President Obama is making the case against his own health care bill.
To address fears that private insurance won’t be able to compete with a public option, he points out how UPS and FedEx are more successful than the near-bankrupt U.S. Post Office. This is an obvious attempt to show how government can’t run things efficiently, so those who like private insurance shouldn’t worry.
However, the health care bill depends on keeping costs down through improved efficiency and a new government agency overseeing it all. If the government couldn’t make the post office run efficiently, then how can we trust the government to run our health care system efficiently?
Listen to what Obama is saying — he’s right.
Another example is that Medicare now has $36 trillion of looming expenses. If the government has not been able to keep Medicare costs down before, why would we expect it to be able to keep costs down in the new health care bill? Urge your congressman to reject the “public option” and really improve health care, not destroy it. There are lots of other proposals out there worth considering.
I don't have health care insurance and really don't want to pay for YOUR "plan". It seems like a way to squeeze some additional monies out of us. And I don't have a lot more to give. I wonder if you could tell us, why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare? Yes, please stop for a minute to explain. And why are Democrats suddenly interested in listening to businesses? When did Democrats listen to businesses. Democrats always claimed they we were the party for the American People.
Things have changed with the Democrats. Recently the Democrats, along with yourself, appear to be sidelining the American people in favor listening to business and other special interest groups. It's very sad to see this happen to the American people.
Democrat appear all to eager to push Nancy's agendas through and seem to be making the mistake of taking on far too many issues at one time. The current "Career Congress" is costing us a staggering multiple trillions, of trillions, of trillions of dollars. If not multiple trillions more. Why don't we pause for a moment and see if that makes sense? Why is it Congress won't go to work on the economy first?
Let's humanize this. My neighbor can't go to work becuse of the economy and has been unemployed for over eight months. Why can't Congres understand people like my neighbor want a strong economy first? Let's get back to the idea of making America a place where we all have a job to do and clearly understand what that job is.
While we're at it. Let's not focus on too many issues at a single time. When you do that we lose focus. It doesn't seem clear that Democrats like yourself, are being inclusive of the public's input on some issues of importance to the American people.
Honestly, I feel democrats are making the same mistake the Clinton administration did by not including everyone in a healthcare debate. A good example is your "phoney town-hall meeting".
I also don't see businesses as being the right venue to USE to push health care reform on voters who are getting little or no say in the issue. Bring the issue to the people (not businesses and special interests) and let the people who have health insurance be the judge.
The people are the stakeholders that Congressmen and Congresswomen should be listening to. Democrats appear to be ONLY interested in listening to businesses and special interests. That seems to be a sad repeat of history. And that will ultimately turn the voters away from Democrats agenda. It's already happening.
Sorry, Jerry. It sure seems wrong to count people out in favor of business and special interests. Is that what you promsed the American voters, back in November? Let's get our priorities back in order. Why not tell Congress to give us jobs and slow down on the 23 trillion dollars before we have no money left. I really doubt the American voters wanted Democrats to put the cart before the horse. (or the special interest before the voters).
We'll have to look at the ballot boxes in November.
Just hope somebody's listening.
Watch Jo Bidon telling a man confined to his wheelchar to "stand up".
Just be careful what you ask for.
Look at how the Dems are wasting 23 trillion dollars of taxpayers money. To keep tabs on us?
Found out they are putting this around now:
"If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to ****@whitehouse.gov."
"
"A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
--BARACK OBAMA
"I have not said that I was a single payer supporter...."
--BARACK OBAMA
"
Shikha Dalmia, 07.01.09, 12:01 AM ET
President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office with a veritable halo over his head. In the eyes of his backers, he could say or do no wrong because he had evidently descended directly from heaven to return celestial order to our fallen world. Oprah declared his tongue to be "dipped in the unvarnished truth." Newsweek editor Evan Thomas averred that Obama "stands above the country and above the world as a sort of a God."
But when it comes to health care reform, with every passing day, Obama seems less God and more demagogue, uttering not transcendental truths, but bald-faced lies. Here are the top five lies that His Awesomeness has told--the first two for no reason other than to get elected and the next three to sell socialized medicine to a wary nation.
Lie One: No one will be compelled to buy coverage.
During the campaign, Obama insisted that he would not resort to an individual mandate to achieve universal coverage. In fact, he repeatedly ripped Hillary Clinton's plan for proposing one. "To force people to buy coverage," he insisted, "you've got to have a very harsh penalty." What will this penalty be, he demanded? "Are you going to garnish their wages?" he asked Hillary in one debate.
Yet now, Obama is behaving as if he said never a hostile word about the mandate. Earlier this month, in a letter to Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., he blithely declared that he was all for "making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and making employers share in the cost."
But just like Hillary, he is refusing to say precisely what he will do to those who want to forgo insurance. There is a name for such a health care approach: It is called TonySopranoCare.
Lie Two: No new taxes on employer benefits.
Obama took his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, to the mat for suggesting that it might be better to remove the existing health care tax break that individuals get on their employer-sponsored coverage, but return the vast bulk--if not all--of the resulting revenues in the form of health care tax credits. This would theoretically have made coverage both more affordable and portable for everyone. Obama, however, would have none of it, portraying this idea simply as the removal of a tax break. "For the first time in history, he wants to tax your health benefits," he thundered. "Apparently, Sen. McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them too."
Yet now Obama is signaling his willingness to go along with a far worse scheme to tax employer-sponsored benefits to fund the $1.6 trillion or so it will cost to provide universal coverage. Contrary to Obama's allegations, McCain's plan did not ultimately entail a net tax increase because he intended to return to individuals whatever money was raised by scrapping the tax deduction. Not so with Obama. He apparently told Sen. Baucus that he would consider the senator's plan for rolling back the tax exclusion that expensive, Cadillac-style employer-sponsored plans enjoy, in order to pay for universal coverage. But, unlike McCain, he has said nothing about putting offsetting deductions or credits in the hands of individuals.
In other words, Obama might well end up doing what McCain never set out to do: Impose a net tax increase on health benefits for the first time in history.
Lie Three: Government can control rising health care costs better than the private sector.
Ignoring the reality that Medicare--the government-funded program for the elderly--has put the country on the path to fiscal ruin, Obama wants to model a government insurance plan--the so-called "public option"--after Medicare in order to control the country's rising health care costs. Why? Because, he repeatedly claims, Medicare has far lower administrative costs and overhead than private plans--to wit, 3% for Medicare compared to 10% to 20% for private plans. Hence, he says, subjecting private plans to competition against an entity delivering such superior efficiency will release health care dollars for universal coverage.
But lower administrative costs do not necessarily mean greater efficiency. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office analysis last year chastised Medicare's lax attitude on this front. "The traditional fee-for-service Medicare program does relatively little to manage benefits, which tends to reduce its administrative costs but may raise its overall spending relative to a more tightly managed approach," it noted on page 93.
In short, extending the Medicare model will further ruin--not improve--even the functioning aspects of private plans.
Lie Four: A public plan won't be a Trojan horse for a single-payer monopoly.
Obama has repeatedly claimed that forcing private plans to compete with a public plan will simply "keep them honest" and give patients more options--not lead to a full-blown, Canadian-style, single-payer monopoly. As I argued in my previous column, this is wishful thinking given that government programs such as Medicare have a history of controlling costs by underpaying providers, who make up the losses by charging private plans more. Any public plan modeled after Medicare will greatly increase this forced subsidy, eventually driving private plans out of business, even if that weren't Obama's intention.
But, as it turns out, it very much is his intention. Before he decided to run for office--and even during the initial days of his campaign--Obama repeatedly said that he was in favor of a single-payer system. What's more, University of California, Berkeley Professor Jacob Hacker, who is a key influence on the Obama administration, is on tape explicitly boasting that a public plan is a means for creating a single-payer system. "It's not a Trojan horse," he quips, "it's just right there."
But even if Obama wanted to, it is simply impossible to design a public plan that could compete with private insurers on a level playing field and without "feeding off the public trough" as Obama claims.
At the very least, such a plan would always carry an implicit government guarantee that, should it go bust, no one in the plan would lose coverage. This guarantee would artificially lower the plan's capital reserve requirements, giving it an unfair edge over private plans. What's more, it is simply not plausible to expect that the plan wouldn't receive any start-up subsidies or use the government's muscle to negotiate lower rates with providers. If it eschewed all these things, there would be no reason for it to exist--because it would be just like any other private plan.
Lie Five: Patients don't have to fear rationing.
Obama has been insisting, including during his ABC Town Hall event last week, that the rationing patients would face under a government-run system wouldn't be any more draconian than what they currently confront under private plans. This is complete nonsense.
The left has been trying to address fears of rationing by trotting out an old and tired trope, namely, that rationing is an inescapable fact of life because every system rations whether by price or fiat. But there is a big difference between the two. If I can't afford caviar and champagne every night, any rationing involved is metaphoric, not real. Genuine rationing occurs when someone else controls access--how much of a particular good I can consume.
By that token, Obama's stimulus bill has set in motion rationing on a scale unimaginable in the land of the free. Indeed, the bill commits over $1 billion to conduct comparative effectiveness research that will evaluate the relative merits of various treatments. That in itself wouldn't be so objectionable--if it weren't for the fact that a board will then "direct financing" toward approved, standardized treatments. In short, doctors will find it much harder to prescribe newer or non-standard treatments not yet deemed effective by health care bureaucrats. This is exactly along the lines of the British system, where breast cancer patients were denied Herceptin, a new miracle drug, until enraged women fought back. Even the much-vilified managed care plans would appear to be a paragon of generosity in comparison with this.
Obama has repeatedly asked for honesty in the health care debate. It is high time he started showing some.
Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and writes a biweekly column for Forbes.
Now look at the number of investors with UPS and FED EX? See their advertisements on TV, who paid for those expensive advertisement.
Computer/Digital era showed the effects of newspapers and post offices decline.... e-mails replacing letters,and so on.
Obama has no clue since he didn't read all the paperwork himself, he has his staff of briefers... who is to know they are not influenced by lobbyists or those who has vested interest and would skim over parts that could help the taxpayers instead of profitting the rich?
Obama rides in the same LA-LA boat as McNerney.
He finally told us the truth. All these Democrats in Congress....
'we're alreday broke'.
-The prez on national TV
He also says he can only "identify" part of the trillion dollars.
That's cause he promised IMF a few hundred billion after saying we're broke.
Start listening, before it's too late.
Also pay attention to Jerry McNerney and what someone called his "phone-ey" town hall meeting.
Turned out Jerry had a phone conference (aka town hall) and only twelve people got a chance to "ask a question".
Paying attention yet?