Ready for another chilling Halloween video? This one was produced by the Heritage Foundation and features an interview with Senator Mike Lee: about (you guessed it!) ObamaScare!
Heritage makes light of a deadly (literally for some people) serious subject, as noted by DrewM, Thursday Morning at AoSHQ:
I’ve occasionally been tough on the GOP (no, it’s true) but I don’t know how they stand by and watch millions of hard working Americans get screwed like this and do nothing. And let’s be honest, some of these people are going to die because of Obama’s lies and quest for power. Can you really give the GOP grief if they try and protect these people? Even if it means a lousy political outcome for them and the country. It’s a brutal situation to be in.
In someways having the GOP have just enough power (control of the House) to take some of the blame but not enough to actually do anything will prove to be the best thing that happened to Obama. In the long run, it will likely be terrible for the country.
So here is the game: the White House wrote regulations to insure that the maximum number of people were terminated from their old policies, thus intentionally breaking its oft-made promise.
The White House and Democrats now wish to claim it’s the insurance companies who are doing this.
And the insurance companies are being told to shut up and take it — or else….
And since the US government is now their largest insurance customer, they have to take it. “The customer is always right.”
How did they not see this coming???
Why did they agree to play ball with him in the first place? Didn’t they realize they were sealing their own doom?
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare’s Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies.
Three years ago, when insurers and other companies had the audacity to expose Obamacare’s damage to their customers and workers, Sebelius brought out her brass knuckles. Remember? As I reported at the time, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates because of the new mandate’s costs. Obama singled out the company in a “60 Minutes” interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem “justify” its rate hikes to the federal government.
A private company trying to survive in the marketplace was forced to “explain” itself to federal bureaucrats and career politicians who have never run a business (successful or otherwise) in their lives. Sebelius went even further. She called on Anthem to provide public disclosure of how the rate increases would be spent — a mandate that no other private companies must follow.
In an even more heavy-handed effort to suppress criticism, Sebelius wrote America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association of health insurers, “calling on their members to stop using scare tactics and misinformation to falsely blame premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act.” The threatening cease-and-desist letter commanded: “I urge you to inform your members that there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases. … Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.”
And of course, the type of thuggery Sebelius has been engaged in is par for the course in Obama’s Gangster government.
Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.
You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.
Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning
Simple, no?
It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?
Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is testifying before the House Energy & Commerce Committee, today about the ObamaCare debacle. Rep. Fred Upton chairs the committee and Rep. Henry Waxman serves as Ranking Member.
As expected, Democrats are circling the wagons, blaming insurance companies, hinting that a government run healthcare system is the way to go. Republicans have been reading letters from bummed out constituents…
Putting out videos is the very least they should be doing. Now would be a very good time to be presenting to the American people an alternative to this trainwreck.
Not that it isn’t fun watching the Regime squirm.
The debate on the O’Reilly Factor, tonight was whether or not Obama knew when he was making that promise over and over and over again, he was wrong. O’Reilly thinks that Obama simply chose not to know the gory details in order to retain some degree of “plausible deniablity.”
But Krauthammer thinks Obama did know. He said that after meeting him twice, it is his impression that Obama is fairly informed about these things, and he went on to note that Obama had no problem telling the absurd lie that Benghazi was a demonstration about a YouTube video that had gone wrong.
Obviously, O’Reilly is missing the boat, here. The NBC News story has already established that the Regime knew. Would his policy wonks have him go out there and mislead the public over and over and over again, without saying, “er Chief? Might want to stop saying that. It’s going to come back to haunt you…”
And a salient point they both missed that Acekeeps making is, the HHS regulations that are causing people to be dropped from their plans can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time.
Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn’t want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.
That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.
O’Reilly is under the impression that the Obama administration is imploding – this health care roll-out is a huge debacle for them, and the media is no longer reporting like the obedient lapdogs they’ve been for the past five years. The Regime is unraveling (or something.) He had Bernard Goldberg on to talk about the huge lack of credibility Obama (and his spokes-thing Jay Carney) now has with the public. Asked if he thought Jay Carney was serving the American people well, (as his salary is paid by the people), Goldberg answered, “no”. Jay Carney only serves one person, and that’s Barack Obama. It’s a disgrace.
Yet they stumble on… knowing damn well that after Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS and DOJ scandals – they can get away with pretty much anything.
Check out this Politifactfrom October 2012, (keeping in mind that they ruled Obama’s promise that “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it”, half true)
Under scrutiny, here: Mitt Romney’s bold assertion, “Right now, the (Congressional Budget Office) says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year.”
Romney said, “Right now, the (Congressional Budget Office) says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year.”
That number is cherry-picked, and many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today “lose” coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.
Actually Romney and the CBO were pretty accurate in their prediction.
When we have a media this corrupt, and in the tank for a party, it’s over. We don’t have a fair and impartial media – but worse – we have a populous that doesn’t seem to mind being lied to.
A plurality of Americans know they are being lied to, and the Regime doesn’t care… They’re either people he has nothing but contempt for, or they’re his Alinskyite supporters who accept the dishonesty with a wink and a nod because they know ends justify the means.
Those people Obama dropped off their plans? They’re mainly self employed or early retirement people (mainly Republicans). Obama gets to kill two birds with one stone – move us toward Single payer, and punish his enemies.
Obama has grown the dependency class to the point where any Republican running for President is going to have a built in uphill – nearly impossible, battle. The man knows exactly what he’s doing.
The Republican plan to deal with ObamaCare as far as I can tell:
Step 1: Run in 2014 on repealing it.
Step 2: Win the House and the Senate.
Step 3: ?????
There is no plan out there yet that congressional Republicans have unified behind. Which is unforgivable because they have had five years to work on a free market alternative to Obamacare. You know what would be a huge win for the Republican party, right NOW? If they had a free market based plan that they could announce to the public that doesn’t dump people off their insurance plans and doesn’t cause premiums to skyrocket, with a respected Republican like Paul Ryan, who has credibility on both sides of the isle, explaining it. They could capitalize on the massive FUBAR failures of the Obamacare rollout, and the confirmation that Obama is a lying SCOAMF, and win the American people (who were never in love with ObamaCare to begin with) over to our side. Instead, I predict they are going to be too paralyzed with political fear to remove all those new Democrats off of their brand new subsidies…
If they manage to win both Houses in 2014, they’ll likely just nibble around the edges of ObamaCare because Obama will still be president who will veto anything they come up with.
In the meantime, they have found time to work on Amnesty which would put the nail in the coffin of their political viability.
You could say, I disagree with O’Reilly that the Regime is “unraveling.” They’ve been in worse fixes, and with a helpful and compliant media, and a weak opposing party, they’ve managed to bounce back easily.
Here is Krauthammer predicting yesterday, he thinks ObamaCare is going to “collapse on its own.”
I wish I believed him. But I don’t. I’m pretty sure the remedy for this mess is going to be more government. The demonization of the private Insurance companies phase has already begun. It will intensify, next year.
MORE:
Neil Cavuto summed up the feelings of millions of Americans, today onYour World: One Too Many Promises Broke:
Obama, trying to redistribute the courage of George W. Bush when he pursued the “surge” in the Iraq war, announced that he’ll lead a “surge” in the ObamaCare website fixes. We’ve hesitated to say why this is the exact wrong thing to do as we don’t want our dear leader to enjoy any success from our comments. But, he and his ilk are products of the public school and have stopped reading by this point.
A little trivia about your host, Karl. He has an extensive background, both Fortune 500 and in startups, in the management of complex software design, development and maintenance. A technology project manager, Karl will tell you that a “surge” is stupid. Here is why:
Unlike construction or other infrastructure projects, technology projects accelerate when the technology team(s) is reduced in size. If a construction project is running late, an option is to add more drywall labor, roofers, or whatever labor-intensive task is presenting a long duration to the project timeline. In software development, especially in business-process automation (vs “dot com”) projects like a national health insurance exchange, it is the opposite. Layers of decision-makers and swarms of developers only compound duration forecasts as they add layers of communication and responsibilities to a project. The failures of the ObamaCare website are in direct relation to the failures of a “surge” mentality within the project team. And the project team is only reflecting the inefficiencies consistent with a government operation. The only solution to fixing the ObamaCare website is the only option our dear leader and his like-minded minions will never do: streamline the team and their responsibilities, flatten the team to just one or two levels of management, and empower the lower leaders of the team to make decisions in real-time. In other words, treat the project as a private-sector company would. – See more at: http://blog.ushanka.us/2013/10/status-report-obamacaregov.html#sthash.EFStwxvZ.dpuf
Obama, trying to redistribute the courage of George W. Bush when he pursued the “surge” in the Iraq war, announced that he’ll lead a “surge” in the ObamaCare website fixes. We’ve hesitated to say why this is the exact wrong thing to do as we don’t want our dear leader to enjoy any success from our comments. But, he and his ilk are products of the public school and have stopped reading by this point.
A little trivia about your host, Karl. He has an extensive background, both Fortune 500 and in startups, in the management of complex software design, development and maintenance. A technology project manager, Karl will tell you that a “surge” is stupid. Here is why:
Unlike construction or other infrastructure projects, technology projects accelerate when the technology team(s) is reduced in size. If a construction project is running late, an option is to add more drywall labor, roofers, or whatever labor-intensive task is presenting a long duration to the project timeline. In software development, especially in business-process automation (vs “dot com”) projects like a national health insurance exchange, it is the opposite. Layers of decision-makers and swarms of developers only compound duration forecasts as they add layers of communication and responsibilities to a project. The failures of the ObamaCare website are in direct relation to the failures of a “surge” mentality within the project team. And the project team is only reflecting the inefficiencies consistent with a government operation. The only solution to fixing the ObamaCare website is the only option our dear leader and his like-minded minions will never do: streamline the team and their responsibilities, flatten the team to just one or two levels of management, and empower the lower leaders of the team to make decisions in real-time. In other words, treat the project as a private-sector company would. – See more at: http://blog.ushanka.us/2013/10/status-report-obamacaregov.html#sthash.EFStwxvZ.dpuf
Nice Deb 