John Dennis with Ron Paul

By Alex Fidel

John Dennis is the Republican candidate for congress in California’s 8th congressional district, who’s incumbent is none other than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi usually rakes in 70% of the vote in San Fransisco, with Green Party candidate Cindy Sheehan winning more votes than the Republican in 2008. Shockingly, Cindy Sheehan is one of the many prominent anti-war activists to endorse John Dennis.

You’re probably scratching your head at the idea of a Republican getting the support of Cindy Sheehan, who said, “[John Dennis is] a good person who is truly antiwar and truly wants to make the world a better place.” Well maybe I should introduce you to John Dennis and his roots.

John has never run for public office. The most activism he has been involved in was campaigning for Ron Paul in 2008. He is a principled libertarian, being against both wars when they were Bush’s wars. He voted No on California Proposition 8 of 2008, supports government getting out of the marriage business completely, and wants to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ He supports the legalization of marijuana, and the complete repeal of the Patriot Act. So from this, you can gather he is not coming to his anti-war, pro-gay positions just to pander to San Fransisco voters. He really believes these things in a very principled way.

He decided to run in the Republican primary against Dana Walsh, who was the candidate in 2008, who got less votes than Cindy Sheehan. He won by a pretty big margin, and the race began to defeat Pelosi.

He has garnered endorsements from Ron Paul, Barry Goldwater Jr., the pro-gay activist group Log Cabin Republicans, and has had a puff piece written about him in the prominent LGBT publication The Bay Area Reporter.

But recently, he has begun to gather support from people outside the libertarian and Republican circles.

In September, he, Ron Paul, and former San Fransisco City Supervisor and Ralph Nader’s VP running mate Matt Gonzalez held an anti-war/anti-drug war/pro-liberty/pro-integrity rally called “Principles Over Politics” outside San Fransisco city hall to bring together the left and right on the issues of war and debt/defecit. To paraphrase, John Dennis pointed out that the left/right fight is counterproductive; that the real fight is between Washington and us.

All three speakers were quick to point out Nancy Pelosi’s flip flops on the wars and the Patriot Act, and her lack of commitment to gay rights. They also pointed out her arrogance and seeming lack of care for her district.

This eventually culminated in Matt Gonzalez’s shocking endorsement of John Dennis, in an open letter to Pelosi. “I write you because a large number of your constituents, myself included, are tired of your leadership,” Gonzalez writes, “Although you may want to dismiss your congressional opponent John Dennis because he is a Republican, I assure you that he is a serious candidate with views worthy of consideration. In addition to being firmly anti-war and committed to defending civil liberties, Dennis is pro-gay rights, opposed the Wall Street bailouts and has joined in the populist call challenging the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve … I intend to vote for John Dennis and I will encourage everyone I know to do the same.”

The Huffington Post even wrote an article saying that liberals should vote for John Dennis. This is true, while liberals may not be able to agree with him on economic issues, John Dennis’s integrity insures voters that he will be principled on the wars. Nancy Pelosi has no shred of integrity in her, and the most SF voters get out of her is an arrogant and condescending tone.

That is why I keep stressing that integrity is the most important thing to look for in a politician. John Dennis is a very cool, down-to-earth, laid back, honest guy. You can tell that by the way he talks; he doesn’t talk in circles, but rather says what he means and means what he says. Can you say the same about Nancy Pelosi? Probably not, that’s why under Barack Obama, she suddenly has a complete policy reversal on the wars and the Patriot Act. That is why liberals should choose John Dennis, because at least they can trust him, rather than leave it up to a game of chance in the hands of Pelosi.

John Dennis is proving to be a formidable opponent to Pelosi. He is gathering support from Democrats, Independents, and others who would normally never dream of supporting a Republican. People are even disgusted by Pelosi’s refusal to debate him, in fact, there is a video of Nancy Pelosi very arrogantly telling off a reporter asking her if she intends to debate John Dennis, which was featured on Drudge Report. That was the second time she has refused a debate, and there is a timer on John Dennis’s website indicating the amount of time Nancy Pelosi has not responded to a debate.

I can sense your skepticism, you’re probably thinking ‘OK, he has a big chance of winning. But he’s just one congressman, what can he possibly do?’ True, he is just running for Congress. But when he enters Congress, he will be entering with a lot of political capital, because he will be pulling the biggest political upset in recent history, which will send a shockwave through the entire political establishment.

————————————–

Visit JohnDennis2010.com for more info, and tune in to Freethought Radio this Tuesday, October 26th at 8PM PST, for our interview with John Dennis, only on ksunradio.com

Last week I began a list of healthcare rubes – those who support the bill for fiscal, moral, and philosophical, reasons that cold, hard facts show the bill utterly fails to provide.  Yesterday I added a couple of clueless Congressman to that list.  Today, I add those of you who support the bill because, notwithstanding it’s other failings, you believe it will prevent insurance companies from asserting preexisting conditions as the reason for denying essential coverage to children.

See here, and here for a long, thorough breakdown of what Congress and the administration promised (before and after the bill passed), why those promises are false, and who confirms that they are false. With regard to who has confirmed that Obamacare’s promise to force insurance companies to provide full coverage to children regardless of preexisting conditions, JOM writes “[f]olks reassured by an appeal to authority will note that the AP has quotes from two Democrats supporting their interpretation.”  LOL.

More persuasively, the articles points out that, due to actually reading the fucking bill and suffering through objective analysis of its provisions, Obamacare-fanatic Ezra Klein backed away from his previous full-fledged commitment to the Administration’s talking points, and the Old Gray Mare herself acknowledged that health insurance companies “do not have to provide one of the benefits that the president calls a centerpiece of the law: coverage for certain children with pre-existing conditions.”

At this point, you’re basically not a healthcare rube if you support the bill because you understand it is an intentional, manipulative leap left towards a centrally planned economy and the establishment of government’s authority to manage every area of our lives. To your dismay, however, you’re not a tough, Machiavellian sonofabitch either.  You’re a moron because if the 20th century taught us anything it is that concentrating power in the State and centrally planning economies is an EPIC FAIL.

Via Reason, I find this Tim Carney article detailing the wool Obama and Congress pulled (and remain dedicated to actively pulling) over the collective eyes of the rubes – those of you who support Obamacare under baseless assumptions that it represents a triumph of the people over corporate lobbying, a blow to special interests, and transparent government. If you think it creates a better health care system, or is economically viable, you’re a rube too. And if you understand all of that, but will suffer those ills in order to provide national health care access as a matter of policy, you’re a rube as well because there are much better, more efficient ways to provide national access to health care without diminishing individual liberty and advancing the cause of the dependency state. Oh, and if you justify support for Obamacare under the assumption it is merely a national extension of the healthcare mandate in Hawai’i or Massachusetts-Care, for your information those models really blow, you’re dead wrong, and a rube to boot. Now, here’s Carney’s article:

“Tonight,” President Obama intoned near midnight Sunday, after the House had passed two health care bills, “we pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. … We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people.”

But even before the president spoke, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America — whose $26.1 million lobbying effort in 2009 was the most expensive by any industry lobby in history — hailed the health package as “important and historic.”

The second-biggest industry lobby in America, the American Medical Association, also cheered, as did the American Hospital Association, the No. 5 industry lobby. Throw in the goliath senior lobby AARP and Beltway powerhouse General Electric, and you realize Obama’s underdog tale is all bark and no bite.

The health care bill Obama signed into law Tuesday is a triumph for the special interests. It will benefit the biggest businesses, and by injecting more government into the economy, it will permanently stimulate K Street.

Yet all along Obama has claimed the opposite. The Democrats’ party-line Senate vote for the bill represented “standing up to the special interests,” Obama said in December — just before the health care lobbyists and pharmaceutical political action committees hosted fundraisers for Martha Coakley to try to preserve the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority.

Throughout March, as momentum built for passing the bill, and as Democrats adopted the mantra, “You’re either with the American people, or you’re with the insurance companies,” health insurance stocks climbed in tandem with the bill’s odds of passing. The health sector outperformed every other sector in the S&P 500 over the last month.

And once the bill passed, health care stocks rallied. Insurance giant Aetna — whose product you are now required by law to own — hit its 52-week high the morning after. Drug maker Pfizer rose 4 percent Monday and Tuesday, increasing its market capitalization by $3.8 billion — almost a two-hundredfold return on the company’s $21.9 million lobbying effort.

In Washington, talk of who’s getting rich or taking a hit often distracts pointlessly from substantive issues. But it’s important here for two reasons.

First, there’s the unsettling but unavoidable conclusion that our president is willing to deceive us if he thinks he can get away with it. He knew the drug makers were on his side — after all, he cut a private deal with top drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin. He also knew that the media would consider any big government proposal a blow to big business.

Second, showing who benefits most makes clear that this “reform” wasn’t designed to “work for the people,” as Obama claims. It works for the deep-pocketed companies who wrote it. Come January, you will no longer be able to buy over-the-counter medicines with your health savings account money — if you want the tax deduction, you’ll need to get more costly prescription drugs. That hurts customers and taxpayers while driving up health care spending — but it profits Big Pharma.

The bill is loaded with sugar plums for the drug industry:

Taxpayers will subsidize drug makers even more. o Employers will be forced to give prescription-drug insurance to workers. o Generic versions of biologic drugs will be kept off the market for 12 years. o States will be forced to subsidize drugs through Medicaid. o Americans will still be prohibited from importing cheaper drugs from China. o Medicare will continue overpaying for drugs.

If the bill’s actual provisions paint a different picture from Obama’s rhetoric, so does the money trail.

Standing behind Obama at the bill signing Tuesday were Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the leading Senate and House recipients, respectively, of health-sector political action committee money in this election cycle. The 2008 champs of health PAC fundraising, Max Baucus and Charlie Rangel, were also on stage.

And the man with the pen in his hand had received more money from drug companies and health insurance companies than any politician in the history of the country.

We won’t know for years whether Obama was right about the effects of this law. But we already know that Obama’s story of how we got here — the people triumphing over the special interests — is a tall tale.

What I care about is the advancement of liberty, prosperity, and equal treatment.  That’s the lens I view through, it’s my paradigm.  With that said, Obamacare is certain to make health insurance companies increasingly prosperous. Proof is the fact that insurance companies have lined up to support the bill, which bought their support with a myriad of subsidies, anti-competitive measures, and a mandate that citizens must purchase near-cadillac versions of their products. By further entrenching the existing health insurance oligopoly Obamacare further limits those companies exposure to market pressures that in every other free sector of the economy (including the aspects of health care that insurance doesn’t cover) force organizations to be efficient and invite innovation, which combined with competition for consumers’ dollars, drives down consumer costs. Now, the federal government is playing the role of the marketplace, tasked with “checking” health insurance companies. A lamb to lobbyist slaughter, mark my words.

By contrast, the bill is certain to diminish the prosperity of productive citizens, who will pay an additional tax on their health insurance plans, see their health insurance costs rise, and experience an ever worsening quality of health care as an already overextended health care infrastructure adds millions of new patients.  All of this has been done in the name of universal health care, which by the way is nearly as much a misnomer as ‘health care reform.’  ’National access’ is a better term – I’ll call it “universal” when rape victims in Darfur have access to health care.  If national access to healthcare is the benchmark for western civilization – rather than ever increasing measures of individual liberty, prosperity, and equal treatment – then there are far better ways to go about providing national access to health care.  For instance, simply implementing a national version of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ (R-IN) Healthy Indiana plan, which is provides statewide access to health care relatively efficiently.

To be sure, Obamacare’s purpose isn’t to provide national access to health care – national coverage doesn’t begin for four years (taxes begin now, however).  Rather, under the guise of ‘reform’ Obamacare carries the torch of government expansion, entitlement, deficit spending, curtailment of civil, social, and economic liberty, and repeated felation of special interest groups, voting blocs, and corporate conglomerates – the modus operandi of both parties, unfortunately.

What to do? We should elect a President, preferably Gary Johnson, and a Congress, that will take a blowtorch to the labyrinth of unnecessary health care regulation that obstructs new entrants to the health insurance market, precludes innovative health care delivery systems, denies permits to construct new health care facilities, and rewards with tax incentives the buffet-like insurance plans employers purchase, while punishing individuals by taxing the less expensive plans they typically purchase when they control their health care dollars.

Here’s more real health care reform, from Cato, from 2002:

Health care is cheap: Eat less fat and more veggies, take a daily walk, quit smoking, and drink a little wine with some nuts. Fail to take care of yourself, and the long-term results can be costly — like the results of never changing the oil in your car and never replacing the tires. New diagnostic and surgical technologies involve expensive equipment and skills. Even so, insurance for gigantic medical expenses is also cheap. My policy pays nothing unless annual medical bills top $2,000. Most people call that “catastrophic” insurance. I call it real insurance.

By contrast, I have a friend who’s counting on being able to receive a lung transplant within twenty years.

Insurance for accidental damage to cars and homes is real insurance — something to protect against emergencies, not routine expenses. We do not expect an insurance company to pay for tires and gasoline, or to pay for home painting and termite inspections. When families make their own choices and pay for them, they choose insurance only for catastrophic expenses — the car becoming a total wreck, the house burnt to the ground or the breadwinner dropping dead. If we never collect a dime from such genuine insurance, we consider ourselves lucky.

With health insurance, by contrast, we all want somebody else to pay. Each of us expects to pay less for health insurance than the insurance companies pay to hospitals, doctors and pharmacies. Sadly, that does not add up.

More than a fourth of the U.S. population already has federally subsidized health care through Medicare, Medicaid and military health benefits. If that percentage ever reached 100 percent, as some politicians promise, we might finally begin to wonder how it is possible for everybody to subsidize everybody else.

If you subsidize something, people want more of it. That increase in demand translates into a market in which prices can more easily be raised.

If health insurance operated like car insurance we could implement a program similar to a food stamp program to provide national access to health care.  Of course, the food stamp system is feasible because the cost of food is relatively cheap.  Food is relatively cheap because, corn subsidies and trade protections aside, the production and especially the sale (delivery) of food is a highly competitive market. By contrast, medical care costs rise every year, except in every aspect of the health care industry that insurance doesn’t cover, such as elective surgeries, where prices drop every year as consumer demand spurs innovation and suppliers compete to provide the highest value quotient. For example, the cost of getting stitches (a simple procedure humans have been performing for centuries) rises every year, while the cost of having laser beams magically and painlessly make your eyes perfect drops every year.  The difference between stitches going up and laser eye surgery going down is their respective purchase and delivery system. For me, reform means moving closer towards the model that drives down costs, using health savings accounts, rather than insurance, to pay for every health purchase except catastrophic care, and making sure the marketplace for catastrophic health insurance is competitive.

Now, what of freedom?  Here’s twenty ways Obamacare limits civil and economic freedom:

1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)

Don’t you get insurance anyway, since it’s ‘universal’?  If so, in effect you’re insurance rate is $750.  Why would anyone pay into the insurance pool?  This bill is a trojan horse to make health care so expensive, so lousy, so inaccessible (you’ve got coverage, but you never see your doctor) that a single payer system looks delicious by comparison. And if you think that a single payer system will prevent the same companies, lobbies, and interest groups that profit from Obamacare from making out like bandits I’ve got a bridge to nowhere to sell you.

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).

See here for articles discussing why paying for other people’s health is economically, logically, and morally objectionable.

3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).

In other words, you must have health care coverage you don’t need, won’t use, and may not even understand you have.

4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).

I bet the homeopathy / chiropractor lobby likes that.

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).

If you get lucky you’re slacker kids will move to Canada in response to the country electing Gary Johnson in 2012. After all, threatening to move to Canada in response to not liking the country’s direction is number 75 on the list of SWPL.

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

Wow, that first bit there covers basically every aspect of health care except elective surgeries.  By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised that the substance abuse requirement is challenged on freedom of religion grounds.

7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a “Bronze plan,” which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A))

Bronze plans are akin to a pre-owned Cadillac.

8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

Just tell the federal government you’re too important to your community to fail.  That should result in a bailout or subsidy – too important to a ‘community’ will be the next “too big to fail.”  Mark my words.

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).

I wonder if the above provision was slipped in just to screw with Whole Foods, whose innovative and effective health care plan is championed by libertarians and decried by liberals.

11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))

I don’t know enough about the judicial constructions concerning the medical doctor-patient privilege to know Courts will reject this provision, but it will certainly be litigated at great cost to all.

12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).

13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

Numbers 13 and 14 shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone – US hasn’t authorized the building of a new petroleum refinery or nuclear power plant in a long, long time.  As a result, energy prices have risen dramatically.  So will health care prices, with such restrictions on infrastructure development.

14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)

Your best response is to fire all of your center-left and left employees, who will be certain to assist ACORN next election cycle and elect a president and Congress who will get you a bailout or subsidy of some sort.

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).
The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).

Hope 15 and 16 doesn’t result in my pal Marc, an R&D engineer at Alcon, losing his job.

17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)

The people who come up with these taxes, fees, and levies, are pretty damn imaginative.  Too bad they don’t use their brains in the private sector and create wealth, rather than devolving into professional leeches.

18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).

Meanwhile, the president of Ohio State University makes $1.2 million, annually.

19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).
That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).

20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).

Unfortunately the members of Congress are exempt from Obamacare, which is despicable.  And what of equal treatment? Discriminations discusses some disturbing special treatment provisions in Obamacare, just to ensure that Obamacare advances none of what I care most about – liberty, prosperity, and equal treatment.

In sum, Obamacare is a Victory for Obama’s Agenda of Spreading Dependency, and an epic fail for individual liberty, prosperity, and equal treatment.

Health care will not be seriously revisited for at least a generation, so the system’s costliest defect — untaxed employer-provided insurance, which entangles a high-inflation commodity, health care, with the wage system — remains. Obama could not challenge this without adopting measures — e.g., tax credits for individuals, enabling them to shop for their own insurance — that empower individuals and therefore conflict with his party’s agenda of spreading dependency.

[UPDATED 3/31/2010 @ 12:00pm]

As far as I can tell only 10 state attorney generals (from Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington) are joining Virginia’s challenge to Obamacare.  Randy Barnett, a Volokh Conspirator, lists the bases for challenging Obamacare here, which include (a) the individual mandate, (b) state-specific kickbacks, and (c) Tenth Amendment. His prognosis is fairly grim:

Ultimately, there are three ways to think about whether a law is constitutional: Does it conflict with what the Constitution says? Does it conflict with what the Supreme Court has said? Will five justices accept a particular argument? Although the first three of the potential constitutional challenges to health-care reform have a sound basis in the text of the Constitution, and no Supreme Court precedents clearly bar their success, the smart money says there won’t be five votes to thwart the popular will to enact comprehensive health insurance reform.

That’s interesting, and extremely important.  But it obfuscates a more important issue.  Only 11 out of 50 states are joining the suit.  A medical prognosis is appropriate here: America’s political spine has osteoporosis.  The best thing you can say about 11/50 is that it’s a fraction George Washington would have used.  [Ed. note: I once read, although I can't find any support on the Internet tonight, that Washington used uncommon fractions, like 7/11, 23/31, etc.]   Also, like I said before, referring to Obamacare as reform is a leading candidate for misnomer of the still infant decade, “since the bill entrenches the existing health care industries’ oligopolistic relationship with the federal government.”

While there may be much perspective to be had regarding the implications of the bill, and what is the best course of action to take to repeal it, I’m struggling to find any positive perspective about the fact that only 11 states are joining the fight.  It’s an appropriate time for inspiration from greater men than ourselves:

“The utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown. They are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.” — Samuel Adams, via.

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams, via Pila.

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” – Variously attributed, mostly to Alexis de Tocqueville.

Here’s my new favorite, also by Tocqueville:

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”

Finally, Mark Levin reminded us today that Tocqueville warned us, in the early third of the 19th century:

Tocqueville foresaw a slow death of freedom.  He feared that the power of the central government would gradually expand, meddling in every area of our lives, and he was afraid that we would welcome it, and even convince ourselves that we controlled it.

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately.  It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.  Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated…

The tyranny he foresaw for us does not have much in common with the vicious dictatorships of the last century, or with contemporary North Korea, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.  “The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling.”  The vision and even the language anticipated Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World. Tocqueville described the new tyranny as “an immense and tutelary power,” and its task is to regulate every aspect of our lives.

It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

Tocqueville thought we would not be bludgeoned into submission; we would be seduced.  He foresaw the collapse of American democracy as the end result of two parallel developments that would ultimately render us meekly subservient to an enlarged bureaucratic power: the corruption of our character, and the emergence of a vast welfare state.  His nightmare vision is brilliantly and terrifyingly prescient:

That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

UPDATE: I found some typos and lousy syntax, and fixed it accordingly.

David Bernstein at Volokh poses a rhetorical question:

But seriously, I’m really wondering, if you were among my liberal interlocutors who adopted the line that Medicare Part D was a malevolent “giveaway” to the drug companies, how are you feeling about Obamacare?

What the health care bill means to the Humble Libertarian:

In response to the passage of H.R. 4872, the “Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010,” (full text here) the Internet is abuzz with questions like “What does the health care bill mean to me?” which is a trending topic on Google, along with “new health care bill pros and cons,” “healthcare bill summary,” and “obama health care plan explained.”

Oh now you’re interested? You couldn’t have bothered to search for these questions before the bill passed, and determine your opinion in time to make a difference in its passage? Hmm? Okay. Whatever. At least you’re paying attention now.

Let’s break it down:

Asshat playing Calvinball.

The Dialectical Playa, King of Rants:

How did Obamacare pass? Quite simply it came down to this: the American people voted for the government they deserved. In the aftermath of extinguishing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the slavery of entitlements and big government, we can now comfortably focus on the important things, like who wins American Idol or why Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock. What? You’re somewhat disconcerted by Obama’s and the Democrats’ vision for America? Get used to it because to the Left, Obamacare is, as Obama himself so aptly described it last night, “what change looks like”. And you’ve still got some change-you-can-believe-in coming with “Cap-and-Trade” and “Immigration Reform”. So while all those disturbing thoughts and images may compel you to wring your hands, you would be much better off by becoming, like the Stupak Bloc, sellouts and embracing the new reality that “We’re all Socialists now.” But rest assured, however you reconcile the fact that the advent of the United Socialist States of America is as equally your fault as it is Barack Obama’s and the Democrats’ . . .

I thought “reform” was the misnomer in “health care reform,” since the bill entrenches the existing health care industries’ oligopolistic relationship with the federal government.  Apparently, I was half wrong:

The “reconciliation bill” is not a “health bill” but an anti-health bill.  It relies heavily on price controls, taxes and fines to punish doctors, hospitals and formerly innovative companies the produce prescription drugs and medical devices.  If we treated farmers, food companies and grocery stores the way Congress threatens to treat the health industries would anybody expect food to become better or cheaper?

Ludwig Von Mises weighs in on Obamacare, sort of:

In the words of Dr. Oreschenkov in conversation with Lyudmila Afanasyevna, a longtime patient and herself a physician in the cancer ward: “In general, the family doctor is the most comforting figure in our lives. But he has been cut down and foreshortened. . . . Sometimes it’s easier to find a wife than to find a doctor nowadays who is prepared to give you as much time as you need and understands you completely, all of you.”

Lyudmila Afanasyevna: “All right, but how many of these family doctors would be needed? They just can’t be fitted into our system of universal, free, public health services.”
Dr. Oreschenkov: “Universal and public—yes, they could. Free, no.”

Lyudmila Afanasyevna: “But the fact that it is free is our greatest achievement.”

Dr. Oreschenkov: “Is it such a great achievement? What do you mean by ‘free’? The doctors don’t work without pay. It’s just that the patient doesn’t pay them, they’re paid out of the public budget. The public budget comes from these same patients. Treatment isn’t free, it’s just depersonalized. If the cost of it were left with the patient, he’d turn the ten rubles over and over in his hands. But when he really needed help he’d come to the doctor five times over…

“Is it better the way it is now? You’d pay anything for careful and sympathetic attention from the doctor, but everywhere there’s a schedule, a quota the doctors have to meet; next! . . . And what do patients come for? For a certificate to be absent from work, for sick leave, for certification for invalids’ pensions: and the doctor’s job is to catch the frauds. Doctor and patient as enemies—is that medicine?”

“Depersonalized,” “doctor and patient as enemies”—those are the key phrases in the growing body of complaints about health maintenance organizations and other forms of managed care. In many managed care situations, the patient no longer regards the physician who serves him as “his” or “her” physician responsible primarily to the patient; and the physician no longer regards himself as primarily responsible to the patient. His first responsibility is to the managed care entity that hires him. He is not engaged in the kind of private medical practice that Dr. Oreschenkov valued so highly.

VDH:

Do Democrats realize that we really have crossed the Rubicon? In the future when the Republicans gain majorities (and they will), the liberal modus operandi will be the model—bare 51% majorities, reconciliation, the nuclear option, talk of deem and pass, not a single Democrat vote—all ends justifying the means in order to radically restructure vast swaths of American economic and social life. Is someone unhinged at the DNC? They just blew up any shred of bipartisan consensus when their President polls below 50%, the Democratically-controlled Congress below 20%, and health care reform less than 50%. Usually unpopular leaders and their unpopular ideas seek the shelter of minority rights and prerogatives. What will they do when they are in the minority—since they’ve entered the arena, boasted “let the games begin” and shouted “by any means necessary”?

Aloha ‘oe, small insurance companies – the big insurance company oligopoly has got you now:

“The support for the bill coming from the major insurers should be one piece of evidence that they expect it to be good for them, particularly due to the provision that requires Americans to buy health insurance. In addition, as is the case with almost all regulation, larger firms are better able to absorb the fixed cost of compliance than are smaller firms. Given that this bill authorizes the hiring of over 16,000 new IRS agents to enforce its tax code provisions, such compliance costs are sure to be high, which will have a higher relative burden for the smaller firms.” * * *

“The irony, of course, is that the very same progressives who have supported this bill will be summarily outraged by the decline of small health and dental insurers and the oligopolistic behavior of the remaining large ones. Not that they will accept it, but they have no one to blame but themselves for supporting this bill as its changes will be the cause of those problems.”

The disconnect between economics and politics:

Economics is the study of the whole system of exchange relationships. Politics is the study of the whole system of coercive or potentially coercive relationships.  In almost any particular social institution, there are elements of both types of behavior, and it is appropriate that both the economist and the political scientist study such institutions.  What I should stress is the potentiality of exchange in those socio-political institutions that we normally consider to embody primarily coercive or quasi-coercive elements.  To the extent that man has available to him alternatives of action, he meets his associates as, in some sense, an ‘equal,’ in other words, in a trading relationship.  Only in those situations where pure rent is the sole element in return is the economic relationship wholly replaced by the political.” Buchanan CW, Vol. 1, p. 40.

Government’s track record in health care when it controls all the chips: The VA’s inability failure to provide:

While the VA’s budget, payroll, and number of facilities expanded rapidly to become “by far the most extensive [medical program] in the country,” its standard of care stagnated, and complaints of inefficiency and negligence mounted. A 1949 commission “uncovered a staggering amount of waste,” a result of the highly political nature of the VA’s health care system.

The VA was raised to a Cabinet department in 1989, although Hamowy argues that there was “not one substantive argument put forward” that justified doing so. The Cabinet position offered no lasting changes to address the extensive waste and inferior care. Conditions further deteriorated as the U.S. began to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan, “substantially increasing the number of veterans needing medical care” from an already dilapidated system. Hamowy finds that “the lifetime costs of providing disability benefits and medical care to the veterans of these two wars . . . will amount to between $350 and $700 billion.”

The VA has clearly overstepped its original role as a health care provider for veterans with service-related disabilities, a raison d’être that the author believes “was extremely weak to begin with.” As new evidence of the VA’s inefficiency reaches the news daily, such as having to reconsider the Gulf War syndrome cases, Failure to Provide presents a compelling examination of the rationale behind the administration that “paved the way for instituting a national system of socialized medicine.”

Obamacare promises decreased medical costs; market betting otherwise:

One of the promises of Obamacare has been that it would reduce health care costs.  The day after the House passed the Senate’s version of health care reform, this headline says “Health Care Companies Pull Stock Market Higher.” Clearly, money is being bet on health care costs increasing, putting more money, not less, into the health care sector.

That should not be surprising.  In a free market setting, individuals decide how much they want to spend on various services, including health care.  With increasing government control, spending on health care will increasingly be a political decision, not the aggregation of individual decisions.  Health care companies already have their lobbyists, who pull for more generous reimbursements.  Consumers (the elderly on Medicare, the poor (and increasingly middle class) on Medicaid, etc.)  will exert political pressures for more benefits.  Political allocation of resources will surely increase costs.

Taxpayers won’t like the idea of higher taxes, already a part of Obamacare, so expect the bulk of the increased cost to push the budget deficit higher.  Essentially, Congress has looked around the world and decided they’d like to shape our public sector to be more like Greece. At least, by not being on the leading edge here, we can see what’s coming.

Finally, five days to Obama is three, tops.

Health care reform, a misnomer if there ever was one, seems to bring out the passion in people.  For instance, this commenter on the Reason article linked to and copied at the bottom of this post.

Of course it’s not a fundamental reform. How would entrenching the existing interests onto the government payroll constitute a fundamental reform. It’s the ultimate bulwark against reform, an unbreachable wall against reform ever threatening the powers that be again.

Here’s Zombie’s take on why many Americans principally oppose ‘universal’ health care.  Some excerpts below (bolded emphasis is Zombies’):

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences

What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper and insert myself into the moral decisions of his life. I’d rather grant each person maximum freedom. I’d prefer to let people make whatever choices they want, however stupid or dangerous I may deem those choices to be. Just so long as you take responsibility for your actions, and you reap the consequences and pay for them yourself — hey, be as foolish or hedonistic or selfish or thoughtless as you like. Not my business.

But if the bill for your foolishness shows up in the form of higher taxes on me, then I unwillingly start to care what you do. And, trust me on this, you don’t want me turning my heartless judgmental eye on your foolish lifestyle. Because I’d have no qualms criticizing half the stuff you do.

Do you want that? No. Do I want that? No. And that’s the point. Instituting a single-payer universal health-care system, or even a watered-down version as the government is now proposing, compels me to become a meddlesome busybody in your personal choices. And it will compel you to become a meddlesome busybody in everyone else’s personal choices. It forever douses the beautiful flame of individualism — freedom to act without interference, just so long as you are ready to accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Unfortunately, individualism has been under assault for a long time.

Since it’s nearly impossible to sort out who is personally responsible for which ailments, the only logical solution is to let each person pay for their own care, because that way there’s nothing left to argue about. But if we share costs, we share blame, and that’s the origin of resentment and anger that the average American feels about socialized medicine.

Now, the Dialectical Playa’s latest rant.  The last time he ranted it was about David Brooks,  the neo-conservative member of Obama’s “Praetorian Guard” – he was referring, of course, to the Old Gray Mare (New York Times).

The Republic has fallen. Americans voted for Hopeandchange ™ without ever comprehending what Obama was hoping to change them into. Thus we stand before a litany of present failures and future disasters beginning with Cap-and-Trade, Obamacare, a feckless foreign policy abroad, a deliberately Kafkaesque economy at home, political corruption, incompetence, moral and ethical indifference, the circumvention of reason, the defenestration of ethics, a contempt of probity, and a servile willingness by some politicians to become reprobates in the service of an administration dedicated to cleaving “We the People” from the Constitution and the Constitution from the people.

A man who has never held a job working for others or owned a company with people working for him is now insensibly the most powerful man on earth in a job that requires him to work for over 300,000,000 citizens while managing and directing a government of almost 12,000,000 employees. How did it come to this?

When’s the last time you heard an Obama rant that doesn’t mention the 2010 budget deficit or national debt?  By the way, did you know that the national debt increases $4.05 BILLION per day?

Here’s another gem of a rant, this time by Sean Malone, at Logicology.

I can’t tell if it’s funny, or just down right depressing.  It’s definitely true, but I really can’t make up my mind as to whether or not it’s worth laughing at, worth crying about or worth breaking out the tar and the feathers.

Also from this comments thread was a link to Rep. Paul Ryan talking about his plan for Medicaid.

There are three things about this video that strike me on first viewing, especially not really knowing too much about Paul Ryan to begin with…

1. He’s created what seems to be a good idea addressing a very serious problem in an intelligent way, and he’s extremely well prepared in defending said idea.
2. House Rules Committee Chairman, Louis Slaughter is either willfully ignorant, unimaginably stupid, downright evil, or some combination of the three.  Note that she was also the one who suggested that instead of actually voting on the health care bill, the house just “deems” it to be good to go…  Cause, you know, something that’s already hated by a majority of the American people shouldn’t even really be subject to a full vote anyway…  Ugh.  And…
3. Take careful stock of the other people in the room besides Paul Ryan.  That, my unaware American friends, is what socialists sound like.

I know the word socialism gets thrown around a lot as a perjorative.  But the fact of the matter is that it is actually a defined political philosophy, although there is some debate on the specifics.  The point of it, however, is that resources are centrally controlled and distributed based not on voluntary, private exchange (as no one gets to own any private property in such a system), but on centralized, government mandates.

Here we have Paul Ryan suggesting that instead of operating in a situation where people get taxed heavily and then the government decides what benefits they shall receive, we should provide people with the freedom to choose what they want for themselves – not only cutting out the middleman and depoliticizing health care decisions for the elderly, but also reconnecting price signals between producers & consumers in the medical sector.  In essence, Paul Ryan is proposing a version of Medicaid that looks more like the Food Stamp program, which (shock!) actually works fairly well precisely because it keeps price signals intact and lets individuals make their own choices based on their own tastes & needs.

What none of the other idiots in the room seem to grasp is that if individuals were actually in charge of paying for their own care directly (even with government assistance in the form of vouchers) then there would actually be competition among producers – in this case insurance companies, drug manufacturers and doctors/hospitals – for consumers’ business. JUST doing that – even if we made absolutely no other changes at all – would result in a world where health care prices actually go down!

Yet all anyone behind Rep. Ryan can say is that his plan won’t keep up with “health care inflation” – which is something that’s 100% caused by government involvement (as it is in every other area they dominate, such as education and housing) and under his plan, the way he described it, would probably be much less of an issue… There’s that Parmenides’ Fallacy again slapping me in the face with its stupidity.  I wish it were slapping our congressmen & women in the face instead, but alas, their stupidity seems always to go unpunished.

Sadly though, every other person in the room with Ryan obviously cannot even imagine a world in which the power-brokers don’t get a say in other people’s health care decisions.  And that, my dear friends, is why they have earned the label “socialist”.

It’s positively disgusting to me… I hope it is to you.

I cannot stress enough that the essence of socialism – in all it’s various forms from the U.S.S.R., to Nazi Germany, to fascist Italy, France & Spain, to right here in the good old U.S. of A. – is central control.  A few hard core Marxists hold out on the idea that for someone to “be” a socialist, they have to advocate the total abolition of private property, but why do that when the fascist strain clearly proved that you can control the resources of the world and still pretend to leave ownership in the hands of individuals?

There is no need to nationalize everything when you can write laws which force individuals to do exactly what you want them to do anyway.

And that’s what it’s all about… Freedom vs. Control.  There is, as Ludwig von Mises said, no third way.

Paul Ryan here is coming down on the side of liberty, and for that he gets my thanks… However… All the other socialist asshats in the room can kindly die in a fire.  Surely that would be preferable to a world where each of these fools gets to wrap their grubby little fingers around the neck of the American economy and continue to throttle it to death with their idiocy.

You don’t get to hear asshat very often. Malone’s got some great commentary here too on the Parmenides’ Fallacy in Health Care.

Finally, Nick Gillespie.  By the way, epic ranting in the comments after the Gillespie article.

If you’re left puzzling over how to carry the $940 billion in spending and subtract the $138 billion in deficit reduction as health care reform is being debated, check out Tobin Harshaw’s excellent round-up of dueling scratchpads over at the New York Times’ Opinionator blog. The conclusion, after running through a pretty thorough summary of arguments claiming the bill does cut the deficit over its first decade and that it does not (Reason’s own Peter Suderman has a star turn in that section!): “Only time will tell.”

Those last four words are the saddest in an opinion editor’s vocabulary — always true and never helpful in the slightest. The additional problem here, of course, is that members of Congress have only the rest of the weekend to guess what time will reveal.

More here.

It seems to me that if that’s the best you can come up with after running through the numbers, that’s enough on its face to say no to this bill, given all the other stuff it does, from mandating insurance coverage, to expanding all sorts of control over how coverage is delivered. Given the history of other interventions into the medical industry, it’s implausible that this won’t end up costing massive amounts more than whatever figures are being bandied about.

But apart from that, this doesn’t even represent a fundamental reform, one that would radically open up the health care industry to the sorts of personalized service and market competition that have actually driven costs down and services up in every other aspect of the economy that is not subject to huge amounts of cheap government money and subsidies (read: house prices and education, which along with health care tell you everything you need to know about what happens when the government gets overly involved in a given sector).

It’s also worth noting that a hunk a hunk a burning change is not included in this bill but is surely coming down the road. That’s the so-called “doc fix,” which routinely staves off cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians in the name of propping up one of the great boondoggles of the past 45 years. As Reason alum Ed Carson writes in Investors Business Daily:

The Sustainable Growth Rate imposes automatic cuts in Medicare payment rates to doctors.

For several years, fearing a revolt by doctors — and seniors — Congress has suspended those cuts. The original draft of the House health care bill included a permanent “doc fix.” But that ballooned deficits, so Democrats dropped it, even though everyone knows Congress isn’t going to slash doctors’ rates. The CBO has estimated a “doc fix” would cost $247 billion over 10 years.

Supposed cuts in Medicare spending help to squeak this bill under the fake door titled “cuts deficit by a teeny amount over its first 10 years,” as does the inclusion of a student loan provision (yes) in the reconciliation version that cuts subsidies to private lenders for student loans. Don’t hold your breath on any of this actually happening. The feds, you see, are looking to cut out the middleman when it comes to brokering student loans; they promise $19.4 billion in savings from this, which as Carson writes, “for virtually all of the $19.8 billion in deficit reduction from the [House's] health care reconciliation bill.”

Regarding the “doc fix,” look for it to come into play soon enough if/when the health care reform passes. Here’s Speaker Pelosi talking on the record on Friday, on why the fix wasn’t in the bill that’s getting voted on today. Especially since a permanent fix was part of earlier versions of the House bill:

Well, we have been including it in legislation for a long time, because it’s not about a doctor fix, it’s about our seniors or anyone who relies upon Medicare to have access to physicians, that they be in their region and in their program.

So this is again, you call it the doctor fix, but it is really about access to health care for Americans. It’s not in this bill, but we will have it soon. And we have made a commitment to do this. This is very important.

That’s from the liberal site TPM, which notes “Leadership aides would never say that a doc fix definitely won’t happen.” Which is, of course, another way of saying they will. And when they do, say goodbye to even the fiction of deficit cuts via a $940 billion (and counting) health care reform bill. But as any number of really bad gamblers could tell you (but probably wouldn’t): You gotta spend money to lose money.

Here’s some gems from the comments:

tkwelge:

Even if they believe that they are doing good, they shouldn’t try to cram this bill down the throat of the hundreds of millions of people who are against it. Socialism can only work when large percentages of the population agree on the specifics, which is why a government encompassing 300 million people has a much harder time passing such “reforms” than smaller, more homogenous countries. How can you possibly please all interests, without picking favorites, and please all 300 million individuals concerned in a way that people can even come to a majority consensus? You can’t!

Why couldn’t we have experimented with a basket of reform options on the state level first? Could we have given deregulation a shot? What the hell!

What, you mean federalism? It’ll never catch on.  LET THE RECORD REFLECT THAT I AM BEING SARCASTIC.