"When We Took Over the Government"

I remember sitting in a meeting back in the mid-1990s and listening to a federal bureaucrat named Elaine Kamarck, a Clinton appointee, talked about all of the changes that the administration had made since 1993. To make the point about how life was different under the Clintons as opposed to 12 years of Republican administration, she juxtaposed then and now, using the phrase "when we took over the government." I had visions of Daniel Ortega pistoleros vaulting the White House fence off of Pennsylvania Ave. Hillary sitting in the Oval Office, wearing camo, boots up on the desk, drawing on a Cuban cigar.

I had my second when-we-took-over-the-government moment this week reading about the Obama counterattack on the furor building over his surreptitious plan to nationalize healthcare:

• The lame plot by an amateur White House to have Americans rat out their fellow citizens who disagree with the President's plan for government-controlled medicine

•  The spam attack from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. containing the approved talking points on healthcare reform. (And where, oh where, did they get all those email addresses? Check the video below)

• And now the real counterattack: sending union sluggers into the town hall meetings across American this weekend to intimidate Americans exercising their right of free speech
  

The town hall meetings are American democracy at its best. The tide has turned on Pres. Obama, although he doesn't know it yet. He is an academic liberal, a policy wonk, more comfortable in the salons of DC or New York than in upstate Pennsylvania or backwoods Alabama. The reason the tide has turned is that opponents of the President have drawn him out of the Beltway and made him fight on Main Street where he's not comfortable. 

The President's answer so far is to stay within his comfort zone. He is relying on support from special interest groups like the AARP, the AMA, or Big Labor--veteran Beltway lobbyists--to win the battle for him. 

In doing so, the President has set up an us-against-them scenario. In his mind and the minds of advisors David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, Linda Douglass, and mouthpiece Robert Gibbs, they've taken over the government and they don't like being told what they can't do. 

Under this scenario it appears that we--the American people--have become the opponents, of our own government, according to Axelrod's spam message.  I am indignant and find it reprehensible that a president and his administration would think of the American people as his opposition.

Guess what, Dave? You haven't taken over anything. You control a building or two. Maybe state-run media. But that's not the government. The government's in session right now on Main Street. Read Amendment X. 

Just thought you might like to know.

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Talking Healthcare Again

These posts continue to try and inform the healthcare debate, substituting facts for the emotion and wishful thinking of the left. Here is another quick "cheat sheet" on some of the most contentious issues in the healthcare debate and the facts that address them:

• Voters in November made the point they want healthcare reform. Voters in November voted for change and against Republicans who had started governing like--well, like Democrats. Healthcare is part of that change. But there's a big leap between wanting to reform what we have and ending up with what Pres. Obama proposes. In fact the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows the country is pretty much deadlocked on whether it supports the President's plan. Sure, when asked if they favor having government pay for healthcare the answer is yes. Why not? If you ask anyone if they'd rather have someone else pay their bill--whether that means picking up a tab for dinner, buying them a new car, or paying their healthcare premium--of course the answer would be yes. But polls consistently show that most Americans like the quality of the healthcare they currently receive. The consummate Chicago pol, Barack Obama, reads those polls. That's why he's promising to let consumers keep the care they already have. So while most people agree for the need for reform, few people believe in the radical change that the President proposes.
• Healthcare had gotten too expensive. No doubt. What hasn't? In 1977 I paid $5600 for a slick, tricked out car--my first one that hadn't been someone else's first car. The equivalent car today would cost nearly $40,000. But it would come with a power train, safety features and conveniences undreamed of 32 years ago. So it is with healthcare. It costs more and keeps costing more, but we get so much more--new diagnostic treatments, new drugs, and new technologies that save lives, improve the quality of life, and prolong life.
• 46 million Americans are uninsured. OK, we've beaten this to death, but here it is again. When you back out 1) workers who are transitionally uninsured--that is, they were between jobs and without insurance when the survey was taken; 2) the people who are already eligible for a government insurance program like Medicaid, Medicare or SCHIP but choose not to enroll for whatever reason; 3) the number of illegal aliens who aren't entitled to care anyway; and 4) the millions of "invincibles"--largely young males under the age of 34 who think they'll live forever and choose to spend their money on other things--the actual number of uninsureds is closer to 8 million. A much more manageable problem that hardly calls for the radical changes the President proposes. But OK, let's play the leftist numbers game. Let's say 45 million people are uninsured. That means 260,000,000 are not uninsured. The point holds. Are you really going to turn the system on its head for a problem that affects less than 15% of the population?
  
• American business could be much more competitive if it could shift the cost of employee healthcare to government. You hear this frequently from corporate whiners. They say that they're disadvantaged because European and Asian countries in effect subsidize their global competitors through nationalized healthcare. This is the same corporate foresight brought you Enron, Worldcom and the Fannie Mae economic meltdown. The truth is that the cost of health care in these other countries is just shifted from premiums to taxes. And so what those companies don't pay to insurers they pay to their governments. At least right now U.S. business has some control over how their money is spent on healthcare. When Uncle takes over they'll still be paying for healthcare, only this time it will be through the IRS and they won't have a clue or a say in how the money is spent.
• Nationalized healthcare will simplify healthcare and reduce its cost. Does the IRS simplify paying your taxes? Does the EPA, with its thousands of pages of environmental regulations,  simplify conservation? If government makes healthcare so simple, why do many doctors refuse to take Medicare assignments? If Medicaid is so cost-effective why are up to 40% of its expenditures in some states fraudulent? This one is so stupid as to not require a response.
• A "government option" plan will provide competition for the private insurers. There are 1500 healthcare plans of various stripes out there. If that's not competition, I don't know what is. The issue isn't that there is no competition in our current system. The issue is that the cost allocation mechanisms are all wrong. The true cost of Medicare and Medicaid treatment is partially allocated to those of us with private insurance. The cost of jackpot justice lawsuits are allocated in the form of higher malpractice premiums to providers with no history of litigation . The true cost of employee health insurance is allocated mostly to the employer's customers as healthcare costs are passed on to you and me in the form of higher prices for everything. These misallocations of cost skew the system and negate the consumer advantage of having 1500 companies competing for your business. The one thing we don't need is a government which can't deliver the mail on time, can't educate our children properly, can't secure our borders, and can't balance its own budget putting itself in charge of your health. 

Bottom line, when the President says that he's going to "reform" health care by providing a "public option" and by ensuring that his new system will lower healthcare costs, improve care and still allow you to keep your own insurance, reach for your wallet and hold on tightly. As my mother would say, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

Just thought you might like to know.

Reforming Healthcare Reform

Let me say from the outset, I'm not against healthcare reform. Lord knows it needs reforming. It costs too much, accessibility can be a problem, and its quality is uneven.

You've heard a lot of talk lately about "universal health care," or government subsidized healthcare. We have government subsidized healthcare now. Most Americans are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or an employer's healthcare plan. The first two are funded directly by the government. The third is subsidized by Uncle through the tax code.

My family is covered my none of the above. We pay rack rate each month for health insurance. So I'm dialed in to this healthcare debate. If you want a really informed view of healthcare in the U.S. check out Conservatives for Patients Rights. According to the group's website, CPR is "a non-profit, 501 c(3) organization dedicated to educating and informing the public about the principles of patients rights and, in doing so, advancing the debate over health care reform. "

CPR sees 4 guiding principles in healthcare reform:

• Choice
• Competition
• Accountability
• Responsibility

The group also dissects the 16 plans that have been put forth for reforming healthcare in America.

You get the other side's vision for healthcare on the network news. CPR provides a healthcare roadmap that differs from today's Washington solution: throw a lot of money at the problem and see what works. That hasn't worked for the banks, it hasn't worked for car companies, and it hasn't worked for the credit markets. It's hard to see how the government-run approach could work in healthcare.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Truth about Healthcare in America

Needless to say, we'll be hearing more and more about healthcare "reform" over the next year. Pres. Obama made healthcare reform the tall pole in his campaign tent over the last two years. But reform that's not real, just makes a bad system worse. I'm the first to admit that our healthcare system is badly broken. Pretty soon you're going to be hearing proposed solutions from Democratic Washington. But don't take the politicians' word for it. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it generally is.

If you want to get a balanced view of healthcare, download Sally Pipes' book, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.Just click here and it will take yout to the download site. It's completely free and a must-read for anyone who wants an informed opinion on healthcare.

You'll hear a lot of proposed solutions over the next several months. Ms. Pipes looks at 10 of them and exposes them for the myths that they are. Here are three:

• Government healthcare is more efficient. Proponents of a government-run health system say healthcare will be more efficient if the government eliminates the "middleman" and directs it all from Washington. But who's a bigger middleman than Uncle Sam? Think about it...what does government do that's more efficient than you or I or the private sector can do? What's government's efficiency track record? How efficient is our tax code? How about our schools? The government runs most schools. How efficient are they? What results to they produce, compared to private schools? How about our government's current experience with healthcare: Medicaid and Medicare. Every try to fill out Medicare paperwork? Ever read about Medicaid fraud? So why would we trust these people with our health?


• Healthcare costs too much; the government can reduce the cost. I suppose Uncle knows a thing or two about overspending, I'll give him that. But why would we think that a national healthcare system would spend less than we spend now? Healthcare costs a lot because you get a lot for it. The average life span increased 30 years over the 20th century. Over the last 50 years death rates from heart disease--our number one killer--dropped by 60 percent. The issue isn't how much we spend on healthcare; the real issue is what we get for it. And we get a good return: dads who live to walk their daughters down the aisle, grandpas watching their grandkids playing Little League, and great grandmas holding a fourth generation baby. Not a bad ROI. Expensive? Yea. Worthwhile? You bet.


• The cost of drugs is driving up the cost of healthcare. Actually, the opposite is true. It takes 15 years and costs over a billion dollars to bring one drug to market in the U.S. But these drugs drive down the cost of healthcare in the long run. Why? Because, for example, the cost of cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor are cheaper than open heart surgery, that's why. Ms Pipes explains how, for every dollar spent on drugs to fight high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes, $4.00 to $7.00 are saved in clinical costs.

There's a ton of scientific evidence and just plain common sense in The Ten Myths of American Health Care. Over the next few months, I'll be blogging about them. But just remember, when somebody tells you something that sounds too good to be true--like nationalizing healthcare will improve coverage, improve quality and lower cost--it probably is.

Just thought you might like to know.