Posted by Labor Law Guy | Posted on 17-07-2009
Category : Federal Labor Law, Random Musings
Tags: Commonwealth Care, health care reform
Commonwealth Care, the failure after which Kennebama Care is being modeled (I’ll get Max Baucus back in the title once he unveils his plan), is now announcing that it’s solved the riddle of the health care Sphinx once and for all. In short, how do you afford this monstrosity?
And the answer is–the HMO!
However, Massachusetts bureaucrats and government freeloaders have come up with a new name for the HMO capitation system–i.e., paying a fixed cost per person per year for all services–global payments.
You’ll see a lot of name substitution over the next weeks, months and years as the Democrats move us to a single-payer (single-prayer) system. Rationing and denial of treatment, for instance, will be termed clinical effectiveness, and you can take that to your grave with you and even have it emblazoned on your tombstone after the system tells you to pack it in because it’s not worth spending anymore money on your decrepit person.
Meanwhile, check out the battle of the duelling charts.
A recent Rasmussen poll found that a scant 26 percent of Massachusetts voters think the state’s ballyhooed health care reform program (that the Obamacrats are now copying) has been a success. Even fewer, 21 percent, think it made health care more affordable, and a minuscule 10 percent feel that health care is improving in the state.
Mind you, this is virtually the same program of mandates and subsidies that Kennebamabaucus wants to unleash on the entire nation.
I guess this is a new take on the old saw about playing well in Peoria before taking your show to Broadway, but in this case, if it’s failing in Massachusetts, it must be headed for success nationwide. Huh?
I’ll have more on Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Care tomorrow with some startling statistics to show what’s really happening under government-mandated health care.
(First hint: The state is going broke.)
Or the INS (then, or now as the USCIS) or the IRS or the Post Office….
It’s KennedyCare, Ted’s take on so-called health care reform, which is really just control reform since the only thing the feds are targeting is how health care is paid for–and ultimately how much is paid for it and how much of it is not paid for (the dreaded “R” word that no Democrat will utter–rationing).
Kennedy is set to unveil his reform module on Monday, and it’s everything a person who loves government will adore–it’s the rapid march to nationalized medicine and the perhaps even more rapid demise of quality health care. Mainly, it’s just the failed Commonwealth Care program that is strangling Massachusetts’ finances and destroying access to doctors and hospitals.
Former GE chief Jack Welch, who lives in Massachusetts, was asked on CNBC what people in the state thought of their new health care system, and he said, in effect, “They all love government, and they’re all drinking the same kool-aid.”
Kennedy is adamant, according to sources, on creating a federal health insurance option, which is, of course, the Trojan Horse needed to kill off private health insurance so that all that’s left standing is one of the great government failures of all time, Medicare (which singlehandedly created the mess we’re in right now).
People who love government will love KennedyCare. The trick now is to hide the costs for those of us who don’t drink the kool-aid, or maybe they just don’t care. Us teetotalers don’t really matter, now do we?
If you thought that four years late and $350 million over budget for the largely unneeded U.S. Capitol Visitor Center was bad, wait till you see what the projects flowing from the recent $787 billion stimulus package will cost.
The 1931 David-Bacon Act (which obviously did nothing to shorten or alleviate the Great Depression) provides that contractors for government construction projects pay a “prevailing wage” to all employees. The prevailing wage–natch–is set by the government itself, and with the Obama people running things, only Karl Marx himself knows how high that can go.
Davis-Bacon was enshrined and expanded to cover virtually everything in the recent stimulus package, so the sewer next to you might end up costing 300 percent of what it would normally cost on the open market.
Wait, it gets better. Not only is Davis-Bacon being married to stimulus projects, but Obama has issued an executive order requiring project labor agreements (PLAs) for major construction projects, currently those costing $25 million or more, but surely and shortly to be lowered by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who has authority over such matters.
PLAs require contractors to accede to all union demands regarding work rules, working conditions, pay, hiring (which must be done in union hiring halls), and union dues (which must be paid even by non-union members). A PLA was and is in place for the infamous Big Dig in Boston, which the Boston Globe projects will cost at least $22 billion, after being budgeted at $6 billion, and not be paid off until at least 2038.
Now, the irony here is that it’s Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Care medical program that the Obamaites are hoping to copy for the rest of us, and that plan makes the cost overruns of the Big Big pale in comparison.
Why does this seem like deja Great Depression all over again?
