Finally: Obamacare unveiled
And it looks pretty much like the Senate version, with a few minor tweaks.
See this and this for some interesting analysis.
In related news, the White House says that if Republicans try to filibuster health care reform, reconciliation is the way to go. Truth? Dare? Bluff? You be the judge.
It’s all so very bipartisan of Obama. What’s that Thursday meeting all about, again? Showtime!
[ADDENDUM: And about those outcome studies…]
[ADDENDUM II: Summary version of the plan: balloon mortgage (hat tip: American Digest). ]
the White House says that if Republicans try to filibuster health care reform, reconciliation is the way to go. Truth? Dare? Bluff? You be the judge.
Then again, Harry Reid has already said that he anticipates passing Obamacare via reconciliation.
The White House is just spinning it so they can blame Republicans when the Democrats use reconciliation.
Geoffrey Britain nailed it here a week ago that the bipartisan summit is mainly to provide cover for reconciliation.
After looking over the links neo provided, the four areas of Obama’s ‘reconciliation’ of the House and Senate bills, that I find of the most significance are his proposed price controls upon health care insurance premiums, his support for forcing all Americans to pay for federally funded abortions the forcing of Insurance companies to insure Americans with pre-existing conditions and his creation of a new ‘public option’.
Obama’s ‘Best’ Idea? Rationing Care via Clinton-esque Price Controls
Obama Unveils Health Care Plan, Violates Pledge by Keeping Abortion Funding
It’s clear that these provisions, if enacted and left unchecked, will doom private health care insurance in America, which is, I believe their intent and ultimate goal.
History has conclusively demonstrated that price controls, in a free market economic system are at best, counter-productive. Every economist knows this, even the President’s economic advisers, such as Larry Summers, are on record as opposing price controls. Additionally, no private insurer can compete with a federally subsidized public insurance program. Capping insurance premiums while forcing the same insurer to pay for expensive pre-existing conditions is a formula for economic bankruptcy.
So the purpose of implementing them cannot be economic but rather political with the goal of moving this country away from capitalism and further toward socialism.
As for the proposed implementation of federally funded abortions; this is simple ideological blindness by the radical leftists within the Democrat’s leadership. It’s a real political powder keg that will explode and result in an ongoing political firestorm that will be impossible to extinguish. There will be ongoing, adamant and increasing civil disobedience by literally millions of Americans.
There are two lines in the abortion debate that may not be crossed; making someone opposed to abortions pay for someone else’s abortion and overturning Roe vs Wade with the intent to outlaw all abortions in America. Both are ‘lines’ that neither side dare cross, yet Obama appears to be completely tone deaf to the very existence of the anti-abortion line.
Obama is leading the Democrats toward the cliff’s edge, if they follow him and use reconciliation to implement his plan, they will doom their party to political irrelevance for decades.
“The White House is just spinning it so they can blame Republicans when the Democrats use reconciliation.”
Which is what I believe all that the current health care bill is.
Oh, not that they do not exactly want what is in there, just that if they really believed their rhetoric it would be passed. As I said in my previous post a filibuster can’t be permament and isn’t *that* big a fear (in case called wrong again – let me point out that the Majority Leader decides if they have to debate/speak or if the silent version is OK – Ried could *easily* force it to be a political stunt if he truly felt that obstruction of the bill was politically hurtful).
Further, Obama and Ried can threaten all they want – I want to see internal congressional polling as to the likely hood of it passing.
It wouldn’t be the first time (assuming it works) that threats like this from a Dem scare a handful of Republicans into voting for something. For some it doesn’t take much at all, just a glint in Pelosi’s eye is enough to have them run to vote “the right way”, morbid fear that she will destroy their career.
The difference is this time I’m not sure if just a few Republicans is enough to bring all the Dems in line either. If they had done it before Massachusetts – maybe. I think more than a few have realized that the “Health Care Reform” chain is big enough for *all* to wear this time.
However, I do not think that Ried, Pelosi, Obama, Et Al think that way and see it simply as a tool to hurt Republicans and get some of what they want at the same time.
The Milbank article about Emanuel is interesting in this context. If Emanuel is going public with a fight that will end with someone declaring that they wish to spend more time with their family, I think that means that 1) Obama has really decided to jam through health care using reconciliation; and 2) Emanuel believes that Obamacare is going to lose, and he is setting up Gibbs, Jarrett, and maybe Axelrod to take the fall.
In the context of discussing “Health Care Reform” and Obama & Co.’s agenda, this description of Fascism I found in the comments section on another website is, I believe of great interest:–
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html
“Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.”
Also of interest is today’s report from the Conference Board that its “Consumer Confidence Index” (http://www.conference-board.org/economics/ConsumerConfidence.cfm) had suffered a dramatic, unexpected drop of almost 11 points, from 56.5 last month, to 46.0 this month–boy, there sure is a lot of “unexpected” economic news these days.