…it would look like this.
I think that this is one of those rare cases where an abortion is the only reasonable option.
37 thoughts on “If The IRS And Medicare Had A Baby”
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…it would look like this.
I think that this is one of those rare cases where an abortion is the only reasonable option.
Comments are closed.
I’m not sure if this is a good link, but you can find the chart there. Looking through it, a good portion of the bureaucracy is there now. Still I fail to see how this is “reform”, especially when there remain mandates on citizens and employers.
No Clicky thanky, I’ve already seen all of the “Alive” movies.
Well, the baby has just slithered out into the world.
Over a trillion dollars in new costs over 10 years yet CBO still claims it’ll somehow reduce the overall deficit. 5.4% tax on anyone making more than $500,000 or a married couple making more than one million dollars. My bet is that those people will figure out how to dodge that tax. 39 Democrats opposed it and it barely passed 220-215. Looks like it might not have, if those two representative elections had gone to Republicans.
Here’s hoping the bill dies in the Senate.
And the bill cuts $400 billion from Medicare payouts. If you don’t wish to be insured, you pay up to 2.5% of your income as a penalty. Large businesses not paying insurance would be forced to pay up to an 8% penalty. Insurance companies get massively screwed.
Insurance companies’ customers get massively screwed.
Fixed that for you, Karl.
I’ve always wondered about people who think the government can force a dairy to pay fat taxes or fines to the Treasury but not raise the price of milk. Can they walk and chew gum at the same time? Count to 12 without taking off their shoes?
Well, I guess we know now that, at least, they can be elected as Democratic Congressmen.
Besides not having 72-hours to read the bill before the vote, I can’t find a record of the vote at thomas.loc.gov. I’m sure it will be there at some time in the future, whenever the government gets around to posting it. I’m sure we will here how it was bi-partisan because two RINO’s voted for it.
Insurance companies get massively screwed.
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Insurers couldn’t charge an older customer more than twice as much as a young one for insurance. They face caps on how much they spend on administrative costs. Since some of the requirements take effect as soon as next year, insurers say it would throw off contracts they’re locking in right now during employer open enrollment for policies.
Yes, it is better to export your old people to Canada.
I keep saying it, we are being pushed into open revolt.
Our country was started over a 3% tax, and no representation, and a KING who forced new edicts on the colonists. A trifecta of forced events the Americans found unbearable. And if you had a problem with the King, he’d just have you locked up or fined into being a pauper.
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT!
Just how did we get here? And just how is it different that a small group of (non) representatives, just voted to tax us, even though the majority do not want it. And if we don’t agree to their edict, we can be fined and imprisoned.
IT IS NO DIFFERENT.
It sounds EXACTLY the same to me. Except that it was foisted on us by a group of people, as opposed to just one.
Well, BFD as the kids say!!.
A bad law is a bad law. The source, being one man, a small group of men and women or a million forcing it on a billion doesn’t change the wrongness of the thing. Unfortunately, it may again take the blood of patriot and tyrants to stop this situation.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. It’s more than just a little ironic, that the country that forced the Soviet Union into capitulation, is now becoming one of most socialized countries of the western world. It is more galling still to those of us who fought the Cold War.
To use a common 21st century short hand, I just hope American Revolution 2.0 is a short one. I’m not young anymore, and I’d like to see my grandsons grow up.
I’d like to see them have a future.
…as opposed to killing them right here by denial of services, right Godzilla?
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And now my last few lines on this blog or any.
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Last night was “it” for me, and this morning is the result. I “blurbed” earlier today in anger and frustration, over this abortion of injustice.
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There is simply too much to do, to sit here even a few hours a day, pouring my energy into words on a screen. I’m going to find some way, to be more active in my community at a grass roots level, to save my country. I took an oath once to do that. And by my own admittance this morning, to you my friends,
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I have not lived up to my oath.
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I have bitched, complained and voted, and that’s about it. It’s not enough. I allowed my inactivity to keep my current Congressman, the (dis)Honorable Brad Miller, in office way beyond his usefulness to my district. He voted FOR last nights abortion. He is way too liberal, to represent even my district, even though we have a major university smack in the middle of the district. Real Americans should not be out voted by liberals in academia, or their liberal friends in the neighborhood. And that’s all a Congressional District is, a big neighborhood.
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I’m going to find the NC Republican Party headquarters this week, and I’m donating this blogging time, to my grandsons, via that office. I’m going to find old fashioned, cast iron, conservative, constitutionalists to back for ALL public offices. I even want my dogs picked up by conservative dog catchers.
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A war was declared long ago, against America, by believers in socialism / communism. Last night, they fired directly into my home. Yes, I know they’ve fired at me before, but this one went right through the kids rooms. I’m going to try to see to it that it doesn’t happen again.
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Personally I hope every blog in the country dries up from people lacking the time to blog, because they are too busy to blog. Too busy for doing what is right. I hope everyone gets too busy protecting the truth and our heritage as a nation first and foremost.
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And if truth, justice and the American Way is too trite or old fashioned for, you know where you can kiss me.
If you loved the way FEMA handled Katrina, you’ll love this monstrosity.
While I’m thinking of it, why have a democracy, if every citizen is thought to be a pampered doll that can’t do anything for themselves? The idea of democracy is that everyone is capable of and trusted to make important decisions that affect all of society. If these people are not trusted to make less important personal decisions, then that’s a step towards the end of democracy.
If I can’t be trusted to make health care decisions for myself, why should I be trusted to pick the leaders of a country?
I thought the whole concept of serfs and being proselytized from cradle to grave by a state religion had been recognized as a historically bad idea.
here should have been hear
Only 1 Republican, a RINO from New Orleans. He’s not safe, but because he is in the nanny city of NO. He’ll be replaced by a Democrat, if he doesn’t change parties.
Vote still not posted to thomas.gov, I guess it just isn’t important a vote after all. I wonder why it had to be done late on a Saturday night.
So much for Tuesday’s election being a “death blow” to health care reform.
On to the Senate!
Yeah, history teaches that totalitarians care little what the proles say.
A few predictions if the Obamination health care bill becomes law:
– Private insurers, unable to make even the marginal profit they make now, will leave the health coverage business, making it increasingly hard to get coverage except the public option. Or paying the doctor directly, if they let you.
– The public option will, like medicare, pay less than the market rate, driving doctors and hospitals, if they have the option, to refuse the public option. I expect they won’t be allowed to refuse the public option, driving doctors to leave the medical field, and hospitals to close.
– the quality/cost ratio for health care will drop.
Why would they? They don’t have “skin in the game”. BO says, “I have great health insurance…” So does Jim-the-Millionaire, regardless of how they frack things up for us.
The public option will, like medicare, pay less than the market rate, driving doctors and hospitals, if they have the option, to refuse the public option. I expect they won’t be allowed to refuse the public option, driving doctors to leave the medical field, and hospitals to close.
You can always take longer to get around to serving public option people. The more real customers you serve between each P.O., the more money you can make.
Second, if you can get the costs of processing POs down while increasing volume (say by doing them in large groups or on an assembly line), then you can make lots of money.
What I’d like to know is, where’d this health crisis come from? Are we actually any sicker as a nation than we were, say, fifty years ago?? (Or sixty, or whenever it was before we switched from paying for doctors when we needed them to having to have a health insurance “plan.”) I mean, were people dying in the streets in their own feces by the thousands because they didn’t have health insurance or Medicare? Did the cancer rate and the heart attack rate and the everything else rate go up all of a sudden, causing a spike in the cost of hospitalization and drugs?
Or was it rather like this: a movement was started by a variety of interested groups — not that I didn’t say what they were interested in; it sure wasn’t your sickly granny. The movement was to cause everyone to believe that “health care” (as opposed to going to the doctor for a checkup or when you were sick or going to the hospital if you had a broken leg or heart attack) was 1) something we needed to worry about all the time; 2) that it was CATASTROPHICALLY EXPENSIVE and no one could afford it; 3) that it was our right to have this extremely expensive health care; 4) so therefore we needed a structure to be set up by someone else that would take care of both the cost and the availability. Little bits of this plan were implemented long ago — this latest Obamacare mess is just another facet of it. And it has nothing, or very little, to do with your health, because we aren’t any sicker as a nation than we’ve ever been. It’s all about power and control. Just think of all the people who work at a job they hate or at least one that bores them because they think they can’t afford to live without a health insurance plan. Think about all the effort and energy that has been expended on this bureaucratic mess which could have been spent doing something else — like figuring out how to get off this planet and colonize space. As to that, as our culture has become now, we’ll never get off the planet. In space, no one can hear you scream for your HMO.
Argh, that should be “note that I didn’t say what they were interested in.”
“What I’d like to know is, where’d this health crisis come from? Are we actually any sicker as a nation than we were, say, fifty years ago??”
No, we’re healthier. The stat that keeps getting thrown around is the “Life expectancy from birth” one, where we’re lower than several of the “more enlightened” industrialized nations. But that statistic isn’t restricted to “death by natural causes in old age.” It includes death through all types of adventures and misadventures – sky diving, inner cities, avalanches through zombie attacks. Er, something with a z.
The same life expectancy tables at sixty are remarkably reversed. That is: America is by far the best place to grow old. Bypasses and hip replacements keep people in “lives worth living” far longer. Once one is demobilized, one’s will to live plummets.
C’mon, now, people, take a deep breath. Look, first of all, we always knew Obamacare was going to pass the House. What is surprising here is not that it passed — that was a given when 257 Democrats took their seats in January.
No, what’s surprising is how narrowly it passed. You had almost 40 Democrats — one out of every 7! — voting against this stinker, and that was after months of arm-twisting by the House leadership and the President. it passed with, what, 2 or 3 votes to spare? It can’t be a coincidence that it just barely got over the line. I’m thinking this means it started out well below majority support, and it took weeks of work by Pelosi to bring it up to the mark, and she had to spend so much capital that she quit as soon as she got a bare majority.
But, as I said, we always knew it would pass the House. What’s shocking is how close it came to not passing.
The real fight was always going to be in the Senate, and in the problem of reconciling the two houses’ versions. The conventional wisdom is that nothing like what the House passed can pass the Senate, and nothing that could be passed by the Senate would pass the House. For example, the House leadership will not consider a bill without a “public option” but the Senate will not pass a bill with a “public option.”
Nevertheless, there may be ways for the crazies to get around that. But don’t let that worry you. You’ve got almost exactly 12 months to the next elections. There’s no way anything Congress does now can take any kind of serious effect before then. (Indeed, as I understand it, almost none of Obamacare kicks in until 2013 at the earliest.)
And, of course, what Congress does in 2009 can very easily be undone by Congress in 2011. And if by some weird hocus pocus the Democrats do get a real stinkeroo of a bill passed early next year, that’s exactly what will happen. They’ll be routed from office next November, and a solidly Republican Congress will immediately revoke the whole deal.
But, as I said, we always knew it would pass the House. What’s shocking is how close it came to not passing.
There’s an old Washington game of letting politicians from certain districts vote against a bill once you know you have enough votes for it to pass. There are a lot of Democrats from relatively conservative districts. The game allows them to symbollically vote against something that would get them defeated in the next election but only after passage of the bill is assurred.
And, of course, what Congress does in 2009 can very easily be undone by Congress in 2011. And if by some weird hocus pocus the Democrats do get a real stinkeroo of a bill passed early next year, that’s exactly what will happen.
Not necessarily so “very easily”, Carl. The Republicans would need sixty votes in the Senate. Right now, it’s the other way around, and it’s unlikely that twenty seats will switch. It’s rarely easy to “undo” legislation, particularly when it is a new entitlement with associated new constituencies. Recall that when the Republicans took over in 1980 with promises to get rid of Education and Energy, it never happened. That’s why we’re in the ratcheted mess we’re in, going all the way back to the thirties. It’s also what gives the leftists confidence that they’ll prevail eventually. It’s why we need a sunset amendment in the constitution — so bad laws will die without continuous review.
Like the terrorists say, “We only have to be successful once. You have to be successful every time.” That’s how entropy works — but our system of government institutionalizes it.
I’m of two minds. First, it’s clear that bad law sticks around. Even now, we still have considerable bad law left over from FDR. But maybe the disease is the cure.
Where?
“House health care bill has nowhere to go in Senate”
In reference to Titus’ link, at least this time Obama used this analogy:
“take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”
rather than the analogy he used Saturday:
“Sacrifice is not casting a vote that might lose an election for you; it is the sacrifice that someone makes when they wear the uniform of this country and that unfortunately a number of people made this week,”
As Rahm says, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Classy…
If the IRS and Medicare had a baby, “liberals” would bring it gold, frankincense and myrrah
Another story on the Pickett’s Charge.
You make a good point, of course, Rand. I think I give the wrong impression by saying “very easily.” I don’t mean without work, and pain. But I don’t think the Republic is quite so endangered. It’s worth remembering that major socialization actions of the past that are still with us (or with other countries, e.g. the NHS in Britain) were passed with large majorities, and enjoyed general broad support among voters.
They did not pass by bare majorities and in the face of general public disapproval — not to mention protests in the street by tens of thousands!
If this health bill passes, then if it takes 60 Republican Senators to undo it — that’s exactly what the voters will produce. This bill is so generally loathsome — a fact to which its writers, wrinkly boomers stewed in the juices of liberal academia and Washington for decades, are astoundingly tone-deaf. People will really and genuinely hate it, like they hate nothing government has done for years.
It’s a suicide pill for the Democratic Party. Pass it, and the only long-term effect will be the decimation, if not outright destruction, of the Democratic Party. They have deluded themselves, like the Marxists before them, that a little “voter education” will take care of the passionate opposition they see. They think the people opposed are like unruly teenagers, once they get used to the idea, they’ll realize it’s actually all good and learn to love it. They’re blind to the fact that it’s solid middle-aged parents and older grandparents who are most upset about it: and these people are not going to forget, still less forgive. Maybe they’ve focussed on their magic “youth and illegal immigrant vote” for so long that they have forgotten what it’s like to deal with people who have strong opinions of their own, gobs of life experience to justify them, and who are very difficult to persuade with gassy promises and bullshit. Obama in particular I think does not understand the difference between starry-eyed students and actual working adults. (And why would he? He’s not really dealt much with the latter.)
Nope. You can look at the disaster unfolding in Massachusetts, the increasingly ugly stories coming out of Great Britain, or hell the entire history of state-planned and directed economies over the last century and see very clearly that things will promptly get significantly worse: poorer care, more expensvie care, more unequal care that depends on Who You Are and how much money you have. Folks will curse it, and the names of the people who brought it, for a generation.
It’s not like the Democrats haven’t trodden this road before. They had the same tin ear and urge to suicide in the years leading up to the Civil War, and indeed exiled themselves from national power for almost 50 years. They pulled a minor version of it in the 70s and got themselves exiled for 12 years — or if you consider how the 1992 Bill Clinton was elected only with the help of Ross Perot, and the 1996 Clinton was re-elected only because he ran on a platform a Republican could easily run on in 2009, 28 years). I think the only questions are:
(1) Will they realize the peril in time, Clinton-like, and eject from the flaming wreckage?
(2) Will they compromise sufficiently to muddy the waters, so that what they do is not an unmixed evil, thus shortening their time in Purgatory?
(3) Will the economy take a tumble next year in response to, or concomitant with, passage of a stinker health-care bill, thus doubling up the damage to Democratic election prospects?
(4) Will the economy fail so badly that people become genuinely frightened, and insist on a Big Government rescue, as in the New Deal (or worse — this way lies fascism)?
My guesses, for what it’s worth, are No, Yes, Yes, and Maybe.
The same life expectancy tables at sixty are remarkably reversed.
When an American reaches 65 he or she starts being covered by single-payer government health insurance, i.e. Medicare.
Look, first of all, we always knew Obamacare was going to pass the House. What is surprising here is not that it passed — that was a given when 257 Democrats took their seats in January.
It hardly seemed a given last Wednesday when Dick Morris and Rand were referring to Tuesday’s election results as a “death blow” to Obamacare, since vulnerable Democrats in the House would be too scared to vote for it. Instead the House passed a bill with a decent public option.
“House health care bill has nowhere to go in Senate”
No one expects the Senate to pass the House bill, but there’s a good chance that they will pass their own bill, which can then be reconciled with the House bill.
Er…Jim, I suspect when informed commenters said last Tuesday’s election was a “death blow” to Obamacare, they were thinking about, say, Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln, who will not be re-elected next year if she votes for a bill with a public option. So she has a pretty stark choice in front of her. And the election results have brought that into sharp focus for her.
but there’s a good chance that they will pass their own bill, which can then be reconciled with the House bill.
No, actually, there’s not. And you’ll note the whores in the press have been laying the excuse groundwork all this week. Oh dear, it’s going to be rough going in the Senate. Those stories are all over the place, whereas last week it was Historic moment nigh in the House!
Coincidence? Ha ha. The pre-spin is being ladled on here for delay and painful compromise. The liberal base — the only people who still read the AP and New York Times with any credulity — are being told to expect some ugly compromises, like no public option, or a public option with a trigger, and to swallow hard and take it, so that their liberal representatives in the House can safely vote for the conference report, and Himself can get to bask in the Greek-column glow of Healthcare Reform: Mission Accomplished!
I tell you, the degree to which you poor tools on the left have to choke down shit sandwiches so your Dear Leader doesn’t get a smudge on his halo is sad. Why do you put up with it? We on the right don’t. No conservative felt the least bit shy to speak up loud and clear when George Bush proposed a mouthful of dung for the faithful. (That’s how we get on your news and commentary shows, ha ha). Why are you all Obama’s bitches? What’s he actuallly done for you, other than make Bush hatred official American policy?
I’ve been reading LOST RIGHTS: THE DESTRUCTION IF AMERICAN LIBERTY, by James Bovard, It was written and published during the Clinton Adminstration, which the Obama Administration seems intent on making look like the Golden Age of Limited Government by comparison. In fact, like Goldberg’s LIBERAL FASCISM, Bovard’s book will probably need a second volume after four years of “Il Dufe.”
(It’s also a book someone like “Jim” would read and think, “So what’s the problem?”)
In any event, Bovard’s closing chapter has two quotes that seem prophetic of ObamaCare. One is from Thoreau: “If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention of doing you good, run for your life.” The second is from John Stuart Mill:
“The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts more and more the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government. or of some party which aims at becoming the government.”
If Medicare and the IRS are the parents, who’s the godfather?
I wish our government were as responsive to public opinion as the East German government of late 1989.