Tag Archives: Obamacare

Can the Government Force Us to Eat Broccoli?

Posted on October 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Andrew P. Napolitano

The Supreme Court’s decisions upholding Obamacare in 2012 was a travesty, and that decision by itself makes Chief Justice John Roberts one of worst Chief Justices ever. From Andrew Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.”
— Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980)

With President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is back in the news. Barrett expressed constitutional misgivings about Obamacare 10 years ago when she was a professor at Notre Dame Law School, and some folks who oppose her nomination have argued that should she be confirmed in the next month, she should not hear the Nov. 10 arguments on Obamacare.

Wait a minute. Didn’t the Supreme Court already uphold Obamacare in 2012? Yes, it did. So why is the constitutionality of this legislation back before the Supreme Court?

Here is the backstory.

The ACA of 2010 marked the complete federal takeover of regulating health care delivery in America. It eliminated personal choices and mandated rules and regulations on almost all aspects of health care and health care insurance. It created a complex structure that, at the back end, directed the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on health care and, at the front end, received health insurance premiums from or on behalf of every adult in America.

To assure that every adult obtained and paid for health care coverage, the ACA authorized the IRS to assess those who failed to have health insurance about $8,800 a year and use that money to purchase a bare-bones insurance policy for them.

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The US Healthcare System Is Hemorrhaging: It is Bleeding Close to $1 TRILLION a Year, by Dagny Taggart

Posted on October 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

Perhaps someday we’ll find the solution for efficient, affordable health care and health insurance: let a free market provide them. Until then, we’re stuck with the current monstrosity. From Dagny Taggart at theorganicprepper.com:

The Affordable Care Act continues to be anything but affordable.

In fact, the healthcare system in the US is in terrible financial shape.

A new study has revealed that waste and needless spending in America’s healthcare system could amount to almost $1 trillion each year. This exceeds the total US military expenditures in 2019 – the world’s largest defense budget – and as much as all of Medicare and Medicaid combined.

This news should not shock anyone.

If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are in serious debt due to medical expenses, you are likely not surprised by the new study’s findings. As we recently reported, 66.5 percent of all bankruptcies in the US are tied to medical issues, either because of high costs for care or time out of work. An estimated 530,000 families turn to bankruptcy each year because of medical issues and bills.

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Please, Please More Democratic Debates, by Ann Coulter

Posted on October 17, 2019 | 1 comment

Every time the Democrats stop attacking Trump and start talking about what they stand for, they lose votes. From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:

With all the rancor in politics these days, the CNN/New York Times Democratic debate on Tuesday night delivered a rare moment of comity: Twelve Democrats agreed, apparently without compensation, to appear in a Donald Trump ad.

Other points on which the Democrats came together in peace and harmony:

— Trump should be impeached.

— Abortion is great.

— Obamacare sucks.

At least we’re all finally agreed on Obamacare!

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Obama’s Forgotten Frauds and Debacles, by James Bovard

Posted on June 4, 2019 | 2 comments

James Bovard discovers some chinks in Saint Barack’s halo. From Bovard at lewrockwell.com:

Former President Barack Obama is again busy lecturing Americans on politics. His speeches have contained many snappy lines that would deserve attention if they came from an untainted source. But Obama as president was guilty of many of the things against which he now warns his fellow citizens.

Last September, Obama received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government at the University of Illinois in Champagne/Urbana. Obama told students that “the biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism” and called for “a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government.”

Obama flailed cynicism as in the glory days of his 2008 presidential campaign. He declared that “making people cynical about government … always works better for those who don’t believe in the power of collective action.” He also warned that “the more cynical people are about government, the angrier and more dispirited they are about the prospects for change, the more likely the powerful are able to maintain their power.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Media, Politics, Surveillance, Technology, War

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Obamacare’s Unhappy Anniversary, by Ron Paul

Posted on April 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

Only someone completely detached from reality would argue that after the government intervention in the medical market known as the Obamacare fiasco that what America needs is still more government intervention—socialized medicine. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.com:

Last month marked nine years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare) became law. Obamacare’s proponents promised that the law would reduce costs, expand access, and allow us to keep our doctors if we liked our doctors. The reality has been quite different.

Since Obamacare was enacted, individual health insurance premiums have more than doubled while small businesses have been discouraged from providing health insurance benefits. The increased costs of, and decreased access to, health care are a direct result of Obamacare’s mandates — particularly the guaranteed issue and pre-existing condition mandates. Another costly mandate forces most plans to cover “essential health benefits.” This mandate is why postmenopausal women must pay for contraceptive coverage.

The increase in health insurance premiums has not helped those who like their doctors keep their doctors. Instead, patients’ choices of providers are restricted to ever-narrower networks. As leading health care scholar John C. Goodman observed, the result is that a cancer patient from my hometown of Lake Jackson, Texas who obtains insurance through Obamacare’s exchanges cannot get treatment at nearby MD Anderson, one of the country’s top cancer treatment centers. If health care were a true free market, insurance companies would compete for the business of cancer patients and others with chronic conditions by developing innovative ways to give them the best care at an affordable price.

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Americans Had To Borrow 88 BILLION Dollars To Cover Their Medical Bills Last Year, by Michael Snyder

Posted on April 4, 2019 | 2 comments

If you want Exhibit A in how badly government can screw up an industry, look no farther than medicine and medical insurance. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

I know that the headline sounds outrageous, but it is actually true.  According to a brand new report that was just released, Americans had to borrow 88 billion dollars to cover their medical bills last year.  That is a truly astounding number, and it shows just how dramatically our current health care system has failed.  And even though the vast majority of Americans are covered by “health insurance”, millions of us are deathly afraid to go to the hospital because of what it might cost.  Today, two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills, and most of the people going bankrupt actually had health insurance.  Overall, more than half a million American families are financially ruined by medical bills each year, and meanwhile our “representatives” in Washington are doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem.

Surveys have shown that up to two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, and an unexpected medical bill can be absolutely devastating for those that are just barely scraping by.

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Posted in Business, Debt, Government, Medicine

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Tucker Tells the Trump Truth, by Robert Ringer

Posted on December 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

Tucker Carlson recently told a German newspaper what he tought was wrong with Trump. From Robert Ringer at lewrockwell.com:

In an interview with a German newspaper, Tucker Carlson undoubtedly caused a lot of Trump supporters to flinch when he spoke frankly about what he sees as the president’s shortcomings.  Right out of the starting gate, he stated that he intensely dislikes Trump’s self-aggrandizement and boasting.

Tucker is not alone on this one.  Those of us who support Trump’s proposed agenda (repeat, proposed) feel pretty much the same way.  It’s very sad that President Trump has such an insatiable need to bluster about his achievements — even when the facts don’t back up his words — because it’s probably cost him a record approval rating.

One of the most basic rules of good human relations is to be aware that people hate arrogance and love humility.  Puffery is a self-destructive trait, and one that is totally unnecessary for someone of Donald Trump’s stature.

Tucker went on to say that he doesn’t believe Trump is “capable of sustained focus” and that “I don’t think he understands the system.”  Perhaps, but if he understood the swamp system too well, he probably would not be as good as he is at thinking outside the box.

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Tele-Prompter Boy and Obamacare, by Eric Peters

Posted on December 16, 2018 | 1 comment

Much of what TV newscasters read as news is actually editorializing. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

Listen to this lead-in by a CNN Tele-Prompter readerabout a federal judge in Texas ruling that the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional:

“The law that brought health care to millions of Americans has been struck down by a federal judge.”

First words out of his mouth.

That’s what they used to call editorializing – as opposed to the statement of fact without the color of opinion you read just above it, in the lead to this story – about the same subject.

The Tele-Prompter reader leaves no doubt as to his view about both the Texas judge’s ruling and the Affordable Care Act, which is annoying right out of the gate because who cares what this Tele-Prompter reader’s opinions are about anything? It’s one thing to listen to a veteran newsman who’s earned some bona fides offer up his slant on an issue, especially if it’s something he’s been covering for decades and maybe thus the man has something to say that’s worth listening to.

But this kid?

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Posted in Government, Law, Media, Medicine, Politics

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Progressives: The Real World vs. Neverland, by David C. Stolinsky

Posted on September 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

Faith, hope, and pixie dust is not much of a political philosophy. From David C. Stolinsky at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Many of these children in adult bodies were told, and actually believed, that better health care for everyone, including an unlimited number of illegal immigrants, would be attainable at a low cost, if only the government were to run it.
  • Many children in adult bodies also seem not to know that Socialism failed in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, and is now failing in Venezuela. The irrational wish is evidently stronger than rational arithmetic.
  • These victims of arrested emotional development seem to confuse good motives with good results. They want better health care for a greater number of people at a lesser cost; so they fantasize that they can achieve it without denying care to those who are too old, too sick or too expensive to receive it. They kind-heartedly want a “more equal distribution of wealth”; so they fantasize that they can maneuver it without penalizing and discouraging the productive members of society, while rewarding and encouraging the unproductive ones.

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child,” Cicero astutely observed. For many self-described progressives today, however, this seems not to be a drawback. On the contrary, like adolescents — insisting that they are grown-ups when their parents get in the way of their fun, but then running home for all their basic needs and creature comforts — such people seem to give no thought to the past and equally little to the future.

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Posted in Crime, Debt, Economics, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Media, Politics

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“Shared Responsibility” Update, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 5, 2018 | Leave a comment

Eric Peters makes a stand—which will cost him actual money—against Obamacare. From Peters at theburningplatform.com:

I am now officially an Obamacare Outlaw – the deadline for sending in my “shared responsibility” penalty/tax whatever-it-is having come – and gone. Without my having sent them a burnished penny of the $695 they claim I “owe.”

Readers will recall that about three weeks ago, I received a thuggy letter from the Luca Brasi division of the government, which has become the collection agency for the health insurance mafia. The mafia succeeding in getting Obamacare passed into law – and don’t be deceived that it was Obama or the Democrats or even the Republicans who did it, though they played their necessary puppet parts. The power behind them is the insurance mafia, which saw the goldmine and determined to mine it – using the power of the government to dig out the gold at gunpoint.

Of course, the government wets its beak, too.

It gets power – over everything it hasn’t already got power over since literally everything imaginable can be claimed to “affect” health care and now that our health is no longer our business but the business of the government, everything we do (and don’t do) at least in principle now falls under the purview of the government.

Obamacare will be used to implement – just for starters – backdoor/extra-legal gun control via “health based” rulings on who may – and may not – own a gun.

For example, the recalcitrant patient – or the refusnik patient, such a myself. Declining to obtain health insurance will be punished in more than just one way. Those who do not “sign up” will likely be characterized as mentally troubled – and “we” (it is always “we” when in fact it is really they) can’t have the mentally troubled running around (or even staying home) with loaded guns on their person.

That kind of thing. Expect it, count on it.

And, don’t be tricked by the black face that has been put on Obamacare – a divide and conquer trick deliberately used to divert attention from the bipartisan decimation of our liberty to not be mugged by the insurance mafia via the joint efforts of Republicans and Democrats in the service of themselves and the mafia.

To continue reading: “Shared Responsibility” Update

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Medicine

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