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Michelle Malkin: Nanny State Gone Wild
The greatest gifts you can give your children can’t be boxed and bowed. Consider the timeless gift of self-sufficiency — a stubborn thirst to leave the nest, make it on your own and live as a free-willed adult. It’s a concept that Big Nanny Democrats are sabotaging at every legislative turn.
Several times during the sneaky debate on the government health-care takeover bill recently, Democrats hailed a provision requiring insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, both specifically championed the unfunded mandate in their floor statements.
This manifestation of the Nanny State is especially galling given the massive levels of generational theft the Democratic majority has presided over this past year. If they truly cared about the physical and financial well-being of young Americans, they’d stop piling on expensive regulations that simply put affordable health insurance out of their reach.
I propose a new symbol for the Democrats. Out: donkey. In: a giant adult pacifier.
I can tell you what most fiscally responsible parents are thinking when they hear the feds “taking care” of everyone else’s adult “children” by confiscating their tax dollars and forcing private companies to comply: You’ve got to be kidding me. Yes, Virginia, there are still some of us left who believe our children shouldn’t depend on a government-manufactured umbilical cord as they approach their third decade on Earth.
Nonetheless, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ages from 24 to 31. And it’s these government health-care mandates that are driving up the cost of insurance.
Health policy researcher Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation reported that in New Jersey, Nanny State peddlers claimed the adult kiddie protection law would help 100,000 uninsured young adults. “Yet in two years, only 6 percent of that estimate has been realized. The primary reason — health insurance is still too expensive.”
Wisconsin has experienced similar results. “Whenever you insure somebody whom you didn’t insure before there’s some additional risk,” insurance expert James Mueller told the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. Mueller points to the premium increases that have followed coverage mandates on employer-sponsored plans. “The problem with all these good ideas is there’s funding necessary,” Mueller said. In Wisconsin, not only are adult children covered, but also the children of those “children” if they live in single-parent homes.
As he rammed through this mandate and the mountain of other government regulations buried in Demcare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promised: “We are reshaping the nation. That’s what we want to do.”
Indeed, this defining dependency up phenomenon is part of the larger push for single-payer-by-proxy. The other universal health care Trojan horse signed into law this year — the expansion of SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) — welcomed more non-“children” into the government insurance fold.
Both political parties have advocated federal waivers to use SCHIP funds for adults, including parents of Medicaid/SCHIP children, caretaker relatives, legal guardians and childless adults. According to the General Accounting Office, SCHIP-funded expenditures on adults nationwide “totaled about $674 million in 2006.”
J.P. Wieske of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance notes that the bennies provide an incentive for parents to drop their private coverage in order to take advantage of free or discounted health insurance for their children. “It has become a program for the middle class at the expense of the poor,” Wieske said.
This is the engine that will power the Demcare architects’ most naked, radical ambitions: “Health care as an inalienable right,” as Harkin put it. How? By breeding a massive permanent culture of dependency and bottomless debt in the name of the “children” from birth through quarter-life — and beyond.
— Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Click here for more information. She can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 09:52 AM
“Self-sufficiency”? That’s code for socialism for the rich. Why waste good money on actual health care delivery when it can be properly spent on luxury cars and yachts for insurance company executives? Ms. Malkin must just love giving the insurance companies all the money - I wonder if she supports the “mandate” in the current Senate bill that will penalize regular folks for NOT buying health insurance from one of the insurance behemoths?
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 11:36 AM
Ok Johnny apparently you haven’t heard, WE ARE BROKE! Again for the umpteenth time where in the world are you going to get the wealth to pay for healthcare? If you haven’t figured it out by now let me enlighten you, the wealth you continually are trying to “tax” out of the wealthy DOES NOT EXIST! The wealthy might have a yacht or two or a home or three and maybe a half a dozen cars. But you confiscating that luxury will find yourself with a spit in a bucket compared to the healthcare bill. So you like good little Bolsheviks go after investment wealth. Oh that is real smart boys. Where do you think the money insurance companies collect from premiums goes? Yes I know they pay their execs obscene compensation but hey even if you were to steal that it doesn’t come close to paying your healthcare bill (by orders of magnitude), no that money is invested right back into the economy stupid. So if it’s taken out what are the consequences to the bottom line? Don’t know do you?
I’ll tell you Johnny like I have your other DNC ops friends; you can have all the feel good crap you want when you generate the wealth to pay for it and that does not mean the treasury printing press or market speculation (as in George Soros and William Buffet, your big lefty sugar daddies). It means you have to WORK for it. Yes, you want universal big nanny government healthcare for all then go earn the wealth to pay for it first and stop trying to pick my pockets for it. Quit trying to screw the rest of the economy even further than you already have so you can “feel good”. Got it?
I’ll be waiting for an intelligent response like, “Oh AN50, here is a way to pay for it and expand our economy too…” not some dopy George Soros scripted montage of talking points, thank you very much.
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 04:19 PM
An50, you sound like a broken record. Yes we are broke but what contributes to that is our lack of competitiveness due to expensive and inferior healthcare, our education system and our overspending on our military instead of domestic items. Just think if we were only to reduce our military spending from more than 50% of our annual budget to around 35% then we could improve the U.S. dramatically by lowering the deficit, improving our infrastructure, improving the efficiency of our healthcare system etc etc etc. We would still be by far the biggest spender on military weapons in the world.
The real problem lies in how politician are elected. They need lots of money and need big business to help them. So companies own the politicians and set the agenda through their lobbyists. Until we break that cycle we will not be able to solve many of our fundemental problems. The Military Industrial Complex loves our continuous state of war because it enables them to drain our treasury in the name of national security and the war on terror. In that regard, the terriorist are winning.
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 04:36 PM
Tort reform needed for the whinners of Calif. Its never YOUR fault..sue sue sue—
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 04:51 PM
Strip away the mind-numbing invective and Malkin’s scandal is this: the feds may follow the lead of 20 states and allow young adults to be covered under their parents policies. (This at a time when starting a career is particularly difficult.) In at least one case (New Jersey) only 6% of young adults have even taken up the offer. This is what’s breaking the health-care system? This is the “Nanny-state gone wild”? Come on, get a grip. Don’t we have anything real to worry about?
On the plus side, she’s calling it all DemCare instead of ObamaCare; if all ranters did this the world would be spared quite a few keystrokes.
» wrote on 12.31.09 @ 01:14 PM
Well Local tell your liberal friends in Europe who enjoy all the nanny state feel good crap you so long for that we will no longer ensure their defense. They will then have to spend enormous amounts of their own money defending themselves (right, like that will ever happen). I just don’t understand why you specifically (and admittedly a scientist) can’t figure out basic economics. It is really mystifying how you don’t get it.
One more time, if you want it you have to EARN it. Nothing is free, period and it makes no difference what economic system you chose, free market or government controlled. It still costs and you still have to pay. Everything you have come up with so far involves TRANFER of wealth not CREATION of wealth. You obviously haven’t got a clue what those terms mean or what it means to do either one. Even if you stopped the entire military budget and transferred that to healthcare (like Europe) you still don’t EARN enough to pay for it (like Europe). Do you get that? Do you understand? We aren’t just broke; we are $100 trillion in the red, both public and private. YOU HAVE TO PAY THAT BACK! YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY WORK FOR IT! You have to make the things you want and have enough surpluses to pay down the debt. YOU DON’T DO THAT BY REGULATING WEALTH CREATION TO CHINA AND PILING ON ANOTHER ENTITLEMENT!
» wrote on 01.03.10 @ 10:26 AM
Just like her twin fascist party doll Ann Coulter, Malkin sees an America that can’t do anything right—public education, health care, Social Security, intelligent diplomacy instead of budget busting wars—all of this is just too outlandishly ambitious for their “conservative” America. Instead of continually saying what we CAN’T achieve, why not follow the lead of progressives who believe in America? The rest of the industrialized world is getting along very well thank you with a higher standard of living, less debt, better education and health care than Americans. Right wing fear mongering and negativity is sapping the lifeblood out of the nation. Just watch Fox News for an hour (if you can stomach it) and you’ll see what I mean.
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