He Who Pays the Piper…
...calls the tune.
That is the hard economic lesson in the recent Supreme Court's vaccine mandate decisions.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin relates to a real pandemic--the bubonic plague--and ends in the Piper vengefully leading the children of Hamelin to their demise.
THE WAY THROUGH THE FOREST
Before analyzing the Court's decisions, the short story is that the Supreme Court split the baby. First, it refused to allow the OSHA mandate to go forward. This released over 80 million private employees from being coerced into submitting to experimental the drug treatment commonly referrred to as Covid "vaccines." Second, the Court nevertheless allowed the CMS (the federal agency that pays Medicaid and Medicare bills) mandate to go forward. This means 10 million private health care employees will potentiallly be coerced into shots or weekly tests. For the employers who read and follow the recommendations in this piece, however, compliance will be relatively riskless and likely temporary. Smart health care employers will comply with the law and at the same time will not do anything that could injure or harm their employees or someday subject themselves to a Nuremberg trial.
As with any crisis, there is great opportunity in this crisis for smart and prudent health care employers. That is because the CMS "guidance" rules are out and three things are clear: (1) CMS enforcers will not question, audit, or challenge any employee exemption request; (2) 100 percent "compliance" with the mandate will be much more about recordkeeping than coercion--employers who adopt and maintain a sound process for keeping track of the vaccination and exemption status of 100 percent of their employees will not be fined or punished; and (3) the major risk to employers, which will likely also be negligible, appears to be in maintaining compliance and recordkeeping with weekly testing.
This is what health care employers should do to obey the CMS mandate and at the same time avoid risking the lives, health and safety of 10 million innocent people:
Liberally Grant Exemptions. The CMS guidance expressly states that CMS will not be auditing, examining, or questioning exemption requests. This is very good news. Employers should communicate to employees a deadline--see below--and tell employees that they must provide proof of vaccination or must provide an exemption request before the deadline. There is no harm in communciating, even formally, that because of the known and uncertain risks surrounding the shots, that the employer will trust that all employees' exemption requests are based on the employee's sincere beliefs and that the employer will therefore liberally grant exemptions.
Develop Sound Recordkeeping Processes. Good records will be the best defense against any CMS enforcement action. Develop processes for communicating the new policy to all employees and gather all information on all employees quickly. Develop a "new hire" policy that informs the new hire that they must provide vax/exemption information prior to their first day of work. Keep the records private and remind HR employees that vaccine status is private information. Do not allow vax/non-vax division to develop in the workplace. Respect both those who have submitted to the vax and those who have not. Recognize that fearful vaxxed employees are living in a delusion that is very real to them and that waking them up abruptly is, like waking up a sleepwalker, unwise. Most of them will be fully awake in 60 days. Let them wake up on their own. In the meantime, nod, be agreeable, and say that you understand when they tell you how afraid they are of the pandemic that never was and which, at its height, had an IFR of less than .01 percent for everyone under 70 and living outside a nursing home.
Figure Out a Way to Test that Builds Bonds with Employees. I have not yet found any particular guidance on testing other than weekly testing is required for exempt employees. I have e-mailed the CMS help line and asked specifically what kind of tests will be required, whether employees have to pay for the tests, and whether employees could use some of the 500 million self-tests that the federal goverment is sending out. No word back yet and I have not found the specific anwers in the guidance. One would think that the federal government's tests would suffice, particularly now that the CDC has itself debunked the always illegitimate PCR tests. Employers can nevertheless e-mail the CMS at [email protected] and ask for specific guidance before implementing their testing plan. The blessing in the CMS decision is that applies exclusively to health care providers so whatever testing is required, it should be relatively easy for these employers to accommodate their exempt employees.
It appears likely that the CMS rule, together with the pandemic psyop, will be over very soon, perhaps 60 days. The Covid narrative has become a political liability to Leviathan (see also). The State of the Union is coming up soon and mid-term congressional elections are right around the corner. Leviathan's minions who are running this little psychological war recognize that they have created too much friction and the current administration is too unpopular. They have read CIA analyst Martin Gurri's Revolt of the Public. They know that, the longer the real facts in the real world don't match the propaganda on smartphones and TVs, the more likely that the deluded will wake up and the more quickly the revolt will come. Time to change the psychological channel for the sleepers and give Biden a "win" over the pandemic.
The CMS mendate is actually a temporary, proposed emergency administrative rule. The 30- and 60-day "notice and comment" periods applicable to rules conveniently coincide with mandate compliance periods detailed below. Given Leviathan's interests in keeping 10 million health care workers in the Red v. Blue game and, for the time being, voting for Team Blue, it seems likely that CMS will quietly withdraw the testing requirement, and perhaps the mandate completely, on or shortly after March 1, 2020.
Until then, smart health care providers will obey the law and at the same time do what they can to protect 10 million innocent people by granting every employee's exemption request. If they do, someday their employees may feel the way Dr. Mary Talley Bowden's employees feel about her. Treating employees with respect and protecting them from Leviathan will build lasting loyalty, and may save some lives.
LEVIATHAN'S MOUTHPIECE
On January 13, 2022, the United States Supreme Court issued two decisions, both relating to the power of the federal agencies, via emergency rules, to compel employers to compel their employees to submit to experimental drug therapy commonly referred to as "Covid vaccines." The two cases, in terms of the legal authority and the power of the federal goverment, are indistinguishable. That is, both OSHA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are federal agencies. Both of these federal agencies established "emergency" rules, bypassing normal administrative rulemaking processes which require public notice and comment periods prior to enactment. Both agencies ordered that private employers order their employees to participate in experimental drug tests (receive the Covid "vaccination") or submit to weekly testing and proven-ineffective masking. The OSHA and CMS rules are virtually identical. The only difference between the two cases is factual. The factual difference between the employers in the two cases is the source of their income. The OSHA employers, for the most part, receive their income through voluntary, direct payments from free market buyers. The CMS employers receive a substantial portion of their income from the goverment--third-party Medicare and Medicaid payments. "Who pays the bills" is therefore the only material difference in the targeted employers in the two cases.
In National Federal of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, the SCOTUS struck down the OSHA mandate in a 6-3 vote with Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissenting. In Biden v. Missouri, the CMS case, the SCOTUS upheld the mandate in a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh and Roberts switching sides and voting for Leviathan. Ponder for a moment the fact that, in our present justice system, five human beings claim the power to coerce 10 million health care workers into participating in a drug experiment where the drug sellers and the government are immune from all liability for adverse outcomes. And the only reason being that Leviathan pays their bills.
The reason that the Supreme Court provided for striking down the OSHA mandate was the "non-delegation doctrine." That is, according to the Supreme Court, because Congress did not delegate to OSHA the power to compel 84 million private employees to particate in a rushed drug experiment that violates the principles of informed consent contained in the Nuremberg Code, OSHA cannot have this power. Implicit in the Court's analysis is the idea that Congress has the power to mandate drug experiments and could delegate it if if chose to. Although there has been some public hand-wringing within Federalist Society circles that Congress could now do this, this is unlikely. The Senate has taken the political temperature of the country and already voted against the mandates in a 60-40 vote, albeit in a non-binding resolution. Moreover, the pandemic narrative is rapidly collapsing, with the Pfizer CEO declaring that vaccines are ineffective, the CDC's Rochelle Wallensky admitting what has always been true--that 75 percent of Covid deaths were actually caused by factors other than Covid--and now Justin Trudeau has just backed down to Canadian truckers. In the end and in the long run, Mr. Market is always more powerful than Leviathan's minions and people intent on profiting from death and injury.
In the CMS decision, the majority admits that CMS pays the targeted employers' bills but would not admit that this was the reason for the difference between the two cases. The Court instead deceptively claimed that Congress did somehow delegate its non-existant authority to compel private employers of over 10 million health care workers to coerce their employees into participating in Nuremberg-violating drug trials. The majority noted that because CMS is a division of the Department of "Health" and "Human Services" and because of this healthy and human label Congress has given to this federal agency, that agency's bill-paying department therefore has the authority to coerce employers into coercing their employees into participating in drug experiments. But Congress did not delegate this power to OSHA--the Occupational "Safety" and "Health" Administration.
The dissents in the CMS decision tell the sad state of the United States Supreme Court. No mention of the Ninth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, individual rights, state rights, or limits on federal powers. No one, not even the advocates, dared to whisper the anathema--the Lochner era concept that the regulation could interfere with employees' collective bargain agreement or other contract rights. No questioning of the unsupported and unsupportable claim that "the pandemic" currently, in 2022, presents a "grave danger." No challeges to the patently and ridiculously false statements of Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer in oral argument. No evidence of critical thought in that, if there was or is a grave danger created by the 2020 Seasonal Flu, the undisputed facts show that it was a grave danger in 2020 to less than 1 percent of the population--the very old, the very sick, and, perhaps the most material risk factor, the very isolated. This, the Court's tacit acceptance of the clearly false pandemic narrative, is the most troubling fact in the CMS decision.
THE AFTERMATH: CMS GUIDANCE
The result of the SCOTUS baby-splitting is that 10 million health care workers are now unnecessarily exposed to experimental drug tests. The entire CMS post-decision guidance is here. The most important parts of the CMS guidance, however, are:
Note: Surveyors will not evaluate the details of the request for a religious exemption, nor the rationale for the facility’s acceptance or denial of the request. Rather, surveyors will review to ensure the facility has an effective process for staff to request a religious exemption for a sincerely held religious belief.
and:
Within 30 days after issuance of this memorandum2, if a facility demonstrates that:
Policies and procedures are developed and implemented for ensuring all facility staff, regardless of clinical responsibility or patient or resident contact are vaccinated for COVID-19; and
100% of staff have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, or have a pending request for, or have been granted qualifying exemption, or identified as having a temporary delay as recommended by the CDC, the facility is compliant under the rule; or
Within 60 days after the issuance of this memorandum4, if the facility demonstrates that:
Policies and procedures are developed and implemented for ensuring all facility staff, regardless of clinical responsibility or patient or resident contact are vaccinated for COVID-19; and
100% of staff have received the necessary doses to complete the vaccine series (i.e., one dose of a single-dose vaccine or all doses of a multiple-dose vaccine series), or have been granted a qualifying exemption, or identified as having a temporary delay as recommended by the CDC, the facility is compliant under the rule; or
No auditing or review of exemption requests. Good records and complete records on 100 percent of employees equals compliance. That is good news. Leviathan knows its limits.
THE REASON WHY AND THE OPTIMISTIC FUTURE
Men scheme and God laughs. Psalm 2:4.
And Mr. Market laughs with God.
If you are sad, depressed, or are otherwise feeling defeated or thinking negative thoughts after living through two years of a psyop in which a Pareto-consistent 80 percent of the population was hypnotized into accepting a patent Big Lie, please consider reading Psalm 2. Read it and keep reading until it changes your mind. The message is clear. God is Sovereign over all of creation, including Leviathan. And remember to thank God that you are in the 20 percent (and growing) who were not deceived.
The Supreme Court's baby-splitting madate decisions can best be understood by seeking to understand the interests of the actors and understanding ethical casuistry. This is not the province of state-licensed lawyers, although it helps to be a member in good standing of Leviathan's courts, the United States Supreme Court and the U.S. Tax Court. More important, however, is an understanding of orthodox, ethical cause-and-effect, and understanding that economic incentives are superpowers. It is also important to understand the economic fact that Leviathan's Medicare and Medicaid system is broke and getting broker. Some believe that this--saving money and reducing its future liabilities--is Leviathan's eugenic, and rational, intent in attempting to coerce the U.S. population to submit to the potentially lethal Covid vaccines. Whatever the case, it is an economic fact that Leviathan's unfunded health care liabilities are unsustainable. Leviathan is a rational actor and its interest is control and survival. What Leviathan pays for, it expects to control. When a business has consented to depending on payments from Leviathan for its livelihood--Medicaid and Medicare payments--that business can expect that Leviathan will have power to tell the business how it will do business. That hard fact is the only thing that distinguishes the two Supreme Court mandate decisions.
Extremely smart health care providers and their patients will recognize this and use this tussle with Leviathan to begin the process of withdrawing their consent to doing business with a Leviathan in its death throes. They will start moving in the direction of decoupling from the Leviathan's Medicare-Medicaid strings, and start moving toward private, first-party-payor health care systems. Such systems are small, but they exist and are growing. One example is The Wedge.
Another thing we can expect from Mr. Market is that the insurance industry, particularly the "excess and surplus" (E&S) segment, will fill the gaps as Leviathan's bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid system collapses. This won't happen overnight, but it will happen because E&S insurance is unlicensed and self-regulated insurance. States, under certain conditions, are prohibited by the Non-Admitted and Reinsurance Reform Act from denying E&S insurers from selling policies in their states, although there is much friction and much fighting with these insurers over whether they have met the state requirements and, of course, over taxes. At the moment, E&S is sold to the very wealthy and has limited availablity. It is not available or salable if licensed insurance is available. As the health care market moves away from the bankrupt third-party payor system and into a direct-pay system, the "catastrophic coverage" market will re-emerge. The market will ultimately likely look like the health insurance that E&S insurers already offer to wealthy expatriates.
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