Fausta’s Blog

By now it’s pretty clear that the Obama administration will make health coverage a priority item. The question is, what form will it take?

The NYT has a glance at the future:
Health Insurers Offer to Accept All Applicants, on Condition

The health insurance industry said Wednesday that it would support a health care overhaul requiring insurers to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability. But in return, the industry said, Congress should require all Americans to have coverage.

The idea behind that is to avoid antiselection: When you cover the entire population, the incidence of catastrophic illnesses is minimal compared to the whole.

But there are a number of things to consider:
1. Will it still be employer-paid coverage?
If so, who’s paying for the insurance for unemployed people?
In what way is that different from Medicaid?

What happens in an economy that is contracting instead of expanding?

Do existing health savings accounts issued through insurance companies count as coverage? Or do you have to cancel that and enroll in the insurance policies?

2. What kind of coverage are we talking about?
Routine check-ups and preventive care, immunizations? How about EKGs, mamographs, colonoscopies? Dental care, eyeglasses? Plastic surgery?
How much would the insurance pay for doctor visits? Paying very little for office visits will reduce the number of physicians. France has found out the hard way.
Or would it be an HMO-type of service where the government decides who are the participating doctors?

3. What if you get sick when travelling overseas? What if you go, say, to India for knee surgery, as many Europeans are doing now?

4. Can one go outside the compulsory coverage and pay directly to private physicians?
What if you have a critical illness that can’t wait?

5. Who gets billed for the coverage? Do the elderly pay more for coverage? Again, how is this different from Medicare?

Or should we asume it will be one community rating fee for all, regardless of age, in which case people with many children will pay the most?

6. How are the fees collected? Will it be through existing governmental bureaucracies, such as the IRS, or through paying insurance companies, or will there be yet another new bureaucracy sinking in more of the taxpayers’ money? How will the department of Health and Human Services fit in the picture?

As a former group benefits administrator and underwriter, I have more questions that I can post right now. But then there’s a really big question,

Insurers did not say how the government should enforce an individual mandate: whether through fines, tax penalties or other means. Politicians have also been reluctant to specify details of enforcement, which could prove highly unpopular.

Lots of questions.

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My latest post, Japanese Princesses Love Jesus is up at LadyBlog. Go read it, and comment, please.

In today’s podcast at 10AM Eastern, Humberto Fontova will be talking about his article, Obama Appoints Castro’s Lawyer as White House Counsel

Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama’s advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel.

The MSM has mentioned Craig’s role as Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig’s role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro’s shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez.

Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where the average monthly salary is $16. The high-rolling Gregory Craig worked for Washington D.C.’s elite firm, Williams & Connolly, one of America’s highest-priced law firms.

Upon accepting the case, Gregory Craig had flown to Cuba for a meeting with Fidel Castro. Craig’s remuneration, we learned shortly after his return, came from a “voluntary fund” set up by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and “administered” by the National Council of Churches. The same reporters and pundits, who routinely erupt with snide snorts midway through any statement by a Republican press secretary, reported this item with a straight face.

But then, this media also reports that Castro’s Cuba provides free and exquisite health-care. And the explanation of Craig’s funding issued from the same source.

Craig presided over the CBS interview

During the taping of Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes interview with Juan Miguel Gonzalez in April 2000,Pedro Porro served as Rather’s in-studio translator. Dan would ask the question in English into Porro’s earpiece and Porro would translate it into Spanish for Elian’s heavily guarded father.

“Juan Miguel was never completely alone,” says Pedro Porro. “He never smiled. His eyes kept shifting back and forth. It was obvious to me that he was under coercion. He was always surrounded by security agents from the Cuban Interest Section, as they called it. When these agents left him alone for a few seconds, Gregory Craig himself would be hovering over Juan Miguel.”

Yes, Gregory Craig had led the Juan Miguel/Cuban-Security entourage into the studio, then presided over the interview as a movie director. “Most of the questions Dan Rather was asking Elian’s father during that 60 Minutes interview were being handed to him by Gregory Craig,” says Pedro Porro. “It was obvious that Greg Craig and Dan Rather where on very friendly terms. They were joshing and bantering back and forth, as Juan Miguel sat there petrified. Craig was stage-managing the whole thing. The taping would stop and Craig would walk over to Dan, hand him a little slip of paper, say something into his ear. Then Rather would read straight from the paper.”

“At one point Craig stopped the taping almost like a movie director yelling, ‘Cut!’ I was confused for a moment, says Porro, “until Greg Craig complained that Juan Miguel’s answers were not coming across from his translator with “sufficient emotion.” “So Dan Rather shut everything down for a while and some of the crew drove to a drama school in New York. They hired a dramatic actor to act as a translator, and brought him back.”

A week later, this:

Another Obama appointee: Eric Holder, who

In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons — of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse — were issued in the months after al-Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, when the Clinton administration was pretending to be the scourge of terrorism. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife’s impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York’s substantial Puerto Rican vote.

I don’t know which Puerto Ricans voted for Clinton for freeing convicted terrorists; instead the vote probably went because of the usual Democrat indentity politics canvassing. In any case, Power Line has the video where

Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch grills Holder concerning the lack of screening by the Department of Justice in connection with the pardons

Here’s the video:

The Obama administration: Change back to the future!

Chat’s open at 9:45AM and the call in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!

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My tango teachers:

Beautiful!

Really guys, how clueless can you get?

Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds
Auto Industry Close to Bankruptcy But They Get Pricey Perk

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.
…
All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

Play me the world’s smallest violin:

As if that’s not enough for stupidity, here’s a GOP idiot saying the $25billion bailout money “is not your money”:

With fools like that, did the GOP deserve to lose? Definitely.

Meanwhile, Romney changed his mind and now says Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.

I’ve always felt that the Lee Iacoca Chrysler bailout was a mistake. Another Detroit bailout will be an even bigger mistake.

Let them go bankrupt.

No more bailouts. Period.

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Michelle Obama is a very acomplished, intelligent woman who, as First Lady of the United States will represent out country every single day she inhabits the White House. As such, she should be treated with respect and allowed the dignity of the office.

Explain to me, then, why Salon has published this awful article by Erin Aubrey Kaplan, First lady got back, focused on Mrs. Obama’s posterior.

It reduces Michelle Obama to a racial stereotype, which, by the way is not exclusive to black women anyway (Mediterranean and Latinas included), and which I can’t say I had paid attention to.

SylviaM at Comments From Left Field rips to shreds the Salon article. Sylvia concludes her brilliant post, which you should read in its entirety,

Ms. Kaplan moves beyond admiration of another woman’s figure to placing her body up on the block for inspection. Reducing a brilliant woman to her “unprecedented” physicality is trafficking in age-old stereotypes of a black woman’s purpose in the world. In short: she’s not a damned mule, and if she really felt perturbed about people describing Michelle Obama as a horse or a giant ape, I don’t understand her motivation to shrink Mrs. O to a rump roast and a pressed coif.

SylviaM is right, of course, but perhaps the key to Kaplan’s cluelessness resides in the subtitle for her Salon article, First lady got back,
I‘m a black woman who never thought I‘d see a powerful, beautiful female with a body like mine in the White House. Then I saw Michelle Obama — and her booty!

Three “I”s and a “mine”: It’s all about “me, me, me”, as far as Kaplan is concerned, isn’t it?

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During his trip to Cuba Hu Jintao had a photo-op with Fidel, according to the official Chinese news service, and both Communists appear to be fond of the word “energetic” - perhaps inspired by the red and black warm-up suit Fidel wore for the ocasion:

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday visited Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, in Havana.

The two leaders warmly shook hands, exchanged greetings and had a long conversation in a sincere and friendly atmosphere.

Hu said he was delighted to see Castro again. The comrades of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China “have all cared about your health and I brought their sincere greetings to you,” he said.

“I see in person that you have recovered and have been energetic so I feel very pleased,” he told Castro.

Castro extended a warm welcome to Hu for his second state visit to Cuba. “We are old friends. I am happy to see that you are as energetic as when I met you last time,” he said.

I prefer the Jerusalem Post’s headline, China’s president reportedly meets Fidel Castro.

Fidel’s got a new combover and maybe a new brand of hair gel that has changed his hair to straight and flat. At least he appears to have given up on hair dye.

How’s Castro doing? Only the Cuban government knows.

This will be today’s podcast topic in 15 Minutes on Latin America. Chat’s open by 9:45AM Eastern and the call in number is 646 652-2639. Join in!

Welcome, Memeorandum readers!

UPDATE
Breitbart has the video:

The Breitbart article gives more information,

The Chinese leader brought 4.5 tonnes of humanitarian aid for victims of three hurricanes that battered Cuba this year, which was handed over late Monday after Hu’s arrival at the Jose Marti International Airport.

Receiving the gift, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Rodrigo Malmierca said that Cuba “deeply appreciates the visit of President Hu Jintao, at the exact moment the country is struggling to recover and continue its development.”

It was the third donation China has made to assist Cuba in its recovery from hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma, which caused 10 billion dollars worth of damages in the space of two months. Hurricane aid from the Chinese government and businesses has totalled more than 2.5 million dollars.
…
Hu’s visit comes less than two weeks before the arrival of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in another Russian bid to fortify relations with outspoken US adversaries in Latin America on the back of a trip to Venezuela.

China offered key support to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro when Cuba fell into dire economic straits after the former Soviet Union collapse, forging a divide which Russia has recently sought to reduce.

Current deals include Chinese oil prospecting and extraction in Cuba — onshore and offshore — and two Cuban eye hospitals in China and a third under construction.

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My friend Rick Moran has asked me to be his podcast guest tonight at 8PM Eastern. The theme, “Is America still a center right country?”

Ed has the video:

Watch it and weep: An electorate so clueless and ignorant that doesn’t even know who controls Congress.

As Ed says,

However, the rest of these results show the abysmal state of media coverage of Barack Obama. It’s not that the voters couldn’t absorb data provided to them by the Tanning Bed Media; these voters quite obviously learned plenty about Sarah Palin. In the video, the subjects demonstrate that by assigning every stupid thing said on the campaign trail to Palin whether she said it or not. Meanwhile, no one can figure out what Barack Obama said, how he conducted his campaign, or his political history.

Dr Melissa agrees, while News Busters notices that

After you stop laughing at how ill-informed these Obama voters are, you will realize how lacking our education system is and how extensively these voters’ perceptions are shaped by the mainstream media. In fact, many of these voters identified PBS, Bill Maher, Jon Stuart, NPR, etc. as their sources for information.

More at How Obama got elected.

Pass the Colombian Trade Pact

We believe that the trade pact would be good for America’s economy and workers. Rejecting it would send a dismal message to allies the world over that the United States is an unreliable partner and, despite all that it preaches, does not really believe in opening markets to trade. There is no more time to waste. If the lame-duck Congress does not approve the trade pact this year, prospects would dim considerably since it would lose the cover of the rule (formerly known as fast track) that provides for an up-or-down, no-amendment vote.

Because of trade preferences granted as part of the war on drugs, most Colombian exports already are exempt from United States tariffs. The new agreement would benefit American companies that now have to pay high tariffs on exports to Colombia.

It also would strengthen bonds with an important ally in a volatile corner of South America — that also is the main source of cocaine shipped into this country and where the United States has very few friends these days.

In neighboring Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez spouts fierce anti-American rhetoric to distract attention from his autocratic policies. Last month, Bolivia expelled the United States ambassador and accused Drug Enforcement Administration agents of conspiring against his government. Ecuador has refused to renew a lease on an airbase used by American counternarcotics flights in the coastal city of Manta.

For the first time in a long time, the NYT has come up with a position that I share.

Prior posts on Colombia here.

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