Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

The Constitutionality of Obamacare: Liberals Still Don’t Get It

In my post on Sunday, I talked about how, prior to last week and the arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of Obamacare, liberals just didn’t understand that there are real constitutional concerns about Obamacare.  And after reading Ezra Klein’s column in The Washington Post (here), it is obvious that at least some liberals still don’t understand.*

You can tell that Mr. Klein doesn’t understand from his first sentence: 

“Of all the arguments being waged over the Affordable Care Act … the one dominating the Supreme Court last week is perhaps the most conceptually trivial.”

Mr. Klein goes on to list three ways, other than Obamacare, that health care could have been provided.  Among them are a government-provided, single-payer plan a la Medicare and Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) tax credits for buying private health insurance. 

Mr. Klein says that increasing taxes and providing Medicare-for-all would clearly be okay under the Constitution, and I think he is probably right.  He says the same for Paul Ryan’s tax credit plan, which he also says “is essentially indistinguishable from the mandate [in Obamacare].”  He quotes William Gale of the Tax Policy Center:

“‘The economics of saying you get a credit if you buy insurance and you don’t if you don’t [Rep. Ryan’s plan] are not different than the economics of saying you pay a penalty if you don’t buy insurance and you don’t if you do [Obamacare].’”

But what Mr. Klein misses is that the way things are done matters.  Process counts.  Conservatives believe the Constitution makes a difference.  But Mr. Klein doesn’t understand:

“Of course, this battle isn’t really about the constitutionality of the individual mandate. …

The real fight is over whether the Affordable Care Act should exist at all. … The argument against the individual mandate is a pretext to overturn Obamacare.”

Except it’s not.  Mr. Klein argues that the fact the constitutionality of the mandate was not raised in Massachusetts, when Massachusetts passed a state mandate to buy health insurance in the mid-2000s, shows that constitutionality is not the real problem with the mandate.  Actually, his comments show how badly he is missing the point.  Under our federal system, there is no federal constitutional problem with an individual state passing a mandate to buy health insurance.  States have the authority to do that under the U.S. Constitution.**  It’s the federal government thatmay not.  Just because something is unconstitutional when the federal government does it, doesn’t mean it is unconstitutional when a state government does it.

What Mr. Klein apparently doesn’t understand, and what so many liberals miss about conservatives, is that, for us, process matters.  Proper procedure counts.  We believe that the Constitution is not just a limit on what the government does, but it is also a limit on how the government does what it does.  Many liberals don’t get that, but it is critical to conservatives.  And it is a big difference between conservatives and liberals.***

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* Even though Mr. Klein’s column was published on Saturday, I did not see it until Monday,

** Whether they have it under their own constitution is a separate question, but it is not one being raised here.

*** Peter Suderman at Reason.com gives one possible reason that many liberals “don’t get it”.  I don’t know if it is true, but it is an interesting possibility:

“What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. ‘The results,’ he writes in the May issue of Reason, ‘were clear and consistent.’ Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. ‘Liberals,’ he reports, ‘were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as “very liberal.”’”

The Constitutionality of Obamacare: Liberals Get the Surprise of Their Life

I don’t know how the United States Supreme Court is going to decide on the constitutionality of Obamacare.  Nobody does.  Questions from the bench are sometimes just that.  Questions.  And questions are not always an indication of how a justice will decide.

In any case, what I wanted to comment on was not what I think the Court will, or should, decide.  What I wanted to comment on was the reaction of liberals to the concept that there could actually be a real argument on the constitutionality of the law.  They can’t believe it.  It does not fit with anything they believe.  They understand that the Bill of Rights limits what the government can do.  For example, laws restricting a woman’s right to choose (i.e., abortion) are unconstitutional.  Many liberals believe that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and that laws outlawing same-sex marriage violate various equal protection provisions.

But the idea that there is any limit on the federal government’s power in other areas doesn’t fit.  Liberals find it absolutely incomprehensible that the federal government can’t do whatever it wants and however it wants to do it.  And in some ways I can understand their confusion.  After all, if the federal government can regulate a farmer’s ability to grow wheat for his own personal use because it affects interstate commerce, what limits are there?  (See here.)

Liberals have come to believe that the federal government is there to solve our problems, all of our problems.  (A fair number of conservatives seem to believe that, too, at least at times.)  Poor third grade test scores?  We need No Child Left Behind.  Drunk driving?  Cut highway funds to states that won’t lower their maximum blood alcohol leve.  Shootings in school?  Pass a federal law.*

In the articles they have been writing, liberals have seemed dumbstruck by the idea that there may actually be limits on what the federal government can do or the way it can do it.**  They cannot comprehend that some people actually believe that different levels of government have different powers and that the Constitution has a relevance for today (except for the limited matters mentioned above).

But James Madison explained it in the Federalist Papers:

“In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments.  Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.  The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

I agree with Mr. Madison that the federal system set out in our Constitution works to prevent "[t]he accumulation of all powers "in one place, which is “the very definition of tyranny.”  But also, by dividing up the powers and duties of the various governments, the Constitution provides better government by ensuring that one level of government does not try to do more than it can and that what it does have responsibility for are those things which it can do best.

As an aside, liberals (and some conservatives) also have problems with the idea that different branches of government have different jobs.  For example, I have often heard liberals (and some conservatives) say that the courts need to deal with a particular problem because Congress hasn’t or won’t act.  No!  The courts are not an alternative legislature that you go to when you don’t get the answer you want from the first one.  Courts and legislatures have different jobs, and they should do their own job and not the job of the other branch.  If Congress won’t address a problem, that doesn’t mean the courts should.  Maybe it means that the people, through Congress, don’t think the problem needs to be addressed or maybe they are okay with the way things are.***

But back to liberals and the constitutionality of Obamacare.  Clearly, liberals never understood that there was, or even could be, a serious constitutional challenge to Obamacare.  It wasn’t within their philosophy, and since they don’t understand conservative philosophy (and many of them don’t think conservatives have a philosophy other than selfishness and not caring for other people), they missed it entirely.  Until last week.  When they got the shock of their lives.

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* This last one actually was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, on the grounds it was not within Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.  See United States v. Lopez.

** Among many others, see here and here.  There are ways the Obama administration could have set up a national health care system that would not have been susceptible to challenge.  (Among others, see here.)  But the fact that there was a way it could have been done without challenge, doesn’t mean that the way they chose can’t be challenged.

*** Obviously, there are problems that the courts need to address because there are questions that rightfully do belong to the courts.  Plessey v. Ferguson needed to be overturned, and Brown v. Board of Education needed to be decided.  But do courts really need to decide the proper way to fund schools and how much money the schools should have – because the legislature isn’t doing it right?  (See here.)

The Constitutionality of Obamacare

On Monday the Supreme Court will be taking up the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare plan, and they are going to do it with three days of arguments. The Court’s providing for three days of arguments shows the seriousness with which the Supreme Court will be giving the issue. And it looks good to the public: It is the Supreme Court telling the people that they understand the importance of the issue and they are proceeding appropriately. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but perhaps the best guess I have seen is a 6-3 or 7-2 vote to uphold the law, with Chief Justice Roberts writing the opinion himself in order to keep the opinion as narrow as possible, so it only applies to healthcare and does not become the basis for further expansions of federal power.

As for my thoughts, I have written on the subject twice before. The first time was on April 8, 2010, when the idea that there could be a real constitutional challenge to the idea was not taken seriously. I wrote again ten months later, on February 7, 2011, by which time it had become clear that there was a real, substantive challenge to the law and that it might not get upheld. Looking back on those two articles, I don’t think I have much more to say on the constitutionality of the law. At this point all we can do is wait for the lawyers to argue and the Court to decide.

Health Insurance: Just Another Decision the Government Will Make for Us

As I said on February 11, there was an easy solution for the Obama administration if they really thought providing free contraception services is critical to women’s health:  Have the government provide it.  If it would be too expensive to provide free contraception services to all women, how about “birth control stamps” for those who can’t otherwise afford it?  Obviously, some Catholics (and other people) would oppose the government doing this, but at least we wouldn’t be forcing them, either directly or indirectly through the sham of some insurance company providing it for “free,” to pay for it, other than as part of their general taxes.

Some might argue that such a program would not pass Congress, but if that is true, why should the executive branch institute such a policy all by itself?  Which is, actually, one of the problems with Obamacare: No choice.  For an administration that is all about choice when it comes to having babies or alternative lifestyles, the Obama administration sure doesn’t want to let people choose when it comes to healthcare and health insurance.  In fact, you have to wonder if that isn’t at least one of the reasons for the unpopularity of Obamacare.

I certainly understand the very big concern about the constitutionality of a law forcing people to buy a product from a private company or be fined by the government.  I understand why some people feel, as has been argued, that if the federal government can force you to buy health insurance, what is there the government can’t force you to buy – or do?

But there is also a concern about the limited choices there will be with respect to the insurance people have to buy.  While the private health insurance market is not all that developed today, because so many people get health insurance where they work, there are still lots of choices.  You can buy plans that provide full coverage for all kinds of illnesses and conditions.  You can include dental coverage if you want; or exclude it if you want.  You can have your health insurance cover some drugs, all drugs, or no drugs at all.  You can even buy a policy that provides just only catastrophic coverage.  You pay, for example, the first $5,000 of medical expenses in a year, and the insurance company pays all the rest.  The insurance is fairly inexpensive, and if all you need is coverage for a major problem, it could be exactly what you want.

But when President Obama’s healthcare “exchanges” come into existence in 2014, people aren’t going to have those kinds of choices.   There may be more than one company offering policies, but the policies are going to be pretty much all the same.  They are going to cover everything – and more – and they are going to be very expensive.  And people are going to have to buy them even if they don’t want that much coverage.

Because the Obama administration doesn’t want to let people choose.  In some ways it’s like the Democrats who don’t like vouchers and other programs that let parents choose what school their children go to.  They don’t think parents are smart enough to know what school is best for their children.  Experts need to make the decisions, not parents.

And so it is with the health insurance people will have to buy.  Liberals think they know what kind of health insurance people should have – and liberals are going to make them buy it, whether they want it or not.  It reminds me of a conversation we had with a young couple in East Germany in 1982.  We told them that, in the United States, people could decide whether or not they wanted to buy health insurance for themselves.  The woman noted that in East Germany one did not have such decisions to make.  She said that the government made those decisions for people so they did not need to worry about making mistakes. 

Which is the way it seems to be moving in the United States – and the way it will continue to move if Barack Obama is re-elected in November.  The government in Washington will decide things for us.  Because they are (or, they think they are) the experts, and they know better than we do what is good for us.  And they will decide for us – so we do not need to worry about making mistakes.

The Incredible Story of a 60-Person 30-Kidney Donation Chain

See Tom Maguire's "JustOneMinute" and The New York Times for the story of a 60-person, 30-kidney donation chain.  Please read it.  It's incredible what one person can do.

What Would Voltaire Say About Forcing Religious Institutions to Violate Their Principles

Voltaire famously said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Trying to fit this idea into the current controversy as to whether religious institutions should be forced to include, in health insurance plans they provide to their employees, coverage(s) which are contrary to their religious beliefs, I came up with this:

“I do not agree with your religious principals, but I will defend your right* to not provide a health insurance plan that violates your religious principles.”

Unfortunately, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this month, 44% of Americans who have heard about the issue, said that, even if a religious institution objects to contraception on the basis of its religious principles, it should still have to provide contraception in its health plan.  I guess we don’t have many Voltaires today.  But at least we have the First Amendment.

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* “To the death” probably doesn’t fit today.

President Obama Accommodates Catholics – By Making Big Insurance Companies Pay

Here is the latest on the controversy over the Obama administration’s new regulations that require religious organizations, except actual churches, to provide birth control/contraception coverage under any health insurance programs that they provide to their employees:

“The White House has given reporters the rundown on the ‘accommodations’ that President Obama will announce on the health reform law’s requirements for hospitals run by faith-based groups to cover the costs of employees’ contraceptives. Here’s how it works.

As it stands, church-run hospitals are required to cover contraceptives at no cost to employees. A slew of Catholic groups have opposed that requirement. So on Friday, the White House rolled out a new rule, where insurance companies, rather than faith-based agencies, will offer birth-control coverage directly to these employees and foot the bill.

‘If a charity, hospital or another organization has an objection to the policy going forward, insurance companies will be required to reach out to directly offer contraceptive care free of charge,’ one administration official explained. …

The administration thinks this is a good deal for insurance companies since the economics tend to work in their favor.  Numerous studies have shown that covering contraceptives is revenue-neutral, as such preventive measures can lower the rate of pregnancies down the line. Pregnancy and childbirth coverage is, of course, much more expensive.”

Except that what the Administration is proposing doesn’t work.  Maybe providing contraceptives is no more expensive than covering pregnancy and childbirth, but requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptives for free because they won’t have to pay for the additional pregnancies and births that would supposedly otherwise occur only works if the insurance company has already factored in those additional pregnancies and births in its pricing to begin with, which, of course, it hasn’t.  What the insurance company included in its pricing was contraception.  But religious organizations don’t want to pay for contraception (for legitimate religious reasons), so the amount they pay to the insurance company goes down.  It has to go down, or the religious organizations would be paying the same amount for less coverage, which makes no sense. 

So where does the insurance company get the money to pay for the contraceptives that it now has to provide for free?  It doesn’t get them from additional pregnancies that supposedly don’t happen because it never priced those pregnancies in its coverage in the first place.  It priced in contraceptives, but now it isn’t getting paid for those – even though it still has to provide them.

Let me give an example.  A hospital has 100 employees.  Half of them are women.  On average three of the women would get pregnant in any year and ten of the women would use contraceptives.  The insurance company prices the health plan for the hospital, including both childbirth coverage and contraceptives, based on these averages. 

But this hospital is Catholic and it cannot, in line with its religious beliefs, provide contraceptive coverage to its employees.  So it tells the insurance company it does not want to provide that contraceptive coverage to its employees.  And since it is not providing that coverage, it doesn’t want to pay for it. 

But now, the government comes in and tells the insurance company that it has to provide contraceptives to hospital employees free of charge even though the hospital doesn’t have to pay for them.  The Administration says that this is okay for the insurance company because providing contraception costs less than the childbirths that it would otherwise have to pay for.  Except that the insurance company didn’t price those births into its policy.  What it priced into its policy was contraceptives.  But the hospital didn’t want the contraceptive coverage and wouldn’t pay for it.  And now the insurance company has to provide the contraceptive coverage even though it’s not getting paid for either the contraceptives or the alleged extra births it is supposedly avoiding by giving away free contraceptives.

Actually, under the Obama administration’s theory, the insurance company shouldn’t charge the Catholic hospital less even though the insurance company is not providing contraceptive coverage because, without contraceptive coverage, there would supposedly be more births.

Also, a point I saw here:  Some big private employers “self-insure” the health coverage they provide to their employees (mine does), and they just hire an insurance company to administer the program, i.e., to handle the paperwork.  If a big religious hospital chain self-insures its health coverage, who provides the contraceptives in that case?  The insurance company which was hired to just handle the paperwork?

Actually, if the Obama administration thinks that free contraceptives are a great idea, there is simple solution.  The government should provide them and raise general taxes to pay for the program.  That would be honest and above board.  And religious groups wouldn’t have an objection – or at least the objection they have today.  But the Obama administration doesn’t want to do that way.  They want to hide the cost.  So instead of the government providing it, the Obama administration passes a regulation saying that private employers have to provide the coverage and that when they won’t, the big insurance companies have to provide it – for “free”.

The Health Totalitarians: Shape Up or …

Ezra Klein writes about the Cleveland Clinic’s efforts to cut its health costs:

“The Cleveland Clinic is best known for providing excellent health care. …

But the clinic has a more interesting – and more consequential – story to tell right now ….

With 40,000 employees, the clinic is the second-largest employer in Ohio. Like most employers, it struggles to contain health-care costs. But according to Michael Roizen, the clinic’s director of wellness, over the past seven years a series of reforms instituted by the clinic’s chief executive officer, Delos Cosgrove, slowed and then arrested the growth in employee health-care costs at the clinic. …

Roizen says the initiative sprang from a single fact. … 70 percent of all medical costs are related to smoking, physical inactivity, food choices and portion size, or stress.

But consider what that actually entails: Changing habits. Breaking addictions. Getting people to the gym. Who wants to hear about any of that from their employer?

The clinic, however, didn’t give employees a choice. … [Roizen said:] ‘Then we banned smoking on campus. You can’t even smoke in the parking lot in your car. … We fired two high-profile physicians who refused to quit.’ …

Food came next. The clinic took out almost every deep-fryer in the building. They removed sugared soda from every beverage case. … 

That left fitness and stress relief. … Usually, you have to pay to hit the gym or attend a yoga class. If you work for the Cleveland Clinic, you have to pay if you don’t.

… The clinic tracks its employees’ blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar, weight and smoking habits. If any of these are what the clinic calls ‘abnormal,’ a doctor must certify that the employee is taking steps to get them under control. Otherwise, no insurance rebate. …

It appears to be working. Not only has the clinic cut its health-care costs, but its employees are also getting healthier in measurable ways. …

In one sense, the clinic has achieved the health policy ideal: cutting health-care costs by making people healthier. But consider how the clinic has done it – tying premiums to personal decisions, firing smokers, tracking employee metrics, eliminating popular sodas and foods from campus. …

The clinic no longer hires smokers. Will the obese eventually face similar hurdles? What about fans of fast food?

The experiment might work at a famed medical center where the CEO plausibly argues that aggressive leadership in health care is central to the institution’s mission. But would it work at General Motors? Caterpillar? Wal-Mart? Medicaid and Medicare?

Roizen thinks it can – and should. He estimates that an aggressive program could cut federal health spending by $300 billion to $600 billion a year. If he’s right, then simply instituting such wellness reforms could cut the federal deficit by far more than the Simpson-Bowles commission or the congressional supercommittee would. …

If we opt for Cleveland Clinic-style wellness programs, we won’t have to gut education, raise taxes or slash Medicare. And we’ll end up healthier. But … are we really ready to let employers – much less the government – tell us to quit smoking, skip the junk food and lose weight?

Megan McArdle, who pointed me to Ezra Klein’s article, is skeptical whether the Cleveland Clinic’s results can be replicated on a nationwide scale:

“One imagines that employees who do not want their employer nannying them about their gym time and alcohol consumption probably decline to work at the Clinic.  

Selection bias will produce good results for the selecting organization, but you cannot replicate its results on a nationwide scale; fat, smoky people have to work somewhere (or go on welfare).”

But, of course (and I think Ms. McArdle might agree with me), the most important question is not whether government can replicate the Cleveland Clinic’s results on a national scale.  The question is whether we want government to replicate the Cleveland Clinic’s methods.

It is one thing for a private employer to tell an employee how to live his or her life.  Maybe it’s okay – though only as long as just a few employers do it and there are places that non-conformists can escape to. 

But for a government?  To tell this to everybody?  I don’t care how much money can be saved.  This is not something government should be doing.  And these are not powers I want government to have. 

But some governments have already raised taxes on cigarettes so high that they are virtually unaffordable.  Other governments have effectively legislated Happy Meals out of existence.  And there are proposals to put extra taxes on fatty foods or on sugared pop (“soda” to those out you who don’t live in the Midwest) because they’re “not good for you”.  Aren’t these ideas precursors to what the Cleveland Clinic is doing – and what some people may soon be proposing that the federal government do to save money on health care?

Washington Budgeting: Adventure in Fantasy Land

Here is a story about how they do budget numbers in Washington, D.C.  It’s something to keep in mind when the people there start talking about deficits and savings and all those things.

Politicians in Washington almost always support their positions on budget issues by claiming that their numbers are supported or verified by the Congressional Budget Office.  For example, when Congress passed Obamacare in 2010, its supporters claimed that it would save money, and they claimed that the CBO agreed.  One of the reasons that Obamacare was going to “save” money was a new program called CLASS, which was short for Community Living Assistance Services and Support.  CLASS was a voluntary government insurance program that was supposed to cover home health care services for older or disabled adults.  Of course, the reason that the CBO said CLASS was going to save money was that it was going to start collecting premiums right away, but it wasn’t going to pay benefits for five years. 

The important thing to understand about the Congressional Budget Office is that when the CBO “scores” proposals for budget purposes, they only look at the costs and income for the first ten years.  Those are their rules.  (They may even be the law; I don’t know.)  Since the CLASS program was going to collect premiums for ten years and only pay out benefits for five years, it was going to have more money coming in than it would have going out over the first ten years.  Voilá!  It was going to save money – under the rules that the CBO has to operate under.  The fact that the program would be a budgetary disaster later on was irrelevant to the way that CBO counts things.

In fact, even though the program was a long-term budget-buster, since the CBO only looks at the first ten years, and since that is how things are calculated for Congressional budgeting purposes, when some Republicans were talking about repealing the CLASS program earlier this year (because it is unsustainable on a long-term basis), under CBO rules the Republicans would have had to either raise taxes or cut other spending to balance the loss of budget savings from repealing the program.*  Mind-boggling.

But finally, earlier this month, the Obama administration admitted that they couldn’t come up with a way to make the numbers work for the CLASS program, and they shut it down.  (The Senate had included in the original Obamacare legislation a provision requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to certify that the program had an actuarially-sound premium before they could start it up.  When they couldn’t certify that, the program had to be shelved.)

This is where it gets interesting – and really bizarre.  Once the Obama administration finally admitted what everybody already knew (i.e., that the program didn’t work financially) and said that they were shutting it down, the head of the CBO said this:

“Following longstanding procedures, CBO takes new administrative actions into account when analyzing legislation being considered by the Congress – even if it has not published new baseline projections.  Beginning immediately, therefore, legislation to repeal the CLASS provisions in current law would be estimated as having no budgetary impact.”

In other words, if Congress had passed a bill cancelling the CLASS program before HHS acted, then the cancellation would have counted, for CBO purposes, as an $86 million increase in the 10-year deficit calculation.  But a month later, after the Administration decided to shut the program down, repealing it wouldn’t count toward the 10-year budget projections.

While I am sure that this makes sense in the strange world of federal government budgeting rules, it obviously doesn’t sense to anybody who lives in the real world.  And that is something to remember the next time you hear somebody say that their budget numbers have been confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office.

One final point, not on budgeting but on the Obama administration:  Even though the Administration has admitted that it could not come up with a way to make the CLASS program work financially, President Obama still opposes repealing it.  Why?  According to a White House spokesperson:

“We do not support repeal.  Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”

Which is gobbledygook.  Maybe I am being cynical, but I think the reason that President Obama doesn’t want to repeal the program is because, if the President gets re-elected and doesn’t have a Democratic Congress, he wants the ability to be able to have his new person at HHS look at the CLASS program and come up with a new theory on why it does work and start implementing it – without needing any kind Congressional approval.**

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* “The Definition of Insanity,” The Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2011.

** Some health care “experts” have already criticized the President for shutting the program down, saying that it actually could work (see here).  After the election, there is no reason to believe that the President wouldn’t decide they were right after all and start it up again.

Update (10/23/11 9:25 am):  For a prior comment on the CLASS Act, see here.

Obamacare Waivers – And More

The issuance of waivers from various requirements under Obamacare continues apace.  In April, in addition to waivers for drug or health companies (27), unions (31), 38 waivers were issued to restaurants, night clubs and hotels in Nancy Pelsoi’s House district. 

While these waivers may be entirely appropriate (I can certainly think of reasons why these businesses might need a waiver), the problem is that it is unclear whether there any standards for the granting of waivers.  It seems to be all at the government’s discretion.  And even though we know who gets a waiver, we don’t know why they got a waiver or why those who didn’t get a waiver were refused.

So here is an idea.  The Obama administration is already drafting rules to require companies who bid on federal contracts to disclose the political contributions that they make, including contributions to private groups that are not currently required to be disclosed.*  The Administration says this is for transparency – even though federal contracts are awarded to the low bidder and there is very little discretion involved. 

So let me suggest this:  If the Administration is so keen on transparency that they want companies that are bidding on contacts which are automatically awarded to the low bidder, to disclose political contributions, why not ask those who apply for an Obamacare waiver, where there really is a lot of discretion involved, to disclose their contributions?

Oh, I forgot.  The Obama administration doesn’t need to ask who the unions are contributing to and they probably know about those places in Nancy Pelosi’s district, too.  There’s no need to bother them.  Never mind.

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PS: I assume the sarcasm in the above was obvious, except, that is, for: (i) the fact that it would be good to understand what the basis is for waivers under Obamacare: and (ii) my very real concern as to why the Administration is pushing for disclosure by businesses who bid for federal contracts of all contributions in excess of $5,000 that they, or their executives, have made to political groups or to independent groups that spend money independently to influence elections.

* “The White House Wants a List,” The Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011; Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, “Executives fighting executive order,” Chicago Tribune, May 8, 2011.