Scott Spiegel

According to liberals, it was “un-American” to protest the adoption of Obamacare.  Now apparently it’s unpatriotic not to go out of one’s way to help make it a roaring success.

The New York Times recently claimed that GOP congressmen and governors are spitefully refusing to fund or participate in Obamacare implementation solely to make the President look bad.  On Monday The Times argued that conservatives are harping on the Internal Revenue Agency scandal just so they can delegitimize the IRS and block its assigned role in determining citizens’ income eligibility for having to buy health insurance.

In the Times’ fantasy world, Republicans are going after former IRS tax-exempt division head Sarah Hall Ingram just so they can stall her installation as head of the IRS’s health care office.  The Times also claims that conservatives are spotlighting Department of Health and Human Services Head Kathleen Sebelius’s improper Obamacare lobbying efforts just so the law will fail.

Meanwhile, The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn complains that fast food restaurant owners, nursing home operators, and other low-wage employers are trying to “weasel out” of complying with Obamacare—as though it were every businessman’s patriotic duty to mindlessly accept intrusive, expensive regulations, or as though thousands of Democrat-connected organizations hadn’t already been granted waivers to evade the plan’s dictates.

Cohn explains that a loophole in the law may allow companies to offer employees only barebones coverage and pay a smaller fine than if they had offered no coverage.  But even Cohn admits to the role that free market forces properly play under such circumstances: “[T]hese companies would have to consider the competitive effects, which could push in either direction.  Do they provide less insurance, so they keep costs lower?  Or do they provide more, so they can attract better workers?  Different companies will undoubtedly respond in different ways…”  Yes, Jonathan, that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work in a free market—minus, of course, the government’s forcing employers to provide any coverage in the first place.

Cohn’s tepid nod to capitalism is positively Hayekian compared to the stance of Ezekiel Emanuel, one-time White House health policy advisor and brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm.  Ezekiel admits that Obamacare may be unsustainable, because it forces young, healthy people to pay disproportionately large premiums to subsidize sick, older people—an arrangement that the former won’t stand for and the latter can’t pick up the slack for.

Emanuel’s solution?  A massive public relations blitz that reminds the Millennium Generation just how much they love Obama, and that urges them to buy Obamacare health plans even if it makes no economic sense so that Dear Leader’s presidency won’t fail.

In a hilariously naïve and economically illiterate editorial, Emanuel preaches, “[Y]oung people believe in President Obama.  They overwhelmingly voted for him.  He won by a 23% margin among voters 18-29—just the people who need to enroll.  The president connects with young people, too, so he needs to use that bond and get out there to convince them to sign up for health insurance to help this central part of his legacy.  Every commencement address by an administration official should encourage young graduates to get health insurance.”  Every commencement address by an administration official should also explain to young graduates where exactly they’re going to find jobs in the Obama economy so they can purchase said insurance.

If I understand Emanuel’s appeal correctly, it’s that twentysomethings should subsidize Obama’s legacy, and in return they won’t look like fools for voting for him if his plan somehow miraculously succeeds.

Commenting on Emmanuel’s Don Draper approach to health care reform, Richard Epstein notes, “Emanuel’s expansive view of civic duty plays the game both ways when he accuses individuals who don’t purchase health insurance of ‘freeriding’ on the public.  But their purchase of insurance will allow the [older] preferred plan recipients to free ride on them.”  Emanuel assumes that young people are already in the bag for Democrats, whereas older folks’ votes need to be bought.

Emanuel also assumes that his proposed marketing campaign will cash in on the emotional nature of persuadable young voters.  Good luck with that.  Most young people who voted for Obama and supported Obamacare are nonetheless learning that the penalty for not having health insurance is lower than the actual cost of health insurance, and are acting according to their rational self-interest by declining to purchase it.  Would we expect young adults—who earn the least of all adult age groups—to do any less?

More broadly, would we expect other age groups, or small business owners, or large business owners, or private citizens, or unions, or—yes—Congressmen and their staffers not to try to find a way to get out of a plan they know costs more than it’s worth and unacceptably limits their options?  Are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi un-American for not signing up for health care exchanges that the poor schlubs in their districts will be forced to buy?

As Obamacare implementation stumbles on, more and more stakeholders are realizing that, not only is it not their duty to make the plan succeed, it is in their distinct interest to help it fail.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

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Last weekend Mitt Romney left grasping liberals and panicky conservatives aghast over some harmless Obamacare musings on Meet the Press.

When David Gregory asked Romney what he would do with some of the more popular provisions of Obamacare if elected, Romney replied, “I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform.  Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place.”

The media went crazy.  First John Roberts, now Mitt Romney.  Everywhere conservatives are wiping the scales from their eyes to behold the glories of Obamacare!

The Hill’s Brent Budowsky trumpeted, “Romney praises and endorses ObamaCare key achievements!”  He wrote: “It is good that Mitt Romney gives Barack Obama credit where it is due, by praising and endorsing two of the most important achievements of the president’s healthcare plan.  Because of President Obama’s leadership, and now with Gov. Romney’s full support, folks with pre-existing conditions will be covered by insurance, and countless kids will be covered by the insurance of their parents.”

Other liberals automatically assumed that Romney was clumsily flip-flopping.  Steve Benen claimed that Romney was “trying (and failing) to Etch A Sketch on health care” and “kicking off a near-comical display of ineptitude.”

CNN chided Romney’s “tap dance around Obamacare.”  Froma Harrop caroled that “Romney Suffers From Pre-existing Positions.”  (Next liberals will be tittering, “Romney Suffers From Premature Articulation.”)

Even conservatives misquoted Romney.  Mark Levin claimed on his radio show on Monday that Romney had said “he liked parts of Obamacare.”  The Daily Koz rounded up numerous quotes from horrified conservatives “in meltdown” over Romney’s remarks.

There’s just one problem: Romney never actually said any of the things liberals or conservatives have accused him of saying.

Note what Romney said: “There are a number of things that I like in health care reform,” not “There are a number of things that I like in Obamacare.”

Note what Romney said: “[There are things] that I’m going to put in place,” not “[There are things] that I’m going to keep [from Obamacare].”

Note what Romney said: “I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” not “I’m not getting rid of all of Obamacare.”

Nothing Romney has said since declaring his candidacy has contradicted his pledge to repeal Obamacare and issue a 50-state waiver on his first day in office.

“Health care reform” and “Obamacare” are synonymous only in Democrats’ stunted imaginations.

I understand why liberals would mistakenly interpret Romney’s remarks as flip-flopping on Obamacare.  But conservatives have no excuse for failing to grasp his meaning.

Any respectable laissez-faire capitalist knows that there are free-market ways of achieving the health care provisions Romney cited without unleashing a leviathan like Obamacare on the nation.

Denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition, as Obamacare makes it.  Coverage can be pinned to requirements policyholders meet by acting responsibly before they lose insurance.  Under our current system, people with preexisting conditions can legally receive coverage for months after a job loss if they have maintained insurance up to that point, and can then transfer their insurance to a new employer without being denied coverage for having a preexisting condition.

Coverage for those with preexisting conditions can be made limited or partial—depending on the consistency with which one has retained coverage in the past—rather than entirely paid for or entirely denied.

Individuals without insurance can enter high-risk pools that require higher premiums, but give coverage for costly care resulting from preexisting conditions.

There are a million ways the health insurance industry and its potential customers can experiment with coverage policies.  Such plans require the sustained focus and rational choice of numerous actors free from one-size-fits-all legislative mandates—which is why a big-government statist like Obama will do everything in his power to prevent such arrangements from ever being established.

Note that most media outlets omitted the closing sentence of Romney’s remarks, which promoted the free market reform of decoupling tax breaks from employer-funded health insurance: “I also want individuals to be able to buy insurance, health insurance, on their own as opposed to only being able to get it on a tax advantage basis through their company.”  Such an innovation would help resolve the problem of denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, because it would increase health insurance portability for those who move from being employed to unemployed or self-employed.

Even if you’re disinclined toward fully free market options, there are constitutional ways to experiment with health care policy on the state level—e.g., Romneycare—so that we can see what works and what doesn’t before liberals try to inflict it on a nation of 300 million people.

Over the past four years, conservative politicians who find it intuitively obvious that government should stay out of health care have found themselves forced to promote “health care reform” policies so liberals can’t accuse them of “not caring.”

But there are plenty of health care reform proposals that would reduce government intervention and free up the private market’s creative forces.  This is what conservatives have been defending when they talk about health care reform—not raiding Medicare to let 26-year-old basement-dwellers stay on their parents’ insurance.

Perhaps Romney should be clearer in distinguishing between free market reforms and government mandates.  Maybe he should be more artful in his phrasing.

But sorry, Dems—our nominee, like a majority of Americans, will remain opposed to Obamacare until the day it’s repealed.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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A candidate who promises to preserve, protect, and defend Medicare, save it from going bankrupt, implement his plan for only those under 55, and let you keep your benefits exactly as they are now if you don’t like his changes: this is the candidate Democrats are portraying as a faceless monster diabolically wheeling Grandma off a cliff.

We’ve reached the apotheosis of the Democratic Party’s political strategy: take the Republican who’s most likely to do it the favor of justifying, rescuing, and strengthening its bloated, big-government welfare programs, and then smear him as their callous, murderous destroyer.

Ten days after Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential nomination announcement, liberals are still spreading the meme that Paul Ryan was a suicidal choice, because he dared come up with a serious Medicare reform proposal—gradually turn the program into a voucher-supported private system—and include it in two House-passed federal budgets.  The left waited about five minutes after the VP pick, then cried, “See—Romney didn’t get a Ryan bounce.  He screwed up!”

Wait till Americans hear Paul Ryan debate Joe Biden and field questions from a smarmy, economically illiterate press.  Then they won’t be crowing that Romney committed political hari-kari.

Back in 2010, the left claimed that Tea Party candidates would hurt the GOP in the midterm elections, because Americans wouldn’t tolerate their extremist, far-right views.  Then Republicans won a historic landslide, picking up 63 seats in the House, 6 seats in the Senate, 6 governorships, and 680 state legislature seats.

The left claimed that Marco Rubio would terrify seniors in Florida with his support for privatizing Social Security and his signing a pledge that labeled the program “generational theft.”  Then Rubio returned from 20 points behind to crush his opponents in a three-way senatorial election.

The left claimed that wishy-washy compromiser John McCain was the contender most likely to deliver a knockout blow to Obama in the 2008 presidential election.  Then McCain embarrassed Republicans by offering a tepid, watered-down alternative to Obama’s platform and lost the election.

Pundits imply that Romney should have picked a VP candidate with no strong positions on Medicare—or any other issue of substance—lest he alienate independents.  In fact, if any voters truly are undecided, they’re going to be blown away by what Ryan has to say on Medicare and every other budgetary topic he addresses in his upcoming campaign appearances, because it’s so much bolder and more honest than what almost any other politician has said to date.

Ryan is one of the rare political candidates who’s even more impressive in enemy territory than he is on friendly turf.

Since they don’t like the Big Bad Wolf’s proposal, what are Democrats’ plans for shoring up Medicare?

They have none.  They don’t even think there is a problem.

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy, for example, argues that Medicare is doing just fine, that the only reason costs are out of control is the large number of retiring Baby Boomers.

It doesn’t matter what the cause of Medicare’s looming insolvency is.  The increase in retirees just lays bare the Ponzi-scheme structure of Medicare and other federal unfunded liabilities.

Contrary to some Democrats’ claims, the Medicare problem is not going to solve itself.  Medicare is not, as they argue, more cost-effective than private health insurance.  The federal government prohibits the sale of private health insurance across state lines, which cripples the private insurance industry’s ability to compete and innovate.  No such hindrance exists for Medicare.

Medicare is not more cost-effective than health maintenance organizations.  The IRS hamstrings HMOs by virtually forcing private health insurance plans to be tied to employers rather than employees, which reduces flexibility and competitiveness.  No such obstacle exists for Medicare.

Medicare could never survive on its own, not without sponging off of the much larger private insurance industry.  If Medicare has such a bright future, more doctors wouldn’t be refusing to accept Medicare patients with each passing year.

The irony is that Democrats warn Republicans that Ryan’s nomination will make the Medicare issue unavoidable for them.  In fact, it’s taken Ryan’s nomination to force Democrats to finally stop avoiding the Medicare issue.

What is Obama’s proposal to address Medicare’s imminent bankruptcy?  He reassures us that we don’t need to cut benefits, that we can keep the program solvent simply by reducing fraud and waste.  In his words, “My plan saves money in Medicare by cracking down on fraud, and waste and insurance company subsidies…  My plan’s already extended the life of Medicare by nearly a decade.”

Please.  Every politician who wants to preserve the status quo claims that gobs of money can be saved from a federal program just by reducing fraud and waste.  Everyone wants to reduce fraud and waste.  John Gambino wants to reduce fraud and waste.

Obama also claims he can save hundreds of billions of dollars by reducing subsidies to insurance companies and hospitals—as if they’re going to just altruistically pony up the difference, rather than cutting services or finding some other way to pass the cost on to customers.

Democrats show no interest in acknowledging the fact that Medicare is going broke, that benefits are going to have to be cut—and soon.  They live in a fantasy land where—at best—they pretend they can save hundreds of billions of dollars via rosy projections of improved Medicare cost-efficiency that will take place just a few years down the road, after the next couple of election cycles, by which time voters will have forgotten about their unfulfillable promises.

At worst, they ignore the problem and demonize Republicans for proposing actual solutions.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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On Thursday the Supreme Court rejected the Obama administration’s justification for the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as being covered by the Interstate Commerce Clause, since the law as written would not regulate commerce but compel it.

The court nonetheless upheld the individual mandate, which requires people to buy health insurance from private companies.  The administration had characterized the penalty for not buying insurance as such, yet also asked the court to consider it a tax for the purpose of preventing the plaintiffs from suing, since under the Tax Anti-Injunction Act taxes may be challenged in court only after they have been paid.  Roberts and the majority agreed that the penalty could not be considered a tax for the question of whether the plaintiffs could bring suit now.  Yet in their view, it was perfectly acceptable for the penalty to be considered a tax for the purpose of forcing people to buy health insurance.

Roberts admitted, “Congress’s decision to label this exaction a ‘penalty’ rather than a ‘tax’ is significant because the Affordable Care Act describes many other exactions it creates as ‘taxes.’”

Yet in the majority opinion he wrote, “The Federal Government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid, or otherwise control.”

And therein lies the rub: Not purchasing health insurance is not an “activity.”  It is a non-activity.  (The hint is the word “not.”)

According to Roberts’ (correct) reasoning, “not buying healthcare” is not commercial activity the government can regulate through the Interstate Commerce Clause.  Yet somehow “not buying healthcare” is commercial activity the government can tax.  How can “not buying health insurance” be non-activity and activity at the same time?

Some conservatives hunting for a silver lining have argued that at least the ruling limited the provenance of the Commerce Clause.  Yet the ruling simultaneously expanded the purview of Congress’s taxing power in such a way as to potentially make up for almost anything the Commerce Clause doesn’t cover.  What have we gained?  What good is restriction of the Commerce Clause if, due to the expansion of other powers, it can’t protect us from abominations like Obamacare?

The ruling expanded Congress’s taxation power in at least three ways.  First, we now know that non-activity can be taxed.  When has the federal government ever taxed non-activity?  Penalized, yes—but taxed our not doing something?

Second, we know that even something that was explicitly disavowed as a tax by its creators and defenders can be considered a tax, if five Supreme Court justices feel like rewriting the law and considering it one.

Third, as spelled out by Roger Pilon, “[T]he power to tax… was designed to enable Congress to obtain the funds needed to carry out its other enumerated powers or ends.  It was not, as Madison made clear in Federalist 41, and often on the floor of Congress, an independent power to tax for any purpose at all.  Search as you will through those 18 enumerated powers and you will find no power to enact ObamaCare or anything like it.”  But thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, we now know that the federal government can levy taxes for any reason it wants, whether it needs the money for any enumerated power or not—and remember that the individual mandate, if it operated properly, would result in $0 revenue.

Also disturbing is the fact that the justices may not have even reaffirmed the limits of the Commerce Clause.  As Mark Levin wrote, “If five justices had intended for their view of the commerce clause (and necessary and proper clause) to be controlling as the majority view, they would have said so by joining or concurring in each others’ [written arguments].  They didn’t.  So, while we can cobble them together, as a formal legal matter, it is a troubling issue.  While the status quo stands re the commerce clause (and necessary and proper clause), there was no formal majority on those issues.”

Of course all this chitchat about RobertsCare will go over the heads of most liberals, for whom I want to ask, not “How is the healthcare law constitutional?” but “Do you even care whether it’s constitutional?”  This is the same group of people, after all, who consistently defended the law, not by talking about its legal soundness, but by claiming that the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney had instigated it.  These are the same folks who for two years eschewed discussion of Obamacare’s constitutionality for posting pictures of sad-eyed looking children on Facebook with captions like “Yolanda Rodriguez can finally get treatment for her spina bifida!”

So now we can rest assured that Congress will never mandate that we buy broccoli, drink skim milk, or do calisthenics.  It’s just going to tax us to death if we don’t, and with the imprimatur of a “conservative,” Republican-appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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Ahead of the Supreme Court’s likely overrule of Obamacare’s individual mandate, and possibly the entire act, here’s a retrospective of the most hilarious and horrifying quotes from bill supporters over the first three-and-a-half years of Obama’s wasted first term.  Hey libs—Thanks for the memories:

1. “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”  Barack Obama.  Demonstrably false, given that employer-based plans—which over 60% of the population holds—are required to meet Obamacare specifications within five years, so if your current plan doesn’t meet these regulations, your employer will soon have to change it or drop it, if it hasn’t already done so.

2. “Are you serious?  Are you serious?”  Nancy Pelosi, when asked where the Constitution authorized Obamacare’s individual mandate.  Almost as good: “I don’t worry about the Constitution,” uttered by Illinois Representative Phil Hare at a townhall meeting.

3. “These are nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate…  They are doing this because they don’t have any better ideas.”  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on protesters and Congressional opponents trying to “sabotage” the Obamacare debate.  In fact, House Republicans had 32 better ideas than Obamacare in 2009 alone, including malpractice tort reform, Medicare reform, health savings accounts, healthcare tax credits, vouchers for private insurance, pay for performance, private market competition, and efforts to preserve individual autonomy regarding level and type of coverage and risk tolerance.

4. “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid… of differing views…  Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”  Pelosi and former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer trying to delegitimize the concerns of health care townhall protestors.  Compare this claim with liberal commentators’ mentally drowning out the constitutional arguments against Obamacare for two years, and suddenly being shocked that the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn it.

5. “The conjunction of a black President and a female speaker of the House—topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay congressional committee chairman—would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.”  Frank Rich, claiming that Obamacare opponents are simply racists, and maybe sexists and homophobes too.  Yes, it’s true—we just couldn’t stand having African-American lesbian bill architects like Harry Reid, Kent Conrad, and Max Baucus.

6. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”  The Obama administration e-mailing supporters and asking them to spy on their fellow citizens.

7. “I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence…  [T]he insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills.” Obama implying that his mother had had to battle health insurance companies when she was sick with cancer, when it was later revealed that her claims had been paid in full and it was disability compensation he was alluding to.

8. “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”  Nancy Pelosi.  And here most people thought it worked the other way around.

9. “I am romantic about the N.H.S. [the UK’s National Health Service]; I love it…  Do not trust market forces to give you the system you need…  I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care.  That is for leaders to do.”  Donald Berwick, Obama’s recess appointment for Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Thankfully the explosively controversial nominee resigned a year later when it became clear Republicans would never vote to continue his appointment.

10. “[W]ell within the traditional bounds of Congress’s Article I power.”  Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the federal government’s power to force people to buy health insurance, in a lame attempt to hedge against constitutional challenges to the individual mandate.

11. “They have to understand that the health care bill is not going to be repealed…  [They] should get a new lease on life and talk about something else.”  Reid dismissing Congressional Republicans’ Obamacare repeal efforts.  If the Supreme Court does what everyone expects it to do tomorrow, Reid may just be right.

12. “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  President Obama’s ignorant and deceitful comments ahead of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s disastrous effort to defend the administration’s position before the court during oral arguments in April.

13. “129 million Americans with a pre-existing condition could be denied coverage without [the] new health reform law.”  The Department of Health and Human Services cautioning against Obamacare repeal, in a claim promptly torn apart by the Cato Institute.  Also: “Thirty million Americans… are going to be able to get healthcare next year because of that law,” Obama recently defending his bill.  Newsflash: Healthcare is not health insurance, and most needy people can get healthcare through Medicaid, parts of Medicare, medical charity groups, or emergency rooms.  Most people without health insurance are temporarily lacking it while in-between jobs or choose not to pay for it.  The Obama administration hyped a nonexistent crisis in order to implement an unnecessary solution.

And the prize for most inane pronouncement in support of Obamacare goes to:

14. “Denying someone their life and liberty without due process…  Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”  Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the legal implications of Obamacare repeal.  Everything is bigger in Texas, including stupidity.

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The Supreme Court’s impending Obamacare overrule seems to have liberal legal types anxious lately.

In their recent lecture-disguised-as-an-op-ed “Health Care Economics 101 And The Supreme Court,” University of Michigan professors Jill Horwitz and Helen Levy argue that by intervening in the health insurance market, government has the power to make healthcare uniquely efficient and affordable.

Assuming that that’s correct—and it’s not—so what?

Horwitz and Levy contest that upholding Obamacare’s individual mandate could lead to forcing people to buy broccoli or cars, as several Supreme Court Justices suggested during oral arguments in April.  They write, “[T]here are significant economic differences between health care and the list of goods the amicus brief and some of the Justices cited…  [T]he market for health care is characterized by multiple and substantial departures from the assumptions of perfect competition…  [A]ppropriately structured government intervention—which in this case means guaranteed issue, community rating, and an individual mandate—can actually promote efficiency, solving the problem of market failure and making the pie bigger for everyone.”

Actually, who cares?  Where in the Constitution can Congress force people to do something they don’t want, just because liberals think it will make life easier?  Actually, where does the Constitution give the federal government the power of central planning for the quixotic purpose of “making the pie bigger for everyone”?

Actually, where in the Constitution may I find the “Correcting Imperfect Markets for Competition via Abridgment of Individual Liberty” clause?

Horwitz and Levy toss out the following unconnected arguments in the hope that one of them will stick: the health insurance market operates poorly on its own; the health insurance market involves many interrelated parts, the failure of any one of which can compound failure in the others; an individual’s need for healthcare is unpredictable; the healthcare industry is high-stakes; the country is experiencing a health insurance crisis.

Not one of these reasons compensates for the egregious constitutional violation of forcing people to purchase a product on the private market against their will.

Obviously the health care market differs from the market for broccoli or cars—no one disagrees with that—though it’s not uniquely different from other markets we don’t allow the federal government to take over.

But all laws vary widely in their outcomes when applied to different referents.  The Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, could yield different consequences if applied to a pastor’s suburban home vs. a drug-infested housing project.

One could argue that government should be able to randomly invade run-down apartments in gang-infested inner cities, since the likelihood of finding illegal weapons, drug paraphernalia, or evidence of other crimes is much greater there.  You might say that such a law “can actually promote efficiency” in law enforcement.

But does the principle prohibiting government from wantonly entering private homes without a warrant and poking around apply universally, or doesn’t it?  If it applies universally, then it applies whether we’re talking about split-levels or slums.

Similarly, there may be compelling reasons from a pure efficiency standpoint for government to intervene in the healthcare market.  (There aren’t, but bear with me.)  That the government could make healthcare so much more superior doesn’t justify forcing people to buy insurance policies they don’t want, or forcing policies on them that mitigate more risk than they care to pay for.

Perhaps the claim that Obamacare won’t lead to mandating broccoli consumption would be more credible if liberals weren’t regularly trying to ban trans fats, salt, Happy Meals, soda, popcorn, and “milk drinks.”  For a perfect example of the left-wing tactic of abridging liberty while distracting the public with superfluous “good for you” justifications, see Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 10-year crusade to turn Manhattan into a monastery.

When the Supreme Court overrules the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate 5-4 next week, liberals are going to gripe about “judicial overreach” for decades, the way they’re still grumbling about Bush v. Gore.  They’ll roll their eyes at anyone who’s happy the Court overturned the law, and try to convince themselves that their legal argument is so much more sophisticated and forward-thinking than ours.

They need to be told why they’re wrong.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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Liberals conspired for two years to plant a web of technologically sophisticated, hard-to-defuse bombs across the country’s urban and suburban centers, explosives that sparked up here and there frightening people and were programmed to detonate four years later.

Conservative SWAT teams screamed and pleaded and begged the public not to let them do it, and tried to stop the impending carnage via arguments, campaigns, and ultimately elections.  Liberals just laughed at the chaos like the Joker.

Twenty-six states sought intervention from the Supreme Court, which may be on the verge of defusing the bombs, and if the Court doesn’t do it the next Republican Congress will.  The right inevitably will spread collateral damage as they storm into downtown areas cordoning off districts, deactivating trigger devices, resetting timers, and safely dismantling and clearing out every last bomb.

Naturally, the media are blaming conservatives for the mess they’re going to make clearing out the explosives liberals planted.

The bombs in question are, of course, the various provisions of Obamacare.  The disorder left by conservatives’ clearing them out constitutes “messy ripple effects” the mainstream media are warning about if conservatives get their way.

In one recent report expressing hope that some Obamacare terms will be retained, Associated Press reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar explained, “It sounds like a silver lining.  Even if the Supreme Court overturns President Barack Obama’s health care law, employers can keep offering popular coverage for the young adult children of their workers…  But here’s the catch: The parents’ taxes would go up.”

Translation: None of us in the MSM wants Obamacare repealed, but perhaps we’ll be able to keep parts of it intact, and through workaround solutions trick Americans into reinstating the rest in Obama’s second term.  What a shame, though, that parents with freeloading 26-year-olds will have to pay marginally higher rates for their children’s healthcare instead of soaking taxpayers for the difference—about $20 a month per child, according to an economist cited in the article.

Alonso-Zaldivar helpfully assures us that “The coverage for young adults up to age 26 on a parent’s health insurance is a popular provision that no one’s arguing about.”  No one in your administration-supporting, socialized medicine-loving AP reporters’ pool, that is.

He warns, “Better Medicare prescription benefits, currently saving hundreds of dollars for older people with high drug costs, would be suspended.”  Note how Alonso-Zaldivar writes as if seniors had been receiving such benefits for decades, and the extra cost would result in their being thrown in the street.  He acts as though government doesn’t constantly make changes to federal programs, adding or removing funding depending on changes in officeholders, and as though state agencies and private charities aren’t constantly stepping in to make up the difference so constituents barely notice changes in their benefits.  He seems to think Americans have never heard of budgets.

Alonso-Zaldivar adds, “Lacking legal authority, Medicare would have to take away the [“donut hole” coverage gap] discounts.  Drugmakers, now bearing the cost, could decide they want to keep offering discounts voluntarily.  But then they’d risk running afoul of other federal rules that bar medical providers from offering financial inducements to Medicare recipients.”

Lovely.  So we can’t repeal Obamacare, because the federal government prevents drugmakers from generously offering seniors discounts to help pay for their medications.  It’s got to be the government giving us treats or no one.

Last year I pointed out the absurdity of liberal legislators protesting conservative efforts to repeal Obamacare as unconstitutional, given that the legislation itself exists in a different universe from our Constitution.  Idiots like Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee characterized conservative repeal actions as the equivalent of trying to roll back a half-century of civil rights.  In fact, the bill had only been eked into law months before, and conservatives were hoping to stop it before any of its provisions kicked in.

Liberals are taking the same tack now, arguing that undoing Obamacare would be hopelessly messy and complicated (never mind what it would do to our health care system if allowed to stand), would take away popular and longstanding benefits, and should be accepted as a fait accompli.

That is, unfortunately, what happened with big-government welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Those programs became so entrenched in federal and state policy that today they’re nearly impossible to eliminate.  Not so Obamacare, which—unlike those programs—was not passed with bipartisan support, or even a healthy majority of one party, and is still raw enough in voters’ minds that they’re full of piss and vinegar about abolishing it.  The fate of Obamacare will be sealed by November 6, and possibly by the end of this month, and Democrats know the odds aren’t in their favor.

Alonso-Zaldivar gets one thing right: “A mixed verdict from the high court would be the most confusing outcome.  Some parts of the law would be struck down while others lurch ahead.”  Though Obamacare authors’ failure to include a severability clause suggests that if one part of the bill fails the entire thing would have to be struck down, I agree: It absolutely should be abolished in its entirety, down to its last period.

No matter how untidy reversal of Obamacare is, the effects can’t be more destructive to the country’s healthcare system than letting it stand.  And the deleterious effects of either course of action are entirely the fault of overzealous, power-grabbing, liberal Democrats.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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In honor of National Nurses Week, I thought I’d pose the question: What are American nurses’ actual responsibilities these days?

Last week while researching a column on Obama’s pandering to various interest groups, I noticed that his campaign website featured a page, grouped with pages for various demographic categories, devoted to Nurses.  What was that about, I wondered?  Was Obama shoring up support for Obamacare with a key segment of the medical profession?

I’d like to suggest another reason: Nurses are the new Teachers, the apocryphally underpaid, overburdened sirens of the service industry who make heroic sacrifices to nurture their tender underlings.

Not at the hospital I spent last week at, they didn’t.

After suffering a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung), I entered the emergency room of a midtown Manhattan hospital for surgery that involved suctioning excess air out of the space between my left lung and chest and allowing the lung to reinflate.  When the lung collapsed again two days later, doctors performed a more advanced surgery.  Two days with tubes in my chest, a day of observation, and I was home.

Throughout the week, all of the doctors I encountered—pulmonologists, cardiologists, generalists, specialists, attending surgeons, resident physicians—were top-notch, and eagerly took all the time needed to answer my most detailed and speculative questions.  They made my long, difficult stay more bearable.

Not so the scores of nurses who crossed my path, virtually all of whom made my stay far more uncomfortable and demoralizing than it needed to be.

All week there were precisely three nurses I encountered who could be described as better than terrible.  The first was a perky twenty-something who fed me rapid-fire advice and reassured me with her calm competence.  The second was a fifty-something Latino man who always welcomed me profusely, whistled while he worked, and asked if there were anything I needed before he left the room.  The third was a thirty-something Filipino woman who was quick, thorough, cheerful, and brimming with information.

The rest of them can go to hell.

The question smoldering at the edge of my consciousness all week was, What do these people get paid to actually do?

Most of the nurses’ duties seemed to be implemented for them by an army of nurses’ assistants, assistant nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, Candy Stripers, and housekeepers, all of whom were regularly corralled into service to handle the supposed overflow.

The nurses performed no food-related services.  A separate contractor rushed in three meals a day to each patient, retrieved replacement items, and cleared everything away.  Requests to nurses for a measly cup of coffee were usually met with rolled eyes, mumbled complaints, and vague promises that rarely amounted to any follow-up.

The nurses performed no recreational services.  A contractor visited every day to collect payment for the cable TV.  Elderly volunteers strolled by offering magazines, newspapers, and paperbacks.

The nurses performed no therapeutic or cheering-up services.  A physical therapist met me twice a day to teach me exercises that would help me transition back to normal life.  Volunteers popped in throughout the week to see if I needed someone to talk to.  One day two ladies offered me “pet therapy”: a sociable Shi-Tzu named Rockie who played with me on my bed while we all chatted.

What did the nurses do?  I’ll tell you what they did—they took blood pressure.  Oh! how nurses love to take blood pressure.  They love to roll in their clunky, ominous, coat-stand-shaped contraption every couple of hours, wrap that cuff around your arm, and crush you like a boa constrictor.  They love taking your blood pressure, over and over again, whether it’s needed or not, whether it overlaps with other nurses’ readings, whether you’re dead asleep in the dark getting much-needed rest and must be rudely awoken to bright lights to take it.  They love taking blood pressure with a cat, they love it in a hat, they love it in a house, they love it with a mouse.

I have no history of high blood pressure, and mine never veered out of excellent territory.  Yet nurses leapt at me with their cuffs every chance they got like lions on wildebeests.  My upper arms had rashes by the time I escaped.

Maybe constantly taking blood pressure made these nurses feel useful.  I would say that they were trying to be sadistic, but Nurse Ratched had energy and focus.  These people were mostly just extraordinarily lazy.

That brings me to the other thing they did, which was shuffle around with sour looks on their faces as though they hated their jobs and were happy to take it out on their patients.  One nurse sloppily inserted four consecutive IVs in my arm over an hour—each of which popped out, because my arm was sweaty and she wasn’t taping them securely enough—and then, instead of investigating the situation and adjusting her methods, yelled at me and told me it was my fault.

These women are in the wrong profession.  They should be toll-takers or parking-meter attendants, where their callousness is less consequential or maybe expected.

The language issue is also not to be overlooked.  When you’re not fluent in English, and your patients speak only English, the results aren’t funny, George Lopez-style misunderstandings, they often cause your breathless, nauseated, aching patients great frustration and discomfort.  I asked one nurse to ratchet down my meal tray, which was a foot too high.  She said “Down?” and proceeded to lower my bed a foot, then turned and left before I could summon the lungpower to protest.

Maybe my experience at this hospital doesn’t generalize to the rest of the country.  This was a large, well-known, respected hospital, and I had a sample size of scores of nurses over seven days.  My observations seem relevant to what goes on in at least some major urban hospitals.  In private consultations with me, doctors and other hospital employees quietly confirmed my dismal evaluation of the nursing staff in a way that implied it wasn’t limited to that particular hospital.

What has happened in recent generations to practitioners of this once-noble profession?  I don’t know.  But I do know that if Obamacare isn’t repealed, Democrats and nurses’ unions are going to do their best to corrupt the occupation even further, teachers-union-style, by shielding professional misconduct, decoupling performance from compensation and advancement, and generally doing everything they can to lower the quality of nursing nationwide to a rock-bottom lowest-common-denominator.



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Talk about chutzpah.  The same chief executive who refused to provide a speck of guidance to one branch of government in crafting his signature legislation is now threatening another branch of government not to overturn it.

Does President Obama believe in the separation of powers?  You wouldn’t know it from his intemperate comments Monday on the legal challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court is now deliberating.  Just days after skeptical justices had subjected administration lawyers and their opponents to a historic six hours of questioning, and just as the judges were retreating to contemplate the competing claims in private, Obama stood up in the Rose Garden and loudly warned the nine “unelected” rubes that they’d better get this one right.

Obama declared that overturning his health care law would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary”—which is funny, because that’s what a lot of people have been saying about his health care law.

What with his haranguing of the justices over their Citizens United decision and his veiled threats over Obamacare, we haven’t had a president interfere this much with the Supreme Court since FDR.  (Apparently Obama’s intimidation tactics still aren’t strong enough for Representative James Clyburn, who wants the president to campaign against the Supreme Court this fall.)

Can anyone recall an instance of one faction of the Supreme Court instructing a sitting president which laws to veto?  How about a Congressional caucus telling the Chief Justice which cases to turn down?

One federal appeals court is so rattled by Obama’s posturing that it is requiring his Justice Department to submit a brief by Thursday noon outlining whether and when it believes the Supreme Court has the authority to overturn federal legislation.

In his address Monday, Obama blithely threw around the term “judicial activism,” suggesting that the Supreme Court justices would be guilty of practicing it if they overturned Obamacare.  But judicial activism doesn’t mean “making decisions the other side doesn’t like.”

The justices’ sworn oath is to uphold the Constitution.  Conservative complaints of judicial activism refer to cases in which justices override the Constitution while upholding or striking down laws that suit their political preferences.

Conservatives have focused obsessively on the constitutionality of the law since Day 1, in particular the propriety of requiring people to enter commercial contracts against their will by purchasing health insurance in the private market.

Judicial activists, including Obamacare supporters, ignore the constitutionality of laws, unless they are forced by their opponents to concoct phony, sophistic defenses invoking the Constitution, in which they typically claim that whatever it is they’re proposing—banning guns, preventing violence against women—is covered by the Interstate Commerce Clause.

When was the last time you heard a Republican legislator respond, when asked about the constitutionality of a law he had proposed, “Are you serious?” as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi did when queried about Obamacare?  How about a Republican announcing, as Illinois Democrat and former Congressman Phil Hare did at an Obamacare townhall meeting, “I don’t worry about the Constitution”?

(The left needs to get its story straight on whether the Supreme Court may ever consider the constitutionality of legislation.  Liberal Dahlia Lithwick, for example, claims that Congress can pass anything it wants, whether constitutional or not, because the Supreme Court will assess its constitutionality and strike it down if need be.  This was two years ago, back when blinkered Democrats didn’t think there was any chance the Supreme Court would hear the case against Obamacare, much less overrule it.  On the other hand, fellow Slate writer Jamal Greene recently argued that the Supreme Court should eschew its constitutional function and let Obamacare stand, because two branches of government have already weighed in.)

In case the “unprecedented” and “judicial activist” arguments weren’t convincing, Obama also crowed that the law had been passed by “a strong majority” of Congress—by which he meant a sputtering, cobbled-together Frankenstein’s monster of reluctant coalitions that had to be bribed, deceived, and coerced into compliance.  (The 2010 Republican midterm election landslide, though—that was nothing special!)

Meanwhile we’ve learned that the American public is solidly on the conservative justices’ side, with 72% endorsing the notion that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.  This includes over 50% of Republicans, Independents, Democrats, voters who oppose the law, and voters who support the law.  How’s that for “a strong majority”?

Obama’s chance to offer input on his namesake legislation has long since passed.  It’s time for him to accept the court’s—and the public’s—verdict on the disastrous legislation he recklessly set in motion.



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This week the newly majority Republican House of the 112^th Congress will vote on repeal of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as The Albatross Around Democrats’ Necks.

Republicans have named their bill the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” proving again that Republicans are more likely to give their legislation names that are corny, contentious, and accurate, whereas Democrats are more likely to give their legislation names that are slick, mollifying, and deceptive.

Pundits expect H.R. 2 to easily clear the House, where ObamaCare narrowly passed 219-212 last March, before the great Republican Reckoning of November 2010.  In that election, not only did Democrats lose a net 63 seats to Republicans, but the remaining Democratic flotsam left after the tsunami realized they ought to consider switching their votes unless they wanted to be swept away in November 2012.

In an insightful analysis, The Weekly Standard reported that in swing districts, just 28% of sitting House Democrats who voted for ObamaCare held onto their seats in the 2010 elections.  In contrast, 57% of sitting Democrats in swing districts who voted against ObamaCare kept their seats.

If all House members still in office after November’s election voted the way they did last spring, all newly sworn-in Republicans voted to repeal ObamaCare, and all newly sworn-in Democrats voted not to repeal ObamaCare, the House would vote for repeal by 255-180—a margin more than 10 times as large as the one by which ObamaCare passed.  That’s assuming no newly sworn-in Democrats—none of whom are saddled with a prior vote for ObamaCare, and some of whom campaigned on the promise that they would have opposed it—will vote to repeal it.

Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic leadership have alternately been laughing at and warning against the repeal effort, which they claim is both pathetically useless and grievously dangerous.

Reid announced that Congressional Republicans “have to understand that the health care bill is not going to be repealed…  [They] should get a new lease on life and talk about something else.”  White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs smirked that the repeal effort “is not a serious legislative effort.”

Meanwhile, Obama has insinuated that repeal would be a grave mistake that would send the nation “backward.”  Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cautioned that repeal could cause 129 million Americans with preexisting conditions to lose their health insurance—a ludicrous claim promptly deconstructed by the Cato Institute.  (New ObamaCare slogan: “If you liked your health insurance, you can’t unkeep it!)

Pelosi plans to march a parade of living-in-their-parents’-basements twentysomething moochers and other sad sacks in front of Congress to talk about the wonders health care reform has already worked for them.  The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel wailed to Ed Schultz on MSNBC, “The Democrats need to tell real-life stories.  They need to bring people into this process and blanket this country with tales of those whose lives have been improved.”

Learning disabled Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee declared that repealing health care is “unconstitutional.”  (Now there’s some irony for you!)

Lee’s brilliant reasoning is that repeal would involve “denying someone their life and liberty without due process.”  She asks, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”  (How about taking away their right to an education that includes a basic understanding of the Constitution?)

Now, even the bill’s authors are admitting that ObamaCare may not reduce costs as planned, and that the government might eventually have to go the way of Massachusetts via price controls and increased taxes, or Tennessee via massive dumping of patients from its rolls.

Yes, it’s true that even after the House repeal bill passes, Reid is likely to refuse to bring H.R. 2 before the Senate, where it probably wouldn’t pass anyway, and certainly wouldn’t clear the 2/3 majority needed to override Obama’s veto.

But Republicans are expected to take over the Senate in droves and bolster their House majority in 2012, at which point they would have enough votes to repeal ObamaCare.  By then, they wouldn’t need 67 votes in the Senate if a Republican president were elected.

In the meantime, House Republicans plan to defund ObamaCare step-by-step via the appropriations process.

Twenty-six states—a majority—are now suing the federal government over the constitutionality of the individual mandate and other ObamaCare provisions.  Democrats previously ridiculed the possibility of challenging ObamaCare in court, but they’re not laughing over that prospect now.

The House vote is the first step on the legislative track toward derailing this heinous legislation.  Congress may not end up being the route by which it is eventually immobilized.  But the momentum to abolish this bill is unstoppable.



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