Tag: ObamaCare

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Website is Fixed?

At Monday’s White House briefing, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Jay Carney, “if you … hit the ‘login’ button … it does take you to that screen where you’re asked to leave an email and come back later. That seems to be coming up … all day long.… is that going to be acceptable if that’s the norm for a lot of people for an extended period of time?”

“What I think is important to note,” Carney responded (repeating himself and blathering a bit) “… is that we have a queuing system made for a better user experience so that individuals could get in that queue, could be notified when was the best time to return to healthcare​.gov and enroll, if they so desired.”

Desired? We’ve been legally required to purchase insurance. Obamacare-​supporting politicians keep talking about all the “demand,” but when folks are forced by law to buy a product, penalized for not, that’s hardly true demand.

After writing that “the functionality of the site does appear to have improved considerably,” the New Yorker’s John Cassidy admits, “However, I didn’t get the opportunity to submit an application, or even to choose a plan. After filling in forms and fiddling around for about forty minutes, I reached a screen that said, ‘You have started an application for health coverage, but our verification system is temporarily unavailable.’”

For those who somehow miraculously navigate the website, the Washington Post reports, “errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-​third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1.…”

Also revealed this week: security was not built into the site, and retrofitting it in could take years.

It turns out that Big Government 3.0 is no more advanced than Web 1.0.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

The Race Card, Again

Are persons necessarily racist if (a) white and (b) opposed to expansion of the welfare state — that is, merely for opposing such expansion?

In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall, echoing a now-​familiar charge, implies as though it were self-​evident that many who oppose Obamacare-​ized medicine do so because of the race(s) of the recipients:

“Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010.… [Obamacare] forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country.”

Poor(er) people can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for the sake of Edsall’s freighted non-​argument, let’s stipulate that the poorest Obama-​subsidy recipients are slightly or much more likely to be minorities than not. Why must this fact motivate an individual’s opposition to seeing more and more of his hard-​earned income coercively transferred to anybody?

Change the context to a street mugging. If a mugger is non-​white, does the victim’s dislike of being mugged necessarily hinge on the race of the mugger?

Of course, any victim of crime may be a racist. But you wouldn’t simply assume it.

Gratuitous charges of racism are one sign of desperation by friends of Obamacare — a program the color-​blind horrors of which will only grow more evident over time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

A Too-​Clever Prez?

“It’s all right in politics to be clever,” said George F. Will last week, “but you don’t want to look like you’re trying to be clever, because that looks tricky and sneaky.”

Will, who has recently jumped ship from ABC to Fox News, was identifying the autocratic nature of current national politics. He did this on his premiere appearance on Fox’s The Kelly File, starring Megyn Kelly.

“And, in fact, as the president continues to waive this and suspend that in the exercise of what he calls ‘enforcement discretion,’ the American people are beginning to feel that the law is in constant flux. And if the law is in constant flux … there is no law.…”

In a Washington Post column earlier in the week, Will identified the president’s personal flaw at the heart of the tragedy. Obama has always thought of himself as an extremely clever fellow, and as a result of his (perhaps undue) self-​esteem, has often been bored. Bored, even, with competence.

For Ms. Kelly’s audience, Will painted the problem in the broader context of Democratic Progressivism. It’s been a hundred years since the disastrous reign of Woodrow Wilson, another clever fellow hailing from the Ivy Leage. Obama’s parallels with Wilson are apparent, and it’s no wonder that “Obamacare is collapsing under the weight of accumulated cleverness,” Will states, perceptively — well, at least echoing what I wrote a few weekends ago on Townhall​.com.

America doesn’t need super-​clever (much less faux-clever) leaders. The country, on the brink of insolvency, needs wise ones.

But Barack Obama, self-​diagnosed clever person, seems more interested in appearance than reality, and is, in the end, merely tricky and sneaky.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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video

Video: The Constitution Doesn’t Allow the Prez to Change Law

Judge Napolitano says NO to the president:

And so does Charles Krauthammer, who refers the president’s characteristic “lawlessness.”

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Freedom Cure

To solve our problems, we need the freedom — to plan, to create, to market and profit. We need the freedom to use the capital we gain by solving problems — whether the capital comes in the form of money, knowledge, or reputation — to solve other problems.

That’s as true in medical industry as in any other productive endeavor. But medical freedom is shrinking thanks to taxes and regulations imposed by Obamacare and numerous previous interventions.

Consider the many life-​saving gadgets and drugs that we now take for granted. Medical doctor Paul Hsieh observes that creating these does not happen automatically. Even slightly higher taxes or tighter regulations “can mean the difference between a product coming to market— or being abandoned as not worth the effort.” We know how existing devices save lives. What we don’t know is what lives will by lost for lack of inventions that never maker it to market but, in a freer political environment, would have. It is the difference between what Bastiat called “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.”

How can we ensure the largest possible field for the invention and propagation of life-​saving technology, like genetically cased medicine or 3D-​printed body parts? For starters, get rid of new taxes on medical devices and eliminate FDA regulations. Chuck the whole apparatus of Obamacare. Then enact ever-​more fundamental market reforms until patients, doctors, drug and device companies use their judgment completely unimpeded.

The debate about freedom in medicine shouldn’t be just about whether you will be allowed (!) to “keep your doctor.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people too much government

Got Ads?

First the hush-​hush secrecy; then the lies. Now something even … worse?

President Barack Obama doesn’t think the American people can handle the truth. Neither do several progressive non-​profit groups in Colorado that have produced a plethora of cringe-​worthy ads promoting Obamacare.

One print ad, “Let’s Get Physical,” pictures a young women giving a thumbs up sign and showing off her birth control pills standing next to a scruffy-​faced man-​boy, with the text: “OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers.* I got insurance.”

No worries, eh? The asterisk informs readers that, “The pill doesn’t protect you from STDs.”

Another advertisement, “Brosurance,” reaches out to young … drunkards. “Keg stands are crazy,” we’re informed. “Not having health insurance is crazier.” It continues: “Don’t tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills. We got it covered.”

Gee, thanks. In fact, both print ads end with the “thanks obamacare!” slogan.

So, can floundering Obamacare be saved by harnessing the awesome power of sex appeal and inebriation and huge dollops of kitsch and irony? Only if young people are as vacuous as these ads insinuate.

“Younger Americans may indeed be reckless enough to do keg stands and have unprotected sex on a regular basis,” Nick Gillespie wrote in Time, “but they’re not so dumb as the ‘Got Insurance?’ ads — or the architects of Obamacare — seem to think.”

Because, as Gillespie and others point out, Obamacare overcharges young people to supposedly lower costs for others. Let’s get real, bro.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.