Ambiguity, Context, Legislative Deference, and State Emasculation in King v. Burwell ObamaCare Decision

This is my belated rational analysis of the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision to approve federal tax subsidies for health insurance exchanges mandated under ObamaCare whether they were established by the state or not in the King v. Burwell case.  I am not a lawyer.  I am simply a man who regards the protection of individual rights as the sole legitimate role of government, as stated wonderfully in the Declaration of Independence.  A very limited government consistent with that goal of legitimate government was mandated by the People in the Constitution of the United States of America.

The first Supreme Court decision on the infamously falsely named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was NFIB v. Sebelius.  The NFIB challenged the use of a fine or penalty fee to force individuals to buy only such particular health insurance plans as were approved by the federal government.  Congress had insisted at the time of passage of this bill that the individual penalty fee was not a tax.  The majority 5-4 decision that upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate was based on the bizarre claim that Congress had the power to tax.  Since the penalty fee was really a tax and was not a penalty fee according to the court decision, the individual mandate was within the powers of Congress to impose.

To this day, the Supreme Court designated tax is still called a penalty fee, a fine, and a shared responsibility payment by the federal government, rather than the tax that was falsely ruled constitutional by dropping the context of the taxing power in the Constitution. The power to tax was exlusively for use in exercising the very limited and strictly enumerated powers that promptly follow the power to tax in the structure of the text of the Constitution.  If the federal government were allowed to do anything it wants under the power to tax, there was no need to enumerate its limited powers to provide for the national defense, handle foreign affairs, establish a federal court system and a postal system, establish post roads, bankruptcy law, patent law, naturalization law, and uniform weights and measures.  Note the lack of any authority to establish health care or health insurance laws.  Now remember this lack of context in the case of the Supreme Law of the Land as we discuss this King v. Burwell decision which hangs so heavily on what it claims is context.

Basically, the decision concludes that ObamaCare "includes more than a few examples of inartful drafting."  Of course those of us who paid attention to the process by which it "became law" understand that it was slapped together with undue hast, without any attempt to rationally evaluate its effects and self-consistency, and without being read by most of those Democrats who voted for it.  In fact, we are not sure that a single voter actually read it.  But, we do know that a number of those who did thought that only those in states that chose to establish an ObamaCare exchange would be eligible for federal subsidies for health insurance plans on those state exchanges.  This was supposed to help convince the state governments to cooperate with the ObamaCare law or get them in trouble with those who would be deprived of the subsidies.

The context of this history was ignored by the Supreme Court in its decision, but its decision starts with the very political and historical assessment that

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act grew out of a long history of failed health insurance reform.

Indeed, it goes on to discuss a series of state efforts at reform and concludes that it is necessary for a successful health insurance law to provide that:

1.  It must have guaranteed issue.
2.  It must have a community rating requirement.
3.  It must require an individual mandate or impose a tax on non-compliant individuals.
4.  It must provide subsidies to make the insurance affordable for low income persons.

Deciding what successful health insurance reform is might be a legislative power, if it were even that and it is not, but most certainly is not a power granted to the federal courts.  Nonetheless, this Supreme Court has decided that this is a part of the context which it will apply as a critical element in its argument that ObamaCare is legal.  This is a purely political decision.

The decision claims that there is ambiguity in the oft repeated phrase "an Exchange established by the State under [42 U.S.C. Section 18031]" due to context.  The dissenting opinion disagrees on this.  If the state does not establish an ObamaCare exchange, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is directed to establish "such Exchange."  The word "such" is loaded with the meaning that whether the exchange is established by the state or by the federal government, those exchanges are interchangeable for all purposes of the law.  Now this is a major case of cherry picking a meaning for the word "such" and loading it with massive interpretive import, especially in the context of a bill which "includes more than a few examples of inartful drafting."  That is a form of context-dropping.  The court claims that this is providing context, nonetheless.

There is also a reference that the act provides that tax credits "shall be allowed" for any "applicable taxpayer."  In this case the majority decision chooses to interpret "applicable taxpayer" as one who meets the income requirement but the word applicable does not apply to whether the taxpayer is in a state with an applicable state-established exchange.  Well, who knows what this means?  It is a badly written bill, full of "inartful drafting."

There is also a reference that directs all exchanges to make an effort to inform individuals about the subsidy program.  Politically, this was known to be a part of the effort to bring pressure on states to establish an ObamaCare exchange.  If they did not do so, the federal exchange would broadcast to those who did not get the subsidy what their state had taken from them and put pressure on the state to cooperate with the law to reduce its costs to the federal government by creating and managing the exchange.  It did not work out this way because so many states refused to set up state exchanges that the Obama administration had the IRS rule that subsidies would be available in all states.  This was needed to tamp down the rebellion.

With the claim that there is ambiguity, the court says that the issue is so loaded with "economic and political significance" that Congress could not have intended that the interpretation be provided by the IRS.  So, the Supreme Court concluded that the interpretation should be provided by the Supreme Court with all of its expertise on economic and political issues.  A rational individual would conclude that if this really is ambiguous, then the Supreme Court should defer to Congress and announce that this critical provision in the ObamaCare law is ambiguous and unintelligible.  It should say if Congress wants the federal courts to enforce a health insurance reform law with subsidies, then it is the duty of Congress to eliminate the ambiguity by passing a new law to remove that ambiguity.  It is critical that laws have intelligible meaning.  But no, there is no deference to Congress and the separation of powers, not even in the context of the incredible change in the Congress resulting from the people's fury over the passage of the ObamaCare law.  This court does not want the new representative resulting from democratic choice of the people to have a say in the correction of the faults of the ObamaCare law.  Clearly, the Progressive Elitist view of the Supreme Court is stronger than that of the present Congress, so the decision must stay in the Supreme Court to insure their desired political and economic outcome.

This court ruling has also had the effect of much further reducing the power of state governments.  Their refusal to participate in a federal program which many of them thought correctly was unconstitutional and unworkable was swept aside.  These state governments were not to be allowed to protect their residents from any of the many harms of the rightfully unpopular ObamaCare law.  The Supreme Court ruled that there was to be no opting out of the health insurance reform bill which it had decided was a politically and economically highly desirable reform.

The Supreme Court has once again defied the Constitution, rational law requirements, the democratic expression of the People, and our sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the pursuit of our happiness.

Congress Calls Itself Small Employer Under ObamaCare Law

The individual state and DC health insurance exchanges under the ObamaCare law allow small businesses with fewer than 50 "full-time" employees to purchase insurance for their employees on the exchanges.  The U.S. Congress purchases its health insurance under the DC health insurance exchange, which under the District of Columbia law setting it up has the ObamaCare law required limit on institutional entities that may use it of fewer than 50 full-time employees.  Under ObamaCare law, a full time employee is anyone working 30 or more hours a week.

According to the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority, at least 12,359 employees or dependents of employees of Congress are receiving their health insurance plans from the DC Exchange.  Because they are receiving their benefits from the DC exchange, many are receiving the federal subsidies offered on state exchanges.  The House of Representatives attested under penalty of law that it had 45 employees.  The Senate made the same statement that it had 45 employees.  This was revealed by Judicial Watch when it obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act.  The DC government has acknowledged that their purchases of insurance on the exchange are a breech of DC law, but has yet to do anything about it.

When the House of Representatives attested that it had 45 employees, it was under Republican control.  When the Senate made the same statement, it was under Democrat control.  Both parties engaged in patently illegal activity for the monetary gain of the 437 members of the House, the 100 Senators, and their thousands of staff employees.

These are the same reprobates who controlled the acquisition of $3.0 trillion of federal revenue in 2014, spending of $3.5 trillion, and the imposition of another $1.5 trillion in regulatory costs on the private sector in 2014.  It is insane to allow such lawbreakers and avaricious, unprincipled thieves have control of so much of the wealth produced by the hardworking taxpayers of the private sector.

They get away with this using the specious argument that they are correcting injustices of the private sector.  In fact, such injustices as there are in the private sector are mostly avoidable simply because individuals are free there to associate or not with others based on their own judgment of the fairness of their interactions.  None of us are allowed to disassociate ourselves from the government and its employees who very determinedly mistreat those of us in the private sector.  We are forced, yes forced, to submit to their myriad, complex, ubiquitous predations.  Congress and government bureaucrats spend every working hour studying and implementing ways to use their nearly unbridled power over us to their advantage and our subjugation.

The only answer to this predation is for the People to insist on the most principled and strict application of the Constitution to severely limit the actions of Congress and the federal government generally.  The size and scope of this out-of-control Big Government monster must be slashed until it performs only its legitimate role of protecting the equal, sovereign rights of the individual.

CBO Says 2.5 Million Jobs May Be Lost Due to ObamaCare

The Congressional Budget Office announced on 4 February that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time jobs may be lost because of the so-called Affordable Care Act.  That act offers neither affordable medical care nor incomes upon which Americans can afford to live.  It is a cruel lie to call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  It is also an insult to the intelligence of Americans.  It is a hidden tax on work, which violates Obama's claim that he would not increase taxes on the Middle Class.  It is, however, a massive redistribution scheme, which Obama told Joe the Plumber he was intent on implementing.

Many Democrat Socialists responded with claims they are celebrating the fact that many people will have much more free time.  Of course, they are really celebrating because many more people will become dependent upon Big Government.

The hardship of the People is good for Democrat Socialists, so they work hard to see more and more hardship is distributed upon the American People.  The pretense of redistributing the income earned and developed by others is a cover for this actual increase in and redistribution of hardship.  This is why the War on Poverty has not reduced poverty in decades.  It is why all the talk about improving the education of children never results in children acquiring more learning skills, problem-solving skills, a desire to learn, or acquiring factual knowledge.  This is why the economic condition of Black Americans still leaves much to be desired.  The Democrat Socialists do not want to solve the problems they claim it is their purpose to solve using Big Government as the tool.  No, their power is dependent upon these problems remaining unsolved and remaining sore points that divide Americans.  For every pretense of help, there is a greater, less publicized, harm.

24 States Expand Medicaid Under ObamaCare

The CBO predicts that 9 million more people will go on Medicaid in the next year.  Most of this increase will be in the 26 states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare.  These states are shown in gold in the map below:

The states not expanding Medicaid coverage under ObamaCare have the number of additional people they would cover with coverage to 133% of the poverty level shown on them.  This represents a huge future savings for these states after 2022 for their state budgets when the federal government stops paying 90% of the bill for the added state dependents.  Those living in the states in gold had best have piles of gold to pay the tax bills after 2022 for all of the people on Medicaid.

The CBO is predicting that ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid will add 9 million people on Medicaid by the end of 2014 and 13 million by the end of 2020.  These additions and the future large increases in state budget costs will occur in the states in the above map in gold.  Of course, Progressive Elitists will complain that the added 5 million people who might have been added in the blue-gray states have been sadly neglected in this redistribution of wealth.  In fact, they like to complain that even more of those in poverty live in many of these blue-gray states.  See the map below from one of their websites:

So the states not expanding Medicaid have an average 9.1% of their populations qualifying as below 133% of the poverty level, while the national average is 8.0% of the population.  But one thing that is overlooked is that there is one single poverty level for the 48 contiguous states and higher levels for Alaska and Hawaii.  So, this map of those below 133% of the poverty level has to be compared to one for the cost of living.  Clearly, some people at 133% of the poverty level are much better off in low cost of living areas than are others at that level in high cost of living areas.  The cost of living map:

Now we see that the states that refused to raise their Medicaid dependency levels to 133% of the poverty level are mostly states with most of their population below or at the national average in the cost of living.  Most of the states that raised the Medicaid eligibility level to 133% have most of their populations living in high or average cost of living areas.  Of the 24 states not raising the Medicaid eligibility level to 133%, Wyoming, Montana, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only ones mostly at the average or higher in cost of living.

There is a reason that Republican-dominated states tend to have lower than average costs of living.  The governments in those states mostly extract less from the private sector to use in unproductive ways in the government-sector.  Their present choice not to increase the eligibility for Medicaid in their states is a move to continue having a lower cost of living.  That means that people in those states above 133% of the poverty level will continue to be better off than will people in the expensive government states that mostly raised their Medicaid eligibility levels under ObamaCare.

After 2022, when those mostly above average cost of living states have to pick up the cost of the 13 million people added to Medicaid, their cost of living will shoot up even higher.  Their taxes will increase further and some of them will go bankrupt.  More and more people will migrate out of those states and move to the states that did not raise their Medicaid eligibility levels.  There will be a further easily seen lesson on the perils of redistribution and socialism.  Socialist transformation and change will have seriously damaged the middle class who will have to pay the bills in the mostly Democrat states that made this bad choice to expand Medicaid.

ObamaVaporCare Website is Not All That is Vapor

So we have learned that the ability to cruise the ObamaCare federal website anonymously was yanked with false claims that it caused problems for the website in testimony to Congress.  Of course it was yanked so that people could not so easily discover that most people were going to face higher premiums and higher deductibles.  I noted with some anger that the need to give all of your personal information including Social Security number up front was to prevent you from assessing how ObamaCare was financially going to affect your family members and your neighbors and fellow countrymen.

In reality, the user has to spend much more time entering such information and then the website goes to numerous federal databases at numerous federal agencies to verify the input information.  This process puts great strains on the website and it is clearly unable to handle those strains.  In addition, when one gets all of one's information in and picks a plan, one may really only be picking it for further evaluation of the doctor and hospital network it has.  In other words, it need not be a final pick, but ObamaCare does not care.  It thinks you are committed.  Of course, the coercive planners behind ObamaCare are the ones who should be committed, though I understand we have a shortage of the needed mental health institutions since Democrats believe the mentally ill should be out on the streets voting and running ObamaCare.

Late last week, the breakdown on so-called sign-ups on the California state exchange, which works better than the federal exchange does, were announced.  Only about 16% of the 30,830 "enrollees" in October were eligible for subsidies or cost-sharing.  56% of them were of the ages from 45 to 64, though only 25% of the California population is in that age range.  So older and sicker people are 2.24 times more likely than their population to sign up for ObamaCare.  Those desirable low cost healthy people 34 or younger only signed up at a 28% rate, though they are 49% of the California population.  So, just as expected by the many rational critics, ObamaCare assumptions that many young and healthy Americans are going to happily subsidize the health care of older and less healthy Americans is already proving wrong.

Some have tried to explain this as being simply because the federally run website does not work.  They say that when it works, then the young will sign up in droves.  But the California website works better now than the federal website is likely work by the end of the year when people must sign up to have health insurance in 2014.  Yes, we shall see soon what will happen.  But, my money is on this is continuing to be a total disaster.  Health premiums for ObamaCare health insurance will be much higher for 2015 insurance.  As though it is not too high now!

In 2014, participating insurance companies are going to take a bath in cold water and many are going to drown.  Making money was posited by them on the assumption that many more people would have insurance and many of the new insurance holders would be young and healthy.  They assumed the websites would work and send them correct personal information.  Instead they are having to put much more manpower into checking that information than they expected.  This is raising their operational costs and ObamaCare put a very low upper limit on what they can spend on administrative costs.  Those insurance companies that trusted ObamaCare to deliver are going to be big losers.

We also learned late last week that there is as yet no means in the federal website for the insurance companies to be paid for policies that people might think they had signed up for.  No policy actually exists until the insurance company is paid.  The Obama Regime claims they will have this part of the software working by the end of the year.  Of course, the rational observer must have his doubts about this claim.  What is more, even if the claim comes true, can you imagine the chaos on the site as millions of such payment transactions occur within days of the start of policies beginning on 1 January.  Can you imagine the chaos at the insurance companies if they receive a flood of such payments within a few days?

It is not just the federal website that is ObamaVaporCare.  No, it is all of ObamaCare that is VaporCare.  It is exploding and releasing nothing but noxious gasses.  Unfortunately, the medical care industry will suffer, the health insurance industry will suffer, the tens of millions of Americans who are losing their health insurance will suffer, and everyone will suffer with fewer choices and lower quality medical care.

Such is the whirlwind the American People created in selecting a heavily socialist House of Representatives and Senate and President in 2008 and their failure to oust them from the Presidency and Senate in 2012.  Irrational choices have very bad consequences.

Dictator Obama Strikes Again

Any time the many harms of ObamaCare become apparent to some constituency that might cause a real political problem for Obama, he simply changes the law for a time he hopes will be long enough for the People he thinks stupid to forget the harm.  At first, this was exemptions from the law aimed at labor unions and businesses whose owners supported Democrat candidates for offices.  Then he delayed the larger business mandate that forced them to offer health insurance meeting Obama's gold-plated requirements at great expense.  Then he ruled once again in favor of unions by protecting their health insurance plans, and only theirs, from taxes on the so-called Cadillac plans.  Now, he has declared that individuals can keep their insurance plans that they like for a year, if their insurance company will allow them to do so.

The government does not have the constitutional power to regulate and control our health insurance and our medical care.  But, the strict limits on government power in the Constitution have long been ignored.  However, the only branch of government that has any law-making power at all is Congress, the legislative branch.  It is certainly not the executive branch.  The President of our Republic is supposed to be the Commander-in-Chief and the executor of the laws, not the lawmaker.  The Constitution made this division of function because they knew that a President with the powers of a medieval king was a very dangerous man.  They absolutely would not trust such powers to their President.

But Obama does not believe in the Constitution.  He only believes in socialism and the Constitution is a barrier to socialism.  His ObamaCare law is a great step toward a more complete socialism in America and it will accomplish a huge redistribution of wealth if it survives the many problems of its initial phases.  Obama, the great socialist Leader, desperately wants ObamaCare to endure.  To do so, he has to keep it out of the hands of a Congress no longer completely controlled by committed socialists as it was when the fraudulently name Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was shoved as a fiery coal down our throats.  He is happy to violate the Constitution to protect the PPACA and because he wants badly to establish precedent for the Imperial Presidency.  He wants to be that Great Socialist Dictator the progressive elitists have long wanted and worked for.

Congress, when still under complete control by the Democratic Socialist Party in 2011, endowed the Dept. of Health and Human Services with $1 billion to provide most of the funding to implement ObamaCare.  This was done to make it harder for the incoming Congress with a House under Republican control to defund ObamaCare.  At the end of the 2013 fiscal year that ended on 30 September 2013, HHS had already spent $811 million of this money and presented the website that will not work and about 20,000 pages of new regulations.  The remaining funds of $189 million will not be anywhere near enough to complete the implementation of ObamaCare.  Yet, Obama will not go to the Congress to get the necessary funds appropriated to finish this process.  No, Dictator Obama will simply take money appropriated by Congress for other purposes and use it as he sees fit to ensure that his signature "achievement" plows on, ripping through the lives of most Americans.

Americans generally, and both Congress and the Federal Courts, must stand up to this dictator and stop him.  ObamaCare is a national disaster of incredible proportion.  An even greater catastrophe would be to enshrine the Great Socialist Dictator as our executive branch leader for all of America's foreshortened future.  History tells us that will be worse than a furious civil war.  In fact, such a war is often the only salvation for such a horrific circumstance.

ObamaCare Numbers Do Not Compute - Emoters Require No Computation

Originally, we were told that 47 million Americans did not have health insurance and ObamaCare was going to provide them with insurance.  I showed that about 10 million Americans had no need for health insurance since they or someone in their family were so wealthy that it was very reasonable for them to be self-insured.  Then there were about 12 million illegal aliens at the time.  So, the number of Americans who actually had some need for insurance and had none were about 25 million.  A short while before the roll-out of the catastrophic ObamaCare website for the federally operated state exchanges for 34 states, the government was claiming that ObamaCare was going to provide 30 million of those who did not have health insurance with it.  That 30 million figure, rather than the 50 million more recently bandied about as the number of uninsured Americans, has now been scaled back to a mere 7 million.

Yes, now ObamaCare will be a great success if it manages to sign up 7 million people by the end of March according to the same folks who originally told us that it was addressing the problem of 47 million uninsured Americans.  So, even if we buy this as the measure of success, ObamaCare must sign up this number between the end of November and the end of March.  The number signed up to date is trivial and will remain so until the problems with the website are fixed.  Some fools are saying that will happen by the end of November.  So, in the course of 121 days, the government says it can declare success if the 7 million are signed up.  To do that modest number it will have to have 57,850 people sign up each day.

But what about the 4.8 million people who have had their health insurance cancelled already by ObamaCare requirements?  Is it really a success if these people and the millions who are about to receive similar cancellation letters do not sign up for ObamaCare insurance on the exchanges?  Apparently the government would have us believe that they do not count.  It is noteworthy that Jay Carney says that fewer than 5% of Americans will have their health insurance cancelled.  Well, that is 15.6 million Americans.

What is more, Jay and the government are hiding the fact that many small group and large group insurance plans will be cancelled in 2014 as the ObamaCare extension of company provided plans starts to run down.  The government extended that deadline in order to delay the overwhelming numbers of cancellation notices that would have been added to those for people in the individual insurance market.  This is what allows them to tell us the lie that fewer than 5% of Americans will lose their health insurance.  Of course, but late 2014 it will be very clear that many times that number will be forced into the ObamaCare exchanges or be without health insurance.

A government study concluded that before the end of 2014, 9.2 to 15.4 million will lose their insurance in the individual market, 16.6 million will lose it in the small group market, and 102.7 million will lose it in the large group market.  This is a total of between 128.5 and 134.7 million who will lose their health insurance by the end of 2014.  So, 25 million originally uninsured and about 132 million newly uninsured Americans (a total of 157 million) will need to purchase insurance meeting ObamaCare mandates by the end of 2014.  This means that about 396,465 Americans will have to sign up for ObamaCare insurance each and every day on average between now and the end of 2014 if they are to be covered with health insurance as per the intent of this mandate.

One of the ObamaCare bureaucrats was recently telling Congress that only about 39,000 needed to sign up each day.  This does not compute.  Even by the end of March 2014 this would not be anywhere near 7 million Americans who had no insurance and offer nothing for those losing their insurance.   The government cannot even perform simple mathematical operations, so how can anyone imagine they can direct the entire critical medical services apparatus of the USA?  These numbers also make it obvious that no one ever supported ObamaCare who gave its claims a few moments of thought.  It was always purely justified on an emotional basis.

Of course my argument only has the power to convince rational people.  The supporters of ObamaCare are not rational.  They are emotional lovers of collectivism and many will support ObamaCare for its collectivist premise no matter how badly ObamaCare abuses Americans.  No matter how many Americans wind up uninsured and unable to seek medical attention thanks to ObamaCare, it will have many supporters.

But, those many supporters will not number so many as it has had to date.  Some people who emoted a different outcome for ObamaCare will fall away from it as it begins to actually hurt them and their families.  Until recently, this duplicitous Obama Regime effectively delayed all of these many harms into his second term and, with the illegal company mandate delay, it is further spreading out the harm to lower the shock to the many Americans who do not give life-threatening matters any thought.

4.8 Million Proofs that Obama is a Liar, an Uncaring Liar

"If you like your insurance now, you can keep it.  Period."  This was stated emphatically by Obama and many of his allies in the Democrat Party over and over.  The reality is dramatically different.  That it would be different was known when the disfigured law was fraudulently named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  That heinous law had to deprive most Americans of their health insurance plans so they could be forced to provide the subsidies needed to support those more ill and older.  This is why the law made any change in an insurance plan reason for not allowing the insured to keep that plan.  They were always to be forced to change to a plan that paid much more for many services they did not want.

As of now, 4.8 million Americans have had their insurance plan cancelled.  Others are being given new plans by the same insurer that provides them with many services they do not want at much higher premiums, with higher deductibles and co-pays than they had.  Most of the cancellations so far are in the individual insurance plan market, which is relatively small.  The bigger small business and large company market cancellations will be delayed because of the one-year delay in applying ObamaCare to the business-provided insurance plans.  The number of cancellations and massive cost increases will continue to the end of 2014.  The cancellations to date are just the tip of the iceberg.

By the end of 2014, there will be many times more proofs of Obama's lie than we have even now.  Some of these proofs will be less obvious, since many companies will pick up the added costs and people will not be shocked by cancellation letters.  However, when a company does pay the higher cost, this will mean that this is a part of an employee's remuneration and that employee will have less money to take home.  Other companies will not be willing to pay that cost and will simply drop the offer of company health insurance.  Millions of employees will have to find their replacement insurance under ObamaCare on their own.

The government itself estimated that 85% of the health insurance plans of the individual market would have to be changed under ObamaCare.  They estimated that 60% of small business plans would have to be replaced and that 40% of big business plans would be replaced.  Most insurers will offer a new plan at greater expense to their customers.   The estimate of the number of people thrown on their own to get insurance was estimated to be from 18 to 50 million Americans.  These were government estimates which the chief executive probably knew and surely should have known if he were competent.  Whether due to incompetence or dishonesty, the man is clearly uncaring.

Meanwhile, the ObamaCare claim that it would insure a larger fraction of Americans, is also a massive lie.  It is perfectly clear that many of the people who did not have health insurance before are not signing up for ObamaCare.  It is also clear that many times more individuals who have had their insurance cancelled because of ObamaCare have not signed up for ObamaCare compared to the fraction who have.  ObamaCare is running way, way behind on the claim it will increase the number of insured Americans.  Not only is it behind now, but there is no chance that it will catch up to even the number who only recently were insured.  There is no mechanism for that many sign-ups.  There will also not be any will on the part of many of the insurance losers to do so.  The fraction of uninsured Americans will increase because of ObamaCare.  How caring is that?

Are Americans Looney Tunes?

How can people be so unthinking and irrational as to hold this collection of beliefs at one time?  Some of these beliefs are rational, but others are highly irrational and contradictory.

From the most recent Rasmussen poll findings:

64% of Likely U.S. Voters now view the federal government unfavorably, with 34% who have a Very Unfavorable opinion of it.

Voters overwhelmingly want to scrap or change the new health care law, with 43% who want to repeal it entirely and start over and 35% who would prefer Congress go through the law piece by piece to improve it. Just 18% want to leave the law as is.

Just 25% of voters believe the United States is heading in the right direction. 

Voters are evenly divided at 42% apiece when asked whether they agree more politically with the president or with the average member of the Tea Party.

Democrats hold a six-point lead over Republicans – 43% to 37% - on the latest Generic Congressional Ballot. 

Most consumers and investors believe the country is still in a recession. 

Only 33% of Americans believe the U.S. economy will be stronger in a year's time, while 41% think it will grow weaker by then. 

Fewer than half (47%) of Americans believe it’s still possible for anyone in this country looking for work to find a job.  

OK, so 64% have no trust in government, yet 35% + 18% = 53% want it to run the entire medical industry and health insurance industry either with the ObamaCare law as it is or after Congress has re-worked this entirely wrongheaded law.  What on earth makes them think Congress can do a rework and make something rational and beneficial out of a government-controlled medical care system?

Only 25% believe the US is headed in the right direction, yet 42% side with Obama and the continued growth of government and the emasculation of the private sector.  They are in opposition to the 42% who want a change in direction, namely those who agree more with the Tea Party movement.

Most consumers and investors believe the US is still in recession, which it clearly is in terms that matter, namely the real per capita private sector GDP.  Only 33% believe it will be stronger in a year, yet 43% believe in the anti-business and anti-jobs notions of the Democrat Socialist Party over the more business and jobs friendly Republicans who can only muster 37% support in the Generic Congressional Ballot.  Note also the disconnect with the 42% who believe more like the Tea Party than with Obama.  Based on that, the Republicans should be equal with the Democrats in the Generic Congressional Ballot.  Based on the economy and jobs prospects and opposition to ObamaCare, the Republicans should be favored.

But no, Americans while right not to trust government, still favor the party of bigger government which has so completely bollixed things up.  Go figure.  They really are Looney Tunes.

ObamaCare Self-Immolates, but Heavily Taxes Middle Income People

The signature achievement of Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party, the fraudulently named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is undergoing an immediate self-destruction brought on by the unbelievable hubris of party hacks in believing that they could better direct the massive medical and health insurance efforts than the private sector can.  The problems run much deeper than health insurance exchanges whose website portals do not work.  That is an unsurprising problem given the nature of those in charge of setting them up, but it is only the start of the tsunami of problems being unleashed upon the American People by these preternaturally bloated Progressive Elitist's egos.

Obama told us on Tuesday, 22 October, that thousands of people are signing up for ObamaCare and saving money.  Actually, it turns out that most of those who have signed up are really signing up for expanded Medicaid benefits.  It also turns out that many who have struggled with the website problems long enough to sign up are those with pre-existing conditions who will often save money under ObamaCare.  In addition, a few states are already so heavily regulated by the state with consequent health insurance costs being forced skyhigh, that even the ObamaCare costs are lower.  Yet, the costs for all but five states are generally up and often are up by factors of two or more.  A Heritage Foundation study by Drew Gonshorowski produced these results:

Only in Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island can you find cost savings under ObamaCare.  The rest of the nation is screwed.

For 27 year olds, their rates are going up by 100% or more in the following 10 states:

Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, and Vermont.  Nobody actually knows the rates for Virginia because it appears that the ObamaCare website is giving out a number that must be wrong.

Again for 27 year olds, insurance premium rates are going up by more than 50%, but less than 100%, in the following 15 states:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Of course, ObamaCare is design to milk the healthy young to pay for the sick and older population.  Nonetheless, for adults aged 50 the rates are also generally going up.  In the following 13 states and DC, they are going up more than 50%:

Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

An adult aged 50 will see rates go up by more than 25%, but less than 50%, in the following 15 states:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

So, a 27 year old will see his premium rates going up by more than 50% in 25 states.  A 50 year old will see rates going up by more than 25% in 28 states and the District of Columbia.  Somehow, I suspect the claims of the Democrat Socialist Party and Obama that ObamaCare was just going to be Hunky-Dorry are ringing, or will soon ring, very hollow.  No, they will even be regarded as the lies that I have always said they were.

When ObamaCare was being pushed through Congress, the claim was that there were 47 million uninsured in the USA and desperately in need of affordable health insurance.  They said it was everyone's responsibility to see that the uninsured had their medical needs assured by ObamaCare.  Now mind you, they did not point out as I did (discussing this here, here, here, and here) that about 10 million Americans do not need insurance since they or a family member are so wealthy that they can readily be self-insured.  Maybe 12 million of that number were then illegal aliens.  Most of the remainder were healthy young people who even at the lower rates available before ObamaCare did not see a reason to insure themselves.  Clearly, ObamaCare does not address any of the needs of the wealthy, the illegal alien, and the healthy young person.  It is only addressing the needs of those who are already sick and do not have health insurance and it is doing so at incredible cost to everyone else.

Let us examine how ObamaCare is doing if thousands had actually signed up as Obama says in the first 22 days of the program.  Since it has been sold recently as covering 50 million people without insurance and since it is now estimated that about 16 million people who had insurance are losing it due to cancellations saying their policies do not meet ObamaCare mandates, there would be 66 million people who have to sign up for ObamaCare by 31 March 2014.  In that 182 day period, 362,637 people a day must sign up, despite Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day!  More refined recent claims were that ObamaCare hoped to sign up 30 million of the uninsured.  So, that makes the total number of sign-ups a mere 46 million by 31 March 2014, or a mere 252,747 a day.  In the 22 days to Obama's speech last week, the total number of sign-ups for insurance was not anywhere near even the one-day necessary average of 252,747.  In fact, so few have signed up to date that one can just as well say that 46 million sign-ups have to occur in the remaining 156 days from today, at an average rate of 294,872 a day.

Now stop and think about this.  Is it at all likely that 294,872 people a day will sign-up for ObamaCare before 31 March 2014 given the website problems, the high costs, and the high deductibles?  There is no way this will happen.  No Way!  In fact, it was never a likely development from the beginning.

I have been sure that ObamaCare was designed to fail so that a single-payer system would soon replace it.  But the facts discussed above now make it clear that the Democrat Socialist Party that is always pushing for new taxes was also trying to create a system almost no one would want a part of so they could charge tens of millions of people the penalty tax for not obtaining the prohibitively expensive ObamaCare with its low quality health care service.  This was always primarily a new and massive tax!  By clever, insidious design.

One can even understand that Obama paid no attention to the problems of launching ObamaCare because its immediate failure was the equivalent of a huge additional tax increase.  It was designed to fail either immediately or in a few years.  But the faster it failed, the bigger the tax increase!  Obama was either setting up a future single-payer completely nationalized medical care system or he was getting out of the corner he had painted himself into with his pledge not to increase taxes on the Middle Class.  It was a win-win situation for him.

ObamaCare was a pretense for an incredible and massive tax increase, which was mostly aimed at the middle class even as the Democrat Socialist Party was pledging no tax increase for the middle class and pretending to care about all the millions suffering without health insurance.  ObamaCare was directly a massive power grab over 16 to 18% of the economy and it was also a heavy tax increase to pay for the program.  People understood that some people would be hit by the penalty tax, but few understood that it was designed to be a massive tax increase to soak tens of millions of people with middle incomes.

Obama is counting on his abilities as a great con man to keep Americans from understanding this.  Eventually, the pain will be so great for so many Americans that I think enough will come to understand the perfidy that fell upon them.  They will finally see Obama and the Democrat Socialists as the malevolent liars that they are.  They will soon no longer control the Senate and in 2016 they will lose the Presidential election.  At last!

I am now reading that the ObamaCare mandated insurance has to be purchased by 31 March 2014, not by 15 March as I had earlier seen reported.  I have recalculated the necessary daily average rates of sign-up for everyone to meet the ObamaCare requirement for its approved insurance plans on 30 October.  Of course, the actual daily sign-ups since I originally posted this remain vastly lower than the necessary daily average.

Is Obama the CEO of the Federal Government and ObamaCare?

Leaving aside the fact that Obama is not eligible to be President because he is not natural born, he is signing legislative bills as though he is the President.  One of the most notorious bills he signed was the fraudulently named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which he has adamantly backed.  Indeed, it is his signature achievement and he is happy to hear it called ObamaCare.  ObamaCare is failing in a colossal manner and it is clear that it is doing so so rapidly because Obama is not a functioning Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  To be sure, it had to fail and it was even designed to fail, but it was not supposed to fail while Obama was still pretending to be President.

The President of the United States of America is the CEO and the Chief Operations Officer of the federal government.  He is charged with protecting, defending, and preserving the Constitution while in office.  Obama does not take this task seriously and does not even believe the Constitution should be protected, defended, and preserved.  He said so explicitly when he was a state senator in the Illinois state legislature in a Chicago radio station interview.  In this, he is in agreement with Justice Ginsburg and many other Progressive Elitist Democrat Socialists.

Under the Constitution, the President is charged with executing and enforcing the laws of the United States.  Obama has failed to do that in the case of his signature achievement, ObamaCare, in many ways.  He has unilaterally changed its timetable on many of the mandates of the law and he has unlawfully granted many exemptions to factions among his supporters, such as labor unions or campaign contributors.

A key development necessary for the ObamaCare initiation was that the state exchanges for health care insurance plans that met the mandated requirements of the ObamaCare law, had to be made available to individuals so they could examine the coverage offered and determine what it would cost them.  To do this, they had to access the costs for their age and location and for their income level so subsidies could be calculated.  In addition, the website has to access data from the IRS, HHS, Social Security Administration, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and other sources to verify the identity of the person seeking the required health insurance costs and the information that individual supplied.  This required a complex program and access website.  The development of this website was entrusted to the Department of Health and Human Services.  The bureaucrats in that department then hired a number of contractors to perform much of the work, but kept a high level of control with ever-changing requirements on how the system would work.  Overlooking this Obama signature project that was taking a large measure of control over one-sixth of the economy and our vital medical care, was the CEO of the federal government.

With all of our lives most literally on the line, the CEO of the federal government was paying no attention at all to his duties.  He was present, but he was busy making speeches about how great ObamaCare was rather than directing his signature achievements development and implementation.  He played the role of company spokesman rather than that of CEO.  According to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Obama had no idea that the website was going to fail.  None.  He was totally asleep at the wheel.  The biggest thing the government has ever done aside from fighting two world wars, the Civil War, and the War of 1812, was not important enough to capture even the least little bit of his attention.

To be sure, the real fault lies with the American People who twice voted for this community organizer with no executive experience to be the CEO and COO of the largest and most important organization in the world.  Then they allowed him to undertake the most massive transformation of the private sector and the American economy to give us the ObamaCare debacle.  Among the consequences of which are:

• Companies are dropping health insurance plans for their employees.
• Insurers are canceling millions of insurance plans that they say do not meet the requirements of ObamaCare, so the cancelled persons will have to buy new plans under ObamaCare.
• Insurers are cancelling the insurance plans of many people with pre-existing conditions.
• People are losing their jobs because providing them with health insurance under the ObamaCare requirements is becoming too expensive.  This will be especially true of young workers, who used to lower the overall cost of insurance to a company far more than they will in the future.  This made it worthwhile to train them and gave them time to learn their jobs.
• Jobs hours are being reduced to less than 30 hours a week.
• High quality medical care institutions are having to fire staff because many ObamaCare health insurance plans will discriminate against them due to their higher costs.  In some cases, as in New Hampshire, people close to good hospital systems will have to travel an hour to get to an ObamaCare covered hospital.
• The many health insurance plans discriminating against high quality medical institutions and their network of doctors will provide lower quality medical care.
• Future innovations in medical care will be much reduced by policy as tougher, more experimental operations and medical equipment investments are denied.
• Administrative costs for health insurance companies are going up due to false and inadequate information being given to them from the malfunctioning exchanges.
• Many young people will not be willing to fight the interminable battle to try to sign up for ObamaCare policies on the malfunctioning exchanges, thereby driving up insurance costs as only the sick and older people have enough incentive to fight that battle.
• Many young and healthy people will not sign up because the magnitude of the subsidy they are providing the sick and older people will shock them.  Paying the penalty tax will be much more affordable.
• Many people absolutely do not want to pay for many of the ten so-called essential health benefits, especially when what they may want is tagged with very high deductibles.
• Many will not sign up because the available plans will not allow them to keep the doctor they like or use the hospital they like.
• Many people will not sign up because ObamaCare violates their religious beliefs.
• Others will not sign up because they are unwilling to allow the government to get away with claiming its owns their bodies and minds, making them slaves.  They will not let the tyrants win.
• Some will not sign up because they know that the government that managed this train-wreck cannot be counted upon to keep their financial and medical data secure.  Not only would that take considerable network security, but huge numbers of people will have access to that data.  Having your bank account continuously emptied is far more crippling than paying the ObamaCare uncaring penalty tax.
• And who wants to be the subject of a Death Panel decision after going to all the trouble to get on ObamaCare?  It is probably safer to fly to Thailand or to Argentina for one's serious medical care.

Federal Judge Rules Suit Against ObamaCare May Proceed

One of the many ways the Obama Regime is violating its Signature Law is by claiming that the IRS can impose penalty taxes on businesses and individuals in the 34 states that did not set up the State Healthcare Insurance Exchanges that the ill-designated Affordable Care Act tried to encourage them to do.  The federal government did not have the power to order the states to set these exchanges up and many Democrats who voted for the law made it clear they would not vote for it if their state was required to set up such an exchange.

The intrepid Competitive Enterprise Institute is assisting in a case, Halbig v. Sebelius, which is challenging the legality of the IRS and Obama Regime attempt to impose mandates on businesses and individuals in those states that refused to go along with this highly unpopular law.  A federal judge ruled on Tuesday, 22 October, that this lawsuit may proceed and he will rule on it by 15 February 2014.

The law itself makes it very clear that in the federal exchanges set up in the non-participating states that businesses cannot be taxed for not providing healthcare insurance such as is mandated by the government in the state-run exchange states.  Individuals cannot be forced to buy health insurance in the same way either.  Subsidies also are not authorized in the law for lower income people under the non-state run health insurance exchanges.  Excluding the exchanges in the 34 states that did not set up the ObamaCare state exchanges is certain to kill ObamaCare in short order.  With the people of 34 states only seeing higher taxes because of ObamaCare and getting no benefits at all, it is not believable that the rebellion against this tyrannical law will not amplify greatly.

Of course, the federal courts may simply rewrite the law as the Supreme Court did in NFIB v. Sibelius when Chief Justice John Roberts so feared opposing Obama that he claimed a broad power to tax for purposes not enumerated in the Constitution was the basis for penalty taxes in the ACA.  He did this despite the many, many Democrat Socialist claims when they created the law and voted for it that it was not a tax.  So, the weak-kneed federal courts may fail to protect our individual rights once again.  But then again, maybe this time the federal court will stand on principle and the letter of the law.  Perhaps the fact that Obama has in so many ways violated the letter of the law is taking a legal toll on the patience of the courts.  Perhaps the fiasco of it implementation and rising anger among the People will give the courts some courage.  We shall see by 15 February 2014.

Thank you Competitive Enterprise Institute and Sam Kazman, its general counsel, and their allies!

Federal ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchange Website Boondoggles

The Obama administration, even more incompetent than most governments, examined the proposal of only one website developer for the ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchange.  There are very widespread reports of how difficult it is get on to get cost and benefit information from this website, how inaccurate the subsidy information is, and how difficult it is to use if you do get on it.  The Obama regime is not at all transparent in providing numbers on how many Americans have signed up for insurance on the exchanges or what the subsidies will cost the taxpayers.

Now there are reports that the Canadian company whose US subsidiary was given the contract to develop the website was criticized by the Canadian government as incompetent and unreliable.  This company had the American ObamaCare Health Insurance website developed in India using Java script, which was a cheap, but totally inadequate way to set up the website for the necessary volume of traffic.  Despite the cheap approach, the company went way over budget.  Various reports claim that between $400 and $600 million has been spent on the website which is far from capable of doing the job required.  John McAfee claims that 15 good programmers could easily have provided an adequate site for $5 million.

In addition to the fact that many people may never be able to sign up for the mandated insurance and will be hit with outrageous penalty taxes as a result, those who try to set up the required accounts before they can learn anything at all about the costs and benefits of the few mandated insurance plans allowed by our draconian, authoritarian government, risk losing everything in their bank accounts.  There are no security precautions to keep social security numbers and birth dates along with full names and addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses safe from hackers.  Imitation websites can easily be set up and induce people to provide all of this information which are actually easier to find and get on.  No one will be surprised that a fake website only takes the usual information demanded by the real websites to set up and account and then fails to give them insurance information.  That behavior would be a good copy of the real website behavior.  With that required account information, the fake website operators can quickly drain the American citizen's bank account.  What a field day for crooks!

See what John McAfee told Fox News.

For all of these risks, one gets rationed and lower quality medical care, which suppresses future medical developments and discourages good, conscientious doctors and other medical care providers.  Many of the best doctors and best hospitals are systematically excluded from the few plans operating under ObamaCare because they are deemed too expensive.  Of course there is no expense in being killed or inadequately treated by less capable or even incompetent doctors and hospitals!  Since my own father was killed by an incompetent, uncaring doctor, I recognize these costs.

It is not enough for the the Obama regime to force us to give up the ownership of our bodies and minds, the health insurance and doctors and hospitals we wish to use, and control over the benefits and costs we are willing to take in health insurance of our own free will.  No, the Obama and Democrat Socialist Rulers must also put Americans to great expense either with health insurance plans that are not suitable for them, with tax penalties, or with the danger of losing everything in their bank accounts.

The incompetence and the hubris of the tyrant is once again affirmed.  The so-called Progressive Elitists are no better than the monarchs of old, the robber barons, the fascists, the communists, and many a petty dictator or warlord.

Why the Democrat Senate Will Not End the Slimdown of the Government

Why is the slight slimdown of the government, wrongly called a shutdown, continuing?

First the Republican House authorized all spending except that small part of the funding for ObamaCare which is in the so-called discretionary budget.

Then the Republican House authorized all spending, but required a one-year delay of the ObamaCare fiasco.

Then the Republican House authorized all spending including that for ObamaCare but with the proviso that the House and Senate and their staffs had be subject to ObamaCare just as everyone else was.

So, as Ann Coulter has pointed out, the only reason that the government slimdown, incorrectly called the government shutdown, continues is because the Democrat Senate recognizes ObamaCare to be so awful that they refuse to obey the law they passed over everyone else' objections.  Obama gave them an exemption, which is surely illegal anyway.  We are to be subjected to rationing, high expense requirements, and its capricious will and they are not.  After all, the Rulers of the People must have their special privileges.  They deserve them because they are the Progressive Elitists caring for we the mere sheep.

You can see why they hate the Constitution so much.  That document is the People's mandate to the government and makes it clear that government is to serve the People.  The People do not serve the Government or its politicians and bureaucrats.  But, this mandate of government service is inherently unsustainable with a big government model.  That model insists upon rulers with prerogatives and peons who do as they are told.

A Piecemeal Approach to Appropriations is Exactly the Way for Congress to Proceed

We are constantly hearing from most of the media and from Obama and his allies generally that the proper way to appropriate funding for government is to pass an omnibus authorization to continue the massive spending of the government and every current program.  They demand a "clean" continuing resolution that includes the very dirty ObamaCare program with full funding.

They choose to ignore many things in this assertion.  Among them:

• The debt due to this unsustainable spending has surpassed the GDP and will be harder and harder to roll-over.  The debt will saddle the People with much higher interest rates in the future.  Any attempt to increase taxes to pay the increased debt payments and the increases in Medicare, Social Security (retirement and disability), Medicaid, and ObamaCare spending, will slow the growth of the economy enough to result in a decrease in tax revenues.  In other words, only spending less is a possible sustainable solution.  This solution is to be avoided at all costs according to Democrats.

•  It is the job of Congress, especially the House of Representatives, to carefully review spending and only authorize that spending which is constitutional and necessary.  This constitutional responsibility is forfeited in the continuing resolution process.  Only in a piecemeal consideration of government program funding will irresponsible, unnecessary, and unconstitutional programs be ended as they ought to be.  Programs should be examined closely by Congress.  This takes time and effort, which it is all too clear Congress is not up to.  Neither is Obama up to it.  This is a great reason to demand huge reductions in government spending and in the number of programs all by itself.  Giving Congress so much money and so many programs is like giving a five-year-old a house, a gun, and a car of his own and filling the house to the ceiling with hundred dollar bills.

• The infamously named Affordable Care Act is very unpopular with the People.  It is a major source of increased government spending.  This spending will add greatly to the national debt.  Many will push for higher taxes to fund it in the future, despite the fact that higher taxes will result in less tax revenue over time, while lowering our standard of living.  Of course a past Congress passed ObamaCare without reading it and without regard to its many violations of individual rights and of the limited powers given the government by the Constitution.  This does not mean that the present or future Congresses are not obliged to stop the funding for this program if they assess it to be unworthy of funding, unconstitutional, or against the will of the People.  Indeed, if any is the case, then it is Congress' responsibility to stop the program.

So much for the nonsense that only a Continuing Resolution to fund all government programs at present levels is responsible.  Nothing could be more untrue.

What is Missing in the ObamaCare Car? The Chained Driver

So Obama is a used car salesman trying to sell a clunker that somehow escaped the Great Cash for Clunkers Buyout of his first term in office.  Well, I have nothing against used car salesmen in the private sector.  What is missing in this cartoon is the very critical fact that Obama is forcing us to buy this clunker.  And it is not just inoperable, but the buyer is chained to it.

Obama or any would-be tyrant like him controls the chain and they can ration our health care in any way they wish.  Obama is abrogating to himself the power to throw us under the ObamaCare car and kick out the blocks holding it up at his will.  Can you imagine the magnification of his power then?

You vota fer me or I kicka ofer these blocks!

I see you are alive and have diabetes.  Well, you pay 70% taxes or I cut off your treatment, since you have no social value unless you are paying your fair share of taxes. 

Hey, Grandma, you are too old to have social value, so we are going to stand by while you die because you cannot afford the mandated insurance that provides 10 essential health benefits you do not need and still afford treatment of your common elderly health problems.

Maryland Health Insurance Exchange Wants Your First-Born Child

It is difficult to actually find the entry point to start the process of finding out what the health insurance plans are and their costs under the State of Maryland Health Insurance Exchange.  It is very easy to find a great deal of propaganda claiming it is easy to sign up for, is inexpensive, and will deal effectively with all of your medical needs.

Of course, I expect this is all lies, but I wanted to try to learn much more about these issues by going through the process of checking out these claims.  After all, we are told over and over that one of the great things about this federally dictated take-over of the medical industry is that it will all be transparent.  If so, one should be able to easily examine the costs and benefits of plans for people of various ages.

But, the state of Maryland will not tell me anything about costs, benefits, and the various medical networks unless I create an account.  Good luck on figuring out how you even get to the point of being told that you have to create an account.  They say the process of creating an account takes about 5 minutes.

To create an account you have to give them permission to store information on your Internet Domain, your IP Address, your browser and operating system, the date and time of each visit, the pages you visit, and an address from which you link to their website.  Then you must provide the following information, which they inform you they intend to verify:

• Your complete name
• Your address
• Your e-mail address
• Your phone number
• Your Social Security number
• Your Date of Birth

Well I tried to use Next to skip over this, but it refused to allow that.  Without an entry to each of these demands for information, one is not allowed to move forward to see if any of the state's many claims that ObamaCare in the state of Maryland is greater than sliced bread and cheaper than water.  This suggests strongly to me that the People of the State of Maryland are to be put on a medical diet of bread and water.  The system is designed to prevent people from doing any hard investigation into the inadequacies of the system.

Clearly, this system is set up to prevent any one from making up a table on each of the few available insurance plans that provides the benefits of that plan.  It is designed to keep anyone from making up a chart of the cost for a male or female for any age.  This of course is the very thing one would expect of a transparent system, which ObamaCare falsely claims to be.  In fact, one rightfully expects that the exchange itself would present such information this way.  After all, anyone wants to know at this stage whether insurance for their adult children will break the backs of their children and what this dictated insurance might cost them in a few years time.  You will be kept in the dark, however.

Not only does the leaking of only bits of such information for one person at one age make this a murky system designed to protect the propaganda claims of the state and federal government from verification, but it is intimidating.  This intimidation is very intentional.  Big Government wants to collect a database on persons, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and birth dates so that those people who do not buy this mandated insurance can be hunted down and harassed easily.  Now this is not actually allowed in the law, but neither are subsidizes allowed for the federal exchanges and neither are the many exemptions and delays.  This is not a law being enforced with any of the rational requirements of good law or with any respect to the Rule of Law.  So, why should we not expect to be hunted down like dogs if we do not buy this mandated insurance.

So, unfortunately, I cannot inform myself or any readers about what the Maryland benefit plans are and what they will cost.  In the absence of any information and given the opaqueness of the state system, I assume it is as bad as anyone who believes government is mostly incompetent would suspect it to be.  It is definitely on the state to prove otherwise and the state of Maryland is determined not to offer such proof.  Indeed, reports are that the federally run exchanges for the majority of states that would not set up their own exchanges operate on the same principle.  That principle is that the People are too dumb to insist on such knowledge and unable to cope with the knowledge if they had it.

This is a thoroughly un-American take-over of our medical institutions and an extreme intrusion into our most intimate affairs.

It is the Job of the House of Representatives to Stop Excessive Spending and ObamaCare

The federal government is wholeheartedly engaged in excessive spending.  Most of its spending is for purposes that are not consistent with the powers of the federal government as enumerated in the Constitution.  It is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to stop such spending.  One of the most egregious examples of the government violating its enumerated power limits is ObamaCare.

The federal government has no enumerated power to either provide healthcare to Americans or to impose limits on the healthcare they are allowed to choose for themselves.  This is so clear that the the only way that it could survive review by the big government Supreme Court was by five Justices pretending it was justified as a tax, despite the claims at the time of passage by its supporters that it was not a tax.  As I have argued before, such passage of legislation on a fraudulent basis should be sufficient by itself to have a law nullified by the Court.

But most fundamentally, ObamaCare's primary premise is that the government owns every individual's body and mind.  If it did not, it would not be in a position to dictate how individuals care for their bodies and minds.  There are almost innumerable other grounds for rejecting ObamaCare as a tyrannical violation of individual rights as well.

The House of Representatives is required by the Constitution to originate tax or revenue bills.  The passage of ObamaCare itself made a mockery of this requirement since that bill really originated in the Senate.  This was a severe violation of the separation of powers.  The House was chosen as the critical point of revenue bill origination because the power to tax was much feared by the Framers of the Constitution and they knew it to be feared by the People.  They wanted the House which had the most rapid turn-over and could be most quickly punished for its misdeeds by the People to play the primary role in taxation.

Because the House must originate taxation bills, it should be especially concerned to limit spending.  This is the only way, aside from running up the nation's debts, that it can avoid taxing the People at levels which will harm them and slow the growth of the economy.  To avoid the onus of heavy taxation or irresponsible debt, the House must control spending.  ObamaCare is a huge spending bill and it is also a bill which is substantially reducing the strength of the economy and increasing the burden of spending on households, thereby reducing their ability to pay taxes.

Yet despite these natural functions and responsibilities of the House of Representatives, we are being told by people such as Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, and Obama supporters that should the House of Representatives defund the ObamaCare train-wreck and should the Senate and the President then refuse to approve the spending bill sent to them by the House, that it is the House that has shutdown the government.  According to them, it is the responsibility of the House to bow to the Senate and the President on spending and presumably on taxation no matter how irresponsible their spending is.  These opponents of defunding ObamaCare are actually depriving the House of Representatives of its constitutional mandate to be the close guardian of government taxation and spending in the interests of the People.

ObamaCare supporters imply that a bill passed by some previous Congress is binding on future Congresses and all of its spending is also binding on those future Congresses until such time as a future Congress may repeal the entire law.  This is nonsense.  The American Principle is that government should be minimal and devoted to the protection of individual rights.  If the house of Congress closest to the People, the House of Representatives, is taken out of the control of the Democrats and comes to be controlled by the Republicans in large part due to the People's anger over the passage of ObamaCare, it is the responsibility of that House to limit the damage of the rights-violating, spendthrift, and health care degrading bill.  This is the process intended by the Framers of the Constitution.  The natural and responsible way to do this is by reducing its funding or better yet by defunding it altogether.

The Senate and Obama are simply obstructionist when they require that every program they want be fully funded or they will shut down the entire government.  They are failing their responsibility to provide those few functions of the government which are actually constitutionally required of it.  ObamaCare is not actually even allowed by the Constitution, let alone required by it.  Yet the media will insist that the House must bow to the power of the Senate and Obama to spend as much as they wish, no matter what the cost is to the People.

It is time for the People to insist upon the responsible use of their hard-earned tax dollars and upon limits on future debt increases.  It is also time for them to insist in no uncertain terms that ObamaCare is damaging their ability to manage their own medical care and hence is a fundamental violation of the very right to live and of the right to pursue their own happiness.

Dr. Bellar: A Succinct, Humorous Explanation of ObamaCare Folly

Dr. Barbara Bellar, a Candidate for Illinois State Senate, summed up in one sentence much of the sheer folly of the Obamacare operation.  Of course, we now know from the Supreme Court decision that the Unaffordable Care Act is better called the ObamaUncaringTax.  Dr. Bellar is not only succinct, but also quite the comedienne.  Please take the time to enjoy her video:

http://youtu.be/vdnY8r7_fLw

Court Thwarts ObamaCare Attack on Religion

A judge, John L. Kane, of the U.S. District Court of Colorado issued an injunction against the rules of the Obama administration that the health care payment plans under ObamaCare must provide for contraceptives.  The Newland family owns the Colorado company Hercules Industries, which manufactures HVAC equipment and materials.  They are a Catholic family and their company has several hundred employees to which they will have to supply Obama administration approved health care payment plans.  They maintain that this violates their religious freedom and is in clear violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  The Jimmy Carter appointed judge ruled that the Newland family case was sufficiently good that the injunction against enforcement by Obama's administration should be granted until the courts make a ruling in the case.

In the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling, the right of individuals in a corporate association to freedom of speech was maintained.  The Obama administration had claimed that freely associated people in commercial activities lost their freedom of speech.  The Obama administration is now saying that people associated in a commercial activity lose their freedom of conscience or religious freedom.  I do not think that claim will hold up any better with the Supreme Court than did their loss of another 1st Amendment right to free speech.

Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2012/08/federal-judge-in-colorado-issues-first-injunction-against-hhs-mandate-expect-more-to-come/#ixzz22MfehyLP

To be clear, I have nothing whatsoever against the use of contraceptives.  But people who do should not be forced by government to violate their own moral values.  Even religious ideas that I believe are irrational must not be threatened by government, if we are to maintain freedom of conscience and the freedom to independent thought.