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Obamacare Rolls On and On

(March 30, 2013 ) Healthcare
Insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under President Obama’s overhaul, the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts has estimated.That’s likely to increase premiums for at least some Americans buying individual plans.

The report by the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act.

While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers.

The disparities are striking. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent for Ohio, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said.

The report did not make similar estimates for employer plans, the mainstay for workers and their families. That’s because the primary impact of Obama’s law is on people who don’t have coverage through their jobs. [Link]

 

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Food Nazis: Whose life is it anyway?

(June 23, 2012 ) Healthcare

Spiked has two interesting articles on eating. One is about the “war against obesity” (newly declared) because fat people, it is alleged, are a drag on the environment and on society.  Body-mass challenged people ought to be compelled to consume less and register at the local gym to work off all their ripples and redundant pounds. Frank Furedi makes short shrift of this policy, which the health Nazis in the U.S. arduously campaign to have implemented, as well, starting with Big Gulps and banana-split milkshakes, among other enjoyables.

The overbearing omniscience of obesity objectors.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/earticle/12558/

Barbara Hewson, in the meantime, asks the question: If a person wants to die, why would the state be so interested in keeping her alive, and be willing to spend a small fortune of taxpayer money to attempt it? Suppose she signed the necessary paperwork in the way of medical directives that would allow her to die on her own terms? Suppose the state overrode her intentions and prescribed a regimen that would kill her in the end? What purpose would be served?  Whose life is it anyway? Has the state first dibs on your existence? Hewson doesn’t answer these questions, but comes close to it.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/earticle/12559/

Very interesting reads.

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Obama’s Legal Minions Name Their Enemy

(June 9, 2011 ) Ayn Rand, Healthcare

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, “may violate the constitution of Ayn Rand, but they do not violate the Constitution of the United States,” acting solicitor general Neal Kumar Katyal told a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday. Conversely, attorney Paul Clement, representing Georgia and 25 other states, framed the issue of mandated purchase of health insurance as an issue of liberty. “Can the federal government compel an individual to take part in commercial activity in order to better regulate that individual?” he asked the judges. [ObamaCare gets put through judicial wringer | Jay Bookman] 

And what does Ayn Rand have to say about the constitution?

The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government. [...] 

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government. [“The Nature of Government”, The Virtue of Selfishness]

The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination. [“Censorship: Local and Express”,  Philosophy: Who Needs It 184]

This view is apparently what the Nihilist’s of the Obama administration disagree with.

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Video: The Doctor Cog in the Obamacare Washington Machine

(June 1, 2011 ) Healthcare, Video

Health Care Reform: Setting Doctors Free [Livestream]

Dr. John David Lewis: Obamacare is a moral assault on free people, and an attack on human life itself.

Government medicine treats doctors as cogs in a giant machine, run from Washington, as if treating patients required no independent thought or action. Twenty-eight states have filed suit against Obamacare, claiming it is unconstitutional. But it is much worse than that. It is a moral assault on free people, and an attack on human life itself. John Lewis has a unique perspective on this issue, both as an advocate for individual rights and as a cancer patient. Don’t miss this hard-hitting lecture on the deepest evil of government medicine.

John David Lewis is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University, and a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University. He has taught at the University of London and Ashland University, and is a fellow of the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. He has a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge. He is an outspoken proponent of free market medicine.

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If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

(May 25, 2011 ) Healthcare

Writes Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner:

[...] If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it? More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare’s biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

[...] Punishing enemies and rewarding friends — politics Chicago style — seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS’ gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors. [Obama skirts rule of law to reward pals, punish foes]

 

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