Obamacare and Review of 2013 Should Remind Us We Are Not 'Subjects'; We Are People

By Laura Hollis, CP Op-Ed Contributor to the Christian Post writes:

The unveiling of the dictatorial debacle that is Obamacare absolutely flabbergasts me. It is stunning on so many levels, but the most shocking aspect of it for me is watching millions of free Americans stand idly by while this man, his minions in Congress and his cheerleaders in the press systematically dismantle our Constitution, steal our money, and crush our freedoms.

The President, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (with no small help from Justice John Roberts) take away our health care, and we allow it. They take away our insurance, and we allow it. They take away our doctors, and we allow it.They charge us thousands of dollars more a year, and we allow it. They make legal products illegal, and we allow it. They cripple our businesses, and we allow it.They announce by fiat that we must ignore our most deeply held beliefs – and we allow it.

Where is your spine, America?

Yes, I know people are complaining. I read the news on the internet. I read blogs. I have a Twitter feed. So what? People in the Soviet Union complained. People in Cuba complain. People in China complain (quietly). Complaining isn't the same thing as doing anything about it. In fact, much of the complaining that we hear sounds like resignation: Wow. This sucks. Oh well, this is the way things are. Too bad.

Perhaps you need reminding of a few important facts. Here goes:

1. The President is not a king. Barack Obama does not behave like a President, an elected official, someone who realizes that he works for us. He behaves like a king, a dictator – someone who believes that his own pronouncements have the force of law, and who thinks he can dispense with the law's enforcement when he deigns to do so. And those of us who object? How dare we? Racists!

And while he moves steadily "forward" with his plans to "fundamentally transform" the greatest country in human history, he distracts people with cheap, meaningless trivialities, like "free birth control pills"! (In fact, let's face it: this administration's odd obsession with sex in general - Birth control! Abortion! Sterilization! Gay guys who play basketball! -- is just plain weird. Since when did the leader of the free world care so much about how people have sex, who they have it with, and what meds they use when they have it? Does he have nothing more important to concern himself with?)

2. It isn't just a failed software program; it is a failed philosophy. People are marveling that Healthcare.gov was such a spectacular failure. Well, if one is only interested in it as a product launch, I've explained some of the reasons for that here. But the larger point is that it isn't a software failure, or even a product failure; it is a philosophy failure.

I have said this before: Obama is not a centrist; he is a central planner. And this – all of it: the disastrous computer program, the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, the lies, the manipulation of public opinion, the theft of the public's money and property, and freedom (read insurance, and premiums, and doctors) -- IS what central planning looks like.

The central premise of central planning is that a handful of wunderkinds with your best interests at heart (yeah, right) know better than you what's good for you. The failure of such a premise and the misery it causes have been clear from the dawn of humanity. Kings and congressmen, dictators and Dear Leaders, potentates, princes and presidents can all fall prey to the same imperial impulses: "we know what is good the 'the people.'

And they are always wrong.

There is a reason that the only times communism has really been tried have been after wars, revolutions, or coups d'état. You have to have complete chaos for people to be willing to accept the garbage that centralized planning produces. Take the Soviet Union, for example. After two wars, famine, and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, why wouldn't people wait in line for hours to buy size 10 shoes? Or settle for the gray matter that passed for meat in the grocery stores?

But communism's watered-down cousin, socialism, isn't much better. Ask the Venezuelans who cannot get toilet paper. Toilet paper. ¡Viva la Revolución!

Contrary to what so many who believe in a "living Constitution" say, the Founding Fathers absolutely understood this. That is why the Constitution was set up to limit government power. (Memo to the President: the drafters of the Constitution deliberately didn't say "what government had to do on your behalf.") They understood that that was the path to folly, fear, and famine.)

3. Obama is deceitful. Just as the collapse of the computer program should not surprise anyone, neither should we be shocked that the President lied about his healthcare plan. Have any of you been paying attention over the past few years? Obama has made no secret of his motivations or his methods. The philosophies which inspire him espouse deceit and other vicious tactics. (Don't take my word for it: read Saul Alinsky.) Obama infamously told reporter Richard Wolffe, "You know, I actually believe my own bullshit." He has refused to be forthcoming about his past (where are his academic records?). His own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told author Ed Klein, that Obama said to him, "You know what your problem is? You have to tell the truth."

Did Obama lie when he said dozens of times, "If you like you plan, you can keep it"? Of course he did. That's what he does.

4. The media is responsible. And had the media been doing their jobs, we would have known a lot of this much, much earlier.

The press is charged with the sacred responsibility of protecting the people from the excesses of government. Our press has been complicit, incompetent, or corrupt. Had they vetted this man in 2008, as they would have a Republican candidate, we would have known far more about him than we do, even now. Had they pressed for more details about Obamacare, Congress' feet would have been held to the fire. Had they done their jobs about Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, NSA spying - or any of the other myriad betrayals of the public trust that this administration has committed, Obama would likely have lost his 2012 reelection campaign. (A fact that even The Washington Post has tacitly acknowledged. Well done, fellas! Happy now?)

Instead, they turned a blind eye, even when they knew he was lying, abusing power, disregarding the limits of the Constitution. It was only when he began to spy on them, and when the lies were so blatant that the lowest of low-information voters could figure it out that they realized they had to report on it. (Even in the face of blatant, deliberate and repeated lies, The New York Times has the audacity to tell us that the President "misspoke.") They have betrayed us, abandoned us, and deceived us.

5. Ted Cruz was right. So was Sarah Palin. The computer program is a disaster. The insurance exchanges are a disaster. What's left? The healthcare system itself. And this, of necessity, will be a disaster, too.

Millions of people have lost their individual insurance plans. In 2015, millions more will lose their employer-provided coverage (a fact which the Obama administration also knew, and admitted elsewhere).

The exorbitant additional costs that Obamacare has foisted on unsuspecting Americans are all part of a plan of wealth confiscation and redistribution. That is bad enough. But it will not end there.

When the numbers of people into the system and the corresponding demand for care vastly exceed the cost projections (and they will, make no mistake), then the rationing will start. Not only choice at that point, but quality and care itself will go down the tubes. And then will come the decisions made by the Independent Payment Advisory Board about what care will be covered (read "paid for") and what will not.

That's just a death panel, put politely. In fact, progressives are already greasing the wheels for acceptance of that miserable reality as well. They're spreading the lie that it will be about the ability of the dying to refuse unwanted or unhelpful care. Don't fall for that one, either. It will be about the deaths that inevitably result from decisions made by people other than the patients, their families, and their physicians. (Perhaps it's helpful to think of their assurances this way: "If you like your end-of-life care, you can keep your end-of-life-care.")

6. We are not SUBJECTS. (or, Nice Try, the Tea Party Isn't Going Away). We have tolerated these incursions into our lives and livelihoods too long already. There is no end to the insatiable demand "progressives" have to remake us in their image. Today it is our insurance, our businesses, our doctors, our health care. Tomorrow some new crusade will be announced that enables them to take over other aspects of our formerly free lives.

I will say it again: WE ARE NOT SUBJECTS. Not only is the Tea Party right on the fiscal issues, but it appears that they are more relevant than ever. We fought a war once to prove we did not want to be the subjects of a king, and the Boston Tea Party was just a taste of the larger conflict to come. If some people missed that lesson in history class, we can give them a refresher.

The 2014 elections are a good place to start. Call your representative, your senator, your candidate and tell them: "We are not subjects. You work for us. And if the word "REPEAL" isn't front and center in your campaign, we won't vote for you. Period."

Marion Algier at Ask Marion Added:

Along with the ever worsening travesty and lies of ObamaCare, Americans are awakening to the nightmare of the Federal government’s ever-growing stranglehold that is destroying wealth-creation and promoting skyrocketing debt. The Fed’s central bank—no longer tied to a gold standard—channels low interest rates and trillions of dollars to Goldman Sachs et al., while the rest of America is jobless, under-employed, owing staggering college loans with more people than ever without healthcare is given a bag of broken glass.

Peggy Noonan recently summarized much of what is wrong this holiday season…. beginning with:  What's the political word of the year? For months journalists couldn't settle on how to describe the rollout of ObamaCare. "Failed," disastrous," "unsuccessful." In the past few weeks they've settled on "botched." References to the botched rollout have appeared in this paper, The Hill, NBC, Fox, NPR, the New Republic, the Washington Post and other media outlets. A botch, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition, is a "bungled piece of work"—to botch is... Or, as JT McFarland recently mentioned on Redeye, is it really just going as they planned… creating total chaos and destroying what was the best healthcare system in the world so they can then install a single-payer socialized medicine system to pretty much cement their (Progressive) control of every every aspect of our lives?!?  I vote it is the latter.

The Christmas Classic, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ was completely reworked for our current national predicament by our friend Rock Peters Western Journalism. It is guaranteed to make you laugh and cry.

Video:  Twas the Night Before Christmas - 2013 Version

Lies of the Year… ‘If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance’ and ‘If your doctor, you can keep your doctor’ 

Whistle BLOWER- President Obama’s HALF sister comes FORTH!

Obamacare Should Remind Us We Are Not 'Subjects,' We Are People

Biden, Obamas tell health care tall tales at Charlotte convention

Barack Obama's father, also named Barack Obama, and mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. (Photo: AP)

Daily Caller:

Vice President Joe Biden, first lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama all told a story during the Democratic National Convention about battles the president’s mother waged with health care companies as she fought a terminal illness in 1995. But the version of events presented Thursday night differs dramatically from others, including those of at least two biographers and Obama’s own previous account.

“Barack had to sit at the end of his mom’s hospital bed and watch her fight cancer and insurance companies at the same time,” Biden said.

The first lady added to the story, observing from the podium that “watching your mother die of something that could have been prevented — that’s a tough thing to deal with.”

“When my mother got cancer,” the president echoed during a video played inside the Time Warner Cable Arena before his entrance, ”she wasn’t a wealthy woman and it pretty much drained all her resources.”

But in 2004, the president told the Chicago Sun-Times that he wasn’t present during his mother’s final days at all.

“The biggest mistake I made was not being at my mother’s bedside when she died,” he said then. ”She was in Hawaii in a hospital, and we didn’t know how fast it was going to take, and I didn’t get there in time.”

David Maraniss, who later authored the best-selling book “Barack Obama: The Story,“ wrote in The Washington Post in 2008 that Obama did not visit her.

“He was into his Chicago phase, reshaping himself for his political future, but now was drawn back to Hawaii to say goodbye to his mother,” Maraniss reported. ”Too late, as it turned out. She died on Nov. 7, 1995, before he could get there.”

The story Democratic convention-goers heard in Charlotte, N.C., however, was not intended as a tragic remembrance, but to convey the tragedy of suffering in a hospital without health insurance.

This narrative, too, is contradicted by history: Stanley Ann Dunham, the president’s late mother, did have health insurance to cover her uterine and ovarian cancer, through her job with Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda, Md.

“Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment,” according to Dunham’s biographer, New York Times journalist Janny Scott.

“Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.”

Scott also wrote that Dunham’s compensation package for her work in Indonesia included $82,500 — about $132,000 in today’s dollars — plus a housing allowance and a car, making that amount well within her means.

The story told from the podium Thursday in Charlotte has been a persistent refrain from Obama and his surrogates since his presidential candidacy began in 2007. His campaign produced an ad that year for the Iowa caucuses in which Obama claimed his mother was ”more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.”

“She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality,” he told an audience in Santa Barbara, Calif., during a 2007 campaign swing. “She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a pre-existing condition.”

“I remember just being heartbroken,” the future president said then, “seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So I have seen what it’s like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a people.”

Related:

Fact Check: First Lady's False Fairy Tale of Struggle

DNC-Backed, $100K-Earning Union Member Hits Romney 

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare lies,ObamaCare,Joe Biden,President Obama,Election 2012,2012 Election,Mitt Ronney in 2012,Obama's Mother,Obama's family,watch the other hand,Obamaland,ObamaTax,healthcare insurance,Election 2012 falsehoods,speeches,Michelle Obama,repeal and replace ObamaCare

The Expanding Catalogue of Obamacare Fables

Is there a health insurance horror story disseminated by the White House and its allies that ever turned out to be true? Obamacare advocates have exercised more artistic license than a convention of Photoshoppers. Now, a prominent sob story shilled by President Obama himself about his own mother is in doubt. It's high past time to call their bluffs.

The tall-tale-teller-in-chief cited mom Stanley Ann Dunham's deathbed fight with her insurer several times over the years to support his successful push to ban pre-existing condition exclusions by insurers. In a typical recounting, Obama shared his personalized trauma during a 2008 debate: "For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that."

But there was something fundamentally wrong with Obama's story. In a recently published biography of Obama's mother, author and New York Times reporter Janny Scott discovered that Dunham's health insurer had in fact reimbursed her medical expenses with nary an objection. The actual coverage dispute centered on a separate disability insurance policy.

Channeling document forger Dan Rather's "fake, but accurate" defense, a White House spokesman insisted to the Times that the anecdote somehow still "speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs" -- even though Dunham's primary health insurer did everything it was supposed to do and met all its contractual obligations.

No matter. Expanding government control over health care means never having to say you're sorry for impugning private insurers. Democrats have dragged every available human shield into the contentious debate over Obama's federal takeover of health care. Personal anecdotes of dying family members battling evil insurance execs deflect attention from the cost, constitutionality and liberty-curtailing consequences of the law. The president's Dunham sham-ecdote is just the latest entry in an ever-expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables:

-- Otto Raddatz. In 2009, Obama publicized the plight of this Illinois cancer patient, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his Fortis/Assurant Health insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn't known about. The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and lived for nearly four more years.

-- Robin Beaton. Also in 2009, Obama claimed Beaton -- a breast cancer patient -- lost her insurance after "she forgot to declare a case of acne." In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but had her insurance restored anyway after intense public lobbying.

-- John Brodniak. A 23-year-old unemployed Oregon sawmill worker, Brodniak's health woes were spotlighted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as a textbook argument for Obamacare. Brodniak was reportedly diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, and was allegedly turned away by emergency room doctors. Kristof called the case "monstrous" and decried opponents of Democrats' health care proposals as heartless murderers. The truth? Brodniak not only had coverage through Oregon's Medicaid program, but was also a neurology patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients). Kristof never retracted the legend.

-- Marcelas Owens. An 11-year-old boy from Seattle, Owens took a coveted spot next to the president in March 2010 when Obamacare was signed into law. Owens' 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. The family said the single mother of three lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She died in 2007 after receiving emergency care and treatment throughout her illness. Progressive groups (for whom Marcelas' relatives worked) dubbed Marcelas an "insurance abuse survivor." But there wasn't a shred of evidence that any insurer had "abused" the boy or his mom. Further, Washington State already offered a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas' mom. The family and its p.r. agents never explained why she didn't enroll.

-- Natoma Canfield. The White House made the Ohio cancer patient a poster child for Obamacare in 2010 after she wrote a letter complaining about skyrocketing premiums and the prospect of losing her home. After Obama gave Canfield a shout-out at a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio, and promised to control costs, officials at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, which is treating her, made clear that they would "not put a lien on her home" and that she was eligible for a wide variety of state aid and private charity care.

Since Obamacare passed, the amount workers pay in health care premiums has soared an average of nearly 14 percent; thousands of businesses have sought waivers in search of relief from the law's onerous mandates; medical device makers have slashed jobs and research; and the private individual health insurance market is in critical condition. Post-Obamacare truth is bloodier than pro-Obamacare fiction.

By Michelle Malkin Posted on TownHall

Related:

Turns Out Obama’s Story About His Mother’s HealthCare Struggle Is Inaccurate

TURNS OUT OBAMA‘S STORY ABOUT HIS MOTHER’S HEALTHCARE STRUGGLE IS INACCURATE

A new book by New York Times reporter Janny Scott sheds new light on the life of Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, including her final years. Scott found while assembling information for “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” that Dunham in fact did have health coverage for her ovarian cancer, based off Dunham’s own past correspondence.Washington Examiner’s Byron York:

“Dunham decided to stay in Jakarta, where she underwent an appendectomy. But the pain did not go away, and Dunham feared, correctly, that she was terribly ill. In January 1995 she left Indonesia to go home to Honolulu, where she was diagnosed with advanced uterine and ovarian cancer. She began a regime of surgery and chemotherapy.

That is the time during which Obama says his mother battled insurance companies to cover her illness. But Scott, who had access to Dunham’s correspondence from the time, reveals that Dunham unquestionably had health coverage. ‘Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment,’ Scott writes. ‘Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.”

Often in his 2008 campaign and throughout his push for national healthcare reform, Barack Obama retold a compelling story of his mother’s struggle against non-budging insurance companies for care in the final years of her life before the cancer over took her.

Additional Discussion today on Radio:

Obama caught in a massive lie

So has the President been caught in a massive lie? Apparently author Scott Wright has been doing some research on stories he told on the campaign trail, and he has found some contradictory information – primarily that a story he told on the campaign trail about his mother’s cancer coverage was exaggerated, to say the least.

“For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in a hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a preexisting condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

“There is something fundamentally wrong about that.  It’s a lie,” Pat said. “Her insurance company covered her completely for the problem that she was suffering.”

“That is weird.  According now to the records in January 1995, she left Indonesia to go to Honolulu where she was diagnosed with an advanced uterine and ovarian cancer.  She began a regimen of surgery and chemotherapy.  This is the time which womb says his mother battled the insurance companies to cover her illness.  But Scott, an author of a new book who has access to Dunham’s correspondence from the time reveals that she unquestionably had health coverage.  Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance which covered most of the cost of her medical treatment,” Glenn read.

Glenn emphasized that she came from another country to the United States and received her medical care. Pat added that she was actually misdiagnosed in Indonesia, where she was said to have appendicitis.

“ Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly leaving Ann only to pay the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which she said claimed to be several hundred dollars a month.  Scott Wright said Dunham, who wanted to be compensated for those costs as well as for her living expenses.  She filed a separate claim under her employer’s disability insurance policy.  It was that claim with the insurance company Cigna that was declined in August 1995 because as Cigna investigators said, her condition was known before she was covered by the policy.  Dunham protested the decision and informed Cigna that she was turning the case over to my son, an attorney, Barack Obama.  Cigna did not budge,” Glenn continued.

“September 1995 Dunham traveled to New York for an evaluation at renowned Memorial Sloan‑Kettering.  She returned to Hawaii, began a new course of treatment.  She died in November.  A dozen years later her son turned ordeal into a campaign pitch for national healthcare.  But the story Obama told Scott Wright was abbreviated.  The abbreviation was to leave out the fact that she had health insurance and it paid for her treatment.  Though he often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a preexisting condition.  It appears from her correspondence in her own writing that she was only denied disability coverage.  That’s a different story altogether but one that nobody in the press seems to care.”

What are some other Obama healthcare related lies that have been exposed?

“One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about.  They delayed his treatment and he died because of it.”

But as Pat pointed out, it has been revealed that the man received treatment, his coverage was paid for, but he passed away anyway.

Glenn and Pat then went through a series of hyperbolic statements wherein the President implied that doctors were removing amputating feet from diabetics or needlessly removing tonsils for money. Obama, of course, did not provide concrete examples.

Video Discussion:  Beck on Radio – Obama Caught in a Massive Lie

But maybe O just comes by it naturally: Evidence of Deception Reaches White House  as Well as New Book on Obama Senior

h/t to the Blaze  -  Cross-Posted at True Health Is True Wealth