In official testimony on Wednesday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared uncategorically that there would be no more delays in Obamacare's implementation, the enforcement of the individual mandate, or any other extensions or adjustments to the nation's biggest, worst-conceived, and most incomprehensible law.
And she may actually be telling the truth, because Obama already made a flying buttload of new changes, extensions and adjustments during the 48 hours before Sebelius made her promise.
With a sweep of his mighty pen, the president backed off until 2016 the amount of time that people can keep their old, substandard, "worse than no insurance" healthcare plans. He then issued another directive saying that for the millions who were tossed from their old healthcare plans due to Obamacare, he was dropping the mandate to get new insurance or pay a fine. In other words, he made a presidential declaration that going from having insurance to having no insurance is okey-dokey in his book!
And as long as his pen still had ink in it, Barry signed an edict somehow magically exempting parts of Obamacare from the sequester cuts which are the law of the land (or were, back when laws actually meant something).
But apart from the fact that Obamacare is now completely without structural integrity of any discernible nature, how is the program doing overall?
Well, according to statistics which Hope n' Change doesn't feel like looking up again, there have been about 4 million "enrollees" to Obamacare, although "enrollee" doesn't actually mean anything, since Sebelius testified that she has no frickin' idea how many people have actually paid for a plan - and moreover, she doesn't appear to care. Estimates are that about 1 in 4 of the (ahem) "enrollees" haven't paid a dime, and have thus not truly enrolled in doodly squat.
And speaking of 1 in 4 (smooth segue, huh?) that also seems to be the number of enrollees who were uninsured when this whole debacle started. That means 75% of Obamacare customers already had insurance, but were willing to change plans when they figured out that other people would be picking up most of the cost.
None of this, of course, was mentioned when B. Hussein appeared on the hip, cool, youth-oriented "Between Two Ferns" comedy webcast, where he was interviewed about Obamacare by alleged actor Zach Galifianakis and proved to be about as funny as crib death.
In other words, this week in Obamacare was pretty much like every other week since the program's inception. A complete disaster.
The ill-fated sketch appeared on "Funny or Die." Sadly, the title is only rhetorical.
22 comments:
As his worshipfulness stated, to put affordable back into the Affordable Care Act, all people need to do is "prioritize". If everyone eliminated non-essentials such as cable tv, phone service, and food, health care insurance would be no problem. The math he did not mention is that the healthcare website alone cost taxpayers over $360 million. The population of the US is around 315 million. Had the government simply given everyone 1 million dollars, all could afford healthcare and taxpayers would have saved over $40 million.
They could've renamed that episode
"4 Potted Plants".
Geoff -- isn't it amazing that Obama, the guy who has already taken THREE vacations in 2014, would have the audacity to say that? I guess when you're vacationing on the public's dime, it's easy to have another "make sure your tires are inflated" moment just to show what a hypocrite and drooling moron you (Obama) are.
Maybe Bammy should prioritize less golf, roll out of bed before 10AM, and try some ACTUAL Presidenting -- but I guess partying, raising cash, and showing one's complete disdain for America takes priority, right?
Heckova job, Bammy. Heckova job.
Stilton -- we are no longer a nation of laws, but a nation of men. Heaven help us all when the general populace figures that out. It won't end well for anyone, but it will end ESPECIALLY not well for those in power ... as history has shown us.
Geoff, your point is well taken but check your math.
I purposefully under-estimated the savings to the taxpayers had the government instead given the money wasted on healthcare.com to the citizens of this country. One million dollars each would not only have purchased plenty of health insurance without sacrificing non-essentials such as cable tv, but would have stimulated the economy like nothing ever seen before. Of course, such an action on the part of our elected officials would have required that they actually gave a damn about us and our healthcare.
O'Liar is banking that the LIV's will have completely forgotten this fuster cluck when they go to vote six times each come November 2016. Sadly, they will forget, and they'll happily cast their multiple ballots for SloJoe or Billary.
Anybody catch Trey Gowdy's comments on the House floor yesterday? I'd give my left nut if he was our President. Hell, I'd give both nuts! Beats being a slave to the gubmint.
I guess what burns my ass more than anything about O'Liar's latest move is, when the House Republican repeated tried to postpone this crap, the liberals and LSM crucified them, but O'Numbnuts wirtes it off with his magic pen, and everything's just kootchy! GRRRRR....
@Geoff King,
Good points, but anon is right about the math. $360 million divided amongst 315 million people would give each of us about a buck fourteen. Granted, that's a shitload compared to what I've gotten from the ACA so far, but...
I have seen the gift of a million dollars proposition before and totally agree. If we ALL got a mil we could buy our own "gold" health care or self insure and still have PLENTY left over to purchase non-essentials and essentials such as food, heat, cars, homes, etc. What a boon that would be to the economy, but apparently the "elite" in Washington were asleep during their math classes. As for the 2 fern thing, I guess now we have a buffoon in chief.
Dang. I did make a greivous error in my math, and I am not even a product of Common Core. I will write off my mistake to lack of coffee or too much Fluoride.
The only thing missing from Barry's three-ring circus is a tent. I don't think there's enough canvas in the world to cover all of the clown acts and dog n' pony shows that (barely)pass as a cabinet in this administration. Obama makes Nixon look like a rank amateur (& Carter good) in comparison!
More transparently self-serving ObamaCare waivers. At this rate, eventually most of the law is going to get pushed back until there are no Democrats left to get blamed for any of it.
And just how is the law doing? Sebelius still won't tell us exactly how many have actually paid. And now it seems that the CBO issued a report stating that over the next 10 years, ObamaCare is going to cost us 2-trillion dollars, and yet 30 million Americans will remain unsinsured!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-cost-1930-trillion-leave-30-million-uninsured_649066.html
Wait a minute! Wasn't ObamaCare a moral imperative because we already had 30-million uninsured in America? So WTF are we getting for our two-trillion dollars?
So next time some pajama-boy-liberal whines as he recites the well-worn Democrat boilerplate narrative that we wasted a trillion dollars on "Bush's Two Wars", you can now flash back "Hey, that's nothing! Obama blew 2-trillion dollars on ObamaCare, and destroyed an entire industry and the American economy in the process." If you really want to appear humble, you can toss in "But, to be honest I have to give Obama credit; At least Obama fully realized his objective."
Of course, as has been mentioned many times here before, the supposed economic viability of ObamaCare is entirely dependent upon people, particularly healthy, young people, signing up who currently have little economic incentive to do so. (Last year, ObamaCare architect Ezekiel Emanuel said, with a straight face no less, that America's youth would ultimately step up to the plate and buy insurance for no better reason that to save Obama's legacy) So how do clueless authority figures make young people do economically irrational things? They make it seem hip!
As I said last year, it's one think to ask people to vote for you a couple of times, but it's quite another to get them to write checks with lots of zeros, every single month forever. Sitting between the ferns was both desperate and sad. Not to mention not all that funny.
Oh, and finally, the consensus is that Health Insurance Rates Likely to Rise in 2015:
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304185104579435533140999534?ref=/home-page
Sebelius says that rates will likely rise, but not as much as they could. Hardly comforting, since the previous narrative was that they’d be going down. ($2,500 a year, right?) Since my rates have doubled instead of going down, I can only assume that they will now triple now that they’re only going to rise “slightly”. Guess it's time to re-evaluate "priorities" again.
So it's little surprise that the Democrats will be trying to shift the focus on absolutely anything other than this as we head towards November. It explains the Senate Democrats double-down on “global warming” the other day. Who knows. Perhaps Obama will start a war with the Russians or China just to get our minds off his disastrous domestic agenda.
Fortunately, I doubt any of this is going to work. Nobody worries that much about global warming or the Crimea when their in-the-face problems involve losing their health care or job.
Geoff King;
I believe the cost was $634 million, and I guarandamtee you, I could have come up with better ways to address healthcare than the Wookiee-monster's husband.
Earl Allison, (heavy-duty transmissions),
I must admit that when I checked the tire pressure in my truck, I personally saved enough gas to make up for the shitcanning of drilling permits and the Keystone Pipeline, (yeah, RIGHT). Poor lamont has ONLY golfed 164 times since taking D.C. hostage, and that means he's only pissed away a complete day after every 10 days while having the most important job on Earth. Oh, and "surprise, surprise", when asked about ANY damned thing, HE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT IT!
I think the democraps need to jettison the jackass as their logo and go to somebody applying corporal punishment to Curious George!!!!
@Geoff King- As much as I'd like to get a million bucks from the government, your math was indeed off - but hey, so is their math, only they're using real dollars!
And it's wildly insulting for Barry to suggest that people just need to re-prioritize to make the purchase of health insurance more important than food or communications. Why didn't he tell them to do that before Obamacare, when rates were actually cheaper?
@Frankie- That's a great line!
@Earl Allison- You're right that Barry is a pretty poor role model when it comes to setting priorities.
And I'm very concerned about the government's increasing disregard of laws.
@Colby- I loved Trey Gowdy's remarks. We need a lot more people showing that kind of anger and courage.
@Judi King- Unfortunately, for the government to give each of us a million dollars, they'd have to collect two million dollars per person to cover their bureaucratic costs.
@John the Econ- As usual, you distill the situation very nicely: a two trillion dollar outlay, and no reduction in the uninsured. So what's been accomplished? Plenty! The redistribution of two trillion dollars from the evil "haves" to the blessed "have nots," and increasing dependence on the government as private institutions are forced to fail.
And it's certainly no surprise that Obamacare rates are going up: they were counting on the young and stupid to overpay for policies, and it hasn't happened. Instead, the people signing up for Obamacare are the ones who can receive benefits of greater value than their premiums - a net loss for the insurers (who are being backstopped with our tax dollars).
As you've said, all of this razzle-dazzle song and dance with the presidential "fixes" is about giving the Dems political cover at election time, and I'm afraid it may actually work.
@Bruce Bleu- Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said with all seriousness that the Dems couldn't have effed up the implementation of Obamacare any more if they were trying to create a disaster. He couldn't be more correct.
It was never supposed to work. It's just a necessary step towards single-payer because they couldn't get single-payer from the start. ACA was always intended to fail, but they came to realize the timing of the failure matters ... hence the delays. It has to fail at a time when the LSM can blame the political right to the LIV.
@Geoff King,
Not to worry, your math error was an honest one. After all, for decades we've all been blasted with "gubmint math" which makes Common Core look almost sensible. I was imagining what would happen if the gubmint actually DID give every citizen a million smackers. The next morning, you'd drive to Bojangles for your morning biscuit, and find that they were now 35 bucks each. A perfect match to the huge health care savings we are all now enjoying.
@Stilton,
YES! We need about 560+ more Trey Gowdy's in DC. And it pains me when he says he is absolutely not interested in running for president, and he is a firm believer that Congressmen should only serve a term or two, then go back home like the founders intended. Damn! Why can't McCain be like that. Oh, and I saw The Turtle (McConnell) on TV last night quacking about how great things would be if HE was Senate Majority Leader. NOOOOO! Somebody like Rubio, Cruz, Barrasso, Issa, or Paul needs that job. Mitch needs to be majority leader of his own house back in Kentucky.
Yes, Trey Gowdy is impressive. Also, I know everyone getting a million dollars is just a fantasy but in my fantasy world there would be no bureaucrats to pay.
@Stilton, but is it going to work? I'm not sure ObamaCare is very unique in terms of cause and effect. So rarely in politics does it happen where a single policy so directly and clearly screws so many people that there can be absolutely no question as to the cause.
For example, Obama can double the minimum wage and force companies to pay more in overtime and kill another 10 million jobs. Those that lose their jobs may or may not correlate their job loss to Obama's policies.
But when millions have lost their insurance and now have to pay more for less coverage or have to deal with health exchanges that don't work, or find out that they can't go to their doctor anymore, there's absolutely no one else to blame. Finally, something that's not George Bush's fault.
The 2014 elections are the GOP's to lose.
If Barack Hussein had taken that $2 trillion wasted on Obamacare and split it equally among 310 million Americans, each of us could have had $6451. It's not a million, but it's more than we've gotten from Barack Hussein otherwise.
Great comments all!
I do believe we are very near, or may be there already, when we will all be subjected to full-blown single-payer mandatory 'healthcare'...when it is not about healthcare at all, just destroying insurers and creating the ensuing chaos that will allow (as if it needs 'allowing') the feds to step in and 'save the day'!
And, if you are required to pay the 'tax' in 2015 as I probably will be, you better pay it, despite what BO writes with his magic pen!
Just gets better and better.
But, take heart in what the Word of God says..."A worthless person, a wicked man walks with a perverse mouth. Perversity is in his heart. He devises evil continually, He sows discord, therefore his calamity shall come suddenly, he shall be broken without remedy." Prov 6:12-15
America is to F'n stupid to survive. Look who they reelected in 2012.
My dear h&c brethern-
My brother recieved an e-mail from our cousin's uncle's nephew's gardner, so we know it has to be tru, that talked about the courage of the british political cartoonist and demonstrated it by showing cartoons critizing prezzy Ø.(not exactly sure how that works but I digress)
Closer inspection showed these british cartoons were... Hope & Change!
I always thought Doc was good murkan from Texas but maybe we should start looking for a hint of an accent in what he writes.
Speaking of hints of an accent, to all those with a hint of a brough, Happy St Paddy's day.
@REM1875- I've seen that collection many times (it gets passed around a lot). On the one hand, it's nice to see my cartoons redistributed as an example of courage. But on the other, it's pretty annoying to not only have all of my identifying info stripped off, but for some nitwit to claim my cartoons are the work of brave Brits.
Rest assured that I'm a red, white, and blue blooded American by birth and a Texan by choice. And also Irish thanks to my grandfather (from County Cork) who never married my grandmother. He was (and I'm not kidding) a professional piano player, but was apparently also pretty good with the organ.
Faith n' begorrah! County Cork, did ye say? Me own grandma was from County Cork. And me grandpap hailed from County Down.
Happy St. Paddy's ta ya all!
And, in honor of the Øne's claim to Irish heritage (clearly a lie, but we continue), I offer a new Irish blessing:
And may ye be halfway through the retirement process before Øbama knows ye're employed...
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