Today, President Obama held a press conference in which he basically tap danced his way around defending his disasterous health care plan. He also offered this crumb from his table:
Insurance compnaies can give customers back their old plan-for one year (until after the 2014 elections, naturally, heh heh). Then the plans go away again.
Great deal, right?
Of course, Obama's main pitch is still that folks can go to the infamous website and "shop around for a better deal".
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/14/rumors-obamacare-fix-president-to-address-concerns-at-1135-am/
This is pathetic. Has he not effectively demonstrated why the government should not take over the health care industry? It is crumbling around him and taking the whole health care system down with it. The only responsible thing to do is for the Democrats in Congress to think of the country for a change and join Republicans in repealing this catastrophe.
And yet, Obama pushes on blaming it mostly on a faulty web site that is being fixed and telling those who have lost their insurance they can try and apply back to their companies to have it reinstated-for a year.
We also learned this week that the government is claiming some 27,000 people who have enrolled on the federal healthcare.gov site and another 79,000 who have enrolled on state sites. That includes an unknown number who have merely put the plan in their "shopping cart". Meanwhile, some 5 million people including one million in California alone have lost their insurance. But now, those who like their insurance can try and get it back from their carriers-for a year.
Maybe the straw that broke camel's back was when even Bill Clinton stepped up to tell Obama that he should live up to his word.
Of course, that depends on what your definition of liking your insurance is.
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12 comments:
He is learning that business are complex and that governments are not very good of imitating them. Government employees, no matter how good they may be, are not as easily held responsible for failures as in business. That means they can only outsource IT and other things to the lowest bidder, the best Powerpoint presentation or the most favored because of the their political contributions or the underdog status. That is the exact opposite of how business works.
Put on top of that an utopian goal of giving everyone healthcare insurance ... no matter what.
Plus, insistence on certain provisions like pediatric care or contraception that many people don't want and certainly don't want to pay for.
There is no thought or provisions in the bill given to the things that would actually reduce the cost of healthcare... like the ability to buy insurance across state lines, some limit on frivolous malpractice lawsuits (lawyers are a big constituency) or incentivize new doctors, medical facilities, etc.
There is a minor detail in Obama's change in the "law of the land". This law was passed by both houses of Congress. The law stands as is. Obama thinks this is an executive order. someone should tell the Harvard law school grad that president cannot change the law passed by Congress, because he has no legal authority. When this scam gets to the SCOTUS hopefull the Roberts will not just decide it is a "Tax", again.
The only responsible thing to do is to pass a comprehensive, streamlined, single payer plan.
@Siarlys
Ahhh Siarlys, you reveal your true Progressive ideological beliefs "The only responsible thing to do is to pass a comprehensive, streamlined, single payer plan." If you like social medicine so well, move to Canada. I understand that Canadians come to America for their serious medical needs, as the Canadian social medicine system delays life saving procedures due to its ineffective management. You can also checkout Great Britian or Scandinavia. Just do it!
I like my plan and want to keep it. I do not need genocological care, contraception, nor coverage for 12 year old children. In fact, I do not need Community Organizers choosing whether I can have a procedure or not. As you know, the Community Organizers are back and they are the new Obamacare Navigators counseling Americans to lie about their financial data (This news is all over the web, not the MSM).
I agree that Obamacare should be canned and I prefer my own plan.
Squid
@ Squid
You put your finger on it. What is a "comprehensive" plan to one person is a burden to someone else. Single payer really means one policy. By keeping insurance companies from competing with each other, the prices goes up. Further they won't tailor or offer policies that you feel are appropriate for you.
Of course if someone else is paying the bill for you, it doesn't matter what is in the policy.
BTW, the Executive does have discretion on what laws to enforce but it is supposed to be based on budget restraints, NOT pure politics. For example they can legitimately ignore parking tickets to have money to go after murderers. But of course liberals use this to accomplish a political agenda.
@ Miggie,
"enforce but it is supposed to be based on budget restraints".
Thanks Miggie! Now I understand why Eric Holder is not deporting "Illigals", not prosecuting Lois Lerner for IRS targeting and Sharing confidential IRS information with SEC, not giving Congress docs. on Fast and Furious, the cover-up of Benghazi and not prosecuting the New Black Panthers.
Squid
@Squid
Glad I could clear that up for you. None of those failures to enforce the laws was based on ideology, they all happened to be based on, ahem, budget constraints.
I don't know how all the conventions the IRS and other agencies threw fit into the budget but they had the resources for them.
This administration is saturated with lies( from the top down), scandals, favoritism, incompetence, and swindles that all blend into a fog of misdeeds that makes it hard to remember them all.
Squid, were you in the dark? It wasn't because I was keeping any secrets. I've been quite open about the fact that I am politically libertarian, economically socialist, and culturally conservative, by which I mean that your right to self expression does not obligate me to view pornography on billboards and advertising kiosks, and that the pro-life movement has every right to urge that abortion is the wrong choice, so long as the police powers of the state are not invoked to compel a woman to make the politically correct choice desired by anyone other than herself.
What I favor, and this is somewhere in the Fousesquawk archives, is a single payer, multiple provider system. I want dozens of different choices in health insurance, ranging from comprehensive coverage (which costs a lot more) to low-premium, high-deductible policies with a health savings account.
Then, everyone can take that coverage and go to any doctor or hospital they want, because EVERYTHING is "in network."
Why don't I move to Canada? Because I'm a U.S. citizen, not a Canadian citizen, and because we can do better than what Canada has now. If you like oligarchic crony capitalism, why DON'T you go live in Putin's Russia?
I mentioned single payer in response to this post because what's wrong with the ACA is that its a hybrid of public policy and bloated private sector profiteering. The two don't mix, although what we should have instead of a quasi-homogenized compromise is rather different, in my seldom humble opinion, than what Miggie advocates.
Complexity is best handled by a free market -- but no free market ever came into existence without public infrastructure and legal framework to make it possible. Our legal framework is not serving us well.
Siarlys,
So has your quest for Affordable Care with Obamacare been proceeding? We want updates.
I'll update you whenever I have a chance Gary. I got an email inviting me to a phone call with President Obama this week. Apparently he wants to hear from me. How many others has invited to talk to him in the same 30 minutes remains to be seen. If I get a chance I'll tell him the same thing I've been telling you:
1) We need the ACA, so by no means should it be cancelled due to people who need the coverage being run through a maze by a misbegotten web site.
2) It was incredible hubris to think a computer program could make final decisions. A human being needs to be involved once the basic data is typed in.
3) Tweaking over the next three years needs to open up a lot of additional options to suit individual tastes and requirements.
4) I want to see all the fine print on each policy available to me, not a quick list of large-print bullet points.
(In case I don't get a chance to speak on the phone call, possibly someone from the NSA will pass this comment along.)_
Siarlys,
I got the same email. Gimme a break. You'll probably get a recording or Obama talking with David Axelrod asking him a couple of set up questions.
Duh-uh.
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