Obamacare
April 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama really poured it on in his speech to Planned Parenthood yesterday (video below). Taken together with the introduction by Planned Parenthood’s president, we get a full airing of the sacramental view of abortion that underlies the Democrats’ mania on behalf of the practice. Obama’s speech begins at about 6:30. In the gospel according to Barry, we now have the blessing for the abortionist: “As long as we’ve got
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April 25, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Congress rarely comes together across party lines these days, but bipartisan consensus has emerged over the unsuitability of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Politico reports that Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join under Obamacare. The talks are said to involve Harry Reid, John Boehner, other top lawmakers, and the Obama administration.
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April 17, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Max Baucus, who helped write the Obamacare legislation, said today that he sees a “huge train wreck” ahead due to problems in implementing that law. Baucus addressed this comment to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a routine budget hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, which he chairs. Baucus expressed concern that new health insurance marketplaces for consumers and small businesses will not open on time in every
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April 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The designers of Obamacare put some serious thought into the expansion of the welfare state. If you have an income up to 400 percent of the designated federal poverty line, you can now skip your application for disability benefits and proceed directly to get on the Obamcare dole. You may actually need the subsidy to cushion the shock of the premium increases that Obamacare will deliver along with the benefits.
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April 8, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The enactment of Obamacare by overweening Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate was more than a gratuitous act of destruction, but it was incredibly destructive, and it was premised on Barack Obama’s incessantly repeated pack of lies about preserving existing arrangements, lowering costs, and all the rest. A willful pack of lies. Now what? Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin have not given up the fight and have been
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April 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The White House, through economist turned flack Alan Krueger, wasted no time in blaming yesterday’s lousy jobs report on the sequester. It’s a ridiculous claim. As we observed, government employment held steady, and the sequester is too recent to have affected the private sector. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, who is frequently cited by the Obama administration, agrees that the sequester is not yet in play. Zandi told CNBC:
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April 2, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yuval Levin directs attention to a story in today’s New York Times which begins: Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation. Levin advises us to get used to the first 11 words of that sentence.
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March 30, 2013 — John Hinderaker
A reader who heads an investment group came across this disclosure in a prospectus issued in connection with the recapitalization of a family-oriented restaurant chain. This isn’t a political statement, it is a legally-mandated disclosure to prospective investors, which renders the issuer liable if it isn’t true: Although [XXX] already offers health care, there is expected to be an increase in costs associated with the affordable health care act (“ACA,”
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March 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, Jay Cost argues that Obamacare isn’t forever. After a big windup, Jay delivers a changeup. He doesn’t foresee Obamacare going away any time soon; it has too big a constituency for its benefits. He postulates that the health-insurance exchanges that will be established under Obamacare provide a mechanism for modulating Obamacare in some beneficial (if unspecified) respect. According to the Washington Post’s
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March 17, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott announced his consent to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in the Sunshine State. As we observed at the time, however, Scott agreed only to support the expansion if the legislature votes in favor of it, a condition that might very well not be satisfied. Since then, Republicans in both chambers of the Florida legislature have blocked the Medicaid expansion in committee. And Will Weatherford, Florida’s
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March 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats knew what they were doing when they deferred the implementation of most provisions of Obamacare until after the 2012 election. What is surprising, really, is that Obamacare has been so unpopular, given that most of its baleful effects have not yet been felt. But it won’t be long now. The Associated Press reports that health insurers are warning of massive price increases beginning next year: Some Americans could
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March 12, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (and may she remain forever a former Speaker) took a lot of ridicule during the debate over the passage of Obamacare when she said that we’d have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. I thought the critics had this all wrong. It was, in fact, the most intelligent thing she ever said, albeit unintentionally. What counts is, as Machiavelli put it,
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February 26, 2013 — John Hinderaker
President Obama sold the voters a bill of goods on Obamacare. In obvious defiance of the facts, the administration claimed that Obamacare would help solve the federal government’s budget crisis, and enlisted the Congressional Budget Office in its effort. The administration gave the CBO a number of bogus assumptions that CBO was required to work with, and in its most transparent ploy, told the CBO to model a ten-year window
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February 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As has widely been reported, Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott recently agreed to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for the Sunshine State. However, Avik Roy (co-author of a good piece on why the expansion is a bad idea) explains that this doesn’t mean that the expansion will occur in Florida. Roy relies on the reporting of Tia Mitchell of the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald, who covers health care developments
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February 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The mandate to offer health insurance doesn’t take effect until 2014, but the “measurement period” used to determine a whether an employer has enough full-time employees to be required to offer health insurance commenced last month. Thus, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the perverse effects of Obamacare are starting to kick in. Under Obamacare, firms with 50 or more “full-time equivalent workers” must offer health plans to employees who
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February 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
2013 is the Chinese Year of the Snake, and also the year in which many of Obamacare’s most damaging features will come into being. Coincidence? Michael Ramirez thinks not:
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February 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Introduced by Senator Jeff Sessions, Dr. Benjamin Carson spoke on Thursday this week at the National Prayer Breakfast to an audience that included President and Mrs. Obama up on the dais. Dr. Carson is a pediatric neurosurgeon who has lived a life of incredible accomplishment defying seemingly impossible odds. Watching the video, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if Dr. Carson might not have a greater contribution to make outside
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