Torquemada Waxman is still watching you
My syndicated column today follows up on the cancellation of the Waxman/Demcare show trials. Alas, it’s a temporary reprieve.
***
The Obamacare Inquisition is on hold…for now
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
The House Democrats’ Torquemada got cold feet. Self-styled “chief inquisitor” Henry Waxman announced this week that he’s canceling a planned show trial of corporate executives who called public attention to the financial hit they’re taking as a result of President Obama’s health care mandate. Business owners can breathe a small sigh of relief. But the witch hunt isn’t over.
You’ll recall that Waxman fired off nasty-grams to the heads of Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T last month, demanding their presence at a congressional auto de fé. Their sin? Publicly reporting the costs and consequences of federal health care taxes on their firms’ bottom lines. A vindictive Waxman sought internal documents and e-mails from the CEOs about the profit charges. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke took to the White House blog and TV airwaves to condemn the “premature” and “irresponsible” disclosures.
In the immortal words of the late comedian Gilda Radner’s goof-prone “Saturday Night Live” character Emily Litella, the finger-waggers and gavel-wielders are now muttering: “Never mind.”
An April 14 memorandum from the Committee on Energy and Commerce Majority Staff informed the Democratic hounds that the “companies acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards in submitting filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission in March and April.” Indeed, after haggling about the overall impact of the health care mandate on firms’ annual company cash flows, the staff memo acknowledged that notifying shareholders of these big one-time company write-downs was “required” by law.
No apology from Locke, Waxman or his Democratic co-bully on the committee Rep. Bart Stupak has been forthcoming. Instead, the ruling majority seems bent on pressuring private companies to peddle the “beneficial” impacts of the law. The committee staff extracted statements from the targeted companies that “if” implemented “right” and “correct(ly),” Obamacare “could” achieve “long term savings for the country” and their businesses. And “if” donkeys were elephants, they “could” spray water from their trunks.
As Elizabeth MacDonald of Fox Business Network points out, the Democrats continue to distort a Business Roundtable study — cited in Waxman’s threat letters to Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T — in order to bolster their claims that Obamacare will create cost-savings of $3,000 on average per worker over 10 years. But “the study is not based on the new bill,” she reports, and is premised on Congress adopting free-market changes and malpractice reform abandoned by the Democrats.
In fact, some of those free-market solutions, such as health care savings accounts, are endangered by Obamacare. As Indiana GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels pointed out in The Wall Street Journal last week, the state will likely be forced to shift low-income residents into the federal Medicaid program and out of an innovative Hoosier State insurance program that includes health savings accounts.
While Obamacare benefits remain as distant from reality as Elin is from Tiger, the damage has already arrived. Side effects are manifesting themselves in private medical practices from Arizona to Florida — where doctors are closing up shop in anticipation of the law’s impact. Those cost-benefit decisions will only exacerbate existing shortages. Moreover, at academic health centers such as the University of Texas Medical Branch, officials there expect patient “crowd out” in their medical homes, “with longer wait times for appointments and/or physicians capping the number of patients they see.”
Waxman may have given a few companies a temporary reprieve for shedding light on Obamacare’s consequences. But medical professionals are already on notice that informing their patients that unwelcome change is coming will carry considerable risk. Dr. Jack Cassell, the urologist who posted a protest sign against the law at his office, still faces ethics probes at the behest of Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson.
And as Waxman himself vowed in his hearing cancellation letter to company heads, “the Subcommittee will closely monitor the implementation of the new law and will schedule hearings on the impact of the law as appropriate.” Torquemada is waiting for a second wind.
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Henry whatchu gonna do about the volcano spewing ash? Better ring up God and grill him in front of your committee cause I don’t think this one is man made. You freakin dork.
When do we get to put this administration in front of a tribunal and demand explanations for their sins?
Crooks and their cronies.
the nose that roared is at it again. this clown never stops trying to make more of himself than he really is. incompetence defines this nasal cavity.
The collectivists in D.C. are never, ever satiated. After all, everything they do is for “our own good”.
The message was sent. Mission Accomplished.
Any chance the clown gets thrown out of office? Hopefully Whack’man gets booted along with all the other Dems.
Actually, ObamaCare could save companies quite a bit of money. What with the provision that if any employee gets insurance through the Exchange, the company must pay the $750 for every employee regardless of whether they provide health insurance for most or all employees, why take the chance? Dump the plans altogether and pay the fine. Since companies are paying $6k to $12k per year per employee, that would be a monster savings.
It is a lot more expensive for part timers to get insurance through their companies, so, they usually do not. So, many will go through the Exchange. Look at AT&T, where approx 20-25% of retail employees are part timers. Why take the chance? And getting rid of the PT positions would be the last thought, since 1 full timer will not provide the flexibility as 2 part timers to fill the high traffic times.
The picture of an out-of-control and unaccountable government. Time for Constitutional adjustments. This little man acts like a Soviet commissar or Politburo member. He needs to face a grand jury investigation.
If I may…
That all sounds reasonable in theory. But I believe you may have forgotten a small piece of the puzzle.
Us taxpayers are the ones really fitting the bill for Obamacare. While its nice that Verizon can save (based on your above numbers) 5-11 thousand dollars a year per person…where do you think the cost of this program comes from in the end?
Me. You. And everyone else.
And sorry…I don’t really feel like shelling out the extra tax money for a massive spending bill that the people who passed it don’t even understand.
There has to be a better way of implementing health care reform.
Just my 2 cents.
Of course. That’s the Bolsheviks plan. Entice this behavior and collapse the insurance industry which in turn begs for the “single payer” government takeover. At that point the Marxists have us all by the ‘nads. Fairly shrewd tactic.
Let them probe. It’s time to walk the walk. People like Waxman and Grayson will only shrink back into their holes when they are stood up too.
If you want your free speech rights then be willing to defend them.
Piglet: “No truffle shall go unrooted!”
I think we’d be better off if serving in the House of Representatives was like jury duty; selected by lottery for one term.
It COULDN’T be worse.
I am sorry to see he called off the inquest. I really want the heads of these companies to give him a piece of their mind. Who does this extremely ugly (sorry, but he truly is) individual think he is? Have you heard that he now wants to ban chewing tabacco from Baseball?http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-14/waxman-calls-for-major-league-baseball-ban-on-chewing-tobacco.html
Waxman is insane.
Torquemada, Waxman, Baria and Himmler: not so very different are they?
I can see it now…
Waxman: “Please swear in the witness.”
God: “I swear the testimony I am about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me Me.”
Waxman: “Before we get started, if you are so all-powerful, why would you give me such a nose?”
God: “My dear Henry. I did it so you could smell your own stench when you forgot the importance of your behavior when holding such power. My only mistake was that I did not foresee that you would relish such a foul aroma.”
Can someone photoshop this picture of him, like with a paper bag over his head?
Every one of these businesses that Whacksman is targeting for speaking the truth should tell Whacksman….
To GO EFF himself. The docs are none of his damn business.
Sad, sad day when Congress(Grayson and Waxman)think they are so powerful they can tell everyone what they have to and how they have to do it. I can’t believe that their constituents actually approve–don’t they know that they are next? We have let our Chavez like legislators get out of hand. They must be stopped and replaced with people who regard our hard won freedoms as valuable.
I definitely understand what you are saying, Abstractmind, and agree whole heatedly. I was just focusing on the costs to business and how they will look to save money by dumping their insurance offerings, which is, of course, one of the purposeful ideas of ObamaSocialistCare.
At this point the execs have absolutely nothing to lose if they tell “Nose-feratu” Waxman that, as with many things, government intervention was the root cause of the problem. Had the oil companies been permitted to drill ON LAND and at the very least close to shore, this catastrophe might have been averted.
Then, there’s the probable cronyism between BP and the regime. They donated millions to the Dems and Capt. Kickass and were in the tank with the phony green economy garbage.
I hate these ba$tards. I really, really do.