Gee, ya think? Senators Worry That Health Overhaul Could Erode Employer Insurance Plans.

Hey, guys. That’s the whole idea.

And Blanche Lincoln doesn’t get it:

Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, said preserving employer-sponsored insurance “needs to be a huge objective.”

No, senator. The “huge objective” should be to get people out of plans that are tied to their employers, and into their own private plans that are portable, by leveling the tax-deduction playing field.

The United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small employers, said the proposed requirement amounted to a new tax and would frustrate the creation of jobs.

Only an economic ignoramus (i.e., much of the Congress) would think otherwise. So a company has a choice of hiring someone who doesn’t need or want insurance (because she’s young and healthy, or has it through her husband’s plan) but the cost of hiring her is buying a redundant policy for her to government specs. Guess what? Others will work overtime instead. That’s assuming that the business case closes for the business to get started at all, of course.

The problem with the Obamacare scam:

Faced with incontrovertible evidence that he and his allies have no intention or ability to fulfill their commitment to Americans regarding their current coverage, President Obama decided today at his press conference to try to redefine the promise. What he meant, he now says, is that the government wouldn’t force people out of their health-care plan. If tens of millions of people get pushed out of their current coverage, it would be because firms chose to drop their insurance plans — never mind the fact that they would do so based on the financial incentives the government put in place.

They must think we’re stupid. Of course, based on last November’s election results, they have some basis for it.

…and the health-spending gap. An analysis by Keith Hennessey:

Combining Kennedy-Dodd with all of the President’s proposed Medicare and Medicaid savings would make America’s long-term entitlement spending problem much worse than under current law.

Gee, ya think?

Sort of:

I’m…glad to see that Ezra Klein is explicit about his acceptance that climate change is expected to have extremely limited effects on the United States for at least the next hundred years. I figure that ought to be pretty important when debating the proper policies for the government of the United States. On the other hand, we continue to disagree about the financial efficiency of the foreign aid program defined by transforming the energy sector of the American economy in order to very slightly ameliorate a predicted problem that might affect people who might live in low-lying equatorial regions of the world decades from now.

As Bjorn Lomborg would say, it’s a lousy deal. But of course, it’s not about economic efficiency. It’s about forcing everyone into the secular religion of our moral betters.

[Early afternoon update]

Keep the lights on! Fight the bill.

The “social progressives” are always complaining because we’re not more like Europe. Well, they can stop whining now:

The US unemployment rate exceeded Germany’s rate in April and was very close to the rate in France.

Spreading the wealth around. And the poverty.

[Update a few minutes later]

A depressing chart of how hard it will be to recover.

[Update a few minutes later]

My piece on Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxie is up at Pajamas Media (I wrote it a couple weeks ago, but Iran had kept it off the front page, and I have a feeling it will be relevant for a long time, unfortunately).

The economic crisis was not caused by the free market. We didn’t have a free market. But the Democrats got themselves into power propelled by this ongoing lie.