All the President's Demons
The president has attacked the enemies of ObamaCare as "well-financed forces" and "those who are profiting from the status quo." So Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner put in calls to the White House and to Obama's group Organizing for America to ask who, specifically, these vaguely defined enemies are. They didn't return his calls.
So Carney went spelunking for answers on his own:
A prime suspect "profiting from the status quo" would be the industry within the medical sector with the highest profit margins, namely the drug makers, which averaged 16.5 percent profit margins last quarter.
But the drug makers have been team players. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Researchers of America, the largest industry lobbying group in the country, is shelling out $12 million for pro-"reform" ads this summer and fall. Obama has bragged that "even the pharmaceutical industry" is on board.
Doctors? Nope. Obama said in Portsmouth, "We have the American Medical Association on board."
The obvious culprit remaining is the health insurance industry. Why, then, don't Obama or the DNC name the insurers, and their lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, as the "well-financed forces" profiting from the status quo. Is the president just being polite?
More likely the president doesn't want to name the health insurers as enemies because the industry is lobbying for most of the Democrats' plans—especially the subsidies for private insurance and the proposed mandate that everybody buy insurance. The industry dissents on only one proposal: a government insurance option.
For Obama, a nameless enemy is more useful because it allows people to imagine whatever "well-financed forces" they like as the enemy….Obama, in "The Audacity of Hope," described himself as "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Today, through his rhetoric, Obama has created a different blank screen, one on which he invites his allies to project not their hopes but their fears and resentments.
If you're thinking that this is exactly what the opponents of ObamaCare have been accused of doing—whipping up public paranoia about shadowy elites while serving elite interests themselves—then all I can say is: Yeah, I noticed that too.
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Obama is Jonathan Crane?
If Stalin knew what was being done in his name, he’d put a stop to it. Stalin is on the side of the Workers and Peasants.
Anyone know where the picture accompanying the article comes from?
That’s the Grand Overlord Wizard of the Libertarian Party grinning as he eyes his feast of puppies and candy stolen from children.
Honestly, looks like a demonic Mad Hatter but doesn’t look like American McGee’s style. Probably stolen from DeviantArt. Jesse, you thug.
This is demonist. I’m calling the NAADP.
Something to remember, the AMA purports to represent all doctors, but in fact only about 25% of all doctors are members. And, then there are all the NDs, chiropractors, etc. who are also not represented by the AMA. And, many of the AMA members are only members because they are required to be by the hospitals or clinics who employ them. And, there are active movements within state medical associations to “deunify” from the AMA.
I like how he finally gets a response from Organizing for America by some commenter who throws out more talking points. He signed the comment as a rep for them, that should be good enough to quote them.
Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be “well financed?” I’m supposed to be making a profit on this whole deal?
Why didn’t anyone tell me this?!
I got my check. The first thing I bought was a new top hat and monocle, and I hired a whole new staff of servants.
Ranilen,
Anyone know where the picture accompanying the article comes from?
Heir. Via the ridiculously useful Tin Eye search engine.
Pro Lib,
No gold plated rocket car? How modest of you.
Caption Contest!
“I’m Nancy Pelosi and I approved this message.”
I’m old money, Naga, and must eschew ostentatious displays.
Uh, you guys know that’s just a painting of Count Warty, right?
Pro usually reserves the gold plating for important things like toilet seats, dogfood bowls and kitchen countertops.
My Status Quo Profit check must be lost in the mail. Maybe they don’t have my new address.
Gold plating is so gauche and all-too typical of the urban rabble.
Kiss my ring, boy.
The insurance mandate is going to kill this thing.
Mandatory auto insurance is one thing – you can live without a car, and auto insurance isn’t too expensive.
Mandatory health insurance is like a tax on living. People will freak when they find out about it. I can’t see it passsing without a major public backlash.
I think you are right Hazel. Bachus wants to find people who don’t buy insurance. That is not going to go over well.
Uh, you guys know that’s just a painting of Count Warty, right?
No it’s not. Where’s his conjoined twin, Episiarch?
“No it’s not. Where’s his conjoined twin, Episiarch?”
Conjoined twin? I thought it was gay lover or is that Sugerfree?
“Heir”
I KNEW it was Harry Reid!
John, I wouldn’t touch either of them, even with your dick.
Conjoined twin? I thought it was gay lover
It’s both, actually. “Keeping it in the family,” you know. They are horrible people.
Mandatory auto insurance is one thing –
that should not be tolerated either.
-JT
Suger Free,
My dick will fuck a lot, so that is a bold statement.
Noted.
Apparently, there’s a not-quite SFW video of Episiarch having sex on the Internet.
For Obama, a nameless enemy is more useful
He and his minions have named the enemy repeatedly. Maybe you weren’t listening. They vilify “for-profit insurance companies,” the villains here being not the companies but the profits they make. As usual, it all boils down to altruism: the notion that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that nobody has a right to profit on others’ health-care concerns. It’s standard Democrat boilerplate.
The insurance mandate is going to kill this thing.
Would there be a contientious objector clause for Amish people? I’d like to see you force them to get insurance, English.
“Mandatory auto insurance is one thing – you can live without a car, and auto insurance isn’t too expensive.”
Auto insurance is also what REAL insurance is supposed to be about – insurance against the risk of some future catastrophic event.
Auto insurance is not about pooling the costs of ordinary maintainence and operating costs. It does not cover oil changes and gasoline bills, ect.
It also does not penalize low risk drivers by forcing them into the same risk pool at the same rates as applies to those who drive like they are participating in a demoliton derby.
Nor does it allow individuals to call up Allstate or Geico AFTER they’ve had a wreck, demand they be sold a policy that retroactively covers the cost of fixing their car.
The health “insurance reform” the Dems are trying to jam down everyone’s throat does the equivalent of all those things.
“He and his minions have named the enemy repeatedly. Maybe you weren’t listening. They vilify “for-profit insurance companies,” the villains here being not the companies but the profits they make. As usual, it all boils down to altruism: the notion that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that nobody has a right to profit on others’ health-care concerns.”
Yet strangely, none of them seem willing to operate their personal lives on a non-profit basis.
What Gilbert Martin just said is exactly right. All of it.
I think that demon just ate a Javan Mohawk Pelosi Bird. It could be a rough night for him, what with all the wretching.
none of them seem willing to operate their personal lives on a non-profit basis
Behold the Limousine Liberal.
I think that demon just ate a Javan Mohawk Pelosi Bird
The Botox will kill it for sure.
Hey joe
Where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?
What a load of bullshit. The people who are profiting from the status quo paid shitloads of money into Obama and Hillary’s campaign coffers because they’re licking their chops at the prospect of health insurance being made mandatory.
-jcr
Mandatory health insurance is like a tax on living.
Complete with the IRS policing whether you’re buying medical insurance or not. Seriously, the proposal on the table is pretty goddamned evil.
-jcr
It also does not penalize low risk drivers by forcing them into the same risk pool at the same rates as applies to those who drive like they are participating in a demoliton derby.
I was going to add that the progressive young hipsters who voted for Obama are likely the very same people as the young, healthy, and uninsured, who are now going to be forced to shell out money to pay for private health insurance they never wanted.
“I was going to add that the progressive young hipsters who voted for Obama are likely the very same people as the young, healthy, and uninsured, who are now going to be forced to shell out money to pay for private health insurance they never wanted.”
Uh huh. That is the funny thing about this. Everyone talks about how they want to help the “uninsured” and how they also want to control costs. Well, the uninsured are not the cost drivers. Old people are the cost drivers. And the uninsured tend to be young.
So, when they mandate that people buy insurance, what they are doing is mandating that the young and healthy pony up to pay for the health costs of the old and sick.
Now that isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I mean the young and healthy will be the old and sick some day. But, good idea or not, that is not what the hippster doofuses with their Hope posters thought they were signing up for.
Obama, in “The Audacity of Hope,” described himself as “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
::double take::
He really described himself as a blank screen? I mean, I think that’s spot-on, but can’t believe anyone but a moron would say it about himself.
When you cut through all the crap about “healthcare reform”, the bottom line is that what it’s really all about is stealing money from people who earned it to give it to people who didn’t.
Just like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SCHIP, welfare, food stamps, farm price supports, etc. etc.
But, good idea or not, that is not what the hippster doofuses with their Hope posters thought they were signing up for.
Caveat emptor, bitches. Too late for buyer’s remorse now.
Studies also show that preventative treatment doesn’t bring health care costs down in any meaningful way, so what exactly is the justification for the mandate?
Everyone also seems to forget that we only mandate auto liability insurance, ensuring that you cover the damage you cause to other people in the case of an accident. If you don’t socialize the cost of health care, there is no liability to speak of, and even that base level justification for a mandate evaporates.
Tulpa,
You can see it in context here. I don’t think it’s that bad of a statement–he seems to be just saying that he’s going to catch hell from someone by putting down specific positions in the book, since as a “blank screen” he’s been heretofore all things to all people.
On the other hand, I think that’s exactly all he brought to the table in his campaign. He coveted the blank screen position and played as evasively as possible with where he’d really try to go as president.
He really described himself as a blank screen?
He said that he appeared as such when he came onto the national scene. It was in the context of saying, essentially, “Now I’m going to tell you some of my positions, and it might alienate some people who assumed I was on their side.”
I see Pro Lib got there first.
On the other hand, I think that’s exactly all he brought to the table in his campaign. He coveted the blank screen position and played as evasively as possible with where he’d really try to go as president.
Like constantly voting ‘present’…..
OK, I understand. I could see saying that in an off-the-top-of-your-head response to a question, but putting it in a book that you have every opportunity to reflect on how it will be interpreted, quoted out of context, etc, before publishing it? He seriously needed to calibrate his words better, methinks.
I would’ve phrased it differently, myself.
Projection, thy name is ‘Progressive’.
“I hear this argument all the time in conservative circles and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. The reason auto insurance doesn’t cover oil changes is because it is extremely unlikely that failing to get an oil change will lead to an accident or damage that the insurance will have to pay for. Auto insurance does pay for preventative repairs such as windshield chip removal, which allows them to pay less than they would to replace the entire windshield when the chip grows into a crack.”
No auto insurance doesn’t cover oil changes or gas because there aren’t enough people (or any people) who are voluntary willing to collectivize those costs and therefore there isn’t any company offering such a product.
Auto insurance only pays for windshield repair IF the insured purchased the particular component of auto insurance that covers that – which costs extra. Auto insurance consists of liabilty coverage, collision and comprehensive (the windshield repair part). No one has to purchase either collision or comprehensive unless they choose to do so.
A free market for heatlh insurance would not offer only policies that did cover all that “maintainence”. People who are healthy and have the financial means to cover the routine health “maintainence” type costs on their own could purchase a high-deductable catastrophic coverage only policy and save money because they would not be lumped in with all the high maitainence people.
Just as some drivers are higher maintainence, some people are as well. People who put 100 K miles a year on their truck towing motor homes are going to have a lot higher gas an maintainence costs that somebody who most just drives 10 miles a day back and forth to work.
In the same way someone who has a chronic illness such as diabetes is going to have a lot higher maitainence costs than someone who is perfectly healthy. It behoves the healthy person to NOT get into the same group and same type policy as the people with chronic illnesses.
Hey, Tulpa:
Where’d you find auto insurance that covers brake shoe replacement? And don’t tell me that failing to maintain one’s brakes isn’t likely to directly result in an insurance covered incident.
A free market for heatlh insurance would not offer only policies that did cover all that “maintainence”. People who are healthy and have the financial means to cover the routine health “maintainence” type costs on their own could purchase a high-deductable catastrophic coverage only policy and save money because they would not be lumped in with all the high maitainence people.
That may well be true — what I was responding to was the belief that health insurance somehow isn’t really insurance, which is poppycock. When it’s profitable to do so, both auto and health insurers pay for things that reduce the chances of a larger payment in the future. This is not just evident in direct payment for some service but also in auto insurance discounts for attending defensive driving classes, etc.
Party on Garth,
I’d be willing to bet that less than 1% of auto accidents are caused by lack of maintenance. That’s simply a risk calculation made by auto insurers that more money will be lost by paying for maintenance (or forcing customers to have maintenance done) than will be saved.
You’ll note that health insurance also doesn’t cover many things the whose lack can lead to coverable health problems: sunscreen, vitamins, gym memberships, well-fitting shoes, etc.
“That may well be true — what I was responding to was the belief that health insurance somehow isn’t really insurance, which is poppycock.”
Free market health insurance is real insurance.
A system where people are forced to buy insurance against their will or insurance companies are forced to provide coverage for all sorts of things mandated by politicans or forced to take people with pre-existing conditions whether they want to or not and not charge them any higher rates for doing so is not real insurance. It is a welfare entitlemnt program.