Obama-Care
GrapeVine (11-12-10)
Dr. Drew on Obama-Care
(Language Warning)
A Majortiy of states may sue the federal government over Obama-Care
Florida Attorney General-elect Pam Bondi told Greta tonight that a majority of states are now joining the suit against Obamacare. …. Only 43 states have attorney generals.
Giuliani Takes It To the Views Audience
Has Blue found a clue? (title is a h/t from commentator at Eric Allie’s site)
Counting Calories Doesn’t work-and more importantly-it kills jobs
Ed Morrissey (over at HotAir) interviewed a business owner about something that was hidden in the Obama-Care (Leftist-Care) bill that passed that will kill jobs and limit growth of the small business person:
Yesterday, I spent a little time at a local pizzeria to find out more about the impact of the new federal menu mandate in the real world. Davanni’s has 21 locations throughout the Twin Cities, a smaller, local chain that suddenly must now comply with this federal requirement to publish the caloric content of each of its menu items on all of its printed presentations. However, these restaurants have a problem when they offer their customers a wide range and high number of options — as most pizzerias do. Ken Schelper, a Vice President of Davanni’s, sat down with me yesterday to explain just how costly this new mandate is, and how difficult compliance will be:
Not only does this new health bill effectively put another layer of mandatory layers onto the business man at his personal expense, but this new layer doesn’t work, like Obama-Care:
Calorie Postings Don’t Change Habits, Study Finds:
….But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country….
And what is the most important thing for an economy to boom? JOBS! Another hidden tax (cost to the small business owner) was in the bill as well, which affects jobs:
CORRECT~What a difference seven months
What a difference seven months — and an election — makes! Joe Manchin told Chris Wallace on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday that he would have voted against ObamaCare if he had taken the time to read the bill before casting a vote. A year ago, though, Manchin was cheerleading its passage, telling people that no bill is ever perfect but that the time had come to pass this particular government grab of authority. Did he bother to read the bill first before giving that advice, or was Manchin just acting as a rhetorical rubber stamp for Obama? The Daily Caller reports on the flip-flop:
In the final days before the midterm elections, Democratic Senate candidate and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin doubled down on his opposition to parts of the health care law, legislation he supported when it was being debated in Congress last spring.
Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday” that he would not have supported the bill if he had been made aware of everything that was in it at the time. While he still fully supports “the concept” of the health care overhaul, he called the final product “overreaching,” citing the new tax mandate on businesses and the lack of protection against government-subsidized abortions.
“Knowing that, I would not have supported that or voted for that at that time,” he said.
Manchin added that he still supports parts of the bill that halt insurance companies from discriminating against customers with pre-existing conditions and the ability for young people to stay on their parents’ health care plan until they are 26-years-old.
“There’s a lot of good parts to it,” he added. “Why don’t we fix what’s wrong with it and make it better?”
Here’s Manchin a year ago, giving the argument that we needed to pass a bill that he apparently never bothered to read:
Will the progressive lefts health care plan allow for choice or job growth?
In the above video we see Obama saying the following:
“IF you are already getting health insurance on your job, then, that doesn’t change. Health insurance reform passed was passed six months ago. I don’t know if anybody here has gotten a letter from their employer saying, ‘you have to go on government health care’….”
This statement is just false. I have posted in the past on this topic of companies dumping their plans because it will be cheaper for them just to dump their employees onto the government plan. Here is a recent example exemplified over at HotAir – 3M to dump retirees from medical coverage:
Remember when Barack Obama repeatedly promised that no one’s current coverage would have to change if Congress approved the health-care overhaul he demanded? When the ObamaCare bill passed, the Associated Press suddenly discovered that the change of tax law that would supposedly generate billions of dollars to pay for the costs of the bill would also drive companies to dump retirees from their existing drug coverage and push them into Medicare. Minnesota-based 3M became one of the first large corporations to do just that — and push retirees off of all their plans as well:
3M Co., citing new federal health laws, said Monday it won’t cover retirees with its corporate health-insurance plan starting in 2013.
Instead, the company will direct retirees to Medicare-backed insurance programs, and will provide reimbursement for that coverage. It’ll also reimburse retirees who are too young for Medicare; the company didn’t provide further details.
The company made the changes known in a memo to employees Friday; news of the move was reported in The Wall Street Journal and confirmed Monday by 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry.
The ObamaCare bill created a fund to subsidize employers who didn’t dump their retirees, but the WSJ notes that it simply wasn’t enough to change the negative incentives created by the government interventions:
The changes won’t start to phase in until 2013. But they show how companies are beginning to respond to the new law, which should make it easier for people in their 50s and early-60s to find affordable policies on their own. While thousands of employers are tapping new funds from the law to keep retiree plans, 3M illustrates that others may not opt to retain such plans over the next few years. …
Democrats that crafted the legislation say they tried to incentivize companies to keep their retiree coverage intact, especially until 2014. The law creates a $5 billion fund for employers and unions to offset the cost of retiree health benefits. More than 2,000 entities, including many large public companies, have already been approved to submit claims for such reimbursement. 3M did not apply.
How did Democrats come up with the $5 billion figure for subsidies to protect retirees from losing their plans? From the looks of it, they simply made it up. They also didn’t do much calculation to determine whether the subsidies would actually incentivize employers into rejecting this strategy for cost savings. To some extent, they may not have been able to make that calculation, because thanks to the massive amount of ambiguity in the bill, no one can really say for sure what the future costs would be. And of course, that’s why 3M chose now to dump the retirees.
3m has 23,000 retirees, many of them likely to be living in Minnesota. They’re also likely to vote in the upcoming midterms, perhaps even more likely now than ever. That won’t be good news for House Democrats in the Minnesota delegation hoping to win a new term in four weeks.
We already know we will not know the ultimate costs… and going off of experience, we know all government programs are always more than what we are told:
This is a concern for the Dems and will be a losing issue (among the many others). Here are a couple examples of the impact this ridiculous bill has had on business:
Sally Pipes is Interviewed By ReasonTV
Obama-Care Loosing Support
Just as a side-note: Almost no one thought the earth was flat in Columbus’ day. Talk about misinformation… jeez! I wrote Leslie Marshall in the hopes she would forgo such use of non-history in the future:
Just an FYI, almost no one (including who was funding and sending Columbus to explore) believed the earth was flat. People from early Grecian days knew it was round. In other words, you were talking about misinformation and gave a misinformed analogy. Even Stephen Jay Gould said, “there never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars.” I suggest two books on the subject, one in-depth, the other a short chapter. The sorter read in entitled, Not So! Popular Myths About America from Columbus to Clinton. The more in-depth book, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians.
I hope this helps,
Bendover
NewsBusters has a piece explaining that the Dems have all but abandoned the fiscal ship (if there ever were one to begin with):
…It has now been five days since Politico’s Ben Smith published a powerpoint presentation created by an amalgamation of powerful left wing interest groups, conceding that two of the central arguments for passing ObamaCare – that it will lower the deficit and will reduce health care costs – have failed.
For a group of organizations integral to the passage of the law, that was a stunning admission. And yet, the mainstream press is nearly silent on the issue. Searches on Nexis and Google News reveal no coverage from the major television networks, the cable news channels (with the exception of Fox), the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NPR, PBS, or Newsweek. To their credit, Time Magazine and the Washington Post published a blog post each on the revelation.
Even while discussing ObamaCare and its potential effects on the deficit and health care costs, some media outlets managed to avoid any mention of a fact Democrats now seem to be conceding: “the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed,” as Smith notes….
[….]
Byron York explains the significance of Herdon’s recommendations:
It’s a stunning about-face for a party that saw national health care as its signature accomplishment. “This is the first time we’ve seen from Democrats that they clearly understand they have a serious problem in terms of selling this legislation,” says Republican pollster David Winston.
The reluctance to defend Obamacare as a cost-cutter and deficit-reducer is particularly telling. Wasn’t that the No. 1 reason for passing the bill in the first place? “This legislation will … lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” President Obama said when he signed the bill into law on March 23. Now, Democrats are throwing that argument out the window…
The story might be even worse than that for Democrats. Everyone knows the public’s top issue is the economy. It has been since before Obama took office. So when the president and Democratic congressional leadership devoted a year to passing national health care, Republicans charged they were ignoring the public’s wishes. Now, when Democrats admit that Obamacare won’t cut costs or reduce deficits, they open themselves up to a more serious charge: they spent a year working on something that will actually cost jobs and make things worse.
The liberal interest group coalition’s recommendations speak volumes about the political and policy failures of the administration and the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership. And yet virtually all major media players are silent on the admission.
…(read more)…