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The Spectacle Blog
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s may be forced to drop health coverage for nearly 30,000 employees as a result of ObamaCare. Today, the New York Times reports that McDonald’s, as well as dozens of other companies, will be granted waivers to get around the onerous new requirements imposed by the new law. At issue in the case of McDonald’s was something called the medical loss ratio, which says that insurers have to spend at least 85 cents out of every dollar they collect in premiums, on paying out claims. The problem is, that it’s difficult to achieve such a ratio for lower benefit plans, or if you’re a smaller insurer — in both cases, there’s a certain bare minimum administrative costs that you’re going to need.
Yet by granting waivers to avert PR nightmares, like the news of McDonald’s dropping coverage, it also adds another disturbing element to the ObamaCare regime. Those companies with the best access and lobbyists are in the best position to be granted a waiver. Bureaucrats can choose to apply a different set of rules to different businesses, and in some cases those rules can determine whether a given business survives. Thus, the waivers themselves are another example of the arbitrary nature of government power.
View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/10/07/administration-to-grant-obamac
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ggoblue| 10.7.10 @ 10:09AM
there will be a correlation between political giving and waivers. this is facism rolling downhill.
26 days til the tsunami
dc| 10.7.10 @ 10:30AM
GGoblue--you're correct; I expect Jonah Goldberg ("Liberal Fascism" author) to pen a long article about this soon. Because it is precisely, exactly fascism in the classic Mussolinian sense of the term and ideology in practice.
The fundamentals are simple: private business and private property are allowed to exist, as long as (respectively) it is subordinate to the state's purposes, and regulated and taxed to the point that nominal possession is the only stick in the property rights bundle left.
Fascism of course benefits only those companies that can afford to "do business" with the state, and part of the unofficial grant of the continued ability to do business is the understanding that money will flow from the private entity to the state whenever the state so desires. The state may or may not return the favors by granting exemptions from laws that it enforces ruthlessly with respect to the politically disfavored (meaning, individual private citizens and businesses that aren't willing to "do business" with the state). Such disfavored citizens and entities are thus left with a choice--either join the captive (corporatist, in Mussolini's terms) businesses, work for the state directly, or be a slave subject to its angry whims and targeted for destruction.
Il Duce Negro (Obama) understands these dynamics well enough to be imitating them almost precisely. Obamacare is the first major, but not the last, vehicle through which he will implement these fascist policies.
Remind me again how anyone can still maintain the grotesque fraud that Demoncrats are "for the little people," or that it's Republicans who are "fascists?" Those who maintain that argument are, respectively, baldfaced liars or ignorami, and utterly unacquainted with what actual fascism means.
I'd be optimistic if I could foresee enough serious conservatives elected as of 11/3/10 to reverse and repudiate Il Duce Negro's fascism. But I can't.
AnyoneButNewt| 10.7.10 @ 10:32AM
How the h*** is this FAIR? Ain't that what liberalism is all about?
Ronald Hussein McDonald| 10.7.10 @ 10:36AM
So the purveyors of unhealthy foods gets a break from Kindly King Barack? On HEALTH CARE no less? Surely Michelle is tearing up her own vegetable garden in a fit of rage!
Ellen| 10.7.10 @ 12:04PM
Watching this unfold, I have the same feeling I had when I first read Atlas Shrugs...nothing in that book was unexpected, yet it was still terrifying. Everyone who opposed Obamacare knew this would be coming, this and more. Now I wonder, do we have the leaders on the right to TAKE THIS ON? I am not convinced. At this point, NO republicans should be equivocating about repealing Obamacare. If they do, they are simply NOT fit to lead in these perilous times.
Siegfried X| 10.7.10 @ 12:08PM
This is basic Chicago machine politics. Any business which pays its "protection money" by contributing to the Democratic Party gets waivers from those nasty laws.
Pete| 10.7.10 @ 12:36PM
Didn't I seen a press release just a day or two ago that listed McDonalds as one of several companies that had signed on to some BS WH "job training" program/initiative? Quid pro quo, Mr. Powers.
Pete| 10.7.10 @ 12:46PM
http://www.dailyfinance.com/st...../19660122/
Link to the story...
Paglia guy| 10.7.10 @ 12:37PM
Absolutely correct! The last paragraph of the Bloomberg story about this states the LARGEST recipient of the waiver is the United Federation of Teachers! McDonalds is chump change, in comparison. Somebodycall Rush and tell him to read all the way through the article!
Oldefarte| 10.7.10 @ 1:29PM
After November, the American taxpayers [through their elected officials] will begin the process of granting waivers to the total welfaric/wealth redistibution system of Obamacare, and will send out CANCELLATION NOTICES to many politicians due to their support of same!!!!!!!!!
Stan Redmond| 10.7.10 @ 2:42PM
"AS DETERMINED BY THE SECRETARY"
Scary words aye?