Unintended Health Care Bill Consequences; Obama Loses His Magic

From the LA Times: Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others say they will make the move as soon as Thursday when parts of the new healthcare law take effect. They cite potentially huge and unexpected costs for insuring children.

Major health insurance companies in California and other states have decided to stop selling policies for children rather than comply with a new federal healthcare law that bars them from rejecting youngsters with preexisting medical conditions.
Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others will halt new child-only policies in California, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere as early as Thursday when provisions of the nation's new healthcare law take effect, including a requirement that insurers cover children under age 19 regardless of their health histories.
The action will apply only to new coverage sought for children and not to existing child-only plans, family policies or insurance provided to youngsters through their parents' employers. An estimated 80,000 California children currently without insurance — and as many as 500,000 nationwide — would be affected, according to experts.
Insurers said they were acting because the new federal requirement could create huge and unexpected costs for covering children. They said the rule might prompt parents to buy policies only after their kids became sick, producing a glut of ill youngsters to insure. As a result, they said, many companies would flee the marketplace, leaving behind a handful to shoulder a huge financial burden.  [Welcome to the real world of unintended consequences.]  http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-kids-health-insurance-20100921,0,799167.story
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This, from a President Bush detractor:  In 20 months, Barack Obama has outbottomed W.  His 75 percent approval rating is barely 40. Like “stimulus,” “health care” is such a dirty word the Left dare not proclaim its name. A Rasmussen poll asks Ohio who it wished were president: Shockingly, W. beats Obama, 52-44 percent. One cause is policy. Another: Increasingly, Obama seems cheap in a rude and snarky way.

Think of Obama as Eddie Haskell Goes to Washington: TV’s “Leave it to Beaver” late 1950s and early ’60s essence of narcissism gone mad. Despite his toxic waste, Bush could be gracious: honoring Ted Kennedy, preaching tolerance, treating critics civilly. By contrast, Obama has become an MSNBC caricature: a hip, glib and graceless man.

Obama ridicules Nancy Reagan’s “seances,” calls Winston Churchill a drunk and terms tanned Republican leader John Boehner’s “color not found in the natural world.” He or aides insult “lost souls ... liars ... narrow-minded nut jobs” for “spewing misinformation” — actually, for noting that non-“recovery summer” has begot a winter of our discontent.

Like Eddie Haskell, Obama cries wolf, saying health care would slash cost while bulging coverage. Both blame others — here, the GOP — except that, controlling nothing, how can it be to blame? Each always comes back to them, as in Obama’s Labor Day diatribe. “They talk about me like a dog.” “If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no.” “Their slogan is ‘No we can’t. Nope, no, no, no.’” A juvenile delinquent would sound more mature.
What a contrast. Nixon hailed a predecessor whose war enormously complicated his presidency. Obama can’t praise a predecessor responsible for his presidency’s signal triumph. Perhaps one day we will again have a president who is also an adult.

Radical. Uberpartisan. Self-absorbed. Each describes a man whose “change we can believe in” now seems more farce than hope. Like Eddie Haskell, though, the word most applicable is “small.” If grace determined a person’s height, Obama would be 2-feet tall.http://www.uticaod.com/opinion/x1547939079/Eddie-Haskell-goes-to-Washington
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