Obama's $1 Million Trip to Colorado to Talk about Gun Control

Morning Jolt – April 2, 2013 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Tuesday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! Jim Obama's $1 Million Trip to Colorado to Talk about Gun Control Today President Obama  travels to Colorado to "meet with law enforcement and community leaders to discuss the gun control package signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper." That's a three-hour flight, right? At  $179,750 per hour, that comes out to $1,078,500 in costs for Air Force One for the trip. That's just about the cost of public tours of the White House for one year. "On the road again . . . Just can't wait to get on the road again . . ." Eh, you knew I was kidding . . . Obama's not just flying across the country to give a predictable speech on gun control; he's also traveling out to San Francisco for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser, and he'll stay overnight. (Yes, our president is already preparing fundraising for November 2014 midterm elections.) So the cost of the flights for today and tomorrow is really more like $1.4 million. Coming Soon to Obamacare: The 'We Told You So' Coalition I'm not sure I endorse this theory, but I'll put it out there: What if 2012 didn't represent a major turning point in the political preferences of the American people, didn't signify an epoch-defining victory for liberalism over conservatism, and so on? What if it just came down to Obama's ability to delay the consequences of his first-term decisions until after November 2012? One of the recurring arguments since November has been why Obamacare, never particularly popular in the polls, didn't prove to be an Achilles' heel for the president's reelection bid. Whatever skepticism Americans had about Obamacare, it wasn't enough to get them to remove the president who passed it. Perhaps they felt lingering skepticism about Mitt Romney because he passed his own health-care reform bill that included an individual mandate. Either way, not enough Americans were upset or worried enough about Obamacare to vote for the guy who pledged to repeal and replace it, over the guy who pledged to keep it. But what if the public's opinion on Obamacare was only half-baked in 2012? (Insert punchline about an electorate that was "half-baked" because of the marijuana-legalization initiatives here.) What if the issue was largely defused because only half of the plan had kicked in, and the second half would prove to be one kick in the pants after another to most American patients, doctors, and employers? What if the pooh-poohing of the "Death Panels" accusation proved beside the point, because long before IPAB started deeming treatments insufficiently cost-effective to be worth covering, the whole system would start to fall apart from skyrocketing costs and ludicrously complicated regulations? Because with each new day, another promise is broken: Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation. The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan. The choice option, already available to many big businesses, was supposed to become available to small employers in January. But administration officials said they would delay it until 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running insurance markets known as exchanges. And they will delay the requirement for other states as well. The promise of affordable health insurance for small businesses was portrayed as a major advantage of the new health care law, mentioned often by White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress as they fought opponents of the legislation. Supporters of the law said they were disappointed by the turn of events. No, really, one promise after another: In his November 2009 address to Congress, President Obama said, "Under [this] plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition . . . [or] drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most." That might be true when ObamaCare is fully implemented in January. In the meantime, people have to rely on a plan administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Well, guess what? The CMS has announced that it has run out of money to enroll any more individuals in the program. So it is blocking states from accepting any more applications. It's a sweet political irony, but it's not funny to those stuck without insurance. And one bad consequence after another: A poorly thought-out section of the Affordable Health Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is causing a loss in downtown Pottstown. Royal Medical Supply, a medical equipment supply business that has been quietly thriving at 34 E. High St., is set to move the bulk of its operation to Oaks this spring, taking as many as 75 jobs with it. The site will remain as a showroom, but the loss will be in the group of employees who spent money downtown, a critical loss to the business district. Company owner Roy Repko says the firm had hoped to expand downtown but is being forced to move to stay afloat. This time, the culprit isn't local taxes or a lack of space or parking, it's a federal law killing the company's profit margins. It's a complicated situation, with many factors, Repko said, "but at the end of the day, without Obamacare, we would still be in town." Central to his dilemma, Repko explained, are the reimbursement rates which will affect Medicare and Medicaid, which comprise such a sizeable part of his business. One other strange indicator: you're seeing lefty state legislators pushing to scrap Obamacare and switch directly to state-run single-payer plans: State Sen. Irene Aguilar wants Coloradans to imagine a day when 80 percent of them see their health care costs drop. She says the wildly different health care system she envisions can make that happen – largely by eliminating much of what health insurance companies do, and by purchasing everyone's medications in bulk. The Denver doctor and Democrat is proposing that Colorado throw out the impending reforms know as Obamacare – which is permitted if the state comes up with a better plan. This week Aguilar introduced a resolution to ask Colorado voters to create a universal health care system for the state. Specifically, Aguilar's bill would ask voters to create a statewide health insurance co-op, owned by all Coloradans, which would replace health insurance companies. It would offer one wide-ranging policy for all residents. It would be funded by a tax, which would replace the insurance premiums that companies and people now pay. I Prefer to Think about Web Traffic, Not the Other Kind After spending eleven hours on Interstate 95 Monday, I've been thinking a lot about Kevin Williamson's recent typically great NR cover piece on traffic, infrastructure, and what, if anything, conservative policymakers can do about them. He drove some of the Northeast's most traffic-clogged commuter routes, including . . . . . . the freeways of northern Virginia, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the terrifying merge-or-die Schuylkill Expressway. With the exception of the Escape from New York segment, each of these routes has been at one time or another a daily commute for me, but I travel around the country enough to appreciate that they are not even the worst these United States have to offer. Just outside Metuchen, I spot what I suspect is a big part of the reason for that: The New Jersey Transit commuter train is as tightly packed as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Car commuting in the densely urban Northeast Corridor can be a frustrating waste of time, but for many of those living between Fairfield County and Fairfax County, it is a choice — a choice not really available to the vast majority of commuters in such traffic-addled metropolises as Houston or Atlanta, to say nothing of the poor people of Southern California, where whatever spatio-temporal anomaly governs life requires two hours to get from any given Point A to any given Point B. (On a recent drive from San Pedro to LAX, I averaged 6.25 mph over the course of the 20-mile trip.) Houston, Phoenix, and other big American cities that saw most of their growth in the highway-intensive postwar era are simply too spread out to support the kind of mass transit available in the Northeast. Sun Belt workers are more or less stuck in their cars. Traffic is a visceral quality-of-life issue. The morning rush-hour commute is pure, unadulterated, Grade A hell for millions of Americans — millions of suburb-dwelling Americans with old-fashioned jobs of the sort that require one to be in a particular place at a particular time doing a particular thing, i.e., low-hanging Republican fruit — an everyday problem that is right here, right now, right on the other side of the windshield. It costs billions of dollars in squandered time and productivity, and in effect extends the 40-hour workweek into 50 or more hours for millions of voters. And it makes people furious. I'll admit, I love the express toll lanes added to the Capitol Beltway (not taking existing lanes and making them toll-only, but adding new ones) and they seem like the simplest solution. Do you know anyone who carpools to work? Maybe you've lucked out; in my circles, it's like an urban legend. I don't know enough people who live close enough together and then work together, or work close enough together, and arrive and depart at the same time, and who have predictable work schedules, never needing to arrive early or stay late, and who don't require a vehicle to get anywhere else in the course of the day. Oh, and preferably, this person will not be a weirdo or have a serious body odor problem or INSIST upon tuning the car radio to some oh-so-wacky trying-too-hard "Morning Zoo" radio personality. For many people, time is money. So a quicker zip around one of the Beltway's more notoriously-congested curves would definitely be worth a few extra bucks. (The amount of the toll changes depending upon the time of day.) But unlike the exorbitant congestion charges in places like London, this toll isn't mandatory; you have the option of taking the "normal" Beltway lanes. What's really great is that each toll-paying car takes one car off the "normal" lanes, alleviating traffic a bit on folks who don't like paying the extra toll. So everybody wins. I could get behind adding two toll lanes the length of Interstate 95. ADDENDA: The hot rumor is Caroline Kennedy will be appointed the U.S. ambassador to Japan. I hope she's ready to hear "Sweet Caroline BAH BAH BAH" in karaoke, over and over and over and over again. You knew that Neil Diamond wrote the song about her, right? And she was eleven when the song was released, right? I just thought I would kick off the baseball season by making every Red Sox fan feel a little weird about singing that song. Get all the latest news, 24/7, at www.NationalReview.com Save 75%... 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