Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

18 May 2011

Making ObamaCare a Power-Luster's Dream

As the 137 agencies and panels are set up and start issuing their many rulings on who will receive health care and who will not and at what cost, the total package of power manipulations of our lives by bureaucrats and politicians will become more clear.  But we have already seen states and certain health care operations acquire special treatment for political reasons in the maneuvers to get the votes to pass the unread, unconstitutional legislation in a most unseemly rush to exert the power of the Democrat Socialist Party.

Since that time, we have seen the Obama Department of Health and Human Services grant 1,372 waivers of a provision of ObamaCare.  These waivers are for one year of the medical expense limit requirements, which are higher than those many company or union health plans now offer.  They can be applied for annually through 2014.  These waivers have been granted to hundreds of union locals, despite the unions being the most vociferous of ObamaCare supporters when it was being considered in Congress.  Apparently many union locals changed their minds when they had a chance to actually read it afterward.  Or were the unions assured ahead of time that they would be granted such waivers as they wanted, seeing as how they were such munificent contributors to the election of the Democrat Socialists?  It is hard to know with this most open and transparent group of political operatives who were running the show in the 2010 Congress and the Obama gang.  Oh, did I say open and transparent?  Sorry that must have stuck in my mind from the election campaign that put these Democrat Socialists in control of our government and they thought of our lives.  I meant to say in this closed, deep-caved, murky regime of moles and voles.

These waivers now cover 3.1 million people.  The Daily Caller reports that:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Now there are 435 Congressional districts and each has about the same number of Americans in the district.  If 204 waivers were granted equally among these districts, the distribution should average 0.47 per district.  But, somehow, surely just a statistical anomaly, the district of Nancy Pelosi, the ObamaCare prime mover through the House of Representatives, just happened to get 38 waivers or 81 times her district's equal share of waivers.  God must be loading the dice when he sees that the good people of Pelosi's district are so willing to delegate powers to the federal government that they elected this good, god-favored woman to Congress.  But I, not being much of a god-fearer, must note that this is a severe injustice in a nation of sovereign, equal individuals with full rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of their minds and bodies, and the pursuit of their personal happiness.  This is the hand of tyranny and it should be no more tolerated than when that hand was the actually lighter hand of King George III.  Under Democrat Socialist rule, there is no such thing as equal individual rights.  No, those are traded for status as either a crony to a powerful politician or the status of the Forgotten Man.  Most of us are forgotten.  I certainly am, unless I am on their enemies list.

One of the remarkable things about the companies getting waivers from Nancy Pelosi's district is that they were expensive, high-end restaurants, hotels, spas, night clubs, and car dealerships.  Apparently many other Congressional districts did not get so many waivers because they just do not have enough wealthy business establishments to compete with Pelosi's San Francisco crony mercantilism companies.  Unless maybe, just maybe, these businesses have special tutoring in how to take advantage of the overly complex and overly belligerent Washington power brokerage system that ordinary Americans will never figure out.  Of course, a call from the office of Nancy Pelosi to HHS head Kathleen Sebelius in her murky subterranean den probably does not hurt either.

2 comments:

Michael E. Marotta said...

... and you think they did not read Atlas Shrugged.

A thousand years ago when John Kennedy was president, there was a comedy album called The First Family by Vaughn Meader. At the news conference, a reporter asked what the President intends to do about medical care for the aged. He replied, "Try to stay young." (Big laughs.) After the mammoths were gone, I was running for Congress as a Libertarian and on a TV interview, I was asked what the libertarian position is on government-funded healthcare. I said, "Take your vitamins."

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

Of course you were simply advising that people should take care of themselves. If vitamins were still thought to be useful, Obama and the Progressive Elitists would be pushing for legislation to have the government provide the unwealthy with free vitamin pills and forcing everyone to take them under the eye of the health regulatory police. I assume that the health regulatory police are wrapped into ObamaCare in some way, if only as rulings to be made by HHS or some adventurous one of the many panels and agencies given control and central planning functions under ObamaCare.

The recent finding that 6 cups of coffee a day offers cancer protection may mean that a government subsidized Starbucks Coffee will dispense and supervise our all being forced to down 6 cups of coffee a day. Big Brother is so eager to manage our lives that it is really hard to see any boundaries Big Brother will honor! Having sex regularly is also generally good for one's health, assuming it is safe sex. If this high-speed train of Progressive Elitist care and central planning is not stopped soon, our sex lives will be highly regulated by government in the future. People will think me excessive in pointing this out, but ideas on the level of principles have major and necessary consequences. Bad principles lead to what should be inconceivable consequences as the "logic" of the reality-denying idea works itself out.

We must be unrelenting in asserting the right to the ownership of our own bodies and minds.