Posts Tagged ‘health care reform’

Bob Maistros

Obamacare is stuffed full of costly, ugly mandates – not just the individual mandate to buy insurance, but as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels pointed out in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, lots of expensive demands on states, not to mention insurance companies, employers and providers.

So the key question:  what to replace it with?

Take your medicine, says Washingon.

The GOP’s answer? Replace some, not all, of the bill’s mandates with their own mandates.

The Republicans would keep some of Obamacare’s really dumb burdens on insurance companies, styled as consumer protections – including a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions and the requirement to allow children up to 25 years of age to remain on their parents’ policies.

Moreover, the GOP plan would engage in its own interventions, including medical malpractice reforms, prohibitions on canceling policies, paying states that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured, and ordering the sale of health insurance policies across state lines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Franken

Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and all the rest need to watch their backs as they make their thinly disguised runs for their party’s presidential nomination (make that “anorexically disguised”). While they might present themselves as the champions of Dark Ages Republicans there is someone else out there who personifies everything the national GOP stands for. It can be completely summed up in three words: “Destroy Obama’s presidency”.

Marketing himself as the next president.

The leader of that band is not Palin nor Gingrich, shameless partisans though they may be. The Obstructionist-in-Chief title goes to Jim DeMint, R (of course), South Carolina. You had probably figured that out, now hadn’t you?

This is the guy, after all, who had summed up his view of health care reform as nothing more than an opportunity to severely weaken the president. That’s it. He made no bones about it. His exact words were “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Maistros

As a further public service, we felt it would be useful to expand our recent Obama Glossary to cover terms in presidential statements on the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen and the Senate’s version of health care “reform:”

“Action” and “actions” – inaction.

“Breakthrough” – embarrassing failure.

Let me be clear...

“Cadillac plans” – expensive private health insurance plans, except those benefiting union members.

“Compromise” – sellout or bribe.

“Concrete commitments” – vague pledges.

“Consensus” – complete lack of agreement. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Maistros

(Loud knocking)

Wondrous Willie: “Go away!”

(Further knocking)

Wondrous Willie: “What? What?”

I knew they'd come crawling back...

Harry: “Are you the Wondrous Willie who worked for the Democrats all those years?”

Wondrous Willie: “The Democrats said they didn’t need me or my wife anymore. They said they had this new Miracle Worker … they called him The One, and they won a big election with him. And thanks for the reminder of such a hurtful rejection. Why don’t you just tie me in a chair with Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar and make me watch an Al Gore PowerPoint presentation?”

Nancy: “We need a miracle.” Read the rest of this entry »

Kelly Anderson Wright

Lawmakers on the Senate floor are wondering if Majority Leader Harry Reid has lost his mind, something folks back home have known for quite some time.

Why else would Reid deliberately offend a majority of Americans, as well as most of his constituents?

During the raging debate on health care reform Monday, Senator Reid intentionally aimed nuclear missiles at his fellow lawmakers: he compared those who oppose health care reform to those who opposed the abolition of slavery more than a century ago.

Harry lives in a bubble, unaware of the mutiny back home.

Reid seems to have forgotten his history: Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat,  unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while Republicans led the charge against slavery.

More troubling is the fact that Reid appears unaware that not just Republican lawmakers oppose Obamacare. Numerous recent polls show a majority of Americans and Nevadans oppose the specific health care reform bill Harry is trying to pass. His salvos, aimed at the Republicans he is supposed to lead, might as well have been aimed at the entire nation… and Nevadans, who cringe every time Reid speaks. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Sherrier

Remember that ordeal in New York recently? When the Republican establishment backed a left-leaning candidate, until conservatives led by Sarah Palin rallied around a third-party candidate who held views more strongly in line with their values?

Pundits had a field day with that one, as they carried on about the GOP being taken over by the “radical right,” which sought to purge the party of moderates.

Sorry, not progressive enough. Gotta go.

This was hailed as a horrible situation for the Republican Party that would no doubt favor the Democrats in elections. The general tenor equated to “those stupid conservatives, sabotaging their own party!” followed by a “Ha! Ha!” similar to that bully kid from The Simpsons.

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine said in a Nov. 4 statement, “However, perhaps the most consequential race of the night was the special election in the 23rd Congressional District of New York in which the Republican candidate, a moderate, was purged from the Republican Party by the most extreme elements of the conservative right wing including Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Hefty

It’s one thing as president of the United States to surround yourself with a cabinet and group of czars that do your bidding.  It’s completely different to direct their general path and provide decision-making leadership that doesn’t embarrass you.  Now that nine full months have passed into the record books of the Obama Administration, I believe we can safely assume a few things about his ability to lead.

In a nutshell, he can’t.

Lost?

When it came to the so-called stimulus bill, he left the architecture of it to the leaders in Congress.  It was like handing clean needles and raw opium to a kingpin dealer.  Congress, instead of crafting legislation that would cut taxes, diminish overburdening regulation, and decrease spending, went on a spending binge that would make an alcoholic look like he only drank in moderation. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Maistros

Winston Churchill once opined that “democracy is the worst form of government … except all those other forms.”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Wrong!

Face it, democracy stinks. Exhibit A-Z: Health care reform.

Every sentient economist or policymaker in America (which leaves out about half of that

The trains ran on time.

octogenary society known as the U.S. Senate and all of the Democratic House Leadership) knows that two simple measures would largely resolve our so-called health care “crisis:” Tort Reform and Tax Reform.

Tort Reform alone is said to be worth about $200 billion in health cost savings each and every year. Not to mention rejuvenating the supply of medical-care providers who are now parachuting out of practice one jump ahead of the bill collectors. The public overwhelmingly favors revamping the legal system.

But can it get passed? NOOOOO!

As Common Good Chairman Philip Howard points out in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “A few thousand trial lawyers are blocking reform that would benefit 300 million Americans.” Your “democracy” – or more precisely, “Democrat-ocracy” – at work.  Read the rest of this entry »

Candace Talmadge

Let’s get one thing straight up front. So-called tort reform will not cut U.S. health care costs in any significant manner. It will, however, deprive Americans of their constitutional right of redress while boosting the health insurance industry’s already bulging bottom line. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated, in a report published in December 2008, that federal caps on malpractice insurance lawsuits and awards would lower total health care spending by 0.5 percent. That is one-half of 1 percentage point. Wow! Alert the press! 

Just for grins, let’s look at some more numbers. Removing private health care insurance industry charges for overhead and profit from health care funding would reduce spending by at least 30 percent and, in the individual insurance market, by as much as 40 percent. 

If we are actually serious about cutting health care costs, do we focus on a 0.5 percent saving, or cost cuts of at least 30 percent?  Read the rest of this entry »

Kelly Anderson Wright

Finally, for once, President Obama and I agree on something! Kanye West is a jackass, and not just for stealing sweet, 19-year-old Taylor Swift’s microphone and award-winning moment at the VMA awards. Kanye rakes in millions as a singer, yet he’s tone deaf: fans cringed in “fingernails-on-blackboard” pain when Kanye’s auto-tune pitch correction microphone malfunctioned on “American Idol.” Frankly, even Yoko Ono sings better than Kanye.

"No You Can't" sing, Kanye, and the prez called you a donkey.

Suddenly it occurs to me: Kanye West and Barack Obama share more than their African roots! They both carry the “I’m Not Worthy” gene: Kanye can’t sing, and Obama won the presidency because he gives a great speech, but he can’t speak cogently or even PC without a teleprompter (or his Press Secretary… Gibbs, where the heck were you yesterday?) But I digress….

Read the rest of this entry »