An Obama-Care Anecdote

It has only been a few months since Congress immorally, and illegally squeezed through the huge Health Care Reform bill. The effect is already showing. Yesterday, I took my beautiful wife to her cardiologist for a check-up. She is currently paranoid about losing her healthcare insurance because of an incident that occurred this month. She received a letter from a collection agency. She does not do too well with any threat to her credit score. The overdue bill was $24.55.

Her secondary insurance is from the State of Illinois, and you may be aware that the state is on the edge of bankruptcy. The result is they are slow at paying their obligations. Peggy is the victim of their stupidity. Our visit to the cardiologist was the result of stress she suffered from the collection notice.

The real point of this post is our conversation with the doctor. The doctors are waiting to see what, if anything, Medicare will pay under Obama Care. If their payment drops to the level of Medicaid, well, his practice does not accept Medicaid patients. The practice cannot afford to keep an office open on that level of payment

Here is my advice to all of you liberal, progressive, socialist, baby boomer, ass kissing Obama health care reform, new Medicare recipients; sit down, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye. There is an excellent chance that you will see a death panel of big government clerks before you will see a doctor.

How in the hell could you be so stupid as to believe that a government that cannot handle the cost of one social program (Medicare), that it will be able to manage a gargantuan (twenty-two hundred page) loosely defined plan?

Here is my wish for you:

I wish you eternal happiness, as you slave endless hours all your life to get a free happy pill from your new health care system.

Finally, He makes Sense

 

My genius Senator Dickie Durbin finally made a proposal to President Barack Obama that could make some sense. The Honorable Senator Durbin is asking POTUS to assign a Carp Czar. These people really do not get it at all. The Democrats have so gotten into eliminating God from the universe that they believe they can build a government agency to outwit nature.

Durbin means well, but he has his head in his rectum again. This time he wants to eliminate the migration of Asian carp away from Lake Michigan.  He wants a new agency formed to coordinate efforts to eradicate an invasion of Asian carp into the Great Lakes. It is a noble idea that will go down in history with other Liberal, Socialist, Progressive, Communist concepts like Health Care Reform, and Financial Reform without regulation of Fannie or Freddie. How about keeping oil from washing ashore? The Democrats can’t secure the border, and eliminate the invasion of Mexicans from over running the United States. How in the hell will they control an underwater invasion of fish?

A Carp Czar could be a good idea if they take this recommendation; make Barney Frank the Czar. Throw him into the water at the mouth of Lake Ontario with a concrete slab tied to his ankles. He can catch the critters, and we kill two problems with one Czar. Barney leaves Congress, and the fish will have some natural food to nibble.

The Big Hoax

 

     Every day our lawmakers and pundits bombard us with BS.  They say, “we are a nation of laws,” but are we?  Sure, we employ sixty Senators and  four hundred and thirty-five representatives to write and pass laws, and they do write laws by the hundreds every year. When some poor slob has a problem, he writes to his Congressman to fix his problem so it never happens again. The Congressman, eager to keep his job for a lifetime drafts a law. He lobbies his friends in congress to vote for it. Together, they vote the law in. The rest of us who do not have the same problem  don’t really give a rats hoot about it. The law stays on the books, and congress forgets about it. Someone finds a loophole in the old law, and applies it inappropriately. Time passes, and some genius Congressman decides to be creative by working around the silly house rules requiring that congress debate it first, then vote on it.  A recent example of this is the reconciliation bill. The Senate adopted the reconciliation bill to fix differences between the house, and the senate versions of the health care bill. Originally, the bill reconciled differences in the budget. 

     How many laws do we have that lurk in the books with hidden time bombs like the reconciliation bill? Today, I tried researching what it takes for a person coming into this country to come in legally.  Try to Google that one. I got thousands of hits on what an American needs to get into Mexico, but very little on what a Mexican needs to get into the USA. There are stories of overcrowded border crossings and border patrol people at the gates who do a poor job at checking the credentials of those coming across.

     I was able to glean that several presidents were involved in opening the gates to the USA. Remember when, Jimmy Carter tried to make the country bi-lingual? He wanted to post all the signs in the country in Spanish as well as English. I bet that is where “dial one for English,” crept into the vocabulary. Bill Clinton made the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) part of his agenda. He also began looking the other way when the Mexicans began flooding across the border to jobs in border towns.  George Bush was no better. He wanted the country to have low-cost labor to pick lettuce, wash dishes, and mow lawns. He is highly regarded by the Latino population in Texas.

     I spent considerable time looking for the requirements for a Mexican to enter legally. I found one reference to a form that day workers use. Another actually mentioned a passport. A visa is not required. I’m sure the State Department knows what the rules are for entry, but I sure as hell don’t.

     So, what is the hoax? The hoax is we are a nation of laws. We have books filled with laws on immigration to the USA. Most of them worked very well until the 1980’s. (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)). Ever since then, we have forgotten what the laws are, and disregard them. We fail to enforce immigration laws. Presidents encourage the border patrols to look the other way. Federal Immigration laws are in such poor regard that big cities pass “sanctuary” laws. A sanctuary law prohibits the police from determining if arrestees are in the country legally.  We do have many immigration laws, but hypocritically, we pass laws to say we don’t have to follow the laws. What is that all about?

The next big push by our president is to reform immigration. I have some recommendations:

  1.  Start by enforcing the laws we already have on the books.
  2. Several presidents have chosen to clean house by deporting all illegal aliens.    
    1. During the Great Depression, President Herbert H. Hoover,  (R) ordered the
      deportation of all illegal aliens in order to make jobs available  to  American
      citizens that desperately needed  work.
    2. Harry S. Truman, (D) deported over one million Illegal aliens after WWII to create jobs for veterans.
    3. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower,  (R) deported 1.3 million Mexican Nationals during ‘Operation Wetback’. He did it to give returning WWII, and Korean Veteran’s  a better chance at jobs. It took two years, but the illegal aliens went home by deportation!

These three Presidents deported illegal aliens to help the country.  Obama can do it too. He has both justifications, i.e. a poor economy and returning veterans.

  1. After we clean house, I recommend we use the laws we already have to allow these people to return legally. This is a tough action. We must take it if we are to live up to the claim that “we are a nation of laws.” If we don’t, we are perpetrating the HOAX and spreading hypocrisy across the world.

Obama will not do it because he is part of the HOAX.

“Kill the Republic”

 

      Three cheers! The Democrats created a moment of history. They saved the first black president of the USA from the pits of disgrace: or did they?  I congratulate the five hundred and thirty five for their blatant disregard for the voices of 180 million constituents.  It is clear to me that this group of Congressman does not give a damn about the people who hired them. They have chosen to listen to a higher authority, the president. In this win-lose situation, they flexed muscles they forgot they owned.  They did exercise democrat political tricks learned on the battlefield from the likes of Alinsky, Kennedy, and Daley.  The ends justify the means, and the means is anything that works at the time. Bribery, lies, deceit, airplane rides, all fit the bill.

     With the current economic situation, and a new Great Depression still looming before us, I predict that this new bill will bankrupt the country before Obama Care will take care of a single newly insured person. Do we really think that after collecting a huge pile of money for four years that the 535 will fail temptation to spend it on something else? History is on my side on this point. They will spend it, but not on health care.

     Even if we were to vote them all out of office today, it will take a hundred years to undo the damage perpetrated on us by this act. By that time, the culture of the USA will evolve into a godless social state of twenty first century slaves serving the 535. Will you care?  Will living in the nanny state fill you with rapture? Will you accept the loss of liberty and a life of servitude?

     Congratulations America, you got the change you want to believe in. You will have an opportunity to debate the point with me in the soup lines soon.

     In the near future, a group of people from the United Socialist States of America will draft a new Declaration of Independence. It will begin something like this. . .

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. . .

Extracted from the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

A Public Option Lesson

     Let me start by chronicling an event that just occurred. Two days before I left on a long trip, I went to the post office to change my address so my mail would be forwarded. In past years, I went in, filled out a yellow change of address form, handed it to a local USPS clerk and forgot about it. I left town, and the mail stopped coming to the old address on the date I requested, and it arrived a week later at my new address. Each piece of mail forwarded had a yellow sticker on it with the new address.  I timed my travel to cover the time of the relay. It worked every time.

     This time, I was in a hurry when I went to the post office. I asked a clerk for the form.

     She asked me, “only one?”

    “Yes,” I responded too quickly. I went to the counter to fill it out when I remembered that I have to fill out a form for each name that receives mail to an address. In the past, I was lucky. I got away with one form for my Sur name, and covered my family by checking the family box.  That way, my wife’s mail forwarded also. This time, I had to complete four cards. 1) Peggy is known by her former name, 2) her new name covered by a check in the family box, and 3)a hyphenated combo.  The fourth is mail that still comes for my beloved Aunt Marie. In the interest of time, I got sucked into doing the job on-line.

     The USPS web site is enormous, but relatively easy to navigate. I found the page quickly, and filled out the form. I clicked finish and the damn thing asked for  a one dollar transaction fee. Hmmm, they never ask for that in the PO. I thought a computer was supposed to improve productivity, and reduce costs. Each name cost me another buck on the credit card. I saved the transactions, and went about packing.

     The result of the new on-line system is totally unsatisfactory. Here is what happened:

  1. The mail continued to come to my old address for one week beyond the asked for shut off date.
  2. It’s been eleven days since I left home, and fourteen days since I filed my on-line change, and the mail is still not coming.

     If this on-line system were implemented in the private sector it would have worked like a charm.  The USPS has some of the most sophisticated automation systems in the world. It knows about computers, they have used them for years. So why can’t they get something as simple as changing an address? They did okay when it was a paper system.

   The supporters of big Government argue that the USPS is not a government run service. Why then, does Congress have to approve every move the USPS tries to implement? If they want to change the price of a stamp, it takes a congressional approval. If they try to change work rules to get concessions from the union, it takes a congressional approval, and Congressmen don’t like upsetting unions.

     Imagine a Public Option Health Care System that works like the USPS. I see a nightmare. I see a dollar charge for every on-line appointment I make with a doctor. I see a major delay in getting satisfaction because of the inability of the bureaucrats to run anything. I see the administrators going to Congress to beg for money to continue the job. I see the American people being taxed to death to pay for a system that gives nothing in return but health improving stress.

What do you see?