Posted on 12/25/2013 8:10:35 PM PST by Dqban22
NOTRE DAME PROFESSOR ON OBAMACARE
Obamacare Should Remind Us We Are Not 'Subjects,' We Are People Laura Hollis is a professor at the University of Notre Dame November 20, 2013 http://www.christianpost.com/news/obamacare-should-remind-us-we-are-not-subjects-we-are-people-109165/
• Laura Hollis is a professor at the University of Notre Dame
The unveiling of the dictatorial debacle that is Obamacare absolutely flabbergasts me. It is stunning on so many levels, but the most shocking aspect of it for me is watching millions of free Americans stand idly by while this man, his minions in Congress and his cheerleaders in the press systematically dismantle our Constitution, steal our money, and crush our freedoms. • The President, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (with no small help from Justice John Roberts) take away our health care, and we allow it. • They take away our insurance, and we allow it. • They take away our doctors, and we allow it. • They charge us thousands of dollars more a year, and we allow it. • They make legal products illegal, and we allow it. • They cripple our businesses, and we allow it. • They announce by fiat that we must ignore our most deeply held beliefs – and we allow it.
Where is your spine, America ? Yes, I know people are complaining. I read the news on the internet. I read blogs. I have a Twitter feed. So what? People in the Soviet Union complained. People in Cuba complain. People in China complain (quietly). Complaining isn't the same thing as doing anything about it. In fact, much of the complaining that we hear sounds like resignation: Wow. This sucks. Oh well, this is the way things are. Too bad. Perhaps you need reminding of a few important facts. Here goes:
1. The President is not a king. Barack Obama does not behave like a President, an elected official, someone who realizes that he works for us. He behaves like a king, a dictator – someone who believes that his own pronouncements have the force of law, and who thinks he can dispense with the law's enforcement when he deigns to do so. And those of us who object? How dare we? Racists! And while he moves steadily "forward" with his plans to "fundamentally transform" the greatest country in human history, he distracts people with cheap, meaningless trivialities, like "free birth control pills"! (In fact, let's face it: this administration's odd obsession with sex in general - Birth control! Abortion! Sterilization! Gay guys who play basketball! -- is just plain weird. Since when did the leader of the free world care so much about how people have sex, who they have it with, and what meds they use when they have it? Does he have nothing more important to concern himself with?)
2. It isn't just a failed software program; it is a failed philosophy. People are marveling that Healthcare.gov was such a spectacular failure. Well, if one is only interested in it as a product launch, I've explained some of the reasons for that here. But the larger point is that it isn't a software failure, or even a product failure; it is a philosophy failure. I have said this before: Obama is not a centrist; he is a central planner. And this – all of it: the disastrous computer program, the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, the lies, the manipulation of public opinion, the theft of the public's money and property, and freedom (read insurance, and premiums, and doctors) -- IS what central planning looks like. The central premise of central planning is that a handful of wunderkinds with your best interests at heart (yeah, right) know better than you what's good for you. The failure of such a premise and the misery it causes have been clear from the dawn of humanity. Kings and congressmen, dictators and Dear Leaders, potentates, princes and presidents can all fall prey to the same imperial impulses: "we know what is good the 'the people.' And they are always wrong. There is a reason that the only times communism has really been tried have been after wars, revolutions, or coups d'état. You have to have complete chaos for people to be willing to accept the garbage that centralized planning produces. Take the Soviet Union , for example. After two wars, famine, and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, why wouldn't people wait in line for hours to buy size 10 shoes? Or settle for the gray matter that passed for meat in the grocery stores? But communism's watered-down cousin, socialism, isn't much better. Ask the Venezuelans who cannot get toilet paper. Toilet paper. ¡Viva la Revolución! Contrary to what so many who believe in a "living Constitution" say, the Founding Fathers absolutely understood this. That is why the Constitution was set up to limit government power. (Memo to the President: the drafters of the Constitution deliberately didn't say "what government had to do on your behalf.") They understood that that was the path to folly, fear, and famine.)
3. Obama is deceitful. Just as the collapse of the computer program should not surprise anyone, neither should we be shocked that the President lied about his healthcare plan. Have any of you been paying attention over the past few years? Obama has made no secret of his motivations or his methods. The philosophies which inspire him espouse deceit and other vicious tactics. (Don't take my word for it: read Saul Alinsky.) Obama infamously told reporter Richard Wolffe, "You know, I actually believe my own bullshit." He has refused to be forthcoming about his past (where are his academic records?). His own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told author Ed Klein, that Obama said to him, "You know what your problem is? You have to tell the truth." Did Obama lie when he said dozens of times, "If you like you plan, you can keep it. Period!"? Of course he did. That's what he does.
4. The media is responsible. And had the media been doing their jobs, we would have known a lot of this much, much earlier. The press is charged with the sacred responsibility of protecting the people from the excesses of government. Our press has been complicit, incompetent, or corrupt. Had they vetted this man in 2008, as they would have a Republican candidate, we would have known far more about him than we do, even now. Had they pressed for more details about Obamacare, Congress' feet would have been held to the fire. Had they done their jobs about Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, NSA spying - or any of the other myriad betrayals of the public trust that this administration has committed, Obama would likely have lost his 2012 reelection campaign. (A fact that even The Washington Post has tacitly acknowledged. Well done, fellas! Happy now?) Instead, they turned a blind eye, even when they knew he was lying, abusing power, disregarding the limits of the Constitution. It was only when he began to spy on them, and when the lies were so blatant that the lowest of low-information voters could figure it out that they realized they had to report on it. (Even in the face of blatant, deliberate and repeated lies, The New York Times has the audacity to tell us that the President "misspoke.") They have betrayed us, abandoned us, and deceived us.
5. Ted Cruz was right. So was Sarah Palin. The computer program is a disaster. The insurance exchanges are a disaster. What's left? The healthcare system itself. And this, of necessity, will be a disaster, too. Millions of people have lost their individual insurance plans. In 2015, millions more will lose their employer-provided coverage (a fact which the Obama administration also knew, and admitted elsewhere).
The exorbitant additional costs that Obamacare has foisted on unsuspecting Americans are all part of a plan of wealth confiscation and redistribution. That is bad enough. But it will not end there. When the numbers of people into the system and the corresponding demand for care vastly exceed the cost projections (and they will, make no mistake), then the rationing will start. Not only choice at that point, but quality and care itself will go down the tubes. And then will come the decisions made by the Independent Payment Advisory Board about what care will be covered (read "paid for") and what will not. That's just a death panel, put politely. In fact, progressives are already greasing the wheels for acceptance of that miserable reality as well. They're spreading the lie that it will be about the ability of the dying to refuse unwanted or unhelpful care. Don't fall for that one, either. It will be about the deaths that inevitably result from decisions made by people other than the patients, their families, and their physicians. (Perhaps it's helpful to think of their assurances this way: "If you like your end-of-life care, you can keep your end-of-life-care.")
6. We are not SUBJECTS. (or, Nice Try, the Tea Party Isn't Going Away). We have tolerated these incursions into our lives and livelihoods too long already. There is no end to the insatiable demand "progressives" have to remake us in their image. Today it is our insurance, our businesses, our doctors, our health care. Tomorrow some new crusade will be announced that enables them to take over other aspects of our formerly free lives. I will say it again: WE ARE NOT SUBJECTS. Not only is the Tea Party right on the fiscal issues, but it appears that they are more relevant than ever. We fought a war once to prove we did not want to be the subjects of a king, and the Boston Tea Party was just a taste of the larger conflict to come. If some people missed that lesson in history class, we can give them a refresher. The 2014 elections are a good place to start. Call your representative, your senator, your candidate and tell them: "We are not subjects. You work for us. And if the word "REPEAL" isn't front and center in your campaign, we won't vote for you. Period."
Laura Hollis is an attorney and teaches entrepreneurship and business law at the University of Notre Dame . She resides in Indiana with her husband and two children.
Finally, someone who thinks like me In this country many people have always talked about the “banana republics” (referring mostly to Central and South American countries), their revolutions, their coup d’etats, etc. But when the governments act like they have in those countries, usually that is the ONLY way to get rid of them. In this country, up to 2008, that was not the case but since then it is rapidly going that route and the natives are not used to it nor prepared to fight it effectively. Most of those natives (and sadly quite a few natives of those banana republics) naively believe in the “checks and balances” which the usurper is quietly but swiftly doing away with. I repeat Professor Hollis words: “Where is your spine, America ?” In case someone wants to write, her address is lhollis@nd.edu
Bm
“The unveiling of the dictatorial debacle that is Obamacare absolutely flabbergasts me. It is stunning on so many levels, but the most shocking aspect of it for me is watching millions of free Americans stand idly by ....
“
Where’s and what’s your action professor? Alot of posters have already pointed out your comments many many times.
Unfortunately, every day makes it more unlikely that the solution will ever come through the ballot box and many on the left will discover that once revolutions start, it is uncertain who and how many will be sacrificed in the coming upheaval.
That's part of it. Another part is that the cultural Marxists have succeeded in their "long march through the institutions."
A large number of Americans have absorbed the tenets of Marxism in everything but name.
Obama's just kicking over a dead tree.
The MSM will ignore this....spread the word on FB and Twitter.
agree, if the MSM did the job they should do, lots of corruption in Washington might just get cleaned out or not voted into gov’t in the first place....just wish they would treat democrats with the vigor they do republicans. Plus stop the lies about republicans=evil and democrats=good. MSM is bringing down this country.
Outstanding. Bookmarked. Thank you!!!
“Unfortunately, every day makes it more unlikely that the solution will ever come through the ballot box and many on the left will discover that once revolutions start, it is uncertain who and how many will be sacrificed in the coming upheaval”
I have a feeling the crowds won’t be as forgiving as they were in the first Civil War.
Where is your spine, America ?Laura Hollis, as a professor at Notre Dame, teaches at the most incredible Catholic campus in America I've ever seen (the grotto, Sacred Heart Basilica, the golden dome), yet she does not offer the answer to building a spine. Maybe she has done so in other posts, but me and my spine go to Eucharistic Adoration (time before the Blessed Sacrament), daily Mass, recitation of the Holy Rosary, and frequent Confession. ALL available at the University of Notre Dame.
But unlike Harvard or Yale, Northwestern or Southern Cal, all once Christian universities but now secular schools, Notre Dame has the weapon to combat all heresies; namely Notre Dame Herself. The modernists may have their day, but, like the song says, Notre Dame will win over all. For the modern infidels to take control here, they would have to blow our dame off the dome, rip the heart (the Eucharist) out of Sacred Heart and lastly, rock by rock, tear the grotto apart. And legions of Her sons and daughters would willingly die martyrs before they would allow that to happen. -Tom O'Toole, '81 http://www.fightingirishthomas.com/2007/03/upon-these-rocks-faith-and-notre-dame.html
Realistically speaking, Obama is our King. We may was well face the facts.
“Where is your spine, America ?”
America is a very law abiding country. And conservatives are amongst the most reflexively law abiding. Regardless of whether the law is just or constitutional.
If there was a law passed ordering conservatives to be sent to concentration camps, the question that most would be asking is not whether they should resist or hide. No. It would be how many bags they’re allowed to take with them.
Perhpas a beginning rumble has started. One can hope, LOL.
Let the counter-revolution begin.
It's time the IRS became the target instead of the other way around.
As long as Americans have their smartphones, reality shows, Facebook and entertainment they won't even notice what has happened.
bookmark
The Poles were the ones who began the great pushback of Solidarity, supported by JPII and Ronald Reagan.
Americans have had a great advantage to live with freedom since our ancestors came to this shore.
The professor is right - what Obama represents is a failed philosophy. It is actually a hollow philosophy that will not be able to stand once it is really pushed.
The end of it will require Divine intervention. And when it comes we will be ready.
The doctor won’t see you? Analysts warn ObamaCare plans could resemble Medicaid
Published December 26, 2013
• FoxNews.com
Those signing up for private health care coverage on the ObamaCare exchanges may be in for an unpleasant surprise — they’ll have insurance, but they might have trouble getting the doctor to see them.
As hundreds of thousands enroll for coverage beginning Jan. 1, analysts are warning that the plans are likely to give them access to fewer doctors and hospitals. So much so, they warn, that the system could begin to resemble Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans.
“Indeed, I think this will eventually be like Medicaid,” said Merrill Matthews, director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance.
Matthews said the only way many insurers are going to be able to control costs is by “simply clamping down on the amount they are willing to pay.”
Just as with Medicaid, analysts warn that if payments get too low, many doctors might start refusing to see patients. That will leave more and more patients jockeying to see fewer and fewer doctors.
They emphasize, then, that having health insurance won’t necessarily translate into access to health care.
“About half of the physicians in many communities refuse to take Medicaid patients because the payment system is just too low,” said James Capretta, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, suggested some of the plans on the exchanges are going in the same direction.
“If you look at something where you get a dollar by treating a private payer, you get about 70 cents out of Medicare for that same treatment, you get about 55 cents out of Medicaid for that,” he said.
He added: “You know, ObamCare started to look like Medicaid of the future, and in the Medicaid in the present, you can have the insurance but a doctor won’t see you.”
By the end of March, the Obama administration hopes to increase the number of people on Medicaid by 9 million, and the number in private plans by 7 million. New Medicaid enrollments so far have far outpaced enrollments in private plans on the exchanges.
But since Medicaid patients already have access to relatively few doctors, expanding that population while opening the door to lower payments for private insurance raises the prospect of rationing, as too many people chase too few doctors.
“These networks are going to be jammed with people,” Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said. “Far more than they’re treating now, and I don’t doubt that we’re going to have problems with access to these doctors. There just aren’t going to be enough of them.”
For now, the Obama administration is trying to move past a year of some ups and many downs for its health care law, and encourage people to sign up during the final three months of open enrollment. President Obama said in his year-end press conference that enrollment has picked up considerably as problems with the federal exchange website have been addressed.
“The law is working: More than half a million Americans have enrolled through HealthCare.gov in the first three weeks of December alone — and 800,000 more are on track to get Medicaid through their states,” he said in an email message on Sunday.
Obama continued to stress that the law is providing health insurance to those previously unable to get it. “Now, thousands of Americans are signing up for coverage every day. That matters. It means financial security for families all across the country. It means freedom from the fear that one illness or accident might cost you everything you’ve worked so hard to build.”
Fox News’ Jim Angle contributed to this report.
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