DISCLAIMER: Before those of you who adore the President read this may I suggest you don’t. Neither of us will change the other’s mind. I feel like I gave the cat a more than fair shake and he has done things I like and/or admire. Not many, but he has. Might I suggest that only those on the fence, or those looking for some eloquent argument to counter the Great Leader crowd, peruse this piece. I will not respond to any cheerleading from either side and will delete offensive posts. I’m no ideologue and have had enough of the shirts vs. skins mentality. I’m about fixing problems, not blame and this is my opening salvo. A while back I posted a piece about how I lost my doctor of more than a few years due to the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act. It now turns out that those consequences weren’t as unintended as one might think. CNN has reported that THREE YEARS AGO, every one of the Senate’s Democrats voted for a rule that caused all, or the overwhelmingly majority of, the cancellation letters millions of Americans have received from their insurance companies. Millions more were sent to the ACA exchanges when their employers cut hours or discontinued insurance plans. Today, a contrite President Obama unveiled a fix, according to the New York Times, or, as the Wall Street Journal phrased it, President Obama will ALLOW us to keep cancelled insurance plans. A couple things jumped out at me concerning this. First, Democrats, with the President as cheerleader in chief, promised ad nauseum that we could keep our doctors and insurance plans, PERIOD, all the while knowing many millions of us wouldn’t. Either that, or, when they cast the vote to kill the rule which caused all this excrement, they had no idea of the ramifications and they are truly imbeciles who have no business deciding anything for the rest of us. Second, the word ALLOW, which the Free Dictionary defines as: to let do, or happen, means that somehow the Democrat party screed of late, IT’S SETTLED LAW, yada, yada, yada, is not true. Now granted, the President never said allow in his remarks. That’s the editor’s word choice. He did say, however, many things about how the current mess is his fault and offered a solution. The problem is that the solution he offered has to glaring errors: 1) how does something that is “settled law” become unsettled by executive fiat? And 2) can he somehow not know that this too is simply untrue? Plans that were by law earlier today illegal, are now okay because the President says so? Not sure how that would work, but I do know that no President of the United States can make such an edict. Laws are passed by Congress and signed into effect by the President; they are not “legal” at his discretion. Due to the language of his law, the plans in discussion are now not only illegal, but unsatisfactory plans that would have killed you at worse, or bankrupted you at best. I can only presume that this ever so brilliant man knows this and is only offering the happy, happy, joy, joy mantra of I feel your pain that politicians so often employ when they have screwed up our lives. Lest my friends on the Left believe I have nothing but animus for their side of the political aisle, let me assure you that I find fault with BOTH political parties. You cannot get the shit back into the horse once it’s on the floor. There is no FIX to this abomination. The President cannot ORDER insurance companies to implement plans that his law cancelled just because he says so. All one needs do is remember back to School House Rock and sing along with “I’m just a Bill. Just a lonely old Bill and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill…..” And the Republicans cannot wish this law away without something to address the problem of uninsured Americans, WITHOUT causing a similar number, or in the case of ACA, a larger number of Americans to have their lives disrupted by the government. I am amazed that all this nonsense began because there were, initially, 10-15 million uninsured Americans. Instead of addressing that ever increasing number, this plan has already disrupted the lives of, according to the President, 5% of the country. Seems to me that those two numbers are more than a little similar. My argument has always been one of expanding Medicaid, with federal dollars allotted to states, create nationwide insurance pools, (dry cleaners, fishermen, etc), tort reform and allow competition across state lines, while leaving the rest of us alone. No politician can do the latter though because they ALL believe they know better and are smarter than the rest of us. The truth is though, that Washington, D.C. is nothing more than Hollywood for ugly people and the Olympics for the unathletic. I do not need them to fix my life. I need them to fix pot holes, collect trash, pay cops and firemen and provide for the national defense. I’ll happily handle the rest. That’s a little hyperbolic of course. I need some other odds and ends, but the point of all this is that I do not need politicians forever deciding what is best for me and what I need to exist. As Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine scariest words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I do not know when or why so many of my fellow Americans decided to ignore that insight, but all too many have and we are all the worse for it. online.wsj/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579197733759439274?mod=djemalertNEWS nytimes/2013/11/15/us/politics/obama-to-offer-health-care-fix-to-keep-plans-democrat-says.html?_r=0&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1384456175-PqBAXOx/ivxD030VGgMLyA President Obama bowed to mounting political pressure from across the country and on Capitol Hill on Thursday, announcing new rules that will let insurance companies keep people on health care plans that would not have been allowed under the Affordable Care Act. He said critics were “properly focused” on the problems with the implementation of the health care law, and said that the current criticism was more valid than attacks on his actions in the past. “There were times I thought we got slapped around unjustly,” he said. “This one is deserved. It’s on us.” politicalticker.blogs.cnn/2013/10/31/senate-democrats-supported-rule-that-lead-to-insurance-cancellations/ Washington (CNN) - Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out. In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:05:03 +0000
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