Does Obama Want Insurance Companies To Fail?

March 20, 2010

It’s looking more and more likely that this travesty of a health care bill will be rammed through Congress one way or another. As I expected, the on-the-fence Democrats are collapsing like a bunch of broccoli under the arm twisting and noogie patrols of Obama and Pelosi.

I haven’t written much about this in the past week or so for two reasons: 1) I’ve been waiting to see how it would all shake out, and 2) I get so depressed when I think of this that I become practically inert. As someone who reveres the Constitution of the United States and desperately loves the ideals that this country has held in terms of liberty and freedom, the all-out assault on the Constitution that is being perpetrated on Capitol Hill is well nigh unbearable. I knew this gang of progressives, socialists, radicals, and idiots would seize any opportunity to turn the United States into a massive welfare state, but I never believed that they would launch such a brazen attack on the principles on which this country was founded. And for me as a New Yorker, there’s not a lot that I can do. My representative and my Senators are among the most liberal members of Congress. I’ve written several emails to Eliot Engel, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chuck Schumer and all I have ever gotten back are form letters thanking me for my support. They don’t care. There are enough people in my area to make their re-election pretty safe, and New York is hampered by a Republican Party that is spineless at best and brainless at worst.

The question I keep asking myself is why the Democrats are so fired up to pass this bill that they will nakedly throw the Constitution into a shredder in order to achieve their goals. The answer, of course, is that this “reform” bill has almost nothing to do with health care and everything to do with power. Give Barack Obama credit for this much: the guy’s got a long-term vision. So does Nancy Pelosi, but Pelosi will continue to be re-elected, so this is a no-risk vote for San Fran Nan. Obama’s willing to sacrifice himself in 2012 in order to achieve what he really wants. Sure, he wants to be re-elected, but if he succeeds here he will have achieved his dream of pushing the United States closer to a top-down, European-style socialist nation.

Consider this: Obama has long been on record as favoring a European-/Canadian-style single payer system of health care. But there’s still enough sense (barely) in the Senate not to include “the public option.” What is in the bill, however, is a requirement that everyone in the country buy private health insurance, insurance which will be heavily regulated (i.e., price controls) by the Federal government.

I once thought that something like this could be a part of health care reform, but I was as wrong as I have ever been about anything. The very idea that the Federal Government can tell a private citizen that they must buy a service provided by a corporation is blatantly unconstitutional. The Fed has no more power to tell me to buy insurance than they have to tell me to buy 300-thread count sheets for my bed. In fact, the unconstitutional nature of this provision is clear to anyone who thinks about it for more than a second or two…and Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have thought about it for more than a few seconds.

Also in the bill is the regulation that insurance companies can not deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition, which means that insurance companies will be forced to accept extremely high-risk individuals. And because the government will be setting price controls, there will be no way that insurance companies will not lose money on this. Obama and Co. know this, which is why they make the unconstitutional case that in order for the plan to succeed, the young and healthy must be forced to buy insurance in order to subsidize the sick and elderly who will now being costing the insurance companies money.

So follow me here:

  • The insurance companies will lose money…a lot of money…because they can no longer differentiate between low- and high-risk consumers
  • This loss of money will be compensated for by the provision that forces the young and healthy to buy insurance
  • The provision that forces the young and healthy to buy insurance is unconstitutional and will likely be overturned by the Supreme Court
  • Without the influx of money from the young and healthy, the insurance companies will incur massive financial losses because the government will not allow them to charge free market rates for insurance or make distinctions between high- and low-risk consumers
  • The insurance companies will fail

So what could Obama/Pelosi/Reid possibly gain by the failure of the insurance system? Is there a reason that these people would want the insurance companies to fail?

Of course. The failure of the insurance companies, even the failure of only some of the insurance companies, would give the government the opening to step forward and become the “insurance provider” for all those people who find themselves without insurance. What we are seeing on Capitol Hill this weekend is the ugly conception of a rough beast known as single-payer, and all that it entails: poor care, rationing, wait lists, doctor shortages, endless levels of bureaucracy.

I will not give up hope that this bill will fail until Obama puts his signature on it. When that happens, I will do everything in my power to have the bill repealed in toto.

The Democrats believe that a vote tomorrow and a signature on Monday with lots of cameras and the smiling mug of Barry Obama will end this debate and that the American people will fall in step and bleat contentedly like the good sheep they are. The Democrats are wrong.

In my entire life I have never seen so many people so engaged on so many levels, and that will only increase when the new taxes, higher premiums, and Medicare cuts actually happen. This bill is the legislative equivalent of Pearl Harbor, and the Democrats may pat themselves on the back for launching such a successful attack, but they will only awaken a sleeping giant.

As expected, the Blogosphere is burning today. More reading from some of my faves: Hot Air has updates and even references the same Yeats poem I did. Also more here, here, and here. In a related item, Hot Air is also highlighting a great video of an exchange on Medicare reform between my newest hero Paul Ryan and the repellent Louise Slaughter (of “Slaughter Solution” fame).

Michelle Malkin’s got pics of today’s Tea Party at Captiol Hill, a brief comment on the defenstration of the Slaughter Solution,.a list of propsed House amendments to Obamacare, and reports of an attempt to buy off the pro-life Democrat contingent through Executive Order.

On the lighter side, Iowahawk channels David Mamet for Glengarry Glen (Cong)Ress.

There’s always lots of great stuff in The Corner.

Finally, over at I Am, Therefore I Think, Larry Downes believes that this bill is a violation of the civil rights of all Americans.

2 Comments | Health Care Reform, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Blaknsam

The Moral Equivalency of Tom Hanks

March 10, 2010

This Sunday, HBO will air the first episode of The Pacific. It’s the much anticipated followup to the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers.

The earlier miniseries premiered just before September 11, 2001 and did not do particularly well in the ratings, largely because America had been suddenly thrust into a real war and as thousands lay dead in lower Manhattan, the appetite for watching more brutal conflict on television was understandably low. Still, due to reruns on HBO and The History Channel, and the DVD release, Band of Brothers has found a huge audience. Deservedly so. Viewed as a whole, it’s the greatest film about war ever made: heartbreaking, rousing, patriotic, perfectly acted, and intensely realistic. The producers, Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, deserve an enormous amount of applause and credit for their efforts.

Obviously, I haven’t seen The Pacific yet, but I will certainly be watching. If it is half as good as Band of Brothers, it will be very, very good indeed. The trailers I have seen promise more of the same intensity and realism.

But this time I’m a little unsure. I started watching Band of Brothers knowing in my heart and soul that it was going to be good, and it exceeded my wildest expectations. For a long time, I felt the same sort of anticipation for the new miniseries. But now, as the premiere draws closer and the press starts to mount, I am a little less sure. Why? Because Tom Hanks is an idiot.

There are other ambitions for their latest project. Asked if they expect “The Pacific” to resonate with viewers when it comes to the conflicts America faces today, Hanks responded quickly.

“We want it to resonate completely,” he said. “The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, from a civilization that didn’t recognize the advancement of human kind.

“Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?” he asked, referring to the U.S.-Middle Eastern conflict.

He noted that Americans who once bitterly dismissed the Japanese as barbaric now accept them as friends and equals.

“Right now we’re facing a different part of the world where they view us and we view them as an aberration of humanity,” Hanks said. “There’s a possibility that somewhere down the line, 60 years from now, we can look at the people that are trying to kill us and we are killing now as we do the Japanese today.” [Emphasis mine]

Hanks and Spielberg had an agenda with Band of Brothers: to honor the World War II vets who beat back fascism in Europe. But after reading the quotes above, I am dreading the concept of another agenda undermining The Pacific: moral equivalency between U.S. forces and Japanese forces, and a metaphorical link to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghnistan.

I’m not even sure where to begin with Hanks’s dribble. It is certainly true that Americans had preconceived notions and prejudices regarding the Japanese. At the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing, many Americans had never even seen a Japanese person. But to claim that the war in the Pacific was a war of “racism” on both sides is ludicrous. Japan had been steadily conquering Southeast Asia for years, brutally savaging anyone who stood in their way. Was it racist to want to defeat that? Why? Because the Japanese were not blonde with blue eyes like so many Germans? Why does the war in Europe get a pass from racism? Were there not jokes and caricatures of the Germans common in U.S. ranks? Did we not view the Nazis as “subhuman dogs?” And did the Nazis not deserve to be thought of in that manner? If it’s racist to think that an enemy that tortures and enslaves civilians, performs medical experiments on POWs and children, and that ruthlessly exterminates anyone who they believe is not of the right ethnicity is comprised of “subhuman dogs”…well, then, I guess I’m guilty as charged. Of course, both the Japanese and Germans were guilty of those atrocities during World War II. The United States, on the other hand, was not.

I’m not denying that individual U.S. soldiers committed atrocities. War brings out the best and the worst in individuals, and there are certainly well-documented cases of American soldiers committing atrocities. But for the Japanese and Germans, atrocities were standard behavior. Compare how Japan behaved in Nanking in 1937 with how the United States behaved in Japan in 1946. Compare the Bataan Death March to the treatment of Japanese POWs in American captivity, or even the Japanese wrongly interred in the States. Hanks says that Americans now look at the Japanese as friends when they once dismissed them as barbaric. That’s very true, but it’s a truth made possible only by the crushing of Imperial Japan. Americans thought of the Japanese as barbaric, because that’s exactly how the Japanese forces acted. In many ways, the Japanese were more savage than even the Nazis.

America did not go to war with Japan because we believed them to be less than human. We went to war with Japan because they were a brutal imperialist country bent on total rule of Southeast Asia who would allow nothing to get in their way. Sorry, Tom, but to somehow draw a moral equivalency here is an insult to all those who fought in the Pacific.

It’s also an insult to the soldiers fighting in the Middle East today. Is Iraq a racist war? Is Afghanistan? Do we view Iraqis and Afghanis as “an aberration of humanity?” Tom Hanks thinks we do, despite the great efforts we are making to spare civilian lives and create some sort of liberty and democracy in those nations. Are the jihadists an aberration of humanity? Philosophical explorations of the question aside (no, they’re not), the instinctive response is yes. And for good reason. The oppression of women and children, the contempt for freedom, and the hatred of modernity that underlie the jihadist belief system are all valid reasons to see them crushed. We may hate what they are, but it’s not a racist hatred, it’s a perfectly rational emotion based on their actions and words.

I will be watching The Pacific and, frankly, I expect it to be excellent. I’m guessing that as he’s making the press rounds, Hanks is just letting his instinctive Leftism get the best of his mouth. He has done much good by American veterans, including his work with the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. But as his knee jerk quotes above tell, he can also do better than to insinuate that we are no different than our enemies. We are very, very different.

UPDATE: I see that Hot Air and Big Hollywood are also on this, but their concentration is on different quotes from Hanks, which makes me wonder if I was being too generous in my final paragraph. Maybe the idiot really believes this junk he’s spewing.

UPDATE II: More from John Nolte, who’s all over this at Big Hollywood and also the good folks at Power Line. Also, Kyle Smith gets in on the act, as does the always fascinating Victor Davis Hanson on PajamasMedia and Brad Schaeffer at Frum Forum. They’re all saying the same thing as me, but better.

2 Comments | History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Blaknsam

Sold! One Judge For One Vote!

March 4, 2010

Over on her blog, Michelle Malkin is asking whether the White House is “incorrigibly corrupt or incorrigibly stupid” over the latest brouhaha from the Obama camp.

Hot on the heels of Robert Gibbs saying that Obama would do “whatever it takes to pass health care” comes word that the President has nominated Scott Matheson to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. That’s a nice, prestigious title for Matheson. Whatever his qualifications are, the nomination looks a little, shall we say, “suspect” because Scott Matheson’s brother is Representative Jim Matheson from Utah. Jim Matheson is one of the Representatives who voted “No” on health care reform the first time it went through the House. Now Obama is courting him to change his vote to “Yes.” Oh, and hey, how about a seat on the Court of Appeals for your brother?

But getting back to Michelle’s question: the answer is both, and there is a third ingredient.

At a time when people are extremely upset over the political back room deals like the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, special deals for unions, etc., for the Obama administration to do yet another one of these deals reflects a level of political stupidity that is mind-boggling.

While technically not illegal, the entire affair screams of a corrupt political machine that uses a labyrinthine system of favors, kickbacks, and punishments to get what it wants. This may not be illegal, and Scott Matheson is apparently very qualified for the job, but let’s call this exactly what it is: a bribe. Hmmm…now where I have heard the word “bribery” in relation to the Presidency before? Oh yeah, it’s in the Constitution, right before the words “treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Now I am not calling for an Obama impeachment. These political hijinx go on all the time, with both parties. But just because both Republicans and Democrats do this sort of thing doesn’t mean it isn’t a type of corruption.

The third element here is the one that blinds Obama to both the stupidity and the corruption of this: his all-consuming arrogance. Obama does these things because he apparently believes that nobody will question him, that dissent from his agenda and his method is somehow illegitimate.

Well, pride goeth before a fall, Mr. President, and if your plummeting approval ratings aren’t enough of an indicator, allow me to spell it out for you: We are on to you. We disapprove of your agenda. We disapprove of your methods. We will make our voices heard.

Hot Air is on the case, too.

Leave a Comment » | Health Care Reform, Politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Blaknsam

Off The Cliff

March 3, 2010

President Obama is going to push for reconciliation (what Senate Democrats used to call “the nuclear option” when it was used by Republicans) to pass health care reform, urging the Democrats to go blindly off the cliff and onto the sharp rocks below. This follows Nancy Pelosi’s grandstanding admonishment to representatives that they need to be worried about the good of the country, and should willingly walk the plank for reform (this coming from a woman safely elected in the People’s Republic of San Francisco).

This is political suicide for the Dems. If they really think opposition to the plan is strong now, just wait until they shove it down our throats and tell us to shut up and like it. I’m thinking we should start a pool…how many seats will the Democrats lose in the House this November? Forty? Sixty? Eighty? A hundred? A hundred would be nice. It’s a good round number. And by doing this, they may well lose the Senate also. Every Democrat (or Republican) who votes for this bill has painted a huge target on his or her back. As for the President, Obama may get this through (still not certain), but he will be completely wiped out. He is using all of the political capital he has, and some he doesn’t have. Obama will not be strengthened by the passage of this bill, he will be crippled by it.

And it will serve his Imperial Majesty right.

Meanwhile, Breitbart is showing a video detailing many of Obama’s statements about how healthcare should not be done on a simple majority vote. There’s a word for Obama that’s not usually used in politics because it’s considered rude or somehow tacky. The word is “Liar.” And it fits.

Write and call your representative. Write and call your senator. Let them know that passage of this bill via reconciliation will not be tolerated.

UPDATE: Obama has now come out and settled the issue by declaring the debate to be “over.” Memo to Barry: It’s not your ball, and you can’t just go home with it. The debate may be over, but if this travesty passes the fight will just be beginning. Also, Michelle Malkin weighs in with one-stop shopping on all the latest about reconciliation.

1 Comment | Health Care Reform, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Blaknsam

Your Daley Lesson In Progressive Politics

March 2, 2010

Drudge is highlighting this article about the Supreme Court taking up the issue of gun control in Chicago.

I won’t get into the issue here, but I want to take a second to comment on this statement from Chicago’s mayor:

Mayor Richard M. Daley wants the ban to remain in place. He says local officials need flexibility to decide how best to protect their communities.

“We have the right for health and safety to pass reasonable laws dealing with the protection and health of the people of the city of Chicago,” Daley said.

This is the perfect indicator of the Progressive/Liberal mindset. “We have the right…”

I really can not say this often enough or loud enough:

Government has no rights; it has powers that can be rescinded, amended, or strengthened by the electorate. Again…people have rights; governments do not. Buying into the argument that the government has a “right” to do anything is conceding that the government has absolutely no limits whatsoever.

2 Comments | Politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Blaknsam

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »