Today marks the second anniversary of the signing of President Obama’s health care takeover, a law which now hangs in the balance before the Supreme Court. But there is another anniversary too, and one far more meaningful in the course of human events.
It was 237 years ago today, in Virginia, that Patrick Henry gave a speech that rang out through the colonies and urged the people to stand up for their liberty. The speech is doubtless familiar to all of you. But there is a line that comes before the more famous conclusion which I have always loved.
In making his case that the colonists should be willing to stand even against the armed might of the British Empire, which had put down so many colonial rebellions in the past, Henry urged the Virginians on, saying:
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
To which I would add: Whether this younger anniversary matters a few years from now depends in large part on us remembering the counsel of the older one.
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A new guerrilla investigation into Medicaid fraud by filmmaker James O’Keefe shows astounding footage of Medicaid employees assisting self-styled drug dealers and pimps in qualifying for aid money.
Watch the video here.
The Daily Caller reports:
In the video, the men explain to Ohio Medicaid workers that they are Russian immigrants who sell illegal drugs, drive a modified McLaren F1 sports car with a gold-coated engine, and use their underage sisters to perform sexual favors in exchange for drugs.
In response, Ohio employees tasked with disbursing federal Medicaid dollars are shown coaching the men through the process of applying for benefits. “If it’s not something registered here, maybe I just wouldn’t mention it,” a Franklin County Medicaid officer named Traci Daniels tells the men, when asked whether they should mention owning a vehicle that retails for nearly $1 million, as they apply for government aid designed to help poor people. “Not that I can say that. You didn’t hear that from me. But, that would right there, that would throw him off. He would be immediately not qualified.”
Daniels also tells the men to describe their occupation as babysitting, though she apparently believes they are drug dealers.
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I’ve criticized Haley Barbour pretty heavily over the past two months regarding his health policy views on a Mississippi health insurance exchange, but that’s not about to stop me from pointing out when he’s being unfairly criticized on other matters. In this case, The Washington Post‘s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, gives Barbour “four Pinocchios” for a comment Barbour made in a hearing last week (full text below the break) regarding a hypothetical scenario where people driving BMWs claim they can’t afford their co-payment on Medicaid and get away with it.
The flaw in Kessler’s fact check is an erroneous assumption regarding Medicaid eligibility requirements — that the people involved have no way to disguise their income levels. The key element of Barbour’s comment is not the legitimately poor population on Medicaid, but rather seniors with a lifetime of accrued wealth who have proven ingenious time and again in hiding their income in order to qualify for Medicaid dollars.
In fact, Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York — no political ally of Barbour’s — has been pushing a crackdown on exactly this type of “wealthy Medicaid moocher,” as the New York Post describes them — booting more than 8,000 seniors off of the program’s home care funding in the process:
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Today a post at Treehugger was making the rounds on Twitter which blames House Republicans for canceling a biodegradable packaging program in the House cafeterias out of sheer partisan spite:
Congress switched to biodegradable packaging, along with a number of other green initiatives like composting, as part of its Green the Capital program. But the program was lead by Nancy Pelosi, whom, you may have heard, is unliked in certain conservative circles. So John Boehner — the new Speaker of the House — and company dismantled her program, largely as a political jab.
Unfortunately, this accusation appears to be based on nothing more than lefty gossip blog Wonkette–and unsurprisingly, a little investigation turns up the fact that this storyline is completely false. It turns out the supposedly green biodegradable packaging program was completely inefficient when it came to energy use–to the point of net savings which hardly justify the half a million dollar cost.
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“Flexibility.” It’s a word that everyone in politics loves. They love it so much, they overuse it, deploying it in situations where it conflicts directly with the facts.
That’s the case today, where President Obama is claiming to embrace flexibility in a speech to the nation’s governors. The New York Times reports:
Seeking to appease disgruntled governors, President Obama plans to announce on Monday that he supports amending the 2010 health care law to allow states to opt out of its most burdensome requirements three years earlier than currently permitted.
You may recall my past discussions of this idea. It’s introduced in the U.S, Senate as a bipartisan piece of legislation offered by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, two prominent moderates. Wyden in particular talks a great game when it comes to health policy—which is a shame, since his legislation is little more than a meaningless nod in the direction of flexibility. [click to continue…]
My critique of Gov. Haley Barbour’s exchange plan is at the DC Examiner today. Given Mississippi’s exceedingly poor population, under the exchange Barbour has endorsed combined with Obamacare, 76% of his state’s population will be eligible for subsidized care through Medicaid or the exchange — and combined with the data from the recent Health Affairs study regarding the churning effect and elsewhere, this translates to massive administrative costs, gaps in coverage, and a massive disincentive for success. An excerpt:
No Republican governor has been a greater fan of exchanges over the past few years than the most politically powerful of them all—Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, who is now openly considering a run for Obama’s job in 2012. Even before the president and his allies forced their ill-advised insurance overhaul through Congress, Barbour had endorsed the exchange concept for Mississippi and three times unsuccessfully supported state legislation to that effect. And in a Heartland Institute survey of all Republican governors conducted last month to find out how many of them would support a sunset provision—which would dissolve the exchanges should Obamacare be repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court—only Barbour rejected the concept.
Yet past experience shows Barbour’s proposal would create more upheaval in the marketplace, institute a near-permanent subsidized existence for the vast majority of Mississippi families, and ignore the lessons of the disastrous failure of the exchange-based health care scheme passed by one of his likely 2012 opponents, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
In speaking with Barbour’s staff, I believe they dramatically underestimate the negative ramifications of these subsidies and the level to which they discourage success — and the fact that without a sunset provision, if PPACA is overturned by the courts or repealed by the Congress, there will be a powerful clamor to keep some form of these subsidies intact.
The one hard and fast rule in policymaking is that people will always go where the free money is. Barbour has evidently not learned this lesson.
It’s generally unwise to rely on The Economist for coverage of American domestic policy, simply because it’s not their focus. I am far less likely to do so after reading this error-filled piece on the Florida court decision, unsigned (as all Economist pieces are) and published last week, which prompted the letter below from myself and an attorney friend. I hope you’ll read it, as The Economist is obviously unlikely to print a retraction of this length, and judge for yourself.
Dear Sir,
Your article in the Feb. 3rd print edition concerning the health care ruling in Florida—“Health Care: Dead or Alive?”—was a disappointing read rife with error. Several statements are blatantly false based on the text of the law, and others are very debatable conjectures. The sheer number of factual inaccuracies is daunting, many of which could easily have been avoided had the author asked any legal expert or policy scholar a few questions prior to its publication.
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Two items of note today, twenty four hours removed from Judge Vinson’s decision striking down Obamacare. This morning I had an extended conversation with David Hogberg of Investor’s Business Daily regarding the Florida decision on Obamacare. I’d encourage you to listen and to read this excellent post from Avik Roy, one of Heartland’s health policy experts:
Judge Vinson has penned a persuasive, well-researched, and tightly-reasoned opinion, one that will surely have some impact on what the Supreme Court eventually ends up doing. Judge Vinson marshals statements from both sides to show that PPACA indeed represents an unprecedented expansion of federal power, one that, if upheld, makes it difficult to argue that the Constitution restrains Congress in any way. Equally importantly, he points out that even the White House believes that the PPACA’s other provisions will destabilize the health insurance market without an individual mandate, thereby making it difficult to uphold the rest of PPACA in the mandate’s absence.
You can read more from Hogberg here.
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With the latest decision in Florida, there is little question that the constitutionality of President Obama’s nationalized health insurance regime will ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. Given that the cases involved are focused on questions of law rather than ascertaining or investigating facts, that the law in question has been challenged now by a majority of states, and that the law’s enforcement holds massive ramifications for the American economy, I hope the U.S. Supreme Court will consider fast-tracking these cases to be considered as soon as possible at the highest level. Until this question is resolved one way or the other, health policy in the United States must engage in a schizophrenic period which pits states against the federal bureaucracy. This is not a healthy expression of federalism, and this extraordinary degree of uncertainty ultimately does a disservice to every citizen.
The fault here lies with the policymakers who rushed this mishmash of legislation through the legislative process for political reasons, sacrificing coherent policy for the sake of hoped-for political gain. The American people now bear the pain of this monumental mistake of leadership, and as they are all individual stakeholders in the current debate, they deserve to know, and know soon, whether the Constitution allows their government to command them to purchase a product under its Commerce Clause authority or not. Not since Bush v. Gore has there been a case which so justly merits expedited consideration.
I encourage you to read the entire Obamacare decision today from Judge Vinson. My favorite portion is from Page 42, below the break.
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