Does Obama’s dictatorial ploy to force private companies and the individuals therein to both pay for and provide “free” birth control, sterilization, arbortifacients, etc., gain strength if it can actually lower the costs of health insurance premiums? Writes Sarah W in the comments:
I am horrified at the prospect of national health care, and the related infringements of Obamacare if anyone here isn’t familiar with me.
People ought to be able to provide for their own costs or prudent provision of insurance, by having less of any money spent in that direction confiscated to government coffers; along with health accounts with tax free growth to boost the power of that money. Employer based insurance is part of the problem ( although there are different ways to change that system and I don’t mean to go into that now. ) Mainly I think individuals should have more power and choice in the matter and that this particular issue would be moot if people bought their own plans and paid their own expenses.
Let me be the debbil though. Devils advocate for a moment (and devils advocate only). I have a feeling this is going to come up, and I think it ought to be talked about. What if net subscriber costs went DOWN as as result, or were raised much less than predicted when adjusted for the following:
This wasn’t addressed directly, unless I missed it, in the article – there is an expected savings from one of the pricier payouts for insurers – the cost of pregnancy and childbirth, especially complicated pregnancy and childbirth, and the extraordinarily high expenses associated with premature delivery of a baby (who is generally added to the parents insurance without any exclusions possible for the insurer, and whose care may rapidly mount into the hundred of thousands and even millions in rare cases over time).
It is possible that this would make provision of contraceptives and sterilization procedures cost effective and lower insurer payouts overall.
I’d like to know the true answer to that. It would have some effect certainly.
But assuming it is true – what then? The argument that costs rise for all even when there is no direct subsidy of a particular health care consumers choices is weaker then.
To which I’d like to answer this way:
Dear Devil’s advocate,
The answer is, we needn’t sell our individual liberty and autonomy for a coupon, if that’s what it comes down to, just as we shouldn’t only concern ourselves with losses in individual liberty if the immediate price tag goes up a bit.
And because there was no shortage of availability for cheap contraceptives before Obama’s dictate — and because the rate of abortion is already so elevated in poor areas to begin with — the point is moot anyway: you aren’t going to significantly decrease pregnancies because pregnancies today are widely planned (or at least welcomed), while those that aren’t are readily dealt with, either in advance (through the use of cheap and readily available contraception, from condoms to the pill to the very free abstinence) or after the fact. And even if you did, the savings would be diffuse and long term, pace the analysis from HHS.
Besides that — and this is crucial — none of this is the point. For instance, why make birth control services “free”? Why not, by the same logic, make, say, Lipitor “free.” After all, to play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, heart disease and disease caused by high cholesterol (diabetes, etc.) are on the whole likely more expensive to treat in the long run than is the price of “free” Lipitor spread among the entirety of the mandated population, right?
The point being, that once you begin concentrating on such localized questions, you’re now back to a kind of Gingrich noodling about what should and shouldn’t be provided and at what cost according to a government now intimately involved in the health care of everyone, all of which — by getting us lost in the weeds — misses the overarching point (as I believe is the point): the market and private contracts should be controlling these decisions and prices, and that includes getting the government out of the way of who it allows to join what pool even if it’s across state lines.
Obama is systematically pandering identity group to identity group, promising them “free” things or tax payer-funded relief that people in these various groups wish to take advantage of. And the pitch is seductive, because we’ve all come to realize that we have a government that has no compunction about spending money it doesn’t have — making it difficult for us to reject our cut of an out of control entitlement State. And all Obama and the progressives are asking for in return is that the people they’re buying off eventually enslave themselves utterly to the state.
I would pause here to mention how none of this movement toward dictatorship and the deconstruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would have been nearly as likely had we not adopted and then legitimated 1) a New Critical — and later post structural — hermeneutic that allowed the Constitution to be rewritten under the aegis of “interpretation” that, because it dismissed the need to appeal to original intent, was not in fact interpretation; and 2) a judicial system that gives itself leave to build and rule upon the presumed legitimacy of prior poorly-reasoned, unconstitutional “interpretations” instead of returning to the source documents.
I’ve been told bringing ideas about interpretation and language into the rough-and-tumble of politics is “fundamentally unserious.” But the truth is, this control over language, how it’s used, and what comes to count as a legitimate claim upon it, is the very foundation upon which the Statist coup is built, because the stumbling block to the left’s Utopian designs in this country — and here is where American exceptionalism comes in to play — has always been a Constitution designed and intended to limit their power and control their reach.
Which is why we have now — and have had at various times in our history (see, eg., Woodrow Wilson) — active, leftist intellectual and academic attempts to question 1) the legitimacy of the Constitution and its framers, and failing that, to question its role as foundational, should we wish to maintain the fiction that we are a country of laws and equal protection for all thereunder; and 2) its fixed intent, should we wish to maintain the fiction that there is, in fact, something stable to appeal back to when we gauge the legitimacy of the Statist’s plans to affect the relationship between a government and the putatively self-governed, be it through Executive order or legislation or the administrative state or court activism.
The coupling between ownership over meaning and individual autonomy, as I’ve repeatedly tried to explain over the years, is foundational to our constitutional republic as envisioned by the Declaration; just as the move to make “interpretation” as an operation a matter of motivated consensus at the expense of the individual — now bracketed as his words become public, and his signs are reduced to signifiers then reconfigured as new signs by various interpretive communities seeking to marshal them for their own purposes — is anathema to a society that claims to stand for the rights of the individual.
The erosion of our Constitutional protections is tied directly to the linguistically incoherent procedures we’ve at various times legitimated; the originalist view, which coincides with the intentionalist idea of interpretative coherence and legitimacy, stands as a bullwark against motivated rewritings disguised as interpretation.
And it because we allowed the left, through emotional appeals that praise the “democratizing of meaning” (while simultaneously decrying the linguistic totalitarianism of the individual author), to convince us that what we think we’re doing when we interpret is not a serious or useful question, that we now find the leftist, textualist idea of interpretation institutionalized — and working actively at the bedrock level of epistemology to replace individual autonomy with a kind of motivated and politically-charged collectivism.
I don’t agree that the issue is the fallout from Marbury v. Madison. I believe that framing this debate as one over contraceptives is to lose it from the beginning. This is about unfettered intrusion by the Federal Government into our private lives irrespective of our rights, including the First Amendment. Steyn mentions today that Obamacare has this chilling provision: “The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance.”
Fighting about anything else except this loss of freedom is just useless. Framing the argument as one of judicial excess or of women’s health is to lose it.
So you mean, just scream “you’re taking my freedom” without showing people the hows and the whys?
Good plan.
Until the next time.
No, I think people can walk and chew gum at the same time. Tell you what: you do it your way and I’ll do it mine, you on Twitter in 140 characters and me here, where I’ll assume an interest from people bothering to read.
“pw: A decade of failure, published nearly live!”
Carve it into my tombstone. Next to “he was fundamentally unserious.”
So, Jeff, you think this sentence is a coherent rallying cry?
“The erosion of our Constitutional protections is tied directly to the linguistically incoherent procedures we’ve at various times legitimated; the originalist view, which coincides with the intentionalist idea of interpretative coherence and legitimacy, stands as a bullwark against motivated rewritings disguised as interpretation.”
To mock you, I say,just scream “you’re using interpretavive conherence incorrectly” and everyone will gather under this banner?
You avoid the mertis. This fight cannot be won on that framing. Best of luck to you in your effort to alientate all but the most devoted.
Were I interested in writing bumper stickers or crafting “rallying cries” I’d likely put it a different way.
But when I’m explaining the hows and whys of the trajectory that has compelled us now to beg back lost liberties, taken from us by way of the same bumper sticker bromides disguised as coherent thought you seem to favor, I use different language.
Because my objective here is to explain and analyze, not to create “rallying cries” for people who treat my liberties as part of a team sport.
This is why we’ve already lost.
Christ almighty Mark, must everything in the world be a rallying cry? Or, in the alternative, are we permitted to attempt to understand what moves beneath our feet, even at the risk it takes more than five words to express what we discover? Shit, man.
Oh, covered, I see. Sorry for the redundancy.
Here, everyone. Ignore my post, with its big words and nettlesome linguistic observations that take a bit of time to get through.
Instead, go with this rallying cry: “Obama must be defeated, and Mitt is electable! So whaddya say? GOOOOOO TEEEEEAAAAAAMMMMM!”
I’m thinking that “I want to fuck for free” would make a cool bumper sticker.
And with that, I’m about spent. To think, I spent an hour and put some thought into answering a question, when all that was really necessary was a “NO-BAMA!” with a line through the O.
Goodnight, Gracie!
Here, everyone. Ignore my post, with its big words and nettlesome linguistic observations that take a bit of time to get through.
crap. Couldn’t you have posted THAT sooner?
Well, heh, anyhow, the exposure of one of Hobbes’ fundamental problems remains: what to do about the dope who can’t discern the best means to his self-preservation? Poor sot is screwed, everywhich-a-way.
I would pause here to mention how none of this movement toward dictatorship and the deconstruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would have been nearly as likely had we not …
But, of course, how do we put that genii back in the bottle when most people are pretty much unaware of what the Constitution and Bill of Rights enumerated? I think anyone – with a brain – who studies the works of our founding fathers, etc, must come to one of two conclusions; either we’ve gone completely off the rails, or that a socialist society is better than the one originally created.
Once people know firmly where they stand, I think the debates could be much more fruitful.
Here, everyone. Ignore my post, with its big words and nettlesome linguistic observations that take a bit of time to get through.
You’re too hard on us. Usually one of these pieces, I need skim, then skip back and forth, and then finally study individual paragraphs.
With “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”in the background, which is making me dumber by the moment.
It’s a process, and a stupid joke or two helps me relax.
Everyone knows that this administration has the keenest, most razor sharp economic intellect EVER!!!
So they must know that abortion is way cheaper than the cost of check ups and tonsil removals over the next 18 years. Thus the big bad insurance industry (which just rolled over and took a big domestic object in the backside… the removal of which would be covered if was is a whoopsie in West Hollywood, but proving that corporations are not people should be painful, so take it in the butt Big Insurance)
Maybe we can make a new czar to create a bureaucracy within the Postal Service that provides daily delivery and administration of the pill curbside. With a crack enforcement wing led by all the ICE agents we’ll no longer need when we open the border. (net SAVINGS!!) tailing along to force those meds down if need be.
Maybe outfit serial offenders with ankle monitors that calculate fertility and if the fecund little wench strays out on the town; gets a little drunk and gets herself some…. the RU 486 SWAT team can kick in the door. (Savings!!!)
Plus MSNBC bonus count of jobs saved or created.
Really this administration has no idea how much the SAVINGS!!!! (don’t check our math) or costs (shhhh) will be even after three days of Tim Geitner staying up all night on his Turbo Tax crunching numbers with Maxine Waters’ crack staff.
Nobody knows yet and it’ll never be exact.
The insurance actuaries will figure a way to do as ordered by their overlords and then hide… I mean spread out, any and all possible costs into every other category, because God knows women should be free from the bondage of paying $9 a month out of their own pocket.
All that rambling aside, I’m with Jeff here on drawing a line now and then start walking this thing back.
The government does not have the right to insert itself so deeply into anyone’s life… even as some of us continue to allow, and invite it to. Government should be in the big business of saying “that is not our job and is outside the scope of the Constitution”
“there is an expected savings from one of the pricier payouts for insurers – the cost of pregnancy and childbirth, especially complicated pregnancy and childbirth, and the extraordinarily high expenses associated with premature delivery of a baby (who is generally added to the parents insurance without any exclusions possible for the insurer, and whose care may rapidly mount into the hundred of thousands and even millions in rare cases over time).”
what if normal child birth wasn’t covered? what if the insurance was there only for “especially complicated pregnancy and childbirth, and the extraordinarily high expenses associated premature delivery of a baby”? this would be more in line with the original intention of insurance.
I feel the video coming on.
This analysis is so crucial to understanding what is happening to us and how we can advance our classical liberal ideals, and so well supported by data, observation, and logical development, that it is really hard for me to understand how people can stay with the contra case. I’m reminded of a plot element in a Douglas Adams story in which an entrepeneur becomes very wealthy by building a software company which is a commercial failure, yet is tremendously successful. Thanks to Uncle Sugar. The software allows you to start with your desired conclusion, and then it works backward to produce a seemingly logical argument.
If “bending the cost curve” is the prime directive of the law then the end choice is simplified as all births become a burdensome expense for the insurer and all deaths become a boon. Humans are the problem, the cost that must be controlled and so must be minimized. The culture of death is a logical consequence of all thought on the left.
Or, on the flip-side, the human problem is the problem. But what, we may ask, is that?
from hhs
“However, there was no need to adjust premium levels because there was no cost increase as a result of providing coverage of contraceptive services.[3]”
which directs to “Coalition of Labor Union Women” but thatpdf is from “National Women’s Law Center” which proudly proclaims link
“2010 The Center’s groundbreaking reports and public awareness campaign on gender disparities in health insurance bring women’s voices into the health care debate and contribute to the passage of landmark legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
then a stroll over to wapo
link
so a bunch of lefties claim that following their agenda “saves” money.
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/02/hypocrisy-of-barack-obama-and-irony.html And we should be attacking Barack Obama on his hypocrisy ever chance we get…
MarkO did a pretty good job of strangling the thread in it’s crib (deliberately?), and there’s not much to add to what Jeff’s already said. But I’ll try anyways.
If you’re talking about freedom and not liberty you’ve already lost.
If you think Mitt Romney is personally (and privately!) more conservative than his big Gov’t Republican record suggests, you’ve already lost.
If you think Rick Santorum is a big Gov’t Republican, and thus only conservative by reputation, you’ve already lost.
If you think trying to understand how we got here is a waste of time when we need to be doing something, not only have you already lost, but you don’t even know it.
speaking of mittens
link
I guess MarkO is okay with rallying around a cry, without understanding why everyone is rallying, as long as the cry is catchy.
I dunno about anyone else, but if the rallying cry is “burn the witch” I’m going to damn well want proof the witch weighs less than a duck.
guess MarkO is okay with rallying around a cry, without understanding why everyone is rallying, as long as the cry is catchy.
I think the problem is that the opposition isn’t used to doing much more than responding to arguments with bumpersticker lines. When you hear your own side demanding that you do the same, it is demoralizing.
Even that fat fuch on “the Five” made the argument the other day that he thought this abortion issue would ‘play well’ for them come November. I mean, cripes, that’s all they’re really concerned about, isn’t it.
check this out http://www.adamcarolla.com/dr-drew/
scroll way ahead to 1:13:15 listen to Carolla rip everyone a new one.
In his rant on the erosion of basic liberty ie: $1000 fine to throw a frisbee on the beach in LA County, Carolla says that the NRA got one thing very right. The NRA drew a line on the second amendment and fights it every step of the way
I meant that the NRA fights for Second Amendment rights and liberties for the individual every step of the way.
(And that one is a dogfight every single day)
Sounds to me like MarkO needs to start his own blog, where he can frame and construct the correct rallying cry that will bring big government to it’s knees.
Come on Mark, just do it! Show us how to save the world!
Hey newrouter, haven’t you been paying attention. Focusing on the minutiae like that isn’t fundamentally unserious.
It’s all about the proper framing you see:
Obama very bad man
any one better than Obama
(Including, it would appear, a guy who’s only problem with Obama seems to be he’s not doing it right —too much transformativeness— not enough attention to the details, but hey, that’s why we need executive experience, soes we can execute, oh and administer the apparat too I s’pose but hey, he’s got the proper label!)
we win by losing!
We just go back from the Cathedral in Tulsa, so I thought I’d share the Bishop’s letter:
I’d started this but i’m not quite sure
If you try to recast the contra argument in mathematical terms the inanity is clear. Assume we agree on what “parallel” and “lines”individually mean, then I can make the statement that “two parallel lines never intersect” and because I intend that statement to be interpreted in the context of a Euclidean mathematics, the statement is demonstrably true. However, a different mathematician, agreeing on what “parallel” and “lines”individually mean, but not knowing my intent, and operating under the Reimann mathematics assumption, would argue that the statement is in general false.
How in great googlie’s ghost does it factor in that one of the mathematicians is a two-fer?
Power. Power power power.
Is that enough? I wonder. Perhaps it is as far as the Bishop can safely tread, so far as his direct participation in politics is concerned. But is it far enough for the parishioner, who is also a citizen? I think not.
newrouter, that’s very interesting.
Mitt vetoed a contraceptives bill on principle, but signed Romneycare because it was the best deal he could get.
So much for the realpolitik excuse for signing Romneycare.
Thanks leigh, excellent and powerful.
I thought it was a very strongly worded letter, especially these two sections I have blockquoted. Bishop Slattery gave a homily today that was a take on the gospel reading of the Prodigal Son (the Mass was for the teens who are to make their Confirmation in April). It was well done conversational in tone for the audience but, with an emphasis on duty and forgiveness.
He is originally from the wards in Chicago and is 71 years old. I think if more forceful calls to duty are needed, he’s our man.
You’re welcome, motionview (ya heathen! Just kidding, buddy)
[…] Bishop of Tulsa lays out the response of the Catholic Church to the Obama Abomination Accommodation With the Bishops and with all right thinking Americans, I […]
link
Ooo! My first link! Thankee, mv!
The author says that like it’s a bad thing, as if it were a bug and not feature.
“Rallying cries” are how you energize a mob. Mobs give you the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
Thoughtful essays reflecting on what has happened, what we stand to lose, and what we hope to preserve and gain are how you get informed citizens. Informed citizens give you the American Revolution and the Constitution.
Absent an underlying principle that may require volumes to lay out, a rallying cry is an empty howl.
This is why any productive enterprise needs both an R&D department and a marketing department.
I peronally like these:
“Don’t Tread On Me”
“Live Free Or Die”
Of course you do need to do a bit of book-learnin’ to get there.
Crawford and McGehee, we all know Thomas Paine’s pamphleteering had absolutely nothing to do with rallying citizens for the Revolutionary War. No underlying principles were discussed. The pages were filled with bullet points of simple slogans for the masses.
btw, Sarah’s speech started slow but ended pretty strong.
Just saw a replay of a speech by Governor Jindal. I was impressed with both content and delivery.
lame thinking cont.
link
“Conservatives will argue that paying taxes is different from buying an insurance policy, but really it isn’t.”
“insurance” is what ever you want it to be i guess.
Oh please. As if there is even ONE person in this country that gets pregnant because, “Golly, if only I could afford birth control”. Planned parenthood gives it away, basically for free, if you cannot afford it.
No costs would go down. PERIOD.
I do like Jeff’s take that, REGARDLESS of costs going up or down, you don’t give up your freedom for the mere hope that costs go down. BUT, when it is virtually impossible that costs could go down from common sense and logic, you stop there.
Oh, bullshit. Taxes and private payments are most definitely completely different animals. Yeah, the government does a lot of things with our tax money that many people disagree with. But regardelss of what they use my taxes for, the tax laws are constitutional and I have to pay those taxes, regardless.
It is completely different to force people to buy something or pay for something on the private market that you disagree with.
doubling down on stupid
link
…there is an expected savings from one of the pricier payouts for insurers – the cost of pregnancy and childbirth, especially complicated pregnancy and childbirth…
I very seriously doubt this. The standard oral contraceptive is only, what, $30, $40 per month? We aren’t talking about homeless women here…the issue is providing this “coverage” free to women that have jobs good enough that they offer some sort of health insurance. The women who will benefit from this mandate likely are already using birth control if they are so inclined.
Not if you’re a church, of course. That would be unconstitutional. Which further illustrates the nonsensical nature of the bullshit argument.
From newrouter’s quote and link just above [my emphasis]:
Pay close attention to the words bolded above. This looks to be an honest formulation of the policy, which we see — again, if we look closely — is a dictatorial policy on its face: for it is based solely on “the president’s ‘very deep belief…'”.
Maybe I’ve missed something in Article II, but I cannot recall the Constitution granting the chief executive a power to institute “rights”, not even “rights” about which he holds a “very deep belief”.
Now, such behavior, is of course not unknown to us. It is as such a behavior which constitutes a commonplace in tyrannies we’ve seen across the world and throughout time. The tyrant has a will. Upon his will he acts as he and he alone, sees fit. What, however, could be a more arbitrary source of governance than the will of a single soul?
You can’t find it because those stupid Founders didn’t anticipate the glory that is Teh Won.
“…those stupid Founders didn’t anticipate the glory that is Teh Won.”
Not that I relish being disagreeable toward a light-hearted comment . . . but . . . (and you know what comes next!) . . .
Oh, yes they did!
Not only did they anticipate, they were actually reacting to Teh Won…otherwise known as the King of England.
I’m feeling generous this morning, sdferr, so I thought I’d lob you a softball.
King George the III of England had Barack Obama one better: monarchical legitimacy! Dear King Obama is merely an interloper on the stage of government in America. A low born, loathsome ne’er do well, soon to fade into black.
Heh. You racist, you.
Oh, btw, the homily today was all about the Bishop’s letter. Message: Game on!
In #52 if the “Answer” section is what Huckabee said then he is more stupid than I had thought he was. If that section was by someone else then I apologize to Mr. Huckabee but wonder why he didn’t dispute the “answer”.
There is a difference morally, a difference in my personal culpability, between the government executing a criminal and the government requiring me to execute someone personally or requiring me to furnish the gun and bullets personally to someone who wishes to execute another.
Yeah geoffb, that’s Kirsten Powers’ voice, not Huckabee’s.
Thanks it wasn’t clear from the comment to me.
In other news:
Ya know, that Plato’s City’s burning, babe.
There ain’t a thing in the world they can do.
Some folks can cheer it on, Geoff.
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/
Protesting math with arson. That’s sure to solve something.
Federalist No. 10