Megalextoria

The Androscoggin County Republican Party overwhelmingly approved a resolution asking Governor Paul LePage to call the Maine legislature to special session and consider legislation nullifying the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Monday night.

Durham Town Republican Secretary Jason Greene introduced the measure. Only two of the more than 100 members in attendance opposed the resolution.

Nullification legislation would declare the PPACA unconstitutional, and authorize the governor and state lawmakers to take steps to block implementation of the federal health care act.

Greene called state intervention the key to stopping implementation of a federal health care program that is clearly unconstitutional and will take away the right of Mainers to make their own health care choices. He compared resistance to the PPACA with Maine’s refusal to implement the Real ID Act during the Bush administration.

“There is no enumerated power for the federal government to create a national ID and there is no enumerated power authorizing the feds to run the entire U.S. health care system,” he said. “Maine, and several other states refused to comply with Real ID and said, ‘We aren’t going to go along with it; it is unconstitutional.’ Because of this, that law is basically gone and is not being enforced. We need to do the same thing with Obamacare.”

Full article: http://maine.tentham … care-effort-expands/

One of the key arguments that President Obama used to get his health care law though Congress, control of soaring health care costs, turns out to have been bogus.

Here is the way Obama put the argument in a September 9, 2009, speech about health care to a joint session of Congress:

Then there’s the problem of rising cost….insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages….our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined….

Now, these are the facts. Nobody disputes them.

Obama’s voice saying “these are the facts. Nobody disputes them,” is almost enough to set off sound effects akin to those that accompany Pinocchio’s growing nose in the Disney movie.

Sure enough, now that the data are in, the emerging consensus is that health care costs, rather than “skyrocketing,” have been moderating, even flat-lining. And they were beginning to do so well before Congress passed ObamaCare in March 2010.

There have been a trickling of academic papers and journal articles tracking the trend, but the news hasn’t really yet made it fully into the political discussion.

A January 2012 article in the journal Health Affairs reported that “U.S. health spending grew more slowly in 2009 and 2010—at rates of 3.8 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively—than in any other years during the fifty-one-year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts.” That article, by economists and statisticians who work for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says, rather than controlling costs, ObamaCare actually increased health spending by one or two tenths of a percentage point in 2010.

Full article: http://reason.com/ar … ding-claim-that-made

After President Obama’s health care law takes full effect, the slogan for national pizza chain Papa John’s may need an update. Instead of, “Better ingredients. Better Pizza,” may we suggest, “Better health care. Pricier pizza.”

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter says that Obamacare will result in a $0.11 to $0.14 price increase per pizza, or $0.15 to $0.20 cents per order, Pizza Marketplace, a trade publication, reports. (Hat tip: @dkberman via Twitter.)

Under Obamacare, the company, which is the third-largest pizza takeout and delivery chain in the United States, will have to offer health care coverage to more of its 16,500 total employees or pay a penalty to the government.

The National Restaurant Association pointed out following the health care law’s Supreme Court approval that it may adversely affect restaurants’ ability to maintain already slim profit margins because it requires companies of more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance.

Full article: http://www.huffingto … pizza_n_1752126.html