Friday, May 28, 2010

The Private Sector Already Provides Health-Care 'Exchanges' -- By: Deroy Murdock

The Private Sector Already Provides Health-Care 'Exchanges' -- By: Deroy Murdock: "

Pres. Barack Obama is twelve years late and $7 billion over budget when it comes to health-care “exchanges.” This keystone of Obamacare already exists in the private sector. There is no need for taxpayers to recreate something that is thriving in today’s free market.

Nonetheless, come 2014, Obamacare requires the creation of 50 American Health Benefit Exchanges, one per state. “The Exchanges will be government entities, with a role in setting minimum benefit standards,” Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster explained in an April 22 memo. Some 15.9 million Americans are projected to use the Exchanges to select federally approved individual medical coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2019, these exchanges will have cost taxpayers $2 billion to establish, plus $5 billion in “Other Related Spending.”

This is a massive waste of time and money. Private enterprise already offers this service at no taxpayer cost.

The simple Internet address eHealth.com, for instance, will link any American to an incredibly useful website. This private company claims that its customers actually have secured coverage in just eleven minutes.

This website asks just five questions: zip code, gender, birth date, and whether one uses tobacco or is in college. If applicable, one may add the same information about a spouse and up to five children.

eHealth.com searches its database of 10,000 plans among 180 health insurers and lists those that operate within a designated zip code. These can be ranked by price, popularity, deductible, ratings, or just alphabetically.

Better yet, one can apply for coverage online or ask insurance-company representatives to call for further discussion.

What about people without Internet access? eHealth.com has about 50 licensed insurance agents to answer questions telephonically, 24/7, toll free. This company has insured 2 million people since 1998.

Another advantage of eHealth.com is that it is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange (symbol: EHTH). As such, its finances and operations are scrutinized by individual investors, institutional analysts, and journalists. In contrast, government agencies too often are black holes. Got a question? File a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

Unlike the exchanges, which would be state-level monopolies, eHealth.com also must contend with rivals, such as InsureMe.com and NetQuote.com. Competition pushes these companies to improve services and prices.

I used eHealth.com in 2007 to compare Atlantis, Oxford, and several other carriers. A few hours after submitting my contact information via eHealth.com, one company’s representative phoned to discuss my options. We soon met at a local bar. Over microbrews, we reviewed several plans, chose one, and agreed that optional prescription-drug coverage made sense. I signed the papers and -- voila! -- purchased brand-new health insurance that has served me nicely.

Throughout this process, eHealth.com cost me nothing. My satisfying experience predated the exchanges, Obamacare, and even the Obama presidency.

eHealth.com and similar websites may need to expand in order to accommodate the additional demand from those whom Obamacare would cover. New competitors likely would arrive to serve this audience. The best way to do this -- which Congress refused to recognize -- is to give uninsured, needy people “health stamps” that they would redeem for, say, $2,500 worth of insurance that suits their needs and circumstances.

So, what does Obama bring to this party? Nothing -- other than a massive budget, suffocating new rules, and a brand-new cadre of government workers who will be paid salaries, benefits, and long-term pension costs from the already-fatigued U.S. Treasury.

One wonders how this country survives without Washington running an American Travel Exchange. Somehow, we get by with Priceline.com, Expedia.com, and kayak.com. Until Uncle Sam launches an American Book and Music Exchange, Americans must endure Amazon.com. So, hang on until help federal arrives.

Rather than encourage, and sometimes help, the uninsured buy coverage via eHealth.com and its competitors, Obamacare mandates 50 copies of this fully functioning private infrastructure, staffs them with government employees, slathers them with stultifying new regulations, and finances them with other people’s confiscated money.

-- Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.




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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Most Depressing Graduation Speech Ever

Instead of providing encouragement for the graduates of the University of Tennessee, Al Gore takes the opportunity to promote his doomsday global warming scenarios. Take action and stop the global warming power grab at RegulationReality.com

Newt Gingrich forecasts Obama loss - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com

Newt Gingrich forecasts Obama loss - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com

Friday, May 14, 2010

Chris Christie - Wow!

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

''Islam or Islamism?'': Robert Spencer at the Vienna Forum, May 8, 2010

Disgrace of the Day: Industry Join Cap-and-Tax Presser

Disgrace of the Day: Industry Join Cap-and-Tax Presser:

This week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.

The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens and which all involved appear convinced will persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.

At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except I’ve seen a copy of the bill. Yes it is cap-and-trade. And worse.

For this latest effort to hide an enormous tax and wealth transfer — a unilateral move that guarantees jobs will be shipped to China, India, Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere — – these lawmakers will be surrounded by numerous representatives of Big Green. That includes not just the wealthy pressure group industry but many among “Big Business”, numerous of whom are the benefactors enabling those pressure group chiefs’ huge salaries and vast PR budgets to scare you into accepting an agenda that uses the state to, oddly enough, enrich these same companies. Huh.

Sen. Lieberman has repeatedly teased the breadth of the organized scrum as proof that the scheme is now a good idea. Absent from his cheerleading is the fact that you are not represented at the table when your wealth and future prospects were being divvied up.

The reason for so many businesses leaping onto the stage today is also the dog that surely will not bark when the media report on industry’s touting of an enormous energy tax and wealth transfer from individuals: why do they support this?

The answer is because they have been promised a slice of the spoils taken from the average taxpayer and ratepayer. I detail who these companies are and how they hope to cash in on this scheme in my new book “Power Grab“. For example, consider Exelon. This Chicago-based utility, which today is expected to be represented both individually by its CEO and by its trade association the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), expects more than one billion dollars in increased profits for no additional capital investment if the scheme announced today passes. Their only cost would have been the lobbyists.

That’s just one company. But the windfall, arranged by politicians, comes from average American families. The company even admits the whole sordid mess in a Forbes article from earlier this year:

“Exelon needs that legislation to happen sooner rather than later. Without a carbon price of some sort, Exelon’s fortunes aren’t so bright…. ‘The conundrums are real,’ [Exelon CEO John] Rowe acknowledges. ‘There’s nothing that’s going to drive Exelon’s profit in the next couple of years wildly. It just isn’t going to happen.’

Except, of course, carbon legislation. And because of that, the company views spending on lobbying for legislation almost like a capital expense….

Exelon has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for President and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon. Emanuel was hired by Rowe to help broker the $8.2 billion deal between Unicom and Peco when Emanuel was at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort). In his two-year career there Emanuel earned $16.2 million, according to congressional disclosures. His biggest deal was the Exelon merger.”

The article details how Exelon wrote the provisions allocating the energy use “allowances”, or ration coupons. Others, including (according to Sen. Kerry) BP, wrote the provisions applying to oil companies, to ensure costs are passed straight through to you.

I lay the particularly odious example of Exelon — and those of others on the dais, ranging from Duke Energy to GE to “Chicago Climate Exchange” members — bare in “Power Grab“. Before your elected representatives impose this on you later this year, as soon as by the July 4 congressional recess, educate yourself on the rhetoric and ruses employed to part you from your money and, if history is any guide, threaten your family’s lives and indeed your livelihood altogether.

CNSNews.com - Why Obama Wanted Times Square Bomber to be a Lone Nut

CNSNews.com - Why Obama Wanted Times Square Bomber to be a Lone Nut

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“Ocean Acidification” is New Climate Scare, Says SPPI

Ocean acidification is the new climate scare and is being used as part of the “Climate Change” drive to force emissions legislation.

L.A. Teacher Calls for Mexican Revolt in the U.S.

Of course. All these "progressive" and social justice organizations aren't about minority rights or helping the down-trodden and marginalized ... it's all about the Marxist Revolution. "We have nine .. governments in Latin America right now..."

Cap-and-Trade Is Back

It's on again, it's off again. The Marxists in Congress and the White House are relentless. Like the so-call health care "debate," they will pretend they don't have the votes, or that it's off the table, but I'm sure that on some holiday weekend at two in the morning, the radical leftist Democratic Socialist party will sneak this bill through, regardless of widespread public disapproval.

Cap-and-Trade Is Back

MILLOY: Tree ring circus - Washington Times

MILLOY: Tree ring circus - Washington Times

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

The Architect of the "Green" Economy, in his own words

from Tundra Tabloids.......
KEY OBAMA ALLY JOEL ROGERS EXPLAINS WHY HE HATES CAPITALISM.......
"Obama is in fact a socialist. He surrounds himself with socialists, takes advice from these socialists and has every intention of wounding American big business for the sake of the socialist ideology. America, wake the hell up and vote the Dems out of office in huge numbers this November, and then retake both houses and the presidency come 2012." KGS