Author: Peter Weldon

Orwellian Obamacare PR

A young woman I know received a mail piece recently from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). View a PDF version.

The headline on one side is: “Your Preventive Care May Now Be FREE Thanks to America’s New Health Care Law.”

The headline on the other side is: “You may now get many of your preventive care services for FREE.”

The mail piece goes on to list the preventive services including cancer, HPV, and HIV screenings, as well as contraception.

I find all the listed preventive services to be fine, dandy, worthy, appropriate for women, who should pay the cost of same like everyone else pays for their preventive services whether through an available health insurance policy that covers such services or directly.

The problem with this political effort is the word FREE in green, all caps, bold, and italic.

The problem? It is a lie.

All health care services cost money. They are not for FREE.

The truth for women? “Your Preventive Care has now been SOCIALIZED Thanks to America’s New Health Care Law.” That is, the cost of the preventive services listed will now be paid by everyone covered by health insurance, including women who use these services. The DNC is lying.

It is notable that men will be universally subsidizing these services together with women but, at least as of yet, women will not be universally subsidizing the cost of prostate cancer screenings, HPV and HIV screening, nor the cost of condoms and erectile dysfunction treatments for men. Where does this stop? What interest group will be the next to demand services that will be SOCIALIZED under universal Obamacare mandates? How about abortions? How about drug and alcohol treatment? How about mental illness treatment? How about smoking cessation? How about weight watchers? How about gym memberships?

So, why is the Democratic National Committee selectively mailing Obamacare propaganda about female preventive services to women? (def of “propaganda”: information, especially false information, that a government or organization spreads in order to influence people’s opinions and beliefs)

The DNC is lying to women in an effort to gain their support for all of Obamacare without having to explain the realities of universal mandates and actual costs. The DNC effort is both a lie and an attempted bribe.

George Orwell was just a few decades early in the reality he saw coming.

The Political and Financial Disaster that is Obamacare

The Congressional Budget Office (not Fox News, not Rush Limbaugh, not Glenn Beck, not some other source considered by those on the left to be on the right wing fringe) published Updated Estimates for the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., Obamacare) on March 13, 2012.

Obamacare is now estimated to cost $1.76 trillion for eleven years through 2022, rather than the $940 billion forecast for ten years ending 2020 as represented at the time it was enacted. That’s $1,760,000,000,000 instead of $940,000,000,000. Get it? See this article in The Washington Examiner. I am still searching for a mention of this report in The New York Times (let me know if you spot one).

Is the $1.76 trillion number comparable to the $940 billion number? Not exactly as the updated numbers include estimates for 11 years through 2022 while the initial estimates were based on ten years starting in 2010. But this was a known scam to begin with and the current CBO numbers reveal the back end cost loading (see Table 2). Anyone hear anyone questioning Mr. Obama on how we are going to pay for an additional $820,000,000.000 over the next ten years, and the estimated $265,000,000,000 each year beyond 2022? Is this updated estimate reflected in Mr. Obama’s budget? Where are the questioners?

Here is the White House spin. It never compares Obamacare’s updated estimated cost with the cost when it was enacted. Does the word “dishonest” come to mind? Ever wonder about the history of actual spending on government health care programs compared to estimates at the time of enactment? And here are some known details of actual costs and taxes imposed by Obamacare.

Mr. Obama and the people in his administration don’t care what it costs. They are happy to put your children and grandchildren in hock for their lifetimes to move us to nationalized health care, to make government the supreme decider. Mr. Obama and his supporters are confident they know what is best for you and believe they have a right to impose the cost of their certainty on you. That alone is reason they all need to go. The obvious financial problems just increase the odds they will soon depart leaving a disastrous legacy.

Political Relativity

David Brooks has a recent piece in the New York Times in which he advocates political relativity.

Mr. Brooks uses phrases like “the ultra-free market Club for Growth,” “Wingers fight to take over the party,” “Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party members,” and more.

His characterization of “extremism” in the Republican party may well be used by Democrats and Mr. Obama to get reelected. It would, however, be nonsense. To wit:

The original enactment of Medicare in 1965 was certainly partisan but by no means to the extremes seen in the “signature” legislation of Obama’s first term noted above. Medicare passed with 70 Republican votes in the House and 13 Republican votes in the Senate.

The fact is that the Obama “signature” bills dramatically impacting our society, your rights, and the economy were rammed down the throats of dissenters with great partisan gusto. The combined impact of these bills make Medicare look like a college tuition program. Extremism, anyone? So let’s ask Mr. Brooks to reassess “Republican’s on the extreme” and to give credit to those who rightly push back against our progressive masters taking over DC, and our lives and our rights. Is that last sentence extreme or does it reflect reality?

“The ultra-free market Club for Growth” is a misnomer. Can there be “mini-free market” or “partially-free market” advocacy? Personal liberty (a.k.a., freedom) is relative only to extent it is exercised against the rights of another person or a person’s property. You know, a crime: theft, fraud, arson, embezzlement, kidnapping, extortion, violence, etc.

The free market and freedom should be exactly that, free. It cannot be qualified absent criminal activity.

Each of us is free in this manner, but only to the extent we insist our government’s purpose is to protect our liberty, and not to protect us from the exercise of liberty by others. Wherein lies personal responsibility and the limited role of government in enforcement against those who violate the liberties of others.

Which brings us back to Mr. Brooks and his suggestion that political relativity wins elections. What kind of future is there in the road we are now traveling? Let’s hope the electorate demands “extreme” candidates who will lead us into a future with a quality education and productive jobs for our children, with economic growth, with a rollback of our $16,000,000,000,000 Federal debt, with  restructuring that reduces our $60,000,000,000,000+ unfunded entitlement liabilities, and much more. Both distant and recent history, and our instincts, tell us no such future exists absent policy changes from a government purposefully protecting our freedoms, rather than one claiming those freedoms for its own purposes.

Let Reason Rule

This responds to an article in the Wall Street Journal from November 3, 2011 by Jeff Greene, “We Should Listen to the 99%”. Mr. Greene is an investor and was a Democratic candidate from Florida for the U.S. Senate in 2010. He is a signatory to the Giving Pledge, which commits participants to devote the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

I am pleased Mr. Greene found the educated, middle class “occupy” protesters “sincere.” I find him to be sincere as well.

Mr. Greene concludes the protesters are “angry and frightened about the future” because they believe 99% of Americans are becoming more insecure, while only 1% of Americans are becoming more secure. Ninety-nine to one! Sounds like an unfair fight to me but people in America are free to express themselves. That expression helps us all digest what we observe, and reach our own conclusions about what has the ring of truth and what does not.

Mr. Greene puts blame for the insecurity of the protesters on a combination of bad government housing policy, bankers, low relative gas taxes, and a non-competitive education system. (Clarifying note to Mr. Greene, those Federal highways were paid for by the drivers who paid those relatively low gas taxes.)

Perhaps Mr. Greene represents the intersection of the “occupy” people and the “tea party” people, or perhaps he represents the ultimate in statist policy presumption that tells people where to live, what forms of transportation to use, and what skills the government will train them to perform. How about the following ideas Mr Greene?

Young and capable people are being asked to finance unsustainable social security and Medicare/caid entitlements. My daughter, a college student, doesn’t understand why she is expected to finance my retirement and health care benefits and pay off 15 trillion dollars in debt accumulated by my generation. She and the “occupy” people are right to be incensed about this. So, let’s restructure the entitlements to transition to a sustainable model where each generation has a chance to receive benefits of equal value. This means that each participant needs to share in both the risk and the return of these programs, not presume their children will subsidize them. If these problems are addressed with fundamental structural reform that fully addresses the multi-generational issues many will be willing to pay additional taxes to help with such a transition to sanity.

The political soup of the now taxpayer owned mortgage bundlers, Fannie and Freddie, has contributed materially to the culture of greed, self dealing, and influence peddling that corrupted the mortgage market and motivated its derivative financial engineering. So, let’s close down government intervention in the housing market and require both lenders and borrowers to suffer the consequences of dishonesty, while holding all parties accountable for performance of the obligations contained in the mortgage contracts they freely enter into. Let’s also make the Federal Reserve accountable to the people for its actions by requiring an annual audit.

One can presume from Mr. Greene’s comments that he understands the role of national, state, and local education interests in driving down the quality of education while driving up the cost. So, let’s put the power to choose and to allocate funding in the hands of the parents that care. Let’s also reflect on Mr. Greene’s comments about required skills and let employers tell the educators what skills they need, as they will be the ones hiring.

Finally, I am pleased Mr. Greene has committed a majority of his wealth to philanthropy as it demonstrates an understanding that it is more productive to deploy his money in the diversified private charitable realm than to allow it to be consumed by government in the form of estate taxes. I hope he is also allocating some of the capital derived from his individual success as an investor to business opportunities that may employ some of those protesters he identifies with.