Obama wants a government-run health insurer

President Obama is apparently not done lying about his health plan. Having pushed Obamacare with false claims such as the infamous lie “if you like your plan, you can keep it” the President is now calling for the return of the public option without admitting the real goal of the program from the start was to crowd out private insurance and usher in single-payer.

In a piece published by the Journal for the American Medical Association (JAMA) Obama writes:

"…the majority of the country has benefited from competition in the Marketplaces, with 88% of enrollees living in counties with at least 3 issuers in 2016, which helps keep costs in these areas low. However, the remaining 12% of enrollees live in areas with only 1 or 2 issuers. Some parts of the country have struggled with limited insurance market competition for many years, which is one reason that, in the original debate over health reform, Congress considered and I supported including a Medicare-like public plan. Public programs like Medicare often deliver care more cost-effectively by curtailing administrative overhead and securing better prices from providers. The public plan did not make it into the final legislation. Now, based on experience with the ACA, I think Congress should revisit a public plan to compete alongside private insurers in areas of the country where competition is limited. Adding a public plan in such areas would strengthen the Marketplace approach, giving consumers more affordable options while also creating savings for the federal government"

The public option is being framed in terms of choice and competition. In reality, it was always intended to be a glide-path to the single-payer system the president and many Democrats really wanted. This isn’t a supposition. The person who created the public option, Jacob Hacker, admitted he would be happy to see it crowd out private insurers over time:

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber put it even more bluntly, equating the public option with single-payer:

This was fully understood to be the purpose of the public option back in 2009-2010, at least among Democratic insiders. Here’s a spokesman for Health Care for America Now, the lobbying group assembled to help pass the ACA, framing the public option and an achievable path to single-payer in May 2009:



The reason the public option didn’t make it into the bill, ultimately, is because democrats got careless about expressing their real goals in public:



I’m rehashing all of this now because you’ll notice none of it was mentioned by President Obama in his argument for giving the public option a 2nd look. He’s claiming this is about choice and competition when he knows this has always been about shifting America toward single-payer.

Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton also embraced the public option. Don’t expect her to be any more forthcoming about its real goals.

Democrats shouldn’t have to cheat to win. If they want single-payer, let them stand up for it openly the way Bernie Sanders does. If they want a path to single-payer, they should admit it and let the public judge it openly. But that hasn’t been the pattern with this president. He’d still prefer to sell this using marketing slogans.

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Another Coffin-Top Lecture

It started off well enough. Barack Obama’s speech at the memorial for the five slain Dallas police officers began with appropriate solemnity and sorrow, complete with Scripture references and gratitude for the work law enforcement officers do all over the country. He told personal stories about each of the five officers.

But then, as he always does, he got to himself (45 first-person mentions) and his political agenda. After proclaiming “we are not as divided as we seem,” he proceeded to divide everyone by their tribal grievances. He again accused police departments of racism. And he ticked off a few of his agenda items:

“As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools.” Actually, we spend more on education per capita than any other nation. But spending does not automatically equal success.

“We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment.” Those are the cities run for decades by leftist policies that we call Democrat urban poverty plantations.

“We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.” What foolish nonsense. But at the same time, Obama said nothing about the thousands of people shot this year — mostly blacks by other blacks — on the aforementioned poverty planation in Chicago.

In any case, this was an inappropriate venue for a stump speech. As Charles C.W. Cooke observed, “This, remember, was a funeral — a funeral for one of the police officers who was murdered last Thursday. It wasn’t a rally. It wasn’t a White House press conference. It wasn’t a public statement, hastily arranged on the airport tarmac. It was a funeral.” Unfortunately, Obama has a repugnant habit of standing on coffins to give his moralizing lectures.

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Congressional Black Corruption

Michelle Malkin

If Black Lives Matter, then why have entrenched members of the Congressional Black Caucus spent more time enriching themselves than taking care of their neglected constituents?

Too many social justice protesters are busy throwing shade, rocks, bottles, concrete blocks and vicious death threats at police officers of all colors trying to keep the peace.

Instead of moaning about “#WhitePrivilege,” I invite radical racial identity warriors to join me in taking on the black political elites selling out their people. Help expose the most crooked members of the caucus of Congressional Black Corruption:

Corrine Brown: This 12-term Democrat from Florida received a 24-count federal indictment last week while her Congressional Black Caucus colleagues tried to drown out the news with diversionary gun-control theatrics. Brown and her chief of staff are charged with creating a fraudulent education charity to collect over $800,000 in donations from major corporations and philanthropies for their own private slush fund between 2012 and early 2016.

The director of the hoax group, dubbed One Door for Education, Inc., pleaded guilty last year to fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors say two relatives of Brown and her chief of staff steered tens of thousands of dollars in cash deposits to their accounts. The charitable contributions paid for lavish galas, NFL tickets, concert luxury box seats, golf tournaments and apparently Brown’s tax bills.

Despite raising nearly a million bucks, Brown’s “charity” only issued two measly educational scholarships for minority students. So while shamelessly claiming this week to be a martyr akin to the murdered Dallas police officers and victims of the Orlando jihad, Brown is embroiled in a sordid scandal that exploited black children’s lives to line her own pockets.

You can’t blame righty or whitey this time, Crooked Corrine.

Chaka Fattah: This 11-term Pennsylvania Democrat was convicted in late June on 23 charges of racketeering, money laundering and fraud, along with four other co-defendants. His son was sentenced earlier this year to a five-year prison term after being found guilty of 22 counts of separate federal bank and tax fraud charges related to his misuse of business loans and federal education contracts to pay for designer clothes, massive bar tabs and luxury cars.

Fattah the Elder’s crimes are tied to schemes to repay an illegal $1 million campaign loan. Like his rotten apple of a son, Fattah siphoned off federal grant money and nonprofit funds (including donations to his educational foundation — sound familiar?) to pay off political consultants.

The con artists inside your own communities are your own worst enemies.

Eddie Bernice Johnson: 12-term Democrat from Dallas, similarly helped steer thousands of dollars in Congressional Black Caucus Foundation college scholarships for four family members and two of her top aide’s children in violation of the nonprofit’s rules.

Maxine Waters: This 13-term Beltway swamp queen from California and past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus walked away with a slap on the wrist from the toothless House Ethics Committee in 2012 after being charged with multiple ethics violations related to her meddling in minority-owned OneUnited Bank.

The banks' executives donated $12,500 to Mad Maxine’s congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. As stockholders, they profited handsomely from their relationship with the bank.

And vice versa. After Waters' office personally intervened and lobbied the Treasury Department in 2008, the financial institution received $12 million in federal TARP bailout money — despite another government agency concluding that the bank operated “without effective underwriting standards” and engaged “in speculative investment practices.” Top bank executive Kevin Cohee squandered money on a company-financed Porsche and a Santa Monica, California, beachfront mansion. After the federal bailout of Fannie/Freddie, OneUnited’s stock in the government-sponsored enterprises plunged to a value estimated at less than $5 million. Only through Waters' intervention was OneUnited able to secure an emergency meeting with the Treasury and its then-Secretary Henry Paulson.

Waters' government cronyism earned her a “Most Corrupt member of Congress” designation from the left-wing Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Then there’s Alcee Hastings, the 12-term Florida corruptocrat impeached while a federal judge in 1989 for making false statements and producing false documents in a 1983 criminal trial accusing him of seeking a $150,000 bribe. He went on to win a seat in Congress in 1992 and used his position to enrich his various lady friends, including paying one girlfriend-turned-congressional deputy district director more than half a million dollars in salary and another he calls a “staff assistant” to accompany on his endless junkets abroad.

Those three are just the start. There’s Texas' Sheila Jackson Lee and the Medicare fraud racket involving a local hospital in her district; Greg Meeks and his $400,000 earmark for a fake health clinic in New York City and Caribbean resort jaunts underwritten by convicted financier Allen Stanford; and Wisconsin’s Gwen Moore and her lucrative friends and family. And, of course, the ethics violations, shady business deals and tax troubles from New York’s Charlie Rangel deserve their own encyclopedia.

My message for BLM? Put down your black power fists and weapons. Give the “#BlueLivesMurder” and “Fry ‘em up like bacon” chants a rest. Aim your outrage at self-serving black leaders and their abject failure to improve black people’s lives.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

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