Internet Scofflaw

Obamacare is costing more Americans their health insurance than have gained it. Many more:

More Americans In 3 States Have Had Their Insurance Canceled Under ObamaCare Than Have Filed An Exchange Account In All 50

This week the reality of the ObamaCare roll-out appeared in a set of news stories that serve as an ironic juxtaposition. Over 500,000 individuals have seen their insurance policies cancelled in just 3 states.  In all 50 states, only 476,000 applications have been “filed” in an exchange. (Even though we are still learning the true definition of “filed.”)

This parenthetical remark refers to the fact that the federal government (as well as some states including California and New York) are reporting applications as filed when in fact the application has merely been started (i.e., the applicant has logged in and begun shopping).

This is an unmitigated disaster.

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This was President Obama, way-back-when (two-and-a-half weeks ago), categorically refusing to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate:

“Steve, let’s be clear, we’re not going to delay the Affordable Care Act,” Obama said. “There are millions of Americans, right now, who don’t have health insurance and they are, finally, after decades going to be in a position where they can get get affordable health care just like everybody else and that means that their families, their kids, themselves, they’ve got the basic security that you and I enjoy. And the notion that we would even delay them getting that kind of peace of mind, potentially going to a doctor to get treated for illnesses that they currently have simply because the Republicans have decided, ideologically, that they’re opposed to the Affordable Care Act is not something that we’re going to be discussing.”

And he meant it. He was willing to shut down (sorta) the government to prevent any delay to his signature achievement. Republicans wanted a full year’s delay, but Obama would not even negotiate something shorter.

But now the White House is announcing a six-week delay. And the Democrats’ efforts to spin a delay as not really a delay are simply hilarious.

Of course, there is a big difference between what the Republicans offered and what the White House is announcing, much bigger than length of the delay. The law imposes the individual mandate on February 15, no ifs, ands, or buts. Republicans offered the president a legal delay, through properly-enacted legislation. He refused it, and is now unilaterally imposing an illegal delay. He didn’t have to flout the rule of law; he prefers to flout it.

POSTSCRIPT: Meanwhile, we should remember that delaying the individual mandate is not actually good policy, unless community rating (i.e., price controls) and guaranteed issue are also delayed. The individual mandate is what makes community rating and guaranteed issue possible without skyrocketing premiums. (Yes, premiums are as much as tripling, but without the mandate it would be even worse.) The administration has no good solution to this mess they’ve made.

POST-POSTSCRIPT: By the way, when you read Obama’s prattle above, keep in mind that what he was refusing to delay was the individual mandate, the part of Obamacare that forces people to buy “peace of mind” whether they want to or not.

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At President Obama’s everything-is-fine-with-Healthcare.gov-really-I-mean-it Rose Garden speech, he brought a dozen supposed success stories, but when you actually look at them, hardly any of them actually are:

For example, a Pennsylvania man named Malik Hassan was in the group, and this is the White House description of his situation, in full: “Malik Hassan works at a restaurant in Philadelphia. Hassan, who does not receive coverage through his employer, is looking forward to enrolling for health coverage this fall. He recently used Healthcare.gov. to process his application and is waiting for the options for potential plans in Philadelphia.” . . .

Then there is Nathaniel Hojnacki, who recently finished his schooling. Here is the White House description of his situation, again in full: “Nathaniel Hojnacki recently received his Master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and is in an employment situation without benefits. Hojnacki recognizes the importance of coverage and is planning to enroll after he explores his coverage options on the DC exchange.”

These are what pass for success stories: people who are planning to use the system eventually. In fact, not one of Obama’s “success stories” had actually managed to use the federal exchange. Two of them (reportedly) used state exchanges, and a few others exploited other provisions of the law; the rest are pretty much of the same character as the examples above.

UPDATE: I found the video for Obama’s speech:

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Remember when President Obama promised you could keep your health insurance?

If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

He was lying, and not just a little bit:

Insurance companies are also already sending out notices to millions of consumers cancelling individual policies because they are non-compliant with ObamaCare’s new mandates. Kaiser Health News, usually a cheerleader for the law, reports that “Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state.” Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people, Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20% of its individual market customers, and Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia is dropping about 45%.

UPDATE: More people losing their health insurance:

The Affordable Care Act was signed by President Obama in 2010 and since then he has repeated one reassuring phrase: “If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”

But it is happening. The president’s health care law raises the standards for insurance policies, which many consider to be a good thing. But hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don’t meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled. . .

[Natalie Willes’s] insurer, Kaiser Permanente, is terminating policies for 160,000 people in California and presenting them with new plans that comply with the healthcare law.

“Before I had a plan that I had a $1,500 deductible,” she said. “I paid $199 dollars a month. The most similar plan that I would have available to me would be $278 a month. My deductible would be $6,500 dollars, and all of my care after that point would only be covered 70 percent.”

Wiles may be paying more to get a worse deductible and coinsurance, but now she’ll get to say that her plan is Obamacare compliant. Priorities.

More People Have Signed Up To Go To Mars And Die Than For Obamacare.

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The 17% federal government shutdown is over now, so the Park Service — now shown to be as partisan and corrupt as any other part of the federal government — is now back at work. Or what passes for work as a federal employee. But there’s still one instance of the Obama Park Service’s screw-you-all policy that is worth noting:

When a man took it upon himself to mow the lawn at the Lincoln Memorial, the Park Service shut him down. Once again, the Obama shutdown does not mean that the government stops doing things; it means the government makes affirmative efforts to ensure things are worse.

Anyway, now that the shutdown is over, the furloughed workers get back pay. Thus, the shutdown was actually a paid vacation, which is pretty sweet. (ASIDE: Which is one reason why the unions had to hire fake government workers to protest the shutdown.) In fact, those workers who were willing to engage in a little public larceny get paid double:

Some federal workers who were furloughed in Oregon could be getting paid twice, with a state official confirming to Fox News that those workers who received state unemployment benefits during the partial government shutdown will not have to re-pay the money.

Other states haven’t yet determined if claimants will have to repay the money. Of particular importance, of course, is DC and Maryland:

Washington D.C. and Maryland also both paid millions in unemployment benefits to about 24,000 furloughed workers during the budget crisis.

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We’ve covered this in the past, but it’s useful to find the case gathered in one place:

• Deception #1: universal coverage
• Deception #2: no new taxes on the middle class
• Deception #3: annual premium savings of $2,500
• Deception #4: no increase in the deficit
• Deception #5: you can keep your plan if you like it

I’ve focused particularly on #5 here.

(Via Power Line.)

Ilya Somin has a very interesting article “voting with your feet”, arguing that foot-voting behavior is much more rational than ballot-voting behavior, and that foot voting strengthens the case for limited and decentralized government.

The Obama administration would like to claim that its unprecedented, spiteful, “shutdown” activities — spending money they don’t have in order to make sure the shutdown hurts — are somehow legally required. But they have never released any legal opinions to explain why a lack of spending authority even permits — much less requires — them to pay people to “make life as difficult as possible”, particularly when such has never been done before.

Moreover, by ending some of their most egregious shutdown theater, the Obama administration is conceding that those activities are not in fact required.

For example, one of the first instances of shutdown spite to come to light was the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, which has been operated by volunteers at no cost to the government since 1980. Since it costs the government nothing, the Farm was never affected by government shutdowns before. But in the Obama shutdown, the federal government rented barricades to close the Farm. After public outcry, the Obama administration is allowing the Farm to re-open, proving that the administration never needed to close the Farm in the first place.

Also, the Obama administration will now allow states to pay to keep National Parks open, something they rejected as impossible just a week ago.

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More Obama administration shutdown theater:

• Barricading wheelchair ramps in Washington DC.
• Removing handles from water fountains on trails.
• Illegally closing Alaskan lands.

The pictures of barricaded wheelchair ramps are really quite astonishing. We used to think that “shutting down the government” meant that the government would not have the money to deliver public services. But now that the Obama administration is spending money they don’t have in order to hurt people, the government is revealed as just an extortion racket: if you don’t keep the protection money flowing, they will screw you up. “Nice wheelchair ramp. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”

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The Telegraph reports:

EU plans to fit all cars with speed limiters

All cars could be fitted with devices that stop them going over 70mph, under new EU road safety measures which aim to cut deaths from road accidents by a third. Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded.

In Daniel Keys Moran’s Continuing Time science-fiction series, an oppressive world government bans manual control of vehicles. Computers drive all the cars, coordinated by a central system, ostensibly for safety, but really so the government can control everyone’s movements. We’re behind schedule on the telepaths and cyborgs, but that prediction seems to be moving along nicely.

Ah, the beauty of socialized medicine. When the government runs health care, health care failures become political problems to be covered up:

Internal emails from the Care Quality Commission show that Labour tried to stop the watchdog from informing the public about failings at Basildon University Hospital, where patients were dying needlessly on filthy wards.

The dossier of emails, released under Freedom of Information, state that Andy Burnham, the then Health Secretary, was “furious” when “graphic details” of the care failings became public. Separate emails suggest that Mike O’Brien, the former Labour minister of state for health, told the NHS watchdog that “anything you do is political” in the run up to the General Election.

Executives at the watchdog decided that “given the political environment” a report into standards of care across the country should be “largely positive”.

So the purpose of the healthcare “watchdog” is to protect the government by hiding its failures. Good to know.

The lion’s share of the blame here belongs to the old Labor government, which actually committed this atrocity, of course. But we should also recognize that the structure of the system makes this malfeasance likely. Government-run health care inevitably is politicized health care.

That’s our future, now. And it won’t take as long here.

(Via Power Line.)

More from President Obama’s “make life as difficult as possible” strategy:

The National Park Service also closed the Foothills Parkway, a major thoroughfare in the county. The closure came without warning and left the local school district scrambling to get children back to their homes.

The children live in the eastern Tennessee community of Top of the World – serviced by School Bus 49. Normally, the bus travels along the Foothills Parkway. Other roads leading to the isolated mountain community are impassible by bus.

“It’s dangerous,” said Nancy Kemp, the spokesperson for Blount County Schools.”It’s very curvy and straight up the mountain. It’s just not a safe route.” . . .

Until the partial government shutdown ends, school buses will not run. That means parents will have to transport their children to and from school using treacherous “white knuckle routes.”

This has gone beyond a fight over spending and a quixotic effort to defund Obamacare. This is much bigger now. The president has maliciously decided to shut down things that don’t need to be shut down, purely to hurt people. He must not get away with it.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

The Obama administration shuts down the AMBER Alert website as part of its petty, malicious shutdown theater, but don’t you worry, union representatives will stay on the payroll, thanks to a timely new ruling by the administration:

The Obama administration quietly changed its furlough guidance Friday to allow government employees who are also union representatives to return to work and receive a regular paycheck during the government shutdown.

And while people are being physically ejected from the National Mall, the Park Service is allowing an immigration pressure group to rally on the National Mall:

A planned immigration reform rally will take place on the National Mall on Tuesday even though the site is closed due to the government shutdown. . . The event is hosted by several immigration activist groups, together with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO.

In short, if you’re inconvenienced by the shutdown, it’s because the Obama administration doesn’t care about you. They’re happy to carve out exceptions for the people they care about.

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As part of its malicious shutdown theater, the Obama administration has decided to shutter the AMBER alert website:

The Amber alert website, the national missing-child warning program, has been shut off due to the government shutdown, according to the Department of Justice.

“Due to the lapse in federal funding, this Office of Justice Programs website is unavailable,” it says on amberalert.gov.

The administration claimed that it had no choice but to shut down the AMBER site, but this was clearly a lie because (1) it makes no sense at all:

The Justice Department official explained the website’s page appearing as if Amber Alert is down by saying, “The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) ran out of funds on Friday so all of the sites they maintain about the work they do went offline.”

It was not clear as to why it would cost less to change the website’s appearance than to just keep it the way it was.

and (2) they subsequently decided to bring the site back up again, proving they can keep it up it they want to.

They later argued that it was somehow a security risk to have content on a page that wasn’t being supervised. Aside from making no sense, this fails to explain why the AMBER Alert site was singled out. Nearly every other page on the DOJ’s Juvenile Justice page is still in operation.

POSTSCRIPT: Just to be clear, the AMBER Alert system itself was unaffected. This is the page that gives information about the AMBER Alert system.

UPDATE: Ace has been finding countless .gov sites left up all day.

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Hah. Ha hah. Hah ha ha ha:

“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”

Maybe next time you won’t be so quick to put your hand in your neighbor’s pocket.

(Via Instapundit.)

As part of its vindictive shutdown theater, the Park Service is evicting people from their own homes:

National Park Service officials cited the government shutdown as the reason for ordering an elderly Nevada couple out of their home, which sits on federal land.

“Unfortunately overnight stays are not permitted until a budget is passed and the park can reopen,” an NPS spokesman explained to KTNV.

Ralph and Joyce Spencer, aged 80 and 77, respectively, own their home, but the government owns the land on which it sits.

Just to be clear, they own the home and pay rent on the land. The federal government has no right to evict them, and doing so actually costs the government money. Is it really possible that Obama and the Democrats can get away with this?

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

If you calculate what percentage of federal spending is actually halted by the federal government “shutdown”, it’s just 17%. The vast majority is exempted from the shutdown for one reason or another.

Yet another example of the Obama administration shutting down something the federal government doesn’t even control:

The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. . . But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

But the real scoop is this one:

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. . .

“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

The Obama administration clearly is supremely confident that they won’t be blamed for anything that happens, but should they be? Their behavior is so inexcusable, the story is bound to get out, even with the media’s wall of silence.

(Previous post.) (Via Ace.)

The awesome pettiness of the Obama administration is truly a sight to behold. Alas, that’s the only sight they’ll let you behold:

Blocking access to trails and programs at South Dakota’s most popular attraction was one thing, but state officials didn’t expect Congress’ budget stalemate to shut down a view of Mount Rushmore.

The National Park Service placed cones along highway viewing areas outside Mount Rushmore this week, barring visitors from pulling over and taking pictures of the famed monument.

They actually closed the places where you could pull off the highway. This isn’t the government shutting down; this is the government going into full screw-the-people mode. Amazing. And horrifying.

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Today is the centennial of America’s second-worst mistake: the federal income tax. It wasn’t always as onerous as it is today; take a look at the original 1040 form from 1913. Keep it in mind whenever the government imposes a new program that seems not so bad at first.

Democrats like to say stuff like this:

If even one child’s life can be saved, then we need to act. Now is the time to do the right thing for our children, our communities, and the country we love.

But that argument only applies when they’re talking about banning guns, which they want to do anyway. It certainly doesn’t apply when their own sacred cows are at stake. Propose exempting the NIH from the government shutdown, and you get this:

CNN: “If you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Sen. Reid: “Why would we want to do that?”

Democrats like to cry “think of the children!”, but it’s all crocodile tears. They don’t mean a word of it.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

Because of the federal government “shutdown”, the federal government is spending extra money to close facilities that cost the government nothing to operate. The instance that is getting a lot of attention is the World War 2 memorial, an unstaffed, open-air monument that is open 24/7, except when the Obama administration barricades it to make a point.

An even better example is the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, in McLean, Virginia. The Farm has been operated by entirely by volunteers for 30 years since its budget was zeroed in 1980:

Visitors unaware of how the farm is run are apt to conclude that the government shutdown, now two days old, is directly responsible for the farm’s closing. But Eberly sent a note Wednesday morning to the park’s email list. In the email, Eberly says, “For the first time in 40 years, the National Park Service (NPS) has finally succeeded in closing the Farm down to the public. In previous budget dramas, the Farm has always been exempted since the NPS provides no staff or resources to operate the Farm.”

The Claude Moore Colonial Farm, Eberly says, has thrived even as the federal government has treated it with “benign neglect” for decades. That benign neglect would serve it better than the barricades now surrounding it. . .

[Eberly adds:] “You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they don’t have the money to pay to evict visitors from a park site that operates without costing them any money.”

In fact, the Park Service is actually renting the barricades it is using to close the Farm. A strange “shutdown” indeed.

UPDATE: More of this crap:

It is obvious that the Park Service intends to block access to these trailheads, even though it literally costs them nothing to leave them open and by closing them they actually increase the possibility of serious problems for drivers on the road and hikers still in the park. In fact, it is costing them money they don’t have trying to block access.

To block access is thus a deliberate, senseless, and mean-spirited act that demonstrates quite clearly the political goals of the Obama administration during this shutdown.

Indeed. Glenn Reynolds adds, “I’m surprised they didn’t put a bag over the Washington Monument.”

Clearly the Obama administration is supremely confident that the public will hold Republicans responsible for everything, no matter what. If they had any worry about blowback at all, they wouldn’t dare indulge in such mean-spirited behavior.

UPDATE: Still more:

The campgrounds are self-sufficient and receive no federal funding. No government employees staff or manage the parks. The management companies pay the National Park Service out of the funds they generate from operating the thousands of campgrounds. . .

Notice that last part. The parks not only do not cost the taxpayers any money, they pay funds into the Treasury out of the fees park users pay. Shutting them down will cost the taxpayers money.

Will Baude has some interesting thoughts on presidential fidelity to the law that relate to my Scofflaw Principle. I think I come down with theory #3:

Government officials are special. Civilians may have no moral obligation to obey the law (see #1), but government officials are empowered by the law, so they are specially obligated to take the bitter with the sweet. The oath of office operates to convert law into a personal promise.

By government officials, I mean specifically executive-branch officials, in regard to the law they are tasked with administering. For the president that’s everything (or, more precisely, all Constitutional federal law). For other executive-branch officials it depends on their portfolio: if you work at the IRS, you might not be morally obliged to obey speed limits, but you had better obey every jot and tittle of tax law.

Barack Obama, June 2009:

If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

Now:

Last week, our family received notice from Anthem BlueCross BlueShield of Colorado that we can no longer keep the plan we like because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” The letter informed us that “(t)o meet the requirements of the new laws, your current plan can no longer be continued beyond your 2014 renewal date.”

Yes, we knew this was going to happen, but this is worth quoting for its bluntness.

Megan McArdle looks at how states that trying to limit health insurance premiums are resulting in insurers dramatically cutting pack their provider networks.

Put politicians in charge of health care, and this is what you get:

The federal government wants to reduce the number of Americans diagnosed each year with cancer. But not by better preventive care or healthier living. Instead, the government wants to redefine the term “cancer” so that fewer conditions qualify as a true cancer.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen. Alas.

(Via Instapundit.)

Now that Obamacare has launched, we can evaluate how well Barack Obama has fulfilled his promise to cut everyone’s health care rates by $2500 per year. It may surprise low-information voters, but will be no surprise to those who have followed this disaster closely, that most people will not see a reduction at all, much less a reduction of $2500 per year. Among younger men (the group probably being screwed most badly by Obamacare) we are seeing this:

The blue states are the ones in which premiums are dropping at all. In most states, premiums are not only rising, but skyrocketing. For other groups the picture looks similar; only the magnitude of the disaster is different. You can find all the maps here. The article also shows that most people will not get subsidies enough to break even.

In a tacit acknowledgement that the numbers are terrible, the Obama administration released very little information, and tried to keep even that data from Obamacare’s critics:

The report was issued to news organizations on Tuesday under a strict embargo, with specific instructions not to share the information with anyone else, like outside health insurance experts who might be able to provide more analysis of the numbers. Apparently, though, the word still leaked out.

The New Republic thinks that Obama should send the army against the House of Representatives.

Of course, they can’t really think that (can they?), so why talk that way?

UPDATE: As Ed Driscoll points out, a few years Democrats were pretending that they believed that merely putting a crosshair on a map was enough to drive people to violence. Now they are broadcasting an explicit call to violence.