I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.
The worst aspect of Obamacare is that we have delegated enormous amounts of power through regulation to the Department of Health and Human Services. Obamacare is the structure, but for every page there will be several or tens of pages of regulations.
As reported by The Weekly Standard (h/t Ben Grivno), it has not stopped there. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of HHS, has issued a ruling in which she unilaterally assumes price controls over health insurance pricing:
Not satisfied with the colossal amounts of power that she would acquire under Obamacare if it isn’t repealed, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued a 136-page “rule” that will now give her (and her subordinates) largely unchecked power to pass judgment on the prices of health insurance throughout the United States. Notwithstanding the fact that 43 states already regulate and approve health insurance premiums, Sebelius claims that we need an additional, more centralized, protection against insurers’ unseemly ‘profit motive.’ But a far greater threat to the future of American republicanism is posed by the impulse that animates Sebelius and the bulk of the Obama administration: the power motive.
The Wall Street Journal has more:
This discretion is typical of the vast ad hoc powers that ObamaCare handed to regulators, though Ms. Sebelius’s true goal is to punish the insurance industry for rising health costs that the new entitlement is already turbocharging. Like so much else in U.S. health care, no one seems to find it odd that the government is decreeing how much businesses are allowed to charge for a product that consumers want to buy, regardless of the economic reality.
Of course Obama is now “Mr. Compromise And Work Together.” He has the legislative structures in place to regulate virtually every aspect of our health care and consumer and financial affairs. There is precious little left that is not subject to the regulatory process, and if the mandate holds up in court, there will be precious little the federal government cannot force you to do.
The beauty from Obama’s point of view of the regulatory state is that Congress does not vote on regulations.
But there is a kink in the regulatory armor, and that is the budget. HHS must be funded, as must the army of people who will carry out the regulations.
The incoming Republican House must be prepared to defund Kathleen Sebelius sufficiently that she cannot expand her authority or implement Obamacare. No capitulation this time, please.
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Related Posts:
Bureaucracy Expansion Act of 2009
Leave Our Vending Machines Alone
Health Care Ghimmitude
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