ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
With greater power comes greater bureaucracy. According to a June report in The Washington Post, HHS will have to hire hundreds of additional staffers to shoulder its new responsibilities. The department needs brainpower as well as manpower: As it stands, the administration doesn’t have the necessary expertise to carry out its new duties. Edmund Haislmaier, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, points out that HHS “doesn’t know how to do any of this. The federal government doesn’t have any experience running insurance regulations.” Prior to the passage of ObamaCare, that job was left largely to the states, who were given the freedom to regulate—or not—at their discretion. But no more. Essentially, explains the Galen Institute’s Turner, the law forces states to become contractors to the federal government. “States will not be able to do it their way,” she says. “They’ll have to do it Washington’s way.”
But what is Washington’s way? As it stands, no one seems to know. [...] Still, there are clues to what the exchanges will require. [...] According to James Capretta, who served in the second Bush administration as the top budget official for health care, Social Security, education, and welfare programs, “the expectation is that these exchanges are able to do real-time income tests on people.”
Verifying eligibility for these subsidies means developing a rapid-response welfare apparatus that has the ability to instantly create detailed, accurate applicant profiles. “These exchanges will have to verify someone’s eligibility for the exchange,” says the Cato Institute’s Cannon. “They’ll have to verify family size and income. They’ll also have to determine if this person is a smoker. And they’ll have to determine where they live, exactly.”
It all sounds less about your health than about your life, doesn't it?
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Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
"It all sounds less about your health than about your life, doesn't it?"
I fear that's the whole point. They've got to first put us in groups. The group you are in will determine the level of care you will get and when (or if) you will get it. The end result, as the President mentioned, is Grandma gets a pain pill. Next patient please?
I wonder if they can treat Chris Matthews' tingling leg...
Jun '10
Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
If Americans don't hate this enough to rebel, our great experiment in human governance is over, tingling legs notwithstanding.
Aug '10
Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
I believe it is in remission at present.
Dave Carter:
I wonder if they can treat Chris Matthews' tingling leg... · Sep 17 at 1:11pm
Aug '10
Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
Great comments, all. These Washington D.C. power people suffer delusions of grandeur; a conviction that they can control and help (which I doubt many intend to do, but for now, we'll be charitable) 325 million Americans. Our people are a mighty force of nature that aren't going to sit still and have another and more onerous yoke placed on their necks.
I say it's a delusion because there's no evidence to show that the trillions spent by D.C. on the various 'Wars' (poverty, drugs, illiteracy, etc.) have done anything much at all, except damage the so called victims and grow government, increasing tyranny. Consider the state of the black family in America. Demonstrably worse since LBJ.
Aug '10
Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
The local (Austin) paper recently ran a story disputing a legislator's complaint that Americans' body-mass indices (BMI) would be stored by the Feds on a database, possibly to be used to keep fat people from getting medical treatment. No no, insisted this bruise-our-brow-from-saluting-so-much organ of the ruling class: BMI would be stored in the aggregate, not individually. And yet BMI is just a number immediately derived from one's weight and one's height, which surely are individually stored. Pull those two data from the database, and obstructive bureaucrats have the number they want for Y-O-U.
This bothers me for two reasons. One is that the journalists who so famously misapprehended Y2K still know boo about computerization; and the other has to do with Claire's earlier thread about American obesity. It is bad enough that blogging has a fungal relation to the MSM; but it is worse that blogging has no relation to the scientific literature, where much is published on the unmysterious subject of fattiness.
Re: ObamaCare: We'll Know What's in It When We Enforce It
River: Great comments, all. These Washington D.C. power people suffer delusions of grandeur; a conviction that they can control and help (which I doubt many intend to do, but for now, we'll be charitable) 325 million Americans. Our people are a mighty force of nature that aren't going to sit still and have another and more onerous yoke placed on their necks.
I say it's a delusion because there's no evidence to show that the trillions spent by D.C. on the various 'Wars' (poverty, drugs, illiteracy, etc.) have done anything much at all, except damage the so called victims and grow government, increasing tyranny. Consider the state of the black family in America. Demonstrably worse since LBJ. · Sep 17 at 4:33pm
What creeps me out most of all is how all the big-brained, big-hearted enlightenment goes out the window the minute the Sebeliuses of the world start getting pushback. Anyone who dares object to the actual policies crystallized out of hope and change is apt to become the focus of unhinged, inarticulate anger.