Monday, September 13, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, September 13, 2010


Well "Hello, Dolly!"
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2 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597204575483900330728436.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

President Obama said at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending, "As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs - we knew that."

* N*O*W HE KNOWS THIS...?!?! NOW...?!?!

That wasn't how he sold the plan, but, anyway, that's a truism. Here's another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when its own policies cause them.

Witness Kathleen Sebelius's Thursday letter to America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group—a thuggish message even by her standards. The Health and Human Services secretary wrote that some insurers have been attributing part of their 2011 premium increases to ObamaCare and warned that "there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They're more subtle than this in Caracas.

What Ms. Sebelius really means is that the government will prohibit insurers from doing business if reality is not politically convenient for Democrats.

ObamaCare includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing "children" to remain on their parents' plans until age 26 and "free" preventative care (i.e., no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers). The tone of Ms. Sebelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise.

ObamaCare gives Ms. Sebelius's regulators the power to define "unreasonable" premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurers "with a record of unjustified rate increases" and then to bar them from ObamaCare's subsidized "exchanges" when they come on line in 2014. (In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.)

This is nasty stuff and an obvious attempt to shift political blame for rising insurance costs before the election. It's also an early sign of life under ObamaCare, when all health-care decisions are political and the bureaucrats decide who can charge how much for a service or product.

Democrats built this system and they now own it politically. The least they could do is take credit for its consequences.

September 13, 2010 at 11:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704621204575487721439384494.html?mod=WSJ_hps_editorsPicks_2

President Hamid Karzai's administration is seeking to limit the role of U.S. and European officials who "mentor" Afghan anti-corruption prosecutors, in moves that Western officials see as the latest attempt to undercut efforts to stamp out the graft that pervades the Afghan government.

(*SIGH*)

The U.S. and its allies have in the past 18 months built an array of Afghan units to investigate and prosecute graft, providing everything from sophisticated wiretap technology to training in forensic accounting. Armed with those abilities and help from foreign mentors, the Afghan investigators have uncovered graft on a scale that has surprised even the most cynical Western officials, said people with knowledge of the efforts. That has created a new predicament: To pursue it all would mean "going after almost every senior member of the government," said another U.S. official.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* YEP. THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ARE DYING FOR...

A senior European diplomat described the review of the mentors for the prosecutors as the latest attempt to "neuter" anti-corruption efforts. "The people we've been aiding" - the investigators and prosecutors - "they've been getting too close," the European diplomat said.

He referred to the July arrest of one of Mr. Karzai's aides, who was allegedly negotiating bribes to squelch a pair of major corruption probes. The aide was quickly released and remains free, his case in limbo, said U.S. and Afghan officials. Immediately after the arrest, Mr. Karzai moved to exert more control over the two U.S.-backed outfits that detained the aide, the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit.

* I HEREBY NOMINATE HAMID KARZAI TO HONORARY MEMBERSHIP IN THE CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS! (DO I HEAR A SECOND?!)

September 13, 2010 at 11:27 AM

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