Mass SNAFU

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

Michael Graham raises an excellent question in his article today in the Boston Herald: If ObamaCare is so great, why hasn't Obama talked about how great RomneyCare – a.k.a. ObamaCare 1.0 – has been doing in Massachusetts? As Graham points out, it may have to do with the results:

It's exploding the budget: Our "universal" health insurance scheme is already $47 million over budget for 2010. Romneycare will cost taxpayers more than $900 million next year alone.

It's killing us on costs: Average Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation and rising. We also spend 27 percent more on health care services, per capita, than the national average. Those costs, contrary to what we were promised, have been going up faster here than nearly everywhere else.

It's creating bizarre marketplace mutations: In Massachusetts, ObamaCare 1.0 is such a mess our governor is talking about imposing draconian price controls. He's even suggested going to "capitation," a system where doctors get a fixed amount of money per patient - and then that's it. Which means it would become in your doctor's financial interest never to see you again.

Ignoring history seems to be a staple of this administration and that puts their motives into question. If this thing passes – and that remains a big if – it's going to be a disaster on so many different levels. Yet the tone deaf Democrats ignore us all and forge on.

Good luck America

Reconciliation is on its way and if it's not stopped, trouble awaits…

Pic via Michelle

Psst, Obama. Need a vote for health care? Give a judgeship to a Blue Dog’s brother.

Via the Weekly Standard:

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother, Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Pay for play, baby. It's the Obama way.

Obama on passing health bill everyone hates via nuclear option: “I know it’s right.”

Sure you do, champ. Because the American people are too stupid to know what's good for them – so you need to counter our stupidity. Thanks, pal. It's amazing we can even feed ourselves without you.

Anyway, the WSJ via Drudge breaks down the ugly details of Captain Wonderful's master plan to circumvent the will of the people:

A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again. […]

The vehicle is "reconciliation," a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.

Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble—within their own party, and even more among the general public—and because they've failed to make their case through persuasion.

"They know that this will take courage," Nancy Pelosi said in an interview over the weekend, speaking of the Members she'll try to strong-arm. "It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare," the Speaker continued. "But the American people need it, why are we here? We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress."

Leave aside the irony of invoking "the American people" on behalf of a bill that consistently has been 10 to 15 points underwater in every poll since the fall, and is getting more unpopular by the day, particularly among independents. As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.

Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can't sell their policy to Senator Snowe, any other Republican, or even dozens of Democrats. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.

It's interesting that Obama has no issue forcing Democrats to walk the plank on this one – especially since his death march into one-term oblivion won't commence until 2012 – because his actions will force vulnerable Democrats into the shark infested waters of November's mid terms. As long as his arse is not on the line, all is well I guess.

The million dollar question: are these Democrats ready to make the ultimate sacrifice and make the leap into those waters?

Thank God this guy's in charge of health reform and an insurance overhaul

President Obama talking about his car insurance as a young man in Illinois:

The transcript:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

What our freaking president - the man in charge of reforming health care - does not understand, and this is a tad worrisome, is that he had liability insurance at the time and not collision insurance. That's why they laughed at him - because he didn't have the coverage.  

That's assuming this fairy tale is even true, which I guarantee it is not.  

Regardless, to tie his poor auto insurance decision into health insurance for sick kids and cancer victims is disingenuous at best.

Joe Biden: America's Rain Man

 

Vice President Joe Biden was present at today's health summit and had this eloquent insight to share:

"I’m always reluctant after being here 37 years to tell people what the American people think. I think it requires a little bit of humility to be able to know what the American people think, and I don’t, I can’t swear I do. I know what I think. I think I know what they think. But I’m not sure what they think. And the second point I’d make is…"

Joe, you are the best.  Fittingly, Ann Coulter recently asked "how long are we going to pretend Joe Biden isn't just some drunk Irishman embarrassing Obama?" 

h/t Red State

Rising star Paul Ryan dismantles Obama's fiscal claims

Paul Ryan takes Obama and his claims of a deficit-neutral health plan out to the proverbial woodshed for a lesson:

And someone wasn't to happy about it:

 

Health summit backfires on Dems. ObamaCare is done.

So much for the trap Obama was supposedly setting with this health care summit. The Republican Senate has been monitoring the feedback and this can't possibly be what the White House had in mind when they put this thing together:

Media Says "Republicans Brought Their 'A Team,'" "Have Been Very Effective," "The Folks In The White House Just Must Be Kicking Themselves Right Now"

CNN's WOLF BLITZER: "It looks like the Republicans certainly showed up ready to play." (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

CNN's GLORIA BORGER: "The Republicans have been very effective today. They really did come to play. They were very smart." (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

• BORGER: "They took on the substance of a very complex issue. … But they really stuck to the substance of this issue and tried to get to the heart of it and I think did a very good job." (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

• BORGER: "They came in with a plan. They mapped it out."  (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

CNN's DAVID GERGEN: "The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened." (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

• GERGEN: "He doesn't have a strong Democratic team behind him." (CNN's "Live," 2/25/10)

THE HILL'S A.B. STODDARD: "I think we need to start out by acknowledging Republicans brought their 'A Team.' They had doctors knowledgeable about the system, they brought substance to the table, and they, I thought, expressed interest in the reform.  I thought in the lecture from Senator John McCain and on the issue of transparency, I thought today the Democrats were pretty much on their knees." (Fox News' "Live," 2/25/10)

THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S STEVE HAYES: "I think to me the most important thing to come out of the morning so far is that Republicans have spent a great deal of time talking with great passion, and I think eagerness about their plans, detailing the plans that until this morning them democrats had been saying didn't exist. Well, you now see, I think, in great detail that Republicans do have plans, that they care about the same issues and that they feel passionately about it." (Fox News' "Live," 2/25/10)

Obama basically gave Republicans a live venue, free from media manipulation, to present common sense solutions as an alternative to the expensive and very unpopular Obama plan, and as Jay Nordlinger at NRO points out, in doing so, they destroyed the Left's media-assisted stereotype of Republicans as obstructionists:

This health-care summit was a bad idea for the Democrats for this reason: They have long benefited from a perception — a perception greatly abetted by the media: The Republicans don't care about health care, they don't know about health care, they are the Party of No. All the ideas and caring are on the Democratic side.
 
It is not so, and it has never been so. And now everybody knows it.

Expect opposition to the Obama plan to increase after today. The latest support/oppose numbers put together by Jim Geraghty at NRO:

Rasmussen: 41/56
Newsweek: 40/49

Public Policy Polling: 39/50

Pew: 38/50

Quinnipiac: 35/54

Ipsos/McClatchy: 37/51

NBC/WSJ: 31/46

CNN: 38/58

NPR: 39/55

Those numbers are going to change for the worse and the Democrats will have only themselves and this dog and pony show that backfired big time to thank for it.

Put a fork in ObamaCare. It's done.

CBO: Sorry champ, but we can't score your new health plan

The Congressional Budget Office released a statement today saying that they can't score the new Obama health plan because it lacks detail:

This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it—a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved. Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.

Hmmm.  I wonder if that was done intentionally to buy some time to attempt to garner support for this monstrosity.  Reid is saying it will pass within 60 days and if the White House plays coy with those details the CBO needs, the true price tag may not be known for weeks.

That's a lot of time to get this done before the sticker shock sets in and Democrats jump ship.

Dems getting a little worried about the lack of results coming out of Washington

The election year jitters are starting to surface. Over the weekend, some Democratic governors expressed some worry about the president's agenda and failed track record to date, as in "this guy is all over the place, can't accomplish a damn thing, and we're stuck defending this crap!" From Breitbart:

Democratic governors said Sunday they worry about President Barack Obama's track record on fighting Republican political attacks and urged him to better connect with anxious voters. Some allies pleaded for a new election-year strategy focused on the economy.

The Obama agenda has saddled Democratic incumbents with defending very unpopular legislation, including a stimulus package that only 6% of Americans think has been effective. Many believe that health care monopolized Congress over the last year when the focus should have been on jobs. But the White House is basically saying "we focused on the economy last week! It's now time to force health care and cap-and-tax on an unwilling electorate, again!" And that disconnect with the American public has many on the Left worried:

"It's got to be better thought out," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said. "It's got to be more proactive." And, he said, Democrats must hit back just as hard as they are hit by Republicans.

Eight months before the first midterm elections of Obama's presidency, most Americans are frustrated with—even angered by—persistent unemployment and gridlock in Washington. Democrats fear voters will punish the party in power.

The titular head of his party, Obama has watched his own popularity drop over the past year. He will bear at least some responsibility for the outcome in November, and Democrats are looking to him for political fixes.

In interviews at the National Governors Association's weekend meeting, several Democratic governors faulted the White House for losing the communications war against Republicans over what Obama has accomplished in his first year.

"We fought back only sporadically and pretty ineffectively," Rendell said, adding that "right out of the box, we lost the spin war" on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed in 2009.

Several Democratic colleagues agreed, and lamented that voters thought Obama focused too much on overhauling the U.S. health care system. Others fretted that Obama may appear to be out of touch with the concerns of Americans.

"I think he's got more work to do on that," said Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, an Obama friend and ally.

Could Deval Patrick giving you accurate advice signify hitting rock bottom? It's got to be close. Anyway, the number one issue of concern with the American people is obviously the economy and the creation of jobs. For some reason this White House is refusing to address that issue, at least in a way that Americans think is effective, and with unemployment expected to hover where it is for months, that spells big trouble for Democrats everywhere.