BUMPED from 9/30/2012: MaggieCare. Having just put up a video, HARD WORK, for Don Bolduc (for US Senate), I remember this about Maggie Hassan’s attempt to “nationalizing” NH’s hospitals and putting with a “Commission” that would have been beyond the reach of voters (sorta like what Democrat US Senator Elizabeth Warren did with the Consumer Protection Bureau – which just got shot down as unconstitutional in its structure and operation).
Just another data point of how she’s such a lover of the Deep State / Socialism in believing Government has subjects instead of We the People happen to have a Government. This is just as true now as it was over 10 years ago.
Is rule by an unelected, unaccountable, and unassailable Administrative State elite an NH Value, or a Democrat one? The history of NH is one of local control by locally elected officials, one shared by TEA Party folks. They WANT to elected their officials that would then govern – and via their votes, the electorate would be able to drop-kick them if they fail in their duty to carry out what they were elected to do. Democrats kicked out Republicans in NH in 2006 / 2008 as Republicans had shown they had lost their philosophical way and focus. And then the Democrats were kicked out with as much (if not more) vigor by voters after they saw the true colors of what a Progressive Democrat governance had wrought and were much afeared what a continuence would have meant.
The Tea Party supports lower taxes, fewer meddling government bureaucrats, more local control, and free markets that allow for more choices and more personal responsibility.
Mike at Concord Patch who thinks the idea that Progressives wish us all to be governed by other than elected officials is pure bunkum:
“Are we ruled by unaccountable bureacrats?” (the end game of Progressives – The Administrative State)”, Another Granite Grok Consperacy Theory.
Mike, this post’s for you, as you may have willfully “force forgot” what Maggie “The Red” Hassan, former NH State Senator and now Democrat nominee for NH Governor actually tried to do exactly what you made sport of. MaggieCare that would do EXACTLY just that – just like Obamacare’s IPAB (e.g., “death panel”), sorta sideways. From a post at the time when this ill-conceived plan was rolling out (reformated slightly here):
She just wants to do it to hospitals instead of insurance companies (Jeanne Shaheen took care of the latter). Or shall we take Hassan as President Nixon (see below)??? NH State Senator Maggie Hassan wants to do with Senate Bill 505 what Obama wants to do nationally – regulate healthcare here in NH even MORE, and turn it, well, her own words:
Senate Bill 505 would set up an independent three-member commission and give it the power to look at rates the same way we do with the Public Utility Commission.
Which is exactly what Progressives want to do as the intermediate step before a complete takeover – a public utility by which their every move will be second guessed by politicians and bureaucrats that never had to meet a payroll themselves (just tax it more and more). Just like what the Democrats are trying to do so small businesses (more govt control by taking more income from them and deciding how much “reasonable” compensation is), they are now going to decide what are reasonable prices for all hospitals will charge patients for care. In addition, it will “take” money from some hospitals and give it to others that need it (can you hear Marx smiling?).
And, oh by the way, charge the hospitals a fee for telling them what they can charge to boot! The “soothing words” is that they are going to prevent overcharging to the uninsured – so they will now get both ends of the line with the uninsured and the Medicaid patients. Who gets the shaft? Yeah, those of us who are covered – driving up costs to insurance carriers. So adding insult to injury to what our former Gov. (and now US Senator) Jeanne Shaheen did to the insurance market place, this will add to the pressure to get them out of the state. Shaheen started the crisis by rigging the rules so as to force out the small carriers (and now the Dems cry that there isn’t competition) and MaggieCarr is going to put the screws to them again AND the hospitals.
…Charlie Arlinghaus over at NH Watchdog has a great summary piece up (details are still sketchy) and he has a good insight:
The commission itself will have the ability to determine how large it becomes. It is given its own authority to assess and collect a tax on hospital income – an “administrative assessment” on “net operating revenues.”
Commissions that control their own budgets and raise their own taxes don’t have a tendency to be small ones. The commission will have broad authority to require hospitals to unveil virtually any information about rates, payments, costs, and the way they do business.
More than just setting rates, the new bureaucracy will be required by law to “promote” new systems of payments and structures of care like medical homes or accountable care organizations.
Economics Professor Walter Williams has more to say on this mentality:
While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant’s primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite.
So Mike, this is a perfect example of the Progressive Administrative State (albeit, writ small):
- Appointed, not elected
- It’s own taxing authority instead of the regular statutory budget process while taxing those over those it is supposed to regulate
- Make its own rules without oversight as to cost or regard to the Private Property of those private concerns (i.e., hospitals and in the future, other medical providers)
And remember, Hassan said on WMUR’s Closeup that she wants revisit this if elected: spin up a new board and just let it go without any of the normal oversight mechanisms. This is a NH Value, Mike? Isn’t this EXACTLY what the Progressive Administrative State would look like? Or do you not know the foundations of the political philosophy that you support?
Is this a NH Democrat value or a traditional NH / TEA Party value? Again, the TEA Party wants a constitutional based system by which the elected are accountable to the electors – MaggieCare is not that, eh Mike?