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    links for 2009-12-11

    • The news of sticker shock to health care premiums under Obamacare had already begun to circulate today when suddenly a bad news cycle became truly awful for the high priests of Obamacare. First the American Cancer Society and other groups noticed that the Senate bill had snuck in the authority of insurance companies to set annual or lifetime benefit caps which shocked some Obamacare supporters.

      And then the roof fell in: The Office of the Actuary in the Department of Health and Human Services issued a devastating assessment of the Senate plan which concluded it would drive overall health care costs higher, that it would lead to Medicare benefit cuts, that its long-term care insurance plan would likely be a costly failure, that 33 million people would remain uninsured after the plan was in effect, and that the cuts to doctors and hospitals envisioned by the plan were unsustainable, and that one in five hospitals would move to unprofitability under the plan.

      (tags: Obamacare)
    • The Reid bill is really tottering now. "If this thing falls apart, you can look back to today as the tipping point," says a Republican aide in the Senate, echoing what Lamar Alexander notes in the Costa post below. First, there was last night's CNN poll showing 61 percent opposition. Then, there was the devastating CMS report today. "Nobody went to the floor that I could see to defend it on the Democratic side," says the aide. The back-drop for all this is the non-deal that Reid hyped as a break-through earlier this week, only to have it unravel almost immediately. Even Bill Nelson says the Medicare buy-in is basically a "non-starter."
    • The Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution released a report today detailing how Americans — including Californians — are opting to stay in the state they live in at the highest rate since World War II.

      "Migration away from areas stretching from San Francisco to San Diego, where high housing prices fueled 'middle-class flight' to the interior West, has now retrenched as home foreclosures rise and job opportunities diminish in states like Nevada and Arizona," according to the report, called The Great American Migration Slowdown: Regional and Metropolitan Dimensions.

      "During the middle part of the decade," the report said, "younger couples and singles with moderate education levels dominated the groups leaving California for lower-cost housing and job opportunities in surrounding states. Now, the state seems to be retaining many of these same groups, particularly younger whites and Hispanics who are married couples or singles, as housing cost pressures ease."

      (tags: California)
    • When the GOP controlled Congress and the White House, many Democrats and their allies in the media complained that Republicans were more interested in pursuing a narrow ideological agenda intended to transform government and society rather than in solving the nation's problems.

      Whether you agreed with that assessment, the charge wasn't completely unreasonable. Tax cuts to strangle government, deregulation for the sake of deregulation and social policy to advance the conservative agenda at any cost (e.g., Terri Schiavo) seemed among the rules of the day, no matter what the problem or the public's desire.

      (tags: GOP democrats)
    • "A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer," reports the AP. The Senate Finance Committee barred annual caps altogether. The merged Senate bill only erases "unreasonable" annual caps. What's "unreasonable?" Hard to say.

      Hill sources explain that this was inserted because CBO said premiums would "go through the roof" if insurers couldn't cap benefits. The official quote from Jim Manley, Harry Reid's spokesperson, says much the same thing. "We are concerned that banning all annual limits, regardless of whether services are voluntary, could lead to higher premiums," he explained. "We continue to work with experts on how best to accomplish our goals of preventing insurance companies from imposing arbitrary coverage limits while providing the premium relief American families need and deserve.”

      (tags: Obamacare)
    • Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

      This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

    • It's hard to imagine a better illustration of the panic and recklessness stringing ObamaCare along in the Senate than the putative deal that Harry Reid announced this week. The Majority Leader is claiming that a Medicare "buy-in" for people from ages 55 to 64 has overcome the liberal-moderate impasse over the "public option." But if anything, this gambit is an even faster road to government-run health care.

      The public option—an insurance program open to everyone, financed by taxpayers and run like Medicare—is intended as a veiled substitute for "single-payer" Canada-style insurance. Under the cover of "choice" and "competition," the entitlement would quickly squeeze out private insurance as people gravitated to "free" coverage and the government held down costs via price controls the way Medicare does now.
      ++++++
      Well, DUH and this is why they did not promote this idea in the begiinning of the health care debate.

      (tags: Obamacare)
  • Danny Tarkanian,  Harry Reid,  Sue Lowden

    NV-Sen: Senator Harry Reid Trails Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian in Latest Poll

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surrounded with doctors, speaks at a health care news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009

    Photo ops with the physicians in Washington above probably won’t help Dingy Harry Reid much in Nevada as he trails his two Republican opponents for re-election.

    • Lowden (R) 49%, Reid (D) 43% (chart)
    • Tarkanian (R) 49%, Reid (D) 43% (chart)
    • Angle (R) 47%, Reid (D) 43%

    Favorable / Unfavorable

    • Harry Reid: 40 / 57 (chart)
    • Sue Lowden: 46 / 32
    • Danny Tarkanian: 49 / 30
    • Sharron Angle: 40 / 37

    But, look at the trend in favorable and unfavorable:

    Can you count Harry Reid out?

    Stay tuned…….


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  • Barack Obama,  Day By Day

    Day By Day December 11, 2009 – Breathless



    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    Amazing isn’t it? One year after a change in government with the election of Democrat Barack Obama as President and the election of Democrat Super majorities in the Congress, Democrats are using end arounds in order to initiate policy change.

    There are so many deep flaws in the “Endangerment Ruling” announced Monday by President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency that it is quite possible the worst of them will escape notice. After all, it’s hard to top the drama of the millions of lost jobs and the crippling energy crisis that will result if the agency begins regulating greenhouse gases — mainly CO2. The agency unilaterally awarded itself authority to do just that with the ruling. But even worse will be the terrible damage this ruling will inflict upon one of the most basic of American constitutional pillars, the separation of powers among co-equal branches, in this case the president and Congress. Obama has launched a thermonuclear warhead aimed directly at the very heart of congressional authority.

    Here’s why: The EPA Endangerment Ruling assigns to the agency authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions not included under that law’s purview. Indeed, when the original law was approved by Congress, nobody said a word about any agency of the federal government telling any business or industry in America how much CO2 it could emit. By now saying the law gives it unilateral authority to declare CO2 dangerous pollutants, the EPA is grabbing power to regulate the 85 percent of the U.S. economy that depends on energy derived from the burning of carbon-based fuels. Those fuels — oil, natural gas, and coal — are heavy CO2 emitters. This ruling thus renders congressional intent irrelevant. If the ruling stands, the law will then be whatever the president and his bureaucratic minions in the executive branch decree, not what the people decide acting through their elected representatives in Congress.

    Remember when the LEFT was moaning about the Imperial George W. Bush Presidency and how the executive branch of government was assuming too much power at the expense of the legislative branch (control of which the Democrats assumed in 2006)?

    Guess separation of powers depends upon who holds control of which branch of government for the LEFT.

    Plus Ca Change you can believe in………

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