Obama's looking for 38% of Obamacare enrollees to be young -- he wants to tax-farm these young invincibles who, thanks to Obamacare, will be paying much, much more into the system than they take out.

Actual percentage of young enrollees so far in Kentucky: N-n-n-nineteen percent.

Obama and Sebelius have, get this, refused to disclose the demographic breakdown for federal system's enrollees.

So our best guess is to look to states which do not, get this, suppress all information and lie about the rest. And Kentucky's figures, at least so far, show that the young people so crucial to Obamacare are just not interested in subsidizing older people.

And In "Success Story" Connecticut... Only twenty-four percent of enrollees are the young people who can be so bountifully tax-farmed.

According to ConnecticutÂ’s latest enrollment data, 10 percent of total enrollees since Oct. 1 are between the ages of 18 and 25, 12 percent between 26 and 34 and 12 percent between 35 and 44.

via @realrosenrosen

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Posted by: Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (196)
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Tarawa was a bloody, hard fought 3 day battle that saw the first tough Japanese resistance to island assaults in the war. Over 1,000 Marines were killed, along with 650 sailors when the light carrier USS Liscome Bay was sunk. 2,100 more Marines were wounded.

Up until this point in the Pacific war, American forces met limited resistance to assault landings. That changed at Tarawa. Over 4,500 Japanese defenders (2,600 soldiers and 2,200 laborers, 1,200 of which were Korean slaves pressed into construction work) dug in a fought to the end. When it was over, only 17 Japanese soldiers were captured along with a hundred or so laborers.

The rest were dead.

After Tarawa the 2nd Marine Division shipped back to Hawaii for 6 months until they were called up for the assault on Saipan. The Marines overcame significant obstacles in this fight, poor coordination between the Navy and the Marine landing forces, an inadequate naval bombardment to sufficiently weaken a well dug in enemy, a shortage of landing craft. LVTs were the only landing craft that could get over the coral reefs. After the battle the Marines ordered more LVTs, and reinforced them with heavier armor and bigger guns. The lessons of Tarawa came hard, but the Marines learned them and adapted.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:00 PM | Comments (62)
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Sometimes, if the Washington Free Beacon staff is just the right amount of hungover, they can function at state that hovers pretty close to competency. There's a sweet spot in the hungover scale that allows one to both produce decent work and ward off any desire for an early afternoon cocktail, which experts call the "Goldilocks post-inebriation zone". The ability to hit this zone is not borne of skill, but rather simple probability multiplied by the frequency of being hungover.

This video will come in handy when the left starts declaring it once again racist to refer to the law as "Obamacare" and not the ACA. They do seem to be a bit stuck here because attempting to shift away from the toxicity of the Obama brand only leaves them with the word "affordable", which Americans now know isn't the case. Some shameless partisans looking to score cheap political points might even call it a "lie".

Even Blue Cross/Blue Shield Is Goofing on Obamacare [ace]: People who can actually deliver insurance to customers are now gently goofing on Obamacare's "glitchy" website.

Not a hard shot by any means-- but a shot nonetheless.

And you don't make a joke unless you think your audience is receptive to it.

Remember the days when Obama, supposedly, just wasn't a comical enough figure for comedians to poke fun at? Dude, even corporations who group-focus their ads to make sure no one at all is offended can now see some humor in Clothes That Have No Emperor.

Posted by: JohnE. at 02:40 PM | Comments (206)
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Here's a little inside baseball: Not only does CAC say this on the blog a lot, but he says it in emails a lot too.

The other day he did a bunch of maps and analysis. It looked pretty good to me. So I said, "Hey, Con Art Critic, that's good stuff. Why don't you put that all together and do it as a post, instead of just an internal email?"

So he did.

He posted at The Federalist.

Oh perfect. Just what I had in mind when I suggested writing it up as a post to CAC, The Meatball.

Now, am I hurt? Sure.

Do I feel betrayed? Naturally.

But am I actually angry at him? Again, yes. Passionately. I want to fight him.

No but seriously it's a good piece. I don't like this whole "Give up on Virginia" idea, but we do need to put more states in play.

We have seen a Democratic turn across the nation since 2000, but it hasnÂ’t been monolithic in its intensity. Once Republicans acknowledge what the electoral map really looks like, it may actually win another national election... Shift the emphasis toward larger states the party has neglected at its own expense.

Setting an electoral vote goal of 300 discourages the electoral atrophy Republicans have suffered from since 2008. Going for big, vote-rich states is no easy task.... But by setting a larger baseline goal, Republicans have far more paths to win the 270 votes needed to win back the White House.

...

ItÂ’s long past time for the GOP to realize VirginiaÂ’s just not that into it, and to finally ask Pennsylvania out on a date.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (186)
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OK, fellow Morons, gather 'round, because I'm going to provide a simple demonstration of why Obamacare is so much different than all the tropes the Left uses to try to scare voters away from those eeeeevil Rethuglicans. While I must admit up front that this is a self-selected group that visits Ace of Spades daily, it is also a very large group. So, let's do a simple experiment.

First, let's visit the standard Left shrieking points.

1) How many of you know someone who died in Hurricane Katrina? (Just thought I'd get that out of the way.)

2) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was a valid registered voter and who was denied the chance to vote due to Voter ID laws?

3) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was unable to afford birth control due to a lack of health insurance?

4) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was denied the chance to have an abortion, due to state regulations?

5) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who has been laid off due to the Federal budget sequester?

6) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was furloughed during the brief Federal Government shutdown and then did not get back pay for the time furloughed?

7) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who was unable to find a meaningful job because of Right to Work legislation in the state where they live?

Now for the flip side:

How many of you know someone (including yourself) who had their existing health insurance policy cancelled as a result of Obamacare, and who are now looking at options that are more expensive and have higher deductibles? (My own hand goes up.)

9) How many of you know someone (including yourself) who works for a business whose health insurance coverage is either going to be eliminated or become more expensive as a result of Obamacare?

Show of hands, everyone?

Yep, what I pretty much thought.

Note that most of the Left's boogiemen -- items 1-7 -- are just that -- largely imaginary, except for the occasional OFA worker who gets press coverage for her 15 minutes of fame. But I suspect that the vast majority of the voting population can't answer yes to question 1-7.

On the other hand, between now and November 2014, I am willing to bet that the vast majority of the voting population will answer yes to questions 8 and 9. And that is why, in spite of the Left's desperate attempts to find some equivalents between the burgeoning Obamacare debacle and the sins of the Right (as they define them), it's really no contest.

Should be interesting. ..fritz..

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:03 PM | Comments (150)
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Incredible -- and an undeniable mode of thinking among the self-professed elite.

Who are not elite, actually.

Obama and all his close appointees -- the people who sip from the same cup of Revolutionary Vanguard socialism as he does -- all believe this, and all say the same things.

They have no respect for the American voter. They believe the American voter is too stupid to participate in a democratic process supposedly conducted for their benefit.

Whenever the American voter disagrees with them, or objects to their grand plans, or has simple questions, or merely fails to support the Vanguard with sufficient fervor, they resort to the same tactic:

The deem opposition to be wholly illegitimate due to a lack of understanding or moral center, and quickly sneer off entire swathes of the population by reducing them to a derogatory social cliché.

How did Obama explain the blue-collar Democrats of Pennsylvania who preferred Hillary Clinton to himself?

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

He quickly reduced millions of voters to, essentially, the level of the mentally retarded and legally incompetent, people incapable of thinking or reasoning, whose actions and beliefs were motivated entirely by fear, hatred, superstition, and ignorance.

Millions of informed Americans -- informed Americans, I say, because the average Low Information Voter is certainly not objecting to the Department of Education's curriculum makeover -- have objected to Common Core.

In many cases, the objection is not that Common Core is too hard -- which is Arne Duncan's suggestion. Quite the opposite. Michelle Malkin, for example, objects to Common Core partly because standards are being undeniably lowered, not raised:

There’s no better illustration of Common Core’s duplicitous talk of higher standards than to start with its math “reforms.” While Common Core promoters assert their standards are “internationally benchmarked,” independent members of the expert panel in charge of validating the standards refute the claim. Panel member Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas reported, “No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics” or other subjects.

In fact, Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. HeÂ’s not alone.

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”

Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed. Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.

ZeÂ’ev Wurman, a prominent software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert in California and Washington, D.C., points out that Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.

Malkin objects that the curriculum is being dumbed down, not smartened up, but that's too difficult for Arne Duncan to rebut. So instead he accuses informed parents like Michelle Malkin of wanting to make the test dumber so that their kids can do better on it.

And beyond that, of course, Duncan is sneering at a huge number of Americans -- again, I stress, intensely informed Americans, not low-information dilettantes -- by reducing them to two badges of cultural shame:

1. White

2. Suburban

Can one imagine any instance in which sneering away opponents as "black and urban, so, [eye roll] you know..." would even occur to Arne Duncan, or be countenanced by the media?

But to sneer away opponents as being unfashionably "white" and "suburban" -- so sorry about our race, you know, but God fashioned us this way; and sorry, too, that we do not make enough money to live in the city and pay $30,000 per year for private school -- is just Standard Operating Procedure on the left.

Opponents are never merely wrong -- they are unworthy to even offer an opinion on the functioning of their own (once and future) democracy.

What the left intends is to remove more and more democratic decisions from the hands of the people and entrust them to socialist members of the New Class. They will achieve this in two ways:

1. By operation of actual law, or unilateral executive action, or permanent-government bureaucratic contrivance that forces certain policies upon an unwilling public, and

2. By socially shaming citizens from even daring to express opposition unless they are card-carrying socialist members of the New Class. The easiest opinion to fight, after all, is one that is never even expressed, but instead suppressed by the would-be dissenting individual, for fear of being shamed by the collective.

And that's the goal of Arne Duncan's statement here.

That's the goal of the New Class, generally: To remove more and more democratic functions from the actual demos, and deposit those formerly democratically-informed government functions in the sole and exclusive care of the Approved List of Officially Recognized (Politically Reliable) Experts.

This point is very important, I think. The Party of Government is insisting, increasingly angrily and loudly, that only "Experts" (again, from their carefully-vetted list of "Experts") are capable of offering informed opinions on the most basic functions of government.

Once they pretended to care about what the public believed. It seems so long gone now, but you probably can remember, if you try. In fact, it wasn't even so long ago. Before 2009, politicians did have to pretend to care what the public believed, and would pay a sharp penalty for the indulgence of demeaning the citizens whom they supposedly work for.

That's not the case any longer. They are increasingly brazen and upfront about their deeply-held belief that only they have the capacity for democratic ideation. Only those socialist-leaning members of the New Class have the intellectual capacity and moral enlightenment to participate in American democracy.

Everyone else may participate in one fashion: You can comply with your betters' expert, enlightened plans.

This is insidious. It corrodes the very notion of democracy.

It's also flat-out false, because the self-appointed experts are in fact almost always feckless mediocrities at best and venal incompetents at worse.

It's time for Americans to begin standing up and insisting, "No, this is a Democracy, and as Citizens, it is both our right and our duty to participate fully in it."

In another era, Arne Duncan would pay a price. But not in this era. Because the media, which would usually put a politician in the hot seat for such an anti-democratic and insulting confession of deepest belief, happens to be socialist-leaning members of the New Class themselves, and they agree fully with Arne Duncan.

We are losing America. And unless more Americans actually care about this fact, and begin behaving like Americans again, we will lose it forever.

Flashback: Speaking of Champagne Socialist members of the New Class, and their non-expertise and non-elite status: Ladies and Gentlemen, Matthew Yglesias' raucously amusing pre-Obamacare-launch prediction.

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (401)
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Other people are linking this, but let me link Freddoso's Conservative Intelligence Briefing, because he included this gif, and I like pictures:

Big numbers: Obama's down to 37% job approval, with 57% disapproving (!). Support for Obamacare itself is down to 31%, with 61% disapproving (!!).

Preferences seem to be cascading:

No loss of support for Obamacare? Uh, sorry, folks, but the loss of support is actually pretty huge — 22 points on net in just one month.

Among Democrats, a 26-point swing against Obamacare. Among independents, a net 23-point swing against Obamacare. Both in just one month[.]

An ABCNews-Washington Post poll released yesterday was not quite so bad for Obama, but it was still very bad:

OBAMA FACES RECORD DISAPPROVAL NUMBERS:

...

The president’s job approval rating has fallen to 42 percent in a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, down 13 percentage points this year and 6 points in the past month to match the lowest of his presidency. Fifty-five percent disapprove — a record. And 70 percent say the country’s headed seriously off on the wrong track — up 13 points since May to the most in two years.

THE PRESIDENT’S PERSONAL IMAGE HAS SUFFERED: President Obama is also at career lows for being a strong leader (down by 15 points this year and a vast 31 points below its peak shortly after he took office), understanding the problems of average Americans and being honest and trustworthy — numerically under water on each of these, LANGER notes. Just 41 percent rate him as a good manager; 56 percent think not. And fewer than half — 46 percent — see him favorably overall, down 14 points this year to the fewest of his presidency. Fifty-two percent now view him unfavorably, a new high and a majority for the first time since he took office.

OBAMACARE’S MOST NEGATIVE RATING TO DATE: Americans by nearly 2-1, 63-33 percent, disapprove of Obama’s handling of implementation of the new health care law. And the public by 57-40 percent now opposes the law overall, with opposition up by 8 points in the past month alone. Fifty-six percent describe the cancellation of health insurance policies that are deemed substandard under the law as “mismanagement” rather than a normal startup problem.

Remember when Republicans were being shellacked for wishing to delay Obamacare? Sure you do. It was like the Summer of Sharks -- a minor story puffed up into prominence by a slow news month before the horrible news of 9/11.

Here's the public on delaying an important part of Obamacare, the individual mandate:

Given the breakdown of the HealthCare.gov website, a broad 71 percent favor postponing the individual mandate requiring nearly all Americans to have coverage. And the mandate’s still widely unpopular in any case; 65 percent of Americans oppose it — a majority of them, strongly. Notably, even among those who support the individual mandate, 55 percent favor delaying it.

Getting back to that picture, and I do like pictures: How does Obama claw his way out of this hole? This is not something easily gotten over, like Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

Because, even though the public disapproved of that affair, and being lied to about it, three things were true in that case:

1. Bill Clinton's sexual dalliance did not in fact "affect his job performance," as liberals constantly screamed. They screamed it... and it was actually true. Although the perjury was a serious charge, committing perjury did not reduce the GDP or the like.

2. Bill Clinton did not continue getting beejers from Monica Lewinsky during the Lewisky scandal, and continue exploring the possibilities of a cigar as a marital aid throughout the duration of his second term.

3. The economy was in great shape, unemployment was down to record lows (like 3.8% in one month), and we had a surplus.

That's why I say that was easily brushed aside, in relative terms. Compare that support-eroding event to Obamacare:

1. Obamacare does in fact "affect Obama's job performance," because it is his job performance. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama cannot say, "I'm ignoring these distractions in order to focus on working for the American people." Obamacare is his work for the American people, and the American people strongly disapprove.

His only real out here is to agree to repeal it, which, of course, he will not do. If/when he gets down into the twenties, enough Democrats may vote to override his veto of a bill repealing Obamacare.

2. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama cannot say his filthy affair with redistributive socialism is "in the past" and he's "seeking counseling and the ministering of Jesse Jackson" to "heal himself" of these defects. Obama intends to continue having his torrid public affair with Spreading the Wealth Around until January 2017.

And he won't apologize for it, not really. What he says is basically Woody Allen's non-apology: "The heart wants what it wants." You'll just have to understand his love affair with socialism-- because he's too much in love to break it off.

3. On the economy, I will only say "Obama's economy" because to say more would be to insult your intelligence.

So that leaves that jpg's suggestion: He will just have to avoid talking about it, and hope that taxpayers don't notice he's taking thousands of dollars from them -- sometimes ten thousand dollars or more -- in order to pay for his constant romantic getaways in the Poconos with his socialist mistress.

And how's that going to work?

And does he think the public won't notice when he begins a new, second affair, this time with taking away employer-provided insurance just before the mid-terms?

Obama's in that very special hell, maybe the Circle reserved for the arrogant and deceitful: He can't move forward, and he can't move back. And he also can't stay where he is.

But oh I know: He'll give a speech. Right?

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (515)
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Stay with the report to see how many people actually managed to sign up Obamacare, even with the aid of navigators.

I'll put the answer in white font if you just want the answer without the hoopety doo and much ado:

Two.

That's from the Free Beacon. Also check out this clip, in which Comically Evasive Mouthpiece Jay Carney fields a question about the "Obamacare success story," personally hailed by Obama, who now turns out to not be able to afford Obamacare's sky-high premiums at all.

He says he's "reaching out to her" to make sure she "understands her options." So, like, she's dumb.

Jay Carney embarrassing himself is not even dog-bites-man at this point. It's dog-bites-dogfood.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (327)
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Via Hot Air, that is Milbank's basic claim.

The Republicans’ scary-movie strategy has some logic to it: If they can frighten young and healthy people from joining the health-care exchanges, the exchanges will become expensive and unmanageable. This is sabotage, plain and simple — much like the refusal by red-state governors to participate in setting up the exchanges in the first place. But those sabotaging the new law should be careful what they wish for: Instead of killing the law, they are likely to make it more expensive to taxpayers. Their efforts could have the effect of turning Obamacare, which relies on private insurance and the free market, into just the sort of big-government entitlement Republicans were worried about in the first place.

If they succeed in scaring people away, the ones who join exchanges are likely to be older and sicker, making the insurance pool costlier to insurers. As Larry Levitt, a senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, explained to me, if costs are more than 3 percent higher than anticipated in the first few years of Obamacare, the federal government will have to pick up at least half of the additional expense.

This was just explained to you yesterday?

Um, why are we reading you then? Most casually-informed people have known about this for three weeks. Truly informed people have always known about it.

But you just had very basic information explained to you, and now you're going to tell us all how the world works?

How the hell does that happen?

If the health-care exchanges continued to attract only the elderly and the sick in future years, premiums would rise and the only people likely to remain in the program will be those who qualify for the federal subsidies, which would increase sharply because individual contributions are limited to a percentage of the recipientÂ’s income.

“The more successful opponents are at discouraging young and healthy people from enrolling, the bigger share of the cost the federal government will end up covering,” Levitt said. “The implication of encouraging young and healthy people to sit on the sidelines is that costs are shifted to the federal government.”

You can read Ed Morrissey's rebuttal at Hot Air.

I prefer to look at this more globally. What the Republicans are doing is telling the public The Truth. And The Truth is this:

* Obamacare, as currently configured, is a "hacker's paradise," according to MaAfee Anti-Virus founder and former owner John McAfee.

Is that scary? Does that discourage people from signing up?

Indeed it does. It's also true. Another security expert just called the site filled with "critical risks." CMS's former head of IT, Tony Trenkle, refused to certify the site as secure.

What does Milbank suppose we should do about this? Lie to the people, as his coreligionists have been lying to them for four years?

* Obamacare is premised on a "Spread the Health Insurance Wealth Around" philosophy which is strongly redistributive, that is, it shifts costs from the poor or uninsurable to the healthier members of the Middle Class.

This means the healthier members of the middle class -- especially men, and especially young men -- are now paying far more for insurance than their actual risk profile suggests they would. This means, finally, that insurance is now a bad economic deal for them.

That's the heart of Obamacare-- and that's not a glitch. That's what Obamacare is supposed to do.

Again: Should we continue lying to them about this? Should we tell them their health insurance dollars -- and their formally generous networks of health care providers, now restricted in order to give doctors to other people* -- are not being appropriated to fund other people?

This is what Obama and the Democrats have been doing all along. The GOP has attempted to tell the public this would happen, but there has been little media interest in covering the story. The media simply assumed Obama was telling the truth and the GOP was lying and refused to look into the actual facts.

Well, now that these things do not require any reading or research to discover -- witnesses are coming forward -- the media cannot continue maintaining its pose that Obama was telling the truth.

He wasn't. He was lying. He was lying all along.

Dana Milbank is upset by this. He wants the media and government to go back to lying to the public. Because he knows the truth will make the public less likely to buy into Obamacare, and if they don't buy into Obamacare, it goes into a death spiral.

And then Obama will have to repeal it, and the Democratic Party will be discredited for a generation.

All that's true, and, no one's going to lie much about this, the GOP would like to see that happen just as much as a partisan Democrat shill like Dana Milbank would like to not see it happen.

Nevertheless, these things aren't happening because the GOP is lying to the public. These things are happening because Obama's lies are finally being contradicted, not by GOP "scare campaigns," but by actual facts. Things you can actually check. Real things. Not spin, not rhetoric -- actual real-world facts.

Milbank's cry, though he won't admit this, is that he wishes the GOP would feel the sense of Redistributive Patriotism that Obama and Democrat partisan shills such as himself feel, and lie to the public about the nature of this program, at least long enough to get it to take root, because when it has taken root, the public will not be able to do away with it, ever, no matter how much it harms them.

Well, the GOP has no interest in lying about this. Lying about other things, sure, maybe. But lying about Obamacare, which they oppose?

Do Milbank and his other firebreathing partisan liberal partisans really think they're going to enlist the GOP in their lies (or at least bully them into keeping silent about the truth) to save Obama, Obamacare, Reid and Pelosi from the consequences of their awful, harmful policy preferences?

You know what's really scary, Dana? Poppin' Molly. It's a dangerous drug. Just say no.

Progressives view the public as three things:

1, stupid and incapable of making the "right" political choices.

2, ethically foul (bitter clingers, racist) and therefore not only deserving of, but requiring, manipulation and deceit from their intellectual and moral betters to induce them to make the "right" political choices. The truth won't work with people who are both intellectually and morally retarded; like children being told to be good or else Santa Claus won't give them gifts, they have to be manipulated into the right decision by childish fictions.

3, tax-generating worker drones whose only real value is not in the fullness of their own lives (they're essentially zombies, monsters, beasts of the field) but whose labor can be expropriated to improve more worthy lives.

Essentially, the entirety of Flyover Country, filled with dull-minded, black-hearted suburban and rural Middle Class workers, is a gigantic farm of human beings from which progressives can harvest the fruits of Middle Class Labor for various feasts they've planned.

Milbank's column is implicitly a confession of this. He cannot write the nonsense he writes without having this idea central in his thinking (but hidden from his audience). He's just Darned Angry at the GOP for blowing the whistle and letting people know that Obama is turning them into farm-animals to be periodically shorn of fur with which to make sweaters for members of Obama's coalition.

He spends an awful lot of time complaining that the GOP is saying these Mean Things, and very little time at all explaining in what way these Mean Things are actually untrue.

Because he knows these things are true. But he doesn't want the Sheep to know that.

Why, they might even begin to fear the Shears.**

Perhaps instead of dishonestly making this sort of argument, Milbank should man up and tell the truth himself. If he believes it's people's Patriotic Duty to sacrifice for the good of the Collective, he should just argue that case honestly, instead of trying to fashion Tricksy Narratives in which the greatest villain, and the greatest threat to the common weal, is an Informed Citizenry.

* It's not exactly true that people's doctors are being taken from them to be given to other people. It's indirectly true, though: Obamacare is restricting doctor networks in order to put pressure on doctors to reduce medical costs. With only one or two insurers in an area, the insurers have more bargaining power. This is intended. "Bend the cost curve down" and all.

It's also required to restrict provider networks in order to reduce costs. Because without that cost-reducing move, the premiums now causing sticker shock would be even higher. So Obamacare screws the Middle Class over in both ways-- it jacks up their premiums, and then, to keep premiums from being even higher, it reduces their access and choice.

** In ancient Rome, the office of tax collector was a position that people paid the state to perform. Becoming a tax collector meant that you now had the right, granted to you by Rome, to tax all the people in the province you purchased.

It was a position you purchased to profit from -- if you were anywhere near good at squeezing taxes out of the population, you'd collect more in "revenue" -- their taxes -- than you paid to state to get the job.

These folks were very commonly called tax farmers, as they were in fact farming tax money from the Human Corn called "citizens." This wasn't even said in a derogatory fashion-- tax farmers called themselves tax farmers. It was just accepted that this was your function, plucking the human farm of its fruits.

We should bring back this terminology, this notion. It's pretty vivid, and it does indeed describe the situation accurately.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (340)
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Oregon has made a decent bit of healthcare news in the last few months, and, given the totality of it, should probably change its nickname to "The Cautionary Tale State".

First, the Oregon Obamacare exchange, "Cover Oregon", must've set some kind of record for its first couple of months in operation:

Oregon, a state that fully embraced the Affordable Care Act, is enduring one of the rockiest rollouts of President Back [sic] Obama's signature health care law, with an inoperative online exchange that has yet to enroll a single subscriber, requiring thousands to apply on paper instead.

Zero. Point. Zero. They really Blutarsky'd that one.

But hold on. What was this from the country's health insurance sales headquarters?

How can this be? The exchange has zero subscribers, but there are 56,000 new Oregonians with "health insurance" now?

Here's the health insurance salesman-in-chief:

HereÂ’s another thing that the Affordable Care Act does. In states where governors and legislatures have wisely allowed it [wouldn't be an Obama speech without a dig at the GOP --andy], the Affordable Care Act provides the opportunity for many Americans to get covered under Medicaid for the first time. So in Oregon, for example, thatÂ’s helped cut the number of uninsured people by 10 percent just in the last three weeks. Think about that. ThatÂ’s 56,000 more Americans who now have health care. (Applause.) That doesnÂ’t depend on a website. (emphasis added)

Yes, think about that. 56,000 more Americans now have health care. And what awesome health care it is:

The big headline from the Oregon Medicaid study is that paying for people's health care saves them from spending their own money (duh!) and marginally increases some self-reported psychological indicators (that is, stuff like "how do you feel?" which can be affected simply by the knowledge that someone's paying your bills) but does nothing whatsoever to improve the health of people on Medicaid.

Leftists, seeking any kind of spin, are now lauding the Medicaid program as the greatest anti-depression program since the Mousketeers. But is that really why the country is paying $7.5 trillion dollars on a program? To make people feel slightly better emotionally, without any tangible physical improvement?

So there you have it. 56,000 people were added to a program with no discernible benefit to health outcomes. Heckuva job, Oregon. Heckuva a job.

And this is what Obama touts as a success.
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Posted by: andy at 10:11 AM | Comments (357)
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