{"id":16798,"date":"2010-02-24T19:20:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T02:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=16798"},"modified":"2010-02-24T21:42:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T04:42:26","slug":"its-back-anti-obamacare-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/24\/its-back-anti-obamacare-2-0.html","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s back &#8211; anti-ObamaCare 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I get letters &#8230; in this case, an &#8220;Action Alert&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capwiz.com\/afanet\/callalert\/index.tt?alertid=14723311\">from Tim Wildmon and the American Family Association (AFA)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Subject: It&#8217;s back &#8211; ObamaCare 2.0, worse than the first<\/p>\n<p>Dear Dave,<\/p>\n<p>President Obama, determined to press for the government takeover of our entire health care system, is reviving a tweaked version of the Senate health care &#8220;reform&#8221; bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How is the government &#8220;taking over&#8221; our &#8220;entire health care system&#8221; here?<\/p>\n<p>Will all doctors be government employees, as in the UK?\u00a0 Nope.<\/p>\n<p>Will the government be the &#8220;single payer&#8221; of all standard health benefits, as in Canada?\u00a0 Nope.<\/p>\n<p>Is the whole Obama proposal focused on and implemented by private insurance companies private physicians, without even a &#8220;public option&#8221; in sight?\u00a0 Yup.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not quite sure what constitutes &#8220;takeover of our entire health care system&#8221; to these people, except the idea that (somehow) we should, as a society, care for the sick &#8212; truly a horrid socialist policy.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>If possible, it&#8217;s even worse than the one Sen. Harry Reid cobbled together in secret and then sprung on the country just before Christmas.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In secret? After months and months of negotiation and compromise? A plan which was continuously watered down to attempt to get it out of committee, let alone to the floor of the Senate?\u00a0 And that&#8217;s &#8220;secret&#8221; and &#8220;sprung&#8221;?\u00a0 Give me a break.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The president will hold a highly-publicized just-for-show &#8220;<em>summit<\/em>&#8221; Thursday in an effort to breathe life into his version of this monstrosity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So after complaints about &#8220;secrets&#8221; and &#8220;springing,&#8221; when the President (properly capitalized) turns around and invites both parties into discuss a proposal and explore ideas, it&#8217;s all &#8220;just for show&#8221; and a faux scare-quoted italicized &#8220;summit&#8221; (?).\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard making the AFA happy.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>As our good friend Gary Bauer &#8230;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah, yes.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/bauer-help-us-fox-news-youre-our-only-hope\">Our<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/bauer-only-backlash-against-muslims-can-stop-terrorism\">good<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/continuing-right-wing-attacks-obamas-faith\">friend<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/gary-bauer-torture-apologist\">Gary<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/bauer-jesus-approves-torture\">Bauer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>&#8230; of the Campaign for Working Families and American Values points out, here are just some of the problems with the bill:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The president is threatening to use what&#8217;s called the &#8220;reconciliation process,&#8221; a gimmick that will enable him to enact <strong>socialized medicine<\/strong> with just 51 votes in the Senate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Right.\u00a0 A &#8220;gimmick&#8221; the GOP has used over\u00a0 and over again for passing budgets, tax cuts, even health care bills.\u00a0 Which (gasp!) allows the Senate to (eek!) actually pass something <em>by a majority<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A 60 vote super-majority is <em>not <\/em>dictated by the Constitution.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an internal Senate rule, no more &#8220;gimmicky&#8221; (but far more abused) than reconciliation.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>A Rasmussen poll found that 58% of likely voters oppose both the Senate and House health care bills, and 61% want Congress to tear up both bills and start over. The American people have already made it clear they do not want the government takeover of health care.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes.  The Right, including the AFA, have managed to so demonize the general concept of Health Care Reform and the efforts in the House and Senate, that if you ask people what they think of those big boxes, they narrowly disapprove.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8230; if you ask them about <em>individual provisions <\/em>and ideas in those bills &#8212; what they are made up of &#8212; a majority <em>approve<\/em>.  They dislike the cover of the book (because people keep telling them it&#8217;s a bad book), but they enjoy all the chapters when they read them.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>The president says his proposal <strong>will cost about $1 trillion<\/strong>, but the Congressional Budget Office says the language is too vague even to come up with an official cost estimate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>True.  That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s not explicit legislation, but <em>proposals<\/em>.  That the CBO has priced the existing House and Senate bills in the same ballpark (and demonstrated significant overall deficit cuts because of that spending) should serve as a useful approximation.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Under his plan, <strong>senior citizens<\/strong> living off investment income <strong>will get hit with a new tax<\/strong> on so-called &#8220;unearned&#8221; income. (It&#8217;s hardly &#8220;unearned&#8221; &#8211; you worked all your life to build those investments.)<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Investment income &#8212; capital gains and dividends &#8212; is considered unearned because you didn&#8217;t actually work to get it (you worked for the money that went into it).  And the tax in question applies to folks making $200K\/year filing singly, $250K\/year filing jointly &#8212; not quite the poor senior citizens implied above.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It extends the &#8220;Cornhusker kickback&#8221; to every state in the Union, essentially <strong>offering a bribe to every senator<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So if &#8220;everyone&#8221; is being bribed &#8230; then &#8220;nobody&#8221; is being bribed.  I don&#8217;t see the problem here.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It includes the unconstitutional <strong>mandate that every American buy insurance or pay a fine<\/strong>. (This means you will get taxed for not doing something!)<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The constitutionality of that provision will doubtless be taken to the courts.  If we&#8217;re going to couch it as a tax &#8212; then, yes, everyone is being taxed, one way or the other.  Next?<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It imposes price controls on the health insurance industry. Every time in history price controls have been used, they have resulted in shortages and rationing.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It regulates price increases, subjects them to review.  Is the AFA suggesting that Anthem&#8217;s boosting of insurance premiums by 25, 30, 40% in a single year (whilst showing record profits and giving big bonuses to the executives) is justified and shouldn&#8217;t be subject to some oversight and justification?  Whose families are the AFA serving here?<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It not only makes <strong>taxpayer funding of abortion<\/strong> a right, it provides for the direct funding of abortions through Community Health Centers and would lead to mandates that would require every private insurance plan to cover elective abortions.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Because heaven forfend that a legal medical procedure should be actually covered by insurance.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, even if I concede the inflammatory language and interpretation of the proposals (which are as sketchy as anything else presented here), why is it that abortion is the <em>only <\/em>issue that somehow gets a morality clause pass in federal policy, the only case where people who shrink in horror from having to pay for it get to decide that they won&#8217;t.\u00a0 Whereas if one considers, say, war (in general or specific) a moral horror there&#8217;s no provision made for folks who demand, &#8220;well, I insist that not one cent of my taxes pay for that.&#8221;\u00a0 Or, to take a different tack, if one thinks of homosexuality as an abomination, there&#8217;s no &#8220;well, I insist that not one cent of my taxes pay for any gay government workers&#8221; compromise taken for granted?<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, AFA &#8212; most of what you say is stupid, wrong, or (in most cases) both.\u00a0 No &#8220;action&#8221; from this alert, except mockery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I get letters &#8230; in this case, an &#8220;Action Alert&#8221; from Tim Wildmon and the American Family Association (AFA). Subject: It&#8217;s back &#8211; ObamaCare 2.0, worse than the first Dear Dave, President Obama, determined to press for the government takeover of our entire health care system, is reviving a tweaked version of the Senate health &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/24\/its-back-anti-obamacare-2-0.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;It&#8217;s back &#8211; anti-ObamaCare 2.0&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":19249,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/17\/bryan-fischer-is-a-dolt-redistributionist-sinners-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":0},"title":"Bryan Fischer is a dolt: Redistributionist Sinners Edition","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Nov-10 1:37pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bryan Fischer leaps onto Dr. Donald Berwick, the new chief of Medicare, on what he has said about health care. Donald Berwick: \u201cExcellent health care is by nature redistributional.\u201d Bible: \u201cYou shall not steal.\u201d Donald Berwick: \"Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics &amp; Law&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics &amp; Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/bryanfischer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":132995,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/07\/morphing-the-aca-into-the-ahca.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":1},"title":"Morphing the ACA into the AHCA","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Mar-17 11:27am","format":false,"excerpt":"Because that's not at all intentionally confusing ...So reading some analysis of the proposed GOP health insurance plan has been a bit confusing, but a few points stand out:1. Mandates change to \"personal responsibility\" -- Which sounds fine and upstanding and all-American, but ends up inevitably breaking the system (again),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132026,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/13\/the-inevitability-of-obamacare.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":2},"title":"The Inevitability of Obamacare","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 13-Nov-16 10:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is not rocket science. This is not some new, fiendish, cunning twist to the debate. This has been discussed and understood by (serious) analysts of health insurance since Day 1 of the Affordable Care Act discussion.TL;DR: If you are going to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against pre-existing conditions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37807,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/13\/obamacare-rationing-death-panels-fox.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":3},"title":"Obamacare! Rationing! Death Panels! Fox!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Jun-13 10:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Sigh.Okay, so I get that Fox News needs to reflexively critique the ACA for its own partisan viewership reasons. \u00a0But it's one thing to point out problems and quite another thing to, y'know, just make shit up.Also, Mr. Johnson, in case you hadn't noticed it, in most cases health care\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18746,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/29\/18746.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":4},"title":"Christine O&#8217;Donnell: Liar or Dolt, You Decide","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 29-Sep-10 7:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Not that Christine O'Donnell needs any more publicity, or that there is any value in actually trying to dissect and discredit the things that spew from her mouth, but ... Well, I just can't help my self. Scryyde, the Muse of Rantful Blogging, is poking me with her pitchfork again.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Elections 2010&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2010","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2010"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Christine-ODonnell.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39313,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/obamacare-north-korea-huge-massacres.html","url_meta":{"origin":16798,"position":5},"title":"Obamacare = North Korea = Huge Massacres!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Oct-13 11:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"'Don\u2019t tell me that the apostates that run this country today who have abandoned a Christian world and life view can\u2019t become the same kind of tyrants that happen in North Korea that now has been whipping out tens of thousands of people in some of the largest massacres we\u2019ve\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}