The full impact!

Thursday-August 18, 2011

The full impact!

The latest court ruling that says Obama-care is un-Constitutional might just be the one that triggers the public option. Last week’s court decision, in a 2-to-1 verdict in the 11th Circuit court in Atlanta, sets up a dramatic, seemingly inevitable election-year showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court over the legality of Obama’s signature legislative initiative.

Yesterday, I spoke about budgets and entitlements and their cost.

The President’s signature piece of legislation has not even been implemented and we know it will cost an additional 50 billion dollars right out of the box, because the assumptions that were made were the wrong assumptions to begin with. A baseline was established to determine the amount of Americans that would be covered under Obama-care. The assumption was based on the present number of Americans who now have healthcare Insurance. That number didn’t take into account the additions that would be made to the number in each household, because of the new law that makes it legal for 25 year olds sharing of their parent’s healthcare policy. The old cutoff was 21 years of age. This drastically affected the first assumption of cost by about 50 billion dollars. This is another example of how government doesn’t get anything right. This is another example of what happens when your sole purpose is to cater to a few for their votes so that you will keep your elected office. In this case, its cost to the tax payer is 50 billion dollars.

Healthcare expert and former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey said the “ruling effectively puts the brakes on cash-strapped states’ implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many more states now will slow down or entirely halt their current efforts to create state insurance exchanges,” said McCaughey, who hailed the decision as, “a very important day for all Americans who care about individual liberty, and a very important day for those who are concerned about the economic growth urgently needed by this nation.”McCaughey predicted states won’t spend scare resources preparing to implement a law that appears very vulnerable to being thrown out as unconstitutional.

So far, federal judges in Florida and Virginia have ruled against the act, while judges in Michigan and Virginia upheld it. Judges appointed by Democrats have consistently upheld the law, while Republican judges generally ruled against it. But Friday, one Republican judicial appointee and one Democratic judicial appointee concurred that the individual mandate is un-Constitutional.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who has been leading a separate legal challenge to Obama-care in the Old Dominion, issued a statement congratulating the 26 state attorney generals who successfully brought the Constitutional challenge to the 11th Circuit Court. "The court determined that the power to force one citizen to purchase a good or service from another is outside the established outer limits of both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause,” Cuccinelli stated.

“The court also ruled that, although the president and Congress want to now call the penalty a tax to make it pass Constitutional muster, the penalty cannot be sustained under the federal government's taxing authority because the penalty is clearly not a tax,” he said.

However, the little known Section titled 1334 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act pages 97 thru 100 states that the president has authority through an executive order to have the office of personal management enact that part of the law, which would be the public option. The single payer option would make it possible for the government to compete with private insurance companies with a mandated lower cost structure. This move would put the insurance industry out of business. The result of this would still allow the government to enforce Obama-care with all its un-Constitutional mandates, enforced by an executive order. The difference would be that government would be allowed to enforce the single payer option or the public option. Like most liberals, instead of abiding by the courts decision, it would be done by fiscal FIAT. When Nancy Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”, she was not lying.

What needs to be done now is to have a bill in Congress move through the legislative process that would block all funding for the public option or dreaded single payer option. This approach would kill funding and force the Senate to go along with the block and let the courts figure it out.

The full impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not even known. But the way the president has set it up, with it becoming law in 2012 after the election, is to have no political liability, because he would not be up for re-election. The president really believes that this type of legislation cures all the ills of government and a society that doesn’t care for the indigent. The other side of this story is that taxes would significantly go up because someone has to pay for Obama-care.

The Presidents signature piece of legislation does nothing to encourage Tort reform. It will do nothing to prevent fraud and abuse, because it is the government administering the funds. Remember, it’s already 50 billion in the hole and it hasn’t even started!

The full impact of any government program always results in three things; loss of liberty, loss of freedom and loss in independence. The first thing to solve the healthcare debate in this country hasn’t been done. There has to be Tort reform, an effort to make healthcare competitive through market forces, insurance reform, big drug reform and fraud and abuse reform. These are the elements that will reduce cost, bring better service and keep what is best working for Americans and that is the delivery system.

Now, on to the economy. The full impact of this administration’s assumptions on stimulus is just beginning to be felt. Some of us have warned you about what happens when you assume. I was one of them. Former Obama economic advisor Jared Bernstein said on August 13, 2011; “At the time, we simply didn’t have good information. We now know, with revised data, in that very quarter when we made that wrong projection the economy contracted at a rate of almost 9%. The statistics were way off at the time its also the case that the forecast that we gave back then was the consensus forecast of the economic community it wasn’t that we were wrong everyone was wrong.” He is speaking about the stimulus packages and the presidents push for spending all that money. Assumptions were made and again; they were the wrong assumptions.

What you are witnessing is the administration coming up with a new job plan and deficit reduction plan on September 5th to counteract the old plan, which was designed to counteract the plan that counteracted the original plan, which was drafted with the wrong assumptions. The administration doesn’t have to pay back the money for the mistakes that were made, because the tax payer now has been forced to pick up that tab! I hate to say I told you, but I did.

In these two cases assumptions were made and the assumptions were the wrong assumptions. I will never understand why people, smart people and intelligent people, depend on the government to make the right assumptions. I will never understand why citizens will relinquish their freedoms, their liberties and their independence over the thought that government can do it better.

I had a conversation with a pharmacist who related a story about a well known local elected official. This local official came into the drug store to pick up the prescription that was ordered for him. This elected official did not have his government healthcare card for payment of the prescription, so the pharmacist said he’d take cash. The elected official said that his aide carried his card, so they tried to call the aide for the group number and other information. The aide could not be reached and to the elected official’s disgust he was forced to pay cash after the pharmacist said that he could not give him the prescription without payment.
The elected official could not understand that he had to pay for it himself, much like most of us do on a daily basis.

Some might say ok, what’s the point and some might already know what the point is. The point to this story is that this particular elected official felt entitled. He felt that he should have gotten the prescription given to him, because of who he was. You see, public officials always play by different rules, because they feel that the rules we are forced to live with don’t apply to them. The entitlement society also feels that the rules we, as tax payers, live by don’t apply to them at all. You get rid of the entitlement and then everybody will play by the same rules, what’s so wrong with that?

I know who this politician is and it is now time for him to leave the office he has held for decades. It has been his votes over the course of decades that have promoted an entitlement way of life and it has been his votes that continually support the bad liberal legislation that has come out of Washington. It has been his assumptions that have been at the center of his bad decisions to support the bad assumptions that were made at the top of his liberal party.

Until we decide to make our leaders accountable for their bad decisions, which are always based on bad assumptions, we will continually be stuck with the tab and the erosion of you know, our liberty, our freedom and our independence.

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: These three stories are based on fact. These three stories go to the heart of the problem we have in this country today. They are: Bad assumptions, bad legislation and people who have voted for these two things continually for years. The full impact is what we are seeing today. Don’t think that a new set of assumptions will make for better legislation especially on September5. The track record just is not there. Don’t think that with this group your liberty, freedom and independence will grow - it won’t, and that’s the full impact.