ObamaCare - We've Seen This Movie Before (hint: remember the financial crisis?)

If you want to know how ObamaCare is going to play out, you need look no further than the financial crisis of 2008.  Without beating around the bush, here's why:

Redistribution

ObamaCare (officially the ACA or Affordable Care Act) is little more than an elaborate redistribution scheme.  As Americans are now realizing, the idea is to force everyone into a highly regulated government controlled insurance system which subsidizes slightly more Americans than it penalizes.  By doing so, the subsidized voters will ensure electoral majorities from now on for The Democrat Party, the party of federal redistribution.

This is exactly what led to the financial crisis of 2008.  There actually was an equivalent redistribution scheme which was loosely called "The Affordable Housing Initiative" (herein the AHI).  AHI was not a single act but rather a constellation of policies pursued by President Bill Clinton and his administration.  Thanks to the policies and regulations which made up the AHI we got Subprime Mortgages, Liar Loans, Alt A Loans, Near Zero Interest Rates, Zero Down Payments, Securitized Mortgages, runaway Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac risk, and all the other elements which caused the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse under a different president in 2008.

What makes these two redistribution schemes so unique is that they represent a new wrinkle in the strategy of the redistributors.  The old model, like the New Deal and Great Society, was for the government to redistribute directly.  Taxes were raised, paid directly to the government, and then redistributed.  The AHI and the ACA take a different indirect route.  Rather than go through the government, these redistribution schemes are largely off the books of the federal government.  Through mandates, regulation, and a vast bureaucracy, private entities and pseudo-private entities are simply coerced into doing the dirty work for the government.

With indirect redistribution, politicians are able to say, "hey, I didn't raise your taxes!"  Then when it all goes bad they can say, "hey, it wasn't me, it was those greedy banks and insurance companies!"  In the case of the AHI, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was a senator in 2008, have completely escaped all blame for the financial collapse they were instrumental in causing.  On healthcare, Barack Obama may not be quite so lucky only because healthcare is not a leveraged transaction.  Absent leverage there is no lag time between stupid policies and disastrous outcomes.

Centralized

One of the reasons the AHI led to such a profound US and near global meltdown was the degree of centralization in mortgages and finance.  The AHI centralized and gutted the requirements necessary to obtain a mortgage.  The federal government essentially controlled the rating agencies that gave the mortgage backed securities AAA ratings.  The entire mortgage industry was essentially controlled by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the FHA, HUD, and Ginnie Mae, all government entities.  Federal tax policy encouraged mortgage debt and speculation in housing.  Federal Reserve policy kept interest rates artificially low fueling the housing bubble.  Globally, the Basel II bank regulations gave extra weighting to mortgages when computing bank reserve requirements.  In other words, we put all our eggs in centralized baskets.  (Today, nearly 100% of all mortgages written end-up being owned by the federal government.  We have learned nothing.)
  

Centralization is the mantra of the ACA as well.  The healthcare system of the entire nation is now under the control of the central planner bureaucrats and politicians.  States and individuals are no longer able to seek their own solutions.  Outside of the narrow confines of what constitutes an acceptable plan, there is no choice.  Reimbursement rates are now dictated by one bureaucratic entity.  The same goes for treatments, devices, drugs, testing, etc.  Medicine was always considered an art because the science can never be fully complete.  Now it is impossible to approach medicine as an art - it would be like mandating that all musicians play from one sheet of music!

Unresponsive

When markets run into trouble they have adaptive mechanisms to self correct.  Market transactions are taking place countless times every second and that information is constantly being fed to and reacted on by actors in those markets.  Price, supply, demand, quality, etc are all being constantly adjusted in response to these market signals.    But that all breaks down in centralized bureaucratic systems.  It took years for the government to modify its disastrous food pyramid, long after it was common knowledge that the advice was dangerous.  The latest one is no better.  This is exactly what happened with the AHI and what will also happen with the ACA.  The pace of innovation in medicine has always been one of the bright spots in our history.  Expect that to end.  Future medicine in the US will now be as cutting-edge as the United States Post Office.

Confusing Symptoms and Diseases

You see, a bad website is but a minor symptom.  The disease is unresponsive centralized redistribution.  That disease and it's effects will be catastrophic eventually.    

Ted Cruz Is Awesome! III

Last week Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee were the lowest forms of scum on the planet, and that was just what the GOP establishment was saying about them!  Democrats went even further calling them arsonists, terrorists, and hostage takers among other things.  Why?  Because they wanted to defund or delay Obamacare.

Now a week later there are probably enough Democrats leaning towards delaying Obamacare to pass the senate with a majority!  You can't make this stuff up.  Are these Democrats arsonists, terrorists, and hostage takers?  Is a comedian like Jon Stewart, who is the de-facto news anchor for Democrats under 90,  also an arsonist and a terrorist?  He too has brutally addressed Obamacare pointing out the obvious - it is simply not ready.    

Cruz and Lee were arguing, among other things, that Obamacare (Officially the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", a name straight out of "Atlas Shrugged"!) had ceased to exist in it's original form.  Yes, it had passed on a party-line vote in 2010 and it survived one Supreme Court challenge in 2012, but Barack Obama has unilaterally rewritten it several times since then.  The legislature is supposed to rewrite laws under our system, not the executive.  Big employers were granted waivers for a year, Congress was given government subsidies in direct opposition to the law, income verification was waived, out-of-pocket caps were waived, and the penalty was rewritten by the SCOTUS as a "tax".   Defund or delay was predicated in part on the premise that the passed law no longer existed.  That, and the self-evident truth that if the law was ready to implement, Obama himself would not have rewritten it several times!  Turns out they were right.

So the good news for Cruz and Lee is that they have been vindicated on that aspect.  The science is settled, as they say.  The bad news comes via others who came before them and similarly challenged the establishment:  recall, Galileo Galilei was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun, in direct opposition to the "establishment" belief that it was the other way around.

It's Just A Glitch!

Pardon me for milking this.

Obama Didn't Build That

Community Organizer Healthcare

If Only This Guy Were A Black Neurosurgeon, People Might Pay Attention!

If you share one video all year with your social network, please make it this one!
And remember this is the same guy who got an #ObamaAudit care of the IRS immediately after he first spoke out publicly!



(You can share this post by using the buttons on the bottom of this page, or by opening the YouTube video and sharing it.)

Tyranny

#IRS #Obamacare #Benghazi #BenghaziCoverup #UnionThugs #DOJSpying #ShutdownTheater #WWIIVets #Redistribution #17Trillion #MuslimBrotherhood #NoNegotiation #YouDidn'tBuildThat #Doublespeak #DroneAssasinations #NewBlackPanthers #HateCrimes #Occupy #1%vs99% #Alinsky #ACORN #NewTone #....

Dr. Ben Carson vs Obama's IRS

Dr. Ben Carson learns what it means to live in a fascist state...

Healthcare Palestinians II

Republicans are split.  Some think Obamacare is a disaster.  Others think Obamacare is a disaster.  Oh wait...  

Of course the split is about what to do.  Some say if Obamacare is a disaster the responsible thing to do is to stop it, or at least go down trying.  Others say, no, no, no, the right thing to do is let it go through, make everyone miserable, kill innovation in the fast moving health sector, make the country even more dependent on Fed money printing, put more people on welfare and subsidies, politicize and socialize 16% of the US economy, install the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board - aka the "Death Panel"), drag down personal wealth, kill jobs, stall the economy, and don't worry the public will blame it all on Democrats!  In other words, one group is acting out of principle and the other out of crass political gamesmanship.  

But there is a problem with the crass political gamesmanship approach.  It will not work.  There are numerous prominent examples of how these political bank-shots backfire.  I call this the "Healthcare Palestinian" approach.  To wit:

Israel's neighbors have long believed that the best way to destroy Israel is to maintain an army of angry Palestinian refugees on their borders.  Keep them poor, keep them in refugee camps, keep them oppressed, and don’t ever let them assimilate into the vast Arab lands surrounding Israel.  To a frightening extent this diabolical and inhumane scheme has worked to create maximum misery but little else.  The Palestinians in refugee camps are mainly the ones who go around blowing themselves up, not the ones who have assimilated into Israel and the Arab countries.  Everyone knows about the wall keeping hostile Palestinians from flooding into Israel.  Very few are aware that there are similar impediments keeping Palestinians out of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.  Do those countries ever get blamed for forcing Palestinians into refugee camps?  This has been the Democrat strategy when it comes to healthcare.  

The last thing Democrats ever wanted was a true functioning individual market for health insurance.  Instead Democrats have forced most Americans, 95% currently, into rigid, non-portable, bureaucratic insurance plans provided by either the government or their bosses.   The move to a true individual market would have always been an easy one (see "The Healthcare Gecko").  But that's not what Democrats wanted lest they lose control.  We have all been made into healthcare refugees.  Who get's blamed for this?  Greedy insurance companies, employers, and Republicans.  Republicans are standing in the way of your God-given right to free healthcare!  Democrats get zero blame and will continue to get zero blame when Obamacare is found to be the disaster everyone knows a 2700 page unread law will be. 

The same exact thing happened with the financial collapse of 2008.  Ask ten people today what caused the financial collapse and nine will say greedy banks, deregulation, Bush's tax cuts, capitalism; in other words Republicans.  Only one in ten may get it right; the financial collapse was caused by Democrats who pursued redistribution-of-wealth policies in the housing sector.  Home ownership became a God-given right, just as healtcare has become now.  Subprime mortgages, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, no-doc loans, liar loans, zero down payments, easy money, low interest rates, mortgage interest deductions; these are all unanimous Democrat policies.  These are the policies which crashed the financial system.  These are the policies championed by Barack Obama as a community organizer, state senator, US senator, candidate for President and POTUS.  Did he ever get blamed for any of this?  No, nor will he ever.  Will he be blamed when Obamacare collapses?  No, nor will his party.  Democrats are just trying to give you free healthcare after all, which is your right!  

Republicans with the exception of the new breed - Cruz, Lee, Paul, Rubio et al, don't even understand why it is impossible to make a good or service provided by others into a right.  It cannot be done without enslaving the providers of that good or service.  So yeah, let it go into full effect, let it be a disaster, and let the blame all accrue to... Republicans.  Seems like a winning approach to me if you're a Democrat.        

Ted Cruz is Awesome! II

Senator Ted Cruz is exceptional.  If you watched C-SPAN2 instead of any of the news nets, you would have seen a man in charge of the facts, speaking passionately and articulately for 21 hours about a law shoved down the public's throat on a party-line vote, which federalizes 16% of the US economy and promises to give us a healthcare system with all the excellence of the United States Postal Service.   As Senator Mike Lee eloquently put it: "We have exited the territorial confines of constitutional governance."

No one watching that marathon could mistake Cruz's motives.  He was not doing that so he could someday flit around in Air force One and make speeches at fundraisers.  His motivation was two-fold:  bring maximum attention to a dire issue, and further his aspirations to someday restore individual liberty from the Bully Pulpit.   Based on his turn at the Filibuster Pulpit, I say bully for you Mr. Cruz!  

Here are some highlights from 21 hours of cogency, minus the reading of Green Eggs and Ham, which the media wants you to believe went on for 21 hours!  

(Below is my original piece about Ted Cruz from 3/15.  As you can see little has changed in the reactions of the dinosaurs - from both parties!) 

Ted Cruz is Awesome!   

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) has a point.  In the latest freak-out over Cruz’s venturing off the freshman plantation, members of the old guard are wetting their Depends because Cruz had the audacity to pose a really good question to Diane Feinstein (D, CA)  about guns and the second amendment.  If you haven’t seen the exchange, here is the question Cruz asked Feinstein: 

“The question that I would pose to the senior Senator from California is: Would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment? Namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

“Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?”

After the question, the entire Democrat contingency went apoplectic, talking out of turn to lecture Cruz about how the first and fourth amendments have limitations and are not absolute.  The reason Cruz has a point is that in all limitations on the first and fourth amendments, those limitations exist because the rights of others have already been infringed!  

Take the old example of unnecessarily yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.  That speech is outside the first amendment because it denies other theatergoers their right to not be trampled in a stampede.  Similarly, the child pornography limitation on free speech exists because children are harmed, rights denied, by the very existence of child pornography.

Similarly, an indiscriminate roadblock, which stops all motorists in an attempt to catch a dangerous criminal, is an exception to the fourth amendment protection on unreasonable search and seizure because it has been deemed reasonable in order to catch a criminal who already has denied someone their rights.

Gun ownership is a different case.  Gun ownership by itself, even if it involves a dangerous assault weapon, denies no one else’s rights.  There is the potential that any gun can be used criminally or negligently, but until that happens, can congress legally deny the people’s constitutional right to keep it and bear it?  This seems like a reasonable enough question, which is why it elicited such a petulant response from princess DiFi and her minions.

Interestingly, if the framers didn’t want the second amendment to be an absolute right, they could have simply used the same word they used in the fourth amendment, unreasonable.  It's not like they didn't know the word existed.  The second amendment would then have read: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be unreasonably infringed.”  It doesn’t, and we should not pretend it does.

The more I hear from Ted Cruz the more I respect him.  Please keep it up Ted.  

PS  All this talk of "DC v Heller", which Cruz's critics have cited is completely besides the point.  The question was to DiFi about her views on the constitution, not her opinion of the SCOTUS and the Heller decision.  Her response, Leahy's response, and all the Democrats responses were disrespectful and shameful.   

Here's the whole shebang in case you missed it: