They Won’t Pull the Plug on Grandma — There Won’t Be a Plug To Pull
Regulations expand upon and “interpret” authorizing statutes; for the most part, they have the force of law. Unlike the congresscritters who vote for statutes, the unelected and generally faceless civil “servants” who write the implementing regulations can’t be voted out of office. Any complex and lengthy legislation must be read, not only to understand what it says, but at least to try to foresee what the many more thousands of pages of agency regulations certain to be promulgated based upon it may say.
This is even more important with health care legislation than it was with the stimulus package. If the stimulus doesn’t work, then “only” a trillion or more dollars and a year or so will have been wasted while the economy tanks. If ObamaCare becomes law and the results are horrible, people will actually die or suffer great physical misery because of it — and it will take far longer than the stimulus package mess to fix, if it can be fixed at all.
Despite the abysmal lack of “red meat” to digest, President Obama claims that there are four sacred and unalterable parts to his “plan:” reducing the cost of health care, protecting consumers from insurance abuses, providing affordable coverage to uninsured Americans, and not adding to the deficit.
That’s like promising good weather with just the right amount of snow and lots of toys for all the kids next Christmas without spending anybody’s money to make it so. It’s reminiscent of campaign promises interpreted by Obama’s true believers to mean that they wouldn’t have to worry about buying gasoline or paying their mortgages. Unfortunately, there are folks who believed that sort of garbage, and that’s probably true about his health care message as well.
President Obama’s four bumper sticker points don’t stand up:
1. Reducing the cost of health care. Any fool can do that; just limit drastically whatever is available. Give everybody who gets sick an aspirin and say “go home and get better, live with it or die.” That (I hope) is just silly. But under the “public option” there would definitely be rationing and cutbacks. The amounts paid for anesthesia, for example, would be cut by more than 50 percent. Other similar cuts would also be made.
Perhaps Obama simply means he will reduce waste and inefficiency without diminishing the nature, quality, or availability of medical care. But the government has lots of experience with waste and inefficiency, and most of it lies in creating it and being unaccountable for it.
2. Protecting consumers from insurance abuses. Abolish private medical insurance companies outright, or more likely, structure the subsidized public option to quickly drive them out of business. If the government sold subsidized tires for $15.00 and a privately owned and operated firm sold unsubsidized tires for $100.00, guess who would survive.
If that doesn’t work, create a national insurance victim agency, funded through special user fees levied on insurance companies and staffed with experts from … well, it doesn’t matter where, so long as they can be labeled “experts.” That benign public agency certainly would not abuse anyone.
3. Providing affordable coverage to uninsured Americans. U.S. citizens, legal residents, illegal aliens, little green men from Mars, or whatever, it doesn’t matter much. It fits in neatly with the first two points. At least it could then be said with a straight face that everybody gets identical medical care, except those unpatriotic folks who go to Cuba or Venezuela for medical treatment. Perhaps some Canadians who now travel to the United States for medical care will go there as well. Some may even go to Panamá, where health care is pretty good and widely available at a very reasonable cost. I’ve used it and think that for all but cutting-edge technology, it is superior to that in the United States.
4. Not adding to the deficit. The estimated national debt for the next ten years is over nine trillion dollars. “More than the sum of all previous deficits since America’s founding. … By the next decade’s end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy.”
Gosh darn! A trillion dollars here and there soon adds up to real money, and the United States is running out of sources from which to borrow or from whom to get additional tax revenues. It doesn’t matter much, however, because it all dovetails with points one through three — if they are implemented, even the Congressional Budget Office may get on board and agree that ObamaCare won’t increase the national debt.
The only thing which is (or should be) entirely clear to everyone is that the health care rhetoric has become a hopelessly deranged, damaged, and deflated political and emotional football. The death of Senator Kennedy will not change this. It must be recalled from the game and immediately replaced with something capable of being kicked around meaningfully. That’s pretty much what President Obama says he wants. If so, he should cap the crap and tell the truth.
This idea is gaining traction. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans would like to start over:
The American people will be very troubled by a single political party’s “my way or the highway” attitude to overhauling their health care, especially when it means government-run health care, new taxes on small businesses, and Medicare cuts for seniors.
To provide superior health care to everybody in the United States is a wonderful dream. It probably sends tingles down the legs of some. However, money, physicians, other health care professionals, and medical facilities are all necessary and finite. Not even a perfect government could do much to augment them substantially and quickly, much less make them infinite. Modest incremental changes are possible, but vague promises of massive and far-reaching solutions to everything all at once are mendacious. To take such promises seriously is stupid.
It is time for President Obama to sit back, have a smoke, reflect on what’s possible, and wipe the fairy dust from the eyes of those who demand the impossible — probably from his own eyes as well. Only then will he be in a position to get something worthwhile accomplished. I hope that is his goal, but it does not appear to be. At least it can be hoped that the president and his Congress will not act in haste, forcing all of us to repent at leisure and in misery.
On the upside, your doctor will either be Doogie Howser, M.D. offering you the red pill or the blue pill or Doctors Cheech & Chong prescribing you some really ‘killer’ weed. Oh happiness!
There are lies and then there are damned lies. Obama and his lame defense of the Health Debacle Bill use damned lies to deceive the public. With the lack of effectiveness of the Less Than Stimulating Stimulus Bill, the lucidity or perspicuity of voting on unread bills drafted by the Marxists Obama is installing around him on a regular basis is an exercise in absurdity.
Trusting Marxists in general is also an absurd concept. We want to avoid feeling like Carter when he complained that the Russian Premier lied to him and sounding like a disillusioned boy whose girl friend has dumped him. Te echoes of an impotent Stimulus bill designed to enrich Obama’s faithful at the expense of Americans yet unborn.
To believe Obama has compassion for the American people is to be deluded to the point of incompetency. Health Care Reform is for the sole purpose of Marxism to wrap its tentacles around an ever increasing portion of the American Economy. Anyone who supports this bill or the president is a member of the Marxist Front, either knowingly or in a duped state of denial. Either way is immaterial, if we submit we will be accepting the yoke of Communism and redistributing our wealth as a country and as individuals to the benefactors of Marxism.
Personally, I love Freedom and Liberty, I refuse to accept the chains of Marxist slavery because some dimwitted and envious faux Americans want to follow Obama and his lunacy toward the Utopian visions of a group of Marxist Morons. Marxist Morons who are anxious to set themselves up as the Elites of an Orwellian Dystopia, Elites who live in wealth and luxury while the rest of us accept the prosperity of a Third World Nation. Do you feel the initial stages?
It is called creeping Communism, it is implemented in incremental stages, otherwise people would be in the streets. The Obama Marxists have the benefit of having watched Marxism being installed many times around the world. They plan to gradually consolidate power and control, until one day we wake up and say, “What happened to my country!”
Tort reform, tort reform, tort reform. There is no hope that costs will be lower without this.
Obama, get your hands off my health care! Enough of your “rules for thee, not for me”.
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
Why doesn’t Obama and his democrats just cut to the chase: Put Dr. Kevorkian in charge of Universal Health Care when it is imposed. He’s unemployed, a doctor, experienced, and embodies the philosophy of the democrats. Plus, he has been to jail!That is a definate resume enhancer if you are a democrat.
To administer a really good nationalized health care program, Obama needs the following kind of person in charge:
1. An active, or former, medical doctor;
2. Someone experienced in end-of-life issues;
3 A cool hand who always keeps his eye on the bottom line;
4. A compassionate liberal.
I wonder if Dr. Kevorkian is available.
From the NYT
…Long-term care constitutes a difficult and expensive challenge in any health system. But the American patchwork, full of cracks through which people fall, has a special problem with medical expenses of all kinds bankrupting couples.
A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills.
M. still helps her husband and, quietly, continues to live with him and care for him. But she worries that the authorities will come after her if they realize that they divorced not because of irreconcilable differences but because of irreconcilable medical bills. There were awkward questions from friends who saw the divorce announcement in the newspaper.
“It’s just crazy,” she said. “It twists people like pretzels.”
The existing system doesn’t just break up families, it also costs lives. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That’s one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour.
In short, it’s a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of “death panels” could — even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters.
So, for those of you inclined to believe the worst about President Obama, think it through. Suppose he is indeed a secret, foreign-born Muslim agent who is scheming to undermine American family values while killing off as many grandmothers as possible.
If all that were true, why on earth would he be trying so hard to reform our health care system? We already know how to prod families into divorce and take a life unnecessarily every 30 minutes — all we need to do is reject reform and stick with exactly what we have.
“It’s time for President obama to be honest…..”????
I’m sorry.
Drunk drivers charged with manslaughter will plead nolo contendre when faced with the facts about their situation. So might murderers. But obama? Believe your lying eyes: it won’t matter what the subject matter is.
No one can honestly believe that President obama has the moral capacity to be honest.
He’s the ultimate liar. He has lied and misrepresented (by both omission and comission) for so long about so many things (including his own TWO autobiographies!) that he habitually lies even when it’s not necessary.
Even if he were telling the truth, no one would know it. Especially those who know him best. You can’t negotiate with a liar.
Hotpatch (6) delivers some interesting points.
”
To administer a really good nationalized health care program, Obama needs the following kind of person in charge:
1. An active, or former, medical doctor;
2. Someone experienced in end-of-life issues;
3 A cool hand who always keeps his eye on the bottom line;
4. A compassionate liberal.
I wonder if Dr. Kevorkian is available.”
The first three points are agreeable.
The fourth is the satirical point. Liberal has nothing to do with it.
Of course a practicing doctor or other medic, is very experienced in end of life issues. So, points 1 and 2 are essentialy the same thing.
Point 3 is also the same thing. Cool hands are required if you are going to be in this business and expect to survive. People are mortal in the best of hands.
Point 4 requires compassion. Again an obvious point. You do not belong here without compassion.
To be liberal I do not understand. That is a political term and does not hinge upon the requirements of experience, coolness under pressure, and compassion. All of those are good points.
Medics need to maintain a certain distance from politics. The person next to you may be an avowed commie-socialist-gay-married-whatever. If you can get the tube in the right place you are my hero.
To throw another log into the fire. Kevorkian had a point. Because of that there are sometimes things that happen in a better way and I have seen that in my own family.
I would suggest that maybe American medicine is a bit over the top. We often do things because we can, which does not always impact so well in terms of the outcome.
Key to progress is keeping government as far to the periphery as possible. Last thing we want is more oversight and appointed ‘experts’ to decide all of the parameters.
I would appreciate more government funding. We all have our own lists of where that should go.
Anyway lets just agree that this is not the time. Nobody, including myself, really understands where this should go in actual terms.
Diagnostic Radiologist signs off on the case.
Three month follow-up exam recommended.
Spindok
Conyers has a point- this bill is way too complicated. Greta van Sustran is a lawyer, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of this bill. If a lawyer can’t understand what the bill says, we need to scrap the bill and start over.
Phobos is his PR guy. Hades is his partner.
Actually, Hobbes said life would be “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” We’re getting there. Faster now than before.
Kevorkian does have a point. I do not want government (or society) to force me to stay alive when my condition has become unbearable. If I wish to end my life with someone else’s assistance, that is my business and not the government’s or any other ‘well meaning’ busybody.
Albert,
I have always considered divorce-in-name-only as a viable option when medical bills get too extreme. The healthy partner gets the assets, the sick one declares bankruptcy, and gets Medicaid to pay the costs.