Obamacare has never been popular. It hasn't even been supported by a majority of Americans.

Things are only going to get worse as it gets implemented, and that has Democrats worried.


Glen Reynolds posts:

KEY DEMOCRATS TURN ON OBAMACARE:

Powerful Democrats who helped write and pass Obamacare subjected the new law’s chief administrator to withering criticism at a Senate hearing yesterday. Gary Cohen, the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, testified before the Senate Finance Committee, and the Democrats on the committee—from its Chairman Max Baucus to Senators Ron Wyden, Bill Nelson, and Maria Cantwell—tore into him. . . .
The about-face of these Democrats is a phenomenon worth pausing over. Many formerly supportive constituencies have grown wary of Obamacare in recent weeks as we’ve learned more about the effects it will have on the health care system. But these Senators’ 180-degree turns are something more severe.
The fate of the Democratic party in America over the next decade is tied to Obama’s healthcare reform. If it is seen to be a success, America could trend Democratic for the foreseeable future. If it fails, liberalism as we’ve known it will take a massive hit. But, so far, support for Obamacare has been waning instead of waxing. Even a recent piece by Talking Points Memo that placed the blame for Obamacare’s potential failure on Republicans noted that the law’s unpopularity with the public at large was the number one threat to its success. Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put some distance between themselves and the ACA.

Obamacare costs more jobs.

Wesley Smith writes:

I never understood the virtue of the Obamacare tax on durable medical equipment and supplies. I mean, if you want to keep prices down, why tax these items, the added expense for which will just be passed along to the insurance companies raising their costs and our premiums? Although, if quasi-rationing is the point, it does have a definite logic: raise prices, reduce demand.

In that regard, the tax has apparently so hurt a medical manufacturer’s bottom line that it has laid off nearly 100 workers. From the Memphis Business Journal story:

Smith & Nephew Orthopedics is laying off an estimated 100 employees in Memphis and Andover, Mass., citing the 2.3 percent excise tax on orthopedic device companies as the reason. Joe Metzger, senior vice president of corporate communications for Smith & Nephew, said the tax is impacting “a number of companies across the U.S.”

What a load of manure. We all know it’s Bush’s fault.

More Obamacare Tomfoolery.

Obama administration is providing an extra short period for public comment for extra complicated health regulations because it didn't want the public to see what it was proposing until after the election.

We had to pass it to find out what was in it, and now we won't find out what's in it until it is being applied to us.

Ha, ha, stupid Obama voters...

...you are about to find out how Obama boned you in the small print of Obamacare.

Here is one doctor's explanation about what that annual free examination you were promised really amounts to:

Now, don’t get me wrong, Obamacare is awful. Forget all the “free stuff” it provides. Children covered on their parents’ plan until 26 years of age? A scam, making young adults — excuse me, children — pay for complete, comprehensive health insurance when all they need and should pay for is major catastrophe insurance. Then there is the “annual ” or “preventative” exam, which according to Obamacare is “free.”

 

You gotta love this stuff. I wish I had the chutzpah of the people who wrote Obamacare. What they did not tell you, and I am, is that it covers absolutely nothing more than the bare minimum.

I have now posted a notice in my office and each exam room stating exactly what Obamacare will cover for those yearly visits. Remember Obama promised this as a free exam — no co-pay, no deductible, no charge. That’s fine and dandy if you are healthy and have no complaints. However, we are obligated by law to code specifically for the reason of the visit. An annual exam is one specific code; you can not mix this with another code, say, for rectal bleeding. This annual visit covers the exam and “discussion about the status of previously diagnosed stable conditions.” That’s the exact wording under that code — insurance will not cover any new ailment under that code.

If you are here for that annual exam, you will not be covered if you want to discuss any new ailment or unstable condition. I cannot bait and switch to another code — that’s illegal. We, the physicians, are audited all the time and can lose our license for insurance fraud.

You, the patient, will then have to make a decision.

Do you want your “free” yearly exam, or do you want to pay for a visit which is coded for a particular, new problem? You can have my “free” exam if you only discuss what Obamacare wants me to discuss.

This happened to me personally, as a patient, when I went for my physical. It is the law. If you are complaining of a new problem, then you have to reschedule, since Obamacare is very clear as to what is covered and what is not. Obamacare — intentionally — makes it as difficult to be seen and taken care of as possible.

Patients can be very tricky. I have had patients make an “annual” exam, only to want to discuss and be treated for another ailment. I can’t do it.

I can hear the complaints from you guys already — I become the bad guy. “Why don’t you just take care of the problem, and not bill out any different code? You’re a rich doctor, and we are entitled to free stuff.”

It doesn’t work that way. First, doctors are not rich and, like most of you, actually work terribly hard for a living. Second, Obamacare is the law — and as I said earlier, we are audited all the time now.

Also — I don’t ask for free gas when I go to the gas station, or ask for free food from the supermarket. Additionally, Obamacare has a 23% cut in Medicare reimbursement to doctors and hospitals.

These lower payments won’t cover the cost of staying in practice to take care of the patient.

Private doctors are becoming a thing of the past. By 2014, less than 25% of physicians will be in private medicine. Obama was right in stating you can keep your doctor if you want to — the problem is he or she will rarely be available.

On top of all of that, doctors will be obligated — that’s right, obligated — to talk to you about things you may have no interest or need to talk about.

You may just want to have a pap smear or check your cholesterol. However, I am now mandated by the government to talk to you about your weight, exercise, family life, smoking, sexual abuse(!), and even to ask if you wear seat belts. And I am mandated to record your answers.

I am a physician. But I need to tell you to wear a seat belt and then record your answer.
I have received interesting responses from my patients since I put up the notice. Almost all are supportive and totally understand. The very few who complain? The same patients who always ask for free samples, who always complain that we do not validate parking. These are also the same patients who call my office and ask for free samples even when they are not even being seen.

Obamacare and its 2,000-plus pages are here to stay. I will still give my patients 100% of my time, energy, and knowledge. I still love being a doctor — my patients’ doctor. I will, however, abide by the law and follow it to the letter. I will have to learn this new dance. “Free” has its price
 

America - Now with more Hope and Change!

Top Obama donor lays off 1,200 employees because of Obamacare.

Obamacare is still vulnerable

According to this Cato report. 

Given its history of avoiding defeat, I'll believe it if I see it.

Living with Obamacare...

...for very liberal temporary attorneys in Washington D.C.

Liberal contract attorneys might want to consider what "live with it" means. Under Obamacare, companies with 50 or more full-time employees either have to provide them with government-approved health insurance policies, or pay a per-employee fine. Further, the fine kicks in at the 31st employee, not the 51st, and it starts at $2,000 per year per employee. It goes up later. Companies, therefore, are discouraged from having full-time employees, or at least 50 or more of them. Hello, part-time employment. Think I'm fucking with you? Think again.

While you're thinking again, start thinking about the industry in which you work. Obamacare, unlike other government regulations, defines a full-time employee as one working 30 hours a week. Every temp agency in town worth a shit has 50 people working "full-time" in any given year under that definition. If you think that temp agencies will give you employer-funded health insurance that meets Obamacare standards (hint: lots of mandates make insurance less affordable), you are delusional. They already didn't offer comprehensive insurance, which was cheaper before Obamacare started affecting rates, so they won't start now. They also are not going to pay the penalty. Margins are too thin. What will the agencies do?

There are only two choices. First, nobody works 30 hours a week for an agency ever again. That probably is an unworkable solution, but it is not unthinkable, given the trend in the industry toward a 40-hour cap on projects. A 30-hour cap would mean more bodies, staggered, but would not be a dramatic departure from the no-OT policy that already governs so many projects. Given the staggering costs of forced health coverage (or penalties), agencies won't consider this option unworkable. They'll think about it, and you'll have to start finding two projects at a time to make a living wage. Assuming, of course, that agencies and the firms that hire them stop enforcing their concurrent employment policies that ban working two projects at a time.

The second choice is, your taxes just got harder. Agencies could deem contract attorneys to be independent contractors and start issuing 1099s instead of W-2s. That means you'll have to make quarterly estimated tax payments for withholding, Social Security and Medicare taxes. Oh, and by the way, it also means you'll be responsible for the employer's half of those Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, as you will now be self employed. Of course agencies will raise your rates to make up for the fact that your share of the payroll taxes doubled while their share disappeared. Don't doubt it for a second. Yeah, you're fucked.

One way or another, you're fucked. Temporary employment as we know it is unlikely to survive Obamacare, at least as it is currently structured. That's not my opinion, that's what temp agency heads said to Congress. I suggest you read the entire transcript. These guys have a pretty good idea of how Obamacare will fuck their industry and, by extension, you.

They are going to scream about unfairness but are never going to figure out why they can't find work.

Obamacare is working as expected...

...by driving up part time employment, which doesn't get benefits.

Charlie Martin writes:

In fact, if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, it’s unlikely that anything has been manipulated — which would be hard to do without being caught anyway — because you can see exactly how the change happened. Here’s the net-net:

•net 114,000 new full-time jobs

•net 456,000 people who left the unemployed list — discouraged or whatever

•net 600,000 people added to part-time workers.

What distinguishes part-time workers from full-time? In general, part-time workers don’t get benefits — like health insurance.

What these numbers seem to be telling us is that it’s too expensive to pay for benefits.

Follow the money; ignore the crony capitalism.

AARP supported Obamacare; profits from Obamacare; doesn't want Obama to mention them in debates.

President Obama invoked AARP to defend his health care law last night, prompting the influential group to release a statement telling him not to do that again.

“While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” the group posted in a statement. “AARP is a nonpartisan organization and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party.”

Obama can perhaps be forgiven for thinking he could mention AARP given how they coordinated with him to pass Obamacare, which is a golden goose for the organization.

“Thanks to its cuts to Medicare Advantage, Obamacare is expected to expand the number of seniors buying “medigap” supplemental insurance plans,” The Washington Examiner explained in an editorial. “AARP controls 34 percent of the market for such plans. According to a 2011 House Ways and Means Committee report, AARP stands to make between $55 million and $166 million from Obamacare in 2014 alone.”

Obamacare - making you complicit in moral evil since 2009.

This is one of those Pelosi "We had to pass the bill to find out what was in it" moments:

Minor children on their parents’ health care plans will have free coverage of sterilization and contraception, including abortion-causing drugs, under the controversial HHS mandate – and depending on the state, they can obtain access without parental consent.

Matt Bowman, senior counsel for the religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, said the mandate “tramples parental rights” because it requires them to “pay for and sponsor coverage of abortifacients, sterilization, contraception and education in favor of the same for their own children.”

The Department of Health and Human Services ruled in January 2012 that most employers who have 50 or more employees must provide the coverage as “preventive care” for “all women with reproductive capacity.”

The mandate also requires the coverage for beneficiaries, including minors, on the affected health plans, Bowman told CNA Sept. 20. That means that a minor on her parents’ plan could be sterilized if she finds a doctor willing to perform the procedure.

“She can be sterilized at no cost,” Bowman stated. “Whether her parents will know and/or consent might differ by state. But the Guttmacher Institute and other abortion advocates explicitly advocated for this mandated coverage of minors so that access without parental involvement might be able to increase.”

The Guttmacher Institute, in a Sept. 1 briefing on state policies, said that an increase in minors’ access to reproductive health care over the last 30 years shows a broader recognition that “while parental involvement in minors’ health care decisions is desirable, many minors will not avail themselves of important services if they are forced to involve their parents.”

The institute, the former research arm of abortion provider Planned Parenthood, said that 26 states and the District of Columbia allow all minors 12 years and older to consent to contraceptive services. At least one state, Oregon, allows 15-year-olds to consent to sterilization.

CNA repeatedly contacted the Department of Health and Human Services for comment but did not receive a response.

Mark Shea asks:

If you are Catholic and voting for this tyrant, may I ask “What happened to your soul? How do square this with all that blather you emit about ‘conscience’ and ‘freedom’ every time you proclaim your brave defiance of the Old Geezer in Rome? How do you reconcile the sheer cognitive dissonance when you chatter about your superior intellect, open-mind and so forth? How, in short, can you sleep at night?”

Tanstaafl! - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch! Canada's "free" health care costs Canadians $11,000 a year in taxes. Which is pretty much what I pay for my family of four, except in Canada, there are two MRI in all of Vancouver and people wait years for medical treatment they can get here in a few days or weeks. Not to worry, under Obamacare, our costs will not go down, but we will get Canada's sucky medical care in record time.

Another rube heard from.

Bart Stupak admits that Obama is violating the phony executive order used to secure his vote for Obamacare.

Math - she is cruel and heartless "biyatch."

Theodore Dalrymple observes the iron law that when things get equally better for everyone, inequality between the highest and lowest grow bigger as a matter of mathematics, not malevolence:

Two considerations arise here, however. The first, as a simple thought experiment shows, is that equality in health is not necessarily desirable in itself. Suppose that the infant-mortality rate in the highest social class is three per 1,000 live births, while that in the lowest is six per 1,000 (approximately the case in Britain today). Then suppose that we could reduce the rate by one death per 1,000 births in each social class, yielding two per 1,000 in the highest class and five per 1,000 in the lowest. A cause for rejoicing, certainly—but not from the point of view of equality, for the ratio of deaths in the lowest class to deaths in the highest class would widen from 6:3 to 5:2—that is, from 2.0 to 2.5. Surely, however, only a latter-day Lenin would reject such an improvement because it increased inequality. Similarly, an increase in the infant-mortality rate of the highest social class, to six per 1,000, would represent an advance to complete equality; but again, no one but a Lenin would wish it.

And then there is this tonic to the Left's infatuation with nationalized medicine:

Horror stories from the NHS also abound, as in this paragraph from the April 10 Independent reporting British patients’ recent experiences with nurses:

Diana watched her father “fighting for breath” and “thrashing around in blood-stained sheets” while five or six nurses “laughed and joked about their recent holidays.” Caroline was told by the midwife who was meant to be helping her through labour that she was busy “eating her biscuits.” Lesley woke up from her operation for breast cancer and was given a drink “reluctantly,” by a nurse who wouldn’t stop reading her magazine. Bronwen, who had open heart surgery, said that there were plenty of nurses “hanging around chatting, sometimes on mobile phones,” but not many who seemed to want to do “their job.” Denis “woke up in something akin to corrective treatment camp” where he saw “elderly confused people being threatened in quiet corners” and patients “being verbally abused.”

These ordeals are far worse than anything that the Labour MP suffered in 1946. Would he conclude from them that state-sponsored medicine was an abomination?

The horror stories in the Independent were relayed to the columnist after she publicized some bad treatment that she had received; in a health-care system employing 1.2 million people, it would be surprising to find no such stories. For every one of those, however, one could probably find another of devotion and good care. My mother was nursed extremely well in the NHS in the five weeks leading up to her death; my 92-year-old uncle was nursed in it abominably before he died. What is clear is that articles like the one in the Independent, though they appear regularly in the British press, leave no trace in Britons’ opinions about their health-care system. Apparently, the NHS was born with original virtue; all other systems partake of original sin.

I've heard similar horror stories about Canadian health care, but I've also heard Canadians express discomfort about ever going back to a private system with its purported higher costs.

This is one reason to oppose Obamacare; it threatens to take away our righ to complain and to get better health care. Witness the inhuman assimilation of individual conscience into a system that would deny the most basic human instinct to take care of one's suffering child:

At a campaign stop in Vancouver, Conservative leader Stephen Harper was asked whether he would access private health care if his children needed medical attention and couldn't receive it in a timely manner through the public system. Harper's forthright answer was that he, like any parent, would do "whatever it takes" to get the proper care for his kids.

A short time later a TV crew caught up with NDP leader Jack Layton and his wife, and asked him about using public and private health care. Layton replied that they would "choose to suffer" (his words) rather than accept private health care.

Upon hearing Layton's words, my first reaction was: "That man has no kids." Like Stephen Harper, surely no parent would sacrifice his child on the altar of the Canada Health Act. Parents sit at bedside softly singing to their child while placing a cool cloth on a fevered brow. Parents bundle their child to the hospital through a January night to get antibiotics for an ear infection. Parents do not "choose suffering" for their kids because of an ideological commitment to a health care system whose waiting lines grow longer and longer and longer.

Perhaps Layton was being genuine. Perhaps, if his wife had cancer and needed a scan, they really would sit and wait for weeks, rather than access a private clinic and obtain the potentially life-saving information within a couple of days. If that choice were only Mr. Layton's, he's entitled to it. But when Mr. Layton "chooses to suffer," that means he chooses for every Canadian to suffer along with him. Mr. Layton, who would undoubtedly sympathize with a poor mother stealing groceries to feed her hungry children, excoriates any parent not stealing, but buying health care to alleviate the suffering of his child.

Here in Manitoba, the NDP government allows hundreds of needy children to go without available dental care because it chooses suffering. Hundreds of seniors live with painful hip and knee conditions because the NDP chooses suffering. Across Canada, thousands ache, and some die, because the Liberals and the NDP choose suffering.

The morning after the Harper and Layton remarks, the radio news item was, "Stephen Harper has come under fire for saying he would use private health care." Have we, as a society, gone so far down the road to collectivism that the suffering of men, women, and children is less important than the sanctity of the Canada Health Act? Do we accept that our governments, Liberal and NDP, have chosen suffering and death for the sake of some theoretical collective good?

Nationalized health care guarantees suffering, and tells people not to complain, lest they be accused of breaching the social compact whereby people let other people suffer, lest their taxes go up.

This is nuts.

Government Health Care and Your Future...

...if you're a women, then not's so much.

Canada's Ontario province won't fund last-chance prostate cancer drug.

There are two tiers of men with advanced prostate cancer in Ontario: Those who get access to a remarkable drug through private insurance, and those who get a death sentence.

The grim news is often delivered at the London Regional Cancer Program to men whose shoulders sag and jaws drop when told Ontario's Health Ministry has for 15 months refused to pay for a medication covered by every other Canadian province.

"There's shock, fury and dismay," said oncologist Kylea Potvin. "Everyone thinks we have this wonderful universal health care system, but this is absolutely not the case. We've increasingly become a two-tier health care system where if you have money, you have access."

The drug Zytiga is a last resort for men whose prostate cancer has spread and who wouldn't benefit from aggressive chemotherapy or even chemical castration.

A pill with few side effects, Zytiga targets an enzyme needed to make a hormone that feeds the cancer and studies have shown it to slow its progression, leaving men living months or even years longer and without as much pain.

It was quickly approved in the United States and by Health Canada.

But Ontario rejected the application, a decision that's left heroic patients such as Percy Bedard of Zurich calling on Ontarians to ask their government why it has abandoned so many men to suffer and die before they should.

Glen Reynolds writes:

(1) They’re men, and nobody cares as much if men die. (2) On average, they’re past their earning years and if they die earlier it helps the pension problem. And men who live too long are just a burden on society anyway.

Expect this sort of thing here, soon, under ObamaCare. Probably with rules designed to discourage doctors from telling patients about treatments the government would rather not pay for.

The Roberts' Obamacare manages to make both the White House and the Judiciary look like morons.

Watch the White House Chief of Staff present himself as a total moron to deny that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare only on the ground that it was a tax.

White House says Obamacare...

...is not a tax.

Because you know who doesn't want to be responsible for levying the biggest tax on the middle class ever.

Who is the liar?

This guy.

The war on Catholicism is still on.

"The Power to tax is the power to destroy."

Moreover, hanging over this controversy like a blinking yellow light in the constitutional sky is Chief Justice Marshall's timeless admonition in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 4 Wheat. 316, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819), that "the power to tax is the power to [*927] destroy." This warning is not only memorable, but it reminds us that might, especially in the hands of government, does not always make right.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Shewry, 423 F.3d 906, 926-927 (9th Cir. Cal. 2005)

Obamacare imposes huge tax on Middle Class.

According to Ann Althouse:

Obama imposes huge tax on the American middle class.

That's the story, right? That's the spin for Romney. What's the spin for Obama?

UPDATE: Drudge points to Obama's assertion, back in September 2009 that the mandate is not a tax.

STEPHANOPOULOS: [I]t's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.
I have said repeatedly that Obama would be worse off if Obamacare were upheld, but what I'm really seeing is how bad it is for him with the mandate declared a tax.

Remember the Democrats got the statute passed by insisting it was not a tax. Now, we learn it is only constitutional because it is a tax. That's got to hurt politically.

ADDED: Romney has at least 3 big arguments:

1. Obama imposed a huge new tax on working people.

2. Obama deceived the American people by saying it was not a tax, when it was.

3. The law made it look like money would go to insurance companies — in the form of new premiums — that would keep premiums low as the companies were required to take on people with pre-existing conditions, but now we find out that the money is really going to go to the federal government. [ADDED: So get ready for your premiums to spiral up and/or for insurance companies to be ruined.]

On the one hand, I'm glad that there is finally some restraint under the Commerce Clause.

On the other hand, I'm tired of being treatd like a rube by the left. They said it wasn't a tax. We knew they were lying back then, but they solemnly told us that we were morons for calling it a tax.

Then, when they needed it to be a tax, a tax it became. They turned on a dime without and embraced a position they had insisted could only be held by dumb-asses. Now they will pretend that their initial position never existed and only dumb-asses could claim that they ever said it wasn't a tax.

Let's make them pay a price in November, if only to stand up for a little thing called "you need to fargin' live in the real world and not in some post-modern place where the truth is what you need it to be this minute."

I blame Roberts for enabling this bullshit.

Now, let's go watch the stock market collapse.

And shut up and eat your broccoli, citizen; it's not a mandate, it's a tax.

The Supreme Court is legitimate; our long national nightmare of a coup is over.

The Supreme Court upholds Obamacare as a tax - which we were told during its enactment it was not.

Chief Justice Roberts has "grown."