Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Before she began to comment upon what is now called ObamaCare, Betsy McCaughey , a former lieutenant governor of New York and presently an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, took the precaution of reading both the voluminous stimulus bill as well as the health care bill, a path not followed by the majority of legislators who either voted or are due to vote on both measures. McCaughey’s findings ought to disturb everyone who will be affected by either bill – which is to say, everyone in the United States. Her recent commentary in Bloomberg News begins: “Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy. “Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.” That’s right: Health ca...

Big oops! Like any washed up politician Tom Daschle cashed in after his term of service was over and joined gold plated money making machine InterMedia Advisors of Englewood, Colorado, which hired him to sooth their clients. Daschle is a limited partner and chairman of that firm's executive advisory board, and is also an independent consultant to InterMedia Advisors LLP of New York City. The job also came with a car and a private chauffer; so Daschle thought. But it turned out that Daschle was supposed to have been paying taxes on the service and didn’t, which put him in arrears to the US treasury for about three years. When Treasury thugs came looking for him, shortly after the new Health and Human Services Secretary was plucked from obscurity by the Obama administration to socialize the nation’s health system, he and his accountant “fixed” the oversight. Daschle failed to report income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031 in 2005, $89,129 in 2006 and $93,096 in...

The new Administration had not yet begun when a bill to enlarge SCHILD, an insurance plan supposedly for children and twice previously vetoed by President Bush, was passed by the House with no amendments allowed. One significant change is that new immigrants no longer have to verify their status to qualify for inclusion. This quasi invitation to free health care is an incentive to Mexican residents to move to the United States. Still unveiled is Senator Kennedy’s task force, which he, long determined to play a major role in health care, organized to write the health-care bill. Still another player is President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader. Simultaneously approved by the President is Daschle’s new Federal Health Board (FHB). He will head it. Its members will be named by President Obama with the consent of the Senate. The FHB, which Daschle likens to the Federal Reserve Board, will make decisions in health care as ...