The First Problems of Obamacare and Health Care Waivers

A story in yesterday's New York Times described some of the issues that were coming to light now that the first phase of Obamacare is going into action.  It would seem that one of the first big problems is coming from companies like McDonalds and from some insurance companies as they are requesting and being granted waivers by the federal government in order that they may maintain even their comparably minimal coverage that is substantially below that of which the new law requires.

It would seem that over the last several weeks, these waivers have had to be issued in order to mollify threats by some health insurers that they were intending to abandon certain markets, refuse to sell certain types of policies, or drop out of the business altogether.  Basically these companies are unable to make a profit and remain solvent when burdened with the dictates of the Obamacare law otherwise.

According to the NY Times article "To date, the administration has given about 30 insurers, employers and union plans, responsible for covering about one million people, one-year waivers on the new rules that phase out annual limits on coverage for limited-benefit plans, also known as 'mini-meds.' Applicants said their premiums would increase significantly, in some cases doubling or more."

So evidently the purportedly unintended bitter fruits of the Obamacare law are already beginning to ripen.  It would seem that already many private companies and insurers are not going to be able to meet the standards and requirements set forth in the un-constitutional health care act.  As more of these regulations and requirements go into effect for companies and their insurers, rest assured that we will see even more insurance companies refuse to offer certain plans or quit the business altogether. 

Of course this will create less competition for our health care insurance dollar and thereby drive up costs, which we were all told would not happen.  Ultimately, over the course of the next decade, one can count on seeing a lot of insurance companies quite the business and thereby in the end leaving only the federal government to pick up the tab via a single-payer government-run health care system.  (Just like President Obama and the progressives wanted all along.) 


Despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary from Obamacare supporters, in just around six months after the law's passage we are already are seeing some of our worst fears about this law come to fruition. 


As I have said ad nauseum, when you enact a law that provides for huge disincentives for doctors, you will lose many of the existing doctors and discourage new talent from entering the profession.  Then when you add 30 million more people to the rolls of those that are now theoretically covered for health care, what results is a simple mathematical example of supply and demand economics.  You have fewer doctors available to provide service to a far greater amount of patients.  The inevitable result is that costs rise, waiting times increase, and ultimately rationing will occur.  Welcome to the beginning of the Obamacare nightmare!

Governing America based on California/New York or Texas/Utah Models

With the rapidly approaching mid-term elections less than two months away, we have reached a crossroads where there will finally be a referendum in our country on how we the people wish to govern our nation.  We can either take the socialistic big-government-is-always-the-solution approach like what has been done in California and New York, or we can take a more limited government, business-friendly approach such has been done in Texas and Utah as our models.

Let's start by looking at California.  California has long been governed with an eye towards progressive policies where the state government was the place that most people looked to for answers to all of their problems.  The results of this have been utterly devastating.  Indeed if California were a country, it would be the equivalent of either Greece or Iceland.  It is effectively bankrupt.  The state has long been over-governed, over-taxed, over-regulated, and over-unionized, with incredibly excessive spending and entitlement commitments that it will never be able to meet.  If current trends continue in California, the rest of the country will have to rescue it from the deep abyss of debt that the unsustainable spending and governing of this state has wrought.  Currently and most disturbingly, it would seem that our federal government is using California as its model on how to govern the country. 

New York, largely due to the huge population center of New York City, is the east coast sister of California.  Seemingly there is no problem that occurs that the people of New York don't look to the government to solve for them.  The result of this reliance upon government has created a climate where New York is the 49th worst state for business in the entire country.  It is directly preceded by California at the 48th spot.

Chief Executive magazine recently conducted a survey of CEOs who rated California as the worst state in the country for doing business. It was awarded a grade of “F” in the category of “Taxation and Regulation” and was the only state to receive this grade.


New York is seemingly trying to follow suit where the taxation and regulatory burden for businesses has surpassed absurd proportions.  In New York City, it is now even against the law for restaurants to sell any food containing trans fats.  Yep, big brother is looking out for everyone there!


In contrast, the CEO's in that same survey rated Texas as the number one state in the nation for doing business. Comparatively to California, it is a low tax, low regulation, right-to-work state, where unemployment is is several points below the national average.


So where does Utah fall in this equation?  Utah is arguably one of the most conservative states in the union both politically and economically in the way it has been governed historically. It has indeed trended towards more progressive governance in recent years from its past where in 1992 Bill Clinton came in 3rd place behind George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot in presidential balloting, but overall it still has strong bonafide conservative principles.


That conservative governance has resulted in the 6th best corporate tax index rank in the country, the 2nd best property tax index rank, and the tenth best in overall tax burden for its citizens compared to eleventh place for Texas, and again as opposed to 48th for California and 49th for New York.  Furthermore Utah is predicting having a balanced budget in fiscal year 2011, whereas California has a shortfall as a percentage of the state budget of 53% this year and 26% in 2011.  New York projects a nearly 39% shortfall this year and a 27% shortfall for 2011.

The bottom line is quite apparent.  When a state government over-extends itself to regulate and govern all aspects of life for its citizens other than just the basic functions that private companies or citizens cannot feasibly do upon their own (utilities oversight, state roads etc) then the burden of having such a hyper-intrusive government becomes so costly that the ultimate destination for these transgressions will necessarily result in insolvency of the state government.  Bankruptcy.  California is already on the precipice of this problem.  New York is not far behind.


In contrast, while Texas and Utah do have their own distinct problems as related to state governance, overall, the more business friendly climate and the overall lower taxation and lesser regulatory burden on the people there have created states where businesses have not fled in droves, thereby keeping unemployment numbers decidedly better than the nation as a whole and far better than California in particular.


So the question now remains, are we as a nation going to continue to vote for politicians and policies to govern our country in the models of New York and California, as we have been doing particularly under the Obama administration, or are we going to reject these obviously failed policies for those that have been fruitful in states such as Texas and Utah? 


Early sentiments seem to suggest that a large majority of the population has awoken and realizes that absolutely when it comes to government, less is more.  I have to assume that the good people of this country have indeed reached this conclusion, because the California/New York model is unsustainable and the results are apparent for anyone looking to see this fact.  It has now become crucial that we adopt the Texas/Utah model if we are to restore our country and undo the massive damage already done by the tax & spend & regulate crowd that is reflected in the California/New York model.  We will hear from the people on this matter very soon!


sources: taxfoundation.org and statehealthfacts.org

Freedom of the Press Versus National Security

It would seem that the fundamental mindset of the main stream press has changed in recent decades. Unfortunately that change has not been for the better either. From the 1970’s when Daniel Ellsberg released the highly classified Pentagon Papers to the New York Times to discredit the government and multiple presidential administrations regarding our fighting of the Vietnam war to the more recent egregious late 2005 leak to the New York Times of the Bush administration’s tracking of al Qaeda communications, the press has been aiding and abetting our enemies. Indeed six months after the 2005 story, the New York Times had a front page publication of leaked highly secret information identifying the Bush administration’s ability to track international bank transfers that were being used to track terrorist financing plots. This was particularly pernicious in that the New York Times also included names and current burgeoning plots in their story.

Such breaches by the press of publishing national secrets, particularly in war time, allowed al Qaeda to change their operational plans and security accordingly, thus making it much harder for our intelligence agencies to track them and ultimately to keep us safe.

Such “journalists” from the Pentagon Papers fiasco to recent times have claimed “unfettered freedom of action with accountability to no one but themselves.” The Supreme Court ruled after the Pentagon Papers incident that if a published story of national security damaging information warranted it, prosecution after the fact of publication was possible. Unfortunately many presidential administrations’ justice departments have failed to do so.

It is discouraging to see how far we have sunk since World War II when FDR had even gone so far as to established the Office of Censorship. This program was voluntary and journalists headed up the office. Their task was to ensure that all journalists were notified which stories not to print so as to not endanger our troops or do anything untoward that could harm our national defense accordingly. Journalist back then understood what was at stake and voluntarily complied with these requested restrictions on the press. Today, one wonders if the current attitude of the main stream press would have prevented them from leaking the United States’ Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb) to the world had it had been leaked to them. The press absolutely has a right and indeed a duty and obligation to keep the government in check, but they do not have the right to endanger our nation and its vital interests for its survival in doing so.

Unfortunately such publishing of vital national secrets has gone back a long way. Indeed a gentleman named Herbert Yardley, who was a government code breaker, decided to have his story published about how he broke Japanese ciphers after the conclusion of World War I. The Japanese upgraded their ciphers accordingly and thus we were blind to the Pearl Harbor attack which started World War II for us. Had Mr. Yardley’s ego not been involved and a press was unwilling to print this, we might well have averted the loss of 3000 people on December 7th, 1941. Luckily this behavior used to be quite rare, although in Mr. Yardley’s singular case, also quite devastating.

Also unfortunately, we did not learn from that mistake as the New York Times and other like-minded publications continues to publish national security secrets with reckless abandon. Evidently they feel the need to relay that information to the public, and our enemies, and that this “right” trumps their responsibilities as Americans.

The government in the past has often times tried to prosecute individual journalists involved in such leaks instead of also prosecuting the entity (newspaper typically) that was responsible for publishing such a story that was known to violate secrecy pledges or espionage laws. If the Justice Department were to make an example of the next newspaper etc that did so, perhaps a little bit more restraint and common sense in protecting our nation through responsible journalism would ensue.

Such a case should definitely be applied to the recent case of PFC Bradley Manning’s leak of highly classified material on the war in Afghanistan to Wikileaks. Such material was vetted by the New York Times and published on Wikileaks. Aside from the prosecution of Manning to the fullest extent that the UCMJ allows, the DOJ should prosecute any news agency in the United States that had anything nefarious to do with this story’s publication and then they should file suit against the Swedish based Wikileaks.

It is far past the time when the press should no longer be able to hide behind their first amendment rights at the cost of American lives. The Bill of Rights was never intended to be a “get out of jail” card for irresponsible journalists and the publishers of their anti-American agenda. It’s time that our government enforce this to the fullest extent of the law accordingly.