Obama claims that, because of his sweeping health care legislation, insurance companies will be forced to provide coverage to children with pre-existing conditions beginning this year. But the NY Times reports that this is not the way that everyone interprets the new laws:

Insurers agree that if they provide insurance for a child, they must cover pre-existing conditions. But, they say, the law does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the “availability of coverage” for all until 2014.

William G. Schiffbauer, a lawyer whose clients include employers and insurance companies, said: “The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.” …

“I would like to see the kids covered,” said Sandy Praeger, the insurance commissioner of Kansas. “But without guaranteed issue of insurance, I am not sure companies will be required to take children under 19.”

With over 900 pages of legalese neatly divided into parts and subparts, sections and subsections, titles and subtitles, you’d think the Social Democrats would be able to achieve one of the mainstays of their objective. Then again, if they were that smart they wouldn’t have saddled an ailing economy with Obamacare in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Health Care Reform, Socialized Medicine in America, Bankrupting America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Now that Obamacare has become the law of the land, Social Democrat leaders are angrily turning their attention to those who dared question their agenda. Namely, the CEOs of the companies that came out and said that Obamacare will cause them to have to cut benefits and trim payrolls.

Powerline has copies of letters sent to Randal Stephenson, AT&T CEO, demanding that he appear before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and provide documentation that explains AT&T’s claims. AT&T said that the company will take a $1 billion charge against earnings in the first quarter in order to comply with the new law, as well has having to re-evaluate health-care benefits of both current and retired employees

Similar letters have been sent to the CEOs of Verizon Communications Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co., whose companies made similar claims.

Bloomberg summarized the damage:

“As a result of this legislation, including the additional tax burden, AT&T will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health-care benefits offered by the company,” the carrier said in the filing.

New York-based Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, told employees in a note shortly after the law was signed that the tax will make a drug subsidy less valuable to employers like Verizon and so “may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.”

Moline, Illinois-based Deere, the world’s largest maker of farm machinery, said on March 25 that the new health-care law would increase its expenses by $150 million this fiscal year.

Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, expects to record a charge of about $100 million in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting new tax liabilities on retiree drug benefits.

The law has yet to go into effect, yet it is already affecting the bottom line.

Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Health Care Reform, Socialized Medicine in America, Bankrupting America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Even left-wing MSM polls show how unpopular the Obamacare that has been rammed down our throats is — across the board!

Now it is being shown that the Amish, all Muslims, and even Obama and his cronies will be exempt from having to participate.
 
Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Socialized Medicine

From Senator DeMint‘s web site:

Today, U.S. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) introduced legislation to fully repeal the Democrats’ government health care takeover that President Obama signed into law Tuesday morning. 12 Republicans have already cosponsored this bill including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Kit Bond (R-Missouri), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), John Ensign (R-Nevada), Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), George LeMieux (R-Florida), James Risch (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana).

Waste no time. I like it.

Technorati Tags: Senator DeMint, Repeal Obamacare, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Representative Dingell spoke too much truth during a recent interview:

The harsh fact of the matter is, when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

Let the apologists begin.

Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Socialized Medicine, Representative Dingell, Declining Freedom in America, Destruction of the American Dream

If you read nothing else today, real American Thinker’s The Federalist Papers and Obamacare. Besides some applicable quotes from Founding Fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the article succinctly encapsulates how I feel on the Obamination of socialized medicine (emphasis added):

The Founding Fathers defined the citizens as the natural guardians of the Constitution. Ultimately, it comes down to us. Remember the immortal motto of Gen. Nathaniel Greene who led his rag-tag militia across the Carolina in 1779-1780, “lost” every battle until providing the Continentals their first major victory at Kings Mountain and cut down Cornwallis’ troops from 30,000 to 15,000 before he quit Charleston and headed to Yorktown:

“I fight, I am defeated, I rise and fight again.” 

It is precisely now that one must not despair. Now is the time for lovers of liberty to throw themselves into the national scale. You are the natural guardians of the Constitution. Now is not the time for Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots; now is the time for the heirs of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, John Adams, John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Nathaniel Greene and Ethan Allen.

You have a choice. What will it be? Acquiescence? Submission? Defeat? Where would we be if all the aforementioned had quit when they faced a little headwind (and, comparatively speaking, this is light breeze next to Valley Forge). Be ashamed; be very ashamed if you choose to go gently into that dark neo-Soviet night.  Be assured; a new dawn of American liberty will rise as American Patriots resolve to protect their Constitution and use all of its provisions to protect their liberties.

Precisely.

Technorati Tags: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Protecting the Constitution, Defending Freedom, States Rights, Socialized Medicine, Bankrupting America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Even the MSM is joining in the Obamacare Regret train. From CBS News:

One such surprise is found on page 158 of the legislation, which appears to create a carve out for senior staff members in the leadership offices and on congressional committees, essentially exempting those senior Democrat staffers who wrote the bill from being forced to purchase health care plans in the same way as other Americans. …

This problem was acknowledged earlier in the process – last year, Senator Grassley tried to repair it, but he was rebuffed.

As Speaker Pelosi said a few weeks ago, it’s only after this legislation is passed that we’ll truly find out what’s in it

One law for them that make ‘em, another for the rest of us. Is that what “Change” looks like?

Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Socialized Medicine, Comrade Pelosi, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

From Rasmussen, 78% Expect Middle Class Tax Hike To Pay For Health Care Reform.

With almost 25 percent real unemployment, is it any wonder that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to start over?

Technorati Tags: Socialized Medicine, Crushing the Middle Class with Taxes, Rising Unemployment, ObamaCare and Other Bad Ideas

Says WSJ Online:

A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can’t stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it’s good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.

Exactly. Read it all.

Remember that we never recovered from Roosevelts socialist New Deals (which arguably added years onto the Great Depression). We never recovered from Johnson’s Great Society. We will never recover from the Great Entitlement Expansions of the Bush/Obama era.

Health care reform, yes. Making us into the image of France, no.

Take back our country. Join the Club for Growth to support pro-economic candidates in winnable races that matter, regardless of party affiliation.

Technorati Tags: Democrats Abuse of Power, ObamaCare and Other Socialist Ideas, Healthcare Reform, Converting America into France, Destruction of the American Economy, Entitlement Expansions, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Robert Reich was on Clinton’s economic transition advisory board, served as Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, and Obama’s economic transition advisory board. So to say that Reich is anything but a left-wing liberal would be foolish.

So it really says something when someone like Robert Reich comes out and accuses B. Hussein Obama of undermining democracy:

I want universal health insurance. And having had a front-row seat in 1994 when Big Pharma and the rest of the health-industry complex went to battle against it, I can tell you first hand how big and effective the onslaught can be. So I appreciate Big Pharma’s support this time around, and I like it that the industry is doing the reverse of what it did last time, and airing ads to persuade the public of the rightness of the White House’s effort.

But I also care about democracy, and the deal between Big Pharma and the White House frankly worries me. It’s bad enough when industry lobbyists extract concessions from members of Congress, which happens all the time. But when an industry gets secret concessions out of the White House in return for a promise to lend the industry’s support to a key piece of legislation, we’re in big trouble. That’s called extortion: An industry is using its capacity to threaten or prevent legislation as a means of altering that legislation for its own benefit. And it’s doing so at the highest reaches of our government, in the office of the President.

Money quote:

We’re on a precarious road — and wherever it leads, it’s not toward democracy.

Amen, Brother Reich!

Technorati Tags: B. Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice, Socialized Medicine, The Socialization of America