Liberal Fascism: Reid Buys All the Votes He Needs for Health (S)care Bill

After the liberty-killing, wealth-stealing health “care” bill passed in the House, people said it will die in the Senate. My thoughts were: I’ll believe it when I see it. And, unfortunately, I was right: In the wee hours of the morning, the Senate got closer to Doomsday. 

The Wall Street Journal editorialized Sunday:

Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

… The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that “reform” has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

***

• Health costs. From the outset, the White House’s core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they’re sticking to that story. “Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills,” Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like “community rating” because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House’s line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed “waste,” even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. “The oft-heard promise ‘we will find out what works and what does not’ scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice,” the Stanford professor wrote.

• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.

This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they’ll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.

Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so “substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance” that companies like WellPoint might need to “be considered part of the federal budget.” …

Read the rest here.

But the health (s)care bill was oh-so important and popular and uncontroversial, that it enjoyed bipartisan support, right? Of course not. Not a single Republican voted for it (Thank God for small favors) and a gaggle of Democrat Senators were so uncommitted that the loathsome Harry Reid had to buy them off (i.e., bribe them) — with our hard-earned tax dollars. President Hope&Change seemed unoffended by this; so much for ending business as usual in Washington:

Payoffs for states get Reid to 60
By: Chris Frates December 19, 2009 07:56 PM EST

Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” as the GOP is calling it, got all the attention Saturday, but other senators lined up for deals as Majority Leader Harry Reid corralled the last few votes for a health reform package.

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more enthusiastic about a bill he said he couldn’t support just three days ago.

Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.

Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Under pressure from the White House to get a deal done by Christmas, Reid was unapologetic. He argued that, by definition, legislating means deal making and defended the special treatment for Nelson’s home state of Nebraska.

“You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It’s compromise," he said.

It was Nelson who proved that he who plays hardest to get, gets the most.

He forced Reid to redraft the bill’s restrictions on federal funding of abortion. And while most insiders were focused on that deal, Nelson was quietly ensuring that his state would never have to pay for the Medicaid expansion being written into the bill – an agreement that had been in the works for weeks. …

Here’s my favorite line from this Politico piece:

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed outrage at the wheeling and dealing, as if their party had never cut a legislative deal in its 150-year history.

Awww, what harm can a little editorializing in a news piece do? But the smarmy Frates misses the point: Sure Republicans have cut deals; that doesn’t make it right either to small-government conservatives like myself. And show me the last time Republicans paid off their buds with hundreds of millions of our dollars to push an unpopular bill through in the dead of night.

And now here come the unconstitutional amendments where these ignorant elitist fascists target capitalism and suppress the workings of the free market:

The amendment mandates that insurers spend no less than 80 percent of their premium revenues providing medical care. Currently, insurers spend about 70 percent of their premiums paying for health care. The bill also eliminates insurers’ ability to cap annual coverage amounts.

In brief remarks at the White House, President Barack Obama also highlighted some new provisions, including penalties for insurers who “arbitrarily jack up rates” and an immediate prohibition on insures’ ability to deny children coverage.

Obama, too, talked of the deals as just the cost of doing business in Washington.

“As with any legislation, compromise is part of the process,” Obama said. “But I’m pleased that recently added amendments have made this landmark bill even stronger.”

Obama, you’re an asshole, a lying, hypocritical, narcissistic asshole. Oh, sorry. Too mean-spirited? Too vitriolic? Tough. Go watch MSNBC or read the NY Times editorial pages. They’re just sooo civil and open-minded there.

Don’t ever let me hear a liberal/Democrat call conservatives/Republicans “fascist” again. This bill is fascism from beginning to end. It is liberal fascism. So much for the pro-abortion movement’s favorite slogan: Keep your hands off my body! This bill puts the federal government in charge of your body from top to bottom. And you fools think this is actually going to make health care better. Your nightmares are only just beginning.

Welcome to the future, suckers.