Democratic “Brain Surgery”
It's only money, we like to say, when we know we shouldn't be pulling out our wallets, but …
The 'but' is a big one when it comes to health care reform: huge, immense, Himalayan. So big we're not going to do it, I'll bet you money. Not this year we're not, because we've barely started to think this thing through. We're not ready as a country, as a people, to have President Obama and his congressional minions shove down our throats a new, costly, coercive plan for reordering the way we care for ourselves, or for that matter don't care.
The Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office—no aerie of Reaganite stool pigeons—says health care reform a la Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd (the Affordable Health Choices Act) would leave more than twice as many Americans uninsured as it would protect, sort of—36 million to 16 million, respectively. The CBO says, further, the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $1 trillion between 2010 and 2019.
The so-called "public option" that is central to the Kennedy-Dodd design is supposed to keep the private insurance companies honest. The taxpayers would subsidize the public option, making it seem—like any subsidized government program—the way for many to go.
The CBO calculates that 15 million Americans would exit their private plans if Kennedy-Dodd were imposed. Coverage from other sources would fall by 8 million, the CBO says.
This is progress? Large numbers of Americans may be forgiven, perhaps, if they differ on that trivial point.
On Monday, the President assured the American Medical Association that "If we fail to act, premiums will climb higher, benefits will erode further, the rolls of the uninsured will swell to involve millions more Americans …"
The President's admirers, especially in the media, consider him some speechmaker. He is reasonably good, by post-Reagan standards. If only his speeches had content as well as cadence! The content-less speech, which you can't remember when it's over except that it sure sounded good, is the Barack Obama specialty. Audiences eat it up with spoons. He promises change, promises unity, promises transformation. It sounds so good you want to march.
March where? That's the eternal question with Obama. You won't find him, I venture, trying to shoot down in public the Congressional Budget Office's arithmetic—first, because he knows we know it's no GOP hatchet job; second, because meeting telling objection with telling reply isn't his stock in trade. He inspires. He rouses. He sends you airborne—without telling you what it's going to cost when you come down.
That's the detail stuff—cost. Obama seems to have decided we don't care about details; we trust him to do the backstage work that makes everything come out right.
The beauty of the Obama phenomenon—and indeed there's a kind of beauty and unintentional charm to it, as well as vitality—is this: Americans last year were ready for a spot of inspiration—a jolt of moral Tabasco. Obama likes to talk about the problems he inherited from "his predecessor," George W. Bush. What he never mentions is the automatic clearance he received from Bush, after a long, mostly flat presidency—to soar over the earth like a bird. Soar he did.
Birds, alas, however graceful in flight, have to come down to earth, where a fact is a fact is a fact; where the Congressional Budget Office tells us—without actually telling us—that there's no such thing as a smooth path to Happy Healthcare Land.
Good ideas—with higher respect for the private sector than the Washington Democrats display—can be found in abundance: none smooth, none easy, none foolproof. The challenge is to start talking and sorting out rather than dictating: wham, wham, do it my way. The Democratic way!
Brain surgery is the most methodical, no-nonsense enterprise anyone ever saw. What's the matter with politicians who propose to slice up, without X-rays or MRI, the best health care system in the world? No brains? Or too many for their own good?
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When did the Democrat party become the Democratic party?
"The Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office—no aerie of Reaganite stool pigeons—says health care reform a la Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd (the Affordable Health Choices Act) would leave more than twice as many Americans uninsured as it would protect, sort of—36 million to 16 million, respectively. The CBO says, further, the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $1 trillion between 2010 and 2019."
It's only a trillion dollars more of debt over 10 years Mr. Murchison! And with the debasement of the currency that will occur over these next ten years, we will be getting this "progress" for a relative drop in the bucket.
"The content-less speech, which you can’t remember when it’s over except that it sure sounded good, is the Barack Obama specialty."
Rush Limbaugh said the same thing more memorably last year, during the campaign: "That guy can say nothing better than anyone I've ever heard say nothing."
Sorry, Mr. Murchison (Mr. Limbaugh),
The president who really knew how to say nothing and make it sing was Ronald Wilson Reagan, the most destructive politician of my lifetime, who single-handedly reduced public political discourse and presentation to sound-bites and flippant gestures.
My apologies for this strictly off-topic comment.
Mr Olson is right. That is what set the stage for the Neocon and Demo sound-bites and gestures of today.
Come on guys, technology was responsible for reducing public political discourse to sound-bites. Reagan governed within the context of a burgeoning 24-hour news cycle. I have always considered Nixon as the first victim of this trend.
Kennedy-Dodd is only step one in the process of Europeanizing the American health system. The possibility that more Americans may lose insurance coverage in the short run if the current Democratic health reform plans are implemented may be a silver lining because the logical goal for the socialists is single-payer government insurance. Kennedy-Dodd is the temporary way-station on the road to nationalized health insurance in much the same way the tacky South-of-the-Border cluster of motels on the North Carolina-South Carolina border is the way-station for Yankee travelers Florida bound.
At the risk of sounding like an apostate, there are conservative aspects to single-payer nationalized health insurance. It offers security to all and this would be especially helpful to the sort of conservative who withdraws from a corrupt and collapsing country, a phenomenom that I expect to snowball in the future. Families, many of them conservative in orientation, would not be bankrupted by serious illnesses that run up huge medical bills and often force families off insurance. Single-payer would simplify the business operations of doctors, most of whom act as small businessmen. Small businessmen in general, many of whom offer insurance to their workers, would find a burden lifted by single-payer. Lastly, as a negative reinforcement, single-payer would lead to rationing. Americans who live indisciplined lives healthwise will be penalized under single-payer.
That single-payer nationalized health insurance will lead to inferior health care in the USA is a given. But maybe that's what soft, fat and self-satisfied America needs.
You got Reagan down right, Ray. However, Eisenhower and Kennedy did much that anticipated what Reagan perfected.
As to being able to say nothing at length and to great applause, I remember reading HL Mencken's description of a Harding speech. Mencken called him "Gamaliel" and was able to dissect the president's contentless speech in a very entertaining fashion.
Contentless speeches have been with us for as long as we've had speechmakers.
"What’s the matter with politicians who propose to slice up, without X-rays or MRI, the best health care system in the world?"
I have worked in the medical field in three coutries and every one stated that "We have the best health care system in the world!" Sadly, they are all lying. People like to boast about a system, when in reality, the health care system has nothing to do with the health of the population.
Leaving the US healthcare system as it is or changing it into a single-payer universal system is not going to change the growing epidemic of diabetes, cancer, and the like, nor will it control the costs to society that these epdemics will cause. All you need to do is walk through the average US grocery store and see complete aisles devoted entirely to potato chips, soda, and refined sugar/high fructose corn syrup-laced candies to see the problem. This is not a problem of the health-care system. It is a problem of health.
@10: You've made a keen observation and I think you are correct. However, to solve these health problems you mentioned, we've got to re-educate the population to the dangers of processed foods, especially the high refined-sugar content of many foods. This (and the concommitant renewal of eating nutritionally) and self-discipline and physical exercise (and I do not mean pushing iron or running marathons, primarily) will help restore good health. As a Catholic I believe that nurturing the spiritual life is the basis for controlling the physical life. It is the key at least to a balanced life.
@11 J Meng
As an Orthodox Christian, I agree with you that the spiritual life is key. If the spiritual life is in order all other things fall into place. However, with the issue of food, you don't necessarily have to even be Christian or belong to a particular religious group to have the good sense to understand that God has blessed us with an abundance of fertile land to provide everything we can possible need for our growth and life as human beings (spiritual and physical).
And what do we do? We subsidize the industrialization and destruction of family farming, the poisoning of the soil and the animals, and the overproduction of GMO crops like corn, resulting in things like high-fructose corn syrup being put into virtually everything on our shelves. Is this our idea of giving thanks? This is not just lack of education, this is almost a sickness of the soul. All we really need to do is take young children to one of the many CAFOs in the US, and they will understand the problem. You don't even need to say anything to them. They will get it just be looking at it.
I am always amazed when I travel through Europe, France being my favorite, at how much their subsidies have paid to prevent overproduction, and keep with traditional methods of growing food. As a result, eating good food still remains at the heart of their culture, and despite eating a high calorie diet, they don't have the diabetes and obesity epidemics that we do. People are out walking and hiking and local farmers markets are everywhere. In many of these places, you never have to step into a mega grocery store for anything.
To Dr. Wilson @ 8,
Thank you. I'm always relieved and very pleased when you endorse something I've said. It's an honor.
BTW, while I'm not able, much to my chagrin, to make the Abbeville summer session on the Reconstruction, I have purchased (for less than half the shipping costs) a pristine copy (reprint ed.) of The Story of Reconstruction, of which I'd read your endorsement.