By PETER SUDERMAN

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously envisioned the states serving as laboratories, trying “novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” And on health care, that’s just what they’ve done.

Like participants in a national science fair, state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results have been dramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-care costs, and reduced access to care. In other words: The reforms have failed.

New York is exhibit A. In 1993, the state prohibited insurers from declining to cover individuals with pre-existing health conditions (“guaranteed issue”). New York also required insurers to charge those enrolled in their plans the same premium, regardless of health status, age or sex (“community rating”). The goal was to reduce the number of uninsured by making health insurance more accessible, particularly to those who don’t have employer-provided insurance.

More

$350 billion Wall Street bailout extension

$787 billion stimulus

$400 billion, earmark-infested omnibus spending bill

$6 billion to federalize charities and pay volunteers

$109 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund

$3 billion for cash for clunkers

$400 million in corporate welfare to help tourism corporations advertise overseas

$4 billion bailout of the Postal Service

August 24, 2009 – 18:05 ET

Am I hateful if I ask:

- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?

- We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?

- The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?

- If it was so important for congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent 6 months later?

- Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them, how exactly does that work?

- Why won’t member of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?

- Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?

- Was the cash-for-clunkers program meant to save the earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?

- How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?

- Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special advisor?

- The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill—why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?

- If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1000 page plus bills actually impose on the American people?

- If the ‘public option’ health care plan is so good why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?

- If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind—why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?

- Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?

- Why would you want to overwhelm the system?

- Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about not letting a crises go to waste?

- What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?

Incredible, isn’t it?  Trillions of dollars, gone.  Say it: “TRILLIONS.”

T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N-S.

Thanks to the Fed, we each owe over $30,000.  Each of your kids also owes $30,000.  Each illegal alien owes $30,000.   Every single person between the Canadian and Mexican borders and between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans owes $30,000.

How’s that hope and change workin’ for ya?

August 14, 2009
By Lee Cary

Obama and Democrat Congressional leaders uncorked the bottle and the peoples’ Genie is out. 

He’s not happy, this Genie. In normal times, he sits there quietly inside the bottle. Sometimes watching. Mostly not. He finds politics boring, if not disgusting.

 He sat and watched in silence as the TARP bill passed. Told the sky was falling, he looked up and saw it wasn’t. But he shrugged, trusting the bipartisan nature of the effort.  Then, as TARP rolled out, he stood up. The bailouts plowed a furrow across his forehead; his eyebrows lowered; his gaze intensified. But he stayed inside the bottle.

 Along came the Stimulus Bill. Or, in the language of the big spenders, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Genie smelled the bacon through the glass bottle. He heard the squeals coming next from the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009.  Another stampede of pigs.  

 Inside the bottle, the Genie’s leaned forward, pressing his hands and nose flat against the glass. As he watched banks and car companies yield to government control, his jaw slid up. His lips pressed tight. His breathing shortened. But he stayed inside the bottle.

 In his peripheral vision he saw a dancing troupe dressed like Cossacks enter the side door of the White House and disappear within. The Czars had come. The Genie watched, and wondered.

 Events outside the bottle picked up speed. More crisis talk was in the air.  He checked the sky again. Still no signs of a falling.

 Then, ever heavier and more complicated legislative tomes rolled out of Congress in carriages drawn by hubris and arrogance. Cap & Trade and Healthcare Reform. Their long official titles no longer impressed the Genie. But their huge price tags did. As did the mounting federal budget deficit for 2009. Now at $1.84 trillion, with more to come.

 By this time, the Genie was rocking his bottle back-and-forth. He tried and failed to get the big spenders’ attention. His mouth moved, but no sound escaped his bottle, at least in the ears of the big spenders and the old news media, becoming ever more irrelevant with each news cycle as they peddle into obscurity. 

 The people felt powerless because they were. They had no voice that carried. The big spenders pretended to listen, but then condescendingly told the people that everything happening was for their own good. It was meant to be, they said. Doing nothing, they said, is worse.

 When the people protested, they were called rightwing extremists, disruptive malcontents, organized mobs, Nazis brown shirts, and other names which they are not. In fact, they’re average American citizens in a nation where nothing is average about them. On the planet, they are the most extraordinary of citizens.

 Calling the people names was the last straw. The Genie tipped the bottle over, put his feet against the cork, and kick his way out.  Beware of an uncorked Genie.

 As this happened, the people started coming to town hall meetings, meant mostly to convince them to go-along to get-along. They held the heavy healthcare bill in their hands. Dog-eared from having been read.  

 The big spenders were shocked to learn that the people had taken time to do what they, the professional legislators, had not done – they’d read the bill!  The people came armed with enlightened questions, reasoned arguments, and impassioned opinions. All things the big spenders lacked. In some cases, numbers were handed out at the entry door to qualify and order those who could speak. Then, one after the other, questioners asked clear, targeted questions. Sharpshooters picked at random. Remarkable. 

 The people stood, a furrow plowed across their foreheads. Their eyebrows lowered. Their chins up, lips pressed tight, gaze intensified. The Genie was out. When the big spenders told them that their reading of the bill was incorrect, the people found their voice. And, though some quivered with nervousness, they pushed against the glass. This time their voice was most definitely heard.

 Obama and the Democrat Congressional leadership let the Genie out of the bottle. It was an unintended consequence of their crass and heavy-handed methods of leadership. They forgot, if they ever knew, that Americans can be led, but they cannot be herded.

 Obama and Friends though it possible to ride roughshod over the Genie’s people.  They remembered the swooning crowds seduced by the oratorical skills of their leader. They assumed his charisma would carry the day, again. The people would fold and comply, even if they might not commit. And, for those who would not fold easily, there was always the muscle mustered from Obama’s acolytes and allies. There was always the hype served up on demand by the old media. There was always the cumulative ridicule and name-calling spit from the lips of their Party leaders. These things would deflect the people’s skepticism and temper their anger. So they thought.

 They were wrong. All these things did was make the people angrier and harden their determination to be heard, and more – to be heeded.   

 One young woman at a town hall meeting said that, for the first time in her life, she was taking politics seriously because so much is at stake. Her freedoms mostly. Her children’s future, too. She said the effort to force the healthcare bill on the people “had awakened a sleeping giant.”  She could have ended her sentence with the words Admiral Isoraku Yamamoto spoke after the Japanese attacked on Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”    

 We are watching each other stand up in town hall meetings and face their representatives. Those politicians with the courage to attend anyway. We watch live, and we watch on that most sensational and powerful new medium of the web: U-Tube. The peoples’ articulate and courageous statements procreate exponentially, multiplying like amoebas on steroids, as we feed on the resolve of others. A resolve only terrible to those who would silence dissent. Wonderful to the rest of us.

 So the Genie is out of the bottle. And it’ll be a good while before he thinks it safe to crawl back in.

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan.  If that is not available, you will be required to take the gov option!

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing.  No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

• Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.

• Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll.

• Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll.

• Page 167: Any individual who doesnt’ have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

• Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

• Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

• Page 203: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it really says that.

• Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor will be affected the most.

• Page 241: Doctors – no matter what speciality you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)

• Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.

• Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.

• Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.

• Page 272: Cancer patients – welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!

• Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.

• Page 298: Doctors – if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.

• Page 317: Doctors – you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!

• Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.

• Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.

• Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.

• Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.

• Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.

• Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).

• Page 425: More bureaucracy – Advance Care Planning Consult – Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?

• Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.

• Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.

• Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how
your life ends.

• Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.

• Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.

• Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.

• Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.

• Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.

• Page 494: Government will cover mental health services,  defining, creating and rationing those services.