Internet Scofflaw

Since the passage of the Democratic health-care-nationalization bill, a number of companies have announced that the bill will increase their health care costs dramatically and possibly will require them to reduce their employees’ health care benefits. AT&T wrote down $1 billion, Deere $150 million, Caterpillar $100 million, 3M $90 million, and AK Steel $31 million. Verizon didn’t state a figure yet, but it could easily run into the billions.

There are several interesting tendrils of the story:

• This is exactly what opponents of the bill predicted would happen. The Democrats’ assurances that no one would lose their health care was all poppycock.
• The worst is yet to come. These write-downs are all (I believe) as a result of two factors, the cut in subsidies under Medicare part D (that’s prescription drugs for retirees) and the “Cadillac tax” on high-value health plans. These effects are minor compared to what’s coming. Once insurance companies are barred from using actuaries to set fair prices, are required to cover pre-existing conditions, and once policies are required to cover a raft of services that many do not cover now, prices are going to soar.
• Democrats, stung by the bad publicity, are demanding that the CEOs of those companies appear on Capitol Hill for a tongue-lashing. The message is clear: don’t expose what we’ve done.
• The hilarious thing is that these write-downs are required under generally accepted accounting practices. Megan McArdle explains:
  

  Accounting basics: when a company experiences what accountants call “a material adverse impact” on its expected future earnings, and those changes affect an item that is already on the balance sheet, the company is required to record the negative impact–”to take the charge against earnings”–as soon as it knows that the change is reasonably likely to occur.

  This makes good accounting sense. The asset on the balance sheet is now less valuable, so you should record a charge. Otherwise, you’d be misleading investors.

  The Democrats, however, seem to believe that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are some sort of conspiracy against Obamacare, and all that is good and right in America.

• In fact, under Sarbanes-Oxley, companies are required by law to make these disclosures.
• The Medicare part D subsidy that is being cut was originally designed as an incentive for private companies to keep retirees on their prescription plan and off Medicare. Now it’s being labelled as “corporate welfare“:
  

  Remember: Subsidies and tax breaks are first sold as necessary carrots in the delicately balanced, expertly engineered Rube Goldberg machine that is our welfare state; they only get labeled as “corporate welfare” when the Democrats decide they want to take over an activity entirely.

• The subsidy is being cut as part of the Democratic effort to rig its bill’s CBO score. According to the CBO score, it will save $5.4 billion. But that’s assuming the CBO’s usual static analysis. That is, it assumes companies will not drop drug benefits for retirees in response to the subsidy cut. This is almost certainly counterfactual. When companies dump millions of retirees into Medicare drug coverage, it will cost much more than the $5.4 billion that the cut supposedly saves.
• Again, this is exactly what opponents of the bill predicted would happen: the bill will cost much, much more than the official figures predict.

Some tax law professors are saying that the JCT analysis arguing that the individual mandate is essentially unenforceable is wrong. Frankly, I don’t know what to hope for.

According to a new Gallup poll, the post-health-care-nationalization narrative adopted by the Democrats has failed, and possibly even backfired. More people (49%) blame Democratic leaders for (largely imaginary) rash of threats and vandalism than conservative commentators (46%) or Republican leaders (43%).

Alas, it appears that the poll didn’t ask whether people thought there really was a rash of threats and vandalism, or whether people thought that talk of threats and vandalism was a political ploy by Democrats to distract voters from what they’d done. It would have been interesting to see numbers on such a question.

The poll also shows that Democrats have much to distract voters from. A majority (53%) believe that the tactics used by Democrats to pass the bill was an abuse of power, including nearly all Republicans, 58% of independents, and even one-in-five Democrats.

The health care nationalization bill limits contributions to Flexible Spending Accounts. A family earning $100k per year that uses FSAs will be paying $625 more in taxes each year.

At Woodland Hills Junior High (that’s my school district, unfortunately) homework is optional.

UPDATE: Woodland Hills ranks 477th out of 498 school districts in Pennsylvania. No wonder.

Jim Geraghty has what he says is the complete list of expiration dates on Obama promises. It’s a long list but I see a few missing (such as this and this).

Heh:

Pharaoh wanted to conserve natural resources, so he withheld the straw from Hebrews that they had been using to make bricks. Free market naysayers and straw industry lobbyists claimed that this would cripple the brickmaking industry, but instead the Hebrews adjusted.

The New York Times on recess appointments, more or less:

It is disturbing that President Obama has exhibited a grandiose vision of executive power that leaves little room for public debate, the concerns of the minority party or the supervisory powers of the courts. But it is just plain baffling to watch him take the same regal attitude toward a Congress in which his party holds solid majorities in both houses.

Seizing the opportunity presented by the Congressional holiday break, Mr. Obama announced 15 recess appointments — a constitutional gimmick that allows a president to appoint someone when Congress is in recess to a job that normally requires Senate approval. The appointee serves until the next round of Congressional elections.

This end run around Senate confirmation was built into the Constitution to allow the president to quickly fill vacancies that came up when lawmakers were out of town, to keep the government running smoothly in times when travelers and mail moved by horseback and Congress met part time.

Modern presidents have employed this power to place nominees who ran into political trouble in the Senate. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton made scores of recess appointments. But both of them faced a Congress controlled by the opposition party, while the Senate has been under Democratic control for Mr. Obama’s entire first year in office.

You won’t see precisely that editorial in the New York Times. That’s Mark Tapscott’s version of the NYT’s 2006 editorial condemning President Bush’s recess appointments. Tapscott just swapped out Bush for Obama and made corresponding factual edits (15 recess appointments instead of 17, etc.).

No, you can’t expect the NYT and its Democratic allies to be consistent with the shoe on the other foot. Recess appointments are good now. Just as signing statements and manager’s amendments are good now, and filibusters (once bad, and then good) are bad once again.

All of this underlines Michael Barone’s first rule of life: All process arguments are insincere.

The hypocrisy is amusing to watch, but what’s really a pity here is the substance. Craig Becker, President Obama’s appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, is truly awful and was justly blocked in the Senate.

(Via Instapundit.)

A glimpse of our future:

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.
The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country. The proposals could lead to:

• 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.
• The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
• A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
• Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The final details of the plans are not due to be announced until the autumn, well after the country has gone to the polls for the general election.

Moral hazard and government mismanagement lead to soaring costs. Soaring taxes and reduced expenditures in other areas (including the legitimate functions of government) follow. Ultimately, when we reach the limit of what can be extracted from the taxpayers, and other areas cannot be cut further, we’ll see this. The only way to prevent this is to reverse course.

(Via Instapundit.)

That’s essentially the conclusion of the Joint Committee on Taxation (page 33, here):

The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

This is a big deal. It means that the entire system the Democrats has forced on us is untenable. (Even more than we thought it was.) The individual mandate is essential to the whole system: without it people can wait until they get sick to purchase health insurance, and (under the pre-existing condition provision) insurers will be forbidden to reject them or charge them an actuarially fair rate. Without forcing healthy people into the system, costs will skyrocket.

(Via Big Government.)

POSTSCRIPT: As I noted earlier, even the individual mandate doesn’t entirely solve the problem, but the properly is certainly much worse without it.

UPDATE: But see this.

In an interview with the New York Times in April 2009, President Obama said that it “is a very difficult question” whether it is “a sustainable model” to give hip replacements to the terminally ill. He went further, explaining how to cut the cost of caring for “the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives”:

It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

That, and other remarks, led people to worry about an “independent group” that would be responsible for rationing care to the elderly and chronically ill. And, sure enough, the health care nationalization bill creates an Independent Medicare Advisory Board to cut Medicare spending.

A month ago, the White House told us not to worry about the board rationing care because:

To make sure that America’s seniors on Medicare are protected, all ideas that ration care . . . will be banned.

The ideas will be banned! I was skeptical, to put it mildly. But now that the bill is law, let’s see what it says. Are the ideas banned?

Section 3403 says in regards to the board’s proposals (which take effect automatically):

The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.

Sounds like a good start, but the strength of the prohibition depends on how “ration health care” is defined. So what’s the definition?

There isn’t one. The word “ration” appears nowhere else in the entire bill. As a result, it’s hard to see that this prohibition could ever be enforced. It’s just there for the White House to point to.

But, in the very next paragraph, the bill specifically authorizes cuts in “payment rates for items and services furnished” beginning in 2020. So while the board isn’t supposed to “ration health care”, it has the power to limit payment rates for health care, which will have exactly that effect.

In short, the board is empowered to ration care, but prohibited from calling it that.

This is hilarious:

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) ties himself in knots trying to deny that health care nationalization charges the IRS with enforcing compliance with the individual mandate. Bill O’Reilly asks him repeatedly who is in charge of levying the fine and Weiner can’t say.

The answer, of course, is the IRS:

(c) NOTIFICATION OF NONENROLLMENT.—Not later than June 30 of each year, the Secretary of the Treasury, acting through the Internal Revenue Service and in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall send a notification to each individual who files an individual income tax return and who is not enrolled in minimum essential coverage (as defined in section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986).

Setting the comedic value aside, there’s one thing to emphasize here. Weiner is lying. Worse, he doesn’t merely lie about the bill, he lies about O’Reilly making things up. He says it repeatedly, while in actuality O’Reilly is absolutely correct.

This is the Democratic pattern through the health care debate. They say it will let you keep your insurance: lie. They say it doesn’t fund abortion: lie. They say it cuts the deficit: lie. They say it cuts costs: lie. They say it will lower premiums: lie. They say it immediately covers children with pre-existing conditions: lie. They say it won’t fund illegal immigrants: lie. They say it contains no sweetheart deals: lie. They say it won’t lead to rationing: extremely dubious.

I’m convinced that the reason only 55% support repealing this thing is that many people believe the lies. When the learn the truth, that number will only go up.

UPDATE: Updated the rationing link.

Social Security has begun wrecking the budget. It first slipped into the red in August 2008, the very month that Peter Orszag, now the president’s budget director, said it would not show a deficit until 2019. Still, last year’s official budget projections said that Social Security wouldn’t start losing money for an entire year until 2017.

Oops. Social Security begins hemorrhaging money this year, and every year thereafter:

The new figures claim that we’ll start getting better next year (don’t they always say that?), and get back into the black briefly in 2014 and 2015. Please. We’ve seen the value of these predictions; there’s no way that will happen.

As of this year, entitlement spending is a sucking chest wound in the federal budget. What a great time to create a big new entitlement.

(Via Hot Air.)

Public opinion on health care nationalization appears to be unaffected by passage of the bill. On the day of the vote, 54% opposed it, 45% strongly opposed it, and 41% supported it. The numbers now are essentially unchanged: 55% support repeal, 46% strongly support repeal, and 42% oppose repeal. Nearly half say their state should sue to federal government to block the bill.

On the day before the health care nationalization vote, there was a big Tea Party demonstration against the bill. The usual people said that the demonstration was racist. (Because, like, we’d be totally okay with health care nationalization if a white president had proposed it. Er, other than Clinton.) As evidence, they gave us unsubstantiated claims that racial epithets were shouted at black legislators, and one black Congressman, Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), was spit on.

There’s no way to refute the claims of epithets; given all the people there, they could even be true. But it turns out there is good video of the supposed spitting incident. The video shows clearly what really happened. In elementary school we would have said “say it, don’t spray it”. It’s annoying, but these things can happen when you walk through a crowd of screaming protesters. As for the allegation that someone deliberately spat on him, it’s a lie.

UPDATE: Cleaver admits that the whole problem was the guy didn’t apologize for his loose spittle. (Via Instapundit.)

Ilya Somin has a list today of the books that most influenced his world view. I thought that was fun to think about, so here’s my list based on a few minutes of thought:

• The Bible. The authoritative work on God and man.
• C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. All the lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves from God. Also, an indictment of American education.
• C.S. Lewis, Perelandra. Why do we sin, really? Satan seeks to repeat the Fall on a new planet, but this time God sends someone to debate him.
• C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce. I never understood the idea of hell before I read this book. Hell is not a punishment; hell is a choice.
• Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek explains why socialism leads to totalitarianism.
• Robert Barro, Macroeconomics. A definitive treatment of neoclassical macroeconomics. It taught me that liberal economics (and big-government conservatism) is doomed to failure.
• Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott, Business Cycles: Real Facts and a Monetary Myth.  An economics paper that shows that, contrary to common belief, economic contraction — not growth — causes inflation. After reading this paper, watching the news is never the same again.
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Much of what Rand says is wrong, and even more of it is right, but she never does anything by half-measures. Aside from the energy machine, this book seems less far-fetched every year.
• Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism. Fascism is a phenomenon of the left, not the right. Goldberg examines the history of progressivism and fascism and finds them deeply intertwined, and in many cases one-and-the-same. Basically this is a historical confirmation of The Road to Serfdom.
• Vernor Vinge, The Ungoverned and Marooned in Real Time. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much these two stories influenced me. The first paints a compelling picture of a working society with no government. The second goes mainly in a different (and extremely cool) direction, but in passing explores the evils of government a bit further.

Michael Kinsley once said that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. John Dingell (D-MI) committed a heck of a gaffe when he explained why the health care bill takes years to take effect:

The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

(Emphasis mine.)

That, is exactly what health care nationalization is about.

I’m not sure Robert Gibbs understands what transparency means:

“The president is signing an executive order on abortion that is a pretty big national issue,” a reporter asked. “Why would that be closed press, no pictures?”

“We’ll put out a picture from Pete [Souza],” Gibbs said. . .

“Right, but what about allowing us in, for openness and transparency?”

“We’ll have a nice picture from Pete that will demonstrate that type of transparency.”

Awesome! A propaganda shoot from the official White House photographer will “demonstrate that type of transparency.”

(Via Hot Air.)

Richard Adams asks a good question: Will Christian Scientists get an exemption from the government mandate to purchase health insurance? It’s hard for me to imagine that they wouldn’t, which will probably lead to a surge in persons claiming to be Christian Scientists.

(Via Power Line.)

Oops:

The relatively new nonstop Delta (DAL) flight from Pittsburgh to Paris may very well be in trouble. It’s not meeting its revenue targets, and that’s going to cost the city a lot of money. Next year, Delta may simply pull out entirely. This shows that while cities may think they deserve transatlantic service, that’s not always the case.

Pittsburgh International Airport used to be a thriving US Airways hub with nonstop service to Europe. When US Airways cut things down to size in Pittsburgh, the city wanted desperately to get its European flights back. So last year, it entered into a revenue guarantee agreement with Delta Air Lines. Delta would come in and fly to Paris and the state, along with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, would cover any losses. . .

The subsidies will last until June 2011, two years into the service. For the first year, if the flight underperformed, Delta could be reimbursed with up to $5 million. It looks like they’ll get the maximum. My guess is they’ll have more money coming in year two.

AP reports:

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday. However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now. . .

In recent speeches, Obama has given the impression that the immediate benefit for kids is much more robust.

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.

Obama’s public statements conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were sweeping and straightforward. . . The president said Friday at George Mason University in Virginia. . . “Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.”

Did anyone read the bill?

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: More here and here. (Via Instapundit.)

Hannah Giles is dancing on ACORN’s grave. I think she’s earned it.

I don’t doubt that this is just a tactical retreat, and they’re planning to re-emerge under a new name, one that’s not associated with election fraud, child prostitution, and human trafficking. Still, the good guys won this round.

Power Line has the details. It’s going to take work just to name them all.

On the occasion of the second anniversary of Internet Scofflaw, it seems like a good time to explain the name of the blog. The blog is named in honor of the Scofflaw Principle.

Simply put, the Scofflaw Principle says that adult humans are free, and that no one but our creator has the rightful authority to impose rules on us without our consent. Consequently, we are under no moral obligation to obey rules to which we have not consented. The reason we do not murder, cheat, or steal is not because civil authorities have made such acts illegal, but because they violate the moral code given us by our creator.

However, while the civil authorities may have no rightful authority to burden us with rules and regulations, they do have the power to do so. Therefore, while we have no moral obligation to obey their rules, we may find it expedient to do so. Such decisions are made on the basis of our own evaluation of costs and benefits.

I always pay my taxes, even though they go well beyond what the government has any right to demand of me, because if I refuse to do so, it is likely that I will be caught and the penalty is high. On the other hand, I almost never obey Pittsburgh’s ubiquitous no-turn-on-red signs, because I am unlikely to be caught and the penalty is slight.

The Scofflaw Principle clarifies our relationship with the civil authorities. The government is no different from anyone else that seeks to control our actions through coercion. When no moral imperative is at issue, we comply or not based solely on our own assessment of the risks. Some suggest that we have a duty to disobey laws that are improperly constituted. But the Scofflaw Principle says that whether the law is “proper” is beside the point. In the absence of a moral imperative, what matters is whether the government has the power to punish us for breaking it.

There are those who claim that we are not actually required under the law to fulfill various obligations (such as paying taxes). The legal theories underlying such claims are extremely far-fetched, but that’s beside the point. Regardless of what the law “really” says, the fact remains there is no possibility of prevailing in court with such a theory. As a practical matter, the law is whatever the courts say. Expecting courts to do the “right” thing merely sets us up for disappointment.

This is not to say that the rule of law is not important. Our lives are inestimably better when the civil authorities are not capricious, and the rule of law is (or used to be) the most important factor limiting their caprice. The same goes for other principles of good government such as democracy, checks and balances, and separation of powers. None of these principles give the government the moral prerogative to command us, but they do serve to limit governmental caprice.

Finally, a caution. The Scofflaw Principle cuts both ways: the whims of the civil authorities carry no moral authority in either direction. While we need not heed their demands, neither may we accept their warrant. Just because government sanctions an action does not make it moral. We cannot rely on government to tell us what is right any more than what is wrong. We must make moral decisions for ourselves.

Rasmussen finds that 49% favor their state suing the federal government to overturn health care nationalization. Only 37% disagree.

UPDATE: A CBS poll finds that 62% want Republicans to continuing challenging the bill.

This is a huge scandal, even for Chicago. Isn’t it? Or is it okay for the politically well-connected to get special treatment?

While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help through a shadowy appeals system created in recent years under former schools chief Arne Duncan.

Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city’s premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan’s office and obtained by the Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Duncan is now secretary of education under President Barack Obama.

The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan’s tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley’s office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

Non-connected parents, such as those who sought spots for their special-needs child or who were new to the city, also appear on the log. But the politically connected make up about three-quarters of those making requests in the documents obtained by the Tribune. . .

The list surfaced amid a federal probe and an internal investigation into admissions practices at the city’s top high schools. Until Monday, the district had not revealed it had kept such a list. . .

Pickens [a former aide to Duncan] acknowledged the list was kept confidential. The vast majority of parents who follow the system’s school application process never knew they could appeal to Duncan’s office for special consideration.

“We didn’t want to advertise what we were doing because we didn’t want a bunch of people calling,” Pickens said.

They didn’t want a bunch of people calling. The appeals process wasn’t for them.

(Via Hot Air.)

The reconciliation bill rescinds Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback. Nelson has announced he will vote against the reconciliation bill. You do the math.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I do oppose the reconciliation bill. It makes a bad bill worse, and it doesn’t even rescind the kickback the right way. (Rather than removing the deal it gives it to every state.) But on this subject Nelson gets no benefit of the doubt.

(Via Instapundit.)

The House Democrats have posted a list of immediate “benefits” people will see from the health care bill:

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
• Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
• Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

Let me paraphrase:

• Make private coverage more expensive.
• Offer a government subsidy.
• Make private coverage more expensive.
• Make Medicare more expensive.
• Offer a government subsidy.
• Make private coverage more expensive.
• Make private coverage more expensive.
• Make private coverage more expensive.
• Nothing.
• Make private coverage more expensive.

A couple of these (the appeals process and the high-risk pools) might be good ideas if they’re well-implemented (which I doubt), but every single one of them increases costs. I mention this because they go on to say:

By enacting these provisions right away, and others over time, we will be able to lower costs for everyone and give all Americans and small businesses more control over their health care choices.

Amazing. They list ten items that increase costs, and then somehow claim they are lowering costs for everyone.  Similarly, they say that they give Americans more control over their health care choices, but most of the items on their list foreclose choices. (You want to choose basic minimal coverage? Too bad.) In fact, all of them do, because cost is the greatest choice restrictor of all.

They really are completely out of touch with reality.

UPDATE: From what I’ve been reading (for example), the appeals process item really doesn’t do anything at all.

The only silver lining I see in this disaster is the emergence of Paul Ryan. Before the health care debate began, most of us had never heard of him.

The health care bill will cost much more than projected:

Holy crap! Medicare was off by nearly an order of magnitude! Also, the taxes that purport to cover it will be unproductive.  We’re looking at utter disaster on the fiscal side of things alone.

(Via Instapundit.)

Chris Muir nails it.

We like to believe our government is basically benign. It’s not. It’s us versus them.

Democrats sent a clear message today: “F*** you America; we know best.” Now it’s our job to make them pay for their arrogance.

A review of public opinion on the day of the vote: 54% oppose the bill. More people (45%) strongly oppose the bill than favor it (41%). 55% say that Congress should scrap the bill and start over. The numbers have scarcely budged for months.

57% say the cost of health care will go up. Hardly anyone (17%) says costs will go down. 54% say the quality of care will go down. 57% say the plan will hurt the economy. 81% say it will cost more than projected. 51% say they fear the government more than private insurers.

Just 20% believe Congress understands the bill it’s voting on. Despite all the above, people expect the bill to pass. In accordance with that expectation, just 21% say the government has the consent of the governed.

UPDATE: The CNN poll is even more lopsided but in the same ballpark: 59% oppose, 39% support. (Via Instapundit.)

The word on the street is the Stupak is buying the meaningless executive order. Without the Stupak bloc, today’s vote is a forgone conclusion.

The lesson here is never to rely on a Democrat to do the right thing.

UPDATE: Stupak’s office is denying this. We’ll see.

UPDATE: There is indeed a deal. So much for the “strong” denials out of Stupak’s office.

It looks as though the pro-life Democrats have gone the way of the national-security Democrats.

UPDATE: Well put:

On Stupak, he was like watching an overmatched pitcher in a baseball game hold off a much more formidable opponent only to surrender the game-winning home run in the ninth inning. He simply ran out of gas and backbone. So very sad to see this late in the game. He obviously couldn’t stand up to the pressure. Too bad we had to watch all nine innings thinking he (and other pro-life Democrats) would pull out a victory.

Indeed. Part of what’s so maddening about this is I really came to believe that Stupak was committed to the cause. It turns out I was wrong about which cause.

AP reports:

It was a bold response to skyrocketing health insurance premiums. President Barack Obama would give federal authorities the power to block unreasonable rate hikes.

Yet when Democrats unveiled the final, incarnation of their health care bill this week, the proposal was nowhere to be found.

Ditto with several Republican ideas that Obama had said he wanted to include after a televised bipartisan summit last month, including a plan by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to send investigators disguised as patients to hospitals in search of waste, fraud and abuse.

And those “special deals” that Obama railed against and said he wanted to eliminate? With the exception of two of the most notorious — extra Medicaid money for Nebraska and a carve-out for Florida seniors faced with losing certain extra Medicare benefits — they are all still there.

For the White House, these were the latest unfulfilled commitments related to Obama’s health care proposal, starting with his campaign promise to let C-SPAN cameras film negotiations over the bill.

We can be thankful that the price controls were abandoned. As for the rest, well, who really believed him anyway?

UPDATE: To be clear, although the overt price caps may be out, the bill still does bar insurers from setting actuarially fair prices. Specifically, insurers are prohibited from considering most risk factors in setting their prices. Thus, costs are pushed down for high-risk clients and pushed up for low-risk clients.