Fausta’s Blog

FACT CHECK: Premiums would rise under Obama plan

“There’s no question premiums are still going to keep going up,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research clearinghouse on the health care system. “There are pieces of reform that will hopefully keep them from going up as fast. But it would be miraculous if premiums actually went down relative to where they are today.”

The statistics Obama based his claims on come from two sources. In both cases, the caveats got left out.

A report for the Business Roundtable, an association of big company CEOs, was the source for the claim that employers could save $3,000 per worker on health care costs, the White House said.

Issued in November, the report looked generally at proposals that Democrats were considering to curb health care costs, concluding they had the potential to significantly reduce future increases.

But the analysis didn’t consider specific legislation, much less the final language being tweaked this week. It’s unclear to what degree the bill that the House is expected to vote on within days would reduce costs for employers.

An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of earlier Senate legislation suggested savings could be fairly modest.

It found that large employers would see premium savings of at most 3 percent compared with what their costs would have been without the legislation. That would be more like a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand.

The claim that people buying coverage individually would save 14 percent to 20 percent comes from the same budget office report, prepared in November for Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. But the presidential sound bite fails to convey the full picture.

The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation. That’s mainly because policies in the individual insurance market would provide more comprehensive benefits than they do today.

For most households, those added costs would be more than offset by the tax credits provided under the bill, and they would pay significantly less than they have to now.

The premium reduction of 14 percent to 20 percent that Obama cites would apply only to a portion of the people buying coverage on their own — those who decide they want to keep the skimpier kinds of policies available today.

Their costs would go down because more young people would be joining the risk pool and because insurance company overhead costs would be lower in the more efficient system Obama wants to create.

The president usually alludes to that distinction in his health care stump speech, saying the savings would accrue to those people who continue to buy “comparable” coverage to what they have today.

But many of his listeners may not pick up on it.

“People are likely to not buy the same low-value policies they are buying now,” said health economist Len Nichols of George Mason University. “If they did buy the same value plans … the premium would be lower than it is now. This makes the White House statement true. But is it possibly misleading for some people? Sure.”

Michael Cannon at Cato points out that,

Nichols’ comments are also misleading — which makes the president’s statement not just misleading but untrue.

Under ObamaCare, people would not have the option to buy the same low-cost plans they do today. That’s the whole problem: under an individual mandate, everybody must purchase the minimum level of coverage specified by the government. That minimum benefits package would be more expensive than the coverage chosen by most people in the individual market. Their premiums would rise because ObamaCare would take away their right to choose a more economical policy.

Note also that the CBO predicts premiums would rise by an average of 10-13 percent in the individual market. Consumers who currently purchase the most economic policies would see larger premium increases.

Finally, the Obama plan would also force millions of uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance at premiums higher than current-law premium levels, which they have already rejected as being too high. Their premium expenditures would rise from $0 to thousands of dollars. Yet the CBO counts that implicit tax as reducing average premiums, because those consumers are generally healthier-than-average. Only in Washington is a tax counted as a savings.

As I have said before, it’s not about healthcare, it’s about control.

Following the American apology to Gaddafi,
Lockerbie bomber is better than ever, brags Gaddafi’s son… seven months after terrorist was given only three months to live

The health of the freed Lockerbie bomber has ‘greatly improved’ now he is home in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi’s son boasted yesterday.

He said Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was doing much better since being released seven months ago by the Scots on compassionate grounds because he had ‘only three months to live’.

How do you spell suckers in Arabic?

Oh yes, they were in Princeton last Friday, and they are fabulous. Here they are at Triangulo in New York, dancing to Esta noche de luna,

Alvaro Vargas Llosa thinks so,
The Spanish Noose Around Chavez’s Neck

An investigation triggered by the contents of computer files captured during a raid on a guerrilla camp in Ecuador has now suggested a Venezuelan link between the ETA terrorist organization in Spain and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. A Spanish court’s decision to indict 13 Spaniards and Colombians as a result of that investigation should shame those who questioned the validity of the computer files at the time of the raid. Among those indicted is Arturo Cubillas Fontan, an ETA member employed by Venezuela’s Ministry of Agriculture and married to Goizeber Odriozola, the chief of staff of Hugo Chavez. Cubillas, believed to be the main contact between the FARC and ETA, is accused in the indictment of coordinating the training of ETA members in urban guerrilla warfare. The indictment also alleges that the FARC sought logistical help from ETA in Madrid in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

The Spanish investigation got under way thanks to evidence obtained by Colombia after the 2008 raid on the camp controlled by Raul Reyes, a key FARC commander. Colombian troops found 17,000 files and 37,000 documents in three satellite computers, two external hard disks and three memory sticks. Once Dipol, the Colombian secret service, studied the content, Interpol was brought in to authenticate the files and confirm that Colombia had not tampered with them. Colombia then discreetly shared relevant parts with the countries named in the files.

What was disclosed in the media was only part of a gold mine of information about the structure, the funding and the international connections of the Colombian terrorists.

How damning is the information?

And yet the evidence was overwhelming. Among other witnesses, Bertrand de la Grange, an authoritative investigative journalist, gained access to the files—which had survived the attack because they were held in metallic suitcases. His first reports were published in Mexico’s Letras Libres and then picked up around the world. They explained the “five rings” of the FARC’s structure, including “Ring 3,” which operated out of Venezuela with Chavez’s help, and “Ring 5,” which spread its tentacles to 15 countries, among them Spain. The author concluded that there was “a network of international complicity of unsuspected dimensions.”

I asked de la Grange how decisive the information in the computer files was for Spain’s National Court’s investigation. “It was the main evidence,” he told me. “Those files had already led to the arrest of Remedios Garcia for aiding FARC in Spain and helped dismantle several networks of support for FARC in Europe.”

What does Chavez have to say? Absolutely nothing. He won’t respond to this very serious case because he finds the subject very stupid.

John Edwards is back in the news, with this article on GQ, Hello, America, My Name Is Rielle Hunter. Skip the article and read Ace’s Daily Beast Confirms Edwards Sex Tape Is Real and Was Made During Edwards’ Campaign For Presidency. Sleaze.

More sleaze, at the New Republic, The New Republic illustrates a serious piece about the Tea Party movement with a gross photograph that’s meant to evoke the pejorative “teabagger.” And then TNR removed the photo…

Speaking of sleaze, Unconstitutional Procedure Being Used to Pass Unconstitutional ObamaCare

Here is how the trick would work: In the House, the Rules Committee sets up the parameters for debate on legislation. House leaders are considering a complicated rule that would be structured so that a vote on the rule setting down the structure for the ObamaCare debate would allow the Senate’s version of health care reform to pass without a vote. First, there would be a vote on a rule. If the rule is passed by the House, then the House would vote on a health care budget reconciliation measure that is an amendment to the Senate passed ObamaCare bill. If that reconciliation measure passes, then reconciliation goes to the Senate and the ObamaCare legislation is deemed passed without a direct vote. The plan for the legislation is unclear. House leadership will either structure the rule to either immediately present ObamaCare to the President for his signature or they will hold the bill and deliver it only if the Senate passes a health care reconciliation measure. Either way, the Constitution and the American people are the losers.

Understand that this procedure is drafted in a way so your average American can’t understand it. The simple way to understand the situation is that the House is trying to pass a bill without a vote.

The Constitution states that the House and Senate are supposed to pass identical versions of a bill before the President can sign it into law. One of the reasons for this tricky procedure is to provide cover for moderate Democrats who don’t want to vote for the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill because it includes the federal funding of abortion.

Michael McConnell expands, The House Health-Care Vote and the Constitution
No bill can become law unless the exact same text is approved by a majority of both houses of Congress.

The rub is that, according to the Senate parliamentarian, reconciliation is permitted only for bills that amend existing law, not for amendments to bills that have yet to be enacted. This means that, for the Senate to be able to avoid a filibuster, House Democrats first have to vote for the identical bill that passed the Senate last Christmas Eve. That means voting aye on the special deals, aye on abortion coverage, and aye on high taxes on expensive health-insurance plans. Challengers are salivating at the prospect of running against incumbents who vote for these provisions.

Enter the Slaughter solution. It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.

More on the sleazy move and Slaughter House Rules
How Democrats may ‘deem’ ObamaCare into law, without voting.

The bottom line is, as Thomas Sowell puts it,

Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized– or even recognized– before it becomes a fait accompli and “the law of the land.”

If you can’t make it to Washington tomorrow, via Instapundit.

Meanwhile – elsewhere in the world – is there a Bronca in Venezuela?

Is there Another billboard mystery in Minnesota? Sure looks like it,

Mary O’Grady has been following this story for several years, and she updates on it following the earthquake,
Democrats and Haiti Telecom
Clinton and friends are back in business.

In the late 1990s some Haitians working at Teleco told me that “the Kennedy company Fusion” was getting a special rate discount and that it had an office inside Teleco. I called Fusion to inquire but it would not even confirm whether it did business in Haiti. Then the FCC told me that its file containing the Haiti contracts, which are public documents, was missing. When the FCC asked carriers for duplicate copies, Fusion coughed up one, from 1999. Then it went to court to block my request to see it.

Fusion lost, and when the contract was released it showed that the company had a rate of 12 cents per minute when the official rate was 50 cents. As one Haitian told me, on one of the busiest routes in the Western Hemisphere, “it was a gold mine.”

Among Mr. Kennedy’s more hilarious claims is that Fusion’s sweetheart deal with Teleco was “an innovative agreement” and an example of “deregulation of state-owned monopolies.” The FCC has suggested otherwise in another similar situation. In 2008 it fined New Jersey-based IDT $400,000 for failing to file its 2003 Teleco agreement for 8.75 cents per minute, a 66% discount from the official rate.

An American entrepreneur who does business in the Caribbean recently explained the Haitian landscape to me this way: “We did not bother with Haiti as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act precludes legitimate U.S. entities from entering the Haitian market. Haiti is pure pay to play. The benefit of competitive submarine cables would be transformative for the Haitians. Instead, they were stuck with Clinton cronies taxing the poor.”

What is worse, as the latest aid effort demonstrates, at least some of them have not gone away.

No change on that, no break for the blighted country.

It’s been a stormy weekend in New Jersey and casa de Fausta has no internet, cable or phone connection, so blogging will be sporadic until that’s solved.

There will be no podcasts until Thursday.

At least we have electricity, which was not the case from Saturday afternoon until yesterday evening.

I’m posting this at the Princeton Public library.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Michael Fumento has been investigating the Toyota hybrid hoax, and he was on Cavuto last night,

Check out Mike’s article on Forbes,
Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax
Exploring an overblown media frenzy.

Virtually every aspect of Sikes’s story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he’d pull such a stunt, beyond the all-American desire to have 15 minutes of fame (recall the “Balloon Boy Hoax” from October) and the aching need to be perceived as a victim.

The lack of skepticism from the beginning was stunning. I combed through haystacks of articles without producing such needles as the words “alleges” or “claims.” When Sikes said he brought his car to a Toyota ( TM – news – people ) dealer two weeks earlier, recall notice in hand, and they just turned him away, the media bought that, too. In Sikes We Trust. Then the pundits deluged us with a tsunami of an anti-Toyota sanctimony .

Where to begin?

Well, the patrol car didn’t slow down the Prius; the bumpers never touched. The officers used a loudspeaker to tell Sikes to use the brakes and emergency brake together. He did; the car slowed to about 55 mph. Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt. He stopped the car on his own.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the transmission or the Prius engine button either.

Over a 23-minute period the 911 dispatcher repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused and then essentially stopped talking to her except to say that he thought he could smell his brakes burning.

“I thought about” shifting into neutral, Sikes said at a televised press conference the day after the incident. But “I had never played with this kind of a transmission, especially when you’re driving and I was actually afraid to do that.” Sikes, who has driven the car for two years, also said “I figured if I knocked it over [the gear knob] the car might flip.”

You must read the whole article.

As I said before, the government has a clear conflict of interest and now Toyota’s being scapegoated.

David Hogberg of Investor’s Business Daily interviews Paul Ryan:
GOP’s Ryan Dissects ObamaCare, Lays Out ‘Roadmap’ To Health

IBD: President Obama said his overhaul will “bring greater competition, choice, savings and efficiencies to our health care system.”

Ryan: It will do the opposite of all three of those. It will mean less competition and less choice because it narrows the options consumers will have to get health insurance. It puts everybody on a glide path to go into an exchange where people will have three choices of policies — gold, silver and bronze. It standardizes health insurance and takes underwriting out of health insurance, which is how many insurers compete. At the end of the day you’ll have a few big insurers selling different versions of the same color. With the kinds of mandates and rules they impose on insurers, the small and medium-sized insurance companies simply can’t compete because they don’t have the economies of scale. What you’ll simply have are these handful of really large insurers simply becoming claims processors for federally run health insurance.

One example. There is a medium-sized insurer in Milwaukee that has 2,200 employees, 1,600 in Milwaukee. They sell in the individual market and they have the biggest share of policies with health savings accounts. If this bill becomes law, they’ll have to close because of the rules and regulations. That means they lay off the 1,600 people in Milwaukee and send out cancellation notices to their 1.3 million policyholders.

The only ones that will survive are the really big companies. That will make prices go up. And what’s so insidious from an entitlement standpoint is it’s an open-ended entitlement that says to everyone who makes under $100,000, if your health care expenses exceed 2% to 9.8% (depending on income level), don’t worry, taxpayers will pay the rest of it. That is an invitation of cost explosion.

Go read the rest of the interview.

Scott Brown delivers the Republican weekly address (YouTube here), and on Washington at its very worst:

“In speech after speech on his health care plan, the President has tried to convince us that what he is proposing will be good for America. But, how can it be good for America if it raises taxes by a half trillion dollars and costs a trillion dollars or more to implement? In addition, how can it be good if it takes another half a trillion dollars away from seniors on Medicare, and still includes all the backroom deals you have been hearing about for months?

Eternity Road on The value of ignorance

‘They Just Want This Over’

itting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”

According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

Stupak: Dems say Abortions save Money: Stupak Threatened by Ethics Inquiry

The Slaughter Solution, And Other Tactics For Passing Health Reform

If you watch cable news this weekend (which, if you a normal and well-adjusted person, you probably won’t), you’ll likely hear a lot of discussion about the so-called Slaughter Solution, a procedural manuever that House Democrats are considering in hopes of making it easier to pass health care reform. NRO’s Daniel Foster and Slate’s John Dickerson have posted detailed explanations, but the gist is this: Rather than vote up or down on the Senate bill (which many House Democrats don’t like), the House would instead vote to pass a reconciliation bill that amends the Senate bill. Attached to the reconciliation bill would be a rule that says that once it’s passed, the original Senate bill is automatically considered passed too.

The result is that House Democrats get to vote for the reconciliation fixes but can say that, technically, they never voted to pass the bad Senate bill.
…
So, as I understand it, if this strategy works, here’s what will happen. First, the House will vote on the reconciliation bill that 1) includes the student loan bill 2) amends the Senate bill and 3) triggers the passage of the Senate bill in the House. After that happens, the Senate will have the option to vote on the reconciliation bill, thus passing both the student loan legislation and the changes to the health bill.

Is this even Constitutional?

Meanwhile, the press bellyaches that they are “bored with Barack“

I’m suspecting some journalistic rope-a-dope here because in the end, it’s all about furthering the progressive agenda and the MSM will always team with liberalism… they quintessentially define and represent it.

Indeed.

Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope

— A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.
…
The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

Here’s a graphic on the history of the abuse case.

And, as the article shows,

In Munich case, a priest from Essen, “despite allegations of sexual abuse, and in spite of a conviction — was repeatedly assigned work in the sphere of pastoral care by the then-Vicar General Gerhard Gruber,” who worked under Benedict when he was the archbishop.

The priest, identified only with the initial “H,” was moved to Munich in January 1980, where he was supposed to undergo therapy, a decision that was taken “with the approval of the archbishop,” according to the archdiocese’s statement. Benedict was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.

the sex abuser is now free, and his identity is still concealed.

There is no justice. None at all.