This is Only the Beginning

Investor Business Daily has a marvelously excoriating piece of commentary and research on the soon-to-be impact of the FacistCare passed into law on 3/21.

A few of the nuggets of gold here, but the whole article is well worth reading and sharing.

"6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
...
13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can't (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).
...
15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b))"

The best part?

When taxes are raised on the industries we pay for health care, who is that passed on to?

Consumers, the little guy, us, ect.

So the price goes up for the insurance companies making the payments on such taxes across the board, as does the price the government has to pay out for its medical welfare system.

Where does that money for the government come from?

Taxpayers, the little guy, us, ect.

So the price goes up for Americans on both ends, and the government has yet another civilization decaying arm to tattoo with the destroyed wealth of Americans.

1x1100, New Look

Well, its been a long voyage, but this fair blog has reached 1,100 posts.

Thats a lot of me pecking a keyboard, and a lot of ya'll reading these said pecks. I really appreciate your comments, they make it worth the time to run a blog of this sort.

In the words of Joel of Seventh Sola,

"Yikes, what happened to your blog template?"

Well, after 4 years of the same color scheme, and one that was starting to hurt my eyes, I decided it was time for a change.
Since Apple and Google seem to have great luck with White backgrounds, I'm trying that out. Orange is a pretty accent color, so thats the other one.
Any thoughts and critiques or complaints on it would be most welcome!

If you're interested in the further blogging adventures and a laugh, check out Grumpy Old Men, a co-oporative blog of Ect run by some crazy old timers and one youngin'.

Old man Dingell Comes Down From the Mt. With Wisdom

"The Honorable John D. Dingell" of Michigan, the longest serving congressman in the US house and the 3rd longest serving in US history.

Since 1955, he has taken his life to DC to represent western Detroit, crusading for nationalized health care as his calling card. At the beginning of every session, he has produced a bill that would lead to such a result, and this must be one blisteringly wonderful payoff for his years of slavish dedication to the facist ideal.

"It takes a long time to administer the necessary steps...to control the people"

Atlas Shrugs Once Again, Congress Harms America

AP: "Summoned to success by President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage.

Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote. Republicans were unanimous in opposition, joined by 34 dissident Democrats.

Obama watched the vote in the White House's Roosevelt Room with Vice President Joe Biden and about 40 staff aides. When the long sought 216th vote came in — the magic number needed for passage — the room burst into applause and hugs. An exultant president exchanged a high-five with his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel."

The fallout from this will be catastrophic in every sense imaginable. A balanced budget can go to hell. The constitution be damned. Every citizen of the United States can die in line at a government institution that has only yet begun to wallow in the mire of government bureaucracy. The kids we birth today will be raised in an nation where the rights of man are those granted solely at the discretion of society, a world where the government serves not the people, but its own ends.

A society where men and women are elected to govern the theft of labor and wealth to encourage and subsidize the parasites of nations. Those who prey upon the productive to survive in futility.

This is what we have once again come to, Fascism at the hands of a legislature. Fascism paid for by naught but borrowed and printed money in manner that is empirically and entirely untenable.

Mr. President, you have once again demonstrated your supreme, constant and overriding desire to ruin my country, and scar its face to a point where it is an insult to the United States to call this America any longer.

The Sword of Arrogance

Looking at the data from a recent Gallup Poll, the Obama administration is now surrounded by a nation rife with disapproval and steadily reducing approval rates, even to the unusual point of having more disapproval then approval.

For an elected official, this is untenable. To what end does the Democrat party and Barrak Obama persist in pushing this health care take over?

Unions? Campaign donations from the Medical establishment? The will of the voters? Personal vendetta? The animal spirits? Its baffling, but I am more sure now naught good will pass the legislature then before.

But in the long run? This may be the rock upon which the Democrat party shatters itself for the coming decade.

Pharmaceuticals to push Obama-Care

Politico: "The drug industry, which has held off running ads until officials sign off on the final reconciliation bill, is growing more comfortable with the emerging legislation and is preparing a substantial pro-reform ad buy in 43 Democratic districts, according to a senior industry source. The amount and timing of the buy have not yet been set and hinge largely on action in the House. Still, the development is a substantial step forward from Monday morning, when industry officials, coming off a tough weekend of negotiating with Democratic staffers, said there were no ads in the works. The movement should also help appease the White House, which has been leaning on the industry to provide Democrats air cover, according to industry sources."

History has witnessed this before, and it appears my generation will see this again.

When government muscles in on the private sector to improve things, only the biggest players in the market benefit. The Railroads and Airlines are beacons of warning in this regard.

Why would the drug companies be in favor of this kind of legislation?

A. They can set prices without competition. In the market place where a motley assortment of customers demand medication, there is at least a modicum of price competition. Reduced though it may be because of patent legislation, it is by far superior to a single payer government system. What this boils down to, do we want to pay through the ears in taxes for medication, or have some competition in drug prices?

B. With a government take over comes stalled innovation. Why spend money on Research and Development when a single payer does not demand it? Even if there is demand, there is no incentive to improve upon medication, because the wheels of federal bureaucracy move slowly, and the contracts are not fluid.

In essence, legislation like Obama-care is a gold mine for Pharmaceuticals. They can charge more for existing medications, and avoid the expensive and risky proposition of further research.

IRS Pursues Tax Evaders. The Really Big Ones.

Sacramento Bee: "Arriving at Harv's Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. "They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending," says Harv's owner, Aaron Zeff.

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff's on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was ... 4 cents.

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv's with an obligation of $202.35."

Government priorities, obviously in the right order.

And to borrow a thought from a commenter,

'Why did they send 2 agents? So they could get their two cents worth!"

Still, I would like to see this man, our Secretary of the Treasury, visited by the IRS agents he controls:

WSJ.com:
"According to Mr. Geithner, he initially failed to pay payroll taxes on income he received from the International Monetary Fund in 2001, and then repeated the error in the three subsequent years, despite the help of an accountant. Apologizing to the committee, he took responsibility for what he called "careless" and "avoidable" mistakes while insisting they were unintentional. He acknowledged signing an IMF statement at the time that he understood he had been reimbursed to pay those self-employment taxes, adding that he should have read the statement more carefully."

1 Pixel = $1Mil

(Click to Embiggen)

(H/T to www.dvorak.org/blog)

"All of the sudden 100 billion doesn't seem like much, and Bernie Madoff looks like an angel compared to the people who approved this waste of taxpayer money"