Thursday, March 4, 2010
USE STATES AS HEALTH CARE REFORM LABS
It's worth recapping how many of the policies Democrats want have already failed in the states:
- In 1994, Tennessee started a massive Medicaid expansion (eventually covering 500,000 additional residents).
- A decade later, the state abandoned the experiment after costs more than tripled from $2.5 billion in 1995 to $8 billion in 2004, consuming one-third of the state budget.
- When the experiment unraveled in 2005, 170,000 enrollees were dropped.
- Starting in April 1993, New York state imposed two new regulations, intended to make insurance more affordable for older and sicker residents.
- Instead, community rating (which forces insurers to charge one price regardless of age or health status) and guaranteed issue (which forces insurere to offer policies to all applicants) nearly obliterated the market for individual insurance.
- The regulations drove up prices for young and healthy applicants, pushing them out of the market; today New York's individual insurance market is 4 percent of its size in 1994.
- In 2003, Maine launched an ambitious plan to cover all its uninsured, in part by creating a government-run, "public option" insurance plan with taxpayer-subsidized premiums.
- An expensive train wreck, less than 10,000 residents have enrolled since it started in 2005 -- at a cost of $155 million.
- Today, enrollment is capped, due to budget constraints.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS "MODEL" MOVES TO PRICE CONTROLS
Subject: txt hcare -
Natural experiments are rare in politics, but few are as instructive as the prototype for ObamaCare that Massachusetts set in motion in 2006. The bills for "universal coverage" are now coming due, and it appears the state political class is prepared to do lasting damage to one of America's top-flight health care systems, says the Wall Street Journal.
Last month, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick proposed hard price controls across almost all Massachusetts health care: [snip]
Ironically, former Governor Mitt Romney (like President Obama) sold this plan as a way to control spending. As with all new entitlements, the rolling cost crisis began almost immediately, says the Journal:
- For fiscal 2010 taxpayer costs are $47 million over budget, in part due to the recession, and while the $913 million Patrick requested for 2011 is a 5 percent increase over 2010, spending has grown on average 6.7 percent per year.
- Meanwhile, average Massachusetts insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation; since 2006, they've climbed at an annual rate of 30 percent in the individual market.
- Small business costs have increased by 5.8 percent.
- Per capita health spending in Massachusetts is now 27 percent higher than the national average... [snip]
All of this is merely a preview of what the entire country will face if Democrats succeed with their plan to pound ObamaCare into law in anything like its current form. Massachusetts is teaching the country a valuable lesson in how not to reform health care, if only anyone would pay attention...READ MORE
HOOSIERS AND HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
Subject: txt hcare -
Five years ago, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) of Indiana requested that a consumer-directed health insurance option, or Health Savings Account (HSA). In the first year some 4 percent signed up for it; this year, over 70 percent of Indiana's 30,000 state workers chose it, by far the highest in public-sector America.
What Indiana and independent health care experts at Mercer Consulting have found, says Daniels, is that individually owned and directed health care coverage has a startlingly positive effect on costs for both employees and the state. In Indiana, for example:
- State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan will save more than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative.
- In the second straight year in which state employees have been forced to skip salary increases, workers switching to the HSA are adding thousands of dollars to their take-home pay (even if an employee had health issues and incurred the maximum out-of-pocket expenses, he would still be hundreds of dollars ahead).
The state is saving, too, says Daniels:
- In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of high HSA enrollment.
- Mercer calculates the state's total costs are being reduced by 11 percent due solely to the HSA option.
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POLL: 58% Say Economy Causing More Family Stress
Subject: txt hcare mny -
[No no, all wrong: everyone's worried about their health care - that's job 1...]
Who Lost Iran?
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The Western Left constantly lied about Communist Imperialism -- to the point where they redefined the very word "imperialism" to exclude any Communist regime. Even today, the Left won't admit that the Soviets and Chinese were running a classic imperialist enterprise. The Western Left enabled Fidel Castro to establish a Communist prison colony in Cuba, and he promptly lobbied Nikita Khrushchev to place nuclear missiles off the coast of Florida.
That slogan"Who lost China?" reminded American voters to elect Ike Eisenhower. As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he had unsurpassed experience in national security and international politics. He was a wise and reassuring presence, the right president for the First Nuclear Age.
We are once again threatened by a fast-rising rogue state, run by a totalitarian, suicidal cult soon to be armed with nuclear weapons. The life-or-death question for the coming elections should therefore be: Who lost Iran?
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Where's the accountability?
Subject: txt nsec iran msm libs -
This was thought to make President George Bush look bad because he was insisting that Iran was a rogue nation that presented a growing threat in the Mideast and throughout the world.
Since it made George Bush look bad, it was therefore considered of major significance. As I noted in a December 2007 column, the mainstream media had been "doing a major blitz of the airwaves with the claim that Bush and Cheney had misled the American people and the world by saying that Iran was a nuclear threat."
But the liberal media - apparently endeared with the idea that 2009 was some far distant future beyond our need for concern - just told the public what it wanted the public to know -
"Bush is bad; Iran not so much."
The only problem was that the sum total of evidence in the National Intelligence Estimate that supported the proposal that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 was the sentence that declared it so.
Indeed, throughout the report there were red flags as big as the nose on Pinocchio's face. Even in the very same sentence that declared Iran had "halted" its nuclear weapons program, it was also acknowledged that Iran "still may be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015."Well, welcome to 2010...
[Among the most glaring double standards in our liberal MSM: accountability of the Left's past misdeeds - frequently their own...]
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Brazil rebuffs US pressure for Iran sanctions
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[America alone.]
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Rebirth of a Nation
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Newsweek's cover this week is a double-taker.
So is the accompanying story, which includes:
Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
And yet it has to be said and it should be understood — now, almost seven hellish years later — that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.
Independent journalist Michael Yon remembers writing something along these lines in the summer of 2008. He e-mails from Afghanistan:
"As per normal, MSM is lagging behind the obvious . . . . You might recall that in 2008 I said the war is over, and we won. (I remember because like with all such statements, people throw stones and only later does it bear out.)"
Yon's not looking for credit there. He explains:
"This isn't rocket science, Kathryn. It's just a matter of paying attention and disregarding what others think about your report, and waiting patiently for history to vindicate."
He adds: "Newsweek might consider renaming itself to Historyweek."
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MSNBC Crops President Bush Out of Newsweek Cover
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On Wednesday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough pointed out the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine, which proclaimed "Victory At Last; The Emergence of A Democratic Iraq" and featured a picture of President George W. Bush walking the deck of an aircraft carrier. However, the image of Newsweek that appeared on screen cropped out President Bush's face entirely...
One of Scarborough's guests, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, reacted to Newsweek's declaration of victory in Iraq: "Too positive....For sure. We're going to take months to see a new government formed and we don't know how well the new government's going to operate....Too soon to take out the champagne, if ever." Show co-host Mika Brzezinski added: "Still a lot of controversy as to why we went in."
[What bias?]
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No Where Safe from Leftist Bombast: TV Mom Frets GOP House Guests 'Denying Global Warming'
Subject: txt grn msm libs fnn -
I can't believe the three of you are in here drinking while the GOP is out there denying global warming.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Abuse of Power
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote.
What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
The vehicle is "reconciliation," a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.
Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because they've failed to make their case through persuasion.
Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can't sell their policy to the people. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.
The goal is to permanently expand the American entitlement state with a vast apparatus of subsidies and regulations while the political window is still (barely) open, regardless of the consequences or the overwhelming popular condemnation.
This is an unprecedented act of partisan arrogance that further marks Democrats as the party of liberal extremism, all so Obama can claim an LBJ-level legacy like the Great Society that will be nearly impossible to repeal...
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[THEN (yes, again)...
"OPPOSE OBAMACARE and 'RECONCILIATION' "
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Californians:or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
Barbara Boxer web mail http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
Dianne Feinstein webmail
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
and as always, pass it on...
..
NBC: Rangel Giving Up Gavel.Salon: No He's Not. ABC: Yes He Is.The Hill: No He's Not
[They're all right {or wrong}]
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Justices signal they're ready to make gun ownership a national right
Subject: txt gdd 1st lbrty guns othr vals othr - bbro -
Washington- Most of the Supreme Court justices who two years ago said the 2nd Amendment protects individual gun rights signaled during arguments Tuesday that they are ready to extend this right nationwide and to use it to strike down some state and local gun regulations.
Since 1982, Chicago has outlawed handguns in the city, even for law-abiding residents who sought to keep one at home. That ordinance was challenged by several city residents who said it violated their right "to keep and bear arms" under the 2nd Amendment.
The case forced the high court to confront a simple question it had never answered: Does the 2nd Amendment limit only the federal government's authority over guns and state militias, or does it also give citizens nationwide a right to challenge their local and state gun laws?
The justices will meet behind closed doors to vote this week on the case of McDonald vs. Chicago. It may be late June before they issue a written ruling.
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.
'Pelosi Says She Has Much In Common With The Tea Party'
Subject: txt msm fnn lbrty 2010 -
"The speaker now says she shares views with movement she dismissed last summer as being 'Astroturf,'"
And that wasn't CLOSE to being the most preposterous part of the story.
More absurd was how Vargas during this 'interview' actually allowed Pelosi to get away with such a ridiculous comment (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary):
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Attorney General Eric Holder Defends Defense Lawyer at Justice Department
Subject: txt gwot nsec -
In an escalating war of words with Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Republicans are raising "serious concerns" about political appointees at the Justice Department who previously worked on behalf of terror suspects. The Republicans told Holder in a letter obtained by ABC News that "unanswered questions" about these political appointees "raise serious concerns about who is providing advice on detainee matters"...
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DOJ: Department of Jihad?
Subject: txt gwot islm - nsec -
War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on?
We may now have a clue as to why...
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