Too Early to Celebrate the Health Care Reform Lawsuits!

Thanks to the fine work of the Attorney General in Florida and Mark Levine, Esq. of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and to the great legal mind of Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson. The President’s use of the commerce clause to implement two key portions of health care reform may be hampered. These are the individual mandate and the penalty for failing to buy insurance.

But wait!

The following features of the law are still intact:
• No preexisting condition limitations
• Limitations on the premium differentiation across enrollment groups
• Removal of co pays and deductibles on preventive care, effectively killing savings accounts and major medical only plans

Those of us for rational market reform should not lose sight of how war is waged. The Waxmans and Kennedys have worked for 70 years to incrementally change the minds of Americans about government’s role in health care.

They brought us Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for those with disabilities, Medicaid for those with disabilities, CHIP for children, CHIP/Family Care for Adults, and Medicaid for individuals…

The single payer crowd has long understood the concept of eating an elephant one bite at time.

Since this lawsuit leaves the key provisions of the health care law in place, that only work with an individual mandate:
• Premiums will increase drastically—when only the sickest and the most risk adverse are the only ones with insurance, insurance costs more.
• If one limits the price differential between age and sex groups for purchase then the healthy, whose experience is not considered will not take insurance and the cost will increase.
• Citing the failure of the program without the individual mandate, looking to increased numbers of uninsured and increased cost the only option will be single payer.

While we celebrate, they continue to eat the elephant.

What we conservative mistake for overreaching may, in fact, have been a brilliant use of the long confidence game—the long Con.

There are short Cons and long Cons. Short Cons are games like three card Monte and letters telling you have won. The long Con is more elegant and takes patience. The mark (victim) must feel that they have won or are smarter than the confidence man along the way.

We, the Marks, now feel that we are the winner when the confidence man has us positioned to handover our wallets…control of our health care in the final move of this long Con.

Please don’t accept partial wins and open up the champagne. Let’s repeal all of this monster. The only thing that stops a confidence man it his tracks is a two letter word—NO!

Moveon.org and Talk Radio Agree and the World Keeps Turning

I never thought there would be an issue where the Left and the Right agree. Well, there was that family cap issue in New Jersey welfare where both pro-abortion and pro-life groups agreed, but that was the last century.

Both the Right and the Left are in agreement on the TSA x-ray screening and the pat downs that either follow or are used as an alternative. And the world keeps turning. I am not sure how I feel about this, the issue of x-ray screenings, not the agreement.

Here are my thoughts:

* For those of us who fly every month, if not every week I have concerns about the level of radiation we are receiving

* For children who are still growing I have concerns about the level of radiation they are receiving

* Wouldn't it make sense to only subject those who meet a level of threat assessment to enhanced screening (I like to say when 6 foot tall, pale Black women start crashing planes into buildings or taking flying lessons with no interest in landing you can pull me out of the line every time for additional screening. At least until I and every other pale, Black woman confronts our peers and stops the threat)

* Do we need protection against underwear bombers if during the year it took to put this technology in place there was not a single copy cat?

* Rather than responding to the last big terrorist attack, shouldn't we be looking for a way of preventing the next big terrorist attack?

* Using this technology for those traveling by train, subway and boat? Really?

* Can someone please tell me why we are not using bomb sniffing canines? They are inexpensive, thrilled when they find something and only offend the ethnic group that so far has been responsible for the attacks. And by the way, the dogs are truly impartial.

* I personally like the deterrent effect of having automatic weapon carrying, military personnel in my airport

So those are the musing of someone who can't believe who we are becoming. And if both the far Left and far Right agree it makes me think that there are no shades of gray in just plain wrong.

The quote from Benjamin Franklin in 1775 keeps running through my head--"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."