More common sense comprehensive reform

[Bill]

Who would have thought the government couldn't put together a team of academia and staffers to re-write our nations financial systems?


BY
Dennis K. Berman,
The Wall Street Journal

The ratings firms showed their power last week. But their power is their weakness.

Just hours after the passage of the new Dodd-Frank Act, the nation's dominant credit-ratings firms had already delayed the effects of a new law in the financial overhaul that would expose them to greater legal liability.

They had, in effect, gone on strike, refusing to let issuers use their ratings. And because those ratings are legal requirements in the world of asset-backed securities—the $1.4 trillion market for autos, student loans and credit cards—things came to a loud, screeching halt.

The move so rattled Washington that everyone from Ben Bernanke to Rush Limbaugh appeared to back the ratings firms' cause. "People should be able to render opinions without being sued," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) in an interview. "We're not going to sue our way to prosperity."

There was plenty of reason for jitters. The liabilities under the new law can hit billions of dollars, as bankers working for WorldCom found out after the company sank under an accounting fraud. "The ratings agencies are not crying wolf," said David Martin, a Covington & Burling attorney who has represented Moody's Investors Service. "It's a very big deal."

[Jesse]

That's old news - we're in Recovery now! Let's instead focus on the joys of healthcare:

"Jonas, 32, sewed up his own leg after ER wait
Published: 3 Aug 10 08:27 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/28150/20100803/

A 32-year-old took the needle into his hands when he tired of the wait at Sundsvall hospital in northern Sweden and sewed up the cut in his leg himself. The man was later reported to the police for his impromptu handiwork.

"It took such a long time," the man told the local Sundsvall Tidning daily.

The man incurred the deep cut when he sliced his leg on the sharp edge of a kitchen stove while he was renovating at home.

"I first went to the health clinic, but it was closed. So I rang the medical help line and they told me that it shouldn't be closed, so I went to emergency and sat there," the man named only as Jonas told the newspaper.

After an hour-long wait in a treatment room, he lost patience and proceeded to sew up his own wound.

"They had set out a needle and thread and so I decided to take the matter into my hands," he said.

But hospital staff were not as impressed by his initiative and have reported the man on suspicion of arbitrary conduct for having used hospital equipment without authorization."

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"Before discussing what the law means for you, we have to look at what it does to government. That’s where the chart comes in handy. It includes the new fees, bureaucracies and programs and connects them into an organizational chart that accounts for the existing structure. It’s so carefully documented that a line connecting two structures cites the legislative language that created the link.

This clearly is a candidate for most disorganized organizational chart ever. It shows that the health system is complex, yes, but also ornate. The new law creates 68 grant programs, 47 bureaucratic entities, 29 demonstration or pilot programs, six regulatory systems, six compliance standards and two entitlements.

Getting that massive enterprise up and running will be next to impossible. So Democrats streamlined the process by granting Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the authority to make judgments that can’t be challenged either administratively or through the courts.

This monarchical protection from challenges is extended as well to the development of new patient-care models under Obama’s controversial recess appointment, Donald Berwick, whom Republicans are calling the rationer-in-chief. Berwick will run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he can experiment with ways to use administrative fiat to move our system toward the socialized medicine of Europe, which he has at times embraced.

-snip-

To pay for this expansion, the bill takes $529 billion from Medicare, with roughly 39 percent of the cut coming from the Medicare Advantage program. This represents a large transfer of resources, sacrificing the care of the elderly in order to increase the Medicaid rolls.

For all this supposed reform, you, the American taxpayer, can expect a bill to the tune of $569 billion.

Front and center among the new taxes is the 40 percent excise tax on those lucky people with so-called Cadillac health plans. The higher insurance costs that are driven by the government mandates will push many more ordinary plans into Cadillac territory.



Have fun filling out all of the forms - in triplicate - months in advance to make sure you're pre-approved for whatever will be cancelled the day you get there... There are just too many stories from Europe to post them all (the previous was just today's notable one).

[Bill]

He said it's "common sense comprehensive reform". Nothing beats that! You can't say "infinity +1" or use logic.

A more simplified flow chart:

1) Birth
2) Pay government for fake health care system
3) Pay inflated cost for private health care to operate in parallel
4) get sick
6) wait in line
7) see private health care
8) cured?
9) yes? go to line 2
10) no?
11) die