Is it a bird? A plane? A public option?

Self-parody from EconomicFreedom.org.

No,  not quite; it's a government-sponsored all-American health insurance program, or rather two of them, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act, including one likely to be offered by the independent nonprofit Government Employees Health Association, to be offered to individuals and small businesses through the exchanges of every state. I understood stuff like this was allowed for by the ACA, and I figured it would inevitably come into existence, startling our Emoprog friends to no end. I didn't realize it was already chartered and in the works.

In addition to pressuring the insurance companies not to skimp in coverage, it will also pressure them to hold down premiums, and who knows? Maybe they'll be able to offer special no-birth-control rates for those institutions with tender consciences, too, heh-heh.

Once again the onion of Obamacare peels to reveal a new and unexpected layer. I didn't notice it in the Times, and might never have heard if not for Dr. Turk (who is skeptical on the subject).

Meanwhile, the latest right-wing panic is a new book by Mallory Factor described by David Martosko in the Daily Caller:  ”Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind”. Yes, the author's name really seems to be "Mallory Factor". What effect that may have had on him in childhood and adolescence is hard to say, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty.

The book argues from a memo of December 2008 from Dennis Rivera to the Obama transition team that the ACA had a secret agenda:

Factor, who is also a Forbes columnist and senior editor of money and politics for The Street.com, recounts emails from former federal Office of Labor-Management Standards staffer Don Loos, now a senior adviser to the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

“It is clear that Big Labor is banking on the probability that all healthcare workers eventually become federal, state, and municipal healthcare employees,” Loos told Factor. That, he said, would make them eligible for involuntary unionization through public-sector unions like AFSCME and the SEIU. “Obamacare is an SEIU and AFSCME membership ‘net,’” Loos claimed, “designed to eventually capture 21 million forced-dues paying government workers.”

Yes, the true purpose of Obamacare—pay no attention to those 30 million previously uninsured people behind the screen—is to juice union membership! The fiends!