The Battle Begins Anew

A Little From our Post Traumatic Image is Everything First (Constitution Second) Conscious Chief Justice:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joked that he’ll spend some time on an “impregnable island fortress” now that the court has ended a session that featured him casting the decisive vote to uphold President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Responding to a question about his summer break, Roberts said he planned to teach a class for two weeks in Malta, the Mediterranean island nation.

“Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress. It seemed like a good idea,” Roberts said, drawing laughter from about 300 judges, attorneys and others attending a four-day conference Friday at a posh southwestern Pennsylvania resort.

The only direct question Roberts got about the health care opinion came when those at the conference were invited to ask questions.

That’s when Roberts was asked what he thought his court’s legacy would be in 50 years and “how one recent opinion might fit into that” – an obvious reference to the health care decision.

“Well, I won’t answer anything that has to do with the second part of that,” Roberts said. But he said he hopes that the court under him is remembered as one that “did our job according to the Constitution, of protecting equal justice under the law.”

Lamberth hinted at the controversial decision when he asked Roberts if it bothered him that he can’t respond to his critics.

“No,” Roberts said, his brief answer hanging in the air to more laughter.(AP)

Public opposition to the health care law remains high. Forty-seven percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-GfK poll said they oppose the law while 33 percent said they support it. Thirteen percent said they are neutral. Those who strongly oppose the legislation also outnumber those who strongly support it, 32 percent to 17 percent, about a 2-to-1 margin.

Critical to both parties, just 21 percent of independents support it, the lowest level of support the AP-GfK poll has recorded on the issue. (AP)

But here comes the old fearmongering and division that Liberals are so congenitally wired for:

“Now the American people are going to say, `Now what’s in that for me?'” Harkin said. “As long as Democrats are willing to go out there and positively say, `Look, now you are guaranteed that you will get affordable health insurance if you had breast cancer in the past … preventive care, free mammograms. … And they (Republicans) want to take it away from you. You have it now and they want to take it away from you. If you want it taken away from you, you just go ahead and vote for them.'” (AP)

So…

Republicans also used the ruling to craft a new attack line. Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion said the law’s requirement that Americans purchase health care is a tax, which Republicans argued contradicted Obama and Democrats who insist they aren’t raising taxes on the poor and middle class.

“The court blew the president’s cover,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

The tax debate will be at the forefront when the House votes the week of July 9 to overturn the law, a largely symbolic step with a Democratic-controlled Senate but one that will put Democrats and Republicans on record and provide fodder for the campaign.

Because guess what, IT’S A TAX!  The Supreme Court says so!!

And who will get it in the shorts the  most– why the middle class and the poor!! Will the Democrats tell them that? Nope. It’s all Fear, Loathing, and Me-Generation Greed.

The Battle begins again.

The medical overhaul is also a choice killer. Many will recall Obama promising that under his plan, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”

Those aren’t the facts.

As we reported in April, the CBO estimates that as many as 20 million Americans will be forced out of their plans as employers toss workers into government health exchanges to avoid ObamaCare’s costs.

A survey by McKinsey and Co. found that nearly one-third of employers will likely to drop coverage for their workers once ObamaCare kicks in.

And an analysis by the Medicare actuary found that ObamaCare’s attacks on Medicare’s private insurance options will force nearly 8 million seniors out of the coverage they’ve chosen.

• Consumer costs will rise. CBO says premiums will increase over the next decade faster than they did in the past five years.

• The Affordable Care Act is just the beginning. It’s the door to a single-payer government system run by a DMV-type bureaucracy.

• The quality of care will suffer. The Democrats’ law will chill the incentives to become a doctor, to create innovative drugs and to produce live-saving and life-enhancing medical equipment.

• Don’t be surprised when treatment is rationed by government. As it takes over a larger portion of health care — it already controls nearly half — resources won’t be able to keep up with demand. Somebody wins, somebody loses based on someone else’s whim. (IBD)

But don’t worry, the Democrats will just focus on fear, intimidation, and “mean” old Republicans who want to throw grandma off a cliff and you to “just die” as former Rep. Grayson once said on the House floor.

Meanwhile, the Democrats WILL tax you to death and give you 2nd-3rd world care (unless you are “rich” that is) but it won’t be their fault. 🙂

And if you increase demand but they supply doesn’t increase or even decreases then what happens? Hmmm….

And it all points to a single solution: Repeal the law before it takes deep root, and replace it with policies that put the patient in charge.

“What has happened in this system for too long is that the patient has kind of been second or third in line behind everybody else,” Ed Haislmaier health policy worker for the Heritage Foundation says.

And then he made a good point on why Democrats may be opposed to it if they get their ideological heads out of their asses:

Critics of the mandate say Republicans and Democrats alike oppose it.

“Republicans are against it because they see it as an impingement on their personal freedom,” says Ed Haislmaier, who works on healthcare policy at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The Democrats are against it because they don’t like health insurance companies in the first place, and they don’t like to be told they have to go buy from someone they don’t like.“(VOA)

And I would add, make them aware of how much everything costs because this is far from “free healthcare”.

Yahoo question from the public at large: Since conservatives are so greedy, I am surprised they would oppose … Free.

Need I say more? 🙂

How about From a UK message board: congratualations {sp} USA on your free healthcare – now you can do something about your obesity and retardation.

The Bright Spot from the perspective of damage and ability to provide clarity on what this really means:

Because the one ”bright spot” of the ruling was on the matter of Medicaid expansion.

Medicaid is the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor, in which both governments split the cost. ObamaCare mandated states accept more federal money and expand eligibility to ensnare a larger number of Americans in this dismal government-run plan. But along with that mandate for the states to spend hundreds of millions more than they can afford, the law included a penalty for states that didn’t expand the Medicaid eligibility – the loss of all federal Medicaid money. Essentially it was a choice between spending more money that states don’t have or receiving no federal money, yet still being obligated to provide Medicaid.

The Supreme Court rejected that provision. It said states can be offered the option but can’t be forced to accept the expansion money, nor to extend Medicaid to people who don’t currently qualify. Given many states are going broke now, and Medicaid is their largest expenditure already, it’s highly doubtful many will spend more on this program.

So, given Medicaid was a key component to extending coverage to all Americans under ObamaCare, and given it’s now dead or at least an unlikely option, the uninsured near-poor – the people this whole mess was designed to help – won’t be getting Medicaid. Since they also probably won’t soon earn enough to buy insurance on their own, they finish right where they started – in no-man’s land.

Middle-class Americans without insurance will have to pay an Obama Tax that will grow with each passing year. The near-poor were exempted from the tax, but they won’t get insurance either.

Given the ease – relative to the rest of the world – with which Americans can move up the economic ladder, many will work at jobs that can’t afford to provide insurance under ObamaCare and are too small to be required to provide it. But those jobs will pay enough so employees eventually will qualify for the Obama Tax. So, just as these near-poor approach some semblance of economic security, the IRS (which Obamacare empowered to enforce the Obama Tax) will be right there to whack them back down.

Therefore, and not for the first time, the people ObamaCare was supposed to help will be hurt the most.

Middle-class families also will take a hit.

Most Americans work for small businesses. The law requires businesses with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance or pay a fine. Since ObamaCare forces insurance companies to accept everyone with pre-existing conditions – which is like requiring car insurance companies to insure cars after their owners have wrapped them around a tree – premiums will skyrocket. Companies quickly will notice it’s easier to simply pay the fine. This means a new group of uninsured Americans.

If the slight bump in pay doesn’t permit them to afford insurance, they will be hit with the Obama Tax. (And for those of you keeping score at home, they make significantly less than the $250,000 per year the President promised to never, ever raise taxes on. “Read my lips!” anyone?)

The government doesn’t care about your expenses. It doesn’t care about your kids in private school, your mortgage or student loans or the relatives you’re trying to help through a bad time. It doesn’t care how or really even whether you make ends meet as the Obama Recession rolls into another year. It sees you as a number – the number of dollars you make, whether you make enough to buy insurance according to its formula.

Don’t believe me? Try discussing with a bureaucrat anything you owe government on any level and see if you can appeal to their mercy. You might get a traffic fine reduced occasionally if you catch the right bureaucrat on the right day. But the IRS deals with tens of millions of people over hundreds of billions of dollars. Bureaucracies are not in the mercy business.

So now that Obamacare has morphed into a tax on staying alive, it will become yet another liberal “well-intentioned” attempt to “strengthen the social safety net” that ends up functioning more like a spider web that ensnares people in the life it was supposed to help them escape.

It also forces the health insurance market into a bastardized market that threatens its very existence. It will cause many insurers to fail, which will lead to consolidation, concentration and ultimately corporate welfare. Or the government will step in, take over the entire market and give us the American version of Britain’s detestable National Health Service, which is something Democrats have been working towards for decades. Either way, government wins and we – all of us – lose.

Of course none of these taxes and insurance drops will take effect for these impacted people until after the election, which was by design. Costing people you need to vote for you more before they vote is fool’s errand, a lesson Barack Obama learned from President George H.W. Bush. But once he no longer need their vote, ever, for the rest of his life…lookout.

Did we reject a tyranny 236 years ago to gradually create our own without the accent and powdered wig? Did we replace “No taxation without representation” with “Taxation through misrepresentation”? As you celebrate our nation’s independence this week, commit yourself to talk to as many people as you can about how we’ve lost that which we are celebrating and how November is our next, and maybe our only, chance to declare it again. (Derek Hunter)

Time for a more literal TEA PARTY revolution against our Would-be King. And time to re-instill freedom into this great land.