Among the values that made the Soviet Union great...

were a corrupt bureaucracy, making business success dependent on politics and grotesque "rent seeking" behavior by the political class.  It looks like America is heading down the same road under Obmacare as it appears that waivers are being granted to "connected" businesses.

And by "business" we don't want to exclude "unions."

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.


That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.

It also seems that we aren't being told who is being denied waivers.

Although the administration has approved more than 1,300 Obamacare waivers and published the recipients’ application information online, it has not made public which companies and other entities have been denied waivers and why they were denied.


Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) won’t release that information, nor will they publicly release the identities of those still waiting for a decision. HHS won’t even say how many applications are in the queue.

Want to remain competitive and save your business?  Then, you better consider kicking some coin into the DNC coffers.

Things can only get better when the bureaucracy is deciding who lives or dies under Obamacare.

Whatever her faults, Sarah Palin gets it:

In response to the revelation that about 20 percent of the latest slew of Obamacare waivers went to luxurious restaurants, nightclubs and hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told The Daily Caller the waiver process is “corrupt.”


“Unflippingbelievable! No, wait, it is believable,” Palin said in an email to TheDC. “Seriously, this is corrupt. And anyone who still supports the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda of centralized government takeovers of the free market and the corresponding crony capitalism is, in my book, complicit.”

"Unflippingbelievable!"

Political rhetoric outstrips reality by 98%.

Hot Air provides some interesting data on actual demand for pre-existing insurance coverage:

255 million: The number of Americans with existing health insurance coverage.


20 million: The number of Americans without any health coverage at all due to economic circumstances.

375,000: The number of Americans with pre-existing conditions HHS said would apply for coverage in the first year of ObamaCare, one of the main political arguments for its implementation.

8,011: The number that actually did.

The Wall Street Journal describes the issue as the "8,011 Person Crisis":

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.


Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick

It's like the Reichstag Fire - manufacture a crisis to expand the power of government.

Hot Air concludes:

The Obama administration and its allies in the Nancy Pelosi Congress revamped one-sixth of the American economy, created new federal mandates, and created chaos in system that worked for the vast majority of Americans, just to deal with eight thousand people?  Perhaps they should have tested the issue by creating the program separately first and determining whether the demand required a complete overhaul of a health-care system that mainly worked for the rest of us, instead of arrogating to themselves the task of dictating the shape of a market they clearly don’t understand.

Some more unnecessary surgery for narcissistic people

The Chastity Bono post has been getting a lot of attention, but this kind of absurd breast augmentation surgery is right up there in terms of "people who need psychiatric attention."

The woman in the picure - "Stripper Chelsea Charms" - has augmented breasts clocking in at collective 52 pounds. 

Given the freakish "I'm disgusted and repulsed and... and I can't look away" effect of this picture, let's hope that this is one kind of medical expense that gets deleted by Obamacare.

Yea, I saw Clerks II. What can I say?  Kevin Smith's nerd humor works for me in a way that I'm not entirely proud to admit.

[Via Instapundit, in case anyone is wondering how I got here.]

Crossing the Rubicon

Victor Davis Hanson explains where we find ourselves:

President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan.

 

We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures.

 

No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we “are leveling the playing field” and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law. (NB: do the math: add higher state income taxes in most states; the new Clinton-era federal income tax rates to come; the proposed lifting of limits on income exposed to FICA taxes; and now new health care charges — and I think you can reach in some cases a bite of 65%to 70% of one’s income.)

 

So we are in revolutionary times in which the government will grow to assume everything from energy use to student loans, while abroad we are a revolutionary sort of power, eager to mend fences with Syria and Iran, more eager still to distance ourselves from old Western allies like Israel and Britain.

And this is chilling - because Democracy - ordered, tolerant civilization depends on the restraint of tradition:

Subscript: Do Democrats realize that we really have crossed the Rubicon? In the future when the Republicans gain majorities (and they will), the liberal modus operandi will be the model—bare 51% majorities, reconciliation, the nuclear option, talk of deem and pass, not a single Democrat vote—all ends justifying the means in order to radically restructure vast swaths of American economic and social life. Is someone unhinged at the DNC? They just blew up any shred of bipartisan consensus when their President polls below 50%, the Democratically-controlled Congress below 20%, and health care reform less than 50%. Usually unpopular leaders and their unpopular ideas seek the shelter of minority rights and prerogatives. What will they do when they are in the minority—since they’ve entered the arena, boasted “let the games begin” and shouted “by any means necessary”?

One thing about having a Democrat in the White House....

...is that we learn more about Constitutional law.

We learned about Impeachment and the Electoral College under Clinton and now, under Obama, we are going to learn about "how a Bill becomes a Law."

Here is a good discussion about "deem and pass" and what the Constitutional issues are in this latest Democrat effort to wire-around the Constitution.

The Glories of Socialized Medicine

English man dies of dehydration as nurses ignore him. He went so far as to call the police to beg for water.

Burning through Credibility

The President shows that if you are going to take a professorial tone, you'd better have your facts straight.

Canadian Content

From the Great White North, where it is controversial not to die in the name of socialized medicine like a commoner.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 2009

Michael Barone provides a history lesson on why the Health Care Bill may be the Democrat's undoing.

Democrat Plan - "Die Quickly."

Clinton Labor Secretary on Health Care:



The Humble Libertarian summarizeses:

-Younger people should pay more

-Healthier people should pay more

-Older people should just die- they're "too expensive"

-There should be "less innovation" in medical technology

-You should not expect to live longer than your parents.

Generation Narcissus tells their parents to jump on that ice berg

Obama on changing the culture of how we deal with the medical problems of the elderly: take a pain pill.