Reflections From a Murky Pond

President Obama’s attempts to quasi-nationalize America’s health insurance industry is based upon providing people with a “Public Option” that will directly compete with America’s current private, semi-free market health insurance providers – whether those providers are the evil insurance giants or individual Americans’ employers.

But why is this the focus of his plan?

What possible valid reason or necessity could there be for the creation of a fully government ran health insurance agency? What does Obama and his Liberals gain by pushing this Public Option? What would America gain by having it?

A Few Facts About The Public Option

1. President Obama’s Public Offering would only be available via the Health Insurance Exchange that President Obama wants to create.
2. President Obama’s Public Offering would have to abide by exactly the same restrictions as any private health insurance plan that was offered on the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.
3. President Obama’s Public Offering would have three tiers of coverage:  Basic, Enhanced, and Premium; it may or may not have a fourth level of coverage designated as Premium-Plus.
4. President Obama’s Public Offering may or may not be directly administered by the government. Provisions are in place to allow them to contract a 3rd-party administrator such as USHealth, Aetna, or WellPoint to administer all or part of the Public Offering.
5. President Obama’s Public Offering utilizes the same “cost sharing” and federal subsidies as any private health insurance plan that was offered on the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

The Public Option put forth by President Obama and his Liberals would be identical in every way, shape, and form except for one critical point – the Public Offering doesn’t have to generate a profit.

Indeed, much like a number of other government programs over the decades, ObamaCare’s Public Option could actually run at a net loss but hide that fact by using support from other government agencies with their own budgets. This sort of budget gimmickry is currently done by Medicare and Medicaid to disguise their true costs and insolvency. Fully 50% of the administrative overhead of Medicare and and Medicaid is provided by other state and federal agencies and therefor not reported as expenditures by Medicare or Medicaid.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide for the offering of an Exchange-participating health benefits plan (in this division referred to as the “public health insurance option”) that ensures choice, competition, and stability of affordable, high quality coverage throughout the United States.

I find it hard to believe that President Obama and his Liberals’ Public Health Insurance Option is meant to provide “choice” or “competition.” There not much in the way of competition when one player doesn’t have to realize any profits and can hide losses, whereas the other players cannot do so, and that will inevitably lead to a commensurate loss of choice when the other players pull out of the game.

I can understand, given the facts above, what President Obama and his Liberals gain by implementing a Public Option; they maintain the support of their Left-Wing base and they gain greater power over we, the People. Can someone tell me what Americans gain though?

Herein is the actual text of the section of HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (AAHCA) that would create a government ran Public Health Insurance Option.

SEC. 221. ESTABLISHMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF A PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION AS AN EXCHANGE-QUALIFIED HEALTH BENEFITS PLAN.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT. — For years beginning with Y1, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (in this sub-title referred to as the “Secretary”) shall provide for the offering of an Exchange-participating health benefits plan (in this division referred to as the “public health insurance option”) that ensures choice, competition, and stability of affordable, high quality coverage throughout the United States in accordance with this subtitle. In designing the option, the Secretary’s primary responsibility is to create a low-cost plan without compromising quality or access to care.

(b) OFFERING AS AN EXCHANGE-PARTICIPATING HEALTH BENEFITS PLAN. —

(1) EXCLUSIVE TO THE EXCHANGE. — The public health insurance option shall only be made available through the Health Insurance Exchange.

(2) ENSURING A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. — Consistent with this subtitle, the public health insurance option shall comply with requirements that are applicable under this title to an Exchange-participating health benefits plan, including requirements related to benefits, benefit levels, provider networks, notices, consumer protections, and cost sharing.

(3) PROVISION OF BENEFIT LEVELS. — The public health insurance option—

(A) shall offer basic, enhanced, and premium plans; and

(B) may offer premium-plus plans.

(c) ADMINISTRATIVE CONTRACTING. — The Secretary may enter into contracts for the purpose of performing administrative functions (including functions described in subsection (a)(4) of section 1874A of the Social Security Act) with respect to the public health insurance option in the same manner as the Secretary may enter into contracts under subsection (a)(1) of such section. The Secretary has the same authority with respect to the public health insurance option as the Secretary has under subsections (a)(1) and (b) of section 1874A of the Social Security Act with respect to title XVIII of such Act. Contracts under this subsection shall not involve the transfer of insurance risk to such entity.

(d) OMBUDSMAN. — The Secretary shall establish an office of the ombudsman for the public health insurance option which shall have duties with respect to the public health insurance option similar to the duties of the Medicare Beneficiary Ombudsman under section 1808(c)(2) of the Social Security Act.

(e) DATA COLLECTION. — The Secretary shall collect such data as may be required to establish premiums and payment rates for the public health insurance option and for other purposes under this subtitle, including to improve quality and to reduce racial, ethnic, and other disparities in health and health care.

(f) TREATMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION. — With respect to the public health insurance option, the Secretary shall be treated as a QHBP offering entity offering an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.

(g) ACCESS TO FEDERAL COURTS. — The provisions of Medicare (and related provisions of title II of the Social  Security Act) relating to access of Medicare beneficiaries to Federal courts for the enforcement of rights under Medicare, including with respect to amounts in controversy, shall apply to the public health insurance option and individuals enrolled under such option under this title in the same manner as such provisions apply to Medicare and Medicare beneficiaries.

I think this is a useful bit of information to have when arguing for or against the specifics of this piece of the legislation colloquially known as ObamaCare.

With support – what there ever was of it – for ObamaCare crumbling in the face of American opposition to the Liberals’ goal, President Obama has chosen to take a more direct approach to “reforming” health insurance coverage in America.

I shall heal the masses – with your undeserved money

Of course I’m just kidding, engaging in a bit of political satire as it were. President Obama is not planning on taking up highway robbery like the dashing highway of popular 18th and 19th century legend. Those highwaymen were honest criminals, upfront and clear in their larceny. That’s not President Obama’s way at all…

The Liberals, led by the biased MSM took one look at the posters of President Obama as the Joker ala Keith Ledger and raised hew and cry over how it was racist imagery. It was vicious Republican propaganda. It was “White Face.” It was direct link between President Obama and the violence of the ghettos. It was horrible and racist, a cruel assault by Angry White Men upon the Liberals’ adored and idolized First Black President.

Obama as The Joker by Firas Alkhateeb

The joke is on them. The image of President Obama as the Joker was created by Firas Alkhateeb, a twenty-year-old Palestinian-American history major at the University of Illinois. Admittedly, Mr. Alkhateeb probably isn’t much of fan of President Obama; he’s a supporter of Rep. Dennis Kucinich!

Alkhateeb does not seem to be an extremist of any stripe, Right, Left, or Muslim. He seems to be a college student from Chicago who had a bit too much time to kill one day.

Somehow I don’t think this will stop the Liberals from labeling him as Right-Wing extremists or disgruntled Muslim though – because dissent is racist in their minds.

From the LA Times:

Bored during his winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe’s Photoshop software.

Alkhateeb had been tinkering with the program to improve the looks of photos he had taken on his clunky Kodak camera. The Joker project was his grandest undertaking yet. Using a tutorial he’d found online about how to “Jokerize” portraits, he downloaded the October 23 Time Magazine cover of Obama and began digitally painting over it.

Four or five hours later, he happily had his product.

On Jan. 18, Alkhateeb uploaded the image to photo-sharing site Flickr (shown at right). Over the next two months, he amassed just a couple thousand hits, he said.

Then the counter exploded after a still-anonymous rogue famously found his image, digitally removed the references to Time Magazine, captioned the picture with the word “socialism” and hung printed copies around L.A., making headlines.

So the joke – and the Joker – is certainly on the race-baiting Liberals this time. The Obama Joker poster been a veritable Rorschach Test for MSM’s yellow journalism and the Liberals’ projection onto the mystery artist of their own unreasonable and deep-seated prejudices and racial biases.

It is important that Americans remember our brave history because that history, whether we remember it or not, can, does, and will repeat itself. Whether that is to our doom will be determined by whether or not we remember the lessons we learned – and forcibly taught upon occasion – in the past.

Here is a timely reminder:

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army.

— Gen. George Washington
Orders to his officers, July 2, 1776

The subornation of TARP – which was a piss-poor idea to begin with – to embed the Federal government in America’s Financial Institutions, the coercive purchase of much of the American Auto Industry, the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454), America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, (HR 3200) – the list goes on and on and everything in it has one commonality: they will greatly harm and possibly destroy the American national economy.

President Obama and his Liberals in Congress know how destructive their plans are. That is why each of these abominable pieces of legislation include subsidies to be paid out to offset the immediate damage that will be done if these bills pass into law.

Are Americans still Freemen if enterprise is forbidden and/or punished, and each and all must queue up for whatever “largess” the Government chooses to dole out?