Following Barack Obama\u2019s speech to Congress on health care Wednesday evening, and despite unified opposition from minority Republicans, Democratic congressional leaders said Thursday they expect to pass \u201creform\u201d legislation within the next few months.<\/p>\n
They have the votes; there\u2019s little reason to believe they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The better question is what such a bill will look like.<\/p>\n
Those hoping the president might pull back from his plan for a massive government takeover of one-sixth of the nation\u2019s economy, instead offering a truly \u201cbi-partisan\u201d plan which could win GOP support for free-market reforms including an end to expensive state coverage mandates, freedom to buy insurance across state lines, and a \u201closer pays\u201d regime for medical malpractice suits, didn\u2019t get much.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, the president ridiculed those who \u201cjust this year supported a budget that would essentially have turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will not happen on my watch,\u201d he vowed. \u201cI will protect Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
From being put onto any sustainable financial footing, apparently.<\/p>\n
The president did mention malpractice reform as a distant possibility, promising to \u201cmove forward\u201d on \u201cauthorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these ideas\u201d … but he held a pretty big hammer over the table where he placed those crumbs, vowing \u201cI will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it\u2019s better politics to kill this plan than to improve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
So much for \u201cbi-partisanship,\u201d which in the Democratic thesaurus shows up as a synonym for \u201chis way or the highway.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was not much change in the president\u2019s umpteenth address on health insurance reform. Most notable was his continued — and still fantastic — assertion that \u201cReducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since no bureaucrat sees his or her paycheck reduced as punishment for waste — in fact, the opposite is typical, as higher spending builds bigger management pyramids — government has no incentive NOT to \u201cgo for broke.\u201d Medicare had cost 20 times the initial estimates within just a few decades of its creation; the president now insists the way to get costs down is not merely to subsidize health insurance for the few million legal residents who now lack it and don\u2019t already qualify for one of the nation\u2019s existing income-transfer schemes, but rather to expand Medicare to cover the entire nation!<\/p>\n
What on earth kind of \u201creduction of waste\u201d is this guy — who has never worked as so much as a candy-striper — talking about? Re-using the tongue depressors?<\/p>\n
Public option ‘down the drain’ <\/strong><\/p>\n While praising Mr. Obama\u2019s speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada signaled separately that the president may not prevail in his inflexible call for legislation to allow the federal government to sell insurance in competition with private industry.<\/p>\n Sen. Reid said he could be satisfied with establishment of nonprofit cooperatives, along the lines expected to be included in the bill taking shape in the Senate Finance Committee.<\/p>\n Ms. Pelosi, though she has long favored a measure that allows the government to sell insurance, passed up a chance Thursday to say it was a nonnegotiable demand.<\/p>\n As long as legislation makes quality health care more accessible and affordable, \u201cWe will go forward with that bill,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The problem is thus not Republican opposition to the government \u201ccompeting\u201d with private firms. (In fact, since the government would mandate which identical coverages each private firm must offer, and what each private firm could charge, this is a vision of \u201ccompetition\u201d which could be taken seriously only in some Marxist ivory tower, like saying you have \u201call the competition you need\u201d if FedEx and UPS are driven out of business, but you still have two different post offices, one selling red stamps and the other one selling green stamps.)<\/p>\n Rather, the problem lies in the resistance of \u201cmoderate\u201d Democrats from places OTHER than Massachusetts, Santa Monica, and New York City, who already have their eyes on next year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n And that means, \u201cAs for the public option, that\u2019s pretty clearly gone down the drain,\u201d in the pithy summary of James Ridgeway of Mother Jones magazine.<\/p>\n Mr. Obama continued to insist Wednesday that his approach will not result in higher deficits, vowing again to veto any bill which would have that effect.<\/p>\n But the Congressional Budget Office says Mr. Obama\u2019s plan will cost a fortune. If their goal is merely to insure the uninsured, why vote down such a cap (just as they voted down amendments specifying the plan wouldn\u2019t cover illegal aliens, and that it wouldn\u2019t cover abortions)?<\/p>\n Obviously, Democratic congressmen know the \u201cpublic option\u201d would end up insuring most Americans, after the government mandates drive the private competitors out of business. This is precisely the \u201cindirect road\u201d to a single-payer system that candidate Obama said years ago the far Left would have to follow to put such a scheme over on an unwilling American public.<\/p>\n And this is precisely what the CBO foresaw when it attached a massive deficit price tag to the president\u2019s scheme.<\/p>\n ‘They said it would lead to socialism. “Socialism”!’ <\/strong><\/p>\n It does appear the Democrats are united, at least, in their determination to bar insurance companies from denying coverage for \u201cpre-existing conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Telling insurance companies they must offer \u201ccoverage\u201d to those with pre-existing conditions is wildly popular — reporters for local newspapers and TV stations around the country who sat with small groups of senior citizens as they watched the president\u2019s speech Wednesday reported cheers and applause when the president vowed that proviso would remain in any congressional bill.<\/p>\n The problem is that, whatever would be left after such a mandated change, it would no longer be \u201cinsurance coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n Insurance, as the term was once understood, meant sharing the risk of outcomes which could not be predicted.<\/p>\n If one ship in 20, sailing to the Orient for tea and spices, was formerly lost to storm or piracy, the owners were free to each contribute 5 percent of the value of each ship and cargo to an \u201cinsurance\u201d fund. An owner who lost his ship could thus claim 20 times what he had paid and be made whole. His fellows bore the small loss, knowing it might be they who would lose a ship next year.<\/p>\n Similarly, a hundred workers each paying a percentage of their paycheck for health insurance don\u2019t know which of their number may contract a disease which requires expensive treatment. They are sharing the risk.<\/p>\n But what if now a person who has recently discovered he or she has that disease tries to join their pool, knowing full well he or she will use up everyone else\u2019s pooled \u201cpremiums\u201d for his or her treatment in the next year, even though he or she paid nothing to \u201cshare the risk\u201d in years past? Such a latecomer is not proposing to \u201cshare the risk,\u201d he or she is just seizing the funds everyone else put up in good faith, leaving nothing in the pot anyone else.<\/p>\n If government requires the pool to accept this late-comer, this is not longer \u201crisk sharing.\u201d It\u2019s government-mandated income redistribution, from the healthy to the sick. No wonder the president insists everyone will be \u201crequired\u201d to pay their \u201cpremiums\u201d in such a scheme. Why else would anyone continue paying into such a manipulated rip-off?<\/p>\n Of course graduates of the socialist government youth propaganda camps who can\u2019t explain why A must equal A cheer at the notion that \u201cgreedy\u201d insurance companies will be required to fund treatment of their emergent diseases at levels that bear no actuarial relation to any premiums they\u2019ve paid in over time.<\/p>\n Where will the money come from? Will such a scheme bankrupt our children and grandchildren? Who cares?!<\/p>\n Then the president had the chutzpah to sneer:<\/p>\n \u201cIn 1935, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism,\u201d and that \u201cIn 1965 … some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care.\u201d<\/p>\n Leave aside, for the moment, how closely this resembles Eugene Lawson in \u201cAtlas Shrugged,\u201d simpering to Hank Rearden \u201cYou businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you\u2019ve cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we\u2019ll perish – but we haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s actually closer to some teen-ager in a monster movie, branding his chums \u201cscaredy-cats\u201d as they bolt for the woods, never noticing the horrid creature shambling up behind him.<\/p>\n \u201cNyah, nyah, nyah, you say you\u2019re afraid of socialism but we already have Medicare and Social Security,\u201d chant the redistributionists. I have never quite understood how this differs substantially from a ship\u2019s officer ridiculing your fears that the Titanic may sink, even though it\u2019s been taking on water for hours and now lists 30 degrees. After all, \u201cIt hasn\u2019t sunk YET!\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t many doctors now see more than half their patients covered by Medicare, meaning the government tells them what treatments they can prescribe and what they\u2019ll be paid — even regularly \u201cadjusting\u201d those payment rates downward, after the fact? But this represents no trend toward government control of the enterprise?<\/p>\n If Social Security and Medicare have not yet converted our entire economy to redistributionist socialism (such failure being the only reason enough tax revenue still flows in to allow Mr. Obama to indulge his fantasies) we should therefore not be worried now that Mr. Obama wants to push the process further — even as our economy, currency, and government debt teeter on the brink of hyperinflation and systemic collapse?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following Barack Obama\u2019s speech to Congress on health care Wednesday evening, and despite unified opposition from minority Republicans, Democratic congressional leaders said Thursday they expect to pass \u201creform\u201d legislation within the next few months. They have the votes; there\u2019s little reason to believe they won\u2019t. 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\nNevada Congressman Dean Heller offered an amendment in House Ways and Means this summer which would have cut off enrollment in the \u201cpublic option\u201d plan at the maximum number of people who now lack insurance, as determined by the Census Bureau. Democrats defeated that amendment.<\/p>\n