It can break your heart to see naivete go unpunished, but fortunately in this life, it rarely does so for long.

Thusly the precipitous and inevitable, yet no less satisfying (in a dramatic sense at least) collapse of Obama’s much-touted, worse-than-the-status-quo ‘health care reform’ is coming to pass with hilarious speed.

First up are a select few of the landmine clauses and surprises hidden in the bill (principally designed by former Wellpoint VP Liz Fowler), which have gone off on schedule, like a perverse anti-Democrat election advent calendar over the last several months. In no particular order:

1: The HCR bill is revealed to place a crushing paperwork burden on small businesses to raise a paltry sum in taxes. If a business spends 600 bucks at any one vendor over a year, they have to file a 1099 for them. This will affect my small business, which is laughably small, but it will absolutely cripple many small businesses across the nation. You will literally be required to get the tax information out of each individual Starbucks franchise if you take clients there on a regular basis. It’s that bad. Because you can’t be sure how much you’ll spend at a given vendor in a year, you will have to track absolutely every single purchase by tax information, no matter how trivial, forever.

Want to buy a pack of gum, a couple cases of coke? Get that supermarket checkout clerk to haul out the store’s tax info. I’m sure it’s on file, right?

By the way? The Senate failed to fix that portion of Fowler’s grand edifice. That’s still in the bill. Remember it.

2: The stopgap high risk pools for insurance victims, err, uninsured Americans, have proven to be almost completely unaffordable and useless. This one only comes as a surprise to gob-smackingly stupid morons in the happy-clappy liberal contingent, but it’s worth pointing out.

Predictably, with insurance costs far too high, there are almost no takers… outside of PA, which apparently decided to go its own way and set one premium for all takers of 283 dollars a month. True, socialist community rating.

Bonus feature: in plans run by the Feds directly, there’s a 2500 dollar prescription drug deductible. Ouch. Hope grandma doesn’t need that pain medicine.

Super bonus: You have to have been without health insurance for six months, and have to prove you were denied, presumably in writing. Ahh, paperwork, Obama loves it so.

3: Although Obama is more than happy to sic the IRS on people who refuse to send their kids to school without shoes to pay Wellpoint, his flagship bill does allow you to opt-out of the individual mandate if you’re a lunatic in a religious cult. Read all about it here. Excerpt:

Since the health-care reform bill passed last month, Lansberry has become a hot commodity on the conservative talk-radio circuit where he sings the praises of health-care-sharing ministries (HCSMs), Christian nonprofit organizations through which members agree to cover each others? health-care costs. As president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, Lansberry, and his team of lobbyists, had persuaded Senate lawmakers to exempt alliance members from the individual mandate. That exemption, Lansberry said, made those ministries “an island of freedom amidst this terrible piece of reform legislation” and “the last pro-life option for Christians of faith.”

The exemption raises an array of concerns, including constitutional questions about the limits of such religious exemptions as well as about adequately protecting consumers without the type of regulatory oversight required of insurance companies. It is also emblematic of how elected officials cater to religious objections without fully examining their origins or consequences.

The exclusion from the individual mandate is “just another example of an exemption granted by a legislature that doesn?t bother to look under the rock,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School and author of God Versus The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law. “It happens all the time. A religious group asks for an exemption, and busy legislators think, well, it?s religion, at least I?m doing some good for someone today. But they don?t ask the hard questions.”

Basically, this is sham-insurance, run by a snake-oil salesman. There’s no regulation and no guarantee they’ll ever pay for anything, and they’re allowed to ban treatment for things they consider sinful, like sex outside of marriage. Delightful.

4: Speaking of religion and the healthcare bill, the final Senate ‘compromise’ allows each and every state to religitate Roe v. Wade on a small scale, banning abortion coverage from the Exchanges entirely if they so wish.

Naturally, that’s already started:

New state legislation that would sharply restrict abortions in Pennsylvania was condemned on Friday by a statewide abortion rights group, Pennsylvanians for Choice.

A bill introduced by Sen. Don White, R-Indiana, would prohibit private health insurance plans sold in Pennsylvania’s state “exchange” — created under the new federal health care law — from offering abortions and require rape victims to report the crime within 72 hours in order to receive an abortion.

Yes Virginia, the Obamacare bill opens this battlefront up in every single state. Congratulations, Obama-bots: you’ve just bankrupted the entire pro-choice movement for a generation.

5: Tom Daschle confirms, on the record and for all time, that the Obama administration did in fact cut a secret deal with the hospital lobby to kill the Public Option, regardless of whatever level of support it had in Congress. So regardless of whether there were enough spineless, sellout, backstabber Dems already lined up to do so, Obama put the first knife in the Public Option’s back:

In his book, Daschle reveals that after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House convinced hospitals to accept $155 billion in payment reductions over ten years on July 8, the hospitals and Democrats operated under two “working assumptions.” “One was that the Senate would aim for health coverage of at least 94 percent of Americans,” Daschle writes. “The other was that it would contain no public health plan,” which would have reimbursed hospitals at a lower rate than private insurers.

Reality paging John Cole.. John Cole, to the reality phone….

6: The Obama administration loves, and I mean loves, to tout the provision requiring insurers to cover sick kids with pre-existing conditions. Err, sorry, I meant loved; the insurance lobby found a way around that one really fast. (Maybe Fowler sent them the Cliff’s Notes?)

At least six major companies — including Anthem, Aetna, Cigna and Humana — have said they will stop writing new policies for individual children not covered by their parents’ or other plans, insurance officials said.

They blamed health reform mandates taking effect Thursday requiring companies that write such policies as of that date to also cover sick children up to age 19.

Thus in order to avoid covering sick kids, they avoid covering any kids not on their parent’s plan to start with. Smooth.

So, contra Obama, you can’t just go get coverage for sick little Billy under his law.

Naturally, they’re shocked, SHOCKED at this treachery:

But officials of the Obama administration said the move contradicted a letter from the leader of one of the insurance industry’s most important trade groups after the law’s adoption in March. Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, expressed support for the law’s provisions concerning children with preexisting conditions and promised to “fully comply” with them.

“We expect [insurance companies] to honor that commitment. Insurers shouldn’t break their promise and turn their backs on some of our most vulnerable Americans,” said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cute, eh? They ARE complying and you know it, Jessica Santillo, aka ‘Dumb as a Sack of Hammers’ Santillo. It’s just that the law is utterly toothless and virtually enforceable… by design.. since Wellpoint’s VP designed it… you know what, I’m going to stop talking at you now, because you’re hopelessly stupid.

Twit.

7: Since the bill provides no meaningful cost controls on premiums (once the Exchanges are up, they can threaten to ban an insurer from an Exchange, which is akin to threatening Ed Gein with a 10% reduction in the local supply of middle aged women who look like his Mom), the insurance lobby is going to spend the next four years jacking up rates and soaking customers, while blaming the HCR bill for the cost increases to damage the Dem brand:

Sept. 19–Connecticut regulators in recent days approved increases of more than 20 percent on some health plans starting Oct. 1, including a series of rates requested by Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield, by far the largest health insurer in the state….The higher prices, however, are a glimpse of what may be in store later this year when insurers propose new rates for 2011.

The major difference between rising prices this year and years past is the cost of new benefits added to health plans starting Thursday as mandated by the sweeping reform approved by Congress in March.

Insurers say the cost of new benefits will increase prices more than 20 percent for certain plans.

Not that it’s just Connecticut; this is happening nationwide.

Aetna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, said the extra benefits forced it to seek rate increases for new individual plans of 5.4% to 7.4% in California and 5.5% to 6.8% in Nevada after Sept. 23. Similar steps are planned across the country, according to Aetna.

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon said the cost of providing additional benefits under the health law will account on average for 3.4 percentage points of a 17.1% premium rise for a small-employer health plan. It asked regulators last month to approve the increase.

In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Celtic Insurance Co. says half of the 18% increase it is seeking comes from complying with health-law mandates.

Oh yes, and the Obama admin has no plans to, or actual ability to, stop it:

The White House says insurers are using the law as an excuse to raise rates and predicts that state regulators will block some of the large increases.

“I would have real deep concerns that the kinds of rate increases that you’re quoting… are justified,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House’s top health official. She said that for insurers, raising rates was “already their modus operandi before the bill” passed. “We believe consumers will see through this,” she said.

Previously the administration had calculated that the batch of changes taking effect this fall would raise premiums no more than 1% to 2%, on average

Wait for the punchline:

About half of all states have the power to deny rate increases. Ms. DeParle pointed out that the law awards states $250 million to bolster their scrutiny of insurance-rate proposals, saying that will eventually curb premiums for people.

“In Kansas, I don’t have a lot of authority to deny a rate increase, if it is justified,” said Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger. She recently approved a 4% increase by Mennonite Mutual Aid Association to pay for the new provisions in the health law.

The process of reviewing rate increases varies by state. For instance, Ms. Praeger said she can deny only rate increases that are unreasonable or discriminatory.

Zing! Only half of all states can review rates at all, and those that can are mostly rubber stamps!

Hahahah..hah… oh man he got you guys good, didn’t he?

Seriously. All you supporters of health care reform got played, and played HARD. Try to remember this searing, aching sensation of loss the next time a slickly repackaged corporatist Dem tries to sweet-talk you into backing their reform proposal.

You’ll do a lot less damage to the rest of us that way.

A pity they couldn’t learn sooner, because this time, it’s not just the happy-clappy liberals from HCAN and the Obama-worshipping blogs who are getting what they deserve for being unforgivably naive stooges; we all get to share share in their karmic reward.