Outside Liberal La La Land, Obamacare is Sputtering

It's not easy to make medical socialism work - Reason Magazine, Shikha Dalmia | June 12, 2015.  An excerpt . . .

ObamaCare's supporters would like everyone to believe that with Healthcare.gov now functioning, everything is just fine and dandy. Contrary to what the conservative press (which I guess would include me) has been saying about the many problems of ObamaCare, Vox's Ezra Klein declared last September that "in the real world, it's working." In February, his fellow Voxland inhabitant Sarah Kliff rattled off eight ways in which the law had proved its critics wrong. 

But has it? Not really. 

For starters, the exchanges have enrolled about 3 million fewer people than the Congressional Budget Office projected in 2010. And far fewer of the enrollees are from the ranks of the uninsured than hoped. Medicaid enrollment is lower too, for the simple reason that states refused to expand the program. 

The core of President Obama's sales pitch to America was that the program, which he called the Affordable Care Act, would "bend the health care cost curve" and save an average family $2,500 on their premiums each year. How would it accomplish this feat? Essentially, he said, by forcing uninsured "free loaders" who show up in the emergency room to obtain free care to either buy (subsidized) coverage on the insurance exchange or sign up for the expanded Medicaid program. The point was that if they had coverage, they'd get cheaper care sooner in a doctor's office rather than more expensive care later in a hospital emergency room. 

Things don't seem to be working out that way. ObamaCare is indeed bending the cost curve, but up, not down . . .  Full Story 

Income Equality

MSNBC’s Reverend Al Sharpton cited a New York Time’s pol that says the majority of Americans believe that income inequality is on the rise.  According to Reverend Sharpton the poor earn too little and the rich earn too much. The Reverend says income inequality is unfair and immoral and that government must use force to re-distribute income in a way that addresses this social injustice.  Income inequality must be replaced with — income equality.

Before we roll out the tanks to impose income equality I would like to ask a few questions.

Income inequality posits that it is not fair that some people earn more money than other people. If this is correct then what is the mathematical formula for achieving income equality?  Would we achieve income equality if the highest earners were forced to surrender 80% of their earnings, 90%? 99%? Should CEOs, business owners, rock stars, NFL quarterbacks and television talk-show hosts earnings be capped at a maximum of $1,000 per hour, $100 per hour, $20 per hour? or how about $15 per hour?  What equality of outcome formula would achieve the Reverend’s definition of a moral and fair re-distribution of income?

Does income equality have a mathematical low bar for unskilled labor?  Would a federally mandated minimum wage of $15 per hour achieve income equality between high and low earners?  No?  Well, how about $20 per hour? $100 per hour? or maybe $1,000 per hour? How shall a fair distribution of income that insures income equality be determined? What equality of outcome formula would satisfy the Reverend’s scale of a moral and fair re-distribution of income?

Does income inequality mean that a rich person such as the aforementioned Reverend Sharpton is immoral because he has earned more than a relatively poor person such as I?  Does income inequality mean that the government should use force to take that which the Reverend has earned and give it to me? If so, how is that moral and fair?  What entitles me to take by force that which the good Reverend has earned?  What entitles anyone, rich or poor, to take by force that which someone else has earned? How is taking that which does not belong to you moral and fair?

Mark Van Schuyver

Rand Paul for liberty Vs "Barack Obama the email reader"

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Rand Paul blasts PATRIOT Act Surveillance

Rand Paul blasts PATRIOT Act Surveillance on Senate Floor During Last Minute Debate -Reason.com, by Scott Shackford|May. 31, 2015 7:45 pm.  An excerpt . . .

"Get a warrant!" 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor Sunday afternoon as debate wrapped up to reiterate, very, very loudly, his opposition to renewing the mass data collection authorities of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. He had argue with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over Senate procedures first to get permission to speak. McCain, for his part, argued that the increase in terrorism (he said the Middle East is literally burning) is proof that we need Section 215 "more than ever," despite the lack of evidence that the mass collection under Section 215 actually contributed in any successful efforts to halt terrorist attacks . . .

Paul reminded the Senate floor and C-Span viewers, "The head of intelligence agency lied to the American people, and he still works there." And he also reminded the Senate that a federal court has already ruled that Section 215 doesn't actually authorize mass metadata collection about Americans. Paul's position: Want to get records about Americans suspsected of crimes? Get a warrant. Paul is tweeting out some quotes from his speech here . . .

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Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty WSJ

June marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter’ that established the rule of law for the English-speaking world. Its revolutionary impact still resounds today, writes Daniel Hannan - Wall Street Journal.   An excerpt . . .

Eight hundred years ago next month, on a reedy stretch of riverbank in southern England, the most important bargain in the history of the human race was struck. I realize that’s a big claim, but in this case, only superlatives will do. As Lord Denning, the most celebrated modern British jurist put it, Magna Carta was “the greatest constitutional document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.” . . . 

ENLARG

It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.

Magna Carta is Latin for “Great Charter.” It was so named not because the men who drafted it foresaw its epochal power but because it was long. Yet, almost immediately, the document began to take on a political significance that justified the adjective in every sense. . .

Magna Carta conceives rights in negative terms, as guarantees against state coercion. No one can put you in prison or seize your property or mistreat you other than by due process. This essentially negative conception of freedom is worth clinging to in an age that likes to redefine rights as entitlements—the right to affordable health care, the right to be forgotten and so on. . . 

It is worth stressing, too, that Magna Carta conceived freedom and property as two expressions of the same principle. The whole document can be read as a lengthy promise that the goods of a free citizen will not be arbitrarily confiscated by someone higher up the social scale. Even the clauses that seem most remote from modern experience generally turn out, in reality, to be about security of ownership. . . .

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President Obama’s Dark Shadows

Years ago, on an earlier version of this BLOG, I wrote that I was “giving up on President Obama.”  Then, and now I find it depressing and really disappointing and sad that Mr. Obama’s interventionist and I believe socialistic approach to “fundamentally transforming America” is so misguided and so destructive. It is no surprise to me that his policies have generated a legacy of failure. The only saving grace for the country is the fact that the Congress has thwarted many of Mr. Obama’s destructive socialistic schemes. Many, but not all . . .

Sadly, Mr. Obama was able to strong-arm the passing of the failed nearly $1T Keynesian stimulus boondoggle bill (how’s that shovel-ready job working out for you?), the ever so destructive Dodd Frank finance “reform” law (can you spell crony?), and the “how can I count the ways it is destroys value” Obama Care debacle (aka “affordable health care act” without a single Republican vote). The economy has been anemic for seven years under the shadow of Obamanomics and the poor and middle class have suffered the most. The United States has assumed more debt under President Obama than was amassed under all of the previous presidents combined. The national debt is now more than $18 trillion and rising.

Speaking of legacies, how’s that key domestic-policy legacy going? Not so hot. ObamaCare remains unpopular; far more Americans oppose than favor it. People still remember the disaster of the October 2013 rollout, which still casts a shadow over the program today.  Those hard feelings were deepened last year by the discovery of a series of talks by key ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber in which he bragged that it had been falsely marketed to the American people to take advantage of their stupidity.” . . .  

In the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, 62% say the country is on the wrong track more than seven years after Obama moved into the White House. - New York Post 

Sadly, Mr. Obama has been able to impose several uber-destructive big-government agenda ancillaries such as the carbon emissions mandate by using his assumed authority over the regulatory agencies (vis “I’ve got a pen and a phone”).  We will suffer for decades from Dodd Frank and the Obama Care mess but hopefully future presidents will undo the damage on the regulatory side.   Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and the middle east in particular is a disaster on steroids.  Anyway you slice it President Obama’s legacy so far is a sorry one at best.

Now the end of his tenure is in sight and President Obama is trying like crazy to beef up his resume, his “legacy.”  His last ditch efforts to “fundamentally change America” (i.e. facilitate a “progressive” movement toward a welfare nanny state) are clouded in dark, socialistic shadows.  I gave up on him years ago. Then, and now I find it depressing and really disappointing and sad that Mr. Obama’s interventionist and I believe socialistic approach to “fundamentally transforming America” has been so misguided and so destructive.

Mark Van Schuyver

Emergency Room Visits Increase Under Obamacare

The Daily Signal.  An excerpt . . .

A majority of physicians report that they have seen an increase in emergency visits since Obamacare went into effect, according to a new poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

In a statement, Dr. Michael Gerardi, the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said that “hospitals are hurting.”

“America has severe primary care physician shortages, and many physicians will not accept Medicaid patients because Medicaid pays so inadequately,” Gerardi said. “Just because people have health insurance does not mean they have access to timely medical care.”  - Kate Scanion

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