Under the new law, for-profit insurance companies will be required to spend 85% of their budget on claims. One left wing group estimated HMOs spend only 15-25% on claims, and 75% on executive bonuses and payments to stakeholders. Yeah, right. A more realistic estimate was produced by people who actually work for the industry - not executives, but people who get a regular wage like most hard working Americans - of 65% of cost to claims. Now lets say you're a liberal lawmaker who thinks anything short of 100% of cost to claims is not enough, but you're willing to take money from the insurance lobby toward your reelection hopes, so you settle at 85%. Now we've all hard a few stories of people who were actually denied claims or dropped from insurance, but of course we never hear all the facts, only the side of the "victim" of the insurance company, but the reality is these companies are not out to get you, and for almost everyone with insurance who isn't taking on an elective operation, your insurance company will honor your claim. If they don't, sue them, it's your legal right. That doesn't happen because those people don't really have a case and just want government to take care of them.
Anyway, the 85% rule will have only two possible outcomes: Either insurance companies will slash thousands of positions to meet the drastic cost cuts - more lost jobs - or premiums will skyrocket to balance existing costs against the new benefits requirement. Democrats know this, of course, and built in a provision where they can step in and evict companies from programs that directly or indirectly receive any public funds or provide for public clients if those companies break undefined and arbitrary cost borders. Effectively, politicians can force private insurance companies out of business by robbing them of significant revenue at any time. And the more insurance companies are forced out of business the more people will be forced to accept the government option of tax credits for access to local, government-contrived insurance organizations with more red tape and bureaucracy between the patient and provider.
You want to talk about customer service? At least with a private company the livelihood of the person on the other end of the phone or the email is dependent on your continued contribution. With government there is no such failsafe. If they screw up you have absolutely no recourse. You're on the hook, and they're unionized - why should they give a damn about you? If you're lucky you'll be allowed a "health insurance advocate" who will dig into your claim and maybe it will all work, but there are no guarantees and you can't realistically sue them and win, and as a taxpayer you're paying their salary, too.
How is this not a scam???
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Crazies!
General Rahm wasted no time implementing his new operation to distract from the substance of health care. The effort to demonize the opposition has reached a fever pitch this week, with the lefty media stumbling over themselves to label anyone who disagrees with the destruction of personal freedom as a racist homophobic evangelical Christian with limited intelligence. Two black leaders in Congress claim racial slurs were hurled at them, although there were hundreds of people in the vicinity, including members of the media, and no one else heard it, but they report it as fact anyway because no one should ever question the integrity of a black politician. To do so is the epitome of racism. Now I'm not calling Charlie Rangel a liar - he wasn't there but was ready to judge the thousands who turned out against the vote without any evidence. Rangel is a repeat tax offender who only stays out of prison by calling everyone else a racist and threatening them from his chairmanship. Democrats hold this guy up as one of their leaders - that is exactly the kind of person and politics they promote. Amazingly, there is absolutely no evidence of racism or any kind of bigotry from conservatives, and the media has been all over these events. They're desperate for it, so desperate that today on NPR they tried to create a link between tea-partiers and the Michigan militia that conspired to kill policemen. I find that horribly offensive, but its just the sort of disgusting slime spewing from the mouths of NPR hosts and guests on a daily basis.
Funny how when crazy liberals were comparing Bush to Hitler there was no outrage from the "Free Press" about rampant partisanship or how the political rhetoric had "crossed the line." No, it's only crossing the line when conservatives dare to speak up, peacefully and armed with nothing but facts. Now we have to be outraged when someone likens politics to war - as if that doesn't happen all the freaking time. "Battleground states"? Never heard that one before, I suppose. Its no one's fault but their own that Democrats executed political suicide by voting to bankrupt the country (even faster than it otherwise already would have been, thanks to Democrats of generation's past).
The media is in its death throes as any kind of unbiased, fact-affected institution, and more and more Americans are catching on to that. Lets hope the beacon in the storm, Fox News, can point out the obvious play Rahm's directing to undermine our credibility as the majority opposition, and the legion of weak-minded fools who were persuaded to vote for Bama without any basis besides his oratory skill are not also swayed by this Chicago-style backroom political trick.
Funny how when crazy liberals were comparing Bush to Hitler there was no outrage from the "Free Press" about rampant partisanship or how the political rhetoric had "crossed the line." No, it's only crossing the line when conservatives dare to speak up, peacefully and armed with nothing but facts. Now we have to be outraged when someone likens politics to war - as if that doesn't happen all the freaking time. "Battleground states"? Never heard that one before, I suppose. Its no one's fault but their own that Democrats executed political suicide by voting to bankrupt the country (even faster than it otherwise already would have been, thanks to Democrats of generation's past).
The media is in its death throes as any kind of unbiased, fact-affected institution, and more and more Americans are catching on to that. Lets hope the beacon in the storm, Fox News, can point out the obvious play Rahm's directing to undermine our credibility as the majority opposition, and the legion of weak-minded fools who were persuaded to vote for Bama without any basis besides his oratory skill are not also swayed by this Chicago-style backroom political trick.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
I'll Pay What I Want!
So we found out today that the price in American taxpayer dollars for Bart Stupak's vote on health care reform was a paltry $750,000. Apparently his principles aren't worth very much, as this pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions given to Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida to get the votes of senators in those states. Oh, and Bart, that executive order that Bama drafted to ease your mind? He didn't sign it. You're both frauds.
On NPR this morning they were conducting a listener poll to see whether people were happy or not with the vote outcome. Naturally, NPR being a lefty slum, the vote went 2:1 in favor. One caller who claimed to be a physician from Milwaukee claimed she was so happy that she would gladly pay more taxes to support the reform.
That got me thinking, why don't we just let everyone in the country pay what they think services provided for them are worth. The government could come out with a breakdown of all services and what everything costs, and you could say, "Yeah, I was helped by that this year," and write a check for whatever. If this crazy liberal whackjob wants to pay $100,000 a year of her income in taxes, who am I to stop her? She could do that today - you can contribute toward next year's return, but of course the government isn't saving that money, they're spending it, so just give as much as you want, crazy lady.
I see the military as the primary service which does me any good, and maybe the federal highway system, so my taxes should be a bout a thou' for 2009. But liberals should feel encouraged to give much, much more, so they can get the warm fuzzy for the sake of "fairness."
On NPR this morning they were conducting a listener poll to see whether people were happy or not with the vote outcome. Naturally, NPR being a lefty slum, the vote went 2:1 in favor. One caller who claimed to be a physician from Milwaukee claimed she was so happy that she would gladly pay more taxes to support the reform.
That got me thinking, why don't we just let everyone in the country pay what they think services provided for them are worth. The government could come out with a breakdown of all services and what everything costs, and you could say, "Yeah, I was helped by that this year," and write a check for whatever. If this crazy liberal whackjob wants to pay $100,000 a year of her income in taxes, who am I to stop her? She could do that today - you can contribute toward next year's return, but of course the government isn't saving that money, they're spending it, so just give as much as you want, crazy lady.
I see the military as the primary service which does me any good, and maybe the federal highway system, so my taxes should be a bout a thou' for 2009. But liberals should feel encouraged to give much, much more, so they can get the warm fuzzy for the sake of "fairness."
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Last Hurrah
It was inevitable, and now it's nearly over. Everything predicted will come to pass with the brush of a pen tomorrow, or more like 50 pens; these bill-signings always call for lots of pens for some reason. In the end, politics trumped principles, as it always does with democrat lawmakers (when the principle isn't the politic). Bart Stupak himself needed little more than Bama's craftily conceived obfuscation to cast his troubles to the curb and vote yes. So what of these vaunted "pro-life Democrats?" Obviously there is no such thing, only liberal opportunists whose "principles" flutter in the wind.
One needed little more than to watch the grandstanding following the vote last night to understand what this was all about. Look at that podium. Every single person who spoke was born during the FDR presidency. Coincidence? Of course not. They were raised suckling the teet of Depression-era New Deal liberalism. They cut their teeth moving paper for LBJ, and now they've created a bureaucratic monument of their own, both a testament and tribute to a life of liberal idealism. They call it progress, but true progress would eliminate the perceived necessity of such action. As I've described before this is entropy. Entropy is cold and inevitable, just like "progressive" liberalism. Maybe the only question is how did we hold out so long?
If democrats could just get out of the way and let somebody make a profit then truly free markets would offer a solution for anyone who needed it, and there would be no imposed fines and weighty new federal institutions to manage what will surely be unmanageable. Unfortunately, profit is some unimaginable horror to democrat politicians, even though many of them are wealthy exactly because of the capitalist society they demonize. Or maybe that's not right - there's a lot of lawyers in that group, too.
What will last for most of us who have been thinking about the issue for the last two years is how brazenly Democrats have and will continue to lie to the American people for this thing. Today Secretary Kathleen Sebelius commented on this occasion by reiterating the lie that "You can't fix the economy without first fixing health care." Oh, then what was the point of that trillion dollar spending spree last year? Wasn't that to fix the economy? It's a lie because the only sector in the American economy that grew last year was Health Care, which saw record profits. When she says "economy" she means government, because government spending for Medicare sets new records every year. Hundreds of billions of dollars of your money and mine goes to approved providers to pay for the care of mostly the elderly. Are we so lost as a society, so afraid to die, that we must squeeze every last painful second from life? More evidence of the erosion of values. More entropy in action, bought by Uncle Sam and paid for by every generation of Americans to follow.
Another lie is that only through reform can we cut costs. If it was possible to cut $500 Billion from Medicare, shouldn't they have done it by now? It's unlikely one dime will be cut from Medicare; it's very likely that Democrats will cave to pressure from frightened seniors, who are equally responsible for the mess the economy is in today because of 80 years of selfish entitlement spending, and who continue to dictate terms even as they get to the end of theirs.
It's a lie that the insurance industry is exploiting consumers for pure profit. Insurance industry profits were 7% last year - hardly egregious. Why do you think that Blue Cross company in California raised rates by 40%? Not because they wanted to make 40% more profit, I assure you of that. I'm not convinced Rahm and Bama weren't involved, and I'd bet a month's pay that if the media was at all interested in the truth instead of just pushing the democrat agenda that they'd find members of the board of directors of that company were Obama campaign contributors, and the relationship goes both ways. Classic Chicago politics.
And then there's the lie that premiums will go down. During that useless meeting with leaders of Congress last month Bama was emphatic that the CBO report showed premiums would go down. Well remember how liberals aggressively pushed for "equality" in mortgage lending, openly threatening and bullying lenders to give loans to unqualified borrowers? Bama was on the front lines, along with corrupt feeder groups like Acorn, directly caused the collapse of the housing market and contributed greatly to the economic collapse of 2008. Now they're doing the same thing to the insurance industry. Forcing companies to take on consumers with pre-existing conditions alters the cost equation. Either premiums will go up to cover or insurance companies will go out of business. There are no alternatives. Bama's argument is all lies.
But that's what he wants. With the insurance industry bleeding a slow death the federal government can step in more and more, and we will be dependent on it for more of our needs all the time. We'll likely have single-payer at some point this decade, and who's going to pay for that? Remember, the government spends our money - it doesn't have its own. Single-payer is a myth - just another lie. We'll all pay, and in addition to the current costs we'll now have to support a massive new layer of bureaucracy. It's self-perpetuating. It's socialism, but that's not even the ultimate goal. Progressives want Soviet-style communism, where the elite few control every aspect of the lives of the many; only then can there be true equality, so long as you don't consider the elite. They'll call it "US-brand social capitalist democracy" or some such nonsense, but it will be death to the freedoms and liberties we've enjoyed for better than two centuries.
No, societal prejudices do not favor everyone, but that's the thing: life isn't fair. Not everyone is born to privilege, or is good-looking or healthy or highly intelligent or even capable, and for the less fortunate we can help out. Americans are a very giving people - we just don't like to be forced to do things at the end of a baton, or a gavel. But then liberals don't trust the American people. They don't trust us because they don't control us. Not yet anyway, and hopefully in November we can get rid of these Stalinists and take a step away from progressive entropy.
One needed little more than to watch the grandstanding following the vote last night to understand what this was all about. Look at that podium. Every single person who spoke was born during the FDR presidency. Coincidence? Of course not. They were raised suckling the teet of Depression-era New Deal liberalism. They cut their teeth moving paper for LBJ, and now they've created a bureaucratic monument of their own, both a testament and tribute to a life of liberal idealism. They call it progress, but true progress would eliminate the perceived necessity of such action. As I've described before this is entropy. Entropy is cold and inevitable, just like "progressive" liberalism. Maybe the only question is how did we hold out so long?
If democrats could just get out of the way and let somebody make a profit then truly free markets would offer a solution for anyone who needed it, and there would be no imposed fines and weighty new federal institutions to manage what will surely be unmanageable. Unfortunately, profit is some unimaginable horror to democrat politicians, even though many of them are wealthy exactly because of the capitalist society they demonize. Or maybe that's not right - there's a lot of lawyers in that group, too.
What will last for most of us who have been thinking about the issue for the last two years is how brazenly Democrats have and will continue to lie to the American people for this thing. Today Secretary Kathleen Sebelius commented on this occasion by reiterating the lie that "You can't fix the economy without first fixing health care." Oh, then what was the point of that trillion dollar spending spree last year? Wasn't that to fix the economy? It's a lie because the only sector in the American economy that grew last year was Health Care, which saw record profits. When she says "economy" she means government, because government spending for Medicare sets new records every year. Hundreds of billions of dollars of your money and mine goes to approved providers to pay for the care of mostly the elderly. Are we so lost as a society, so afraid to die, that we must squeeze every last painful second from life? More evidence of the erosion of values. More entropy in action, bought by Uncle Sam and paid for by every generation of Americans to follow.
Another lie is that only through reform can we cut costs. If it was possible to cut $500 Billion from Medicare, shouldn't they have done it by now? It's unlikely one dime will be cut from Medicare; it's very likely that Democrats will cave to pressure from frightened seniors, who are equally responsible for the mess the economy is in today because of 80 years of selfish entitlement spending, and who continue to dictate terms even as they get to the end of theirs.
It's a lie that the insurance industry is exploiting consumers for pure profit. Insurance industry profits were 7% last year - hardly egregious. Why do you think that Blue Cross company in California raised rates by 40%? Not because they wanted to make 40% more profit, I assure you of that. I'm not convinced Rahm and Bama weren't involved, and I'd bet a month's pay that if the media was at all interested in the truth instead of just pushing the democrat agenda that they'd find members of the board of directors of that company were Obama campaign contributors, and the relationship goes both ways. Classic Chicago politics.
And then there's the lie that premiums will go down. During that useless meeting with leaders of Congress last month Bama was emphatic that the CBO report showed premiums would go down. Well remember how liberals aggressively pushed for "equality" in mortgage lending, openly threatening and bullying lenders to give loans to unqualified borrowers? Bama was on the front lines, along with corrupt feeder groups like Acorn, directly caused the collapse of the housing market and contributed greatly to the economic collapse of 2008. Now they're doing the same thing to the insurance industry. Forcing companies to take on consumers with pre-existing conditions alters the cost equation. Either premiums will go up to cover or insurance companies will go out of business. There are no alternatives. Bama's argument is all lies.
But that's what he wants. With the insurance industry bleeding a slow death the federal government can step in more and more, and we will be dependent on it for more of our needs all the time. We'll likely have single-payer at some point this decade, and who's going to pay for that? Remember, the government spends our money - it doesn't have its own. Single-payer is a myth - just another lie. We'll all pay, and in addition to the current costs we'll now have to support a massive new layer of bureaucracy. It's self-perpetuating. It's socialism, but that's not even the ultimate goal. Progressives want Soviet-style communism, where the elite few control every aspect of the lives of the many; only then can there be true equality, so long as you don't consider the elite. They'll call it "US-brand social capitalist democracy" or some such nonsense, but it will be death to the freedoms and liberties we've enjoyed for better than two centuries.
No, societal prejudices do not favor everyone, but that's the thing: life isn't fair. Not everyone is born to privilege, or is good-looking or healthy or highly intelligent or even capable, and for the less fortunate we can help out. Americans are a very giving people - we just don't like to be forced to do things at the end of a baton, or a gavel. But then liberals don't trust the American people. They don't trust us because they don't control us. Not yet anyway, and hopefully in November we can get rid of these Stalinists and take a step away from progressive entropy.
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Slippery Slope
Some might wonder how conservatives can claim to want health care reform but be against Obama's proposals. The answer is simple, and reveals the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. While liberals need to accomplish everything through a consolidation of power to the few in the federal government, conservatives strive to restore power to the many in private enterprise. How do we do that? By eliminating the crushing impediments of taxation and bureaucracy which slow down the health care system and drive up costs exponentially. Think of it like this: taxes and fees are not merely added to regulatory oversight costs, they are multiplied several times over. I said it in my first post on this subject: Government is the cause of the problem and cannot also be the solution.
We've heard the "Public option" ad nauseum, but the moniker is a lie. What Democrats propose is a government option, and has nothing to do with the interests of the public as a whole.
This morning again on NPR the guest said this is all about the 50 million uninsured, and it's just common decency to give them the same coverage everyone else has. I hate that obnoxious entitlement mentality. There are dozens of other factors that must be considered besides "common decency", which is not a factor that benefits society at all. The same guy held up Social Security and Medicare as great triumphs of progress, ignoring the reality that those two programs are doing more damage to the long-term financial solvency of this country than any thing else, and if you add yet another massive entitlement program on top of that you really do hasten the end of this once great democracy. This is not a joke. The United States really could collapse under these financial burdens.
Finally, realize that Social Security was a political gimmick concocted to raise money for the government. When it was enacted the average person did not live long enough to collect - that was by design. The "fund" has actually never been funded, and now we're $50 Trillion in the hole. Try asking the government for a lump sum payout of all the money you've paid in when you retire. Good luck. Somehow Democrats have managed to make it sound like the money to pay for all these things is just sitting around waiting to be applied for some purpose, not that it comes from taxpayers who have no say right now in whether they want to donate even more of their paycheck for someone they've never met to go the clinic to stop a nose bleed.
Liberals have said for decades that there is no slippery slope. Is there anyone who still believes that? I guess so, but here's hoping that number is getting smaller, even while public education is conditioning our kids to believe otherwise.
We've heard the "Public option" ad nauseum, but the moniker is a lie. What Democrats propose is a government option, and has nothing to do with the interests of the public as a whole.
This morning again on NPR the guest said this is all about the 50 million uninsured, and it's just common decency to give them the same coverage everyone else has. I hate that obnoxious entitlement mentality. There are dozens of other factors that must be considered besides "common decency", which is not a factor that benefits society at all. The same guy held up Social Security and Medicare as great triumphs of progress, ignoring the reality that those two programs are doing more damage to the long-term financial solvency of this country than any thing else, and if you add yet another massive entitlement program on top of that you really do hasten the end of this once great democracy. This is not a joke. The United States really could collapse under these financial burdens.
Finally, realize that Social Security was a political gimmick concocted to raise money for the government. When it was enacted the average person did not live long enough to collect - that was by design. The "fund" has actually never been funded, and now we're $50 Trillion in the hole. Try asking the government for a lump sum payout of all the money you've paid in when you retire. Good luck. Somehow Democrats have managed to make it sound like the money to pay for all these things is just sitting around waiting to be applied for some purpose, not that it comes from taxpayers who have no say right now in whether they want to donate even more of their paycheck for someone they've never met to go the clinic to stop a nose bleed.
Liberals have said for decades that there is no slippery slope. Is there anyone who still believes that? I guess so, but here's hoping that number is getting smaller, even while public education is conditioning our kids to believe otherwise.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Inevitable
Stalinist Dennis Kucinich is now on board with Bama's health care takeover. Not really a surprise there; I imagine Dennis was just holding out for pork but easily caved. I bet his conversation with the Campaigner-In-Chief went something like this:
BO: Look, Dennis, obviously I need your vote on this.
DK: Mister President, I can't vote on this in good conscience.
BO: Well what is your objection, exactly?
DK: This bill continues to favor special interests and Big Insurance at the expense of the poor.
BO: You want single-payer.
DK: This country needs it.
BO: Dennis, and this is between you and me, OK? I'm with you, but we both know that once we get this passed then single-payer is inevitable.
DK: I have to stand on principle. You understand.
BO: Sure I do. Look, here's how this is gonna go down. You're going to vote Yes on this bill, as it exists today. You got me?
DK: Umm...
BO: You know, Dennis, I'm sure your voters get it, we're not talking about Texas here. Tell me I've got your vote and I promise you single-payer during my second term.
DK: You're second term?
BO: What do you think of Air Force One? Nice, right? I could probably use your council more often on trips like these. Whaddaya say?
Eventually DK caves without any sugar except an empty promise from a likely one-term jerk-off.
The Democrats are going to pass Health Care destruction. It might even happen this week, but it will happen. It's also at least remotely possible that the Supreme Court will throw the whole thing out, but that's some wishful thinking.
BO: Look, Dennis, obviously I need your vote on this.
DK: Mister President, I can't vote on this in good conscience.
BO: Well what is your objection, exactly?
DK: This bill continues to favor special interests and Big Insurance at the expense of the poor.
BO: You want single-payer.
DK: This country needs it.
BO: Dennis, and this is between you and me, OK? I'm with you, but we both know that once we get this passed then single-payer is inevitable.
DK: I have to stand on principle. You understand.
BO: Sure I do. Look, here's how this is gonna go down. You're going to vote Yes on this bill, as it exists today. You got me?
DK: Umm...
BO: You know, Dennis, I'm sure your voters get it, we're not talking about Texas here. Tell me I've got your vote and I promise you single-payer during my second term.
DK: You're second term?
BO: What do you think of Air Force One? Nice, right? I could probably use your council more often on trips like these. Whaddaya say?
Eventually DK caves without any sugar except an empty promise from a likely one-term jerk-off.
The Democrats are going to pass Health Care destruction. It might even happen this week, but it will happen. It's also at least remotely possible that the Supreme Court will throw the whole thing out, but that's some wishful thinking.
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