The Whitehouse is panic stricken over the failure of Obamacare and didn’t just trip and fall on their face this morning. They quadrupled down on their live demonstration of failure.
It was obvious to even an outsider like me that they had no clue what they were doing when they made their announcement this morning. Just what do you think the insiders that know in far more detail are going to say and do? I’m not just talking about people who work for the insurance industry. The insurance industry might be successfully demonized by Obama and friends and made to be the scape-goat for Obama’s mess. I’m talking about all the government regulators of insurance. The insurance industry is highly regulated by the states. While these regulators may not understand or approve of the free market you can be sure that after a few years of contact with the insurance industry they know a thing or two about the industry.
What are these regulators are going to say about these changes? We don’t have to do much speculation. The clues are coming in:
Washington later became the first state to announce that it would not allow insurers to extend their policies. Saying that its state-based exchange was “up and running and successfully enrolling thousands of consumers,” Mike Kreidler, the Washington state insurance commissioner, expressed “serious concerns” about Obama’s move and “its potential impact on the overall stability of our health insurance market.”
“In the interest of keeping the consumer protections we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course,” he said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
That is the “for the public” version. What almost for certain is being said in back channels to representatives in Congress and the Whitehouse is that changes such as these would violate state law. Obama does not have dictatorial powers, as much as he might like to, and he may be able to find some legal loophole to avoid or delay enforcing Federal law upon the beleaguered insurance companies. But he cannot demand insurance companies bypass state processes and laws to make changes he thinks will work. Furthermore these people know the Whitehouse changes are complete nonsense.
Obamacare is like a train. The millions of people who are losing their insurance are the passengers on this train. The train entered a tunnel at full speed only to find the tracks weren’t fastened down (the website being non-functional). But the train can’t stop. It’s still sliding, sparks flying as the wheels get ripped off on the rocks, into the end of the tunnel which could not be dug through the rocks made impenetrable by the laws of economics. At this point there is nothing the supporters of Obamacare can do but watch the crash and attempt to avoid prosecution.
The tragedy is that the politicians responsible for the train wreck made sure they were not on the train. But this should not be a surprise to anyone. Liberals love forcing people onto trains. Obama may say he’s not a dictator but he has a fair amount in common with some of them. The obvious match being dictators who forced other people on trains which carried them to their deaths.
I forget where I saw it, but paraphrased “liberals are getting hit in the face with the frozen flounder of reality.” To the fools that voted for this guy, all I can say is “hope you like the taste of your shit sandwich.” The chaos and lawsuits that will result from this might just set leftists / progressives / socialists back a good long time. I just hope we don’t get many big-givernment (sic) Republicans to replace them. Maybe more Libertarians and Whigs.
Because of the lag-time in these sorts of things, the pain is going to last for YEARS while it all gets sorted out. I hope the body-count isn’t too high.
The thing about train wrecks is that they’re accidents. Unless of course, sabotage is involved, which makes it a case of terrorism. Which is what we got here today. Good ol King Barry, the lil dic…tator.
Avoid prosecution? By whom? Holder? Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, but I can’t imagine Obama’s “Justice” department going after anyone of consequence in this. Unless Obama decides he has to throw someone under the bus. But I doubt he’d take that risk, given the possibilities for what could emerge in testimony.
I like to fantasize about them eventually being prosecuted under 18 USC 242. Maybe 10 years from now it will be more obvious they need to be made an example of.
Any guesses how the Stupid Party will manage to avoid any of the eleventy-dozen possible winning strategies and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again? Pols being the sort that want to be seen “doing something,” which brand of stupid do you think they’ll go for first, rather than trying to drag it out, and let the Senate make the first dumb move and get the heat turned up on Reid?
Maybe they’ll go for Impeachment? That worked out so well for them last time….
Hasn’t someone presented a bill of impeachment (whatever it is called) on Holder?
“…That worked out so well for them last time….”
Translation; “Abandon hope, you puny, ridiculous teatards.”
Only thing is; you wouldn’t be on here trying to demoralize us if we were so puny and ridiculous. You could safely dismiss and ignore if that were the case, but you don’t. That proves you believe we’re a credible threat to your authoritarian ideals.
It’s good to know we’re making you nervous. It shows that we’re on the right track. The hand wring and wailing from the leftist Democrats and Republicans over the emerging libertarian movement reminds me of that quote from Zaphod Beeblebrox, when he was informed that several nuclear-tipped, guided missiles were converging with his ship;
“Man, this is GREAT! We must really be on to something if they’re trying to kill us!”
And if you want to play the distracting game of “your ideas represent a minority of Americans and so you’re puny and ostracized” (as the left claims to support the “little guy”) then we’ll trot out the fact that 34 times as many people bought guns this October than signed up for O-Care. But I’d rather stick to the issue, which is liberty verses authoritarianism.
You make your case for the grace, moral superiority and beauty of centralized authoritarian control through coercion and intimidation and I’ll make mine for liberty. Otherwise go play your games somewhere else.
At this point I’m inclined to give ubu52 the benefit of the doubt. She may just be skeptical the Republicans are savvy enough to take political advantage of the situation. I know have a lot of skepticism at this point.
She may be coming at it from a different viewpoint and just stating a conclusion we agree with without all the baggage you are attributing to her.
Never mind state law, the other minor problem is that what he talked about would violate federal law (his own favorite law). That may be why he described his “fix” as a suggestion rather than a change — he can suggest it but no one can actually legally do what he “suggested”.
Even the liberal TV reporters in Massachusetts pointed out last night that insurance companies are unlikely to be able to do anything about this suggestion — it’s way too late for that. (They didn’t get into the issue that it would be illegal for them to even try.)
Funny thing. He’s asking the insurance companies to break the law, saying “we won’t prosecute.” But what happens if an insurers renews an old “grandfathered” policy that isn’t ACA compliance, then denies coverage for something that isn’t covered under that policy, but would be covered under an ACA policy and the policy holder sues? No insurance company will want to go to court and ask a judge to ignore the clear letter of the law just because captain Zero said they could. So none of them will. Any state insurance commission telling them they have to will put them in a bind. They won’t take it lying down. They have the better sound bites, and the profits to pay for the ads to push their view. This “offer” is nothing more than a poorly thought out attempt at CYA and blame-shifting, but I don’t think the media and the average folks are going to buy it (no pun intended).
“The insurance industry might be successfully demonized by Obama and friends and made to be the scape-goat for Obama’s mess.”
Might be? They already are, and as exhibit A I present my Stalinist Sister-in-law who believes the problem is “Greed”, which apparently includes wanting to spend the money you earn the way you want it, and not rolling over for the taxation program. This is perilously close to the Soviet ideas of counter-revolutionary crime and sabotage for failure to meet quotas.
Curiously, while she jumps for the marionette master about minimum wage and the fast food employees in particular, she sees no contradiction in having an unpaid intern from the local school doing work for her that 30 years ago would have required her to pay minimum wage.
For her, profits are evil unless they are hers.
There will always be unshakable supporters for even the most despicably evil people. My definition of success in this context would be that more than 50% of the voters think the insurance industry is responsible for the failure.
Since the Democrats passed this beast without a single Republican vote, and had no idea what was actually in it, I give the health insurance industry a complete pass. If it is so great as they say, then they should implement it as the law demands; every bit of it, no waivers, no delays, no exceptions, and I will make a fortune selling rope for the hanging of the Democrat traitors.
They want to make me pay for abortions with it, against my conscience, and I say to hell with all of them (where they are certainly going).
Some of this is all by design – what ever it takes to destroy capitalism.