EDITORIAL

Didn't understand what was in it

Since the passage of ObamaCare, several major U.S. companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- have announced that they expect the law to cost them billions of dollars in higher health care expenses.

This has prompted an angry Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and one of many Democrats who swore up and down that the measure would actually cut costs, to summon some of the executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment.

Rep. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances, a move one committee Republican describes to Byron York of the Washington Examiner as "an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents" of ObamaCare.

Perhaps these Democrats really are surprised ­-- perhaps (as Republicans consistently warned) they never actually read and comprehended what was in their nearly 3,000-page social engineering experiment.

"Most of these people (in the administration) have never had a real job in their lives," a senior lobbyist for one of the firms told the American Spectator over the weekend. "They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the president. My CEO sat with the president over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the president what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the president didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying."

Nor is this just coming from Republicans. One Democratic staffer affiliated with the Waxman committee told the magazine that neither Rep. Waxman nor Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individuals before they voted on the legislation.

"We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them," says the staffer. "When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them. ... They just didn't understand what they were voting on."

And it's only just begun.

Comments

Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.

1. John F Mar. 31, 2010 | 12:11 p.m. Report Abuse

   Green Dragon Regular,
   
   I see your point, too. But I do believe it was the invention of the corporation, not the rise of the nanny stater, that came first.
   
   "The reason you can't name a single corporation that compels you to buy something on pain of violence or imprisonment is because there is no such thing."
   
   That just ain't true. As long as corporations are writing the laws - and don't kid yourself, they do write the laws - then the power of the state will always be behind their edicts.
   
   What we need to do is take away the ability of corporations to write the laws.
   
   Do you think I'm exaggerating? Ask Dick Cheney who wrote our national energy policy. Who do you think wrote the Mrdicare prescription drug plan?
   
   On a local level, who do you think writes things like building codes into law? It's the contractors who stand to profit from all the extra work.
   
   I cite as an example the fact that I had to spend about $2,500 per restaurant in my company having backflow prevention devices installed, and have to spend about $450 per year having them inspected. All this to eliminate the risk of copper contaminants from getting into the soda lines in my dispensers.
   
   Do you have any idea what the risk of that was without the backflow prevention devices? Much less than one percent.
   
   Now think about $2,500 per restaurant plus $450 per restaurant per year and multiply that by the number of restaurants in Clark County.
   
   Cui bono?
   
   And what happens to my business if I fail to comply? The plumbing contractors use the power of the state to close me down.
   
   And this is just small scale stuff. Think about how the multinationals use the power of larger governments to control us.
   
   It's insane., and it isn't just nanny staters.

2. Green Dragon Regular Mar. 31, 2010 | 11:12 a.m. Report Abuse

   @John F-
   
   Auto insurance is a different animal. No one requires you to own a car, nor, if you do, does anyone require you to insure it, unless you want to register it. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
   
   Life, on the other hand, is a right.
   
   The reason you can't name a single corporation that compels you to buy something on pain of violence or imprisonment is because there is no such thing.
   
   I get your point, however, but the solution is not more government to shield citizens from big business, but less government for big business to use as a tool. As long as government's reach grows, and yes, "nanny-staters" are the enablers of big government, despite what you may think, as long as government is allowed to exceed its true Constitutional authority, it will always be thus.

3. John F Mar. 31, 2010 | 10:17 a.m. Report Abuse

   Green Dragon Regular,
   
   Don't be so naive. Corporations don't have to send men with guns; they use their proxies in government to do it. Why do you think the health care bill took the form it did? The insurance industry pulled a nifty trick in seeing to it that everyone now has to buy insurance, but has to buy it from them.
   
   Same thing with auto insurance. Mandatory auto insurance is not a requirement foisted on us by nanny state liberal do-gooders. It was foisted on us by the insurance industry. Of course they used the nanny state liberal do-gooders to get it done (in part because the do-gooders had no idea they were being used).
   
   Always ask yourself "cui bono." Always follow the money.

4. John F Mar. 31, 2010 | 10:05 a.m. Report Abuse

   Patrick,
   
   And who do you think rigs it so the government supports oligopolies? The oligopolies themselves.
   
   Our government didn't set out to be a tool of the corporations, it's just evolved that way, and we have enabled the corporations through a series of court rulings which grants them the privileges due to individuals but shields them from the liabilities. With the most recent ruling corporations will now have even gtreater control of the electoral process.
   
   Corporate interests are far more powerful than the government. Look at the way we've spent trillions of dollars in the past few years for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, military contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton, and the banks and financial institutions that were deemed too big to fail. All of this was at our expense.
   
   Now we have a health care bill that forces everyone to buy insurance from private providers at whatever rate they care to charge. It's a replay of the imposition of mandatory auto insurance purchases. If that had been done to protect the interests of taxpayers, the government would have provided a low-cost way for people to purchase insurance. But the process was corrupted so that corporate interests benefitted the most.
   
   Such is the case with the health care bill. If we simply wanted to cover everyone at the lowest cost, all we had to do was eliminate the words "above the age of 65" from current Medicare laws. Instead, we have a bill that is a $980 billion windfall for private insurance companies.
   
   Ain't life grand.

5. Green Dragon Regular Mar. 31, 2010 | 6:36 a.m. Report Abuse

   @John F-
   
   Still waiting on that example- one corporation who sends men with guns to your home to put you in jail for not buying their product.
   
   Just one...

6. Ralph Mar. 31, 2010 | 1:12 a.m. Report Abuse

   We shouldn't be voting on these politicians who've had no business experience. Many probably never even ran a paper route. They've been in politics since student council in high school. It's all they know.

7. Alcohol Mar. 30, 2010 | 10:52 p.m. Report Abuse

   Helen are you Allen?
   
   I know bec. you didn't take my bet.
   
   YOU ARE SMART!!!

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