This was Tweeted out by a photogapher with the NYT this morning. I was impressed.
But since the NYT might be inclined to be possessive about the rights, I’m not going to put the image in this post. I’m just going to give you the link so you can go see it.
Pretty good shot, huh? I’ll bet those photogs in the photo — all of whom got the standard, run-of-the-mill shots — are kicking themselves now, assuming they saw this.
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Oh, for those who want something more than a picture, Sec. Sebelius called the Obamacare rollout a “debacle,” and apologized.
Such a waste of time, these “hearings”. Republicans ask questions that are evaded or deflected. Democrats pretend there are no issues and either lob softballs at Sebelius or spend half their time talking about Republicans or about the Medicare Part D program which isn’t close to Obamacare.
And why is it that there is all this phony talk of collaboration when the room is set up specifically to have Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other? It’s all pure theatre built around lies and posturing. Nobody really knows what the truth is. But its easy to tell who the liars are.
Getting the angle that tells the story is the job.
The story is the calculated, duplicit charade of GOP indignation over RomneyCare. I did like the camera lens allusion to circular fire though.
Got the day off to prepare for Halloween. We typically have 150 kids come by so it’s important to have the house properly decorated for the event.
But before I get started I thought it would be appropriate to bring up something really scary. I’ll do this in the form of a game. We’ll call it the presidential mendacity quiz. This will be a 2 part game. Part 1 will be to match the POTUS to the lie he told. The second part will be to grade each lie according to how egregious it is. Let’s get started.
The Presidents:
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H.W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
The Lies
I did not have sex with that woman
I was attacked by a Rabbit
This pardon is for the purpose of healing the country
I will not make American boys do the job Asian boys should be doing
Read my lips, No New Taxes
If you like your insurance you can keep it, period
The British have learned Saddam Hussein was seeking large quantities of Uranium from Africa
Your president is not a crook
I just don’t remember
Sebelius might just be the first victim of the Obamacare death panels…
I have one to add to Bud’s list of presidential mendacities, although technically this was not uttered while this person was actually President (yet) (that should give it away)
“The President looked fine and ate a bigger lunch than I did!”
Meanwhile, re the pic…Sebelius seems to be reaching under the table for the button to activate the Tantalus Field.
Here’s the reason the “If you like your insurance, you get to keep your insurance” promise was so important: Because Obama promised us choice. The American people only agreed to this plan (well, let’s just say we resisted less) because Obama swore up and down for years that we would have the choice of retaining our old insurance OR switching to the new, supposedly “better,” insurance.
He offered us a “choice”. Freedom for us to choose ourselves. People liked that, because people like having individual freedom to control their own lives.
See, if you have a choice, then you can switch if the new policy is in fact better. You are thus held harmless. If you think the new policy is in fact worse, you can simply opt-out of the whole deal by not signing up for a new policy. And don’t tell me that the new policies are “better”. They’re not. If they were “better” you wouldn’t have to force people to sign up for them. People would be able to decide that they want to go with the better policy. But the whole point was to force young healthy people (like me) to subsidize other people’s health insurance.
On the other hand, if you are not allowed this choice (which is now being revealed), the government can FORCE you to accept worse coverage — or the same coverage at stratospherically-jacked-up premiums — and you cannot do anything at all about it, except take your punishment.
We’re being forced to take our punishment now. The freedom to choose is being exposed as a lie. If the President had said “You’ll lose your plan and be forced to get a new one” do you think the ACA would have passed? Yeah, me either. But that’s what the reality is. That’s what it HAS to be for for the math of the plan work.
Generally, it’s not lying to people that gets you in trouble. It’s when they find out that you’ve been lying to them. With every cancellation notice that arrives every day, people are starting to find out they’ve been lied to.
I may have to do a whole post on this. I thought it was very telling that bud wanted to do the game where he shows us that other Presidents have lied to us. Deep down, bud knows that President Obama lied and lied and lied about this, and he’s trying to deflect this by telling us that other Presidents have lied about other “more important” things, so we shouldn’t be upset that Obama lied to us about being able to keep our health insurance.
But hey, if you like your willing suspension of disbelief, you can keep your willing suspension of disbelief.
No the American people didn’t “only agree to this plan” for that reason. Those who had private insurance they wanted to keep would have likely opposed it, since they are likely Republicans, as small business types who make enough to buy insurance.
And it wasn’t a referendum. Nobody asked the “people” to agree, or the more popular single payer would have won. It was a foolish compromise with the right-wingers who look upon compromise as a dirty word.
As Lee Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend”.
It was not a compromise with “right-wingers”. No right-wingers voted for it. Again, no Republicans voted for it. Please explain to me how it was a compromise when one side did not vote for it. It was rammed through with parliamentary tricks and gimmicks.
The uber-left (wanting single payer) negotiated with the moderate left the entire time. The Republicans weren’t a party to the negotiations. Remember the Corn-husker Kickback? That was a bribe to Democratic Party Senator Ben Nelson to get him to vote for the ACA. No republicans voted for this. That’s not a compromise. This was all done with Democratic super-majorities. The Democrats didn’t need the Republicans, so they didn’t concede anything to them.
A compromise is where both sides leave the settlement table getting some of what they wanted. The Republicans didn’t get anything of what they wanted, because the Democrats didn’t negotiate with them.
You can’t re-write the history, Kathryn. You can call it a compromise between the ultra left and the regular left, but that’s a compromise within the Democratic Party. The GOP didn’t compromise at all, as you indicate from your own statement of: “right-wingers who look upon compromise as a dirty word.”
The ACA was opposed by the GOP on principle. And now it’s falling apart, so the leftists are running around trying to figure out how to get the GOP to share the blame for a total failure.
On that issue, I believe that President Obama recently asked for the “GOP’s help” in this moment of crisis for the ACA. What help exactly is he looking for? What does he want the GOP to do exactly? I’m not sure what he’s asking the opposing party to do. Can anyone help me out on that?
“Those who had private insurance they wanted to keep would have likely opposed it…”
Why would we have opposed it? I was told by the President that I could keep my insurance if i liked it. Do you remember him saying that once or twice? Are you saying he lied to us? If so, are you saying that it’s our fault for believing him?
“Those who had private insurance they wanted to keep would have likely opposed it, since they are likely Republicans,”
Hmmm… so if you have a job in private industry, you are likely a Republican? What does that say about everyone else?
Obviously, everyone else isn’t a greedy, evil, racist, capitalist who makes money from slave-like labor of the poor.
Not what I said.
People who work for the sort of employers public AND private who have great insurance are probably more likely Democrats, as are people with no insurance. People with enough money to buy private insurance and not get it through their employer are far more likely to be Republicans.
Just because the Republicans did not accept the compromise does not negate that it was offered.
Republicans attempted to add numerous amendments to Obamacare. All were eliminated.
This is a 100% Democrat law. It was pushed through for one specific purpose: to give Obama a “signature” piece of legislation.
They own it. If it succeeds, they get the credit. If it fails, they get the blame.
Lawyer flag on the play.
“Just because the Republicans did not accept the compromise does not negate that it was offered.”
If you make me an offer and I do not accept it, then we have nothing. We have neither a contract nor a compromise, whatever you want to call it. We didn’t reach an agreement, so we don’t have a compromise. The failure to reach an agreement means there is no compromise.
The Democrats in the House and Senate simply negotiated with themselves. The most leftist leaning members negotiated with the most centrist DEMOCRATS because they didn’t need the Republicans; they didn’t want the Republicans.
It doesn’t really matter how much we bat it around here, though. Reality has a way of intruding into things, as it’s currently doing. What was the number they needed to sign up by January 1? 7 Million? If 7M don’t sign up, the ACA enters the death spiral where the prices keep going up and up, because all the young healthy folks aren’t there to subsidize the old, sick ones.
The plan isn’t working, y’all. I’m just trying to figure out when the drumbeat for single-payer starts in earnest from the left. I’m thinking around March.
Now, let’s not just highlight the negatives of Obamacare. There are some positives. Here are three:
1. No single male will ever go without maternity care again.
Hey, you know the old story. A young single man, planning his life and then BAM! He wakes up feeling funny, missing his period, feeling nauseated. Finally, after hand-wringing he goes to the drugstore for an in-home pregancy test. Oh, jeez! It’s positive….oldest story in the book. Until now, this pregnant guy would be shocked to see that his policy didn’t cover maternity care. Problem solved, bros.
2. Obamacare really punishes the rich folks.
Yeah, there are some winners and losers in Obamacare, but there’s some social justice as well. For too long, the evil capitalists have been profiting off the backs of the poor. These rich 1%ers are really going to pay now. Too bad Pennybags.
3. The ACA gives you choice!
Not the keep your old plan kind of choice, winger. We’re talking about the choice to purchase a plan that is three times more expensive or pay a tax. It’s choice, with a little dash of government edict for flavor. Delicious.
True story. Someone I work with had his family plan cancelled because it did not meet the criteria set by the ACA. On the surface, one would conclude he tried to cheap out and buy the least expensive policy he could. Sorry, the reason the policy was cancelled was because it was not all inclusive to include dental care for his young son. However, he had a separate policy that did cover his son’s dental care and both policies are, no were, very good.
Now, he is scrambling to find coverage and is reeling over the sticker shock of the cost of a new plan because he makes too much to be eligible for a subsidy.
Since I have decided to not criticize or engage in a rant about Obama again, I think the true story should say it all.
Bart that’s an easy one. IF TRUE (and many of the anecdotal stories prove to be something very different) that sort of cancellation should not happen. These are the glitches that occur with any rollout of something big. Read the story of America’s first jet fighter, the P-80. There were glitches, big and small for a couple of years before it became a terrific fighting machine. But not before several pilots were killed. Look at the horrible operating system Windows was when it first rolled out. My PC routinely froze up or gave me the blue screen of death. Hardly ever happens now. Color TVs first appeared in 1954 but were awful until about 1968. Early instant photography, Polaroid, was a messy and expensive proposition. Remember early commercial jetliners, British Comet? Not a safe way to go.
What needs to happen is a cooperative effort by all Americans to make the ACA work and work well for all Americans. Otherwise we will continue to have the most expensive healthcare system in the world. And folks will face the very real prospect of “death panels” as per the insurance industry. American ingenuity will once again prevail. And the “Fulton’s Folly” naysayers will be left with nothing useful to say. But that will not stop the nattering naybobs of negativity from slamming the next big idea. History always finds a way to repeat itself.
Well bud, it is TRUE. He is a client. As for the other examples, every example cited was the first of its kind. If as we are constantly reminded, if ACA is based on RomneyCare, then why the massive problems? After all, RomneyCare has been around for several years, right?
No one declared the P80 would conquer the skies, Bill Gates never promised Windows would be perfect and by the way, comparing ACA to Windows is an example of comparing apples to oranges. Color tv was a new technology, not based on something that had been around for decades. Polaroid? Again, new technology, ahead of its time.
“What needs to happen is a cooperative effort by all Americans to make the ACA work and work well for all Americans.”… How are we supposed to correct the problems, are we all suddenly proficient in writing code for the ACA so it will work as promised?
Anecdotal? Ask the millions whose insurance has been cancelled if they consider their cancellation “anecdotal”.
I know that Blue Cross Blue Shield has sent everyone letters (including myself) that did not get their current BCBS individual (or family) policy before sometime in 2010 (whatever that grandfather deadline was) that they will have to change to one of the new plans by mid Sept 2014. Definitely not just anecdotal. We also cannot get the subsidy.
Based on the current premiums, the payment for me and my son will increase from about $370 to about $530, so by about 45% (certainly not 3x as much, but definitely more). On the other hand, my husband was paying about $950/month through the SC reinsurance facility, his only option before ACA. Starting in January, he will get a BCBS plan that costs about $550 (he gets better coverage since he uses it more). So, his premium will drop almost 48%.
Which is to say, we are one of those families that wins and loses, though overall, we come out $250/mo better. And so, I think it’s not as bad as Bryan paints it, and not as good as bud does. Of course there will be those who are just where we are, but everyone’s healthy (like Bryan’s client), and they will end up paying 30%-40% more. However, without ACA it wouldn’t take much to put them where we were — where one sickness made the only available insurance cost more than twice as much. Then they would be glad for ACA.
So, an insurance system where you pay less as long as you’re healthy, and then pay much, much more if you’re not? Or a system where you pay more when you’re healthy, and the same amount more if you’re not? Even if we were all healthy in my family, I think I would prefer the latter — though I might still not be thrilled with the premium increase.
But our premiums on the state plan are going up this year, as always. By quite a bit unless you elect the bare bones indemnity plan….
Oh, yes, I didn’t include the fact that part of the increase is probably not related to ACA, but just because that what premiums do every year.
This is from Yahoo! Finance:
…………..Health Care Shoppers Aren’t as Dumb as Obama Thinks
By Rick Newman | Yahoo Finance – 18 hours ago
…
…….”Jim Stadler is one of the “5 percenters”—the 5% of Americans with health insurance policies they purchased on their own—who got notified recently that their carrier was canceling coverage because it didn’t meet the tougher new minimum requirements of the ACA. Stadler, a freelance writer who lives outside of Charlotte, N.C., was laid off from a full-time job at an ad agency in 2009, at which point he became a freelancer and bought individual health coverage for him and his two kids.
Jim Stadler of suburban Charlotte, N.C., whose health insurance is being axed on account of the Affordable Care … Under Stadler’s expiring policy, his premiums are $411 a month, for coverage that always seemed adequate to him. “It’s not a substandard policy,” he says. “I thought it was a great deal.” The premium for the new policy offered by his insurer will be $843 a month, with coverage that’s more or less the same as far as he’s concerned. But new policies are required to include free preventive services such as mammograms and colonoscopies, and they can’t be canceled or priced higher for sicker people, which is why the cost of some policies is going up.
Since Stadler’s family’s income is too high to qualify for federal subsidies, he’s considering putting his kids on the policy his wife, a teacher, gets through her job. But that would be expensive, too. “The thing that gets me,” says Stadler, who voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election, “is I thought Barack Obama was the only guy I could trust in Washington. He ended up lying to me because he said, if I like my insurance, I could keep it.” ……
…….The 5-percenter problem could end up being a much more serious albatross for Obamacare and its mostly Democratic supporters than the notorious web site snafus and other temporary snags, which can mostly be fixed. Obama did, in fact, say repeatedly, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But policies held by as many as 10 million Americans don’t meet the minimum requirements of the law and are now being canceled. Obama this week added a “vast majority” clause to his earlier claim: “For the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it,” he said in a recent speech on health-care reform……..
…….Obama did, in fact, say repeatedly, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” But policies held by as many as 10 million Americans don’t meet the minimum requirements of the law and are now being canceled.”
Now, bud, tell us how this is freaking “anecdotal”, enlighten us please!!
No one denies health care access reform was needed and some guidelines established but the ACA that was forced upon the country was a quagmire of unrelated wish lists and incomprehensible regulations that simply did not exist. Simply stated, it is a make-up-as-you-go piece of legislation but the administration and Democrats refused to negotiate changes unless they benefited the administration or Democrats. Republicans did try to present changes but to no avail because as the administration declared, “we won, you lost, get over it”, or “elections have consequences”, or “you can come along for the ride but you have to sit in the back”. To make matters worse, the senate version and the house version both became bills that can stand on their own. You tried in vain to equate ACA with other efforts that simply do not compare in scope, relevance, or value. Microsoft Windows was a private sector effort; color television was a private sector effort; Polaroid another private sector effort; commercial jetliners private sector; and the list can go on and on and on but still will not compare to the failure of the rollout of ACA which was a government effort, not private enterprise.
Dealing with private enterprise products, the public has a choice to buy or not and there are no penalties or taxes to pay if one chooses to not purchase. ACA is not optional unless one is on Medicare and even then, the impact is being felt though increases in drug benefits and if one opts to purchase Part B from an insurer.
But, as each glitch or revelation is made public about ACA, the unrest within the Democrat ranks keeps growing and the explanations or excuses become less credible every time a Democrat or administration spokesperson tries to defend the ACA. When Yahoo! has a headline like the one referenced here, “Houston, we have a problem.”
susanicola made perhaps the most relevant comments. There will be some losers, mostly the young, high-earning and healthy who purchased on the open market. But I don’t think this is entirely a zero sum game. The winners will ultimately outnumber the losers and ultimately costs will be contained. But we really won’t know the total impact until several years have passed. What we do know is what was occurring in the past. Health care premiums were skyrocketing while deductibles and copays increased. Any state worker can tell you that. So any current increases cannot be entirely attributed to the ACA.
I agree; she did.
Many comments here – and elsewhere – seem to gloss over the whole point of insurance: things do happen, and happen unexpectedly as often as with warning (witness girl paralyzed by a bullet in 5 Points). How could there have been that universal clamoring to have kids under 26 be included on all parental insurance which sailed through to everyone’s relief? People saw the need to protect the “invulnerable” from themselves. The same thing is happening now; we are asking those over 26 to take on adult responsibilities. Think about that…at 26!
The point of insurance is to widely, and actuarially, distribute the financial load. The point of insurance is to protect us all as economically as possible. Who doesn’t believe those same people who want their cut-rate insurance will not end up being some of the ones who need extended coverage the most – when enjoying that coverage, or later? If that happens, as expected, the rest of us will end up paying for them. How did ducking one’s personal responsibility become a Republican talking point? When I grew up, it was the Democrats who always seemed to be doing that…
Obamacare isn’t just about personal responsibility, it is also about the rich paying the bulk of the cost of insurance for other people. That has nothing at all to do with personal responsibility.
People who make more than $100k pay the bulk of Medicaid and Medicare costs. People who make more than $200k pay all of the cost of the Obamacare subsidies. That’s doesn’t equal shared responsibility in my book. That’s wealth redistribution.
As a 30-something man with my own plan for myself, being a relatively healthy person, I don’t want lactation and maternity services, abortion services, speech therapy, mammograms, fertility treatments or Viagra. I don’t want it. So why should I have to tear up my existing health-care plan, and then buy a plan with far more expensive premiums and deductibles, and with services I don’t need or want?
Why? Because Team Obama says I have to. And that’s not much of a reason. It’s not freedom.
Insurance, by definition, is subsuming one’s own current situation to the overall needs of the greater whole. Insurance is about future risk mitigation. All of those services you mention are statistically probable for a thirty year old man to encounter; directly or indirectly.
“Insurance, by definition, is subsuming one’s own current situation to the overall needs of the greater whole.”
No, Mark. That’s the definition of collectivism. Insurance is simply a bet. No more no less. Health “insurance” stopped being insurance a long time ago.
Insurance is the sharing of risk. It is the opposite of a bet, and therefore is, as you say, collectivist.
No. At the fundamental and most basic level, insurance is a bet.
If you buy the simplest and cleanest kinds of insurance, like term life, you are betting that you are going to die during the term of the insurance, and the insurance company is betting you won’t. That’s it. It has nothing to do with “sharing” anything. I’m paying a risk premium to the other side.
Remember “insurance” in blackjack? Same thing. You’re betting against yourself that the dealer will have blackjack if he’s showing a certain card. (face or ace, I cannot remember).
It’s just math.
In life insurance, you start by deciding how much money your survivors need if you were to fall over tomorrow. Let’s say it’s $100,000 to use a round number. So the amount at risk for the insurance company is $100,000. That’s called the hazard, H. They look at your your age, your sex, your health, and possibly your profession or hobbies (base jumping? Race car driving?) and come up with a probability that you will die during the term of the insurance. That’s a number P, where P is somewhere between 0 and 1. Closer to one means it’s more likely to happen. (higher probability) Then they compute the expectation value R of that $100,000 as:
R = P × H.
That’s insurance. It’s got nothing to do with “sharing”. Now, obviously, the more policies an insurance company sells, the more they protect THEMSELVES from the wrinkles of life not being perfect. However them selling more policies doesn’t help YOU a single bit.
Your problem is that “health insurance” isn’t really insurance anymore. Maybe it used to be – once upon a time. Now, there are things that are definitely going to happen that are covered like colds and flu, childhood illnesses, and so on — with probability near 1.
Guess what? If P is about 1, that premium is going to be the total cost plus x. Always. No matter what.
So we’ve gotten away from hedging risk to basically having pre-paid health care to a certain extent. It’s not pure insurance anymore.
Normally, young people aren’t fired up about the idea of buying anything other than catastrophic (pure risk only) health insurance. Why would they be? Other than accidents and VERY rare diseases, a 25-year-old shouldn’t normally need anything more than minor maintenance and occasional hangover cures. The risk is low, so premiums are accordingly low.
The idea of the mandate, though, is that if you include these low-risk people in the whole insurance pool, the higher premiums they are FORCIBLY CHARGED UNDER PENALTY OF LAW (sorry “tax”) can be added back to the pot for older people and people with serious illnesses, which makes the insurance more “affordable” — for them.
It’s simply a generational transfer of wealth from young to old. Take it from the young healthy people and give it to the older sicker people.
So yeah, in that sense it is collectivism. And I’m against that on principle.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Obamacare is not about sharing risk, it is about redistributing wealth to pay the health care costs of people who cannot afford to pay for it themselves. In a perfect world, those who receive this free benefit would be expected to provide something in return in non-monetary form – for example, an agreement not to smoke, to maintain a reasonable weight, to exercise. That would at least provide some measure of shared responsibility.
Am I the only person that gets a Cruella DeVille vibe from Sebelius? You put a Dalmatian coat on her, and she’s a dead-ringer.