Posted by
Bob Christensen on Sunday, August 16, 2009 4:07:41 PM
I volunteered yesterday at America's Healthcare Townhall in Atlanta. It was a great experience.
I talked with a number of physicians, young and older, who are VERY concerned about their future if the Obama Healthcare bill passes. Every one argued that the best health care is provided by doctors who know their patients and are trained in their profession (not bureaucrats with statistical charts), and that more-and-bigger Medicare-like programs will be a diaster. Hospitals are paid 93% of their costs for Medicare (and they make it up by charging more for patients with health insurance). If everyone was on Medicare, private hospitals would go broke or severely reduce services. Why would anyone believe that Obamacare would be any different?
HR 3200 is in trouble and is losing support rapidly as the public becomes more educated about it. If you aren't already an expert, here's a good summary by Professor John Lewis, a classics professor at Duke. http://www.classicalideals.com/HR3200.htm He quotes several key passages of the bill and translates them into ordinary English. The highlights:
- The Government will decide what is covered and what conditions/procedures/medications are not covered (based on statistical analysis, not medical practice)
- Readmission to the hospital (for the same condition) will be determined by the Government (not your Doctor) based on statistics (a minimum % of people with that condition must be discharged)
- It is Government rationing, "straight up" with no appeals or judical review possible (Government bureaucrat decisions cannot be appealed to any court - "The Secretary is above the courts"
- EVERYONE is forced into a plan; if you are not in a plan the IRS will collect a special tax from you
- Health Savings Accounts and catastrophic insurance are illegal
- All business-provided health plans will have to meet minimum standards or employers will be taxed 8%
- Many businesses will opt for the lower-cost Government plan, therefore all of their employees will be shifted to the Government plan with no choice
- All private plans must be approved by the Commissioner and meet Government requirements
- It will cost higher-income families much more than others in tax "surcharges"
- The Government has unlimited authority to set fee structures (see Medicare above) and to determine what is "adequate payment" for medical services, prescriptions, etc. (Price controls - not cost controls)
Several of the speakers made excellent observations and comments. Herman Cain set the record straight about the fictitous 50 million chronically uninsured - the number is actually somewhere around 10 million. It's not very difficult to solve that problem - and we certainly should address it.
Several good, common-sense proposals were presented by a panel of health care industry experts; others are in general circulation. I prefer the tax credit to pay for health insurance for those who cannot afford it, combined with a state level "pool" that would enable anyone not covered by their employer to opt-in to a plan with similar cost and benefit to those available to employers, plus portability, which would allow each person to keep their insurance (at the employer cost, not the excessive COBRA costs we experience today) if they change employers, become unemployed, etc. - this way there would be no "pre-existing conditions" to worry about. The panel presented several feasible, common-sense approaches to insuring the un-insured and reducing the escalating costs of health care - without creating a huge Government bureaucracy or spending TRILLIONS more dollars.
We were also reminded that the unfunded liability of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security exceeds 53 TRILLION dollars. That's $147,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. As a Christian, I have to say that's just outright sinful, to pass that debt on to our children and grandchildren. Congress should fix THAT problem before asking us to "Just Trust Me" to "fix" the entire health care industry!
The future of health care in the US seems to rest on the "Blue Dog" Democrats, because it appears that almost all Republicans are opposing Obamacare while Pelosi and Obama, and most of their Democrat followers, have become entrenched in their positions - does anyone have any indication that they are actually listening to "the people"? Please let me know if you see any evidence of that.
Blue Dogs seem to fear Speaker Pelosi, yet they are politically very calculating. Our strategy, if we intend to defeat this bill, should be to focus on the Blue Dogs and make them fear the electorate more than they fear the Speaker! Fear This: Early Retirement from Congress in 2010! Send letters, Fax them, send email, phone their offices. Show up and Speak Up at their townhalls. Let them hear from you.
My message to everyone in Congress who voted for the Stimulus Bill, the huge deficits, who supported Freddie and Fannie and the Bailouts, and who votes for Obamacare:
HOW DARE YOU! How dare you create a $9 TRILLION public debt, which subjects every citizen to a lower standard of living for generations to come! How dare you insult "the people" for opposing your chicanery, your wild-and-crazy out-of-control spending, your Chicago-style politics, your BIG government solutions to crises that you create! How dare you demonize "the people" in your arrogance! Everyone who was involved in creating this huge mess should be sent home - both Republican and Democrat!
I am writing under the blog heading "Christian Reflections on US Politics." I understand - and rejoice in - both our heritage of openness to all religious beliefs (including atheism, Islam, and all other religions), our freedom of religious choice, and our responsibility as citizens to participate in this great American Experiment. I believe that we should seek for - and insist upon - truth from our elected representatives, that we should seek justice for all, and that we should seek out and put an end to all forms of oppression.
It seems pretty clear to me that many of our national politicians have bought into Statism (big government is our salvation from ... whatever), that they are much less than honest (they are lying) about the legislation that they are trying to pass, and that the end result of more big government programs is greater oppression (loss of freedom, loss of economic opportunity, loss of quality health care, huge burdens of debt).
The left is over-reaching. Their arrogance is their blind spot - they are unaware that they are acting with arrogance; they simply believe that they are smarter than the rest of us. They never consider that they might be dead-wrong, or that the opposition might actually have rational cause for alarm.
I want to recommend a few really great articles/blogs from the last couple of weeks.
"Principle Four: The left imposes its values on others whenever possible and to the extent possible. That is why virtually every totalitarian regime in the 20th century was left-wing. Inherent to all left-wing thought is a totalitarian temptation. People on the left know that not only are their values morally superior to conservative values, but that they themselves are morally superior to conservatives. Thus, for example, the former head of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, could say in all seriousness, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, we don't think children ought to go to bed hungry at night.”
Therefore, the morally superior have the right, indeed the duty, to impose their values on the rest of us: what light bulbs we use, what cars we drive, what we may ask a prospective employee, how we may discipline our children, and, of course, how much of our earnings we may keep.
It is dishonest to argue that the right wants to impose its values to anywhere near the extent the left does. This can be demonstrated to a fifth-grader: Who wants more power -- those who want to govern a big state or those who want to govern a small state?
The president of the United States and the much of the Democratic Party embody these left-wing principles. Right now, America's only hope of staying American rather than becoming European lies in making these principles as clear as possible to as many Americans as possible. The left is so giddy with power right now, we actually have a chance."
"Dissent against the left is another matter. To Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to the New York Times Paul Krugman and every other left-wing commentator I have read on the issue, those who dissent against the Obama/Democratic Party health care plan are not only not patriotic; they are Nazis, mobs, white racists (according to Krugman's non-sequitur thesis) and are always organized. They are activists sent by health insurance companies, the Republican Party, or by some other nefarious right-wing organization."
Prager characterizes the left as being emotional and belief-oriented, without necessarily having rational or factual basis for many of those beliefs. This explains their highly emotional reactions (Pelosi, Obama) to opposition. They are lacking in facts and common-sense logic to support what they want to do, so they demonize the opposition. That's their standard response. I agree with his assessment. Those of us who envision a very different outcome from their proposed policies need to stay calm and engage in reasonable and principled conversation and debate. Most Americans respond better to that approach, and they are beginning to see through the hyper-emotional rhetoric and demoagoguery of the left.
We need to begin demanding that the media start thinking seriously about the consequences of implementing the leftist agenda. There are hundreds of very penetrating questions begging to be asked. Who is up to the task?