Patterico's Pontifications

9/20/2010

Congratulations, Barry: ObamaCare Means No Health Insurance for Kids

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:59 pm



The book that helped me understand economics was “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell. One of his main points is that government intervention almost always has unintended consequences. Take rent control, for example. It sounds great (from the standpoint of renters) to have the government control prices so that they will be affordable. Problem is, it’s not so great for the landlords, and due to the law of supply and demand, housing shortages result. What was intended as a boon for renters often turns out to be a burden on people seeking housing.

So what do you think might happen if you sought to make health insurance more widely available for children — by simply mandating that companies with child-only policies make those policies available to children with pre-existing conditions?

You cheated and looked at the headline, didn’t you?

Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

Welcome to the Law of Unintended Consequences, Barry.

Well. Unintended, by the chuckleheads who wrote the law? Sure. Unexpected by those of us who warned against such a law? No.

[S]upporters of the new health-care law complain that the change amounts to an end run around one of the most prized consumer protections.

“We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds,” Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group, said in a statement. “[It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.”

No, Ethan, what is patently dishonest — or simply stupid, if there must be an alternative — is to ignore the fact that the new law caused this. They were told they couldn’t raise rates. What did you expect them to do? Lose money to comply with your sense of right and wrong?

Remedial economics all around!

It would be laughable if it didn’t exact an actual human toll.

Coons’s Possible Free-Speech Thuggery Fits a Leftist Pattern

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:38 pm



Blogger Hube — a former colleague at a long-defunct blog called “Oh, That Liberal Media!” — raises questions about Alan Muller, the fellow I interviewed last night who accuses Chris Coons of anti-free-speech thuggery. Hube’s post cites nothing that particularly concerns me; mainly, he quotes a man who had some run-ins with Muller and considers him quite difficult to get along with. OK, and?

But I’m still glad for the post, because it gives me the chance to make some points that need to be made:

1) I obviously don’t know Muller and can’t tell you his story is accurate. He did not seem like a kook on the phone; just someone whose politics are wildly different than mine. But the point of my post was not to say: hey, look! Based on this post we know for a fact Coons is a thug! It was mainly to say: hey, look! These are serious accusations, backed up by some documentary proof of overbearing government action, and someone in the media ought to look into it. It’s a disgrace that, in this highly visible election, the first person to pick up the phone and call the guy making accusations like this was . . . me.

2) The man who had the run-ins with Muller wrote a comment on Hube’s post saying: “I sure would like to hear Chris Coons[‘s] side of the story before I would believe [Alan] Muller’s representation of him.” That’s a fair point. I sent the campaign an e-mail tonight and essentially told them I would print any response he has, within reason.

3) The bigger context for that post is the willingness of Democrats to use the power of government to intimidate those who are engaged in speech they don’t like. I went on Tammy Bruce’s radio show today at lunchtime to discuss the piece, and we discussed how my piece fits into that context. Regular readers know that I am (RINO that I am!) mostly skeptical of any notion that leftists are intrinsically bad people who display worse character traits than conservatives — with exceptions for things like responsibility and adherence to principle. But anti-speech thuggery is one way we’re different. Whether it’s Democrats’ threatening to pull Fox News’s broadcast license because they don’t like the content; or Harry Reid & Co. writing a mafia-style letter threatening ABC’s broadcast license over “The Path to 9/11”; or the DNC threatening Sinclair Broadcasting’s broadcast license over an anti-Kerry documentary; or Obama’s thugs threatening networks’ broadcast licenses over criticism from the NRA; or, most recently, Kathleen Sebelius suggesting that insurance companies had better not claim they’re raising rates because of ObamaCare, or they may find themselves regulated out of existence . . . based on these examples and many more, the public has a special need to fear Democrats’ bringing down the hammer when they engage in free speech.

And if Chris Coons is that type of thug, best we find out now.

Big Media, do your job.

UPDATED to correct the gender of the person who had had run-ins with Muller.

Breitbart Takes on the Astroturfers

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:00 pm



Entertainment from beginning to end.

I love this guy.

Via RINO sell-out Ace.

Christine O’Donnell: Too Extreme Because She Opposes Masturbation

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:26 pm



Vote instead for Chris Coons, who is for it. All for it:

H/T daleyrocks.

Does Chris Coons Think the Delaware Senate Seat Is The People’s Seat? Or Joe Biden’s Seat?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:39 am



Why, it depends on his audience, of course. If he’s talking to an audience in a debate, it’s the People’s seat, just like Scott Brown would say. If he’s talking to the Kos Crowd, it’s Biden’s seat — and we can’t let the ultraconservatives take it away!

He learned well from Obama. Call them bitter clingers — but only when you think everyone in the room agrees with you.

Problem is, Chris, in the new media age, we’re all in the room, every time.

Thanks to the Daily Caller.


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