As with many Constitutional provisions, “recess appointments” have come to be used in ways the founders didn’t intend. Presidents now use recess appointments to get a desired appointee into office — at least for a time — over the objections of recalcitrant legislators, especially when the Senate is in the hands of the opposition party. [...]
During the week following the Democratic enactment of “Part One” of Barack Obama’s federal takeover of American medicine (“Part Two” will come after “Part One” has bankrupted or nationalized most private health insurance providers — the Democrats will blame the failures on “greed”), “numerous companies have announced that they expect their taxes to increase, earnings [...]
The modern Prussian police state was built by Bismarck and others in the 19th century on a Spartan model, giving the central government vastly greater control over the individual than had ever been considered possible before. From government control of the schools to health care, the whole idea was to create an obedient populace that [...]
I grew up in a different country. In the suburbs in the 1950s, kids I grew up with can remember their moms putting greenback dollars in plain white envelopes, writing on those envelopes “Insurance man” or “Milkman,” and sticking the envelopes to the refrigerator door with little magnets. Later in the day, when no one [...]
The phone rings at 7 in the morning. The phone rings at midnight. If we don’t answer the phone, letting the machine screen the calls, the patients leave interminable messages, explaining that the insurance company already paid, that the second test on their sexual plumbing wasn’t really necessary. It’s amazing the detail about their very [...]
Did President Obama truly set up Thursday’s televised health care forum with Republican congressional leaders at Blair House, across the street from the White House, “to try to hammer out a compromise with Republicans,” as The Associated Press reported? The Democratic scheme is to impose higher taxes and fewer choices on the 85 percent of [...]
Despite the unprecedented horse-trading — that’s the nice term — that top Washington Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi employed to push their massive bureaucratic takeover of American medical care through both houses of Congress on a “rush” schedule this year, the scheme still seems to be in trouble. House and Senate negotiators face “a [...]
City health departments do some useful work, on balance. They were mostly born of the “sanitary” and “hygienic” movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Appalled by the squalor and disease in the nation’s crowded tenements, volunteers — at first — set about informing people about how diseases were transmitted, stressing the importance of [...]
In 2004, New Jersey Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Cryan had a brilliant idea. Only rich people get cosmetic surgery, right? So — if one of the goals of the redistributive state is to impoverish the rich, thus discouraging them from investing their money in job-creating businesses — why not tax cosmetic surgery? After all, a 6 [...]
What was it like to go to a doctor in America 60 years ago? The family doctor couldn’t offer high-tech diagnostic tests or treatments, mind you. But neither would you find the office full of employees negotiating on telephones with Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurers, trying to determine what treatments would be “covered,” and what [...]
Vin’s Blog at the RJ
