The White House is quietly implementing a shrewd new strategy of silence on Obamacare. Its goal: making sure the revolt against the unpopular health care overhaul that swept Republicans into power across the country in November 2010 isn’t repeated in 2012.

After two years of nonstop focus on health care, the president has stopped talking about the law’s far-reaching effects. Now he is concentrating on a few micro changes. Meanwhile the administration is working hard to dampen controversy by handing out buckets of waivers and attacking Republicans over Medicare. …

Our country’s future will be determined by what happens in 2012. The American people tried to tell Washington in every way they could that they strongly opposed Obamacare–from town hall meetings, marches on Washington, and electing Republicans to office in very blue states, to creation of an entirely new political movement. Washington didn’t listen. Now the White House hopes we will forget.

That’s why it is so crucially important that Obamacare not slip to a second-tier issue in the political debate. The threats to our liberty, our economy, and our future prosperity could not be greater.

Read the whole article: The American Spectator : Obama’s Strategy of Silence.

Soon, the Department of Health and Human Services will require all new insurance plans to cover birth control, breast pumps for new mothers, counseling on domestic violence, and many other essentials. Women will not be charged co-pays, thanks to these rules that were required by the Affordable Care Act.

It’s easy to get discouraged by the grinding nature of debates in Washington. But Monday’s news reminds us that our hard-earned victories reverberate for years, and they improve tens of millions of lives. Despite the inevitable frustrations, we continue our fights because our causes are worth the effort. …

One victory at a time can change lives. One single part of Health Care Reform means huge protections for women’s health.

Here’s the details from what’s perhaps one of the scariest domain names ever: Healthcare.gov.

What if government taxed everyone to pay for breast pumps and birth control, regardless of if you use them?  This is a socialist financing scheme, which currently exists for government run schools.  The Health & Human Services’ mandate on all new health plans (“insurance”) to cover breast pumps and birth control is just one example of how the 2010 health control act turns insurance companies into a vehicle for socialized medicine.

Also note that breast pumps and birth control fall way outside the realm of what real insurance is supposed to be.  For homeowners insurance and car insurance, you never want to make a claim. That means something undesirable happened.  You’re insured against undesired events. Sure, becoming pregnant can be undesired, but (rape aside) can only happen if you choose to be sexually active.

In this sense, birth control is itself a type of insurance, but to mandate that all health plans cover it is like mandating that all health plans allow policy holders to buy condoms.  Why stop there?

How about requiring all health plans to cover protective expenditures like bike helmets and new brakes on your car?

Also note that Mr. Palacio considers birth control and breast pumps to be “essential.” This is odd given that most discussion of universal politically controlled coverage that Democrats want assumes that all medical care is a life-or-death emergency.

The bigger point is that insurers should be free to sell health plans that cover such items, but not be forced to.  What should be the penalty for selling such illegal plans that don’t have these mandates? Companies in MA were fined for doing so, even though certainly some customers wanted the plans free of costly mandates.

(Via Ari Armstrong)

[T]he governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. …

The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless. …

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life …

Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.OK, then what? You’ll roll it back – like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel’n'dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter?

Read the whole article: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats.

(Via FIRM)

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is pressing colleagues to use a procedural tool known as reconciliation to pass health-reform legislation — and to include the controversial public-insurance option in the bill. …

“Much of the public identifies a public option as the key component of health care reform — and as the best thing we can do to stand up for regular people against big insurance companies,” said the letter, which so far has garnered signatures from six other Senate Democrats.

The last, desperate gasp would be to use an arcane procedure known as reconciliation to pass health care reform with just 51 votes. But doing so would require Senate Democrats to overcome all manner of procedural hurdles. Reconciliation cannot be used for policy as opposed to budgetary issues. That means Democrats would have to drop some of their more popular proposals like the ban on preexisting conditions. They would be left with a bill that did little more than expand Medicaid and other subsidies, raise taxes, and cut Medicare. How popular would that be?

Oakland, CA, Feb. 10, 2010—The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has requested a $4.03 billion budget for FY2011, a 23 percent increase over last year. Prompted by the FDA’s vast reach and alarming budget, a new report delves into the organization’s history, finding that a series of drug-related crises provided it with the political leverage to amass control over the nation’s food and drug industries, while showing the FDA’s repeated failures to protect the public.

Medical Disasters and the Growth of the FDA (February 2010) by Independent Institute Research Fellow Ronald Hamowy investigates the three major health crises that fostered the expansion of the FDA. Hamowy, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Alberta, Canada, highlights the FDA’s power plays in the aftermath of each event, every one resulting in constricted protocol for producers and broader authority for government.

Read the whole press release: FDA’s History Reveals Power Plays Produced No Health Benefits.

…It’s a sad day in which the health care services available to anyone are subjected to the political winds. One man–Scott Brown–could make a difference. That’s not good. Then again, it’s not good when 536 people–the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and president–make the difference in what kinds of health services 300 million people have. …

Government can have a role in enforcing contracts that patients make with insurance companies or doctors. … the decisions of a few people, who use the mechanisms for power for personal benefit–whether that’s to advance an ideological vision or to line their pockets–do violence to the dignity and welfare of us all.

In a better world, political power would be so decentralized that the election of candidate A or candidate B in one state–or 50–would make no difference.

This has gotten me  to think about the 17th Amendment, which ended the practice of state legislatures electing U.S. Senators and replaced it with a popular election.  The Wikipedia entry has a few citations of those who want to repeal this, and Ross Kaminsky cites this article in National Review by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett writes:

The Constitution originally provided that senators would be chosen by state legislatures. The purpose was to provide the states — as states — an institutional role in the federal government. In effect, senators were to function as ambassadors from the states, which were expected to retain a large degree of sovereignty even after ratification of the Constitution, thereby ensuring that their rights would be protected in a federal system.

Read the whole article here.

Seeking to avert the collapse of major health care legislation, the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress face a crucial decision about whether to use a procedural maneuver that would allow them to advance the bill despite the loss of their 60-vote majority in the Senate.

The maneuver, known as budget reconciliation, could allow President Obama and his party to muscle the legislation through Congress with a simple majority vote in the Senate. But it carries numerous risks, including the possibility of a political backlash against what Republicans would be sure to cast as parliamentary trickery.

The procedure is also subject to complex rules that could make it difficult for Democrats to include all the provisions needed to win approval of the bill, especially among rank-and-file House Democrats. For instance, it might be difficult to include provisions related to insurance coverage for abortions.

Brian Williams describes it this way (summarizing Dick Morris):

1. The House would agree to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare and send it to the President’s desk for signature.
2. The House and Senate would agree to subsequently approve some of the House’s amendments to the package — using the reconciliation process (which does not require 60 votes because it is not subject to filibuster).

Scott Brown takes over a seat in the United States Senate that has been held by one family (including its seat-fillers) for just over 57 years, since John F. Kennedy was elected to it in 1952, before Brown was born. Massachusetts hadn’t elected a Republican senator since 1972. …

… [T]he Brown victory is a flashing red light with a siren warning Democrats not to proceed with a health care bill that voters don’t like and a big-government agenda that Americans weren’t voting for in 2008.

Brown is no libertarian. But he campaigned against the Obama-Reid-Pelosi health care plan and against tax increases, so he will be part of the opposition to the current governing agenda. …

How does an entrenched political party respond to a successful rebellion? Well, one way is for both the local and national officials to refuse to certify the results of the election and try to ram unpopular programs with the votes of rejected legislators. Would Democrats try to do that with more elections looming in just 10 months? Harry Reid and Barney Frank say absolutely not. Expect a lot of scrambling this week.

Read the whole post:The Brown Revolution.

For more conjectures on Brown’s victory will affect pending health care bills see James Capretta‘s post at National Review.

That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are … – Barack Obama, Jan. 31 2008

From the AP:

House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses.

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation’s health care system [No, it's entrenchment. - BTS] by the time President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February.

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

In this case, the plan is to skip the formal meetings, reach an agreement, then have the two houses vote as quickly as possible. A 60-vote Senate majority would be required in advance of final passage.

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