If you’re a well-connected corporation or a union and beg for an exemption from ObamaCare, that is. Yup, McDonalds and Jack in the Box, as well as teachers unions, are among those being granted waivers from the onerous restrictions of health care "reform".
The rest of you smaller businesses? Well, you can keep the plan you’re in, until you can’t.
Low-wage workers may lose what health benefits they do have because these "mini-med" plans used for high-turnover workers don’t spend enough, according to the government.
Keep your insurance if you like it? Yeah, right.
From James Taranto’s "Best of the Web Today" column:
• "Many provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 won’t be implemented until 2014, but much of the low-hanging fruit started Thursday. One such juicy apple is that insurers will no longer be allowed to deny coverage to children on the basis of pre-existing conditions. . . . To review: As of this week, insurers will be unable to refuse to do business with children."–Matthew Yglesias, TheDailyBeast.com, Sept. 24
• "Refusing to Play: Health Insurers That Won’t Offer Child-Only Policies"–headline, San Francisco Chronicle website, Sept. 24
If you punish it, you get less of it.
Media Bias Dept.: The Left got upset when Rupert Murdoch gave money to right-wing groups. No mention, of course of the 88% of TV network donations go to Democrats. And how much coverage did you hear about the BBC’s Director General admitting that the state-run news organization has had a "massive" left-wing bias? Yeah, me neither. Also, Patterico explains how the media has shaped the national discussion by selective coverage.
Market Watch: The market is doing more for troubled homeowners than the government it. CNN is, apparently, shocked to discover such a thing can happen.
"Recovery" Summer Dept.: Germany’s recover has been fueled to a large extent by private sector consumption and growth, as opposed to the graph I posted earlier showing most of our jobs went to the government. And irony of ironies, a French bureaucrat had to tell the US about cutting spending spurs growth. Why can our own guys understand that?
ObamaCare Dept.: After helping pass the health care bill, one Democratic Senator, using language he helped craft in the bill, is trying to use it to exempt his state from the individual mandate. "Yeah, it’s a great idea … for everyone else but me." Also, reality is putting the lie to the promise that nothing was going to change for you if you like the health care you have.
Film Corner: The trailer us up for "Blood Money", an expose of the abortion industry.
Government (In)action Dept.: The Justice Department is refusing to enforce voter fraud laws, and they’ve plainly said as much. So one lawyer is using a provision of the law to file the lawsuits the Obama’s Justice won’t. Our President respects the rule of law insofar as it furthers his own agenda. No good can come of that.
Gossip Column: Fidel Castro himself admits that the communist economic model doesn’t work. It "works" only insofar as you get influxes of cash from, say, a beneficiary either internally (the "rich") or externally (the USSR). But on its own, it is an abject failure. Would that the Left would hear this and stop trying to move us closer to it.
And finally, the last word on the "Ground Zero Mosque" and the burning of Korans, from Rick McKee. (Click for a larger image.)
Yes, it’s that time of the week again, where I toss out a bunch of links that I was too lazy to do a full blog post on.
Turns out the Iraq war didn’t break the bank. It’s understandable that you might think that, but that only indicates a need to get your news from more sources. The MSM loves to parrot DNC talking points.
(Liberal) feminism is dead. Long live (conservative) feminism!
Jim Wallis said that Marvin Olasky (World magazine editor) “lies for a living” when Olasky noted that Wallis got $200,000 from George Soros. When it was pointed out that he, in fact, did, then came the abject apology in sackcloth and ashes, “Well, it was so small I forgot.” UPDATE: Wallis has issued a formal apology.
Three months ago, James Cameron was ready to “call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads”, speaking of those who dispute anthropogenic global warming. At the very last minute, after changing his demands over and over for how a debate was to be run, he cancelled. Now that takes guts. Or something.
In England, teachers are dropping history lessons on the Holocaust and the Crusades, for fear of offending Muslims who are taught Holocaust denial and a different view of the Crusades at local mosques. They’re afraid of challenging “anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils”. So much for academia being the standard bearer of truth and free speech.
A back door repeal of the First Amendment by … social workers? Well, when liberal ideologues get ahold of professional organizations, nuttiness does ensue. Look at most unions.
And finally, a US district judge put a temporary halt to embryonic stem cell research. Some believe this will devastate scientific research, but Steve Breen puts it in perspective. (Click for a larger image.)
You know racism is seriously on the decline when the New York Times is left to complain about the insufficient diversity of third base coaches in baseball.
Highly-placed Muslims around the word are coming out against the mosque near Ground Zero. In fact, there is apparently a widespread belief among Muslims that opposing any mosque construction is a sin, so we’re probably not hearing as much opposition as it out there.
For the purposes of the November campaign, Democrats won’t be trying to sell ObamaCare as a cost savings. Rather, they’re going to try to sell it as an improvement to health care, never mind the cost. Oh, and that cost? Paid for by the wealthy, so don’t worry. Like they have an unlimited supply of cash to finance this administration’s unprecedented red-ink-o-rama. The link has loads of claims in a recent presentation and how they just don’t pass "Common Sense 101". One of the slides says that the Dems will work to improve the bill. For cryin’ out loud, it just passed! Why wasn’t it improved before passing it, if the improvements are so obvious?
New unemployment claims rose by 500,000…unexpectedly! We’ve tried it the Democrats way for over a year now, and the stimulus just ain’t stimulating anything. But their solution to failed plans is more of the same. Prepare for more unexpectedness in the months to come.
Chuck Asay says it best, in pictures. (Click for a larger version.)
Under the state-run health plan in Massachusetts, emergency room usage has gone up, the costs to the state and to patients has gone up, and many doctors are now refusing new patient that are only covered by the state plan. In addition, business is booming for brokers that help other firms dump their current plan for the state-run one. "Keep your current plan"? Not likely.
As Bruce McQuain of Q&O notes, this epic is coming to a government near you.
MassCare is almost identical to ObamaCare – many of the same people who authored it were instrumental in putting the federal monstrosity together. Reviewing the above 4 items, I’d say they’re 0 for 4 in their promises. The sad thing is we had this example at a state level there to study and as usual, the media wasn’t able to manage the comparison during the weeks of hype surrounding the bill before its passage.
This is you life on ObamaCare. More money, fewer choices, less care.
That’s what happens when the gullible buy into the “something for nothing” political promises of a pack of charlatans and snake oil salesmen.
None of this should be news, especially if the media had been doing its job, but Democrats will simply, once again, come up with excuses why it won’t happen this time, and, when it fails on cue to deliver the promises they made, will convince their blind followers that indeed what we wind up with is "better" than if they’d done nothing.
I’ve seen this movie before, and it always ends badly.
That’s what happens when I take a Friday vacation day.
Democrats are in a struggle with Republicans to see who can repeal portions of ObamaCare first. And now that Harry Reid has actually read the bill, he’s finally realized that this is going to hurt the hospitals in his state more than it’s going to help them. As much as Democrats complained about the delays in getting the thing passed, you’d think they’d have read it by the time it did.
Put Obama in the Oval Office, and he’ll repair our standing with the world…or so went the campaign thought. A poll of Arab public opinion, supposedly an area where Bush had destroyed our credibility, shows that little had changed. In fact, some indicators are even worse than under the eeevil Bush.
A very interesting article suggesting that Evangelical Churches are the new "Mainline" Christian churches, and that the traditionally "mainline" denominations, as they have become more liberal, shrink and thus have less influence on society (spiritually speaking). A very good interview of Rodney Stark, who’s been following this a long time.
I’ve been asked, regarding the Tea Partier’s wish to reduce government spending, why now? Why not during Bush or Clinton or even Reagan. I keep saying that the spending going on now is unprecedented, and Bruce McQuain explains some of the reasons and ramifications of this spend-fest.
How’s that stimulus stimulating the economy? Not so well, actually.
The "classy" Left, taking its usual name-calling tact against the Tea Party. And lest you dismiss this as some loner in a basement, it’s got huge funding partners.
And finally, a study in religious tolerance from Chuck Asay. (Click for a larger image.)
What will cost billions of dollars, make demands on you never made before, and look like this?
It’s your new health care system! (Click for a PDF suitable for zooming in on.) Don Sensing notes that this is just a third of the whole picture.
Feeling better yet?
Read more about this behemoth at his blog.
Obama’s executive order forbidding the use of ObamaCare money for abortions has been rendered useless by … the Obama administration. Did anyone, other than hyper-partisan liberals, really believe him when he signed it? I certainly didn’t.
The Obama administration has officially approved the first instance of taxpayer funded abortions under the new national government-run health care program. This is the kind of abortion funding the pro-life movement warned about when Congress considered the bill.
The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program under a provision of the federal health care legislation enacted in March.
It has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
Tabitha Hale writing at RedState explains that the so-called "high risk" qualifier is just another fig leaf.
The loophole comes in the wording:
The section on abortion (see page 14) asserts that “elective abortions are not covered,” though it does not define elective — which Johnson calls a “red herring.”
Therein lies the problem. Anything that is not hard worded is a gray area that will be manipulated by the most pro-abortion administration we’ve ever seen. What, then, determines an “elective” abortion? Is the mother who chooses to terminate her baby with Down’s Syndrome “electing” to have an abortion, or is she forced by circumstances?
The National Right to Life Committee has determined that the only abortion that will not be covered under the plan is gender selection. It’s dangerous territory, which is why there should be no Federal funding for abortions, period. Everyone has a different definition of what is “elective.” We know all too well what happens when Washington has room to maneuver within the wording of the law.
Bart Stupak caved, and I agree with Tabitha that the term "pro-life Democrat" is an oxymoron. The Democrats flat-out lied to get their agenda through, both (at least) in that this would be a a cost saver (whereas now they’re defending it in court as a tax increase) and what it would pay for. This is big government. It’s what it does. The more power you give it, the more it’ll lie to you (and bribe you) to get more.
We’ve not seen the end of the surprises.
