Obama on healthcare: SOS

Realizing that his plans to "reform" the nation's healthcare system are, to put it mildly, in distress, Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress last night in a last ditch effort to pursuade the American people of the particular wisdom of his vision on health care.

How'd he do? He screwed the pooch. Basically, it was the Same Old Shit.

He simply repeated, albeit more forcefully, the same arguments that a majority of voters have already rejected as phony. Obama said, "nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." As Pajamas Media's Vodkapundit Stephen Green correctly pointed out, "require" is one of those "weasel words." Yes, not "required" in the strict sense of the word, but once a public option plan is made available, that is cheaper than an employer's current offering, one can easily expect that the employer will pay the premiums (or penalties) and simply dump his employees into the public option. You can't keep your employer-sponsored health insurance if your employer no longer offers it.

As to how he was going to pay for the expanded coverage in his plan, Obama again offered nothing new:

[W]e've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system - a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . In fact, I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. . . . These steps will ensure that you - America's seniors - get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. That's what this plan will do for you.

I see, Obama's going to waive his magic want, and convert fraud and abuse into untold riches which are going to pay for the expanded coverage in the plan. Vintage Obama, grand promises without any specifics that would make them meaningful. By the way, why do we need further legislation to trim fraud and abuse?

With respect to the public option, Obama said:

But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear - it would only be an option for those who don't have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.

Again, only until their employers stopped offering their own plans, that is. Obama is right that a "broad concensus exists" on things like prohibiting insurers from dropping sick people, or denials for preexisting conditions, or allowing an insurance market exchange, or for tax credits for those who can't afford insurance. If it were true that only 5% of American would sign up for the public option, which is the most controversial part of Obama's plan, why risk this broad concensus for this 5%? Unless this is, of course, a trojan horse by which the government will ultimately assert control over the entire health care industry (as Obama, Barney Frank, and other liberals have so franly admitted).

In the end, I don't think anybody was fooled. Obama promised greater coverage at no extra cost. He refused to walk away from the public option and only offered, incredibly, that it would have no effect on anyone else's quality or choice of care.

I don't see how he changed anyone's mind. The only question now, is whether Obama, Pelosi and Reid can muster enough votes to ram this down our throats through a reconcilliation process. We'll see.

Obama's make or break speech on health care reform

In case you live under a rock and haven't heard yet, President Obama will deliver a prime-time address Wednesday to a joint session of Congress aimed at regaining momentum in his push for universal health care coverage.

I think this speech will make or break him. If Obama says something new, breaks new policy ground, or charts a new path on achieving health care reform, his legislative efforts will be revived. But if he simply trots out the same old tropes (e.g., if you like your health care, you can keep it, even with a public option; were going to cover 50 million new people and reduce costs without rationing, etc.) he's finished.

The crux of the problem over at the White House appears to be that they think that the problems with health care reform thus far have been its packaging, not its substance. But as Charles Krauthamer said on Fox News, the problems is that "the dog won't eat the dog food."

In Sunday's New York Times, Jackie Calms writes:

In 1994, Democrats’ dysfunction over fulfilling a new president’s campaign promise contributed to the party’s loss of its 40-year dominance of Congress. Now that memory is being revived, and it is the message the White House and Congressional leaders will press when lawmakers return this week, still divided and now spooked after the turbulent town-hall-style meetings, downbeat polls and distortions of August.Republicans early on united behind the lesson they took from the past struggle, that they stand to gain politically in next year’s elections if Democrats do nothing. But the Democrats’ version similarly resonates with all party factions, giving Mr. Obama perhaps his best leverage to unify them to do something. In now-familiar financial parlance, this one is “too big to fail.”

Adding to this chorus is Joe Klein where he writes in the August 31, 2009 issue of Time that:

[H]onorable conservatives . . . have been overwhelmed by nihists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal. . . . The party's putative intellectuals [ouch!] are prosaic tactitians who make precious few substantive arguments but oppose health care reform mostly because passage would help Barrack Obama's political prospects.

(To digress for a moment, this statement ignores that the public option, which conservatives has been resisting for over 50 years, violates deeply held conservative principles. This statement also ignores the fact that in an August 31, 2009 poll, 51 percent of voters say that they oppose Obama's health care reforms. To paraphrase the February 7, 2009 cover of Newsweek, "We are all nihlists now.")

But in the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti writes:

For a while now, the message from Washington has been that we know what's good for the public, whether the public likes it or not. One after another, both parties have attempted to foist a series of grand reforms on a skeptical populace--in areas ranging from Social Security and immigration to energy and health care. Politicians have made decisions affecting millions of lives without accountability and oversight. The upshot has been more government, more debt, and--coming soon to a 1040 form near you--more taxes. No wonder the public is anxious.

* * *

As for the elites, especially the liberal elite: They remain deaf, dumb, and blind.

The White House is learning all the wrong lessons from Clinton's effort to reform health care 15 years ago. Those at the White House think that they will be punished by the voters for failing to reform health care.

But one of the reason voters revolted against the Democrats in 1994 was not that they failed to deliver on a campaign promise, but that their proposals scared the hell out of the American people. It's not that they failed, but they overstepped their mandate by trying to do far too much.The White House appears to think that the public generally wants its version of health care reform, it's just that the voters don't really know it yet. If Obama could just somehow find the magic words to turn things around.

In June, ABC News aired a one-hour special from the White House on health care reform. In July, Obama held a press conference on health care reform (where he made an unforced error by stepping into the Heny Louis Gates affair). Obama has also had numerous town halls, other speeches and conference calls on the subject. And now he's going to salvage the debate with yet another speech before a joint session of Congress?

The best advice for Obama (which I offer fully confident that he won't take it), is to seek passage for a plan that the American people can accept (no cancellation of policies for sick people, no denials due to preexisting conditions, vouchers for the poor, etc.) and ditching those they can't (public option, rationing, transfer of monies from Medicare), and declare at least a partial victory.

But because the White House thinks Obama can sell ice to eskimos and their refusal to see that their problems lie in the substance of health care reform, such moderation of the Left's health care agenda is not likely.

In the end, Obama will reiterate the same tired arguments he's been making for the past 3 months, soften or rename (but not eliminate) the need for a public option, make nice noises towards Republicans (although they already know that Obama thinks talk is cheap), and try to unify the Democrats saying that they'll pay at the next election if they don't do something now.

So get some beer, popcorn, nachos or other snacks to watch the President's address on Wednesday. This is going to be classic. He'll either save his bacon, or self-destruct. I'm betting on the latter.

Return here after the speech for my comments to see how I think Obama did.

Public option would mean the end of American exceptionalism

If Congress were to pass, and President Obama ultimately to sign, a health care reform (excuse me, health insurance reform) bill, it would mean the end to American exceptionalism. American would then only refer to the continent we live on. We would have become only another socialist democracy. Of course, this is the unstated goal of the proponents of health care reform.

This health care fight is not about the monetary costs. Even if we had the money, the costs to individual freedom would still be too high.

This fight is not about snitch lists, "un-American" protests, attacking the American people as racist and unpatriotic, Obama's doublespeak, dissimulations and equivocations. Even though that's a fun fight to engage in because the targets are so irresistible.

This fight is about the fact that personal decisions about health care are not appropriate subjects for the body politic.

The term "American exceptionalism" was coined by Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 book Democracy in America:

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.

Over the next century and a half, the term American exceptionalism has taken on a broader meaning. Wikipedia explains:

The basis most commonly cited for American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and its people differ from other nations, at least on a historical basis, as an association of people who came from numerous places throughout the world but who hold a common bond in standing for certain self-evident truths, like freedom, inalienable natural and human rights, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, civil liberty, civic virtue, the common good, fair play, private property, and Constitutional government. The term is also used by United States citizens to indicate that America and Americans have different states of mind, different surroundings, and different political cultures than other nations, and still others use it to refer to the American dream and the slow yet continuous journey of the people of the United States, sharing a nation and a destiny, to build a more perfect union, to live up to the dreams, hopes, and ideals of its founders . . . .

This brand of American exceptionalism was recognized by Lincoln in the Gettysburg address:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Left has always been hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism, equating it with jingoism, thus explaining their earnest efforts to destroy it. In April, President Obama was, depending on your point of view, either oddly (for an American President), or characteristically (for a Leftist) dismissive of the notion:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. . . . There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But American exceptionalism has also been used to describe the strange absence of organized socialism in America. In American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword, Seymour Martin Lipset writes:

The United States has stood out among the industrial nations of the world in frustrating all efforts to create a mass socialist or labor party. This fact has occasioned a considerable literature seeking to explain this aspect of American exceptionalism . . . . Karl Marx and Frederich Engels grappled with the "exceptional" aspects of American society. In so doing, the presented a picture of America as a unique society, not very different from the analyses of Tocqueville . . . .

The weakness of socialism in the United States has been a major embarrassment throughout the twentieth century to Marxist theory . . . .

. . . . much of the efforts by Marxists and socialists to account for the failure of the prediction [that America would be an early socialist country] stressed that from sociological and political points of view, the United States was too progressive, too egalitarian, too open, and too democratic to generate massive radical or revolutionary movements on a scale comparable to Europe.

* * *

In analyzing the prospects for socialism in America, Marx and Engels did not limit themselves to economic factors. . . . America was a new nation and society, which lacked many of the institutions and traditions of previously feudal systems and as a result was the most "modern" and purely bourgeois culture. It was also the most democratic country.

The absence of a feudal past and consequent lack of rigid status in the United States in contrast to most of Europe was seen by the Marxist fathers, particularly Frederich Engels, as a source of the political backwardness of the American working class. Thus he wrote in 1890 that "Americans are born conservatives just because America is so purely bourgeois, so entirely without a feudal past, and therefore proud of its purely bourgeois organization."

For the better part of the last century, "health care," (long before it was "health care reform" or most recently, "health insurance reform") has always been the "holy grail" for those desiring to introduce socialism into the U.S. by incremental measures.

In a 1961 speech (the year Obama was born), Ronald Regan, warned:

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people, has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

The dangers of health care reform to American exceptionalism are also obvious to some non Americans: Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament stated recently:

You might find it slightly odd that I come here as a British politician and [extol] the virtues of the original colonial patriot leaders . . . and the people who wrote your constitution. Let me explain why I do so.

* * *
What scares me, is that I come here, to the place where British freedoms in the traditional sense I thought were still flourishing and I see the same tendencies. . . . I see this massive encroachment of the state into not only what should be the jurisdictions of the 50 states but what should be the sphere of the private citizen. In this of all countries! If you hear a clanking sound, that is the noise of the shades of your founding fathers rattling as they look on what's been done in their name to the country they founded. A country based around the maximum dispersal of power, now seeing in the name of contingency, in the name of emergency, this huge power grab by the government, by the state machine. Nationalization, stimulus packages, bailouts, this huge squeezing of the private sector to engorge the state sector, this expansion of the state payroll . . . in this of all countries! It's extraordinary that I should have to come here as a British politician and observe this phenomenon. All of us in the world benefited because the United States has been a strong, prosperous, free country. And that carries with it some burdens and some responsibilities. And one of them is that we all have an interest in your continued success. So if you want to go down this road to British style socialism, it's our problem as well as yours, my friends. Which is why I feel that I have some place in coming here to give a British response to the tea parties.

And let me say this. The expansions of state power that we have seen under the last two presidents, to be honest, I don't want to be partisan about this, are as nothing compared to what is now being proposed in the field of health care.

Ronald Reagan also stated in his 1961 speech that the pretext of providing health care to those who might not be able to afford it was a "foot in the door," "an excuse to bring about . . . socialized medicine."

Reagan continued:

James Madison said 1788 that "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

In this country of ours took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in world's history, the only true revolution, every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here for the first time in all the thousands of years of man's relation to man, a little group of men, the founding fathers, for the first time, established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the god given right and ability to determine our own destiny.

Should the public option pass, everything that makes America exceptional, will cease to exist. Maybe not overnight, but it will be the beginning of an irreversible march into socialism, that we have so far, been able to (more or less) resist.

This is the ultimate design of Obama and the Left, and don't let anyone tell you any different. The stakes could not be higher if we had armed Soviets at our doors.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, I'd rather die from disease because I am uninsured, rather than submit to government run health care. Really.

Get on Obama's Snitch List!

On Monday, the following note was placed on the White House website from director of new media Macon Phillips:

These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation,” Phillips wrote. “Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Every right thinking American should consider reporting themselves to the Obama snitch team.

You can even visit the website where the entire bill is located - http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.p df. - and then copy and paste a portion of the bill on to the White House snitch list with your comments. Maybe this way, someone will actually be forced to read it.

I love the following letter already sent to the White House by some brave self-reporting soul:

To whomever is in charge until the adults come back to
Washington:

I need to report Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Reid, and a few select others, for submitting frivolous and unconstitutional proposed legislation, and using manipulative tactics and coercion to entice, and/or force, other lawmakers to vote for bills of national significance without first reading it and fully understanding the implication to the American public, i.e., porkulus and health care reform. And worse, deliberately using clouded language to hide the true ramifications of this legislation from the American public. I also want to report the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Timothy Geithner; (I’ve heard from reliable sources that he cheats on his taxes).

I also want to report the Obama administration for encouraging these Soviet style tactics in regards to encouraging Americans to inform directly to their leaders of the free and protected speech of those who may disagree with official Obama policy. Furthermore, I question the motivation of the administration in making this request, and to what purpose the information gleaned would be used. I also question the accuracy of such reports. I suggest that any type of penalty for disagreement would have to be investigated extensively, thereby wasting billions more taxpayer dollars on frivolous bureaucratic BS. I hereby inform you that I do not appreciate the violation of my constitutional right to peaceably disagree with what Washington DC decides to do WITH MY MONEY!

You have my name and e-mail address; also note please that I am a veteran, therefore I believe somebody in your office considers me to be an enemy of the state.

For what it’s worth, I also believe you are all a collection of shameless liars.

I am here waiting to be picked up by the Obamagestapo.

VTY,J. Baker”

Are the children in charge of the White House really that stupid or out of touch? Did they really think we would take this lying down? It's like they can only play checkers, not chess. 100 million of us can all inform on ourselves, copying and pasting portions of the bill (or even Obama's own comments on how a public option will inevitably lead to single payer) - and let them sort it out. By the way, I'd be honored if someone who reads this sees fit to inform on me.

What would Lincoln have thought of Obamacare?

When President Obama took office in January, it was just weeks before the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, so even if the main stream media (why do we still call it that?) didn't hail the new President as the Obamessiah, comparisons to America's greatest president would have nonetheless been inevitable (so much so that CNN even morphed their faces).

In his earliest recorded speech, a 28 year-old Lincoln stated:

It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Which brings us to Obamacare. Neither I, nor most Republicans, object to legislation that would prevent insurers from dropping sick people. I'd even be willing to consider legislation that did not allow insurers to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions if it would kill the public option. (Even this is like buying car insurance after you have an accident).

But as I have written previously, insuring the uninsured is simply a pretext for the creation(either incrementally or all at once) of a public option that would (as Barney Frank frankly admitted) inevitably lead to a single payer system.

This is where the "man of ambition" (you know who I mean) will not emancipate slaves (that's already been done) but "enslave[] freemen."

As Mark Steyn wrote in NRO, this would have the effect of permanently changing the political culture to a left of center one that would redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state in matters as personal and as basic to personal liberty as one's own body. Your health care choices would ultimately be left of to Congress, special interest lobbies and the courts. (One might have the unfettered right to an abortion, but could not get an MRI if she so wanted unless she went to Mexico or China). Are you really free if you can't get an MRI or some other medical treatment, regardless of its usefulness unless the government says so?

Toward this end, Lincoln also warned:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

We will have committed suicide (both figuratively and literally) by failing to just say no to "free stuff" from those whose design it is to ultimately make us dependent on the government.

Healthcare Obama's Waterloo?

Senator Jim Demint said that health care would be Obama's "Waterloo" moment. Maybe. It's possible that should Obamacare (and for that matter, Cap and Trade) fail to pass, Obama would be so weakened and drained of credibility that he woud become ineffective through the rest of his term. Given the extreme efforts the White House is making to win this one, they apparently share this analysis.

But I think that by thwarting Obama's healthcare amitions, Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans may actually be saving Obama from himself. If Obamacare were to pass, voters would certainly hold the resulting catastrophe against him. People would clearly be unhappy with losing thier employer-sponsored health care plans because they were dumped into a "public- option" plan. Obama would suffer a further loss of credibility because what he promised would not happen would have come to pass. People would also be unhappy about rationed care and a resulting increase in health care costs and the deficit. Not to mention the fact that the alleged need for immediate action on health care (to fix the economy) would have been exposed as phony.

By sweeping Republicans into office in 1994 the American People saved Bill Clinton from himself and he went on to a largely successful presidency. But the permanent damage that would be caused by the current health care proposals are too terrible to permit, even if their passage did ultimately bring Obama to his Waterloo.

Health care reform a pretext for increasing dependence on government

Almost no one, Republicans and conservatives included, has a problem with making health care available to the uninsured.

But with each passing day, it appears that "Health Care Reform" is a pretext not for covering the uninsured, but increasing the government's reach over one-fifth of the economy, and into decisions that were until now, between a doctor and a patient (or a doctor, a patient and an HMO).

What Republicans, conservatives, Blue Dog Democrats and evidently, now a majority of the American People have a problem with is the government's total takeover of the nation's health care system, higher taxes, and increased spending. This is particularly true given that the economy shows no signs of immediate improvement.

What can be done? It wold be easy enough to provide vouchers for the poor so that they could simply just purchase the insurance (although this would still cost money, but not as much as the current proposal before Congress).

Americans enjoy the world's best health care, the problems are costs and access. To increase access, insurance companies should be allowed to cross state lines to sell policies to increase competition (and lower prices). Congress can also allow insurers to write policies that do not cover every conceivable malady. Is it better to go uninsured because you cannot afford a "gold-plated" policy that is required to cover, for example, HIV infection or precription costs for Viagra? Or would it be better to forego these things (particularly if you aren't at risk for HIV or think your plan shouldn't pay for Viagra should you need it)?

Further, any effort to artifically control costs (i.e., price controls), would result in either a healthcare black market, or inability to get healthcare because it would become scarce. Think
1970s era gas lines.

Agressive efforts to replace current employer's health care plans with health savings accounts would likely help control costs. With health savings accounts, employers take the same money that they would spend for insurance premiums, and use it for: (1) a less expensive major medical plan to cover only catistrophic costs; and (2) a savings account (for the remainder) that is used to pay for expenses not covered by the major medical insurance policy.

Because the savings accounts are an asset that each person keeps should they remain healthy, there is an incentive for each person to be the guardian of his own costs. If an unnecessary trip to the emergency room or expensive diagnostic procedure would cause an account withdrawal, then people would be more careful not to purchase these services unless truly necessary. This of course, would reduce costs and further increase access.

This of course is not an exhaustive list of alternative proposals to Obamacare. But it is clear that insuring the uninsured is not the real goal, which is make the government the sole insurer and increase the public's dependence on the Democrats. Who you gonna call when there are no longer any insurers to provide affordable coverage?