Seraphic Secret usually publishes just one post per day.
But son-in-law #1 just brought this very important story to my attention.
The facts are simple: Obamacare, as the Republicans have charged, is a national disaster in the making. And not content to destroy the world’s greatest health care system, the Democrats, led by Henry Waxman, are hiding information that every American has the right to know.
A few years ago Karen and I attended a parlor meeting featuring Henry Waxman.
He told us—an Orthodox Jewish group—that he got into politics because he was so angry at Richard Nixon’s duplicity. He made Nixon sound, I kid you not, like the most evil man in the history of American politics.
Hatred and scorn, as political motivation, inevitably yields catastrophic results.
Witness California, bankrupt, Greece in progress. A once golden state disemboweled by the ruling Democrat party, their lord and masters the unions, and the Democrat addiction to unsustainable entitlement programs.
It would have been nice if Waxman became involved in politics because of a love for American values and the Constitution. Unfortunately, Henry Waxman loves European values, social engineering in the form of fiscal death spiral nanny states like Greece, soon to be joined by Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.
But Representative Henry Waxman’s a leftie and the left is motivated by inchoate rage. Hence, they are incapable of building, only destroying.
It was a childish and embarrassing performance replete with moral preening and dopey assertions about Jewish values. For Waxman, this was—sigh, head in hands—“social justice,” code for Socialism. Waxman was pandering to what he thought was an overwhelmingly Democrat audience.
But Henry Waxman is so out of touch, lives in such a liberal bubble, he didn’t understand that many if not most in the room were Republicans.
I didn’t bother pointing out to Waxman that for all of Nixon’s faults he saved the state of Israel in 1973 when he ordered, against the advice of his cabinet, Operation Grasshopper, an airlift to resupply Israel’s depleted arms. Why bother, Waxman’s a hard-core leftie and facts don’t really matter to him or his fellow travelers.
Waxman was one of the main authors of the 2,500 page monstrosity called Obamacare. Now he’s involved in a massive cover-up of the bill’s horrendous consequences.
Nixon was involved in a cover-up, but he had the decency to resign.
I can guarantee that Waxman will deny, deny, deny his role in this criminal cover-up, and probably get elected by the Democrat lemmings in my district.
(Fortune) — The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we’re getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system.
Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences. Amazingly, the corporate documents that prove this point became public because of a different set of unintended consequences: they told a story far different than the one the politicians who demanded them expected.
Why the write-downs happened but the hearings didn’t.
In the days after President Obama signed the bill on March 24, a number of companies announced big write downs due to some fiscal changes it ushered in. The legislation eliminated a company’s right to deduct the federal retiree drug-benefit subsidy from their corporate taxes. That reduced projected revenue. As a result, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) took well-publicized charges of around $1 billion.
The announcements greatly annoyed Representative Henry Waxman, who accused the companies of using the big numbers to exaggerate health care reform’s burden on employers. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, demanded that they turn over their confidential memos, and summoned their top executives for hearings.
Yup, remember Henry Waxman’s self-righteous grandstanding.
But Waxman didn’t simply request documents related to the write down issue. He wanted every document the companies created that discussed what the bill would do to their most uncontrollable expense: healthcare costs.
The chaos and rioting gripping Greece is a foreshadowing of what will happen in America if Obamacare kicks in.
The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings. On April 14, the Committee’s majority staff issued a memo stating that the write downs were “proper and in accordance with SEC rules.” The committee also stated that the memos took a generally sunny view of the new legislation. The documents, said the Democrats’ memo, show that “the overall impact of health reform on large employers could be beneficial.”
In short, Henry Waxman and the Democrats are liars…
Nowhere in the five-page report did the majority staff mention that not one, but all four companies, were weighing the costs and benefits of dropping their coverage.
… if not criminals.
Full story here.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
14 Comments
These consequences were intended.
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I read some Milwaukee area blogs. One, Badger Blogger, exulted at Henry Waxman having been born in WI, but moved to CA. They now exult at David Obey retiring.
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ProphetJoe, Your last sentence was the rationalization I was contracted to install software at the Census in 1990 to install a tape robot. The union employees were not mounting the data tapes when called for.
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Miranda, while I agree you have a point — some of the public are just plain jerks when it comes to dealing with others — I’ve also seen abuses on the other side of the coin too. Until last December, I worked at a major University. I was a professional employee (we had annual contracts) and the civil service employees are AFSCME union workers. I knew several who were absolutely rude to students and parents and their response was basically “what are they going to do, fire me?” That’s because the union contracts made it virtually IMPOSSIBLE to fire someone unless a felony was committed. They could be relocated to a different unit within the University, but you basically couldn’t fire a rude or incompetent employee. Such a great system — we’ve gone from protecting the powerless employees from the almighty robber barons to protecting the bad employees and making the employers powerless.
And people wonder why businesses want to replace PEOPLE with computerized machines…
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Dear Robert: If you ever wonder why civil service employees, for example, DMV employees are so rude, sit behind that desk for a week and see how polite you stay.
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Premiums for the program that insures 1.3 million NYS state, city and local employees and their families are predicted to rise between 13% and 24% in 2011. Obamacare mandates requiring insurance for older dependents, less copays, faster insurance coverage for new employees, and more will only insure rising premiums for years to come. Special districts, local, county and the State government which are all in big fiscal doodoo right now will be hard pressed to come up with the extra money. Nassau County alone estimates it will have to find another 22 to 50 million dollars for 2011 in revenue to cover the extra insurance costs. The county is already submerged in a $250 million dollar deficit…so where is the money coming from.
The big question is this: Is the Federal government intentionally attempting to drive state and local governments bankrupt? Because that is where we are heading.
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Jenny:
Ariel’s ZT’L medical expenses added up to several million dollars over several years. The insurance company balked at one procedure. We hired a lawyer, he wrote one letter. Problem solved. Do you really believe that it could ever be that easy with a vast federal program? Have you ever dealt with the IRS or the DMV?
I have always been grateful to our insurance company.
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Jenny, if I remember correctly, the insurance company had a way to get procedures covered. Their profit motive gives them an incentive to not get a reputation as treating their customers with disdain.
When the government treats us with disdain it a step up from usual.
On Fox tonight, Steve Hayes made the point that Greece has to make their health care system more efficient by privatizing parts of it to reduce their fiscal problems. Meanwhile the Democrats are moving our system in the opposite direction. And liberals like to call the Tea Partiers crazy.
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How can we ethically ask a for profit company to “do the right thing” if it will drive down profits? Aren’t we asking them to defraud their investors? Therefore, in a situation like health care, a necessity, insurance companies should bow out and let the government do it. Yep.
And, didn’t Karen once write that your insurance company had to be pressured legally to authorize tests for your son?
There’s blame to go around.
Jenny
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outstanding expose, Robert. Of course, what Obama and the Dummocrats will do if corporations drop their health care coverage will be to increase the penalties to draconian levels, which will then cripple the business sector and prolong the economic slump. Just another page from the FDR economic playbook.
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I got an e-mail from my Sen. Ben Cardin a few weeks ago boasting about the accomplishments of ObamaCare that he had just helped pass. I read through the accomplishments and kept thinking, very nice, but that’s just going to cost us more.
Then I got to the last item on the list. Insurance companies will be required to pay out at least 85% of premiums for claims. Think about that for a moment. These bullies who have no business experience telling a whole industry how they can operate! My guess is that we’ll see many fewer health insurance companies in the coming years.
This is like a pincer movement to get rid of private insurers. Make it more economical for big businesses not to insure employees and impose impossible terms on the companies that try to operate anyway.
Oh and those aren’t the only problems. CNN Money had another issue.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_care_tax_change/
Remember the Democrats rushed to pass this bill before they got an objective opinion from the chief CMS actuary.
If a Wall Street firm had acted so recklessly and dishonestly, all these same bullies would be hauling their butts to Washington to grill them for the 6 O’clock news and show how they were protecting the tax payer. The problem is that taxpayers need to be protected from them!
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Jake…”They’ll burn down the country, blame the flames, and fiddle while it burns”
An executive of my acquaintance was fond of the saying, “fix problems, not blame.”
Obama has the same approach, only in reverse.
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America’s companies are in the game to make a profit.
Only a fool doesn’t know that.
Enter fools like Henry Waxman, who think they can fundamentally force private companies to become socialist tools of government and just take it with a smile.
Thank goodness, there are very very few people in America who are sick and cannot contribute a penny to their own health care through work.
For those people, I have compassion and I support charity for them. That’s what Medicaid was supposed to be for.
But many, and even most, of the millions of people with no health coverage could afford to contribute at least something to their own medical costs.
Instead, the government has decreed that it will see to it that someone else, the people who are actually working and making profits, will have to do it for them.
What’s interesting about this is I think there are a lot of forces inside the White House who probably see this scenario as a win-win for Obama. The Obama team is giddy with the poll boost, (it’s slight, but it’s there), it gets when it bashes Wall Street, health insurers and oil companies. If the big corporations drop coverage, the Obama team will bash them publicly and expect to reap the rewards at the polls.
That’s really a dangerous game. They’ll burn down the country, blame the flames, and fiddle while it burns.
Now, corporate America is saying that makes no sense.
Good for them.
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Champions dreaded? Perhaps it’s what they wanted: millions of Americans without health insurance, so who must come to the rescue? Government, with the “public option”! Of course, there is a market-based argument for severing the tie between employment and health insurance (http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=275), but the legislation for that’s not in place at the moment, as far as I’m aware.
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