureaucrats (a la the British NHS policy of refusing dialysis to end stage renal disease patients simply because they are older than 55) because a particular treatment is not deemed cost effective? Will you have any concern over the rights of an OB who, when refusing to perform abortions against his religious beliefs, is sued, censured or threatened with the loss of his medical license? The precedent has already been set by the legal action taken against the Oregon bakers. The politicization of medical practice will be inherent if the government assumes sole control of American medicine.

#29:

“What I can’t understand is that while the ACA clearly isn’t the end point in healthcare, it is a start (right direction or not) and for as long as I can remember, the GOP really didn’t have any suggestions at all about how to get better and more affordable health care to the many millions who didn’t have any – except tax-free health accounts, something that would have some value to the tax-paying employed but no one else.

Same tired leftist talking point they regurgitate every time there is another obamacare failure. The GOP put forth plans for allowing insurance to be transportable across state lines. The GOP also tried to introduce plans to limit malpractice awards – which was going nowhere with the dems being paid off by the Trial Lawyers Association. There were other attempts as well, but none of them gave the government more power over medicine, nor the opportunity to enlarge government employment.

You claim you never believed obamacare would bring down the cost of health care. Fine – I haven’t read all your posts and will stipulate to your claim. So why on earth, if you knew there was no possible way for obamacare to lower medical costs and insurance premiums despite Obama and his acolytes repeatedly saying so, did you support a program that was at best economically illiterate and at worst a complete falsehood?”

How, you asked?
Here’s how:
Which one of those GOP suggestions would benefit the unemployed?
None that I can see.
Resistance to tort reform pi$$es me off, and transportable insurance seem to be a no-brainer, and I can’t imagine why it is a stumbling point, but neither benefit the poor, and in my mind it is the poor whose needs are the most critical, and who have the weakest advocates. Making health care costs tax-sheltered benefits taxpayers, and I don’t mind them getting that benefit, but there still isn’t a GOP initiative that gets healthcare to people who cannot afford it. Is there?

“By finding any merit in the philosophy of communism,”

Here you demonstrate a lack of comprehension of what I said.
Read it again:
“I prefer to keep trying to get it right, unwilling to be discouraged by the fact that a bunch of communists have so far failed to achieve the utopian perfection that their “founding fathers” promised.”
I didn’t say that communism HAS worked. Except in isolated and minor cases it hasn’t. But the flaws you have pointed to are not structural to the philosophy of communism. They are the consequence of sociopathic behaviors endemic to the cultures in which communism took hold. It is quite possible that such flawed cultures initially found communism more attractive than less flawed groups would, but their history of mass-murders, greed, corruption and crime far predate communism, and the philosophy of communism cannot be blamed for the abuses that followed its introduction.

#30:
“I do not have time to go spelunking through FA archives…”

Are you currently able to access the FA archives?
I cannot, and Retire05 has made a fuss about it, but she refuses to say if she can.
There are a few of her quotes I’d like to shove down her throat once I find them, but when I click on the “archives” access icon, I get an empty screen, save for the “archives” title.

@George Wells:

Which one of those GOP suggestions would benefit the unemployed?
None that I can see.

Helping the unemployed? I thought we were trying to help the uninsured.

What would help the unemployed is employment, something the ACA disposes of.

@George Wells:

I have no intention of letting any sodomite get anywhere near my throat.

It’s not my fault you’re not smart enough to find the comments you claim to be looking for.

@Bill #33:

“Helping the unemployed? I thought we were trying to help the uninsured.”

Well, seeing as how y’all have been foaming at the mouth over how Obama’s presidency is responsible for the WORST unemployment EVER – that RECORD numbers of Americans REMAIN unemployed – it stands to reason that the “uninsured” and the “unemployed” are largely one and the same.

You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t insist out of one side of your mouth that all of those unemployed Americans are out of work because Obama has intentionally destroyed the U.S. economy and then turn around and insist out of the other side of your mouth that their unemployment is the result of their personal refusal to work.
Which is it?

I might also point out that long before the ACA made its way onto the drawing board, companies – the things that employ people – were $hit-canning their employer-funded health insurance benefits in record numbers, having been repeatedly bled by their own defined benefit plans as their employees’ healthcare costs skyrocketed. That wasn’t Obama’s fault, or Clinton’s or Bush’s.

I don’t know how to fix the healthcare problems we have in America today, but I have a hunch that it isn’t going to get done by wagging our fingers at the folks across the isle. If that’s the only plan you really have, we’re screwed.

#34:

Your obsession with insulting Democrats and homosexuals certainly paints you as a nasty soul. It must give you pleasure, else you wouldn’t do it, but I wonder how so much negative emotion effects your physical health…

@George Wells:

Your obsession with insulting Democrats and homosexuals certainly paints you as a nasty soul.

You mean like all the comments you have made against those who don’t agree with you because of their religious beliefs or maybe the many denigrating things you have said about religious faiths?

It must give you pleasure, else you wouldn’t do it, but I wonder how so much negative emotion effects your physical health…

Don’t add to your hypocrisy by pretending you give a tinker’s damn about my health.

#37:
“You mean like all the comments you have made against those who don’t agree with you because of their religious beliefs or maybe the many denigrating things you have said about religious faiths?”

Did I ever do that?
Why don’t you show me one and prove that you can access the FA archive.
That’d kill two birds with one stone.

@George Wells: The irony of your concern for the unemployed is stunning.
What did Obama do when he took office and saw the economy was tanking?
He EXTENDED unemployment to 99 weeks!
He, thus REWARDED the behavior of staying unemployed longer.

He also took almost $1 Trillion dollars in ”Stimulus Money,” but had no ”shovel-ready jobs,” to apply it to.
So, he gave it to cronies, like bundlers from his campaign.
SolYndra comes to mind.
Took $100 million, hired almost no one, frittered it all away on high living for themselves then threw away all the solar glass tubing in such a way that HazMet had to clean up after them!

When Republicans took the Congress they cut down the unemployment weeks and, voila!, the unemployment numbers immediately started down.
(Obama took credit, naturally.)

When ObamaCare was passed Obama redefined ”full-time” as anything over 30 hours a week as a way to supposedly help workers.
But he cost workers their hours as many employers found they could not afford to cover as many employees with the new high costs.
So, many people were cut to 29.5 hours a week.
(I personally know many in CA who hold two of such jobs, with coordination between the employers who both want to keep such good workers!)
A huge chunk of our employed populace wishes it could work more hours but ObamaCare’s new costs make that impossible.

Next year, after Obama leaves office, many of the on-the-fly changes Obama made to ObamaCare end. One of them props up insurers who lose money covering people through the exchanges.
That’s going to hit hard….later.
Another is the ObamaCare Employer Mandate / Employer Penalty, originally set to begin in 2014, was delayed until 2015 / 2016.
ObamaCare’s “employer mandate” is a requirement that all businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees (FTE) provide health insurance to at least 95% of their full-time employees and dependents up to age 26, or pay a fee of $2000/ employee.
Think that won’t hurt employment numbers?

@George Wells:

Did I ever do that?

Yep.

Why don’t you show me one and prove that you can access the FA archive.
That’d kill two birds with one stone.

I don’t feel the need to prove anything to you, George. You seem to think you hold more importance for me that you really do. And I never said I could access the FA archives, now did I? But I have found your comments by other means. Too bad you’re not that smart. Have you finally learned to “cut and paste?”

@George Wells:

The structure and philosophy of.communism are inherently flawed, due to the simple fact that it completely ignores human nature, and works to establish the state as a controlling deity, while ironically referring to religion as “the opiate of the masses”. It demands enslavement of the individual to the arbitrary whims of those in control of the state, and will not tolerate dissent in any form. It is dishonest to the core, punishes individual effort and rewards laziness, all while claiming to have the best interests of the enslaved masses as the primary motivation. The idea that “the right people just haven’t been in charge of implementing communism” reveals either a complete lack of comprehension of Marxist doctrine, or thoroughly deceptive representation of the despicable ideology.

@George Wells:

The way to benefit the unemployed is to deconstruct the oppressive regulations and taxes that take economic resources away from people who can actually grow the economy and create greater opportunities for employment. The government cannot create wealth. But the government sure can hamstring wealth creation.

#41:

“The idea that “the right people just haven’t been in charge of implementing communism” reveals either a complete lack of comprehension of Marxist doctrine, or thoroughly deceptive representation of the despicable ideology.”

I studied Russian history. The following statement from my #31 is an accurate assessment of that history:

“…the flaws you have pointed to are not structural to the philosophy of communism. They are the consequence of sociopathic behaviors endemic to the cultures in which communism took hold. (Russia’s) history of mass-murders, greed, corruption and crime far predate communism, and the philosophy of communism cannot be blamed for the abuses that followed its introduction.”

Like the sweet folks of the Muslim World, Russians have never had a taste for Western-styled democracy, work ethic or morality. Excepting for Peter the Great, Gorbachev and the few lucky ones that have escaped, Russians dance to a tune that is half Mafia and half Greek, hardly fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of ANY successful governance.

Your “opiate of the masses” statement is indeed ironic, seeing how EVERY form of governance sooner or later discovers that it has to anesthetize it’s populace. The consequences of allowing several hundred million angry citizens to run roughshod through the countryside, trampling over each other’s constitutionally guaranteed rights and demanding to have their voices heard are unbearable. Each government sooner or later discovers that it needs to sedate it’s populace. Saddam Hussein kept a firm thumb on his subjects beyond the point of oppression, and we gift the most worthless among us with treasures stolen from the working class. Why? To “maintain order”. Think of what would happen if you took away all of those “freebee” “social safety net” programs. How many millions are on them? Got police with which to round them all up and enough jails to put them all in? I don’t think so.

You give the masses too much credit. You believe that their collective will should be allowed to decide issues. Just wait until too many of them give up on honest, lawful work and see what happens.

Employers don’t reimburse your workers’ health-insurance premiums.

Beginning July 2015, the IRS can levy fines amounting to $100 per worker per day or $36,500 per worker per year, with a maximum of $500,000 per firm if you do.

This amount is over 12 times the statutory amount in the Affordable Care Act of $3,000 per worker per year.
That is what an employer is charged when one of its employees gets subsidized care on one of the health-care exchanges.
It is 18 times the $2,000 penalty for not offering adequate health insurance.

The $100 fine is applicable to all firms that hire more than one employee!
The current estimate is that 14% of all businesses qualify for this penalty.

See more:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-newest-obamacare-fail-penalties-of36500-per-worker-2015-07-23?siteid=yhoof2

Seems ObamaCare is aiming to get all American workers fired.
And to put out of business every business in the country.