Thursday, December 26, 2013

KENDALL: All Americans wanted for Christmas was health care choice

Seeing Obamacare for the first time, it isn’t what we asked for

By Mary Claire Kendall
Wednesday, December 25, 2013 
Originally published in The Washington Times


Illustration by Linas Garsys/ The Washington Times more >
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President Obama's famous unkept promise, "If you like your insurance, you can keep it," has had a Scrooge-like effect on countless Americans this Christmas season.
Far from delighting in Obamacare goodies, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius delusionally recommends, millions will be staring at the proverbial lump of coal, having lost health insurance coverage because of Obamacare, forced to fend for themselves on the public exchanges, and facing a very insecure future given steep prices, risk of identity theft, and uncertainty over actual coverage.
Individual stories shine a brighter spotlight on the misery afoot in the land.
Take 7-year-old Hunter Alford from Gainesville, Texas. This salt-of-the-earth child, passionate about country music, playing guitar and keyboards, and soon the fiddle, is now fighting a rare form of cancer without health insurance. His Children's Health Insurance Program coverage was canceled on Nov. 1, after 18 glitch-free months. When Texas transferred the program to Obamacare Medicaid, it seems Hunter's police officer father earned $173 a month too much to qualify.
Can our leaders finally admit it? Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster, and it's time to repeal and replace it with health care reform that works for all Americans.
We've seen this movie before.
Twenty-five years ago, Americans rejected a massive government health care overreach called the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. Seniors pounced — literally, on the car of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, Illinois Democrat — and it was promptly repealed.
While Democrats like to argue Obamacare is the 2010s version of 1930s Social Security, and its 1960s Medicare and Medicaid expansions, Medicare Catastrophic is the more apt comparison.
Like catastrophic Obamacare, Medicare Catastrophic was inspired by social engineering do-gooders who believed government knows best. A Congressional Budget Office staff working paper described its benefits: "The net result of the act if it were fully effective in 1988 would be to reduce out-of-pocket costs (direct costs plus premiums) for poor and near-poor enrollees, while increasing costs for other groups." The ceiling on those increased costs in 1989 was $1,600 per couple, $800 per individual. The legislation also assumed the almost 75 percent of seniors who had Medigap coverage would drop it in favor of Medicare.
It's the same template Obamacare uses: the well-off subsidizing the less-well-off while assuming the former will agree to this beneficence and sign up despite increased costs. It's the same incorrect assumption underlying the anticipated "death spiral" that would make the "Affordable Care Act" increasingly unaffordable, not only for families and individuals struggling with Obamacare sticker shock, but for the nation as a whole.
Just as Medicare Catastrophic was gone when reality set in, so should Obamacare be.
When it's repealed, we can finally put to rest that other big lie: Republicans have no alternative proposal to Obamacare. The Patients' Choice Act, offered in 2009 by Republican Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Devin Nunes of California, and Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina, was a particularly good plan. Rejecting top-down, one-size-fits-all government mandates, it emphasized disease prevention and health promotion, affordability, accessibility, transparency and equal tax treatment. Unique among the plans, it transformed Medicaid's inferior health care system such that, as Mr. Nunes said, it would have given the poor not only health care, but "dignity," because it put funds directly into their pockets to purchase first-rate coverage.
In the Christmas classic film "It's a Wonderful Life," Jimmy Stewart plays the part of George Bailey, who learns how different his hometown of Bedford Falls would be if he had never been born. Similarly, now that we've experienced life without "the private option," we know how dismal life can be with "the public option." Isn't it time that Americans be given the freedom to enjoy true choice in health care?
For Hunter, and others like him, it can't happen a minute too soon.
Miracle of miracles: Late in the day on Dec. 19, the Obama administration decided folks who have had their insurance canceled because of Obamacare can buy less-expensive catastrophic-only plans or be freed of the health insurance mandate entirely, the deadline for which was Dec. 23.
President Obama minimized this eye-popping change at his news conference Dec. 20, before he jetted off to Hawaii for his year-end vacation.
It's understandable: This unconstitutional change in the law by presidential fiat is an admission that Obamacare is not working. Mr. Obama is not one to admit failure — much preferring to point out the supposed failure of others, particularly Republicans.
Giving Americans a smaller lump of coal was not exactly a Christmas present.
Mary Claire Kendall, a Washington-based writer, served in the Department of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush.

KENDALL: Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginian

By Mary Claire Kendall
Monday, October 21, 2013
Originally published in The Washington Times
Illustration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times
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It’s tempting to call what’s going on in the Virginia gubernatorial race entertainment, mirroring the dysfunction across the Potomac River in the nation’s capital. It is, unfortunately, real. The outcome will shape the political landscape for years to come, impacting not only the 2014 elections — given the morale and policy boost — but more importantly, the critical 2016 presidential race.
Will the other half of the Clinton power partnership — Hillary Rodham Clinton — sit in the White House, thanks to her buddy Terry McAuliffe working from his perch in the Richmond governor’s mansion, when she seeks the presidency?
Or will a Republican with the seriousness of purpose of a Gov. Ken Cuccinelli, radiating out over the Virginia Commonwealth, occupy the White House come Jan. 20, 2017, thanks to rising Republican leadership?
Make no mistake: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is by far the better candidate for governor than Mr. McAuliffe.
How, though, to get past the lies?
There’s that famous line uttered by Gary Cooper’s character in “The Virginian” (1929), the first Western “talkie,” based on the novel by Owen Wister: “If you wanna call me that — smile.”
Mr. Cuccinelli could say the same to Mr. McAuliffe, who is attempting to distract from his nonexistent governing record by lobbing untruths about the attorney general.
Mrs. Clinton, ending her five-year political hiatus, endorsed Mr. McAuliffe at a rally on Oct. 19, in Falls Church, Va. “I believe Terry has what it takes to lead Virginia forward in this rapidly changing world,” she roared.
The Northern Virginia Technology Council PAC (Tech PAC), which endorsed Mr. Cuccinelli last month, begs to differ.
When Tech PAC met with Mr. McAuliffe, he was “uninformed, superficial, flamboyant, no details, all [expletive deleted],” The Washington Post reported. On the other hand, the council found Mr. Cuccinelli “precise, serious and detail-oriented.”
The Tech PAC endorsement of Mr. Cuccinelli undermines the credentials that Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign touts as the basis for his bid for the governorship — that he is a lifelong pro-business entrepreneur whose administration will be all about jobs.
The reaction of Team McAuliffe — warning that the state’s “doors will be closed” to Tech PAC if the organization sticks with its endorsement — also underscores how Mr. McAuliffe’s business success has largely been achieved through his high-powered political connections, most prominently, to the Clintons.
The Virginia state motto, “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”), would need to be replaced by “Quid pro quo” (“this for that”) in a McAuliffe administration, Mr. Cuccinelli said at a Fairfax Chamber of Commerce debate.
If Mr. McAuliffe is elected governor, it’s a good bet Virginia will kiss goodbye Forbes’ recent ranking of the state as the best for business. For one thing, Mr. McAuliffe would rubber-stamp “Barack Obama’s ‘war on coal,’” that would “kill Virginia coal, Virginia jobs.”
In her endorsement, Mrs. Clinton also trumpeted Mr. McAuliffe’s 21 years living in Virginia, i.e., since the Clintons arrived on the Washington political stage.
Here’s the truth, according to The Washington Post: “McAuliffe has been viewed as a Virginia outsider and Washington insider.” The real Virginian is Mr. Cuccinelli, who, unlike Syracuse, N.Y., native Mr. McAuliffe, grew up in the Old Dominion and attended school there, including the University of Virginia.
Mr. McAuliffe is also a Hollywood insider. His contributions from ZIP code 90210 ranking fourth-highest. Mrs. Clinton is headlining a Beverly Hills fundraising luncheon for him on Oct. 30, hosted by media mogul Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl, costing $15,000 per person, and $25,000 per couple.
He’s using all that non-Virginia Hollywood money to tar Mr. Cuccinelli as anti-woman, using camera techniques Hollywood pioneered and knows best. However, if you visited the attorney general’s home, you’d encounter, besides his wife, five daughters running around the house, along with his two young sons — all of whom he wants to succeed beyond their wildest imaginings.
The most pro-woman (and pro-man) policies are those that create jobs. In this regard, actions speak louder than words, and the Tech PAC endorsement of Mr. Cuccinelli speaks volumes. So this real-life drama continues.
In “The Virginian,” the good-natured cowboy played by Cooper listens to his conscience when he discovers his best friend is cattle-rustling. Hopefully, Virginians will choose as their next governor the candidate who, likewise, consults his conscience before listening to his well-connected friends: the very quality that defines Mr. Cuccinelli.
Mary Claire Kendall writes a regular column on “Old Hollywood andBeyond” for Forbes.


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Benghazi Providing Rich Material For An 'All the President's Men' Sequel?

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Friday, August 2, 2013

CNN Reports "Unprecedented Attempts to Keep Benghazi Secrets"

"(Congressman Frank) Wolf has repeatedly gone to the House floor, asking for a select committee to be set-up, a Watergate-style probe involving several intelligence committee investigators assigned to get to the bottom of the failures that took place in Benghazi, and find out just what the State Department and CIA were doing there... More than 150 fellow Republican members of Congress have signed his request, and just this week eight Republicans sent a letter to the new head of the FBI, James  Comey, asking that he brief Congress within 30 days."

As we close in on the one-year year anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the Benghazi consulate, resulting in the deaths of four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens, it's well past time to get to the bottom of Benghazi. 

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Benghazi Is Back / Bach: God's Time Is the Very Best Time

By Mary Claire Kendall


Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685-1770
 

Benghazi is back and, with it, the role of Ben Rhodes in what many consider a classic cover-up. Dithering on whether or not to call the attack on the Benghazi outpost last September 11 a “terrorist attack” certainly smells like a cover-up.  If so, it will come out starting with House Oversight and Government Reform hearings this Wednesday.  That hearing will include two witnesses who will testify that the State Counterterrorism Bureau was cut out of the loop after the attack. 

Squarely in the crosshairs then, as now, is the infamous “talking points,” about which Stephen Hayes writes in a lengthy piece in this week's Weekly Standard.  (See also this piece in The Weekly Standard blog.)  

As I wrote back in November in my 2012 American Politics blog, “Sensing their vulnerability (in the wake of Petraeus’ appearance before Congress), even the White House took the extraordinary step... of refuting the testimony, through National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhoades,” according to The Washington Times

Rhoades, no political virgin, is a former Obama campaign staffer. He has served as President Barack Obama’s speechwriter since 2007 and has written all of Obama’s key foreign policy speeches.” 

While the White House might claim, in Jay Carney’s words, “Benghazi happened a long time ago,” this baby is about to be born—June 11, 2013 being nine months after the attack that occurred.  

Whether the truth comes out now or a year from now, one thing’s certain: God’s time is the very best time as the Cantanta BWV 106 by Johann Sebastian Bach Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit underscores.   

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

President Obama Abdicating Sorely Needed Leadership

By Mary Claire Kendall

What President Barack Obama is doing to America by abdicating his responsibility to oversee the management of the federal government shows, at the least, gross incompetence. President Obama has the responsibility to prioritize funding according to the gravest national needs, of which the defense of the country comes first; and he has failed in this regard.

May our country be spared this scourge, hopefully by Obama waking up to his responsibilities. If not, by taking the only action a nation which hopes to survive, can take.

A friend, asking what 'action' I was recommending, should Obama not wake up, suggested we were hurtling toward a collision course on all possibilities: the one the Constitution offers, which I was reluctantly suggesting; and the other two which arise out of anarchy, to which I replied, "The other two are not corrective actions but disordered reactions. But you're right, God forbid, those two threaten if leadership is not forthcoming. 


Yet, if you look at it optimistically, this time is tailor-made for a leader, not unlike some of our greatest, including Lincoln and Reagan, to step forward and take charge."

We're on a perilous course - just how perilous, I don't think we quite comprehend. As Abraham Lincoln famously said in 1837, "As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide." Words of wisdom, which should stir our leaders - perhaps one who is about to emerge - to action.

Abraham Lincoln, November 1863

Meantime, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, is shaking things up.