A BLINDING GLIMPSE OF THE OBVIOUS

Brit Hume on the Senate health care bill:

In breaking with her Republican colleagues to vote for that Senate committee bill, Senator Snowe said she still has reservations about it, especially about its cost. And with good reason. Consider what just happened to the bill in recent days.

Central to it was a tradeoff. Insurance companies would no longer be able to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Nor could they charge sick people higher premiums. In return, the bill would require everyone, sick and healthy, to have insurance, thus providing the companies a stream of new premiums from the healthy to cover the care of the sick.

But the committee then voted to weaken the penalties on those who refused to obtain coverage. That made it inevitable that millions would opt out of the system, choosing to pay the modest penalties, and wait until they got sick to get insurance, knowing they could not be turned down because they were sick.

The insurance industry responded with a report Tuesday that said the bill would end up raising health care premiums for everybody. No kidding. The report was immediately denounced by the White House, but that's almost beside the point, which is this:

The major cost of this whole new insurance entitlement is supposed to be paid for by about a half trillion dollars in unspecified Medicare cuts.

Does anyone believe that a Congress that can't put teeth into its insurance requirement, would actually make those kinds of cuts in Medicare, perhaps the most popular program ever passed?”

Where is ObviousMan when you need him?

OH, MY

Geithner aides reaped millions working for banks, hedge funds.

I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Absolutely shocked.

THANK GOD

”The headline sent my heart racing. I scanned the article under ‘Pope Canonizes Five New Saints,’ doing a quick search of the five holies. Relief. None was named Obama.”

IS OBAMA WORSE THAN CARTER?

Frank J. describes the Carter years - and reminds: “[H]e’s still eligible to serve another term.”

HATING OBAMA'S AMERICA

Ben Shapiro responds to Eugene Robinson: "I don't root against President Obama because I hate America. I root against President Obama because I hate his vision for America."

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

More bluster from the White House.

The Wizard of Oz had the good sense to recognize when he was unmasked.

Obama doesn’t. And it shows.

THE IRONY OF IT ALL

Thomas Sowell on the politics of health care: "The crowning irony is that the problems caused by insurance companies refusing to pay for certain medications or treatment are to be solved by giving government bureaucrats that same power, along with the power to prevent patients from using their own money to pay for those same medications or treatments."