I’m not predicting that the mandate or the entirety of Obamacare will go down at the Supreme Court. But based on the oral arguments, those who support the law are in a state of panic.
Digging back into Memeorandum from March 23, 2010, when Obamacare was signed into law, is like opening a time capsule of an earlier civilization which somehow did not survive.
In that time capsule was a story about a note Patrick Kennedy left at Ted Kennedy’s grave:
The late senator’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, spent hours Sunday at the simple white cross at Arlington National Cemetery marking where her husband was laid to rest only seven months ago. Ted Kennedy’s youngest son, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.), visited on Monday morning and left a hand-written note that read: “Dad, the unfinished business is done.” …
Kennedy’s legacy was not lost on anyone who filled the East Room of the White House for Obama’s bill-signing ceremony. Members of Congress wore blue “TedStrong” wristbands in his honor and posed for pictures with Patrick Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy, the senator’s niece, sat in the front row, with other members of the storied family. Vicki Kennedy walked into the room with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Obama received a thunderous applause when he evoked the ghost of Ted Kennedy near the climax of his speech.
“I remember seeing Ted walk through that door in a summit in this room a year ago, one of his last public appearances, and it was hard for him to make it, but he was confident that we would do the right thing,” Obama said.
When Obama sat to sign the bill, Patrick and Vicki Kennedy stood behind him. Finally, Ted Kennedy’s dream became the law of the land.
Finishing Teddy Kennedy’s dream became Democrats’ political nightmare.
I wonder what Teddy would say about a court which gave meaning to the federalism embodied in our Constitution and placed some limiting principle on the expansion of federal power.
Actually, we have a good idea what Teddy would say, from another time capsule from an even earlier civilization:
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Comments
Errrr-ah, this is an outrage against women…errrr-ah, and the poor and weak. Errrr-ah, where’s that Scotch…?
Something like that?
“Errrr-ah, every man must believe in something, including members of the Supreme Court. I believe too. But as for me, I, errrr-ah, believe I’ll have another drink.”
This reminds me of a quote from a Ted Kennedy satire ..
‘I cheated for you ‘wetbacks’ at Harvard’
I have been finding myself, in the dark of the night, thinking about all the notes I might leave, or the dance I might do, on his grave when Obamacare goes down. To my shame, all of them are the kind of tacky response, obviously a mirror image, which one expects and sees from the Left.
New note:
“Ummm, Dad, disregard that note I left last time.”
How about a new note that just says, “Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.”
Every time that man’s name is invoked, this is the only proper response.
I think we should feel some sympathy for the obvious sense of amazement the Collective is feeling. Really, out of compassion, we should mount some effort to salve their gob-smackedness.
We can call it “Shock And Awwwwww”. For the children.
I think that the thing Kennedy would have the hardest time with, is that polls showing how many people don’t want Obamacare – there’s nothing more confused and upset than a somene who has Done Something To Save The World, and the world has told them “we don’t want it”. There’s nothing worse than thinking of yourself as the savior of womankind, and being rejected (and in Teddy’s case I was careful to say “womankind”, not “mankind” if you know what I mean – he seemed to spend a lot of time with women)
so why did they intentionally take out the severability clause?
Was it so they could pressure SCOTUS … “you can’t take out the mandate, you’ll kill the whole (historical) bill!”
The overreach was always obvious, and they had no response from the start, except the Pelosi roll your eyes response. The plan was to twist the Obamacare corkscrew so deep into the health care body that it would be hard to remove.
I think it was Trump saying there are only 15 million not insured, and most of them by choice. Costs are so high mostly because lobbyists own our congress, so they write all the bills. The thing lobbyists want is more income from the taxpayer, whether through forced top dollar insurance policies or higher levels of coverage in Medicare and Medicaid. He who has the most lobbyists wins.
What does an old drunk, misogynist man slaughterer have to do with national health care? Dead Ted should have been buried in a car underwater at the site of Mary Jo’s “negligent homicide”. That would be a permanent reminder of how much he cared for the little people.
Lobbyists are indeed a large problem.
But here is another theory on why costs are so high (a bit long, but bear with me):
Insurance. Until the mid- to late-1940’s, there was NO medical insurance, as we know it, in the US. Originally, the idea was to give a perk to employees to cover medical costs: i.e., the employer paid for medical insurance, and the employee didn’t have to pay a thing (a “fringe benefit,” if you will). Doctors (who back then made house calls) began to get paid by insurance companies, not just their patients. Some saw this as a BOON – bill a huge price to the insurance company, the doctor is reimbursed by the insurance company, company gets good employee and employee gets great health care that “costs nothing” – a seeming win-win for everyone (or so these less-than-ethical doctors thought). The idea took of in the 1960’s, pushed even more because the government created MediCare (and MedicAid) – which put the government into the place of the insurance company for the elderly, disabled, etc. Explosion of costs and reimbursements resulted.
So, these intermediaries paying for medical care were able to get big, BIG bucks from corporations, and all was well…..until too many medical malpractice law suits, obvious waste, fraud, and abuse were identified, and several cases of medical practices over-billing or worse for medical procedures (at hospitals, in-office visits, etc.) started to impact costs to employers (insurance premiums went way up), doctors (medical malpractice insurance skyrocketed, law suits hit….), patients (started seeing their “max” coverage limits exceeded, billed when ins. co’s didn’t pay, etc.) – i.e. things became too expensive for everyone. So, people started to have to pay for – or contribute to – their insurance plans, to cover exponentially increasing premiums, waste, fraud, lawsuits, etc. etc. And costs continued to grow out of any seeming logical, rational control.
Add to the above scene that government grants given for medical research, to companies, universities, and other scientific organizations (non-profits, usually) were ever increasing medical expenses via R&D, padding many a pocket in the process…..and you can trace the increase of medical costs almost to a T.
Lobbyists are only 1 part of the problem.
Now, I am NOT saying that insurance should be eliminated – or are the sole problem. Nor am I saying all doctors are unethical, or greedy, for billing inflated costs to insurance companies (IMHO, the 80/20 principle applies: at most 20% of less-than-ethical people cause problems for the 80+% of ethical ones…..affecting us all).
I am saying that putting an intermediary between the doctor and patient, by removing the cost for service/procedure/medicine and the payment by the patient directly to the medical person(s) providing these services makes corruption of the system all too likely – and easy. And when the federal government is that intermediary, corruption and fraud are rife – which MediCare demonstrates only too well (e.g. can you say pen!s pumps?!)
The PPACA (aka ObamaCare) didn’t address ANY of these problems. The Pelosi/Reid Congress from H*ll created a monstrosity that exacerbated the problems to force a collapse of the existing insurance system, which naturally will lead to “universal” (i.e. 100% government-controlled) health care.
The insurance industry is going to die, if ObamaCare stands. They are on life-support now. And, unfortunately, too many of the companies out there have a naive belief that they can survive this……..they will be the lucky “useful idiot” who won’t go down.
They are fooling themselves.
Well put, DINORightMarie. May I add that the health insurance benefit was a response to government intervention in the private market? With FDR’s wage and price controls, employers were not allowed to give raises in wages, so they kicked in the health insurance. This is why I support taxing the benefit, as a segue towards eliminating that as a benefit. Too many people lose their health insurance when they lose their jobs.
thx DINO’ … that seems reasonable, with more depth than I can analyze. Removing the consumer from the process obviously screws up the free market. Copays have been found to help a lot.
What other product is there where (if you can enter a hospital with a real need) you’re forced into purchases that might cost tens of thousands? Our only chance is to pay a few hundred monthly (for a high deductible plan) for an insurance company to act as an advocate.
Hospitals and their suppliers have many rules to follow, but they know how to work the rules to milk every last available dime from what government (or private insurance) will pay for any given incident. My uncle was ready to come home from the hospital once, I inquired of the nurse. She knew the date he’d be released … the day the Medicare ran out.
So he filled a room for an extra week … that is business as usual. What’s an extra five or ten thousand among friends? All kinds of equipment I’ve seen purchased for my Mom, I could buy for much less … but it’s “free” through Medicare. And the same people (doctors and lawyers) running the hospitals are running the other services.
But there is little consumer outrage, cuz it’s all “FREE”, till insurance rates start skyrocketing, and government goes broke.
Before medical insurance, physicians were just like you and me. They were paid for a service, often with a chicken or a basket of vegetables. The problem is insurance itself. There is no one between the physician and the insurance company. If it was reimbursement to the patient, there would be some transparency about the cost of the treatment, as in, “I’ll remove your appendix for $500.00 plus the hospital fees.” “That’s more than I can afford. How about $300?” “OK.” Everyone knows what will be done and how much it will cost, so costs will decrease and it makes sense.
Most probably ol’ Teddy is burning in hell after many misspent years writing legislation designed to destroy the health care industry. May his dream of government controlled healthcare soon join him.
The ghost of Teddy is probably haunting the SCOTUS justices…..reminding them who this was really all about: him, not the “poor, uninsured masses.”
Teddy’s shining achievement?
Forever corrupting the court nomination process-
No longer are sound, qualified jurists considered, opening the door to the likes of Kagan.
The corruption is so thorough, it has spread to every level of elected government.
It’s not that our government is broken–broken is the character and virtue of the men and women on the ballot.
(No, not all)
Keep that in mind when you go into the voting booth this November, and bitch about your choice for President- “Obama or Romney”.
Unnoticed to most Americans is how much the small percentage of progressives have changed the lives and thought processes of the vast majority.
Most of it is subtle-hidden, under the cover of darkness.
Teddy did it in broad daylight, under the bright lights and cameras-and institutionalized it.
He lead, but he had many followers.
Generally, very good, accurate analysis.
Kennedy was a king pig.
“What would Teddy say if Obamacare goes down?”
Who gives a shit?
What would Mary Jo Kopechne say if she knew Teddy would leave her to die and never be punished for killing her?
No priest can absolves the Kennedys for that crime. It is immortal.
[…] Justice Kennedy vote to uphold (will Ted Kennedy attend the next Michelle Obama diet lecture?) the Obama health scam? The L.A. Times doesn’t think so because of the number, the targets, […]
Newt spoke at Georgetown University. The main topic was Social Security and Prosperity. But he also talked about the Sovereignty of the American People and the fiction of the “supremacy” of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Whatever the Court does in the Obamacare case, we must end this destructive notion that we are ruled by nine lawyers.
Robert Bork talked about this illegitimate aggrandizement by the Court in his brilliant book, “The Tempting of America.”
Our country is a Constitutional Republic. The Supreme Court is supreme over the courts; not the People, the States, nor the Executive or the Legislative branches of the government.
Newt at Georgetown:
“You are personally sovereign. You loan power to the State. The State does not loan power to you. This is very fundamental to the nature of being an American.
It’s actually a large part of the debate at the Supreme Court right now. It was stated that way, by Justice Kennedy, in one of his questions. He said, “this is, this idea that the government can mandate everything you do, in fact, is a dramatic shift in the relative power of the citizen and the government.”
So historically, the people who founded this country, in fact had a very clear vision. They founded it in response to what they saw as tyranny.
[…] [T]he number two argument of the Founding Fathers was over judges. Because they saw the British judges as imposers of dictatorship on behalf of the King.
And that’s why they took a number of steps to limit the power of judges. That’s why Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, writes that the Judicial Branch is the weakest of the three branches; that it could never take on the Legislative and Executive Branch because it would inherently be defeated by them. […]
Jefferson, when asked if the Supreme Court was in fact supreme, wrote, “That would be an absurdity”; for nine people to decide the Constitution would be for us to lose our Liberty and we’d be in an oligarchy.
Abraham Lincoln, who in part was drawn back into politics by the Dred Scott decision, by which the Supreme Court extended power of — slavery — to the whole country, in his Inaugural Address, takes the Court head on, and says, “The Court may issue the law of the Case; but they cannot issue the law of the Land.”
Because if they could, the American People’s freedom would be gone. And in fact, Lincoln refused to enforce the Dred Scott decision as President.
Now, those of you intellectually interested in this, there’s a 54-page paper at newt.org, which Vince Haley and I worked on for nine years. […]
But the fight we’re in on a values level goes much deeper.” [end loose transcript]
“VALUES & INNOVATION, THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL SECURITY & PROSPERITY IN AMERICA”
http://electad.com/videos/newt-gingrich-social-security-speech-at-georgetown-university-washington-dc-march-28-2012/ Georgetown University – March 28, 2012 – 60:43
There is much, much more, for a dramatically better future for you and the ones you love. Check it out.
Personally, I believe they left out the severability clause by accident. Incompetence is the explanation for most such errors, especially when they were scrambling to get it passed before the demonstrations threatened to hang them all.