Pete Stark is really glad you are here

This video clip is a pull from our running series, Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery and remains one of our favorites because it represents the best take-down of ObamaCare that what we have heard and from what we can tell it's from not a pundit, commentator or another politician but a regular everyday citizen.

She hits on not only the compulsory aspect of ObamaCare but something on the other side of the equation that has not been brought up nearly enough and that is if you legislate a good or service as a right out of thin air, then you are confiscating, perhaps against their will, the those goods and services from the providers.

How, then, is this confiscation not a form of economic slavery?

We love how the young lady speaks slowly and enunciates all her big words as if talking to a 3 yr. old because that represents the level of understanding of the constitution held by Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) as he will demonstrate in his own words (with apologies to all 3 yr. olds out there).






Stark sneering "I'm glad you're here to save it (the country)" puts a cherry on top of this country class vs. ruling class smack-down.


If there is one video that represents the constitutional dubious-ness of ObamaCare as well as the yawning gap between the public and our elected representatives and how it is they perceive us, this would be the one. Please pass along as you see fit.

A funny thing happened on the way to Canada

Technically, this doesn't qualify for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery as nothing specific to the ObamaCare legislation is revealed but as we travel down the road to socialized medicine this is certainly what we can expect.

From the Reuters article Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model:

Ontario, Canada's most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate "incentive fees" to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit -- an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It's likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

"There's got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

"We can't continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

"At some stage we're going to hit a breaking point."

(italics, ours)
In a world where the government is not interfering with setting the price of goods and services, "incentive fees" would be known as "profits".

And the allegedly illegal user fees, "fee for procedure" and "payments on each medical visit" and "private funding" sound suspiciously like "paying for your own health care" a radical idea that is coming back into vogue with nations confronting the reality of unsustainable socialized medicine.

Brian Golden, a professor at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business, said provinces are weighing new sources of funding, including "means-testing" and moving toward evidence-based and pay-for-performance models.

"Why are we paying more or the same for cataract surgery when it costs substantially less today than it did 10 years ago? There's going to be a finer look at what we're paying for and, more importantly, what we're getting for it," he said.

Why indeed?

The losers could be drug companies and pharmacies, both of which are getting increasingly nervous.

"Many of the advances in healthcare and life expectancy are due to the pharmaceutical industry so we should never demonize them," said U of T's Golden. "We need to ensure that they maintain a profitable business but our ability to make it very very profitable is constrained right now."

This represents a self-inflicted bind of socialized medicine: The government places itself in the position of determining how much profit can be generated by the pharmaceutical firms. By limiting the profit margin, however, the government is also limiting the incentive for the pharma firms to produce and to invest in research and development. It's effectively a price control that stunts service and innovation in the medical field.

Scotia Capital's Webb said one cost-saving idea may be to make patients aware of how much it costs each time they visit a healthcare professional. "(The public) will use the services more wisely if they know how much it's costing," she said.

"If it's absolutely free with no information on the cost and the information of an alternative that would be have been more practical, then how can we expect the public to wisely use the service?"

But change may come slowly. Universal healthcare is central to Canada's national identity, and decisions are made as much on politics as economics.

"It's an area that Canadians don't want to see touched," said TD's Burleton. "Essentially it boils down the wishes of the population. But I think, from an economist's standpoint, we point to the fact that sometimes Canadians in the short term may not realize the cost."

Since the cost of doctors visit are invisible to the consumer because it's all "free", there is simply no incentive for the consumer to self-ration, something that we all do every single day of our lives when making purchasing decisions.

The idea of socialized medicine simply wishes away the fundamental fact that the more frequently you pay for goods and services out of pocket, the more transparent the cost structures in an economy become and no amount of 5-color PSA brochures are going to change that fact.

The article seems unwilling to admit it but the overwhelming conclusion to be gained from the evidence presented is: Paying for your own health care represents the most efficient health care model.

Did Obama and Pelosi actually get it right?

While the conventional wisdom is that last Tuesday's election results, a massacre for the Democrats, was a rebuke of the hard left swerve taken by the administration and Congress (and it was), Philip Klein of the American Spectator takes the long view of these past two years and wonders if President Obama and Nancy Pelosi did indeed employ sound political strategy.

The American public didn't go from being socialists to Reaganite conservatives in the past two years, any more than their ideology radically transformed from 2004 to 2006. The lesson of recent elections, thus, may not be that the American people are right of center, or left of center, or dead center, but that many of them aren't terribly ideological. This means that political power is ephemeral. No matter how popular one party is, they could be only one election away from embarrassing defeat. No matter how badly one party is defeated, they could be on the verge of a historic comeback. In this environment, reports of the demise of any political party, at any time, are likely to be greatly exaggerated.

One reaction to this reality is to argue that a political party should enact as many of its policy goals as they can while in charge. While Obama’s presidency is shaping up to be a spectacular failure from a political perspective, he may view it as a smashing success from a liberal ideological point of view. Instead of squandering Democrats' time in power by playing small ball, he went bold.

Political majorities are fleeting - legislation is (nearly) permanent.

When Nancy Pelosi says she has no regrets, we tend to believe her not because she's delusional but rather she is a true believer. Liberals like Pelosi have had a hot lust for government managed/universal health care for over 60 years - it was their single biggest dream and if it cost them votes, even enough to lose control of Congress, then so be it.

What the Republicans must do and must do on a continual basis is to educate the public on ObamaCare and reveal all the hideousness that is contained in that 2,800 page monstrosity*.

Educate the public and in a show of bipartisanship, allow the Democrats to help. The Republicans hold the subpoena hammer now, so they should hold hearings asking people like Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, just how she intends to administer ObamaCare. After all, this bill is simply festooned with "...at the discretion of the Secretary..." and "the Secretary shall..." and the American people deserve to know precisely how all that structural arbitrariness is going to be managed.

And politically speaking, if the Republicans are serious about wanting to repeal ObamaCare then they are going to have to pursue it with the same fanatical damn-the-torpedoes zeal that the Democrats did in getting it enacted in the first place.

The Republican Party being left for dead just two years ago demonstrates just how swiftly and substantially that pendulum can swing.


* As doing our part to educate the public on just how bad ObamaCare is now that it is law, we instituted a running post, "Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery". Apparently, the contents therein were so horrendous and so terrifying, Blogger couldn't bear it as it has been deleted from our archives. Now we aren't suggesting anything untoward as the Speaker inspired us to log quite a bit of info into that single post resulting in a really, really long post so we will do what we can do to resurrect it or simply start over with all that we have learned since August.

Just one more reason to move into the folks' basement, kids.

One of the advantages of a free market economy over a command and control one is the increased competition compels the provider of a good or service to provide the consumer options and choices to better fit the needs and circumstances of the consumer.

Say you are a college student wishing to purchase health insurance. Generally speaking, are you going to opt for a expensive gold-plated insurance policy that covers all your doctor visits, hip replacement surgeries and regular check-ups or are you going to choose a bare bones low cost/low benefit plan? Because of your youth and therefore, relative health and because you really need the money for tuition, books, lodging, food, etc., you are most definitely going with the latter option because it much better suits your circumstances.

Unfortunately, for college students across America that may all change.

Colleges and universities say that some rules in the new health law could keep them from offering low-cost, limited-benefit student insurance policies, and they're seeking federal authority to continue offering them.

Their request drew immediate fire from critics, however, who say that student health plans should be held to the same standards that other insurance is.

(italics, ours)

Once again, a reminder that ObamaCare really isn't about optimizing the benefits of your individual health care but rather making sure everyone is receiving the equal amount of health care benefits as miserable as the outcome may be.

Among other things, the colleges want clarification that they won't have to offer the policies to non-students.

Without a number of changes, it may be impossible to continue to offer student health plans, says a letter that the American Council on Education sent Aug. 12 to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, signed by 12 other trade associations that represent colleges.

Additionally, the colleges say that some provisions of the law don't apply to their policies, including those that require insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on medical care and that bar them from setting annual coverage caps.

Many of the provisions at issue don't go into effect until 2014, but the colleges say they need clarity soon because they're negotiating long-term contracts with insurers now.

(italics, ours)

And once again, we see price signaling taking effect as colleges are making rational decisions in bracing for the inevitable disaster that will come with ObamaCare.

As it stands, colleges may be forced to provide only ObamaCare-mandated insurance policies that won't fit the needs of their students as they provide benefits their relatively healthy students don't need and certainly can't afford.

This is a perfect illustration of what happens when a command and control regulatory regime forces consumers into a one-size-fits-all plan.

Exit question: Does this qualify for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery? We're thinking yes as the colleges only discovered what was in the bill after it was passed.


H/T: Hot Air

Hey, Harry. Nancy was right, wasn't she?

Yet another qualifier for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery... where Harry Reid finds out just what's in ObamaCare after it has become law.

You can't make up this stuff: Looks like poor ol' Harry Reid finally got around to reading ObamaCare and surprise!... finds out it's bum deal for his home state hospitals in Nevada.

In a July 21 letter to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Service Kathleen Sebelius, the Senate Majority Leader complains that ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicare will “result in a net reduction in payment to Nevada’s hospitals when they are unable to absorb such a cut.” Furthermore, he questions the method used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to calculate the payments to hospitals, and is “very concerned about potential effects on beneficiary access if this regulation is finalized without adjustment.”

Consider us baffled by Reid's bafflement. In order to get ObamaCare deficit neutral, as promised, one of the key elements of the plan was to cut nearly a half billion dollars from Medicare. Amongst other budgetary gimmicks used in ObamaCare this was to be remedied by the infamous and still-as-yet-to-be-passed "Doc fix". Everyone knew this. Everyone. Well, almost everyone, apparently.

That this dawned upon Harry a full 4 months after the passage of ObamaCare is hysterical. Forgive us if we allow ourselves to bathe in the warmth of schadenfreude. C'mon in - the temperature is fine.

Here's our own open letter to Harry:

Dear Senator Reid: deal with it, you miserable, clueless nitwit.

Sincerely,
Beers with Demo

H/T: Baseball Crank

Free campaign advice

When it comes to political strategery with respect to the mid-terms and the Ground Zero mosque, memo to Republicans: don't campaign on the mosque at Ground Zero. Keep your eye on the ball... it's not about the mosque, per se, but it is about Gutfeld's gay bar next door.

We kid, but only slightly. Now that the President came out foursquare in support of the construction of the mosque before he walked it back a tad again over the weekend, the Democratic Party now owns this issue. Let the Democratic candidates explain their own party leader's apparent equivocations on the matter. Let the Democratic power structure in office in all the key positions in New York (save Mayor Bloomberg whose abject RINO-ness, puts him deep inside the New York ruling class) deal with the deep and broad-based resentment.

When your opponent is busy setting himself on fire, leave well enough alone.



Hammer away on three things:

1) The economy (and linked to that is jobs and out-of-control spending)

2) ObamaCare (we've provided Republican candidates with all the ammo they need in Nancy's Nuances...)

3) Process. Process matters.
Remind independents and stray Republicans of why they voted for Obama and the Democrats in '08 (HopenChange, most ethical administration/Congress ever, transparency, etc.) and contrast that to how he and his Congress have actually governed: A broadly unpopular set of legislative "accomplishments" achieved by such means as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator Ade and all manner of completely opaque back room wheeling and dealing, bribes, kickbacks and whoring-out to Big Pharma and health insurance lobbyists that was all the very anti-thesis of what HopenChange was to represent.

The Process portion of the campaign talking points does not, at this point, seem to be getting the love it should. Get back on it... Process matters.


Your welcome.

Mass. medical-device companies (heart) ObamaCare

Golly, the way things have been going around here of late, you'd a thunk we'd forgotten all about ObamaCare. Seriously, what's it been? Like, a week?

Since the following is something we're just learning about subsequent to the passage of ObamaCare, this qualifies as an update to our rolling post Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery which we will update later this week.

Massachusetts medical-device companies say they’ll cut back on operational costs - and jobs - after a planned 2.3 percent tax on their products is implemented in 2013, according to a new survey.

The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, which held its annual meeting yesterday in Boston, said about 90 percent of the 100 medical-device firms said they would reduce costs due to the new tax tucked into the recently passed health-care reform bill.

The tax - imposed to help pay for the massive health-care industry overhaul and expansion - is “of the greatest concern” to a majority of its members, the survey found.

About 70 percent of the survey respondents said future innovation will be hurt by a new federal “physician sunshine bill.” The bill will require medical-device firms to report their marketing expenditures on physicians, and a recently passed gift-ban law in Massachusetts.

(italics, ours)

What the article doesn't mention is that not only will medical device makers cut back on R and D for potentially life-saving and quality-of-life-improving devices, they will pass along that tax burden in the form of higher prices on the devices they do produce to the consumer. That would be you, in case you were wondering.

The chill to R and D in the medical field that we predicted when ObamaCare was being "debated" is now a reality as businesses are finding that ObamaCare is actually a disincentive to innovation.

Fewer jobs, less innovation and higher prices. Just what is there not to love about ObamaCare?

Another day, another ObamaCare "benefit" discovered

We need to start keeping a running tally of all the little surprises, or if you prefer, unintended consequences, misrepresentations or outright lies that are revealed from within ObamaCare on a near-daily basis.

Maybe we'll put together a post and we'll update it periodically to reflect just what all is in this wondrous piece of legislation and we'll name it in honor of Madam Speaker who shares our sentiments in this journey of discovery - we'll call it Nancy's Nuances.

Today's find:

Currently, people with massive medical expenses -- more than 7.5 percent of their income -- can deduct them on their taxes. Under Obamacare, the threshold goes up to 10 percent in 2013 for younger taxpayers and in 2017 for older ones.

According to the Hill, this unnoticed tax hike will squeeze $15.2 billion out of 15 million very sick people, 99 percent of whom make less than $200,000 per year.

Call it what you will but don't call it a tax hike because that would be claiming a broken campaign promise and that would just be intemperate speech.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services can lead those with pre-existing conditions to water...

... she just can't (dammit!) make them drink.

We were sold ObamaCare on the premise that it would a) bend the cost curve downward and b) it would guarantee coverage for those without insurance, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.

With respect to b), how's that been working out so far?

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.
States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick.

(italics, ours)

By the numbers, that is a success rate of 2.13%, surely a smashing success by anyone's estimation.

So, we have a situation where ObamaCare's attempts to manipulate the health care sector have actually caused health care costs to rise at a faster rate than that which they were already rising (our running post "Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery" which helped chronicle such developments has disappeared into a Blogger worm hole but a few recent examples can be found here and here) and now the other half of the sales job looks to be failing miserably as well as the greed and rapaciousness of the health care providers appears to be a myth or, shall we, a smear job perpetrated by Team O.

The two pillars for justifying ObamaCare are falling apart in spectacular fashion a mere 8 months after its passage.

Stupaked in Ohio and Pennsylvania

B-Daddy here. Stupaked seems to have re-entered the political narrative. Dean has a regular series called Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery, the latest entry is in the post below. When Bart Stupak and "pro-life" Democrats cut the deal that passed Obamacare in the House, on mere assurances that a federal executive order would prevent tax dollars from subsidizing abortions, a new word entered our political lexicon, Stupaked. As in:

"Dude, I cannot believe you let that used car salesman play you like that. Now, you’re stuck with this lemon. You got totally Stupaked.”

Now Democrat congressmcritters in generally pro-life districts are crying over their spilled milk, as pro-life groups are airing ads that correctly point out that they voted for the biggest expansion of federal funding of abortion evah. Of course, they are crying like babies to their lawyers to get the ads pulled.

From Ohio:

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-West Price Hill) has filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission against anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List.

The complaint stems from the group attempting to erect four billboards blasting the Congressman for his vote on the health care bill, accusing him of voting for “tax-payer funded abortion.”

From Pennsylvania:

Attorneys for Democrat U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper's campaign want four Erie radio stations to pull an ad by an anti-abortion group that contends her vote for health care reform resulted in "the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortions ever."

Americans United for Life stands by the ad, saying the freshman lawmaker voted to pass a final version of the bill that omitted key safeguards to prevent federal funding of abortions.

Why aren't they proud of their votes? And look at this article to see the specific mechanisms under which the subsidy flows to insurance plans that cover abortions.

What's another $115 billion dollars between friends?

Since we are only finding this out now.... after ObamaCare has passed, we have yet another qualifier for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery which we will get around to updating... once these hey, look at what we found items slow down just a bit

Remember how we simply had to pass ObamaCare in order to bend the cost curve downward and how the Democrats used every trick in the book including offsetting the taxes (begin immediately) and the benefits (oh, about 4 yrs. from now) and the putting the doctor fix in a completely different bill in order to keep O-Care below the magic $1 trillion price tag?

Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections.

The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to over $1 trillion.

.

The CBO estimated in March that the gross cost of the overhaul would be $940 billion over 10 years. The net cost was estimated at $788 billion over 10 years. But the group cautioned that it couldn’t make an estimate of the discretionary costs without more time and information.

This is why Republicans pleaded with the Democrats to delay the vote in order to get a more accurate figure but, you know, what's a $100 or so billion to supporters of a bill that will stop at nothing in order to get it passed.

We'll let Allahpundit bring it home:

At a moment when Americans desperately need leaders to be frank with them about the cost of entitlements and what it’ll take to restore fiscal stability, Obama gave them a new entitlement built on lie after lie after lie. That’s the legacy of his signature domestic “achievement.”

More unintended consequences in your health care

Good grief. We can barely make it through the weekend before we have yet another candidate for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery... things we are finding out about ObamaCare after it has become the law of the land.

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

The administration reacted sharply to the insurance pullback. "We're disappointed that a small number of insurance companies are taking this unwarranted and unnecessary step," said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services department.

Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems — a major early benefit of the complex legislation. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

(italics, ours)

There is the very reasonable argument that has been made that this phenomena of health insurers dumping people from their health plans is not an unintended consequence whatsoever and that ObamaCare was written to have this happen to easier pave the way for the public option and a full government take-over of the nation's health care system.

After all, who would be heartless enough to leave the children of this country uninsured?

This would assume, though, this administration and House and Senate leadership being competent enough to actually game this out. Tough call.

What is not up for dispute is that 4 years prior to the ObamaCare "benefits" kicking in, we're all ready seeing it's negative consequences as health insurance providers are making rational business decisions at the expense of the American public.

Guaranteed, we will be seeing more and more of these negative consequences, intended or not, in the coming months and years on our way to the great ObamaCare roll out.

It all just depends on what your definition of is... is

Nancy Pelosi promised us that we would find out what's in ObamaCare once ObamaCare was passed and as we've documented in our running post Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery, she's been more right than perhaps even she realized.

There are some things, however, that we may never get a handle on.

My God, what have they done.

Earlier this week, the Congressional Research Service reported that the new bureaucracy the bill created is so complex and indiscriminate that its size is "currently unknowable." Capitol Hill's independent policy arm added that among "the dozens of new governmental organizations or advisory bodies," it is "impossible to know how much influence they will ultimately have."

No wonder Missourians rebelled, as with voters in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia last year. There will be more such what-have-they-done ObamaCare moments. Wait until the public discovers the government is now literally determining what qualifies as "health care" in America.

That isn't a typo. ObamaCare mandates that insurers spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on benefits, but Democrats never got around to writing the fine print of what counts as a benefit. So a handful of regulators are now choosing among the tens of thousands of services that doctors, hospitals and insurers offer. Few other government decisions will do more to shape tomorrow's health market, or what's left of it.

(italics, ours)

Terrific. 2,800 pages and they don't even get around to defining exactly what ObamaCare is.

But perhaps that was done by design

Your health care will now be sufficiently politicized to the point that candidates will stump on what "benefits" in ObamaCare will be expanded, cut-back, eliminated, etc.

As for actually defining what those benefits will be, in the meantime, let's again consult our ObamaCare wiring diagram to see how this might actually get done.





So your health care is now in the hands of a regulatory bureaucracy over which you really have no control. Every two and four years, you might have the opportunity to leverage things one way or another but suffice to say, your health care has undergone a redistricting and you are just along for the ride.

As the statists among us have pined for, just like the Constitution, think of ObamaCare as a living document.

The Bay State: once again the health care bell cow

Since this is yet more wonderful news we are finding out after the ObamaCare legislation has been passed, this qualifies for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery.

Remember, folks, if it is happening to the Massachusetts health care sector you can pretty much bet on it happening to the rest of us when all the "benefits" of ObamaCare start kicking in.

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees.

In Sandwich, business consultant Bill Fields said he has been hired by small businesses to enroll about 400 workers in state-subsidized care since April, because the company owners said they could no longer afford to provide coverage. Fields said that is by far the largest number he has handled in such a short time.

“They are giving up out of frustration,’’ Fields said of the employers. “Most of them are very compassionate but they simply can’t afford health insurance any more.’’

Compassion and a couple of bucks might get you a cup of coffee but as the employers of Massachusetts are quickly finding out, paying the $300 fine instead of covering their employees to the tune of an order of magnitude more than the fine just makes more business sense, compassion be damned.

This, even after Romneycare which was signed into law in 2006 included incentives for employers to provide coverage to low income workers.

Word around the campfire is that Congressional liberals that were not initially onboard with ObamaCare because it did not include the single-payer/public option were convinced otherwise because of this perverse incentive built into ObamaCare whereby businesses saw the option of paying the fine preferable to providing health care for their employees and thus dumping them into a public health plan.

The single-payer model is the defacto endgame here, even though it was never expressly written into the legislation.

H/T: Hot Air

Got paperwork?

We're almost there. The unveiling of our rolling post Nancy's Nuances: A Journey of Discovery is nigh and probably would've occurred today were it not for finding yet another gem in ObamaCare now that the bill has been passed.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute points out that businesses that currently issue 1099s in a limited set of situations will now be required to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year.

Here's Edwards:

For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

And this from the Air Conditioner Contractors of America:

The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.

In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.

With unemployment still hovering around 10%, does all this additional paperwork and increased overhead/administrative costs sound like a great idea to spur economic growth?

This is, of course, bad for any business but particularly small and medium-sized businesses that do not have the resources to keep up with this paper mill that has been generated by ObamaCare.

All that... in a healthcare bill!

When the IRS claimed the 16,000 additional employees they would need was not to enforce mandatory enrollment in a healthcare plan, perhaps they were telling the truth.



H/T: Hot Air

Gold is kind of like health care

Gracious. The hits just keep on coming. Yet another installment for our running archive Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery.... things we're finding out about ObamaCare after the legislation has passed.

Those already outraged by the president's health care legislation now have a new bone of contention -- a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

The issue is rising to the fore just as gold coin dealers are attracting attention over sales tactics.

Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals.

And some perspective from the small business angle:

Pat Heller, who owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., deals with around 1,000 customers every week. Many are individuals looking to protect wealth in an uncertain economy, he said, while others are dealers like him.

With spot market prices for gold at nearly $1,200 an ounce, Heller estimates that he'll be filling out between 10,000 and 20,000 tax forms per year after the new law takes effect.

"I'll have to hire two full-time people just to track all this stuff, which cuts into my profitability," he said.

No one gives a damn about your profitability, Mr. Heller. Profits are evil. In fact, why are we fussing around so much about this. If gold is so popular, let's just declare it a right.

Affordable gold for everybody!

Ornate, yet complex

Once again, what we're finding out about ObamaCare after ObamaCare has passed. As such, another entry for our bulging and constantly updated, running post, Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery.

Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas commissioned his people to put together the ObamaCare organization chart or as we like to call them, wiring diagrams - a basic one-line diagram that illustrates the relationships between all the different components, entities and departments within a larger organization.

But consider yourself forewarned. What you are about to see is something so mesmerizing, so dazzling and so brilliant you will indeed see the ObamaCare org chart as the perfect manifestation of its Creator.




Behold








(click to enlarge, if you dare)

Stunning, no?

We had to shrink it for it to be formatted to blogger so let's take a closer look at some of the finer details of this rendering:

68 new grant programs
47 bureaucratic entities
29 demonstration or pilot programs
6 regulatory systems
6 compliance standards
2 entitlements

And in very fine strokes that may or may not be visible to the human eye, we have:

$569 billion in higher taxes
$529 billion in cuts to Medicare
16 million more people dumped into Medicaid


A thing of rare beauty like this deserves to be shared. Print out copies and hand them out to family, friends and co-workers. Use them table mats or wall paper, anything to share the love. Hell, super size it and play naked Twister.

Because of the sheer grandeur and beauty of this, we get the feeling that when gazing upon it, The One gets very much the same feeling as he does when looking into the mirror. It is, after all, in his image.

Alas, Brady admits the committee analysts could not fit the entire ObamaCare org chart onto one sheet, rather it will require three. We know what you are asking yourself and we feel the exact same way: What did we ever do to deserve such a glorious fate?

bye

Since the following is a result of finding out how awesome ObamaCare is after passage of said legislation, this certainly qualifies for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery.

The hotly debated healthcare reform bill signed into law in March has killed a local insurance company.

At least that’s according to a brief letter Richmond-based nHealth sent to insurance agents explaining the reason behind the shuttering of the once promising local startup.

“I wanted to share with you the decision by nHealth’s board of directors to exit the health insurance market,” wrote James Slabaugh, executive vice president of the Richmond-based insurance company that employed about 50 people. (Many of those were at an office in Ohio).

The letter, obtained by BizSense, was sent June 2 to nHealth insurance agents. (You can read it here).
The letter explained that “considerable uncertainties” in the health insurance market caused by the recent federal healthcare legislation made the two year-old company’s business model unsustainable.

“Despite a product that was gaining increasing acceptance among companies throughout the Commonwealth, the uncertainties in the regulatory climate coupled with new demands imposed by national healthcare reforms have made it challenging to sustain the level of sales required to remain viable over the long run,” Slabaugh said in the letter.

According to nHealth CEO Paul Kitchen and Paul Nezi, one of the company’s original investors and former board members, regulatory changes the company believes are coming as a result of the legislation will require levels of capital beyond what nHealth’s business model can sustain.

Founded back in 2008, nHealth's model was high deductibles and utilization of health savings plans. They were able to keep costs down by making customers more vested in their own healthcare decisions. In a world where the patient/doctor relationship is front and center, this is the model we advocate. Apparently, however, this model where one pays for one's own health care is too outside the norm to be competitive under the Obama regime.

Just as well, though. Probably just another greedy insurer looking to get over on its customers.

The obligatory Pete Stark video post

This does qualify for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery (things we're finding out about ObamaCare after ObamaCare has passed (Letting the Mask Slip sub-set)) not only based upon chronology but also on the merits of Stark's justification for passage of ObamaCare: We won.



Great points all, made by this young lady as it's readily apparent that she is talking at a level way above Stark's pay grade as he has no concept nor interest in understanding how the 5th, 10th and 14th amendments would prevent you from being compelled to sign up for health care just as it would prohibit the confiscation of goods and services from others as is the case when you declare particular goods and services a right.

Stark is a thug. There is simply no other way to put it.

Another memo to our goo-goo (good government) liberal friends: Sure, you would like to see the government play an active role for good in society but does Pete Stark's vision of a Thomas Friedman-esque totalitarianism look like your view of liberalism? Does what Pete Stark is saying sound anything remotely like, "Keep your laws off my body?"

The Democratic Party, which has for years been informed by notions of the limitless power of government dared not actually say it, until now. The passage of ObamaCare has proved to be truth serum to its authoritarian acolytes who now attend town hall meetings and impassively tell their constituents:

I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from (making) rules that could affect your private life.

Well, shoot-howdy, that doesn't sound like the bra and draft card burning Democratic Party of dear old Mom and Dad, now does it, gang?



If they can do this, what can't they do?


P.S. We have no idea who the young woman in the video is, however, her identity along with other private details of her life will no doubt be exposed by the Wasilla Dumpster Diving Posse.



Follower Update: Rational Nation USA who also blogs at fellow SLOB site, Left Coast Rebel is in the house.

So, about that 'critical health priority' setting on your dinner table?...(UPDATED)

(Please scroll to bottom for update. Thanks.)

File this one under: Is there anything in life that these people do not wish to regulate?

The Food and Drug Administration should regulate the amount of salt added to foods to help Americans cut their high sodium intake, which can lead to high blood pressure, kidney failure and strokes, an influential federal panel said on Tuesday.

The Institute of Medicine said this was needed because Americans get most of their salt from processed and restaurant food, and merely telling them to eat less salt has not worked.

Meghan Scott, a spokeswoman for the FDA, which sponsored the IOM report, said the agency has not yet decided whether to regulate salt in U.S. foods. "We are not right now working on regulations," she said, but the agency is considering the panel's recommendations.

(italics, ours)

So when the incessant nagging and caterwauling doesn't work, you break out the big regulatory guns of compulsion.

And dig this Meghan Scott character: she wants us all to believe that they are merely considering regulation after a study they sponsored recommend that they do so. Don't you think that if you commission a study that concludes the FDA should regulate salt, the FDA will most likely regulate salt? Folks, the FDA is going to regulate salt.

"For 40 years we have known about the relationship between sodium and the development of hypertension and other life threatening diseases, but we have had virtually no success in cutting back the salt in our diets," Jane Henney of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio, who chaired the Institute of Medicine panel, said in a statement.

"The best way to accomplish this is to provide companies the level playing field they need so they are able to work across the board to reduce salt in the food supply."

For those of you scoring at home, "Level playing field" is statist lingo for mandatory rules and regulations

"There is now overwhelming evidence that we must treat sodium reduction as a critical public health priority," said Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard School of Public Health and a member of the Institute of Medicine.

The panel said companies should be allowed to reduce sodium on a step-by-step basis so that they do not lose customers due to sudden changes in flavor, the panel of experts said.

That companies would be graced by this leniency is proof of the ultimate benevolence of this panel. All hail the Institute of Medicine!

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Senator Tom Harkin said on a conference call they would pressure the FDA to regulate salt intake in the U.S. food supply.

"My view of self regulation is that it has not worked in the past," DeLauro said. "We need to move this along."

This quote was given after the article noted that food giants like Pepsico, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soups Inc., all had stated goals to reduce the sodium content in their products across the board.





(UPDATE #1): A funny thing happened on the way to the Institute of Medicine...

High-salt diets may not increase the risk of death, contrary to long-held medical beliefs, according to investigators from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

They reached their conclusion after examining dietary intake among a nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S. The Einstein researchers actually observed a significantly increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated with lower sodium diets.

The researchers analyzed data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), which was conducted by the federal government among a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. These data were then compared against death records that had been collected by the government through the year 2000. The sample of approximately 8,700 represented American adults who were over 30 years of age at the time of the baseline survey (1988-1994) and were not on a special low-salt diet.

After adjusting for known CVD risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes and blood pressure, the one-fourth of the sample who reported consuming the lowest amount of sodium were found to be 80% more likely to die from CVD compared to the one-fourth of the sample consuming the highest level of sodium. The risk for death from any cause appeared 24% greater for those consuming lower salt, but this latter difference was not quite large enough to dismiss the role of chance.

“Our findings suggest that for the general adult population, higher sodium is very unlikely to be independently associated with higher risk of death from CVD or all other causes of death,” says Dr. Hillel W. Cohen, associate professor of epidemiology and population health at Einstein.

(italics, totally ours)

Color us unsurprised. ObamaCare is not about better healthcare and neither is this pending regulation of salt. It's about control. It's about a fundamental distrust of individual freedoms and liberty.

They may try to dress it up in the fineries of doing what's best for the greater good of individuals in society but at the end of the day the compelling logic is that you cannot be trusted to make healthcare decisions or dietary decisions on your own.

Looking at the way Obamacare was fashioned and looking at what is actually in the bill as we have been doing in our Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery and now looking at the statements, motives and facts regarding salt regulation, how can it be anything but?