When a poor, disadvantaged, misguided, minority person breaks into your home, do you sit him down for a five-course meal, treat the cut on his hand he got from the window he broke, and give him a job mowing your lawn?
Or do you call a cop.
Yeah, I thought so.
“We’ll insure 30 million Americans who don’t have insurance,” Barack Obama said in 2008.
“We’ll insure 27 million Americans,” Barack Obama said in 2009.
“We’ll insure 15 million Americans by 2013,” Barack Obama said in 2011.
“We’ll insure 7 million Americans by March of next year,” Barack Obama said when he moved the deadline in 2013. Again
“We’ll insure 6 million Americans by March 31,” the White House said in last week.
“We’ll insure 2.8 million Americans by 2016,” the White House will say in July.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 48.6 million Americans had no health insurance in 2009, 50% more than Mr. Obama originally promised Obamacare would originally cover. “There are still more people uninsured today than when Obama was elected president,” U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) said recently.
He’s mostly right. 15.4% of Americans were uninsured during the first quarter of 2009. That’s 47.7 million folks. 15.9 percent of Americans are uninsured today. That’s 49.9 million folks.
The Obama administration’s original goal was to enroll 30 million 15 million 7 million^H^H^H 6 million people by the end of the open enrollment period on March 31. Around 20% of those will fail to pay and most of those who do follow through already had had insurance that Mr. Obama cancelled.
That’s today.
Do you have insurance? Today is your last day to sign up.
Do you have insurance today?
45.1 million Americans won’t.
And the hidden gotcha: your premium in 2015 will be significantly higher than those in 2014. Aetna and WellPoint predict that most carriers will raise rates by “double digits.” So will your taxes.
BREAKING NEWS: healthcare.gov was down again for much of March 31 under the crush of the tens of people trying to sign up at the last minute.
How’s That Working Out for Ya?
Blue Cross blew an advertising flier into the Herald yesterday to remind us that the open enrollment deadline is just 28 days away.
Want to know why Obamacare can’t flourish over the long run? Click through to see the slightly crumpled flier. I’ll wait.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury…”
This quote probably originated in Elmer T. Peterson’s 1951 op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman. Mr. Peterson had probably read Democracy in America.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville was a French political historian best known for the two-volume Democracy in America and for The Old Regime and the Revolution.
In 2000, the health policy journal Health Affairs found that the United States spends “substantially more on health care” than any other country. The use of health care services in the U.S. is below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development median by most measures. The study also concluded that the 19 next most wealthy countries by GDP each pay less than half what the U.S. does for health care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that in 2012 U.S. health care spending increased 3.7% to $2.8 trillion, or $8,915 per person. 3.7% is “slowest growth rate on record.” That sounds like welcome news until you look at the real numbers:
1. The official Cost of Living increase is less than half that.
2. Total annual health care spending at this “slow growth rate” will double in less than 20 years, to $17,830 per person.
HOW MUCH $ WILL THE GOVERNMENT
PAY FOR YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE?
And where does “the government” get the money?
The Congressional Budget office estimates that Federal spending on major health care programs will rise from $2.8 trillion in 2012 to $23.8 trillion in 2038. “A trillion here a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
And where does “the government” get the money?
We can’t blame Blue Cross for this; in fact, we ought to thank them for the reminder.
And where does “the government” get the money?
See, the final vote tally for the Obamacare “reform legislation” was 60 Senators plus 219 Representatives. 34 Demorats in the House joined all Regublicans in both houses in opposition. Want to see who would bribe the public with the public’s money? Here’s the blacklist.
Mr. Peterson concluded:
“After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.“
Horse thievery used to was a hanging offense.
Steven Brill wrote in Time Magazine, “Put simply, with Obamacare we’ve changed the rules related to who pays for what, but we haven’t done much to change the prices we pay.”
Banks and post offices are service businesses, same as movie theaters and restaurants.
Liz Arden and I both ordered new phones. Hers is scheduled for delivery today; mine allegedly shipped today. And a laptop SWMBO ordered is sitting at the post office. We can’t pick that up until tomorrow.
“I think FedEx does not necessarily follow bank holidays,” she said.
That’s right. FedEx and UPS both provide normal pickup and delivery service on these national holidays:
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Presidents’ Day
Good Friday
Columbus Day
Veterans Day
Today’s holiday was changed to the third Monday of February in 1971 in compliance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Advertisers morphed the name into “Presidents’ Day” because the federal observance of Washington’s “birthday” must fall between February 15 to 21 and never include Lincoln’s birthday nor Washington’s.
Public Law 90-363 amended the the United States Code to move holidays on Mondays. The Act moved Washington’s Birthday (originally February 22), Memorial Day (May 30), Columbus Day (October 12), and Veterans Day (November 11) from fixed dates to designated Mondays so federal employees could have more three-day weekends.
Members of the Armed Services don’t get three-day weekends.
“Thank goodness they don’t drag me out on Monday mornings,” Phil told me earlier this year. If Candle Mas Day is bright and clear, There’ll be two winters in the year. I guess even Congress was smart enough not to condemn us to a Monday and six more weeks of winter all on the same day.
There was a time, back before you were born, back when I walked to school, uphill both ways, that most companies followed the same holiday schedule as the federal and local governments and that schedule matched actual birth and event anniversaries.
“Not so much any more,” Ms. Arden said. In fact, her workplace has pared official holidays down to New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, the Day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.
They did give back, with three or four “floating” holidays. Some employees use them for celebrations like One Ring of Sauron Day. Others bunch them up around Christmas.
I liked that change as long as they didn’t shortchange us in the process. We’re (mostly) still getting 10 days off which was about the norm I remember. We’re paid for 260 workdays in a non-leap year but we typically work no more than 240 of them and usually have some paid “sick” days as well.
“I do like the flexibility,” she said but it irks her that not to get mail delivery on days she has to work, and the bank is never open on a day when she needs to replace a lost credit card. “I want everyone to follow my schedule, dammit! Except, of course, if I’m taking a holiday I want businesses I use to be open.”
A decommissioned Russian satellite is headed for home and an asteroid the size of three football fields will do a flyby today.
Today is also Rene Russo’s 60th birthday and not George Washington’s no matter what they said in Congress or on weather.gov.
And despite all that, I still need to write a blog and a newspaper column and do laundry.