Category Archives: democrats
Bill Clinton on Keeping Your Healthcare. Period.
Bill Clinton knows the meaning of “period“.
He took this opportunity to drive the Hillary Machine off the tracks of the ObamaCare train wreck when he said the president should honor his commitments to people who lost their health care.
Easier said than done, considering nearly 5 million insurance contracts have been vaporized.
Clinton on Keeping your Health Care
Anyway here’s the Clinton quotation on CNN:
“So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” Clinton said during an interview with the website OZY.com.
Wonder if he’ll insist the president come clean with the people on the meaning of “what difference does it make“?
Update:
Looks like the king is trying to put it back together again. He wants to use prosecutorial discretion to let people keep their old plans. Howard Dean thinks that’s illegal.
Young Voter Base
The president is punishing his base. Young voters delivered for him in both elections. Their reward is to be asked to subsidize older and sicker voters through ObamaCare. It’s a scheme to spread the wealth from the relatively poor to the relatively affluent.
Can’t say he didn’t give the “young healthies” an important job. If they don’t sign up, ObamaCare could go into a death spiral. Or not.
Carl Schramm in the WSJ cites this Manhattan Institute study:
A Manhattan Institute analysis of Health and Human Services numbers notes that a 27-year-old male will pay 99% higher premiums under ObamaCare than he would under previously prevailing market rates. One reason is that the law now limits insurers to charging the sickest seniors no more than three times the amount they charge their youngest customers. Given that 64-year-olds use on average six times as much health care as 19-year-olds, the Affordable Care Act forces young people to pay considerably more than the cost of their own care.
Young men and women who pay a fine instead of buying coverage are not making an irrational choice. They know how little care they need and use. They also may be beginning to understand that the high cost of their plans reflects the redistribution of their wealth to older people and a bunch of mandated services that don’t make sense for them.
Pottery Barn Rules for Health Care
Back when George W Bush was putting together his coalition of the willing, to kill people and break stuff in Iraq, Colin Powell warned they were under Pottery Barn rules: you break it you own it.
It appears that Democrats have broken the health care system. They transformed it by cramming through the Affordable Care Act, under special rules, on a Christmas Eve, with a completely partisan vote, featuring Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases. Now the thing doesn’t work.
Pottery Barn Rules
Rich Lowry says that rather than try to help fix it, Republicans should let them own it.
Tea Party and Donkey Tracks
President Obama focused blame on Republican responsibility for refusing to raise the ceiling on irresponsible spending. The Tea Party made a brave stand but in the end got stomped.
Update:
I like cartoons that work without words – other than the ones on the flag in this case. Also, I think it’s funnier when a cartoon implies an event that has already happened and the reader gets the punchline when he or she recognizes it.
Obama off the Hook
After redlining himself into a hopeless corner of the Mideast live box, Putin let Obama off the hook. Actually, it was more gaffe than hook.
Kerry’s lame comment about Syria turning over its chemical stockpiles is the basis for the whole thing. At first he walked back his proposal. Then Putin snatched it up, Assad agreed, and Kerry walked back the walk back.
Soon enough Obama took credit for the idea and the party elite swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Next thing we know President Obama was flip flopping like a fish out of water while giving a speech, trying to convince us to hold off on a war nobody – least of all him – wants.
Noonan Nails Obama
Peggy Noonan imagines Putin wants to negotiate with a president of foreign policy stature (like Nixon) but he’s stuck with “a self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy”.
Update: Michael Tackett at Bloomberg covers the whole situation here.
