Obamacare Whac-A-Mole

The wheels began to come off Obamacare in 2011 when the administration announced that the "CLASS Act," a provision to provide long-term disability care, was, in the words of Kathleen Sebelius, "totally unsustainable," and would be discontinued.

What was the problem? The White House website had boasted: "No taxpayer funds will be used to pay benefits under this provision ... Safeguards will be put in place to ensure its premiums are enough to cover its costs."

"Safeguards." Sounds quaint now, doesn't it? A bit like "If you like your plan ... " So why did the Department of Health and Human Services kill it? Because former Sen. Judd Gregg, R - N.H., had inserted a provision requiring that the CLASS Act be entirely self-sustaining and ineligible for government subsidies. (Yes, wouldn't it be sublime if most laws contained such a provision?) Because it contained neither a mandate to purchase insurance nor a taxpayer subsidy, most of those who enrolled would be those who expected to need disability care. Sound familiar?

At least the administration actually got Congress's agreement to scrap this piece of the legislation. (It was repealed as part of the fiscal cliff deal at the start of 2013.) As for the rest of the law, the administration is flinging whole chapters over the side without so much as a nod toward its coequal branch.

No one can safely plan in this environment. Jay Carney's declarations have a shelf life of hours, not weeks, but the more lasting damage inheres in the idea that the law can be dictated by the White House. The changes are not matters of implementation but structural elements going to the heart of the law. The administration feels free to issue such changes -- though doing so violates (at the very least) the Administrative Procedure Act and arguably the Constitution -- because President Barack Obama has successfully flouted the law since 2009.

Bankruptcy law was ignored in the auto bailout. Secured creditors were undermined in favor of unions purely on the president's say-so. After the Gulf oil spill, the administration, without any authority, summarily ordered BP to set aside $20 billion for restitution. In the pre-Obama world, this would have been the province of the courts. Obama behaved like a dictator, and few protested. He then issued a moratorium on all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico -- again, without authority. The president demonstrated the same contempt for law and procedure when he made flagrantly unlawful recess appointments.

Regarding Obamacare, the administration has issued 1,231 waivers to unions, businesses, trade associations and others. In a display of government by decree, the administration has delayed or altered the law no fewer than 14 times (as of this writing).

After a string of denials, HHS announced that employers would not be required to offer health insurance until 2015 instead of 2014 as the law provides. Next, Obama decreed that small businesses would not have to enroll in online exchanges next year. HHS high-handedly ruled that next year's enrollment deadline for individuals would be Nov. 15, not Oct. 15 (I can't imagine why). After the outcry over canceled policies, the president unilaterally allowed that insurers could go ahead and offer last year's policies. Accelerating retractions and corrections come daily now -- most without legal foundation. Individuals can take an extra week to sign up for plans; those who've had their policies canceled can sign up for "catastrophic" policies. It all depends upon Obama's whim.

This last bit of executive caprice creates the illogical and utterly unjust outcome that people who could not afford insurance at all in 2013 are still subject to the mandate, whereas those who did have insurance but saw their plans canceled are not. The law contains a "hardship exemption" from the individual mandate, which had included the homeless, members of Indian tribes, those who'd filed for bankruptcy within the previous six months and so forth. Now, according to the White House, having your insurance plan canceled because of Obamacare is itself a hardship. They're getting warmer.

The president and his secretary of HHS seem to be playing a federal version of Whac-A-Mole. No sooner do they bat at one problem with the law than another pops up.

This isn't just a problem with Obamacare. It's a dangerous new level of government by decree. Adhering to the rule of law isn't just a tradition -- it is the essence of American liberty and success. Nations without it (look at Egypt, Venezuela or Russia) have difficulty achieving stability and prosperity even though they are blessed with natural resources and other advantages.

Obamacare has thrown one-sixth of the economy into chaos -- with results that are still incalculable. It's even more dangerous that Obama has undermined the rule of law and gotten away with it.

NOTRE DAME PROFESSOR ON OBAMACARE
THE CHRISTIAN POST ^ | 11/20/2013 | Laura Hollis

Obamacare Should Remind Us We Are Not ‘Subjects,’ We Are People Laura Hollis is a professor at the University of Notre Dame November 20, 2013 http://www.christianpost.com/news/obamacare-should-remind-us-we-are-not-subjects-we-are-people-109165/

• Laura Hollis is a professor at the University of Notre Dame

The unveiling of the dictatorial debacle that is Obamacare absolutely flabbergasts me. It is stunning on so many levels, but the most shocking aspect of it for me is watching millions of free Americans stand idly by while this man, his minions in Congress and his cheerleaders in the press systematically dismantle our Constitution, steal our money, and crush our freedoms. • The President, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (with no small help from Justice John Roberts) take away our health care, and we allow it. • They take away our insurance, and we allow it. • They take away our doctors, and we allow it. • They charge us thousands of dollars more a year, and we allow it. • They make legal products illegal, and we allow it. • They cripple our businesses, and we allow it. • They announce by fiat that we must ignore our most deeply held beliefs – and we allow it.

Where is your spine, America ? Yes, I know people are complaining. I read the news on the internet. I read blogs. I have a Twitter feed. So what? People in the Soviet Union complained. People in Cuba complain. People in China complain (quietly). Complaining isn’t the same thing as doing anything about it. In fact, much of the complaining that we hear sounds like resignation: Wow. This sucks. Oh well, this is the way things are. Too bad. Perhaps you need reminding of a few important facts. Here goes:

1. The President is not a king. Barack Obama does not behave like a President, an elected official, someone who realizes that he works for us. He behaves like a king, a dictator – someone who believes that his own pronouncements have the force of law, and who thinks he can dispense with the law’s enforcement when he deigns to do so. And those of us who object? How dare we? Racists! And while he moves steadily “forward” with his plans to “fundamentally transform” the greatest country in human history, he distracts people with cheap, meaningless trivialities, like “free birth control pills”! (In fact, let’s face it: this administration’s odd obsession with sex in general - Birth control! Abortion! Sterilization! Gay guys who play basketball! — is just plain weird. Since when did the leader of the free world care so much about how people have sex, who they have it with, and what meds they use when they have it? Does he have nothing more important to concern himself with?)

2. It isn’t just a failed software program; it is a failed philosophy. People are marveling that Healthcare.gov was such a spectacular failure. Well, if one is only interested in it as a product launch, I’ve explained some of the reasons for that here. But the larger point is that it isn’t a software failure, or even a product failure; it is a philosophy failure. I have said this before: Obama is not a centrist; he is a central planner. And this – all of it: the disastrous computer program, the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, the lies, the manipulation of public opinion, the theft of the public’s money and property, and freedom (read insurance, and premiums, and doctors) — IS what central planning looks like. The central premise of central planning is that a handful of wunderkinds with your best interests at heart (yeah, right) know better than you what’s good for you. The failure of such a premise and the misery it causes have been clear from the dawn of humanity. Kings and congressmen, dictators and Dear Leaders, potentates, princes and presidents can all fall prey to the same imperial impulses: “we know what is good the ‘the people.’ And they are always wrong. There is a reason that the only times communism has really been tried have been after wars, revolutions, or coups d’état. You have to have complete chaos for people to be willing to accept the garbage that centralized planning produces. Take the Soviet Union , for example. After two wars, famine, and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, why wouldn’t people wait in line for hours to buy size 10 shoes? Or settle for the gray matter that passed for meat in the grocery stores? But communism’s watered-down cousin, socialism, isn’t much better. Ask the Venezuelans who cannot get toilet paper. Toilet paper. ¡Viva la Revolución! Contrary to what so many who believe in a “living Constitution” say, the Founding Fathers absolutely understood this. That is why the Constitution was set up to limit government power. (Memo to the President: the drafters of the Constitution deliberately didn’t say “what government had to do on your behalf.”) They understood that that was the path to folly, fear, and famine.)

3. Obama is deceitful. Just as the collapse of the computer program should not surprise anyone, neither should we be shocked that the President lied about his healthcare plan. Have any of you been paying attention over the past few years? Obama has made no secret of his motivations or his methods. The philosophies which inspire him espouse deceit and other vicious tactics. (Don’t take my word for it: read Saul Alinsky.) Obama infamously told reporter Richard Wolffe, “You know, I actually believe my own bullshit.” He has refused to be forthcoming about his past (where are his academic records?). His own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told author Ed Klein, that Obama said to him, “You know what your problem is? You have to tell the truth.” Did Obama lie when he said dozens of times, “If you like you plan, you can keep it. Period!”? Of course he did. That’s what he does.

4. The media is responsible. And had the media been doing their jobs, we would have known a lot of this much, much earlier. The press is charged with the sacred responsibility of protecting the people from the excesses of government. Our press has been complicit, incompetent, or corrupt. Had they vetted this man in 2008, as they would have a Republican candidate, we would have known far more about him than we do, even now. Had they pressed for more details about Obamacare, Congress’ feet would have been held to the fire. Had they done their jobs about Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, NSA spying - or any of the other myriad betrayals of the public trust that this administration has committed, Obama would likely have lost his 2012 reelection campaign. (A fact that even The Washington Post has tacitly acknowledged. Well done, fellas! Happy now?) Instead, they turned a blind eye, even when they knew he was lying, abusing power, disregarding the limits of the Constitution. It was only when he began to spy on them, and when the lies were so blatant that the lowest of low-information voters could figure it out that they realized they had to report on it. (Even in the face of blatant, deliberate and repeated lies, The New York Times has the audacity to tell us that the President “misspoke.”) They have betrayed us, abandoned us, and deceived us.

5. Ted Cruz was right. So was Sarah Palin. The computer program is a disaster. The insurance exchanges are a disaster. What’s left? The healthcare system itself. And this, of necessity, will be a disaster, too. Millions of people have lost their individual insurance plans. In 2015, millions more will lose their employer-provided coverage (a fact which the Obama administration also knew, and admitted elsewhere).

The exorbitant additional costs that Obamacare has foisted on unsuspecting Americans are all part of a plan of wealth confiscation and redistribution. That is bad enough. But it will not end there. When the numbers of people into the system and the corresponding demand for care vastly exceed the cost projections (and they will, make no mistake), then the rationing will start. Not only choice at that point, but quality and care itself will go down the tubes. And then will come the decisions made by the Independent Payment Advisory Board about what care will be covered (read “paid for”) and what will not. That’s just a death panel, put politely. In fact, progressives are already greasing the wheels for acceptance of that miserable reality as well. They’re spreading the lie that it will be about the ability of the dying to refuse unwanted or unhelpful care. Don’t fall for that one, either. It will be about the deaths that inevitably result from decisions made by people other than the patients, their families, and their physicians. (Perhaps it’s helpful to think of their assurances this way: “If you like your end-of-life care, you can keep your end-of-life-care.”)

6. We are not SUBJECTS. (or, Nice Try, the Tea Party Isn’t Going Away). We have tolerated these incursions into our lives and livelihoods too long already. There is no end to the insatiable demand “progressives” have to remake us in their image. Today it is our insurance, our businesses, our doctors, our health care. Tomorrow some new crusade will be announced that enables them to take over other aspects of our formerly free lives. I will say it again: WE ARE NOT SUBJECTS. Not only is the Tea Party right on the fiscal issues, but it appears that they are more relevant than ever. We fought a war once to prove we did not want to be the subjects of a king, and the Boston Tea Party was just a taste of the larger conflict to come. If some people missed that lesson in history class, we can give them a refresher. The 2014 elections are a good place to start. Call your representative, your senator, your candidate and tell them: “We are not subjects. You work for us. And if the word “REPEAL” isn’t front and center in your campaign, we won’t vote for you. Period.”

Laura Hollis is an attorney and teaches entrepreneurship and business law at the University of Notre Dame . She resides in Indiana with her husband and two children.

Finally, someone who thinks like me In this country many people have always talked about the “banana republics” (referring mostly to Central and South American countries), their revolutions, their coup d’etats, etc. But when the governments act like they have in those countries, usually that is the ONLY way to get rid of them. In this country, up to 2008, that was not the case but since then it is rapidly going that route and the natives are not used to it nor prepared to fight it effectively. Most of those natives (and sadly quite a few natives of those banana republics) naively believe in the “checks and balances” which the usurper is quietly but swiftly doing away with.

I repeat Professor Hollis words: “Where is your spine, America ?” In case someone wants to write, her address is lhollis@nd.edu

OBAMA BULLYING NUNS (Part 1)

Townhall.com ^ | JANUARY 7, 2014 | Chuck Norris

PolitiFact has crowned the promoter in chief’s sound bite for Obamacare the “Lie of the Year” for 2013: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” And let me make a prediction that among his top 10 falsehood contenders for 2014 will be a reversal of what he emphatically stated back on Sept. 9, 2009: “Under our (health care reform) plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.”

Indeed, just a few months later, he reiterated to ABC News: “I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill. And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions. And I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions.”

“Sneaking in funding for abortions,” this administration?
Of course, we didn’t have to wait a year before we discovered that federal funds were in fact being funneled to provide for abortive services in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

Then the House and Senate, in secret Sunday sessions, passed an omnibus bill and its provision that overturned the 1988 Dornan amendment, which prevented taxpayer dollars from funding abortions in Washington, D.C. (Tragically, that omnibus bill also appropriated $648.5 million for international family planning funding — an increase of $103 million over 2009 funding — and contained funding for Planned Parenthood and for the United Nations Population Fund, both of which have pro-abortion agendas.)

Of course, there have been many other underhanded pro-abortion moves by Barack Obama’s administration since then, right down to the present. In fact, last week, LifeSiteNews.com ran a piece by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., explaining abortion’s rapid growth and funding in and through Obamacare:

“Rollout of the Obamacare exchanges reveals that many health insurance plans will subsidize abortion-on-demand. For example, the preliminary data suggests that every insurance plan on the Connecticut health care exchanges will pay for abortion-on-demand. In the most recent example, we learned that 103 of the 112 insurance plans for Members of Congress and congressional staff include elective abortion coverage. Only nine plans offered exclude elective abortion.”

(You can go to http://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2013_12-02_floor_flyer_on_member_hc_plans.pdf to view the flier about the nine plans.)

It is clear that there are numerous Obamacare plans that include elective abortion and that billions of taxpayer dollars will be handed out as credits to buy abortion-covering health insurance — a clear violation of the Hyde amendment’s fundamental principle of restricting funds to abortion-subsidizing health insurance plans.

If Obamacare is to encompass the full measure of abortions, Obama knows that he and his cronies must first remove all the stops that prohibit federal funding for the termination of life in the womb. Legislatively, the Dornan amendment was their start. And they will continue to chip away at the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the same through the Labor and Health and Human Services departments — for example, with Medicaid.

Obama knows that if his pro-abortion agenda is to win the war on the womb, his administration must also oppose anti-abortion advocates, and chief among those warriors is the Roman Catholic Church. You know the White House isn’t dumb enough to confront papal power overtly — yet that doesn’t stop it from chipping away at the anti-abortion wall by putting nuns and Catholic contraception views and values in its cross hairs.

On New Year’s Eve, just one day before Obamacare’s mandate forced nonprofit companies and religion-affiliated institutions across the country to provide contraception and drugs that possibly induce abortions in their employee health care plans, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blocked the requirement for a care facility for the elderly, run by Catholic nuns who appealed to the high court for help.

As NPR explained, “churches and other houses of worship are exempt from the birth control requirement, but affiliated institutions that serve the general public are not. That includes charitable organizations, universities and hospitals.”

In response to the nuns’ appeal, the Department of Justice placed the Little Sisters of the Poor in an ethical dilemma in which group members must violate their faith or pay fines. The DOJ argued in legal papers filed last Friday that the nuns don’t have a leg to stand on.

The Obama administration tried to explain that they don’t have to offer contraception and abortion-inducing drugs, as long as they sign a government form that delegates the action to a third party. Without signing that “self-certification” form, the nuns would incur steep government fines.

But Mark Rienzi, who is senior counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, responded on behalf of the nuns to the DOJ’s argument by retorting that government officials “are simply blind to the religious exercise at issue: the Little Sisters and other Applicants cannot execute the form because they cannot deputize a third party to sin on their behalf.”

And where is President Obama — the so-called constitutional lawyer living in our White House — during the whole debate? Coming out to protect the Bill of Rights for the nuns as he has for a number of progressive minorities? No. He’s hiding behind the curtains in the Oval Office, manipulating his minions to follow his pro-abortion biddings.

It is not known when Justice Sotomayor will rule on these ludicrous government actions and violations of the nuns’ personal religious liberty and practice. But one thing we do know is that the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves right now regarding the government’s obliteration of our First Amendment religious rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What an utter constitutional and leadership travesty it is that Obamacare’s promoter in chief repeatedly is breaking this promise: “Under our (health care reform) plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.”

Seeing as our president won’t honor life in the womb, please write or call your representatives to let them know where you stand. Read and hand out my friend Randy Alcorn’s book “Why Pro-Life?” (http://www.epm.org). And then ensure your local community of faith is honoring Sanctity of Human Life Sunday on Jan. 20. The day commemorates the Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion in our country. Since then, more than 55 million abortions have taken place in the U.S.

I will follow up next week on Sotomayor’s next action and where this case goes.

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"It's a dangerous new level of government by decree.
Adhering to the rule of law isn't just a tradition --
it is the essence of American liberty and success."

Well Said !!

"It's a dangerous new level of government by decree. Adhering to the rule of law isn't just a tradition -- it is the essence of American liberty and success."

Well Said !!

"It's a dangerous new level of government by decree.
Adhering to the rule of law isn't just a tradition --
it is the essence of American liberty and success."