Jennifer Johnson: 'I Am Too Young...'

At London's Daily Mail, "Terminally ill mother-of-two records heartbreaking YouTube video before she died just days before Christmas."

And watch the video, "A Heart Worth Saving."

Ms. Johnson died of complications following open heart surgery. Join me in a prayer for her survivors.

Hit by ObamaCare, Anthem Blue Cross to Hike Premiums 25 Percent for Individual Policy Holders

The Los Angeles Times reports on the price hikes by California insurance providers in response to ObamaCare, "Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes up to 20%."

I have Anthem Blue Cross, which is mentioned:

Health insurer Blue Shield of California wants to raise rates as much as 20% for some individual policyholders, prompting calls for the nonprofit to use some of its record-high reserve of $3.9 billion to hold down premiums.

In filings with state regulators, Blue Shield is seeking an average rate increase of 12% for more than 300,000 customers, effective in March, with a maximum increase of 20%.

Some consumer advocates and healthcare economists say Blue Shield shouldn't be raising rates that high when it has stockpiled so much cash. The company's surplus is nearly three times as much as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assn. requires its member insurers to hold to cover future claims.

"Blue Shield is sitting on a huge surplus that is beyond what is required or necessary," said Laurie Sobel, a senior attorney for Consumers Union in San Francisco. "It should be used to hold down rate increases when it hits these extraordinary levels."

California officials can take into account an insurer's amount of surplus, among many other factors, when determining whether they think a rate increase is reasonable. Both the California insurance commissioner and the state Department of Managed Health Care are reviewing the company's proposed premiums, but neither agency has the authority to reject changes in rates.

Some other states limit how much surplus can be held by nonprofit health plans. Other regulators press nonprofit insurers to return more money to consumers and the community overall since their stated mission is to serve the public good. Washington's insurance commissioner has said the two big nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans there hold enough surplus to allow a portion of it to be used to reduce rates.

At Blue Shield of California, based in San Francisco, reserves have jumped 77% since 2006 from $2.2 billion to $3.9 billion in September. That has outpaced the company's 19% growth in annual revenue since 2006.

Blue Shield said its reserves have nothing to do with rate increases, and that money has been put aside for the future benefit of its policyholders.

"Reserves are needed to ensure our members' claims can be paid no matter what," said Blue Shield spokeswoman Lindy Wagner. "We need them to protect against uncertainties like a pandemic or another crisis."

The company also expects higher costs from an influx of new customers under the federal healthcare law in 2014.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime change in the healthcare market that will bring a lot of volatility, and we need higher reserves for that," Wagner said.

Even with these proposed rate increases, Blue Shield said, it expects to lose money in the individual insurance market in 2013.

The insurer said its medical costs for this segment of the business grew 10.6% and what it actually pays is rising 12.5% after adjusting for its portion after customer deductibles. The state's largest for-profit health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, cited a similar jump in medical costs in seeking rate hikes as high as 25% for some individual policyholders, effective in February.

California regulators expect to finish their reviews of various company rate filings in the coming weeks.

Understand that the Democrats had not a single clue about what they were doing in 2009. They just rammed through this monstrosity greased with lies. WyBlog has more, "Remember when Obamacare was gonna save us thousands on our health insurance? Me neither..."

A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

I love this story, at the New York Times, "In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia":

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

My god that is so wonderful. Research is closing in on a cure, or so it seems. And that's in American hospitals, it should be noted.

RTWT.

ObamaCare Slams Wisconsin Small Businesses

These interviews with businessmen are very revealing. Remember Sam Facchini's interview the other night? Well, more on his concerns coming out of Wisconsin, at the clip.

I was fairly skeptical reading Rivkin and Casey's case for new ObamaCare challenges at the Supreme Court. But one way or another something's going to happen. Perhaps the GOP's fortunes will change by 2016, winning the White House and the Senate, and Republicans will consider changing the law, or even replacing it. Something's going to happen, though, either way. The law's so messed up on so many levels, and so viciously unfair to those not well-enough connected to score a waiver. The small businesses are just getting hammered. It's completely un-American, but then, progressivism is un-American, so there you go.

The Opening for a Fresh ObamaCare Challenge

From Rivkin and Casey, at the Wall Street Journal:

The court's determination to preserve ObamaCare through "interpretation" has exacerbated the law's original flaws to the point that it has become palpably unworkable. By transforming the penalties for failing to comply with the law's requirements into a "tax," the court has given the public a green light to ignore ObamaCare's requirements when it is economically beneficial. Law-abiding individuals, who might otherwise have complied with the law's expensive purchase mandate to avoid being subjected to financial penalties, can simply now choose to pay a tax and not sign up for coverage. There is certainly no stigma attached to simply paying a tax, and noncompliance with the law's other requirements—such as those imposed on employers—is arguably made more attractive on the same basis. This effect fundamentally undercuts Congress's original purpose, which was to expand health-care coverage to the greatest number of people, not to improve federal revenues.

Similarly, having reviewed the likely costs and benefits, states are now taking advantage of the court-granted flexibility. Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi and Georgia, have so far opted out of the Medicaid-expansion provisions, and eight (with more certain to come) are refusing to create the insurance exchanges, leaving this to a federal bureaucracy unequipped to handle these new administrative burdens. As a result, a growing number of low-income Americans will be unable to obtain the free or cost-effective insurance that Congress originally meant them to have, although they remain subject to the mandate-tax.

Policy problems aside, by transforming the mandate into a tax to avoid one set of constitutional problems (Congress having exceeded its constitutionally enumerated powers), the court has created another problem. If the mandate is an indirect tax, as the Supreme Court held, then the Constitution's "Uniformity Clause" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1) requires the tax to "be uniform throughout the United States." The Framers adopted this provision so that a group of dominant states could not shift the federal tax burden to the others. It was yet another constitutional device that was simultaneously designed to protect federalism and safeguard individual liberty.

The Supreme Court has rarely considered the Uniformity Clause's reach, but it cannot be ignored. The court also refused to impose meaningful limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce for decades after the 1930s, until justices began to re-establish the constitutional balance in the 1990s with decisions leading up to the ObamaCare ruling this summer. And although the court has upheld as "uniform" taxes that affect states differently in practice, precedent makes clear that a permissible tax must "operate with the same force and effect in every place where the subject of it is found," as held in the Head Money Cases (1884). The ObamaCare tax arguably does not meet this standard.

ObamaCare provides that low-income taxpayers, who are nevertheless above the federal poverty line, can discharge their mandate-tax obligation by enrolling in the new, expanded Medicaid program, which serves as the functional equivalent of a tax credit. But that program will not now exist in every state because, as a matter of federal law, states can opt out. The actual tax burden will not be geographically uniform as the court's precedents require.

Thus, having transformed the individual mandate into a tax, the court may face renewed challenges to ObamaCare on uniformity grounds...

RTWT.

Actually, I think the Court will be faced with religious conscience violations before any new Art. I challenges come before it, but this is an interesting piece either way. The PPACA is a motherf-king abomination and should be consigned to the scrap-heap of history, sooner rather than later.

We'll see. Meanwhile, check the additional commentary at Memeorandum.

ObamaCare Threatens Sam Facchini's Las Vegas Metro Pizza

Following up on my previous entry, "Permanent Part-Time Is the New Normal."

Here's Greta Van Susteren's interview with Sam Facchini of Metro Pizza in Las Vegas, which aired last Friday:

I watched this when it ran originally and this guy Facchini just seemed like a genuinely socially responsible businessman. Here he's just contemplating how he'll be able to continue doing what he apparently loves to do --- run a pizza business in a dynamic labor environment with lots of young flexible and independent workers --- without bringing layoffs or going under. People often remarked back in 2009 when the national healthcare debate was raging that Obama had no clue about running a business. With that context it's just astonishing to hear this man tell the story that he indeed was invited to a small business roundtable at the White House so that administration officials could better determine how the law would impact the restaurant economy. He won't say that the White House ignored their concerns, but given the $100s of thousands in new bureaucratic regulations, it's almost sad. Facchini is too charitable in his comments. I personally know businesspeople who would like to personally rip this president a new one. ObamaCare's the biggest clusterf-k in modern American history. Staggering to think about sometimes, but so true.

Dying Patients on Liverpool Care Pathway Never Told That Life-Saving Treatment Was Being Withdrawn

The socialist state is a cold, calculating killer.

The Telegraph UK has more on Britain's National Health Service hospitals that send their patients home to die, and in this case, the patients aren't even told what's happening. See, "Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told":

Almost half of dying patients placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway are never told that life-saving treatment has been withdrawn, a national audit has found.

The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.
It also reveals that thousands of dying patients have been left to suffer in pain, with no attempt to keep them comfortable while drugs were administered.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, last night described the disclosures from records held by 178 NHS hospitals as "totally unacceptable".

He said the failure to consult patients would now be examined by an independent inquiry, which will also look at payments made to hospitals for meeting targets to place people on the pathway.

Each year around 130,000 patients are placed on the pathway. The national audit by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool and the Royal College of Physicians examined a representative sample of 7,058 deaths which occurred between April and June last year, at 178 NHS hospitals. Of these, X were on the pathway.

The new disclosures demonstrate just how routinely hospitals are placing patients on the pathway without informing them that steps which could hasten their death have been taken. The national audit found...

Well, that doesn't sound so lovely now, does it?

And it's not like it isn't coming here. Perhaps we'll have some other name besides "death pathways," but we'll have identical death by rationing soon enough.

Check Paul Hsieh's report from October, at Forbes, "Get Ready For ObamaCare's Medical Rationing":

ObamaCare supporters are now waging a high-profile public relations campaign to make medical rationing palatable to the general public.

The latest front is the opinion pages of the New York Times, which recently published two Op-Eds openly advocating medical rationing. The first was by their economics columnist Eduardo Porter, “Rationing Health Care More Fairly” (8/21/2012).

Porter argued that rationing was “inevitable” and the only question was how best to implement it. He advocated a system like Great Britain’s, which doesn’t pay for medical therapies costing more than $31,000 – $47,000 per year of life gained. Similarly, he praised New Zealand’s approach of not paying for vaccines that cost more than $20,000 per year of life gained.

For Porter, the only question was the precise dollar value the government should set on a year of a patient’s life. Supporters of government-run health care used to argue against market-based approaches because “you couldn’t put a price on human life.” But that’s precisely what Porter wants the government to do.

The second pro-rationing piece was by Obama administration advisor Steve Rattner, “Beyond ObamaCare” (9/16/2012). Rattner stated up front, “We need death panels.”

Rattner advocated restricting medical spending on the elderly, especially on patients in their last year of life, because such spending “consumes more than a quarter of the [Medicare] program’s budget.”

One big problem with Rattner’s approach is that we often can’t know what will be a patient’s final year of life until after they’ve died. It’s easy for a bureaucrat to say in retrospect, “This unnecessary spending didn’t extend the patient’s life.” But the treating physician doesn’t always know whether a patient will live or die from a surgery or procedure. If the surgery succeeds and the patient lives another 5 years, then it was money well spent. But if the patient dies, a bureaucrat can classify it as “wasteful.” Do we really want the government deciding whether or not a doctor is allowed to save your grandmother’s life?

In a recent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article, former Obama administration officials have also advocated a more indirect form of rationing. They’ve proposed a fixed cap on aggregate private medical spending (not just government spending). Such a cap has already been enacted into law in Massachusetts and the authors wish to extend that to the rest of the country. Of course, any cap on private medical spending necessarily means the government must restrict Americans’ right to spend their own money for their own medical care.

One of the co-authors of this NEJM article, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, has already laid the intellectual groundwork for overt rationing in a 2009 Lancet article, “Principles For Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions.” Dr. Emanuel is a former White House health care advisor and the brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff.

Dr. Emanuel proposes rationing based on a combination of factors including patient age, expected “quality adjusted life years,” and the patient’s “instrumental value” to “society.” Given that the government would be making (and paying for) these rationing decisions, value to “society” will become “value as determined by the government.”

Such rationing completely inverts the relationship between the individual and the state. Rather than the state existing to serve the individual, the individual’s existence is sustained at the discretion of the state. This is the opposite of the American founders’ intention that the government be the people’s servant, not their master.

None of this should be surprising. Lots of folks warned of the horrible, horrible inevitability of rationing under ObamaCare while it was being debated. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, for example, "ObamaCare Is All About Rationing." But critics were dismissed as cranks and racists, conspiracy theorists pushing crazy fever swamp theories "death panels" hatched by Sarah Palin and her "unhinged" followers. The critics were right, although for the time being, it just doesn't matter.

As I've been saying, the new era of socialist dependency government is upon us. The voters ratified the ObamaCare monstrosity last month. Things are now starting to take effect. Death be upon us now, too late to cry about it, however. The wheels of the gargantuan maw of progressivism are rolling, and political dissenters are being eliminated by campaigns of demonization from the shock troops of the Democrat Party regime. There is hope, of course. And that lies in the electorate waking up before too much damage has been inflicted. We'll have midterm elections in 2014 and perhaps libertarian-minded tea party conservatives will be elected in greater numbers. Perhaps even the possibility of a GOP majority in the Senate will open up. I'll have more on that. In the meantime, folks should hunker down and take care of themselves and their families, for the weakest among us will be the first to make the last journey down the left's pathway of death.

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "Now sick babies go on death pathway: Doctor's haunting testimony reveals how children are put on end-of-life plan," and "Doctors 'are withholding treatment from dying cancer patients because they think it is futile to continue'."

In U.S., Majority Now Against Gov't Healthcare Guarantee

Well, the public is turning around, unexpectedly!

At Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ -- For the first time in Gallup trends since 2000, a majority of Americans say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage. Prior to 2009, a majority always felt the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all, though Americans' views have become more divided in recent years.

The current results are based on Gallup's annual Health and Healthcare poll, conducted Nov. 15-18 this year.

The shift away from the view that the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all began shortly after President Barack Obama's election and has continued the past several years during the discussions and ultimate passage of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Americans are divided on that legislation today -- 48% approve and 45% disapprove -- as they have been over the last several years.

Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, are mostly responsible for the drop since 2007 in Americans' support for government ensuring universal health coverage. In 2007, 38% of Republicans thought the government should do so; now, 12% do. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners there has been a much smaller drop, from 81% saying the government should make sure all Americans are covered in 2007 to 71% now.

One thing that has not changed is that Americans still widely prefer a system based on private insurance to one run by the government. Currently, 57% prefer a private system and 36% a government-run system, essentially the same as in 2010 and 2011. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the percentage of Americans in favor of a government-run system ranged from 32% to 41%.

The report also highlights some of the rosier findings, but as the ObamaCare horror stories continue to pile up like corpses at the morgue, expect support for this socialist monstrosity to continue its free fall.

Image Credit: Michelle Malkin, "Death, taxes & Obamacare: Poster contest, Round Two."

Unaffordable Cost Seen for Some Under Affordable Care Act

We're seeing report after report on just how disastrous this legislation is, at Bloomberg, for example:

To Megan Hildebrandt, President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act means she can no longer be denied health insurance because of her lymphatic cancer.
There’s a big catch: Coverage for the 28-year-old artist and many other Americans without insurance will come at a potentially unaffordable cost.

Hildebrandt, who relies on hospital charity, will face more than $1,000 in annual premiums, by one estimate, and probably more in out-of-pocket expenses even with new federal subsidies. She and her husband have a combined income of $25,000.

“It’s great that I’m not going to have to pay some hugely impossible amount,” said Hildebrandt, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Though now I’m in the health-care system and still have to pay money that we can’t really afford.”

The landmark health-care law, which survived the threats of repeal and a Supreme Court review, now confronts another hurdle: living up to expectations. As the administration spells out the details, many uninsured will be surprised at how much they will have to pay. It may involve “very substantial amounts,” and “there still will be a significant number of people who can’t afford health coverage,” said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a consumer group that backs the law.

A family of four earning $75,000 will pay $7,125 in annual premiums and as much as $8,333 in co-pays and deductibles, according to a preliminary estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A single 40-year-old earning $30,000 will pay $2,509 in premiums and as much as $3,125 in cost sharing. For a 60- year-old making $40,000, the amount will be $3,800 in premiums and up to $4,167 in out-of-pocket costs, according to Kaiser.

I vaguely remember (snark!) how the president kept claiming that costs would go down. Maybe they will, although meanwhile untold numbers of Americans will be driven from their homes by mandatory costs imposed by faceless ObamaCare bureaucrats in Washington. What a f-king monstrosity.

Continue reading at the link.

Five New ObamaCare Taxes Coming January 1st

From Katie Pavlich, at Townhall:

Although some of the "fiscal cliff" taxes can be avoided through a deal made in Congress, new ObamaCare taxes are guaranteed to kick in on January 1, amounting to $268 billion tax hike. From Americans for Tax Reform...

Baby Death Panels

Well, it couldn't happen here. Nah, it just c-c-c-couldn't (blabbering incoherently to one's self...).

At London's Daily Mail, "Now sick babies go on death pathway: Doctor's haunting testimony reveals how children are put on end-of-life plan" (via Gateway Pundit):

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

The investigation, which will include child patients, will look at whether cash payments to hospitals to hit death pathway targets have influenced doctors’ decisions.

Medical critics of the LCP insist it is impossible to say when a patient will die and as a result the LCP death becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They say it is a form of euthanasia, used to clear hospital beds and save the NHS money.

More at that top link, and also, "Doctors 'are withholding treatment from dying cancer patients because they think it is futile to continue'." Cancer patients are also being placed on LCP, and there's an outcry among physicians. God, I pray that people get the care they need, and that Americans resist the ObamaCare rationing regime. Nothing is permanent in politics, certainly FUBAR legislation like the PPACA.

'After age 50, pushing too hard is probably not good for one's heart or longevity...'

Well, I haven't been running lately, so I guess there's an upside to the latest science. At the Wall Street Journal, "One Running Shoe in the Grave: New Studies on Older Endurance Athletes Suggest the Fittest Reap Few Health Benefits." And from the report:

The most vocal proponent of cutting back for cardiac reasons is Dr. [James ] O’Keefe, a 56-year-old cardiologist and former elite athlete. From 1999 to 2004, he won outright the largest sprint distance triathlon in Kansas City, a testament not only to his athletic abilities but also to hours and hours of early- and late-hour training.

But a sense that this regimen was aging him prematurely, coupled with the mounting awareness of cardiac issues in extreme endurance athletes, prompted Dr. O’Keefe to slash his running to below 20 miles a week, never faster than eight minutes a mile.

Asked if he ever runs a 5-kilometer race for time, he said, “Not for the past three years. After age 50, pushing too hard is probably not good for one’s heart or longevity.”

Meanwhile, Dr. O’Keefe’s fellow author on the upcoming Heart paper, Carl Lavie, continues racing at speeds slightly above what their editorial recommends. “I did a turkey day five-mile race in 38 minutes,” said Dr. Lavie, a cardiologist at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans. “I train slower than I race, and when I race I know the risks. That’s all we’re trying to do: Let people know the risks and make up their own minds.”

More at the link (via Instapundit).

Hope and Exchange

At the Wall Street Journal, "The feds blame the states for refusing to become ObamaCare subsidiaries":

ObamaCare is due to land in a mere 10 months—about 300 days—and the Administration is not even close to ready, so naturally the political and media classes are attacking the Governors and state legislators who decline to help out. Mostly Republicans, they’re facing a torrent of abuse in Washington and pressure from health lobbies at home.

But the real story is that Democrats are reaping the GOP buy-in they earned. Liberals wanted government to re-engineer the entire health-care system and rammed the Affordable Care Act through on a party-line vote, not stopping to wonder whether it would work. Now that implementation is proving to be harder than advertised, they’re blaming the states for not making their jobs easier.

The current rumpus is over ObamaCare’s “exchanges,” the bureaucracies that will regulate the design and sale of insurance and where 30 million people (and likely far more) will sign up for subsidized coverage. States were supposed to tell the Health and Human Services Department if they were going to set up and run an exchange by October, but HHS delayed the deadline to November, and then again at the 11th hour to December.

Sixteen states have already said they won’t participate. Another 11 are undecided, while only 17 have committed to doing the work on their own. Six have opted for a “hybrid” federal-state model. That means HHS will probably be responsible for fallback federal exchanges in full or in part in as many as 25 or 30 states.

Continue reading.

It sucks. It's bad law. It'll be interesting to see how the massive resistance of the states plays out.

More at National Review, "States Should Absolutely Refuse to Set Up Obamacare Exchanges."

Young People Getting Even More Screwed Under ObamaCare

This is freakin' mind-boggling. The news on the ObamaCare monstrosity gets worse by the day.

At Forbes, "Young People under Obamacare: Cash Cow for Older Workers":

It’s official: the health care law will unduly stick it to young Americans by making them pay far higher premiums starting January 1, 2014. New rules announced this month are even worse than expected when it comes to shoveling an unfair burden onto our nation’s youth. Moreover, they also perversely increase the incentives of young people to remain uninsured.

The newly announced rules limit insurers to charge their oldest customers no more than three times as much as younger ones. As shown in the following chart based on estimates by international management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the rule will force insurers to hike rates for 18- to 24-year-olds by 45 percent even as rates for those 60 and older drop by 13 percent in most states. That means a 22-year-old waitress paying $2,068 for her health insurance will have to fork over $3,000 when Obamacare takes effect.[3] And these figures even underestimate the actual impact....

The real-world consequence of this regulatory misjudgment is that young people will have an even greater economic incentive to simply pay the $695 annual penalty for not having coverage and wait until they are sick before they purchase it. [4] In short, it is now even more likely that Obamacare will amplify the perverse incentives for “free-riding” that it was intended to counter.

Clearly, until we observe actual behavior next January, we won’t know precisely how large an adverse selection problem has been unnecessarily created by these new rules. But what we can say for certain is that for young adults who elect to have health coverage, it will be way more expensive next year than it is today.

Is this fair? Ask the typical 20-24 year-old—whose median weekly earnings are $461—whether it’s fair to be asked to pay 50 percent higher premiums so that workers age 55-64—whose median weekly earnings are $887—can pay lower premiums. Think about that. The median earnings for older workers are $420 a week more than those of younger workers, or roughly $20,000 more a year. How is mandating a price break on health insurance for this far higher income group at the expense of the lower income group possibly fair?

It's not fair.

Seriously. "Fair" isn't even the word for this. Shoot, is it legal? Young Americans are practically being raped by ObamaCare. The effective violations of liberty with this law are so freakin' astounding, people should be screaming violently in rage. And the thing is, young people don't even know what's about to hit them. I know this for a fact. I've been discussing the consequences of the election for the preservation liberty in my classes. Students were literally shocked when I told them they were going to be taxed under the individual mandate if they were uninsured beginning in 2014. Students will be even more glum when we open debate on current events for the remainder of the week.

Ignorance is very costly, and it's sad too since so many young people practically worship this president.

How 'Life of Julia' Prevailed

From William McGurn, at the Wall Street Journal, "How Obama's 'Life of Julia' Prevailed":

The name of the program now escapes me. Several months ago, while flipping channels with the remote, I stopped on an MTV show about a working mom whose whole life was upended when her partner announced that he was splitting. It caught my attention because this mother lived in a nice apartment that looked like one in my suburban New Jersey town, and she was applying for food stamps.

This wasn't your caricature "taker"—the woman had a real job. With her partner leaving, however, she could no longer afford the rent, and she would have trouble providing for her two young boys alone. As she walked up to an office to sign up for food stamps, she said something like, "I can't believe I am applying for public assistance."

Her situation provoked two questions. First, how could her boyfriend just abandon his sons without having to pay child support? Second, what is the conservative response to a woman who finds herself in this situation?

The show comes back to me in wake of the thumping Mitt Romney took in the presidential election among the demographic this mom represents: unmarried women. During the 2012 campaign, we conservatives had great sport at the expense of the Obama administration's "Life of Julia"—a cartoon explaining the cradle-to-grave government programs that provided for Julia's happy and successful life.

The president, alas, had the last laugh. For the voting blocs that went so disproportionately for the president's re-election—notably, Latinos and single women—the Julia view of government clearly resonates. To put it another way, maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don't find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.

The dominant media conclusion from this is that the Republican Party is cooked unless it surrenders its principles. I'm not so sure. To the contrary, it strikes me that now is a pretty good time to get back to principles—and to do more to show people who gave President Obama his victory why their dreams and families would be better served by a philosophy of free markets and limited government.

RTWT.

Well, I couldn't agree more, but it's going to be a long tutorial with the lunkhead progressives. These people are diehard Democrat dependency freaks. I think the trick is actually to get people before they start going Democrat, since weaning people from progressive entitlements will be even harder than encouraging a natural scavenger to hunt for itself.

PREVIOUSLY: "Meet Julia: The Big-Government Dependency Robot and Dream Woman of Leftist Ideology."

RELATED: Recall this piece, "Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers"? (Excerpted here.) I mentioned it in one of my American government classes. Boy were there some glum faces when students realized that the negative externalities of the law might make their lives more difficult and less prosperous. So yes, explaining how ever-increasing government reduces opportunity and increases dependency can have an impact. The lessons may stick, even though the hurdles remain extremely high in the current environment.

Baby Boy Dies From Meningitis After Doctors Twice Fail to Spot Symptoms

This was at yesterday's Daily Mail, "One-year-old boy, died of meningitis because doctors ignored his mother: Instinct told Jane that her son was gravely ill - but she was dismissed as hysterical."

DAILY MAIL FRONT PAGE: "Boy died because doctors ignored his mother" #skypapers twitter.com/SkyNews/status…
— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 20, 2012

And these were National Health Service physicians, the same folks who were immortalized at the London Olympics opening ceremonies last summer. And it's coming to America!

Progressives Launch Revenge on Applebee's as Company Downsizes in Response to ObamaCare

Look, I wrote about this yesterday.

The business community's had the writing on the wall for sometime. The election simply cleared up the uncertainty in the decision-making environment. Gateway Pundit has the video, "NY Applebee’s CEO Zane Tankel Says He Won’t Hire Because of Obamacare (Video)."

And taking their go-ahead from the Thug-in-Chief, the progressives have launched retaliatory attacks. At London's Daily Mail, "Calls to boycott Applebee's after CEO threatens hiring freeze and layoffs over Obamacare."

More at Twitchy, "Applebee’s targeted after franchisee mulls hiring freeze in response to Obamacare," and "Libs call for boycott of Papa John’s as CEO anticipates cut in workers’ hours."

Plus, "Insanity: Papa John’s, Olive Garden, others attacked as racist for anticipated responses to Obamacare."

Permanent Part-Time Is the New Normal

At the Wall Street Journal, "Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers" (via Blue Collar Philosophy):

RT @mdrache: Dear Liberals, if you're upset about corps going to PT to avoid Obamacare, you should have read the law before you passed it.
— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) November 10, 2012

Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a fee.

Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker.

The shift is one of the first significant steps by employers to avoid requirements under the health-care law, and whether the trend continues hinges on Tuesday's election results. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has pledged to overturn the Affordable Care Act, although he would face obstacles doing so.

President Barack Obama is set to push ahead with implementing the 2010 law if he is re-elected.

Pillar Hotels & Resorts this summer began to focus more on hiring part-time workers among its 5,500 employees, after the Supreme Court upheld the health-care overhaul, said Chief Executive Chris Russell. The company has 210 franchise hotels, under the Sheraton, Fairfield Inns, Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns brands.

"The tendency is to say, 'Let me fill this position with a 40-hour-a-week employee.' "Mr. Russell said. "I think we have to think differently."

Pillar offers health insurance to employees who work 32 hours a week or more, but only half take it, and Mr. Russell wants to limit his exposure to rising health-care costs. He said he planned to pursue new segments of the population, such as senior citizens, to find workers willing to accept part-time employment.

He described the shift as a "cultural change" toward hiring more part-timers and not a prohibition against hiring full-timers.

CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains, began two months ago to hire part-time workers to replace full-time employees who left, said Andy Puzder, CEO of the Carpinteria, Calif., company. CKE, which is owned by private-equity firm Apollo Management LP, offers limited-benefit plans to all restaurant employees, but the federal government won't allow those policies to be sold starting in 2014 because of low caps on payouts. Mr. Puzder said he has advised Mr. Romney's campaign on economic issues in an unpaid capacity.

Home retailer Anna's Linens Inc. is considering cutting hours for some full-time employees to avoid the insurance mandate if the health-care law isn't repealed, said CEO Alan Gladstone.

Mr. Gladstone said the costs of providing coverage to all 1,100 sales associates who work at least 30 hours a week would be prohibitive, although he was weighing alternative options, such as raising prices.

Suck it, progs.

You voted for it. You're stuck with it ---- with a life of less prosperity and well-being.

Outbreak Spurs Calls for New Controls

At the Wall Street Journal:

As many as 13,000 patients may have been exposed to fungal meningitis from tainted spinal steroid injections, authorities said Monday, as some lawmakers called for bringing certain specialized pharmacies under greater regulatory scrutiny.

The oversight of compounding pharmacies, which create customized versions of medicines, is gaining greater attention as the death and illness tolls in the outbreak continue to rise. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 11 people had died and 119 people in 10 states had been sickened by fungal meningitis, a rare but potentially deadly inflammation to the brain or central nervous system.

New Jersey is the 10th state to report at least one illness, the Associated Press reported. The other states involved in the outbreak are Tennessee, Michigan, Virginia, Indiana, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio.

The CDC said a majority of the thousands exposed to the tainted injections had been contacted and weren't ill. The number of meningitis cases could still rise in the coming days and weeks, but it isn't possible to forecast how many might ultimately get sick, the CDC said. Patients have come down with the illness one-to-four weeks after receiving the injections.

State regulators, federal agencies and the pharmacy industry all share some responsibility for monitoring compounding pharmacies like the New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts facility that shipped the contaminated steroid tied to the meningitis outbreak. But health officials and lawmakers say these facilities essentially slide through the cracks because no one entity has full responsibility for overseeing them.

"Compounding pharmacies currently fall into a regulatory black hole," Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) wrote in a letter to Margaret Hamburg, Food and Drug Administration commissioner, on Monday.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), called for the FDA's oversight authority of the facilities to be extended if necessary, saying that compounding pharmacies' "relative immunity from standards of safety and effectiveness seems anomalous and unacceptable." Mr. Blumenthal is on the Senate committee that oversees how much jurisdiction the FDA has.

If the FDA had full oversight of these pharmacies, it could treat their compounds as new drugs and require the pharmacies to submit clinical trials before the drugs are allowed on the market. It also would have more powers to inspect facilities.

Continue reading.

Labor Union Conflict-of-Interest Allegations Against Blue Shield of California

More union corruption, the freakin' commie thugs.

At LAT, "Blue Shield's union ties raise concerns about conflicts":

At a time when public-sector unions across the country are fighting to hold on to generous retirement and health benefits, one of the loudest voices standing up for their rights is Dave Low.

A longtime labor activist, Low carries considerable clout as executive director of the California School Employees Assn., a 215,000-member union that represents bus drivers, custodians and other school workers. He also leads a broader group of 1.5 million government employees, including firefighters, police and teachers, called Californians for Health Care and Retirement Security.

But Low had another job as well until recently. He was a consultant for Blue Shield of California, which has secured lucrative health insurance contracts that cover many of the same public workers that Low represents. His contract shows he was to be paid up to $125,000 a year for his work, which went from 2004 until Aug. 31.

Low isn't the only person with union ties pulling double duty for Blue Shield. One of the insurance company's senior executives also works as a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 300,000 government workers statewide.

Experts say those close ties between Blue Shield and key labor unions may give the nonprofit company undue influence over multimillion-dollar insurance contracts for public employees. It's common in California for a joint panel of labor and management officials to pick the winning insurance bidders and set many of the terms.

"This raises red flags about conflicts of interest and self-dealing," said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who studies public corruption. "It really starts to feel offensive when the public money at stake is so huge."

A spokesman for the school union said it had approved of Low's contract with Blue Shield, and Low said he always put the interests of the union ahead of the insurer.

Blue Shield and Low said there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship and that they've done nothing illegal or unethical. After The Times began asking questions about their relationship, the company ended Low's contract Aug. 31.

Public employee benefits are coming under increasing scrutiny as municipalities, school districts and state governments face severe fiscal pressures and debates over what they can afford to offer rank-and-file workers. Health insurers compete vigorously for public-sector contracts because governments still provide some of the richest benefits among employers.

One of the biggest prizes for any company is a contract with the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the country's third-largest healthcare buyer after the federal government and General Motors Co. It spends $7 billion annually on medical care for active and retired state and local government workers.

CalPERS is a crucial customer for Blue Shield, which serves about 400,000 of CalPERS' 1.3 million members. Overall, the San Francisco company has about 3.3 million customers and nearly $10 billion in annual revenue.

In August, CalPERS began the process for choosing new healthcare companies, and it plans to award three-year contracts next year that take effect in 2014. Many of the industry's biggest players — UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc. and Aetna Inc. — are competing with Blue Shield.

Blue Shield's contracts with Low, obtained by The Times, show that it was paying him for information and advice about dealing with CalPERS' board members and agency staff. Low was hired to "advise and assist Blue Shield in gaining CalPERS board and constituent support for key initiatives and proposals" and to "assist Blue Shield in its efforts to expand interactions with key decision makers and influencers of other non-CalPERS contracting public agencies."

In an interview, Low described his duties differently. Low, 55, said his primary role with Blue Shield was to monitor its service to union members and to alert the company about any problems CalPERS board members shared with him. He said he wasn't privy to any inside information about healthcare contracts and that it wasn't his job "to sell their product."

"I will challenge anybody to come up with a single instance in which I acted in an unethical manner," he said. "I've never had inappropriate conversations or contacts with Blue Shield or CalPERS."

Tom Epstein, vice president of public affairs for Blue Shield, said the company employed Low to provide "strategic political consulting." Epstein declined to comment further on Low's work or his recent departure.

Yeah, the dude declined to comment alright. He'll be taking the fifth in no time.

More at the link.