Winners & Losers

The first step in any uberLeft "transformation" operation is the sabotage of the target industry, after which follows government "rescues" and "bailouts" which become "takeovers" and "nationalizations" as each successive "fix" screws things up even worse, until there's no private sector role left.  Then, after the government controls it lock, stock, & green eyeshade, and politics, not economic rationality and self-interest, is the new lifeblood of the realm, the Regime sits back and picks winners and losers in its OWN self-interest.

We saw this with the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb, and we've seen the results since: most of the financial sector nationalized, the remainder consolidated into a few smotheringingly regulated mega-banks/firms that are much easier for The One to corrupt and intimidate, and all lying in stagnant ruins.

But the DFLB constituted clandestine sabotage; for the vast majority of Americans, the Panic of 2008 came out of nowhere, and they didn't have a context for understanding it until long after they'd made the terrible mistake of entrusting Obamunists with unchecked power.  They used that power principally to ram ObamaCare down our throats, an act of overt sabotage of the health care sector that is already yielding its bitter fruit - and has businesses lining up penitantly for the chance that Don Obamone might only make them kiss his ring:

As Obama administration officials put into place the first major wave of changes under the health care legislation, they have tried to defuse stiffening resistance — from companies like McDonald’s and some insurers — by granting dozens of waivers to maintain even minimal coverage far below the new law’s standards.

…To date, the administration has given about thirty insurers, employers and union plans, responsible for covering about one million people, one-year waivers on the new rules that phase out annual limits on coverage for limited-benefit plans, also known as “mini-meds.” Applicants said their premiums would increase significantly, in some cases doubling or more.

These early exemptions offer the first signs of how the administration may tackle an even more difficult hurdle: the resistance from insurers and others against proposed regulations that will determine how much insurers spend on consumers’ health care versus administrative overhead, a major cornerstone of the law.

Several leading insurers, including WellPoint, Aetna and Cigna, have also objected to new rules requiring them to cover even those children who are seriously ill, warning that they will stop selling new policies in some states because the rules do not protect them from having to cover too many sick children.

“The hardest part of health reform is always going to be the transition,” said Peter T. Harbage, a former state health official who is a policy consultant in Sacramento. He predicts more insurers and employers will lean on the government to delay or weaken the new regulations. “I think this pressure just increases until we get to 2014,” he said, referring to the year that the law will fully go into effect.

The Slimes makes it sound like the Regime is retreating in panic, the clear implication of the author's bellicose adjectives vis-a-vie insurers and employers - "stiffening resistance," "will LEAN ON the government," etc.  We're to get the idea that the latter are to be understood as the U.S. health care equivalent of al Qaeda in Iraq circa 2006, a sinister, thuggish insurgency poised to vengefully overwhelm the poor, compassionate, well-intentioned do-gooders down O-Care way.

The reality is The One holds all the cards because he's seized all the power; as I've observed before, with ObamaCare what Barry O has really nationalized is our bodies - what we do with them, what we put into them, what we put them into, how they're treated, by whom, when, how often, for how much.  The man who holds all the gold becomes the most "generous" by definition - but he nevers dispenses a favor for "free".  Every one of these "waivers" will have ample iron cables attached that will drag its recipients into a tidally-locked political orbit of Planet Obama - or else the waiver will be waived, and the recipient will be targeted for "bailout" and cease to exist as completely as GM or Chrysler or AIG.

Otherwise, what the Slimes piece suggests is what amounts to piecemeal repeal.  Anybody think Bammy is going to allow that to happen on his watch?

As to a federal judge ruling the unconstitutional individual mandate constitutional, all you need to know is contained in this Phil Klein headline.  Anybody think any Donk appointee wouldn't rule that the Commerce Clause gives the feds more power than Darth Sidious?

Exit question courtesy of Eeyore:

What’s the limiting principle on this decision? Would the feds be barred from penalizing people for failing to maintain, say, a certain BMI target because of the right of privacy or bodily autonomy, etc? Or would they not be barred at all? Where does this end? 

It doesn't.  Only repeal will.