Ezekial Emanuel Is Really Looking Forward To The Demise of Insurance Companies

The Reaper Curve: Ezekiel Emanuel used the above chart in a Lancet article to illustrate the ages on which health spending should be focused. "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" The Lancet, January 31, 2009 making way for death panels as part of his system and part of the ObamaCare plan!

PJ Tatler: Ezekial Emanuel, the brother of Rahm Emanuel and former health care adviser to President Obama, is just salivating at the thought of the demise of health insurance companies. Why, he’s downright gleeful.

Ezekial Emanuel, brother of Chicago mayor and former Obama staffer Rahm Emanuel, is cheerily predicting that Obamacare will bring about the death of the private insurance companies in the US. Ezekiel makes the provocative prediction in the New Republic.

Emanuel writes that Obamacare is already causing insurance companies to either die or evolve into something else. “The good news is you won’t have insurance companies to kick around much longer,” he writes.

Obamacare was not sold to the American people as a means of destroying private health insurance companies or even forcing them into turning into a different type of company. It was sold as a means of bringing insurance costs down while increasing access. It has turned out to cause about 6.2 million Americans to lose their insurance while forcing some Americans to buy insurance or pay a fine to the IRS. “If you like your healthcare, you can keep your healthcare,” President Barack Obama repeatedly promised. Emanuel’s article provides more evidence that the president was knowingly lying, and that people like Emanuel, who were close advisers while Obamacare was being written, knew that it would cause chaos for millions of Americans and their insurance.

Emanuel writes that Obamacare is already causing some medical services providers to seek exclusive contracts with employers, cutting insurance plans out but also limiting the choices available to customers.

Ezekiel has consistently predicted, after Obamacare became law, that it would kill insurance companies. While Obamacare was being debated, Democrats denied that its purpose was to destroy private health insurance companies. Emanuel claims, without providing any evidence, that Americans will be happier in the new employer-based health provider networks.

“So be prepared to kiss your insurance company good-bye forever,” Emanuel concludes at the end of the article.

About 85% of Americans were happy with their healthcare before Obamacare.

It’s really no secret that the Democrats’ plan all along was single payer. Some just aren’t willing to admit it.

Update: Emanuel appeared on Morning Joe talking about how great Obamacare is doing. He didn’t, however, mention his glee at the coming demise of the insurance companies. 

He also did not mention his creepy ‘Complete Lives System’. In 2009 Betsy McCaughey warned about Obama’s Health Rationer-in-Chief and now we are standing at the door…

Cross-Posted at AskMarion

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,The Plan,Ezekial Emanuel,Single-Payer,Wake-Up,Big Brother,Evil,Insurance Exchanges,Health Insurance Companies,ObamaCare Surprises,IRS,Complete Lives System,Czars,Obamaland

Moody's Downgrades Health Insurers, Cites ObamaCare Uncertainty

New American: In announcing credit rating firm Moody’s downgrade of all health insurers, Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk placed the blame firmly and directly on the Obamacare rollout and implementation:

The ongoing and unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change. The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational changes well after product and pricing decisions were finalized.

Translation: Health insurers could lose their shirts if the assumptions they made in their premium calculations prove false. So far, it doesn’t look good. Zaharuk cited some of those uncertainties, including the demographics of those enrolling for coverage. The insurers assumed that the Obama administration was right when it estimated that at least 2.7 million young and healthy individuals aged 18 to 34 would sign up by the end of March. Only 24 percent of the 2.2 million enrolled by the end of the year fall into that category. Put another way, so far just 528,000 of the 2.7 million needed to make the math, and the economics, work out are in that category.

That’s why, in its report, Moody’s cut its earnings estimate for all insurers by a full third, while expecting enrollments will fall short by two-thirds.

There are other uncertainties, including the decision by the administration to allow insurers to continue to offer “bare bones” (read: low profit margin) coverages in response to pressure from those previously insured who had their present insurance plans terminated. The administration delayed the premium payments deadline (delaying expected cash flows to the insurers), delayed the sign-up date, pushed back the second-year enrollment period until after the November elections, and extended the enrollment deadline for those with pre-existing conditions.

There’s also the industry’s new tax on medical devices that insurers somehow had to factor into their calculations. Said Zaharuk: “While some insurers built this tax into their premium calculations, the amounts [they receive] may still be insufficient to cover their share of the assessment.”

Also, many ObamaCare enrollees are actually pouring into the states’ Medicaid programs, and insurers have no direct way to offset those increased expenses and will have to eat any losses, perhaps for years. Zaharuk explained: “The Medicaid business is particularly vulnerable to this disconnect as insurers cannot pass on additional costs to consumers, and it remains to be seen whether states will permit insurers to factor in the assessment costs in determining Medicaid reimbursement rates.”

Health insurers are vulnerable on other fronts as well. Gallup just published its latest “Well-Being Index,” which shows the uninsured rate to be virtually the same as it was two years ago, despite the enormous marketing efforts by the administration touting the wonders of ObamaCare, and actually significantly higher than it was in January 2008, long before the federally mandated law was birthed in the hothouse of central planning. In addition the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that, even under the most favorable circumstances, by 2016, when Obamacare was assumed to be fully functioning, 31 million citizens will remain uninsured. This means insurers can’t count on that huge block of customers to enhance their revenue streams.

Moody’s was not optimistic:

In 2015, insurers will need to deal with the implications of the employer mandate and the second year of the individual mandate. Both require substantial lead time with respect to product development and pricing. Ad hoc changes to these provisions, as experienced at the end of 2013 … add additional risks and financial uncertainty.

When asked by Kate Rogers of Fox News what it would take for Moody’s to reverse its downgrade, Zaharuk said:

We would need [to see] some positive enrollment numbers, the back-end problems with the exchanges fixed, and the regulatory environment … stabilized.

Positive news would help the situation.

How likely is that? Responded Zaharuk:

The first test comes in March when we will see what enrollment looks like, if the back-end issues are fixed, if people are getting access to health care, and what the costs … are.

If these things don’t work, it may have a longer and more detrimental effect on the industry as they struggle under the new law. 

Whether intended or not, this disruption in the healthcare marketplace is having its consequences, nearly all of them negative. First experienced by the consumers, they are now spilling over, inevitably, to the insurers. 

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

Here comes Obama’s solution to the disastrous Affordable Care Act: National Health Care a.k.a. the Single Payer System

Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare 

Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Health Insurers,Moody's,Economics,Bailouts,Downgrades,Single-Payer,The Plan,Socialized Medicine,Watch the Other Hand,Wake-Up

Vermont plots course for single-payer health care system

Here we go… down the road to single-payer… socialized medicine… the plan all along~

Nov. 26, 2013: A doctor speaks to patients at his office in Peoria, Ill.Reuters

Fox: WASHINGTON –  While all eyes are on the ObamaCare rollout, an ambitious health care experiment is going forward in Vermont that would create a government-run alternative know as a "single-payer" system -- and it's starting to attract more attention from liberals frustrated with the Affordable Care Act's implementation.

Democrats' faith in ObamaCare has been shaken by the technical failures of the federal and state insurance exchanges as well as, in some cases, premium increases. In Vermont, however, they see a potential first step toward the kind of national government-run health care system some have advocated for years. Filmmaker Michael Moore, in a column last week blasting ObamaCare, said Vermont's plan could "change everything."

But critics say the proposal goes too far and would kill thousands of jobs. "It’s not practical,” Vermont state Rep. Patti Komline, who voted against the plan, told FoxNews.com. “There are too many complications involved.” 

A single-payer plan would largely sideline the insurance industry, and instead set up a government-managed insurance system to collect all health care fees and pay out all health care costs.

Full implementation of Vermont’s single-payer plan could be held up for another three years, at least. In order for Green Mountain Care to fully launch in 2017, the health care exchange would have to get approval from the federal government to use federal money to fund the state program.

State law would also require Vermont to define the benefits of the single-payer program and provide a three-year budget that clocks in less than current health care costs.

University of Virginia public policy professor Raymond Scheppach said it will take another half decade to determine whether Vermont’s controversial plan even works and if there are any real benefits associated with it. He also says that regardless of outcome, Vermont’s political makeup differs from other states and therefore would not provide an accurate view of what’s to come.

The single-payer debate recently resurfaced in national headlines following the Dec. 31 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Moore. In it, Moore called ObamaCare “awful” and said liberals have avoided speaking in public about the problems with it because they didn’t want to provide the president’s critics with additional ammunition.

Moore went on to sing the merits of a single-payer system and said that the real problem with ObamaCare is that it is a “pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go.”

Supporters say the single-payer system would cut down on the administrative waste and complications associated with having multiple billers and billing systems. Opponents say such a widespread overhaul would be bad for business.

Vermont became the first state in the country to lay the groundwork for single-payer health care. Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, signed the plan into law in May 2011.

The initiative, which was approved by the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, promises to extend coverage to all of Vermont’s 620,000 residents, of which around 47,000 residents are uninsured and 150,000 are underinsured.

"This law recognizes an economic and fiscal imperative," Shumlin said during a press conference when he signed the bill. "We must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business.”

The exchange, Green Mountain Care, will set reimbursement rates for health care providers and streamline administration into a single, unified system.

Some experts say a revised system would save an estimated $580 million annually, and $1.9 billion by 2019. But the single-payer system’s creator, Harvard economist William Hsiao, says it could generate even greater profits for Vermont.

Hsiao predicts his plan would save the state 25.3 percent a year in total health care spending, lower household and employer health care spending, boost job growth and create a higher economic output for the state.

The savings, he said in a 2011 Health Affairs article, would come from tort reform for malpractice suits, better governance and lower administrative expenses. Vermont would rack up $4.6 billion in savings during the first five years of the program which he says would be used in part to cover the state’s uninsured as well as to expand benefits and services.

Vermont’s health care spending runs about $5 billion annually, with costs rising between 6.5 percent and 8.5 percent in recent years.

But not everyone is on board with the plan. It is still unknown how Vermont will pay for the plan and whether that money will come from additional taxes on its residents.

Komline says despite the plan's passage, she doesn’t see Vermont residents warming up to the idea of a single-payer system any time soon. She also said that Vermont, because of its small size and political makeup, is open to influence from special interest groups.

“It doesn’t take much money for special interest groups to come in and influence votes,” she said. “That’s why Vermont was among the first to legalize pot and same-sex marriages.”

Calls to the governor's office for comment were not returned. 

Here comes Obama’s solution to the disastrous Affordable Care Act: National Health Care a.k.a. the Single Payer System

Here comes Obama’s solution to the disastrous Affordable Care Act: National Health Care a.k.a. the Single Payer System

By: Nelson Abdullah -  Conscience of a Conservative  -  h/t to the NoisyRoom

Cancelled health insurance plans by the millions. Premiums rise 300%. Two million people enrolled in ObamaCare but most are low-income families covered under Medicaid, not the healthy, young, affulent Middle-Class families with incomes that were supposed to support the program. The so-called Affordable Care Act is already proving to be unaffordable with family deductibles averaging $10,000 or more. That means that even with the health insurance a family must pay out the first $10,000 in medical bills before the coverage starts. This plan is a disaster but it is so bad that it could not possibly be that way by accident. Even stupid people manage to do something right once in awhile. The Unaffordable Care Act was designed to fail from top to bottom.

Since the Democrats were the only ones who voted for ObamaCare they will be the only target of the expected backlash by millions of angry voters. The Democrat leaders who conceived and wrote the plan in secret, who told members of Congress they had to pass it before they could read it, are now facing the most frightening threat they have ever faced. But while conservatives are enjoying the prospect of voter revenge in the 2014 elections, only 11 months away, and the expected retaking of the Senate giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress, this may all be just a planned scenario scripted by the Marxist/Socialist leadership of the National Democratic Party. A perfect example of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. While we watch images of a squirming and obviously uncomfortable Obama admitting that he screwed up, we may well be the ones in for the big surprise. This is because the Affordable Care Act is not the health plan that the Democrats had in mind, it was only a stepping stone to launch their valiant and heroic rescue effort to save America. And the solution to everyone’s problem will be a “new” compromise health care plan, the Single Payer System. The Single Payer System, otherwise known as National Healthcare is pure, outright socialized medicine. The following is a glossy explanation from Wikipedia that does little to explain the pitfalls of National Healthcare. It fails to warn of the long waiting lists for medical treatment or the low wages paid to Doctors or the full implementation of the Death Panels that consist of panels of bureaucrats who will be granting approval for medical procedures or denying them to the elderly who make no contribution to society.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Health_Care_Act

The United States National Health Care Act, or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R. 676), is a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Representative John Conyers (D-MI). The bill had 88 cosponsors in 2009. The act would establish a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, the rough equivalent of Canada’s Medicare, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service…

Under a single-payer system, all medical care would be paid for by the Government of the United States, ending the need for private health insurance and premiums, and probably recasting private insurance companies as providing purely supplemental coverage, to be used when non-essential care is sought.

The national system would be paid for in part through taxes replacing insurance premiums, but also by savings realized through the provision of preventative universal healthcare and the elimination of insurance company overhead and hospital billing costs.

The leftist news media that has been covering up the problems with ObamaCare in order to protect the Democrats in the previous two national elections while the bill was being created and the 20,000 pages of new regulations were being written are now playing their part by reporting the disastrous effects to drum up support for some sort of needed relief. Even liberal web sites like Politico called Barack Hussein Obama’s promise that we could keep our insurance coverage, The Lie of the Year. They are all setting the stage for the White House to announce a viable solution to the millions of citizens suddenly finding themselves with no health care coverage and the millions more who have found they cannot afford the coverage they signed up for. Look for Barack Hussein Obama calling on Congress to voluntarily repeal ObamaCare and replacing it with a National Health Care Single Payer System. The law they wanted all along.

And there goes one third of the U.S. economy right down the tubes.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides

A Failing Grade for Obamacare

By: Zack Slingsby  -  The Forge

GK Chesterton once said, when asked to describe what it was about the world that made him believe in a divine creator, that he regrettably found himself dumbstruck, ill-prepared, at a loss for words. When he surveyed his surroundings, he explained, it was not that one thing pointed toward a celestial hand; it was that everything did.

Politicians and pundits of verifiable eloquence have similarly found themselves humbled before the mountain of evidence towering in tribute to President Obama’s calamitous Affordable Care Act. The heap has grown at such a rate that it is getting difficult to stand back far enough to see it all at once. How can anyone squeeze the multitude of weekly revelations into a digestible sound bite?

It is not merely the premise of redistribution at issue, not merely the suffering the law has inflicted on the populace directly (via policy cancellation and the structured marginalizing of small business interests), not merely the constitutional flippancy with which the Executive has unilaterally amended and implemented the bad law at will, but rather the coalescence of all these factors, and their myriad implications, that confounds opponents when asked, Well, what is so wrong with Obamacare?

The case for repeal is made plain by the simple fact that the law sold to us as a magical fix-all has thus far rendered every step of the healthcare insurance process completely broken.

The immense failure of the Obamacare rollout has evidently emboldened the media to use a painless litmus test for its success. If the administration’s tech savvies can catch up to the flaws of the website, if they can sign people up and stifle the groans of cancellation, and really make a go of the exchanges, then all is well and all is bright. This is the wrong test.

From the moment of the bill’s inception, the President has claimed his signature overhaul will improve the essence of healthcare for the people of America. Not simply make it as good. The numbers he has to compete with have been plainly recorded. In 2009, the Washington Post conducted a survey revealing that approximately 81% of US citizens were satisfied with their health insurance coverage and 88% were satisfied with the quality of the healthcare they received.

If the President wants to remake the economy under the guise of providing coverage to 15 million uninsured Americans—a goal that could have been reached through the tested-means of capitalism—his program will have to produce satisfaction returns that not only meet but exceed the statistical enthusiasm of 2009 (and do so, as he promised, without contributing to the reckless tax-and-spend trend of new progressivism). As it stands today, on the precipice of full-scale implementation and with the administration’s arbitrary revision tactics quickly become a new fact of governing, the President must contend with seven in ten Americans who, at minimum, would like to see the law’s one-year delay.

He will have to ignore them all to stay the course. And that he will. So when the White House wishes you a Merry Christmas via press conference, pundit promise or passing pop-up ad, remember to thank them for Obamacare: the gift that keeps on giving, whether you want to return it or not.

Technorati Tags: Constitution,Financial,Politics,Survival,Taxation,ObamaCare,Failure,Tranwreck

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

Judge Jeanine Pirro Slashes Obama for Incompetence and Indifference, Dec 7, 2013

This is the Judge's "Opening Statement" from Dec 7, 2013, "Justice with Judge Jeanine Pirro" show.

Video: Judge Jeanine Pirro Slashes Obama for Incompetence and Indifference, Dec 7, 2013

Judge Jeanine Pirro, Dec 7, 2013, tears into Obama and his minions for stupefying overreach and incompetence in implementing Obamacare. The price may be the very lives of Americans who cannot get the healthcare they had before Big Government's meddling. Further, Obama's spokespersons, especially Jay Carney, try to trivialize the crisis by claiming that only a small number of Americans, just 5%, will suffer. Small comfort.

How can these people be this incompetent you wonder?  Perhaps because of the Dirty Little Secret: Rationing is at Heart of ObamaCare and that the goal is Single-Payer Socialized Medicine for all but the Elite.

New Obamacare Bombshell - Rpt: No System Yet For Exchange Payment - The Kelly File

Video: New Obamacare Bombshell - Rpt: No System Yet For Exchange Payment - The Kelly File

My fellow citizens… Nobody is this incompetent of stupid!! This is all part of the plan.  The plan has always been to make this roll out and the actual process so horrendous that they can jump in at the last minute and fix it… creating a single-payer plan, which is socialized medicine, which they wanted in the first place so they can control every aspect of your life, including who lives and dies and when.

Don’t fall for this.  Clean house in the 2014 and 2016 Elections.  Do your homework.  Elect people who are not part of the Washington DC system and are willing to fight for you.  And replace everyone who voted for ObamaCare or was associated with the Obama Administration!!

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One’s Talking About

Attention Main Stream Media. Regarding Obamacare… I Told You So!

Wake-Up… ObamaCare Eliminates Your Plan by Design

O Gives Oh So Faux Apology…

Video: Broken Obamacare Promises - David Webb - David Rosenberg - 'The Kelly File' - 11-7-13

President Obama said in an interview on Thursday that he’s sorry a number of Americans are being forced to change their health care plans despite previous assurances the Affordable Care Act would allow them to keep their existing plans.

"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," Obama told Chuck Todd during an interview with NBC News at the White House.

"We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."

Obama’s admission represents the latest evolution on the issue dating back to before the Affordable Care Act was even signed into law in 2010. Up through September of this year, Obama was adamant that the Affordable Care Act would not impact Americans who already had their own health insurance.

But it was not a true apology nor was it an admission that he… they they lied to us.  And it is becoming ever more evident that they did.

"If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything,” Obama said in a speech on September 25^th speech in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

But already 3.5 million Americans have had their healthcare plans cancelled, according to the Associated Press. Most of these are individuals who purchased plans directly from insurers, rather than through a workplace. The reason for the cancellations: their plans changed since the signing of the new healthcare law. While Obama was promising that you could keep your plan if you purchased it prior to the signing of the law on March 23, 2010, what he didn't say was that if a provider changed the plan its grandfather status would become void.

Since individual plans change frequently, the chances of individuals being able to keep their plans was always low. In fact, buried in Obamacare regulations dating back to 2010 is a Health and Human Services estimate that 40 to 67 percent of individual plan owners would lose that coverage because of normal turnover in the individual market.

About 80 percent of Americans with health insurance are covered through their employers or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid. Conservative estimates now project the majority of those 5 percent of Americans who buy their own plans (about 14 million people) will likely have to make some kind of adjustment, sometimes at a higher cost.

The White House and administration surrogates have tried to mitigate criticism by contending some of those individuals will actually end up with cheaper and better plans. Nonetheless, Obama’s failure to include the "grandfather" clause in his if-you-like-it-you-can-keep-it speeches has turned into a growing controversy.

After the law went into effect in October, early reports began to emerge that Americans who buy their own insurance were starting to get letters from insurance companies informing them that their current plans were being cancelled and that they would need to replace their coverage in order to be in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.

White House officials continued to insist that Obama did not “lie” to the American public about the issue. However, throughout October, the administration’s stance continued to evolve.

“What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage," White House Spokesman Jay Carney said on October 28th. “So it's true that there are existing health care plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act."

After four years of sticking to his "if-you-like-your-coverage" promise, Obama recalibrated on Oct. 30. "Ever since the law was passed, if insurers decided to downgrade or cancel these substandard plans, what we said under the law is, you've got to replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage because that too was a central premise of the Affordable Care Act from the very beginning," he explained.

Just over a week later, that recalibration has become a faux apology.

And what he didn’t say is that as employers realize that they cannot afford to maintain coverage for their employees, many people will be forced into part-time or business will drop their whole program for everyone… dropping all those people into the exchanges.

Estimates are now as high as possibly 129 million people my lose their healthcare coverage.

And then there is the dirty secret that this is the plan… to force everyone into the exchanges and into a single-payer plan, which is socialize medicine.

Wake-up America.  Many are planning to just pay the the $95 fee and then voting out these Progressive Democrats in 2014 and 2016, replacing them with fiscal conservatives who will repeal this whole power-grabbing program and replace it with something that will help the poor and the middle class.

Related: Dirty Little Secret: Rationing is at Heart of ObamaCare

Memo: Administration bungled Obamacare long before GOP had power to obstruct

Washington Examiner: An emerging theme from Democrats struggling to explain the Obamacare fiasco is that stubborn Republican opposition has hobbled the administration's efforts to implement President Obama's complex national health care scheme. If you want the particulars, just glance at "The Obamacare sabotage campaign" by Politico's Todd Purdum.

But a memo revealed in a new Washington Post examination of the rollout shows the administration was already on a disastrous path in May 2010, just two months after Obamacare was signed into law -- and six months before Republicans won control of the House and more Senate seats in the November 2010 elections. At the time the memo was written, Democrats still had the huge majorities in the House and Senate with which they had passed Obamacare on party-line votes.

In the memo, dated May 11, 2010 and sent to top administration economic official Larry Summers, Harvard professor and health care expert David Cutler, a supporter of the administration's efforts, wrote that "the early implementation efforts are far short of what it will take to implement reform successfully." Cutler continued: "For health reform to be successful, the relevant people need a vision about health system transformation and the managerial ability to carry out that vision. The President has sketched out such a vision. However, I do not believe the relevant members of the Administration understand the President's vision or have the capability to carry it out."

Cutler laid out a set of problems: 1) poor leadership at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a key organization in creating Obamacare; 2) clueless management at the Department of Health and Human Services on the subject of setting up exchanges; 3) an ineffective effort to work with insurers in implementing reform; and 4) general incompetence. "The overall head of implementation inside HHS, Jeanne Lambrew, is known for her knowledge of Congress, her commitment to the poor, and her mistrust of insurance companies," Cutler wrote. "She is not known for operational ability, knowledge of delivery systems, or facilitating widespread change."

All that was at a time when the administration had control of Congress. Although the election of Scott Brown had ended the Democrats' filibuster-proof control of the Senate, the fact is, Republicans had no control of anything. Later, after their landslide victory in the 2010 midterms, House Republicans could block funding increases the administration needed to pay for Obamacare's inevitable cost overruns. And Republican governors could make use of a feature Democrats wrote into the law that allowed states to decline to create their own exchanges, leaving the job to the federal government. But Cutler's memo shows the administration was well on the road to a disastrous debut of Obamacare long before Republicans could do anything to make the job harder.

See: Original MEMO Document (PDF) » 

What this memo does is again bring us back to the question:  Are they (Obama and cronies) really that inept?  Or was the plan really always that ObamaCare in its present state was meant to fail, leaving it to the government to swoop in and create a new single-payer (socialized medicine) plan.  Obama and Harry Reid have both said it was the second. 

So beware and watch the other hand.  The only real answer, either way, is to clean house in Washington D.C. in both Congress and the White House in the next two elections (2014 and 2016) and in the process repeal and replace this disaster  known as ObamaCare with a free market solution that really will help the average American and those without affordable healthcare insurance. ObamaCare does neither!!

**And if you understand that, it means no Hillary Clinton and no Chris Christie, who might as well be a Democat half the time, but rather real change… AM~ 

Yes, the Democrats' Plan Was to Create a Transition to Single Payer 

First Battle of 2014 and 2016 Elections: Next Tuesday and the Fate of ObamaCare

Obamacare Hype - ' The Land Of Oz ' Lies! - Judge Jeanine Pirro Opening Statement 

Wake-Up… 1,492,000 HC Plan Cancellations and Counting… All Part of the Plan to Force All But the Elite Into a Single Payer Socialized Medicine…  It has always been: 

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One’s Talking About

Wake-Up… 1,492,000 HC Plan Cancellations and Counting… All Part of the Plan to Force All But the Elite Into a Single Payer Socialized Medicine

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One's Talking About

Technorati Tags: Single Payer,Single-Payer System,Socialized Medicine,Repeal and Replace ObamaCare,Wake-up America,Obama's Agenda

Forum: What Do You Predict The Ultimate Fate Of ObamaCare Will Be?

Watcher of Weasels  - Cross-posted at AskMarion: Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day. This week’s question: What Do You Predict The Ultimate Fate Of ObamaCare Will Be?

The Independent Sentinel: I learned that no matter what the government does wrong, it will be the Republican’s fault.

Even Republicans will blame Republicans.

When Obamacare tanks, it will be the Republican’s fault for not trying hard enough to repeal it.

The Glittering Eye: Cutting to the chase, here’s what I wrote as a comment to this post of mine:

My off-hand conjecture is that on April 1, 2014 the scope of the problem of lack of healthcare insurance will be about the same as it was on February 1, 2009, healthcare will be substantially more expensive, and a bit more than five years will have been allowed to elapse without addressing the fundamental problem of cost.

There are no prospects for the PPACA being repealed until after 2016. Neither the president nor Senate Democrats will allow that to happen. As to its fate after 2016, who knows? The frequent assertion that once enacted into law entitlements are sacrosanct is incorrect—the long-term care benefit enacted and repealed during the Reagan Administration is an example that comes immediately to mind as does AFDC.

As of this writing it looks very likely as though the PPACA will run into cost overruns more rapidly than anyone could possibly have imagined. That’s clearly what will happen if 85% of those who sign up for insurance under the plan are enrolled in Medicaid and the balance are already sick and desperate enough for insurance that they’ll put up with the ordeal of registering for insurance under the federal exchanges.

Working together those will make decreasing healthcare’s outrageous costs all the more urgent than it was in 2009 and, sadly, the PPACA does very little beyond wishful thinking to do that.

The Right Planet  : There isn’t enough pixels in the universe to contain all my work on the #ObamacareFAIL.

Bookworm Room: I don’t care if Obamacare fails. I hate the thought of our country’s medical care and economy failing….. (Especially since my husband currently earns a nice living thanks to the medical care system.) I foresee lean times ahead.

Simply Jews : I know that I will, most probably, piss off my Republican friends on this forum. However, my answer is less about this specific (and very doubtful) implementation of healthcare, rather about what I wish to happen in USA regarding that painful issue. So, instead of the ultimate fate let’s talk about the ultimate hope.

As one who has experienced for several years one of the existing medical insurances in US, here is my impression:

1. Devilishly expensive, even for generally healthy people
2. The “pre-existing conditions” could probably kill one with time
3. Excellent medical care is followed (or even preceded in some cases) by a bureaucratic nightmare and a maze of phone calls with people who don’t understand, aren’t eager to help and in general couldn’t care less.
4. Out of work – out of luck, or very soon so.

My apologies if I am wrong in some details, some time has passed since. Besides, we were mostly healthy then.

What I wish to happen to my American friends: a complete reform of the medical care, based on successful examples that proved to work in some countries:Japan, Israel, France and several others. Make it simple and efficient and make it work. And yes, add optional private insurances for those who want some additional bells and whistles – I am not a commie enough to be against this.

If you look at this table, US has the most expensive healthcare. Meaning the money is already there, and there is more than anywhere else in the world.  It is just used (abused) by insurance companies very inefficiently. So the issue is not the lack of funding, rather the poor organization, spiraling uncontrolled insurance/care costs and chaotic oversight of the whole system, which by now became too complicated to manage successfully.

Will Obamacare succeed? They way it was set up – as a doubtful system of compromises and as an additional superstructure on top of the already crumbling base – I doubt it. But at least it may speed the process of destruction of the current status-quo and the birth of a really workable and working healthcare system.

And, by the way, there is another, but closely related, issue of litigation, ambulance chasing in simple words, that has helped the prices of treatment skyrocketing, doing the same to the insurance prices… this must be reigned in too.

GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD: Whale, I have absolutely no idea so I’m going with Skippy Klein’s Ouija board here:

1. Affordable Care Act is a success, and liberals build on it
Under this outcome, the law works as well as or better than its supporters predicted. After some initial hiccups, it expands insurance coverage to those in need without disrupting the health care experience for those who are already satisfied. The cost-control measures work, and providers are able to deliver better care at a lower price by taking advantage of government incentives to be more efficient. As a result, the government saves hundreds of billions of dollars on Medicare without seniors noticing any cuts to their benefits and access. Young and healthy Americans flood into the insurance market to offset the cost of providing insurance to older and sicker Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions. The new insurance exchanges are vibrant marketplaces offering beneficiaries a wide range of options, promoting competition that drives down the cost of premiums. Over time, more individuals and businesses demand access to the exchanges, and America evolves into an exchange-driven single-payer system.

2. Affordable Care Act is an epic disaster and it gets fully repealed
Under this scenario, the law unravels. The cost controls do not work, proving especially troublesome for smaller regional hospitals. They either start closing, stop accepting Medicare or cut services. This effectively reduces the benefits seniors can get out of Medicare, and they, along with industry lobbyists, pressure Congress into undoing the cuts that are one of the primary offsets to the law’s trillions in new spending. On top of this, new taxes kick in – mandate penalties, the insurance premium tax, the medical device tax, pharmaceutical tax, etc. – and businesses struggle to adjust to a raft of new regulations. The exchanges are swamped with technical problems and poorly administered, making it difficult for individuals to sign up. Not many insurers participate in the exchanges, meaning they don’t offer sufficient choices to promote competition. New regulatory requirements drive up the price of premiums, so young and healthy Americans decide they’d rather pay a penalty than invest in costly insurance. Without the younger and healthier people in the risk pool to offset the cost of sicker Americans, insurers raise premiums even further, prompting yet more individuals to exit the insurance market. And so, the dreaded insurance “death spiral” ensues. In the meantime, newly insured individuals start taking advantage of their free or heavily subsidized care, but the capacity of the health care sector does not grow quickly enough to meet demand, translating into long waits at doctors’ offices and difficulty getting appointments in the first place. The ensuing backlash from all fronts leads to a Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014 and helps elect a Republican president in 2016. At some point in 2017, a new Republican president signs a law wiping Affordable Care Act off the books.

3. Affordable Care Act is largely a disaster, but it survives, and possibly expands
At some point at least some constituency of voters will be deriving some benefits from the law. It’s one thing to support repeal when it means voting against theoretical subsidies for theoretical beneficiaries. But once the law goes into place, repealing the law would mean stripping away benefits from people actively receiving government aid. Let’s say, in 2017, there’s an incoming Republican president with – at best – control of the House and a narrow Republican Senate majority. Would he or she be willing to use reconciliation to push through a repeal bill when confronted with Democratic attacks that it would take millions off the Medicaid rolls and make millions more lose their subsidized private insurance? Republicans have not traditionally shown themselves to have the political fortitude to roll back entitlements once they are in place. At the same time, if Republicans do not respond with an alternative to clean up the mess, then liberals will begin to blame problems in the health care sector on the idea that Affordable Care Act left too much control in the hands of private industry. This will prepare the groundwork for a further move toward a socialized single-payer health care system, perhaps by, say, re-introducing a “public option.” There have been many times in American history when failures of government policy led to further expansions of government. Limited government advocates should be wary of this happening with Affordable Care Act.

4. Affordable Care Act is largely a disaster, and it gets reformed
Under this scenario, a combination of public backlash and adverse court decisions forces Congress to re-open Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t get fully repealed, but it gets reformed. Perhaps, for instance, exchanges remain, but there are far fewer restrictions on what type of insurance can be offered, broadening the range of options and providing more affordable choices for those who don’t have as many medical needs. States may be given actual flexibility on the operation of the exchanges, and Medicaid funds become block granted. Insurance is made accessible to those with pre-existing conditions without the “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” policies that force insurers to cover everybody who applies at a price effectively set by government. This allows Congress to get rid of the federal individual mandate.

Liberty’s Spirit:Note: I am going to address this as the parent of two special needs children. Someone who has had to pay hundreds of thousands for therapies, support systems and doctors that are not covered under any insurance plan. I have seen what the high cost of healthcare can do to do a family in this country and there is no question that there needs to be an overhaul of the entire system. So I am NOT against many of the provisions of Obamacare: allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance until they are 26 (for those of us with special needs children this is financial helpful. The cost for them for health insurance would have been staggering if our children could even get health insurance at all); not allowing insurance companies to deny a policy due to preexisting conditions (most insurance companies would not write a new policy for someone with autism, epilepsy and any other preexisting conditions); providing for autism treatments, etc. However, as the child of a parent on medicare advantage (Humana) I am concerned that this terrific program is going to end.

I am going to start off from another rather rebellious position….I think there is nothing wrong with requiring people to carry health insurance. If hospitals have to treat people when they get sick, there has to be some way that those bills get paid. Most people who have no insurance do not end up paying their hospital bills and that means the rest of us are left with the cost when we are sick. The problem is that the way the law is written it is still financially better for some people to pay the fine rather than carry health insurance. (Israel, which has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, requires their population to carry insurance plans.)

Also there is a huge issue with the general cost of medicine. Most nations that have socialized medicine negotiate with drug companies about how much they can charge, which means the American people end up paying the drug company’s loss when we by our medication. This has not been addressed.

The cost to educate a doctor is ridiculous. But that is the issue with the cost of higher education (another issue for another day). So many doctors coming out of medical school are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and need to find a position that allows them to live and pay off their student loans. This makes healthcare very expensive in this nation.

Death panels are a big issue. The idea that bureaucrats will decide whether someone has the right to medical care is frightening. However, at the same time, insurance companies decide whether they will pay for some medications, surgeries and therapies, which if you cannot afford these on your own, can become a form of a death panel as well. The idea that certain persons (age, illness) and those with disabilities, do not have the same right to life as those of a certain caliber is replete in society and as seen by the writings of those like Ezekiel Emmanuel, who helped craft Obamacare, eugenics is considered not only acceptable but for the betterment of society. Furthermore, the targeting of conservatives by the IRS does not engender competence that politics will not be used as a weapon to deny healthcare to those who challenge the policies of the executive branch (which is what happens in a fascist society.)

There is no provision in Obamacare where you can sue the government if you disagree with a ruling by the panel. The law is that you cannot sue the federal government unless they allow it (sovereign immunity.) Unlike at present where you can sue your insurance company if they rule against you for a treatment, Obamacare does not allow for this remedy. Administrative relief is not always enough.

The issue with Obamacare is that the provision that the republicans wanted, the right to sell insurance across state lines, which would have brought down the cost due to the real free market, was rejected. The reality is that instead of providing people with a lower cost, more effective form of health insurance, Obamacare is a nightmare and does nothing to reduce the costs of healthcare in this country.

The exchanges are too costly and do not offer most people the same type of insurance that they were used to carrying. This needs to be fixed. No I do not blame Obamacare per se that people’s insurance policies have been canceled. Instead of complying with Obamacare the insurance companies have simply decided to cancel the policies and push people into the exchanges. While this was foreseeable, it is the choice of the insurance companies.

It is embarrassing that the government website is such a disaster. It does not engender competence that DC will be able to fairly and effectively regulate healthcare.

Will it survive? Yes it will. Does it need tweaking? Absolutely.

JoshuaPundit:  ObamaCare as it is now will almost definitely fail. Among other things, it depends on young, healthy people applying for overpriced policies with scanty coverage and ridiculous deductibles that will not even cover them in the event they need emergency coverage from ‘out of network’ doctors. They’re staying away in droves, while the vast majority of people now signing up for the exchanges are people that qualify for MedicAid, there being an unlimited demand for free stuff at someone else’s expense. There is no way to fix  this basic problem without spending huge amounts of money, because medical providers will simply opt out in order to avoid going bankrupt. And actually, that’s  the whole idea.

Let’s start out with this basic truism – ObamaCare was never about healthcare per se. It is about increased taxation (and unconstitutional taxation at that, as anyone who can read the Constitution can discover for themselves) and government control.  As I wrote a week or so ago, the end game for ObamaCare is single payer with government mandated rationing and ultimately  the Sovietization of American healthcare. It was designed to fail, and as it does, the Left will hold out the carrot of single payer as a panacea.

I have always said that anyone unwilling to utter the words ‘tort reform’ and to deal with America’s problem with illegal aliens (another huge factor in driving up healthcare costs nobody wants to mention) is not serious about reforming healthcare and reducing the cost of it to the average citizen.

Tort reform hasn’t happened because the majority of members of congress are lawyers, many with practices back home, while the various trial lawyer associations are major donors to the Democrat party.And illegal aliens and those that advocate for them are becoming a constituency for a lot of politicians in Washington.Senator John  McCain’s chief financial backer, for example, is the owner of the Spanish language media giant UniVision.

ObamaCare is  the only major social legislation ever passed in America by one party alone, and the manner in which it was pushed through is in violation of rules that have governed how laws are passed by congress in our Republic for well over a century. It also is a perversion of the Constitution because it provides a precedent wherein the Federal government can use its police power to force its citizens to buy something  or not buy something  just  because.  The damage done to our institutions if ObamaCare stands as a precedent will be horrendous.

Another issue no one wants to discuss is the issue of social control. Government bureaucrats will decide who rates certain procedures and who doesn’t. Given how the IRS has been used in an unprecedented fashion to wage war on the Obama Administration’s political enemies and is in charge of enforcing ObamaCare, is anyone naive enough to believe that the huge amount of personal data accessible because of ObamaCare won’t be used to deny medical procedures outright to those whom don’t vote or donate correctly? Or at least send them to the back of the line?

And people actually laughed at Sarah Palin,  one of the first public figures  smart enough to point this out .

Will ObamaCare survive?  Not if we wish to remain a free people. The 2014 elections will be key in determining whether the law is simply frozen until it can be repealed or whether it eventually morphs into single payer.That is something the American people will decide.

The Colossus of Rhodey: I predict that ObumbleCare will survive — but in a drastically altered form. Let’s face it: The promises made by Boss Obama and his acolytes virtually ALL turned out to be lies. “Keep your doctor?” Yeah, right. (I can see Obama spinning that one: “You CAN keep your doctor. If you lost your coverage, it wasn’t because of a government mandate. Your insurer made that decision on their own!”) “Costs will go down?” A total fantasy for the vast majority of Americans.

If something substantial is not done in the next few months, the 2014 mid-term elections may make 2010 (and 1994) seem pitiful in comparison. The GOP House majority could become prodigious, and the Senate could flip to Republican control, perhaps by a sizable margin. There is almost nothing Boss Obama can do to pin the ObumbleCare disaster on the GOP; he and the-then Democrat controlled House and Senate passed this clusterf*** without a SINGLE Republican vote. Not. One. Obama and the Democrats own this. 100% completely.

I believe that some of the worst aspects of the law will be repealed; that is, unless the Democrats want to get crushed next November. By next summer we’ll see that the employer mandate will be excised, and the individual mandate will as well. What will replace the latter is not for me to say; perhaps Obama will propose some new tax on millionaires and/or corporations to pay for those who need health coverage. But HOW he will do this will be fun to watch given that he NEVER takes responsibility — or apologizes — for anything. Expect much ridiculous spin and blaming of the GOP, the Koch Brothers and, of course, “racism” along the way.

Rhymes With Right:Frankly, I have very little hope regarding ObamaCare. I don’t see it being overturned by the courts, I don’t see it being repealed by Congress, and I don’t see it working anything like it was advertised. The most likely outcome I see will be even worse for America than what is currently enacted into law.

Let’s be honest — the ruling by the Supreme Court in 2012, and the opinion written by John Roberts in particular, were a disaster. The notion that the penalties in the legislation are a tax is completely at odds with the legislative history of the bill (such as it is) and the claims of the Obama Administration. The president and his henchmen admitted as much at the time of the ruling and have continued to do so since then. Based upon admissions made within days of the ruling that the Solicitor General’s office had committed a fraud upon the Court by making the argument that the penalties were taxes and and their arguments that John Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court got the decision wrong, the losing parties in the case should have made an appeal for rehearing under the Supreme Court’s Rule 44. Unfortunately they did not do so, and so it is likely that any future Supreme Court decision will continue to abide by the precedent in place.. At most we will see some nibbling around the edges based upon First Amendment issues and statutory language regarding state vs. federal exchanges, but no judicial flip on the question of constitutionality.

As for repealing ObamaCare, we don’t have the votes in Congress to do it, or even delay it one second longer than Obama wants it delayed for. After all, The Democrats control the Senate, Harry Reid is refusing to run that body in a collegial fashion, and there is no way we can get a veto-proof majority in either house of Congress even if Reid allowed the Senate to consider repeal legislation. That means that Obama can stop any Congressional effort to repeal ObamaCare with a stroke of his pen. The same will be true after the new Congress is seated after the 2014 elections — there is no way the GOP will have the sort of landslide that it would take to get to a veto-proof majority, and without one Obama will still wield the veto pen.

Which leads to the question of the implementation of the law. We’ve already seen that it is a fiasco and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. Software doesn’t work, prices are high, and millions are losing the medical insurance they like and the doctors they have been seeing, promises by Barack Obama notwithstanding. By 2016 it will be clear just how big a failure ObamaCare is — but too many Americans will already be dependent upon it. Republicans campaigning on a platform of repealing ObamaCare will be depicted by the Democrats and their media toadies as seeking to “take access to healthcare away from millions of Americans who cannot afford it”. Any Republican plan to replace ObamaCare with something else will be attacked by the lapdog media as even worse than the status quo. And into the fray will step Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who will declare that the failure of healthcare reform was the fault of Republicans who “opposed fixing the system” in 1993, refused to “work with us to care for the poorest Americans” in 2009, and whose efforts to thwart ObamaCare after the passage of the law was nothing short of a program of sabotage responsible for the every unpleasantness experienced by Americans due to ObamaCare’s failure. Their proposal will be nothing less than a single-payer system — perhaps “MediCare for All“. Presuming that the GOP does not manage to pull off a trifecta by holding the House, gaining a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and winning the White House, we will see the passage of a single-payer bill by the end of 2017. Any likely 2016 winner (and no, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Sarah Palin are not likely winners), regardless of party, will sign the resulting legislation on the basis that it will be better than ObamaCare — though I question whether that will prove to be the case over the long term. At that point we will have a federal health care system funded by massive tax increases for all but the poorest quintile.

Do I truly see such a dystopian future? Sadly, I do. The choices of the GOP since the adoption of ObamaCare have brought us to a position where we have failed to stop ObamaCare and are unlikely to find ourselves positioned to undo ObamaCare. The result will be the ultimate success of the sort of single-payer system that the Left has been seeking, the resulting expansion of federal power, and the increasing irrelevance of the Constitution as a blueprint for limited government and maximum individual liberty. The Reaganite vision of my youth will have failed, only to be replaced with an Obamunist state that will collapse within two generations.

The Razor: If you would have asked me four years ago, I would have said the Democrats would never stoop to using a legislative trick, reconciliation, to pass a law without a single Republican vote. Two years later I would have said there was no chance that a conservative supreme court justice would have allowed this mess to pass the test of constitutionality. Now I have to guess what it’s ultimate fate would be? Have you ever watched The Walking Dead? If this legislation doesn’t remind you of a zombie, I’m not sure what law would.

At this point I’m not sure what it would take to kill it, beyond a GOP triple play (owning both houses of Congress plus the White House). One that happens the GOP had better be ready with their own well thought out health care plan to replace this mess with.

Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Watcher's Council,Socialized Medicine,Dystopian,Single-Payer,Medicare,Trainwreck,Thoughts,Destroying America,ACA,PPACA

Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare

By Marion Algier – AskMarion – h/t to MJ 

Betsy McCaughey, an expert on the Affordable Care Act, was on the Kelly Files regarding more enrollees in Medicaid is a signal for Single-Payer.  McCaughey is the author of Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for the New Healthcare Law, Decoding the Obama Health Law: What You Need To Know (Kindle) and Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It (Encounter Broadsides) (Kindle).  She knows of what she speaks!!

Video: Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare

One of the key Obamacare architects Zeke Emanuel – Rahm Emanuel’s brother - has lot in common with Hitler. He supports the rationing of medical care - you know denying care for the elderly. Betsy McCaughey cited 2 examples on Megyn's show - 1) a 2008 JAMA article in which Zeke said doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously and focus too much on the needs of their patients. Instead they should be more focused on how resources can better be used for the young people. 2) He believes that 65 year olds have had their chance.

Video:  Obamacare Architect shares Hitler's values; Supports rationing of medical care for elderly

Rationing healthcare in a single-payer system where boards, a mandate committee, of primarily non-medical experts and non-medical practitioners, especially not your own doctor, decide on your treatment based on the good of the many… not the patient at hand, is socialized medicine and no matter how you spin it is a death panel system.  Someone will decide whether, or not, you, your grandparents, your special needs child or someone that the powers that be at the time don’t like get to have surgery, a major medical procedure or even an expensive medicine… or whether you will be left to suffer or just die.  That my friends is a death panel, exactly what Sarah Palin and others who read the ObamaCare Bill warned us of.  And because Palin was right and tried to warn Americans (about this and a lot of other things), the Progressives in power both hate and fear her, so the demonized her.  But Sarah and Betsy are right… there are death panels in this law.

In 2007, Senator Obama said he wanted to eliminate private health insurance.  And just recently Harry Reid admitted that the whole goal of ObamaCare is to get us all into a single payer system where the federal government controls one-sixth of our economy, will decide on who and when they will authorize treatment and will use the IRS as their enforcer to collect whatever premiums they set without competition.  Think about it!

And as for ole Zeke Emanual… he is for death panels! Inform yourself about his Complete Lives System.

Video:  Megyn Kelly Grills Zeke Emanuel on Obamacare Promises: Was Obama Lying or 'Grossly Mistaken'?

There are only two ways to stop this… (1) Win the House and the Senate in 2014 and then the White House in 2016 (2) and Repeal and then Replace ObamaCare!!

The time to get involved is now.  This whole ObamaCare rollout website disaster is the least of our worries!!… even if it did cost us $634 Million of taxpayer money paid to a Canadian company with ties to George Soros and Michelle Obama for a site that doesn’t work, and now we have to pay again to fix it.

Related:

Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief

Ezekiel Emanuel & The Complete Lives System: part 3 of Health Care: Why We are Scared (Video) 

Doctors Quitting Over ObamaCare – Lindsey Williams –> Socialized Medicine… the Jewel of Socialism 

On the Road to Death Panels

Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, Says Constitution Backs Compulsory Abortion 

"People 70 and over will not be treated under Obamacare… and you thought DEATH PANELS were gone" 

Ezekiel Emanuel, architect of ObamaCare..please read

“Death Panel” Three Years Later 

Death Panels 101? Chilling High School Assignment Makes Students Decide Who Lives and Who Dies 

Bill O’Reilly on Socialism and a Shocking New Book 

Will Sick Babies Be Starved to Death Under Obamacare?

Useless Eaters  -  Eliminate the Useless Eaters: A Disease of the Elitist Mind

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,rationing healthcare,rationing for the elderly,Betsy McCaughey,Socialized Medicine,Zeke Emanuel,Rahm Emanuel,Hitler's Germany,Useless Eaters,elderly,seniors,Election 2014,Election 2016,Hippocratic Oath,Death Panels,Sarah Palin,Megyn Kelly,Fox News,Affordable Care Act,ACA,single-payer,Complete Lives System,Medicaid,Medicare,Get-Involved,You be the judge