Arkady's Thoughts

This is an article about RomneyCare, but with the passage and upholding of ACA it behooves all Americans to pay attention.   We have in front of our eyes an amazing example of politicians taking a problem, analyzing it and then proposing stupendously awful "solutions".   Republicans defend Romney suggesting that universal care would have been passed in Massachusetts and he salvaged it, while Democrats criticize Romney for not going far enough and leaving the one party in power to fix up his mess.  Shocker, both are wrong.  Let us look at the problem and discuss a solution! Deval Patrick recently signed legislation that will control costs for MA residents.  Apparently it was a huge surprise to folks that intervention of strong-arm policies to insure everyone has lead to significant problems.  A quick look at what has transpired in the State. While there are many ways to examine quality with certain indicators being debatable, one is clear and concis...

Virtually partisan passage here , with only three Democrats voting yes. There was actually some lively discussion on the floor with both parties pretty much clinging to exactly the same notions and ideas that were presented during the last several years prior to passage.  A summation; Republicans maintaining this bill would kill jobs and Democrats extolling the virtues of eliminating pre-existing conditions and filling in the dreaded senior doughnut hole.  Both parties are correct and both parties are presenting useless arguments as they pertain to the nation's health care. Nobody is talking about the true cause of spiraling costs and how to fix them, instead the two parties are arguing over how to best shaft the American people - through Government run healthcare via Medicare/Medicaid or mandated insurance purchases. What the Republicans are doing in reality is buying political points while doing nothing and I believe they are doing this by design.  This newly elected ...

An interesting story, but I am rather skeptical.  Fred Upton suggested to Fox News that a bipartisan effort to nix the recently adopted ObamaCare is viable and that a good number of Democrats will join the process.  Conventional wisdom suggests that with Obama as president any effort to repeal his flag ship legislation for which so much political capital has been expended is impossible, however there may be enough votes to overturn the veto.  A very timely discussion indeed as three new ObamaCare taxes have kicked in yesterday. This is very significant for several reasons. First, Republicans must understand that starting with Scott Brown's election the majority of Americans to this day would like to see ObamaCare repealed. The entirety of the 2010 GOP wave (sans Massachusetts) rested primarily on ObamaCare and spending.  Although the weak and ineffective GOP Pledge does commit to repeal the rhetoric has been transformed to repeal-and-replace (troubling), but th...

Breaking news today, but Federal judge Henry Hudson ruled that the individual mandate portion of the 'ObamaCare' law is illogical and is not supported by precedent. Of course just a few months back another Federal judge saw no problem with this particular provision, so it appears that the individual mandate concept is going to the Supreme Court.   This is not to say that all of 'ObamaCare' is thrown into the dust bin where it belongs, but it means that the primary funding source is compromised. "An individual's personal decision to purchase -- or decline purchase -- (of) health insurance from a private provider is beyond the historical reach" of the U.S. Constitution," Hudson wrote. "No specifically constitutional authority exists to mandate the purchase of health insurance." What is especially important to remember, if this ultimately gets rejected by the Supreme Court that this at least puts up some kind of barrier on Federal overreac...

With apologies to Jon Stewart for my offensive title, but an interesting video deserves some attention.  This is a video of Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director on the implementation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).   Essentially once you get past all the political correctness you will realize that the idea in the long term is to reduce quantity, well, of course increase quality too. If you believe those two are mutually exclusive like the Obama administration then you might also believe that ending all hunger should be accomplished by 2012.   Oh, Bibi just called and apparently he met with Hamas and he is handing Jerusalem over to the Palestinians.  Ok, back to reality. Yes, we have a problem in this country, no doubt about it.  Our medical cost curve toward end of life looks like a parabola.  This is probably common sense, as people get older they generally consume more health care....

If you want a reason to dislike Jon Stewart, here is one.  In this video below, Stewart interrupts a Tea Partier and points out that ObamaCare is a derogatory term.  Why does this matter?  Because this is a very popular mechanism to manipulate debate and assign meanings to words based on one's own perception.  No one ever complained before that HillaryCare was used to describe the early 90s push for the exact same concept.  RomneyCare is just as frequently mentioned in the same conservative circles to denote the socialized medicine implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.  So why give Obama a special treatment?   Because despite the mounting evidence that ObamaCare is terrible, unpopular, was passed in unscrupulous manner and achieves nothing of what it promises, Stewart the happy liberal, will work to disassociate Dear Leader from this piece of turd. In other news, progressive means Statist and liberal means progressive.  Jon Stewart...

The list is mounting and it should be no surprise considering Pelosi herself stated that we will only discover the inner workings of the bill after it's passage.  This of course tyranny at it's finest and it is happening right under our noses.  While you can be somewhat comforted knowing that a majority of Americans want this abomination of a bill repealed, it is only a short lived comfort since the majority is a paltry 58%.  So far only 18 states have filed suit to preserve state autonomy, another disturbingly low number, disturbing because it is astonishing how quickly states are willing to surrender rights and freedom to the likes of Pelosi and Reid. Today's discovery comes from a story from Arizona .  One doctor is threatening to close his practice, a practice that been operational since 1976!   Why is the good doctor so perturbed?  It looks like the already obnoxious penalty of $10,000 for failing to comply with Medicare standards will be going ...

More information is slowly coming out as to what the giant multi-thousand page monstrosity known as ObamaCare entails.   Our left leaning media decided now that their idealogical fight has completed and a new entitlement program has been passed, they can pretend to be reporters and actually divulge the real impact of ObamaCare.  NYT published a piece listing several new mandates while feigning shock and surprise.  So assuming you understand that ObamaCare will result in higher insurance premiums, worse coverage and longer wait times at doctors, lets look at some more goodies brought to you buy the socialists from DC. Chain restaurants must list calorie for all items on their menus. Employers with 50 or more employees must provide a space and time for a mother to breast feed. Indoor tanning is slapped with a 10% tax. W-2s must provide detailed health benefit breakdowns Flex spending accounts: Starting in January, you will no longer be able to tap your accoun...

Another group has joined the majority of Americans in opposing the unprecedented expansion of Government mandates, this group represents American Physicians and Surgeons.   In fact, it has not only joined us in recognizing that a Federal government cannot force it's citizens to purchase something for the sake of a common good, but is suing the Obama Administration.  In a press release issued by the AAPS, some of our doctors are warning that the quality of our case and overall sense of freedom are in danger of being compromised. “If the PPACA goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it,” observed Jane Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of AAPS. “Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients.” AAPS further underscores the underlying theme of why this piece of legislation violates the Constitution, a document that every member of Congress (and President) swears to uphold. ...

This is just a little message to the minority that supported this bill and believe that America will benefit from the narrow passage that occurred several days ago.  It would appear that the primary celebration stems from the idea that we will now be insuring those millions who are uninsured and the secondary celebration from the idea that we will now remove pre-existing conditions.  While common sense dictates that there is no such thing as a free lunch, less common sense does not deal with the question of why more insurance is the panacea.  So assuming that it is, a concept terribly flawed, then the cost of insurance will rise.  However we must simply observe what is happening today to determine the course of our future direction.  Currently the majority of Americans who have insurance, obtain it via their employers.  This already skews and distorts the perception of most Americans as to what the real cost of health care is and something I once covered ...

Perhaps discussing is the wrong term, perhaps skewers or shreds is more appropriate.  In five or six minutes Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) runs through the costs of Obama's proposal and brings to light the many painful aspects that we have been talking about for the past several months.  First and foremost, the entire plan is way too expensive and while Obama's proposal is not yet scored by the CBO the Senate's version was indeed scored and the scoring was based on misleading information.  Ryan delves into specific tricks and gimmicks that he believes were injected into the bill on purpose to offset the cost deficit.  The true cost over ten years of this new government health care proposal will result in over 400 billion in losses, but that number is useless.  Because as you remember, the bill is front loaded which means that taxes and cuts to Medicare will go on for ten years, but spending will only go on for six.  If you were to look out in twenty years the d...

Reading the news has replaced for me the need to watch late night comedy, I get all the humor one could handle plus a dash of fright and terror.  In today's NYT piece , we learn of our dear leader's new brilliant idea; price fixing!  That is right folks, where the brilliant minds of the Soviet Politburo and the crack team of the Nixonian administration have failed, our Harvard Law School graduate (where are those pesky transcripts?) decided he has figured it out all out.  The president’s bill would grant the federal health and human services secretary new authority to review, and to block, premium increases by private insurers , potentially superseding state insurance regulators. The bill would create a new Health Insurance Rate Authority, made up of health industry experts that would issue an annual report setting the parameters for reasonable rate increases based on conditions in the market. Nice.  Let's pretend that America is just stupid enough to forget th...

As the Brown supporters run amok in Massachusetts comparing yesterday's election to the battle of Lexington and Concord, Democrats in Washington are scheming.  Indeed, some of the rhetoric has dramatically changed from a full blown liberal charge to a more thoughtful and amicable tone.  While some have proudly declared ObamaCare deceased, I think otherwise and find this new tone troubling.  Allow me to share with you why a Brown victory may have very unintended consequences. As discussed earlier, I objected to supporting Brown for the sole reason of stopping ObamaCare because I refused to believe that six months of negotiations would be flushed down the toilet.  If he were just a slightly  better candidate and had some semblance of Constitutional thought in him I would have gladly given my support, but as a candidate he was and still is more liberal than McCain.  My main point at the time was that ObamaCare would pass as is and indeed still favor that o...

An important question to consider seeing that his entire campaign has now been focused on this one issue.  Although the legislative technicalities have already been discussed , I decided that a picture might convey the idea better.  For all the out-of-state supporters clamoring for a Scott Brown victory, this is for you! By the way, Democrats striking a deal to exempt labor unions from the Cadillac tax means that the current version will be accepted by the House - in other words, Brown's vote will be entirely and utterly useless.  At this rate a vote for Joe Kennedy, the only candidate promising to repeal ObamaCare is the only sensible solution. 

This is too difficult to ignore, it appears that the leading Senator in the fight for ObamaCare Mr. Max Baucus got bamboozled into sipping on some spiked eggnog.  While he spends 5 minutes explaining to the American public how he fought for comprehensive health care reform and how the GOP did everything in their power to be obstructionist one cannot ignore the seemingly glaring problem - Max Baucus is wasted.  The Democrats have really lived up to Ted Kennedy's standards now.  Bravo. \

Yesterday it was MSNBC and today it is CBS.  When traditional backers of the Democrat liberal agenda decide that this is a story worth sharing, one must assume that something stinks to high heaven.  In fact it would appear that things have gotten so out of hand in the Senate one does not even know what is legal or illegal anymore.  What is right or wrong?  Harry Reid claims this is the art of compromising.  Republicans are equally guilty of engaging in the same kind of vote buying, although as Katie points out, at least Republicans chastizied then majority leader Tome DeLay, the same kind of hubris missing from today's majority.  Is this the 17th Amendment at work?  Probably not, considering before the amednment's passage special deals and favors were done at the local legislature level.  So what is going on?  Is this a fact of life in America?  Are Americans content with having federal money spent on state favors? ...

Daniel Hannan is a politician from across the pond and for whatever reason really likes our Constitution.  He discusses with Glenn Beck the NHS, Britain's national health care system and basically asks us if we are insane.  Why would we want to hand over something as precious as health care over to the government.  The video speaks for itself. 

After Ben Nelson sold his principles down the river I posed a theoretical question on FaceBook of whether or not the entire Senate is broken. In a clip below, MS NBC, spends two minutes discussing special interest payoffs, sweetheart deals and special breaks for privileged groups.  I have no idea what is more stunning, the fact that MSNBC is actually reporting this or that our Senators are brazen enough to pull this off.  After the 17th Amendment some 80 years ago the policies and responsibilities of Senators dramatically changed.  Because Senators are now elected by the people they no longer have a responsibility to the country, but to the forces that elect them.  This in turn prompts Senators to ensure that they get re-elected or in the worst case slap their name on a piece of federally funded property thereby establishing their prominence for ages to come.    Has this gotten completely out of control?  ObamaCare in it's current version is ext...

Bernie Sanders (video below) is a socialist who truly and honestly wishes for central control of virtually every industry in this country at every cost.  He will even soil the very essence of the Senate violating a long standing tradition of allowing the bill to be read until completion unless anonymous consent is achieved, which today it was not!  Even though Sanders somehow stumbled into our good graces by standing against Ben Bernanke while supporting an Audit of the Fed, but his motivation and thinking process are completely on the polar opposite of most Americans.  The video below illustrates that he disrupts the reading illegally (based on a faulty precedent in 1992), but is pushing the mantra of the Obama administration - crisis.  Sanders states with full confidence that "everyone knows" we are in a crisis and finds the Republican tactic shameful.  Let us examine that. First of all, no poll currently exists that supports ObamaCare and no poll exi...

If you recall previously, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma threatened to read the entire Senate version of the bill, but he has chosen to do so with the proposal from Bernie Sanders.  Sanders decided that on top of the existing 2,000 pages he was going to add another 300+ pages implementing a single-payer system.   Considering that Harry Reid already had to forfeit both the public option and the Medicare expansion this appears to be just a giant waste of time.  Considering that none of the senators and certainly NONE of the house members actually read the bill they passed it would seem prudent to do so in the Senate, but it is peculiar that Coburn chose the silly amendment instead of the actual bill.  Most likely this is a warning sign to the Democrat majority that any attempt to shove a massive takeover of health care will be met with stiff resistance.  As far as the single-payer system on the Senate floor right now, well it would appear that Coburn is simp...