When Ben Cardin, one of two Democrat U.S. senators from Maryland, was first elected to the Maryland General Assembly in 1967, the handheld calculator had just been invented, the top TV programs were The Andy Griffith Show, The Lucy Show and Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. (respectively), and the number one song at year’s end was “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees.
Since then, Ben Cardin graduated to the Major League, having served in Congress for the past 25 years as both a U.S. representative and in his most-recent incarnation as a senator.
For 45 years, Cardin has been lost in a world far-removed from the reality of life in the private sector, where balancing a budget and considering the actual effects of legislation upon the average American are as foreign a concept as time travel.
Ben Cardin: Obamacare will make health insurance “affordable.”
So it’s no surprise that Cardin spews political pablum about issues of which he has no expertise and no real understanding of the consequences of his political action other than how it will get him press, political contributions or re-elected.
When he voted for and promoted Obamacare, he was defiant even in the face of angry constituents at town hall meetings.
“I know a lot of you have your minds made up,” Cardin told hundreds of attendees at a standing room-only town hall meeting at Towson University (Md.) in August 2009, “but listen to the facts.”
The trouble was, Cardin wouldn’t listen to OUR facts. Those of us in Maryland who said Obamacare would cause stratospheric increases in health insurance rates, who warned of a shortage of doctors, who predicted that states would find online insurance exchanges costly and unworkable, who saw that government was limiting the choices of Americans by treating the purchase of a comprehensive and personal health insurance plan like buying a cheap flight to Orlando on a cut-rate website like Travelocity (which is what USA Today called it when the law was being drafted).
Steny Hoyer: Voicing opposition to Obamacare was “un-American.”
But Cardin didn’t listen. Neither did Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) who was at the time House Democratic leader, and good friend Nancy Pelosi, the Maryland native and outspoken former Democrat speaker of the House representing California, who labelled those of us who waited hours in line to confront our elected officials as “mobs” who were “un-American” and only wanted to shout down opposing views.
In fact, more than 60% of the American electorate was against Obamacare. Some “mob” of “un-Americans.”
After passing the Affordable Care Act (talk about an oxymoron) in March 2010, Cardin said this: “One of the very first bills that I introduced when I came to the U.S. Senate was for universal health coverage for all Americans. Thanks to the health reform measures we have passed, I am proud to say we have finally reached that goal, which has eluded Congress and presidents for generations. Affordable, quality health insurance coverage will now be a right and not a privilege for every American across the country. I will fight to protect this right from anyone who attempts to diminish or repeal it.”
He added: “Health care reform will have an immediate impact on real families, small businesses and seniors in Maryland.”
Why, then, is the senator crying and complaining about the rollout of the health “reform” law, that is facing implementation of some of its major aspects by the end of this year, and that so far has created more confusion and increased costs than any relief Cardin and others promised?
[See New York Times article]
Cardin is complaining about a requested 25% increase in premiums for individuals being sought by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield in Maryland. A 15% increase for small businesses is also being sought.
President Obama: Promised to bring all parties together and broadcast health reform “negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.”
The increases, which must be reviewed and approved by the Maryland Insurance Administration, whose commissioner is appointed by the Maryland governor and approved by the Maryland General Assembly, will likely be approved, if not fully, then to a degree very close to what the company seeks.
This, in a state that is one of the nation’s strongholds of Democrat control, where the governor’s mansion has been inhabited by a Republican for just one term in nearly the last half-century, and where the legislature is so steeped in political cronyism that the House speaker and Senate president – both Democrats whose combined tenure as chamber leaders is more than 35 years, and whose combined time in the legislature is 63 years! – will likely rule from the nursing home.
The rates will be approved because they are warranted. Because the level of bureaucracy created by Obamacare, the inclusion of an as-yet-unknown population of those with pre-existing conditions and the exit of the younger and healthier who will not pay the increasing rates causing the overall rates to increase, the minimum plans created by Obamacare, and the rules and regulations of Obamacare are so cumbersome that costs for the insurer rise.
And when costs for a product or service provider rise, to whom does the cost increase get passed along? You got it; the consumer.
Lest one think that insurers are just adding fat to premiums: Obamacare set limits called “medical loss ratios” that dictates what health insurers can spend above and beyond the actual cost of care on things like administration, operating costs, marketing, compensation, etc. Additionally, in Maryland, CareFirst is the “insurer of last resort,” and thus subjected to even further scrutiny over rates due to its tax status.
CareFirst cannot “slip” rate increases in unless the rates are justified and approved by a Democrat government that is forced to admit that, by its approval of said rates, Obamacare costs more. Much, much more, in fact, than promised.
Nancy Pelosi: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”
Cardin said he is “distressed” that the Obama administration is unable to require aspects of dental coverage be instituted. But he shouldn’t be surprised. The Obama administration terminated a pre-existing condition health insurance plan that it ran itself – required under the Affordable Care Act – because (are you ready for this?) it cost too much! [Read story here]
If Cardin had read the 2,900-page health reformn bill during the few days it was put out for public consumption and debate before being voted on, perhaps he would have understood how horrible a piece of legislation it was. Remember how the Senate use the obscure “reconciliation” rules procedure that fast-tracked the legislation and virtually guaranteed its passage and ultimate signature with the complete exclusion of those who advocated for the majority of Americans (yes, most Americans were against passage of the law) who at a minimum wanted to have an open and frank discussion of the issue? Republicans were excluded from all committee and Democrat-party discussion, which were literally held behind closed doorsl.
Remember how President Obama promised that he would be “bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.”
But I digress.
Neither Cardin nor any other congressperson – nor any American, for that matter – could have possibly digested the single-largest piece of legislation in history, designed to control one-fifth of the national economy, over the course of a weekend before its certain passage in such a secretive and aggressive manner.
Nancy Pelosi famously told us, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”
We now know what is in it.
And so does Cardin.
He doesn’t like it, so he’s crying “foul.”
But he gave US exactly what HE asked for.
Thanks bunches, Uncle Ben.
Senator a hypocrite in crying about rate increases due to Obamacare via IFAwebnews .
