The slacker mandate revisited
One of the biggest applause lines from President Obama’s latest “the time for talk is over” talk-talk-talk today on Demcare at Arcadia University came when he peddled the slacker health care plan to adoring college students. Cradle-to-grave entitlement culture gone wild.
I reported on this slacker mandate last December.
A refresher course:
Nanny State Gone Wild: Defining dependency up
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
12/24/09
Copyright 2009
The greatest gifts you can give your children can’t be boxed and bowed. Consider the timeless gift of self-sufficiency – a stubborn thirst to leave the nest, make it own your own, and live as a free-willed adult. It’s a concept that Big Nanny Democrats are sabotaging at every legislative turn.
Several times during the sneaky weekend debate on the government health care takeover bill this past Sunday, Democrats hailed a provision requiring insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Democrat Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Harkin both specifically championed the unfunded mandate in their floor statements.
This manifestation of the Nanny State is especially galling given the massive levels of generational theft that the Democrat majority has presided over the last year. If they truly cared about the physical and financial well-being of young Americans, they’d stop piling on expensive regulations that simply put affordable health insurance out of their reach. I propose a new symbol for the Democrats. Out: Donkey. In: A giant adult pacifier.
I can tell you what most fiscally responsible parents are thinking when they hear the feds “taking care” of everyone else’s adult “children” for them by confiscating their tax dollars and forcing private companies to comply: You’ve got to be kidding me. Yes, Virginia, there are still some of us left who believe our children shouldn’t depend on a government-manufactured umbilical cord as they approach their third decade on earth.
Nonetheless, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it’s these very government health care mandates that are driving up the cost of insurance. Health policy researcher Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Institute reported that in New Jersey, Nanny State peddlers claimed the adult kiddie protection law would help 100,000 uninsured young adults. “Yet in two years, only 6% of that estimate has been realized. The primary reason—health insurance is still too expensive.”
Wisconsin has experienced similar results. “Whenever you insure somebody whom you didn’t insure before there’s some additional risk,” insurance expert James Mueller told the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal. Mueller points to the premium increases that have followed over coverage mandates on employer-sponsored plans. “The problem with all these good ideas is there’s funding necessary,” Mueller said. In Wisconsin, adult children are not only covered, but also the children of those “children” if they live in single-parent homes.
As he rammed this mandate and the mountain of other government regulations buried in Demcare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised on Sunday: “We are reshaping the nation. That’s what we want to do.” Indeed, this defining dependency up phenomenon is part of the larger push for single-payer-by-proxy. The other universal health care Trojan Horse signed into law this year – the expansion of SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) – welcomed more non-“children” into the government insurance fold.
Both political parties have advocated federal waivers to use SCHIP funds for adults, including parents of Medicaid/SCHIP children, caretaker relatives, legal guardians, and childless adults. According to the General Accounting Office, SCHIP-funded expenditures on adults nationwide “totaled about $674 million in 2006.” J.P. Wieske of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance notes that the bennies incentivize parents to drop their private coverage in order to take advantage of free or discounted health insurance for their children. “It has become a program for the middle class at the expense of the poor.”
This is the engine that will power the Demcare architects’ most naked, radical ambitions: “Health care as an inalienable right,” as Sen. Harkin put it. How? By breeding a massive permanent culture of dependency and bottomless debt in the name of the “children” from birth through quarterlife — and beyond.
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The President is correct. The time for talk is over. Let’s drive a wooden stake through the heart and fire two silver bullets into the head of this albatross and get on with killing Cap and Trade.
obuma couldn’t sell watermelons if you the state troopers stooped traffic for him
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=Xd8zuz8znz
Liberals are a slacker breed at heart. They want gifts from those that work for their money wrapped up in a bow and sent to those that wouldn’t bother to work unless they had no other choice.
It’s at the core of why most of those on unemployment find a job right around the time the unemployment money runs out.
“Guess I gotta go get a job now that unemployment is over.”
Slackers…. they’re the heart of the Democrat Party.
That’s what we need. More 26 year old slugs to pamper and feed. By the time I was 26 I was married with two kids, working a full time job, paying for a house and a car. Today if you are 20 – 26 years old you get to sit around playing on your gameboy and watching youtube waiting for someone else to support you.
Ever notice how liberals are always the sideline reporters, but never with any skin in the game. The media, both print and on air, critics who couldn’t play the game, so they critique from the sidelines the next day. academia, the brilliant folks too important to do anything, so they beg money from the working class and write papers no one will ever read. Hollywood, acting the life real people lead, but with stunt doubles and rigging o’plenty so they don’t get hurt. The Hurt Locker wins best picture, while hollywood sits on it’s collective rich ass and allows jerks like Bill Maher to say “we love the military the way Michael Vick loves dogs.” The lawyers, who until some law firm starts suing these dirt bags for malpractice have a license to rob, cheat and steal with the backing of their colleagues in the legislatures. Not a single player in the bunch, just critics like Frank Rich.
Put Americans back to work. Stop un-employment benefits after 6 months.
…while Squatter the Girlfriend watches…
NJ has it right, lazy, jealous and greedy.
I suppose I’d like to hear some 26 yr. olds call this an insult and tell the Dems what they can do with their ‘dependent care’. Twenty six year olds are not children.
Parents are to blame then. Kick em out!
yes indeed, let’s get rolling and don’t forget killing off yet another run at shamnesty especially with 14-15 million out of work!
This part I don’t understand: How can this age group drive up costs when they should be the healthiest age group?
Both my grandfathers were soldiers in WWI while in their early 20′s.
My late father was in Normandy, France in June of ’44 at the age of 21.
My late mother was in the British Army in Belgium on VE Day at the age of 21 — NOT as a nurse or clerk-typist (with all respect for both positions) she was in an anti-aircraft-artillery unit that shot at German aircraft, first while in the UK and then deployed to the Continent as the Allies moved eastward.
My late father-in-law was in a German POW camp in eastern Poland at the age of 22 (shot down on his second mission in B-17s).
I was flying combat missions in Vietnam at the age of 22.
I guess some liberal would get their undies in a wad for letting us children go off to war!
My family is NOT unique, we were each adults who chose to serve our country, not children looking for a handout from that country!
I remember Army Warrant Officers who returned from combat tours in Vietnam where they flew snakes, slicks, and medevacs and found out since they were not 21 they could not buy a car.
Amazing times.
THat reminds me, I need to find out how many jobs my son applied for today. It’s getting close to “job or not, you’re out of the house by xxx” time.
Hey nail49, thanks for serving (to you and your family).
Your comment makes me wonder: what if the kids pampered by Obamacare and Nanny state initiatives join the military. Scary, eh?
Flyoverman
Some couldn’t buy a beer!
One of those W.O.’s was a good friend who was young enough to come back to the States, go to college and then enter AF flight school and complete that year of training before he turned 25!
His callsign is “Slick” because he flew them in ‘Nam.
The feds have been expanding their involvement in our education system for decades and now the metrics are finally in-
Students stand up and cheer their own enslavement!
I got my dolphins before age 21.
My son made “Employee of the Month” at Home Depot before the age of 21.
{Sigh}
GladzKravtz
It was our honor.
Yes, scary indeed to think that they might actually have to take on some responsibility, not just for themselves BUT for somebody else — heaven forbid it might be someone I know that has to rely on a Slacker!
Fortunately, we have a LOT of young Americans who are taking up the gauntlet and our prayers are with every one of them!
Mrs. Nail 49′s best friend lost her youngest son in Oct of 2006 in Iraq. He was a 20 year-old Marine and was most definitely NOT a slacker!
Semper Fi!
A HERO.
Kids are basically rebellious.
Kids of the sixties rebelled by smoking dope, tuning in, and dropping out. Peace, Love, and Bluejeans. “War is not healthy for children and other living things” says the poster.
Today’s rebellious kids, larvae of the 60′s era peaceniks, are rebelling. They fly Blackhawks, shoot M-16s, and kill towelheads for Jesus.
GladzKravtz, they would have to grow up or get out. It is called an Admin separation and we process them when the need arises. The best things never change.
Long live the rebels!
Exactly.
Confidence. Love the military.
I think the pilot who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki was – at the time – 26.
Pity all the dependent minds filled with statism. When the unsustainable corrupt system run by the D.C. crime syndicate collapses and everyone is forced to rely on themselves, they will likely perish quickly.
I believe that they really want all of us to send our offspring to college, where they can be re-educated.
What was it Rush was running on the radio today about Dan Rather saying about Obama … something to the effect — ‘Obama couldn’t sell watermelons if the state police were out on the road flagging down the customers’
Pretty much describes Obama’s problem, when the teleprompter is off, it’s like he is off as well. Obama’s lies are not too becoming on him.
Basically, in my view, modern-day liberals are scum.
There it is in a nutshell.
My my my, what a sad, sorry situation the baby boomers have created.
Fools do not know they are foolish. Obama is their foolish president.
Peas in the same pod, or nuts in the same shell.
And their larvae will be broke because of Obama and liberal elitists.
Obama strikes me as a puppet; unable to speak for himself, needing people to speak for him. That’s the purpose of the teleprompter. They write what they want him to say, and he repeats it. It doesn’t surprise me. He is so inexperienced as a national/international leader, he has to rely on others to speak for him.
Not so fast. I hear Obama is going to ram through legislation requiring parents to allow their children to live in their basement until they are 30. (This will be extended to 40 if they have advanced degrees in the social sciences.)
So will these coddled little bundles of joy be Democrat voters? Seems like inter-generational vote tailoring to me.