Cha-ching

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Another of Obamacare's hidden expenses is revealed in this analysis by Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute. (I had already posted (11/23, 11/26) the gimmick that Cannon mentions in his first paragraph).

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”
Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending. That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan. And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs. When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4). …
When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion. That’s not a precise estimate. It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard points out how silly the mainstream media appears when it colludes with the Democrats and their phony projected numbers. In one article, the Washington Post called the Senate bill a $200 billion a year program while re-stating its $848 billion 10 year cost.

Threats - Imaginary and Real

I don't know which was more predictable. The revelation that scientists have been conspiring to cover up data and silence criticism unfavorable to their increasingly speculative global warming hypothesis. Or, that the mainstream media would essentially ignore the story. Senator Jim Inhofe (R, Okla) has long been a voice of reason in Congress opposing global warming alarmists. He believes that the scandal will put the final nails in the coffin of the movement. Well, maybe, but even if it doesn't, it's been fun watching defenders of the scam squirm as they try to minimize the importance of the revealing e-mails. That Mark Steyn (NRO) is enjoying it too is evident in this typically entertaining column.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjAxYzA3NmI0N2Y1MDVhYzdmM2JkZGIyMjE5ZWU2OTI=

Want something really serious to worry about? Cliff May (NRO) has that one covered. WMDs are not just the punchline of a bad Bush joke. May lists nuclear weapons, easily hidden and disseminated biological weapons (smallpox, anthrax, ebola virus, highly contagious HIV), easily constructed "dirty" bombs, cyber attacks and EMP (Elecromagnetic Pulse) attacks as among the most devastating threats we face. Yet, he points out that no "summits" are being organized to address them. May proposes an aggressive strategy to deter would be terrorists.

If we are to prevent our enemies from doing the kind of damage they intend, we must stay on offense. We need to keep our enemies nervous, under pressure, and on the run. We’ll need to go after the bad guys in their training camps, laboratories, and safe houses — wherever those may be. We’ll need to force them to continually look over their shoulders and worry that they may be killed or captured — and being captured should not mean they are rewarded with a global stage to spout their propaganda at American taxpayer expense.

George Orwell articulated a fundamental rule of national security: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Most of the West is now led by people who believe that rule may have once applied but no longer. If that doesn’t keep you awake at night, nothing will.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzM5OGQwZjIyMmNhMTE3MjYwNTlhMjM0MjRhMWFlMjU=

Dr. Charles' Cure

The Democrats have shown us how not to reform health care. So how can it be done the right way? A sensible, concise explanation is provided, unsurprisingly, by Charles Krauthammer (NRO). His proposal focuses on three areas completely ignored by the Democrats in their more than 4,000 pages of proposed legislation - tort reform, elimination of the prohibition on interstate competition for health insurance, and taxation of employer provided health insurance. The money generated would be more than sufficient to insure the uninsured and the plan would significantly reduce the overall cost of medical care.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODFkNjliY2FkMGNmNDU5NmNlZjE3YmE4MjQzOTI1NmQ=

"...we're going to let you die"

In his book, "Liberal Fascism", Jonah Goldberg defines fascism as follows.
Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well being, and seeks to impose unitformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.
Goldberg adds that,
...contemporary American liberalism embodies all these aspects of fascism.

The following is a remarkable speech (though not remarkable enough, apparently, to be widely disseminated by the mainstream media) given by former Clinton Labor Secretary and present Obama economic advisor Robert Reich in September 2007.

I'll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:
"Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that's true and what I'm going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people...you're going to have to pay more.
"Thank you. And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."
"Also I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid---we already have a lot of bargaining leverage---to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you."

Reich's speech provides a resounding confirmation of Goldberg's thesis. First he explicitly assumes that the topic of health care is a political issue. (It may seem strange to the progressive mindset, but there is actually a rational case to be made that it shouldn't be). Then he makes a broadly reckless and inaccurate assertion - "we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people". If what Reich says is true then it would not be possible for patients to receive high quality, prompt, urgently needed medical care for life threatening illnesses at substantial discounts from their actual cost (and I mean really substantial, greater than 95%). I am personally aware of more than a few cases where this has happened. Put aside my anecdotal experience - Gallup reports that eighty-three percent of Americans rate the quality of health care they receive as excellent or good, while only 15% say theirs is poor. The system is decidely not "avoiding" these people when they're sick.
Reich's sweeping declaration then becomes the impetus for a complete overhaul of our health care system - an imperative objective of the state. Negative outcomes - and they are exceedingly negative - young people paying more, old people being allowed to die (death panels), the stifling of medical innovation - are all justified to "achieve the common good" of government control of health care. Drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers will be "forced" to lower their costs.

Reich's dictatorial tone is reflected in the methodology of the Democrats' efforts to pass their legislation. Compromise and negotiation with those not "aligned with the objective" are rejected. The headlines shout - "Dems willing to go it alone on health care". Unbelievers are trampled. Obama -"I want them just to get out of the way". Grassroots opponents are denigrated with slurs - "teabaggers" - even Bill Clinton used it. (He knows about such things). Pelosi, Hoyer - Protesters "simply un-American". Reich's is a fascist speech mirroring his party's fascist ideology.
Goldberg quotes Mussolini, "The fascisti...proceed unceasingly toward one goal, the future well-being of the...people".

We should be grateful for Reich's brutal honesty. The official progressive line is soothing, opaque and disingenuous. As Reich admits, a real candidate for president would not say these things. Reich has and Obamacare opponents should broadcast his pronouncements nationwide, over and over again. The more effectively this is done, the quicker these atrocious proposals can be deep-sixed. Then maybe we could start over. Revamping one-sixth of our economy should be attempted only after careful deliberation. We could spend three years vigorously debating the issue of health care reform and still have a plan in place in the same time frame as the Democrats' current bills. It's not the sledgehammer, fascistic approach to government now favored by those currently in power. But it's how our American democracy should operate.

Obamacare's Generational Theft

Shown above is a new improved graph detailing the true ten year cost of the Democrats' Senate health care bill. The graph I had posted previously (11/23) included only those costs for expansions in insurance coverage. There are many other costs, including, as noted on the Weekly Standard blogsite,

...spending related to the CLASS Act, risk-adjustment payments, funding for the government-run "public option" (not a cent of which is included in the figure for "expansions in insurance coverage"), and other new federal spending.

Those costs bring the total level of projected expenditures for 2014-2023 to $2.5 trillion, dwarfing the Democrats "official" ten year number of $848 billion, which is a lie twice over. It includes four years of spending from 2010 to 2013, even though benefits from the bill don't begin paying out in earnest until 2014. And it only includes a portion of the bill's total costs. Also, note the upward trajectory of annual outlays. CBO cost projections for the first 15 years are well in excess of $4 trillion. Which only means that the actual cost will ultimately be north of $10 trillion since all initial price tags for federal health care programs are woefully underestimated.

I haven't listened to it but apparently there's an audio recording circulating in which two women waiting in line for unemployment checks in Detroit are asked where they thought the money was coming from. Their answer - from Obama's private stash. That's no doubt how he sees it too.

Help Wanted : Academicians, Government Bureaucrats and Lawyers, Community Organizers

An interesting graph appearing on the NRO blog. Interpret as you wish.

Coincidence?

In my post regarding health care reform on Monday (11/23), I wrote, "Reid, Pelosi and Obama are probably willing to sacrifice temporary control of Congress to achieve that holy grail of socialism - permanent government control of health care."

In his WSJ column on the same topic on Tuesday (11/24), William McGurn wrote,

Now he (Joe Lieberman) threatens to filibuster what for many Democrats is the Holy Grail: a vast new health-care entitlement.

In that same post (11/23) I also wrote, "There are two powerful competing forces at work. The Democrats with complete control of the legislative and executive branches versus millions of individuals "standing athwart history, yelling 'stop!'"

In a column discussing the health care debate in NRO today (11/25), Jonah Goldberg had this to say,

Democrats insist they’re pushing for health-care reform against a political headwind because “history” compels them to. Republicans are standing athwart “history” yelling, “Stop!”

Now, I'm not going to flatter myself by believing that those two distinguished gentlemen actually read my posts and used my phrasings for their columns. After all, the Holy Grail is a well worn metaphorical device and William F. Buckley's conservative creed is well known. But it is mildly intriguing that both writers used the same figures of speech in the same context that I had - in the first case that the proposed health care legislation is akin to a holy grail for Democrats (I had said socialists, but same difference), and in the second case that those opposed to the Democrats proposal invoke WFB's slogan. Piquing my curiosity further is that both columns appeared within a day or two of my post.
A couple of similar instances of copycatting the language in my blog has occurred previously. I think I'll continue to make note of them. If they happen often enough I may start demanding acknowledgements.