Obamacare Daily Round-Up 08-23

The Gormogons have read HR3200!
Here is their take on pages 501-600.
Here is their take on pages 601-700.
Here is their take on pages 701-800.
Here is their take on pages 801-900.
Here is their take on pages 901-1,017.
And here is the summation.
You can get their take on pages 1-500 at their website archives listing or here and here in mine.

"White House Adds $2 Trillion to Deficit Forecasts" from The Washington Post. I wonder how they will spin this. The article starts with the need to borrow the $9 Trillion we'll need over the next 10 years. How about WE DO NOT SPENT NINE TRILLION DOLLARS? How about we tighten our belts and pay our debts off before our creditors (China) use it as a means of our own destruction.

Byron York over at The Examiner explains "Why Democrats may jam through health care plan."

The Washington Post explains why Obamacare is wrong, here, in a post titled, "Illegal Health Reform."

John C. Goodman has Wall Street Journal op-ed up titled, "Explaining the Town-Hall Protests, Our 1.1 million signers include cancer survivors, seniors, and others who are very well informed."

The Heritage Foundation has an article up on their website titled "Missing the Facts on Townhall Concerns." The article basically clears the air on three of the largest concerns private citizens have about Obamacare and why the press and Obama's claims that these concerns are unmerited are wrong.

This Boston Globe article offers all America a glimpse of our future by detailing the failure of Massachusetts's mandated healthcare program to improve healthcare spending. Yet more proof that governments can't run businesses and shouldn't ever try.

Massachusetts has the most expensive family health insurance premiums in the country, according to a new analysis that highlights the state’s challenge in trying to rein in medical costs after passage of a landmark 2006 law that mandated coverage for nearly everyone.

"Obama Plays the God Card" according to Andrea Tantaros' piece up here at the Fox News blog. Did Obama and his acolytes ever stop believing he was god?

The LA Times shows it got its journalistic instincts from The Big Book of DUH with this article titled, "Obama's healthcare messages are backfiring, strategists say, The president's range of abstract arguments for reform are leaving people confused, some Democrats contend."It should be patently obvious that Obama is drowning in his own flailing spin on Obamacare because it is such a bad idea. Bad policy begets bad strategy. And by the way, why is strategy more important than actual good idea?

Jim Towey from the Wall Street Journal explains how Obama resurrected "The Death Book for Veterans." Don't our Veterans deserve better. President Bush thought so when he crushed this book that was written in 1997 but Obama has this death-fixation (dead babies, dead grandmothers, Death Panels, dead everyone really)... Mr. Towey also talks about this death book, here.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

The above is from the always excellent Mark Steyn in a post titled, "Why the Stimulus Flopped
Under Obama, nothing is certain but death panels and taxes." Sure it's under the heading of stimulus and not Obamacare but why should we drive ourselves deeper into debt when the policy that was supposed to take us out of recession has so massively failed?

"The Peasants Are Revolting" No, we're not disgusting, we are protesting Obamacare and all the other ugly socialist policies being crammed down our throats.

Here's a solution to protesting Obamacare - Send In The Marines! "Marine goes nuclear on Democrat over ObamaCare." There's video too!

Being the New York Times means never having to say you're sorry. Well, yes you do. Here JustOneMinute points out several retractions the NYT has reluctantly been forced to make.

Moe Lane at his webside here points out that more people want OUT of (failing) Social Security than want in, 49% to 37%. What do you think the percentages are of people who want in to Obamacare?

Is there a need for Obamacare when both life expectancy and obesity are rising in tandem? Meghan McArdle over at The Atlantic wonders if something isn't wrong with the modeling. Yes, Meghan, garbage in, garbage out - that's all computer modelling is.

Charles Lipson over at the Chicago Tribune is promoting an inexpensive solution to healthcare reform that I've been supporting as well (here), "Let insurance companies compete across U.S." From his article...

The easiest way to see how insurance competition benefits consumers is to look at auto insurance. That's a huge, nationwide market and companies compete intensively for a share of it. Some stress their low prices, others customer service, whatever gives them an edge in the marketplace. Geico and Progressive have been especially aggressive in touting cost savings. State Farm and Allstate certainly compete on price, but they stress service after an accident. That's why Allstate says "you're in good hands," and State Farm says it will be there "like a good neighbor." Other companies, like SafeAuto, focus on drivers who want only minimum coverage to meet state license requirements. In short, auto insurance companies compete vigorously to provide what different consumers want, and they tell them so in national advertisements. Life insurance companies do the same thing. There are even companies that specialize in comparing policies for customers. Competition drives down excess profits and means better, cheaper options for consumers.

Ever see an ad touting health insurance? They are rare because the markets are small and companies don't need to compete aggressively on price or service. Introducing such competition would be good for consumers, wouldn't require another Washington bureaucracy and could be done quickly.

Obviously, small changes like this wouldn't solve the myriad problems with America's health-care system. But modesty can be a virtue. In fact, Americans typically favor incremental steps to solve big problems rather than top-down, technocratic plans, which are far more common in France or Germany.

"Feminists And Health Care: Leave My Uterus Alone?" I think the title alone summs up this RiehlWorldView blog post.

Gotta love this guy! "Web extra: Congressman Herger calls Obama plan 'threat to democracy'" is the headline of an article run in the Mount Shasta News (in California!). Sweet.