2nd Grand Obama Policy Deception

Well we now have proof that a second of President Obama's accomplishments is based on a big fat lie. First we learned from Jonathan Gruber, the economist and consultant paid $400k to help create and sell Obamacare to the American people, that we were intentionally deceived. As reported by Marc A. Thiessen in the Washington Post on 17 Nov 2014, "...there are now seven Gruber videos, in which he mocks the “stupidity” of American voters and boasts of the Obama administration’s ability to take advantage of it. In a new video that surfaced Friday, Gruber explains that the Obama administration passed the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value employer health plans “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we know it’s a tax on people who hold these insurance plans.” Americans would not support a tax on individuals, so “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on the higher prices . . . it ends up being the same thing.” The ruse, Gruber says, was “a very clever . . . basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

Now we have an Obama Administration official admitting that the people (and Congress apparently) were lied to regarding the Iran Nuclear Deal. In a New York Times profile of Obama Administration National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Rhodes himself details the level deception and lies told to the country in order to get support for the deal.

If progressive ideas are so good, why do they so frequently require some initial lie? The power of propaganda!

An Idea for Real Healthcare Reform

One of the many flaws of the Affordable Care Act is that it increases demand for healthcare but does nothing to increase the supply of healthcare providers i.e. doctors.

An important metric of the strength of a country's healthcare system is physicians per capita which is usually given as the number of physicians/1,000 of the population. According to the CIA World Factbook and similar references, the U.S. had 2.45 physicians/1,000 population in 2011. The left loves to point to European countries as examples for the United States to emulate. For example, France has a physicians per capita of 3.19, Germany 3.89 and Switzerland 4.05. America's number is even less than Uzbekistan's 2.53. Obviously, physicians/1,000 of the population is only one indicator and doesn't tell the whole story but it is significant. 

An important factor in the shortage of doctors in the U.S. has to be the high cost of medical school. Typically, a new American doctor starts his or her career with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. To help alleviate this problem, I propose the creation of the Civilian Medical Training Corps which would be modelled after the Reserve Officer Training Corps or ROTC.

CMTC would offer promising American students a full scholarship to a civilian medical school in exchange for five years of service in an underserved region of the country or perhaps a VA hospital. After that, the doctor would be free to practice medicine anywhere they chose but would still be required to donate their time one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year just like a military Reservist. An additional benefit would be they would also be available during times of crisis such as natural disasters. The students would be selected through a national competitive exam. So how much would this program cost? A quick check of the numbers follows.

In order to increase the physicians per 1000 to 3 it would require an additional 170,500 doctors. To do this in 10 years means 17,050 doctors per year at a cost of $3.41 billion which is a little less than 4% of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $87.4 billion annual discretionary budget. To raise the physicians per 1000 to 4, the cost would be $9.61 billion or about 10% of the annual discretionary budget. This seems to me to be a worthy use of HHS funds.

Would this proposal significantly improve the healthcare system in America? I guaran-damn-tee you it will have a more positive effect than Obamacare's fiddle farting around with the insurance system!

Do Nothing House or Do Nothing Senate? You Decide!

Amid the growing Veterans Administration scandal where allegedly veterans were placed on secret waiting lists and at least 40 reportedly died before receiving treatment, the highly partisan, do nothing, obstructionist, Republican-lead House of Representatives (paraphrasing President Obama here) passed a bill 390-33 to give the Secretary of Veterans Affairs the power to fire anyone found responsible for gross violations. Perhaps something like, oh I don't know, creating secret waiting lists to get the number of those awaiting treatment down in order to meet department goals and receive bonuses? The bill was passed yesterday with both Democrat and Republican support. It was only 3 pages long but when it went to the US Senate, it was immediately tabled. The Senate didn't have the time. Understandably, Senators are very busy and have many issues competing for their time so they have to use their judgement to prioritize what they act on. So what was a higher priority for the US Senate than fixing the Veterans health care crisis? Well for 50 of the 100 Senators (all Democrats), it was writing a letter to the NFL urging them to force Washington Redskins owner, Dan Snyder, to change the name of his football team. Keep in mind, Congress has no say or responsibility for dealings with a private business like the Redskins. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a self-proclaimed socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, explained that they didn't have time to hold hearings or read the bill - the 3 page bill! That didn't stop them from passing the Affordable Care Act without reading it. So have the Democrats learned their lesson or are their priorities just out of whack or both? I'll leave it to the reader to decide for themselves. I think you can guess my position. In the meantime, perhaps some money should be invested in Evelyn Wood Speed Reading courses for all the Senate Democrats so they can get through those pesky 3-page Republican bills coming from the House. But that's just me!

If Obamacare is so good...

If Obamacare is so good, why:

    Did the president delay implementing it - oh but only the employer mandate - the average "Joe
    Smo" has to buy health insurance which in most cases has gone way up in price;

    Is everyone is calling it a "train wreck" even Democrat members of the House and Senate;

    Did members of Congress quietly exempted themselves and their staffers before going on August
    recess;

   Did presidents of 3 of the largest unions - the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the United
   Food and Commercial Workers International Union and UNITE-HERE, a union representing hotel,
   airport, food service, gaming, and textile workers - write President Obama a letter urging him to
   delay implementing it;

  Does the non-partisan CBO (the Congressional Budget Office) continue to estimate the cost of the
  program will skyrocket, and

  Did they have to change the wording on the official Affordable Healthcare Act website from "if you
  like your current doctor, you can keep your current doctor" to "if you like your current doctor, you 
  may be able to keep your current doctor." and "if you like your current healthcare plan, you can
  keep your current healthcare plan" to "if you like your current healthcare plan, you may be able to
  keep your current healthcare plan".

If this is only a train wreck, America will be very lucky!

Sebelius Delivers First Obamacare Death Panel Ruling

Sarah Murnaghan is the 10 year old Pennsylvania girl who is dying of cystic fibrosis because there are no child organs available for transplant. She needs a lung or she will die in 3-5 weeks but government regulations say she must be 12 years old in order to be placed on the adult transplant list. At a Congressional hearing yesterday, legislators from Pennsylvania pleaded, no literally begged, Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius to use her authority to grant an exception. She refused. It may have only been a panel of one but in the case of Sarah, Kathleen Sebelius gave the first "death panel" ruling.

Liberals wince and claim to hate to have to make life and death decisions such as this but in reality, they relish the power and control. And they love to be able to do this under the cover of government bureaucracy. "Sorry, rules are rules, you know. Nothing I can do about it."

Is this a vision of things to come under the Affordable Care Act? Did it make any difference that the Senators and Congressmen speaking on behalf of Sarah, were Republicans? Cynical of me to ask I know, but in this current scandal-rich environment, one has to wonder. I heard a radio talk show caller ask a very interesting question - something to the effect of "Why does the president with his 'If we can save just one child, we need to act.' when it comes to gun control, not apply the same reasoning when it comes to saving this one child?"

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Democrats and the media derided Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin for calling the rationing boards that would be instituted under Obamacare "death panels." You may not like the language but the results are the same regardless of what they are called.

I think Shakespeare expressed it best when he wrote:

                        "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
                          By any other name would smell as sweet."

The IRS Debacle Widens and My Paranoia Grows

I'm sure many readers of my last posting where I closed by raising a concern that the IRS will be the agency enforcing parts of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare were thinking, "Mac has gone paranoid on us. There's no reason to think anyone will be treated differently." However, today we learned that Sarah Hall Ingram, the same IRS official who was in charge of the IRS division responsible for vetting tax exempt status applications during the period when it improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for unfair, unusual, and illegal additional scrutiny has since moved on to be the head of the IRS division responsible for enforcing the individual mandate of Obamacare. Those under her will determine, among other things, who gets fined for not buying health insurance. I kid you not! Now who's paranoid?

IRS Scandal Just Another Example of Lack of Leadership

The IRS scandal which we are learning more and more about despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration to downplay it and blame 'low-level' employees is yet another window into Barrack Obama's lack of leadership ability. IRS employees in the Cleveland, Ohio office reportedly were delaying the approval of tax exempt status for groups they believed to be Conservative. It is also alleged that they passed confidential tax return information on to liberal groups to use as political ammunition. The story itself is significant and I will opine on that as well as the other major scandals that have all come to light in the last week soon but for now, the leadership implications are what I would like to address.

What was our first clue that our president and his fellow travelers don't understand what leadership is all about? For me, it was their claim that the president was 'leading from behind'. Unless one is a dogsled musher in the Iditarod, there is no such thing as leading from behind. Another indicator that Obama and those around him know little about leadership is their 'go to' response whenever they are faced with a problem: "We just learned about (insert the name of the latest scandal here) from news reports and it appears to be the actions of a few low-level employees." They say this as if it somehow absolves them from responsibility or accountability. I can only assume their logic is 'We can't be held accountable for every single person in our charge and you can't expect us to know everything that goes on in such a large organization.' Unfortunately that isn't how leadership works. As many a commanding officer in the Navy have found out much to their chagrin, the leader is responsible for the actions of subordinates, not only as a result of the direct orders they are given by their commander, but also for the implied direction that results from the 'command climate' established by the person in charge. If the leader has made their opinion on a matter clear to their subordinates or presented a position of indifference on a subject and a problem occurs as a result of an underling acting on the superior's perceived desires, then it is indeed the leader's fault - period!

From the minute he emerged onto the national political stage, Barrack Obama has demonized those who disagree with him politically. He has referred to political opponents as enemies and has falsely accused Republicans, Tea Party members, Conservatives and those for smaller government of wanting to starve children, throw granny over the cliff, let kids with autism fend for themselves - not to mention wanting dirty air and dirty water. When coupled with liberals' propensity for an 'Ends Justifies the Means' approach to governance based on their sense of moral superiority, it is easy to imagine an entrenched 'true believer' bureaucrat confusing the command attitude for policy and singling out 'enemies' for special attention. That may very well be what happened in this case but as one can see, the leader is responsible just as sure as if a direct order was given. This may also explain but not forgive the second part of their standard excuse. Since subordinates believe they are doing the bidding of their leader, when there is a problem, it never gets reported up the chain of command. Why would it? It is policy from the top, right? Or perhaps is doesn't get reported out of fear of being thrown 'under the bus' by those in charge. There are certainly enough examples of this to make it a legitimate concern.

If the scope of the problem remained confined to just those few employees in Cleveland and the president accepted responsibility and took action right away instead of trying the pass the blame, this incident wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, as we learn more, we are finding out this isn't the case. Hundreds of people and organizations are now reporting that they received similar unfair treatment, making the Administration's low-level employee claim appear to be not only the result of poor leadership but also the intentional actions of scores of leftist at multiple levels in the IRS 'doing the right thing.'

Is it any wonder why Conservatives are concerned that the IRS is the government's enforcement agency for Obamacare? Could information from your tax return (e.g. what charities you donate to - an indicator of your politics) determine whether you get treatment or that pain pill candidate Obama talked about?