« Lessons For America's Youth: Europe's Doomed Generation | Main | "Ultimate death stare": New RAF helmet allows pilots to shoot down enemy jets by looking at them »

January 3, 2011

Obama Administration Takes Control of Insurance Prices

The Obama administration has just taken another step in his policy of "ruling by exectutive order" rather than the legislative process ... and moving toward complete government control of our health care - via making the public option the "only option."

WND: Feds take control of insurance prices (emphasis mine):

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her staff are implementing a new 136-page federal regulation which, for the first time ever, gives the federal government the power to set health insurance premium prices, a regulatory role traditionally reserved for the states, health policy experts are telling WND.

The new price control rule centralizes regulation of insurance policy premiums -- and coverage -- in Washington, D.C., under the aegis of Sebelius, a longtime radical abortion advocate and instrumental player in President Obama's cabinet for the Obamacare agenda.

Sebelius, a former Democratic governor of Kansas, has been a mover in liberal health policy circles for years.

"Government control over the health care sector is the ultimate goal of Obamacare, and the latest rule giving the secretary authority over health insurance prices is part of the march," Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based health policy think tank, told WND. "We're only seeing the beginning of the onslaught of regulations to come."

Another analyst noted that the policy essentially creates another layer of red tape for health insurance firms to jump through in order to bring policies to market, and likely will discourage new companies from entering the market, or established companies from expanding their offerings.

That means fewer choices for consumers, who purchase policies for their families, or employers who offer their workers health insurance, say experts.

"It's just one more way to drive health insurers out of the health insurance market," Hans Bader, a senior attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington D.C., told WND.

The move seems to be in line with recommendations from Obama advisers that his administration simply rule by executive action.

Does anyone seriously doubt that Obama is more likely than not to continue to try to ignore and override the Constitution in order to achieve Fidel Castro-style health care in the U.S.? After all, as Mark Steyn has so aptly pointed out, for Obama and the Reid/Pelosi-crats, it's not about our healthcare - which they really don't give a rip about ... It's about power and a permanent left-of-center political culture:

"The appeal of this issue (health reform) to him (Obama) and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture -- one in which elections are always fought on the Left's issues and on the Left's terms, and in which "conservative" parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can."

Related: ObamaCare and Political Insanity

Posted by Richard at January 3, 2011 12:10 PM

• Obama Administration Takes Control of Insurance Prices - Jan 03, 2011