Empty Promises on Healthcare Will Hurt Obama
by Byron York

Barack Obama is only halfway through his term, but it’s not too early to ask: What is the biggest whopper he has told as president? So far, the hands-down winner is, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

Obama made that particular pledge in a speech to the American Medical Association in June 2009, but he said the same thing, with slight variations, dozens of times during the healthcare debate. And now, exactly eight months after he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, we’re seeing just how empty the president’s promise was.

The New York Times reports there is a “growing frenzy of mergers” in the healthcare field in which hospitals and other care providers, pressured by the new law’s provisions, are joining forces to save money. “Consumer advocates fear that the healthcare law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve,” the paper reports, “by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.”

The Obama administration’s answer to the problem will undoubtedly be more regulation. But the wave of mergers is just one of many signs of trouble with the new law.

For example, we know that the government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has found that the new law will increase healthcare costs, rather than reduce them, in the coming decade. We know that cuts in Medicare, with the money saved going to pay for expanding coverage to the poor, will jeopardize seniors’ access to care. We know the law will make it impossibly expensive for companies that currently offer bare-bones health coverage to low-income employees to keep doing so. We know several corporations are taking giant write-downs because the bill will increase the cost of providing prescription-drug coverage to retired employees. And perhaps most important, we know the law offers an enormous incentive for employers who currently provide coverage to workers to stop doing so, sending those workers to buy coverage in government-subsidized healthcare exchanges.

In sum, what the law means for millions of Americans is: No matter what the president said, if you like the coverage you have now, you can’t keep it.

And a lot of people do like their coverage. A new Gallup Poll found that when Americans are asked to assess the quality of their own health care, the results “are among the most positive Gallup has found over the past decade.” A total of 82 percent of respondents rate their health care as excellent or good, while just 16 percent rate it as fair or poor.”

The key question of healthcare reform has always been how to make things better for the 16 percent while not messing things up for the 82 percent. Obama decided to blow up the system for everyone.

In doing so, he has created not just well-founded anxiety in those who are skeptical of the new law but also unrealistic expectations in those who support it. “We just told millions of people that they can go to the exchanges in 2014 and buy insurance,” writes Aaron Carroll, an Indiana University School of Medicine professor who blogs on healthcare issues at a site called the Incidental Economist. “There won’t be any lifetime or annual limits. There won’t be denials for pre-existing conditions. There won’t be any surcharges for having such conditions. And it’s going to be ‘reasonably’ priced.” Carroll talked to lots of insurance executives, and concluded it’s just not going to happen. “I feel like many people think they will have choice of doctor, choice of hospital, and the ability to dictate care,” he writes. “I’m not seeing how insurance companies will be able to offer such products at prices people can afford.”

Is any of this a surprise? The fact is, the president knew or should have known that his healthcare scheme would have these effects. He paid a political price for his actions on Nov. 2. There might be more to pay on Nov. 6, 2012.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pte_2vEnX8

A Point of No Return?
by Thomas Sowell

With the passage of the legislation allowing the federal government to take control of the medical care system of the United States, a major turning point has been reached in the dismantling of the values and institutions of America.

Even the massive transfer of crucial decisions from millions of doctors and patients to Washington bureaucrats and advisory panels– as momentous as that is– does not measure the full impact of this largely unread and certainly unscrutinized legislation.

If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an Executive Order of the President, to do that.

With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, and having the power of granting or withholding medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?

Despite whatever “firewalls” or “lockboxes” there may be to shield our medical records from prying political eyes, nothing is as inevitable as leaks in Washington. Does anyone still remember the hundreds of confidential FBI files that were “accidentally” delivered to the White House during Bill Clinton’s administration?

Even before that, J. Edgar Hoover’s extensive confidential FBI files on numerous Washington power holders made him someone who could not be fired by any President of the United States, much less by any Attorney General, who was nominally his boss.

The corrupt manner in which this massive legislation was rammed through Congress, without any of the committee hearings or extended debates that most landmark legislation has had, has provided a roadmap for pushing through more such sweeping legislation in utter defiance of what the public wants.

Too many critics of the Obama administration have assumed that its arrogant disregard of the voting public will spell political suicide for Congressional Democrats and for the President himself. But that is far from certain.

True, President Obama’s approval numbers in the polls have fallen below 50 percent, and that of Congress is down around 10 percent. But nobody votes for Congress as a whole, and the President will not be on the ballot until 2012.

They say that, in politics, overnight is a lifetime. Just last month, it was said that the election of Scott Brown to the Senate from Massachusetts doomed the health care bill. Now some of the same people are saying that passing the health care bill will doom the administration and the Democrats’ control of Congress. As an old song said, “It ain’t necessarily so.”

The voters will have had no experience with the actual, concrete effect of the government takeover of medical care at the time of either the 2010 Congressional elections or the 2012 Presidential elections. All they will have will be conflicting rhetoric– and you can depend on the mainstream media to go along with the rhetoric of those who passed this medical care bill.

The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other “historic” changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

What will it matter if Obama’s current approval rating is below 50 percent among the current voting public, if he can ram through new legislation to create millions of new voters by granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? That can be enough to make him a two-term President, who can appoint enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp further extensions of his power.

When all these newly minted citizens are rounded up on election night by ethnic organization activists and labor union supporters of the administration, that may be enough to salvage the Democrats’ control of Congress as well.

The last opportunity that current American citizens may have to determine who will control Congress may well be the election in November of this year. Off-year elections don’t usually bring out as many voters as Presidential election years. But the 2010 election may be the last chance to halt the dismantling of America. It can be the point of no return.

The True Price of Obamacare
by Carol Platt Liebau

The Messiah sacrificed his life to save all who believed in Him, offering them eternal life. In contrast, the Obamessiah has called on his followers in the House of Representatives to sacrifice their political lives in order to save his presidency in pursuit of health care legislation that’s massively unpopular in the country.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Obama and the Democrats is this: Even though they have railroaded a “victory” on the health care bill, it will be a pyrrhic one. The President has revealed a ruthless arrogance – and the complete absence of any decent respect for the opinions of a majority of his fellow Americans – that will prove costly to him in the long run.

Health care is an issue that will touch each and every American (aside from our elected representatives, who are conveniently exempted from the “reform” the President is attempting to impose on the rest of us). If the staged presidential health care “summit” proved anything, it was that there are principled differences between the parties when it comes to reforming health care. Rather than acknowledging that truth and using the best ideas from both sides, however, the President attributed any congressional disagreement with him only to the basest motives – selfish political gain, a desire to block all reform, an improper embrace of the insurance companies (ironic, coming from an administration that itself sought to make a deal with “Big Pharma”), and indifference to the plight of suffering Americans.

But the contempt the President has manifested for his congressional opponents pales in comparison to the disregard he has shown for the honest objections of American citizens – many of whom voted for him. When a deep blue state voted a Republican into Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, largely on the basis of his opposition to ObamaCare, the President and Democrats simply changed the rules of the game, attempting to shoehorn a massive expansion of the welfare state into a procedure intended to correct minor discrepancies between House and Senate legislation.

Apparently, House Rules committee member (and impeached, then removed judge) Alcee Hastings (D-FLA) was right when he insisted, “There are no rules here . . . we simply make them up as we go along.” But Americans understand that a Congress with “no rules” is a frightening beast – especially when its lawlessness is actively encouraged by the nation’s Chief Executive.

The underhanded process through which passage has been pursued highlights the dramatic deficiencies of the health care overhaul bill. Democrats – with their largest congressional majorities in years – wouldn’t have had to resort to a procedural trick like reconciliation if the substance of the bill warranted support on the merits. Nor would the President and his congressional allies have had to offer so many special deals: The union tax exemption, the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the UConn – the list of infamy goes on, with no doubt more to come when the final bill can finally be scrutinized. And there would have been no need to rush the vote through before the bill’s costs could be thoroughly analyzed and digested.

Americans, a majority of whom oppose the health care bill, can see through all of this. They aren’t stupid. But apparently, their president believes that many of them are – they simply don’t understand the beneficence of the legislation that he is prepared to force upon them, presumably for their own good. As for the rest, it seems he thinks they’re wickedly opposing a bill that would benefit others for nothing more than their own selfish reasons.

Can a president successfully govern a nation when he apparently believes that a majority of its citizens are either stupid or wicked? We shall see. One thing, however, is certain: In a dazzling irony, through the ugly procedural health care “reform” drama in which he has embroiled the country, the most enthusiastically pro-government president in recent American history has demonstrated once and for all just how corrupt, cynical and inept government can be.

In the wake of this debacle, many of Obama’s Democrat allies in the House of Representatives will no doubt be the first lambs to the slaughter. But because her citizens are now more divided, demoralized, disillusioned – and disrespected – than ever, America as a whole is suffering for the Obamessiah’s triumph.

Dems’ Health Strategy Doesn’t Add Up to a Win
by Michael Barone

“More talk, no deal” was The Wall Street Journal’s headline on Thursday’s Blair House health care summit. “After summit flop, Democrats prepare to go it alone on Obamacare,” proclaimed the headline here at The Washington Examiner. These were appropriate verdicts if you viewed the summit as an attempt to reach bipartisan agreement or even a limited consensus.

But that of course was not why Barack Obama convened this unique colloquy. He did so as part of an attempt to pass some Democratic health care bill, somehow, through both houses of Congress — and to discredit the Republicans who opposed the bills passed by the House in November and the Senate in December.

In that he seems to have failed. The Atlantic’s Clive Crook, who supports the Democratic bills, concluded that “the Republicans did not come across as the party of no. They looked well-informed, pragmatic and engaged in the discussion. It was the Democrats who leaned more heavily on talking points, and seemed evasive and unspecific.”

Kevin Drum, blogging for the left-wing Mother Jones, agreed. “My take is that the summit was basically a draw, but with a slight edge to the Republicans. They didn’t have to win, after all. They just had to seem non-insane, and for the most part they did. What’s more, Obama missed a chance to provide a punchy 60-second sales pitch for the Democratic plan.”

Obama and the Democrats face problems with both public opinion — their bills are hugely unpopular — and with legislative procedure. The problem with public opinion has been undeniable since Republican Sen. Scott Brown’s victory five weeks ago in Massachusetts. The problem with legislative procedure is more complex.

Democrats could theoretically solve that problem by having the House pass the Senate bill in toto, ready for Obama’s signature. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has proved herself a fine vote-counter, doesn’t have the votes. Last month, she said “unease would be the gentlest word” to describe House Democrats’ resistance. They understandably don’t want to cast votes for the Senate’s Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase.

In November, Pelosi had 220 votes for the House bill. The one Republican is now a no, one Democrat has died, one resigned last month, and another turned in his resignation Friday. That leaves her with 216, one less than the 217 she needs.

There is another problem. The Senate bill lacks the amendment sponsored by House Democrat Bart Stupak banning abortion coverage, and Stupak says that he and about 10 other Democrats will accordingly vote no. That leaves Pelosi around 205. She may have commitments from former no voters to switch to yes (especially from three who’ve announced they’re retiring), but she doesn’t have more than 10 other votes in her pocket — or she wouldn’t have accepted the Stupak amendment.

So the House wants the Senate to go first and pass changes to its bill through the reconciliation process that requires 51 rather than 60 votes. But Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad says that you can’t use reconciliation on a bill that hasn’t already become law. And reconciliation is probably not available on abortion issues.

All of which reminds me of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ attempt to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reservation in 2005. Stevens got it in the reconciliation process in the Senate, where it had 51 but not 60 votes. But House Republicans couldn’t get it into reconciliation, even though a majority of House members were for it. The Senate could pass it by reconciliation but not regular order; the House could pass it by regular order but not reconciliation. Result: It never passed.

There are two differences here. ANWR drilling would have little effect on most Americans. The health care bill would affect almost everybody — by raising taxes, cutting Medicare spending, abolishing current insurance — as Republicans pointed out in Blair House.

The second difference is that ANWR drilling was reasonably popular with the public, and there were majorities in both houses for it. Neither is true of the Democrats’ health care bills today.

Last month, we were told that Obama would switch his focus from health care to jobs. But Democrats have spent February and seem about to spend March focusing on health care. It’s hard to see how they can navigate the legislative process successfully — and even harder to see how they turn around public opinion. Summit flop indeed.

The Real Cost Of ObamaCare

Health Reform: The linchpin of ObamaCare 2.0 is that 31 million uninsured will be covered at little added cost. But in fact, White House estimates for low costs are based on little more than accounting tricks.

The president’s plan “puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years — and about $1 trillion over the second decade — by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse,” the White House says on its Web site.

Sound too good to be true? It is.

None of the numbers can be believed. The plan is a result of blatantly dishonest accounting for the real costs of the program, while grossly overstating its benefits. Americans should know the actual 10-year cost is closer to $2 trillion over 10 years, not the $950 billion claimed, when all the actual costs are toted up.

How can there be such a wide gap? Mainly because the president’s plan doesn’t provide benefits until the second half of the first decade. So it pretends that it will “only” cost $950 billion. But once the program kicks in, the full 10-year cost of benefits will be included — at a real current cost of $2 trillion or more.

Or, as columnist Charles Krauthammer, himself a trained physician, told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly: “It’s a trick. The way the Democrats got under (the spending limit imposed by Obama) was by making 98% of the expenditures, the benefits that you and I would get under the bill, occur in the second half of the decade.”

That’s not all the numbers trickery. Take the plan’s so-called “doctor fix.” Under current law, physicians are slated for a 21% cut in Medicare fees this year. Those cuts, if enacted, would lead to many doctors leaving Medicare. A proposed “fix” will cost some $229 billion over 10 years. But that new cost won’t be included as part of the health care bill. Only phony Medicare “cuts” will.

Then there’s the promise to remove new taxes on so-called “Cadillac Care” health plans. Originally, Democrats wanted to exclude only their pet unions from these new taxes. But after a huge outcry, the exclusion has been extended to most taxpayers.

Now, only the rich will be hit with these grossly unfair levies. But the cost of excluding the others doesn’t appear to be accounted for.

Even with all this, estimates say the Obama plan will jack up taxes by $629 billion over the decade. That includes tax hikes on the middle class — something candidate Obama vowed he’d never do.

Then there’s the Nebraska reversal. To get the Cornhusker State to go along with ObamaCare, it was exempted from some new Medicare costs. That created an uproar among the other 49 states. So the new bill treats all the states the same. But again, it doesn’t seem to account for the new cost run-up.

When you tote it all up, the real cost is in excess of $2 trillion. Not the $950 billion as claimed. And deficits will rise by $600 billion, not fall by $1 trillion.

It couldn’t be worse, right? Wrong.

Former Office of Management and Budget official James Capretta, now a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, asserts the real 10-year costs of President Obama’s bill are likely $2.5 trillion — “with the strong likelihood of far exceeding this amount.”

Promised spending cuts, he argues, will never be made because they would put a number of institutions in financial trouble.

Meanwhile, huge subsidies offered to individuals and businesses to buy their insurance through government-run “exchanges” almost guarantee costs will soar far beyond expectations.

Under the Senate’s bill, for instance, the subsidy for a family of four with a $60,000 income covered by an employer-based health plan would be $4,500 less in 2016 than for a similar family buying from the heavily subsidized government exchanges. By forcing all Americans to buy insurance, premiums will rise by at least 10%, and possibly higher.

This will decimate the private insurance market and create a de facto nationalized health care system — at much higher cost than today. Because of the dishonesty about costs, Obama’s plan is a nonstarter. And Thursday’s health care summit is little more than farce.

Unhealthy Arrogance
by Thomas Sowell

The only thing healthy about Congress’ health insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed.

Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past attempts to pass such legislation– going back for decades– failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government health care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political “victory.”

In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something– anything– to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.

The utter cynicism of this has been apparent from the outset, in the rush to pass a health care bill in a hurry, in order to meet wholly arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines. First it was supposed to be passed before the August 2009 Congressional recess. Then it was supposed to be passed before Labor Day. When that didn’t happen, it was supposed to be rushed to passage before Christmas.

Why– especially since the legislation would not take effect until years from now?

The only rational explanation for such haste to pass a bill that will be slow to go into effect is to prevent the public from knowing what is in this massive legislation that even members of Congress are unlikely to have read. That is also the only reason that makes sense for postponing the time when Obamacare goes into action after the next presidential election.

What does calling this medical care legislation “historic” mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is “historic” is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn’t care one bit what the public wants or doesn’t want.

In short, this is not about the public’s health. It is about Obama’s ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.

This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier, to pass the “stimulus” bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that the government doesn’t have– and that may well amount to more than a trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and the next generation to pay off.

Legislation is not the only sign of this administration’s contempt for the intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.

The appointment of White House “czars” to make policy across a wide spectrum of issues– unknown people who get around the Constitution’s requirement of Senate confirmation for Cabinet members– is yet another sign of the mindset that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.

That some of these “czars” have already revealed their own contempt for the values of American society in the things they have said and done only reinforces the point.

In a sense, this administration is only the end result of a long social process that includes raising successive generations with dumbed-down education in schools and colleges that have become indoctrination centers for the visions of the left. Our education system has turned out many people who have never heard any other vision and who can only learn what is wrong with the prevailing vision from bitter experience.

That bitter experience now awaits them, at home and abroad.

ObamaCare: Freedom on Life Support
by Larry Elder

Ignore, for the moment, the ludicrous claim that giving 30 million Americans health insurance actually lowers the cost of health care. What happened to freedom, to the opposition to an intrusive federal government?

Ask a liberal what he most dislikes about the “right”? “I resent the attempt to tell me how to live my life,” he’ll say. He’ll mention abortion and say that the decision belongs to a woman and her doctor. He’ll mention same-sex marriage and say that government should not prevent two people of the same sex from marrying, especially if one objects based upon religious grounds. He’ll argue that a Supreme Court “stacked” with right-wingers threatens his liberty.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gives liberals hot flashes. He is religious. He calls the Constitution a “contract,” not a “living, breathing” document on which one can discover or project nonexistent rights. He is a “strict constructionist,” or an “originalist,” who believes that the literal words in the Constitution have meaning. He thinks his job is to figure out what the original Framers meant, not what he would like them to have meant.

Ask a liberal how Scalia and those who share his “conservative” philosophy think the Supreme Court should decide issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and doctor-assisted suicide? He’ll say, “Scalia would impose his religiously based worldview on society — anti-same-sex marriage and anti-abortion — because the federal government should always preserve life.”

No, Scalia would not. In fact, Scalia has publicly said these issues are none of the Court’s business. He’s said that however he feels personally about these contentious matters, the Constitution gives the Court neither the authority nor the expertise to decide them — and such matters are ideally left to the states.

This brings us to ObamaCare.

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?

Recall the anger at former President George W. Bush, who, to fight the war on terror, “trashed” and “shredded” the Constitution. The same people who railed against the Patriot Act, the terror surveillance program and “illegal” torture happily unleash the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth for ObamaCare, a socially desirable objective. Never mind the absence of authority in the Constitution.

The left tells us that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Surely the Constitution says so. No, it does not. Article I, Section 8 details the limited power, duties and responsibilities of the federal government. Extracting money from your paycheck and giving it back to you when you retire — Social Security? Not there. Taxing workers to pay for the health care of seniors — Medicare? Not there. Mandating that employers pay workers a minimum wage? Not there.

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. This infuriated FDR. He threatened to expand the number of Court justices, adding jurists who saw the Constitution the way he did until he got the kind of decisions he wanted. Intimidated, the Court blinked. Actions by the federal government that the Court once had deemed illegal suddenly became permissible.

A liberal once asked me: “What should society do about the poor? Is your attitude ‘just (expletive) them’?” I said: “Allow me to rephrase your question. Because of someone’s plight, is he entitled to money from you?” “No,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.” Yes, a moral, compassionate society cares for those who cannot care for themselves. This is, however, an entirely different matter from using the power of government to take from someone who has, to give to someone who doesn’t. The Constitution does not provide that authority. Nor has it been amended to do so.

What about the poor? Through economic freedom and competition, we make goods and services cheaper, better and more accessible. Health care is less affordable because of well-intentioned rules and regulations. When government officials go beyond passing laws to protect us against force or fraud, they raise costs and hurt the poor.

Finally, what of charity? Americans are the most generous people on earth. The religious and those who believe in limited government are the most generous of all. By design, the federal government plays a limited role. The rest is up to us. Our country was founded in opposition to tyranny by government.

Today we submit to it.

Less Health Care for More Money
by Ann Coulter

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.

According to Kristof, Brodniak can’t get medical help because we don’t have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man “writhing in pain on the sidewalk.”

In another article in the Times, William Yardley wrote about Melvin Tsosies — also of Oregon — who ended up with $200,000 in medical bills after having a heart attack.

As of March 2008, Yardley reported, Tsosies was waiting to find out if he would win the Oregon lottery for health insurance. But with 600,000 uninsured state residents and a “universal” health care program with only enough money to pay for about 24,000 of them, Tsosies is more likely to win a Powerball lottery.

How can this be happening? Oregon already has “universal health care”! (Probably just a coincidence, but isn’t Oregon also the only state with physician-assisted suicide?)

Once again forgetting about the existence of the Internet, the Times neglects to mention its own erstwhile enthusiasm for Oregon’s universal health care plan, introduced back in 1990.

Back then, the Times published an editorial titled “Oregon’s Brave Medical Experiment,” hailing this technocratic monstrosity as an example of “hardheaded compassion” designed to make “health coverage available to many more families.”

Ron Wyden — then a congressman from Oregon, now a U.S. senator at the forefront of pushing “universal health care” onto the nation — said: “This is a strong dramatic step toward universal access of health care.” He predicted, “[T]his is going to be copied everywhere.”

No wonder Wyden is such an ardent proponent of national health care — it will force states that didn’t adopt these idiotic universal health care schemes to bail out the ones that did.

Liberals cite medical horror stories from the very states they once cheered for enacting universal health care in order to argue for a national health care plan that will wreck the entire nation’s medical care the same way liberal states already wrecked their own medical care.

Only Democrats could propose fixing one Bernie Madoff-style scam with an even bigger Bernie Madoff-style scam.

Maybe when national universal health care fails, we’ll be able to go international. Then interplanetary — then interstellar! Why should I pay for my gall bladder surgery when some Venusian could?

Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket.

Democrats are being utterly disingenuous to say that you won’t have to leave your current plan under national health care. Maybe, but it won’t be your choice: Your employer will be making that decision for you.

Recall that one of the big selling points of national health care is that it is supposed to reduce costs for American businesses. The only way national health care will make American companies “more competitive” is if they dump their employees into the public health care system.

It’s so weird! We expected X number of people to show up for health care and instead 75X showed up! Yeah, just like every other government program in the history of the world.

Ten years from now, we’ll be talking about cost overruns of $6 trillion — but by then, national health care will be an untouchable “third rail” of politics, just as Medicare is now. (Ironically, injuries sustained from actually touching the third rail won’t be covered under ObamaCare.)

As with Medicare, voters will be terrified to go back to even the wisp of a free market system we have now, afraid that they’ll never be able to get health insurance without the government providing it. Having been dragged unwillingly into the government plan, how will a 58-year-old be able to leave the public system and get insurance on the free market?

Speaking of which, how many of you are planning to retire on your Social Security benefits? Just you there, with the shopping cart full of cans?

The only solution will be for the government to keep running up gigantic deficits and raising taxes on “the rich,” which, in turn, will stifle job creation and economic growth in a phenomenon known to economists as “the Carter years.”

In addition to forcing Americans into dealing with surly government workers in order to obtain medical care, sooner or later, there’s no free lunch. (And if government X-rays are anything like the photos the DMV takes for your license, count me out. I don’t want my lungs looking like they had a bad hair day.)

Even if national health care puts the screws to doctors and pharmaceutical companies by reimbursing them below cost — so all future doctors will soon resemble DMV employees and no new drugs will ever be invented — the government is still going to have to cut services and pay for the system with massive tax hikes.

Which is exactly what happened with Oregon’s “Brave Medical Experiment.”

The Depths of Demcare Demagoguery
by Michelle Malkin

How low can they go? The desperate Democratic peddlers of a government health care takeover have proclaimed an insurance “holocaust in America” (Fla. Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), lambasted conservative health care town hall protesters as “political terrorists” (Indiana Democratic Rep. Baron Hill), sent SEIU thugs to demonstrate outside Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman’s private residence, and derided senior citizens questioning President Obama’s fuzzy math savings claims (California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.”) Now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is leading them deeper into demagogic mire.

This week, Reid pummeled opponents with the worn-out race card. Following in the mucky footsteps of former President Jimmy Carter (who blamed GOP Rep. Joe Wilson’s objections to Obama’s policy deceptions on a “racism inclination”) and Jesse Jackson (“You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man”), Reid likened Republicans who object to socialized medicine to slave masters, enemies of women’s suffrage and Bull Connor.

Reid’s rhetorical aim was worse than the unhinged Minnesota protester who threw tomatoes at Sarah Palin during a book signing and hit a police officer instead. Splat.

Mustering up as much indignation as his taut face could exhibit, Reid lectured those standing in the way of Demcare: “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, ‘Slow down. It’s too early. Things aren’t bad enough.’

“When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted, ‘Slow down. There will be a better day to do that. Today isn’t quite right.’

“When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.”

It was the GOP that fought slavery and the Democratic Party that battled to preserve it. It was then-Democrat Strom Thurmond who led the civil rights filibuster that Reid tried to lay on Republicans. And it’s the Democratic Party, not the GOP, that boasts ex-Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd among its senior leaders. But don’t confuse Reid with history while he’s chasing Republicans around with his “RAAAACISM!” stamp.

The more the American public learns about the choice-limiting, debt-exploding, bureaucracy-multiplying health care takeover, the more opposition increases. And the more unhinged the Democratic majority and its supporters get.

There is now a $200,000 “bounty” on the head of U.S Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue. Left-wing activist website “Velvet Revolution” published a want ad this week with Donohue’s picture on it, soliciting information leading to “the arrest and conviction” of the business leader for “opposing progressive initiatives.” The witch-hunt is targeting Donohue for his outspoken criticism of the costs and impact of the Dems’ health care legislation on small businesses across the country.

Such reckless propaganda accusing opponents of “criminality” isn’t limited to nutroots publications. In the august pages of The New York Times last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof titled his universal care manifesto, “Are We Going To Let John Die?” Kristof elevated unemployed Oregon sawmill worker John Brodniak, 23, as the Demcare poster child. Reportedly diagnosed as having a cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, Kristof bemoaned: “Without insurance, John has been unable to get surgery or even help managing the pain.”

An emergency room asked Brodniak not to return without insurance, Kristof claims (a practice that is prohibited by federal law). No doctor would treat him, Kristof reported (get your grain of salt ready). Isn’t it “monstrous,” Kristof concludes (hanky alert), “for politicians to avert their eyes, make excuses and deny coverage to innumerable Americans just like John?”

Ready for the punch line? Brodniak not only has coverage through Oregon’s Medicaid program, but has also been a patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients) for the past three weeks — a fact Kristof either deliberately ignored and suppressed from readers or didn’t bother to find out before publishing his screed.

In other words, Brodniak was already being treated and cared for by a top-notch neurologist under our existing health care system when Kristof came along to scream at Congress for letting him die.

Kristof’s tale follows on the heels of at least two dubious horror stories disseminated by President Obama. In September, Obama told of Illinois cancer patient Otto Raddatz, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about. The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and died just this year.

In another case, Obama claimed, a woman with breast cancer lost her insurance because “she forgot to declare a case of acne.” In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but her insurance was restored anyway after intense public lobbying.

But why bother with troublesome facts? In the insatiable pursuit of government control, truth and rationality are the first casualties.

Kill the Bills. Do Health Reform Right
by Charles Krauthammer

The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes — such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs — is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:

– You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.

– You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

– You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle- class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

Then do health care the right way — one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.

First, tort reform. This is money — the low-end estimate is about half a trillion per decade — wasted in two ways. Part is simply hemorrhaged into the legal system to benefit a few jackpot lawsuit winners and an army of extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers such as John Edwards.

The rest is wasted within the medical system in the millions of unnecessary tests, procedures and referrals undertaken solely to fend off lawsuits — resources wasted on patients who don’t need them and which could be redirected to the uninsured who really do.

In the 4,000-plus pages of the two bills, there is no tort reform. Indeed, the House bill actually penalizes states that dare “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.” Why? Because, as Howard Dean has openly admitted, Democrats don’t want “to take on the trial lawyers.” What he didn’t say — he didn’t need to — is that they give millions to the Democrats for precisely this kind of protection.

Second, even more simple and simplifying, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines.

Some states have very few health insurers. Rates are high. So why not allow interstate competition? After all, you can buy oranges across state lines. If you couldn’t, oranges would be extremely expensive in Wisconsin, especially in winter.

And the answer to the resulting high Wisconsin orange prices wouldn’t be the establishment of a public option — a federally run orange-growing company in Wisconsin — to introduce “competition.” It would be to allow Wisconsin residents to buy Florida oranges.

But neither bill lifts the prohibition on interstate competition for health insurance. Because this would obviate the need — the excuse — for the public option, which the left wing of the Democratic Party sees (correctly) as the royal road to fully socialized medicine.

Third, tax employer-provided health insurance. This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues — the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

This reform is the most difficult to enact, for two reasons. The unions oppose it. And the Obama campaign savaged the idea when John McCain proposed it during last year’s election.

Insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative. The problem is that the Democrats have chosen the worst possible method — a $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency.

The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one — tort reform, interstate purchasing and taxing employee benefits. It would take 20 pages to write such a bill, not 2,000 — and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.

Does He Lie?
by Charles Krauthammer

You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn’t lie. He’s too subtle for that. He … well, you judge.

Herewith three examples within a single speech — the now-famous Obama-Wilson “you lie” address to Congress on health care — of Obama’s relationship with truth.

(1) “I will not sign (a plan),” he solemnly pledged, “if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period.”

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama’s very next sentence: “And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there’s absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.

Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. “Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?”

(2) And then there’s the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

But more importantly, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we’d have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it’s illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don’t voluntarily turn themselves in.

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating “hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud” from Medicare.

That’s not a lie. That’s not even deception. That’s just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse — Meg Greenfield once called this phrase “the dread big three” — as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn’t he gotten started on the painless billions in “waste and fraud” savings?

Obama doesn’t lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things — energy, education and health care. That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel’s Law — a crisis is a terrible thing to waste — failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.

So on to the next gambit: selling health care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office’s demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform — until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.

Obama doesn’t lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads — so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn’t fatal to “Slick Willie” Clinton because he possessed a winning, near irresistible charm. Obama’s persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

Legal Immigrants and “Anchor Babies” Weigh Down Obamacare
by Virgil Goode

Like virtually every issue that faces the nation, our healthcare problem is greatly exacerbated by mass immigration—both legal and illegal. A total of 43% of non-citizens lack health insurance, compared to just 12.7% of native-born Americans. These uninsured immigrants impose huge strains on our healthcare system that helped create the crisis we currently face.

Plenty of analysts and commentators have exposed how illegal aliens will receive healthcare under Obamacare. They point out that while the bill claims to prohibit illegal aliens from receiving benefits, the Democrats repeatedly blocked Amendments that would screen for legal status. Steve Camorata of the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies recently estimated that 6.6 million illegal aliens will be eligible for public healthcare.

This is an outrage for hardworking American Citizens, but I’d like to focus on two other important but largely ignored aspects of our immigration crisis that will cost taxpayers billions of dollars if Obama’s healthcare boondoggle is passed.

The first is birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution states,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The Amendment was passed for the sole purpose of granting freed slaves and their children citizenship. Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan who introduced the Amendment stated,

This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States.

But the obvious intent, as well as the “subject to jurisdiction thereof” clause, is ignored by federal policy that gives children of illegal aliens born in the United States automatic citizenship.

What does this have to do with the healthcare debate? Under the plan right now, only one family member needs to be eligible for government healthcare, then the whole family can get free healthcare.

The Congressional Research Service acknowledged,

There could be instances where some family members would meet the definition of an eligible individual for purposes of the credit, while other family members would not… H.R. 3200 does not expressly address how such a situation would be treated. Therefore, it appears that the Health Choices Commissioner would be responsible for determining how the credits would be administered in the case of mixed-status families.”

This means that if a family of illegal aliens sneaks into the country and then they have one child after they come in, the US Citizen “anchor baby” could make the entire family eligible for tax funded healthcare. And I don’t need to tell you how Obama’s handpicked “Health Czar” would come down on the issue.

Another problem that makes the healthcare bill problematic is our policy of legal immigration. Annually, America accepts approximately one million legal immigrants in addition to the flood of illegal aliens. Most of these immigrants come through the process of chain migration, whereby legal immigrants and US Citizens sponsor family members. The process spirals out of control where eventually everyone’s cousin is eligible, regardless of skills or what they contribute to this country.

Steve Camarota analyzed the effect of all immigrants, both legal and illegal, as well as their US Born children on health insurance. Camarota found that this group comprises up to one third of all the uninsured in America. Compared to the native born population, they are twice as likely to be uninsured, and twice as likely to be on Medicaid.

In an attempt to partially alleviate the burden chain migration places on social services, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act made some requirements that the sponsors of immigrants be financially responsible for the immigrants. Indeed most welfare programs have some limitations on non-citizens. But under HR 3200, new immigrants who are supposed to be supported by a sponsor can get tax funded healthcare. They can even sponsor more immigrants!

Writing at the immigration website VDARE.com, former Hudson Institute economist Ed Rubenstein estimates that legal immigrants and their children will be responsible for 78% of all increased healthcare costs by 2050 totaling 1.2 trillion dollars.

Unlike illegal aliens, anchor babies and legal immigrants did not break any laws. We should not demonize them, but we should not ignore the huge fiscal burden they impose on our already stretched economy.

Fixing our broken healthcare system is not easy, but making some basic changes to our immigration policy is. Securing our borders, enforcing our laws, ending birthright citizenship and chain migration, and reducing our levels of legal immigration; would do much more to lower healthcare costs than any government program.

Before America embarks on healthcare reform, we should either fix these problems in our immigration system, or at least put adequate safeguards to prevent immigrants from receiving even more free benefits at the expense of the US taxpayer.

How To Answer Obama’s Plea on Health Care
by Michael Medved

What is the President likely to say in his big speech to Congress on health care and how should Republicans respond to him?

First, its easy to anticipate the theme and tone of President Obamas remarks. He will call for a new spirit of unity and bipartisanship (just as he did in the campaign) and lament the bitterness and divisions roiling the nation when all agree on general goals for health care reform: insuring the uninsured, while making insurance more secure and affordable for those who already have it. He will stigmatize the enemies of reform as political hacks or special interests, and call upon the people to rise above the fear-mongers and demagogues and to embrace reform with hope and confidence. Hell certainly invoke the memory of his fallen friend, the Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, and call for all Americans to go forward in his spirit. Senator Kennedy combined visionary idealism with practical ability to work across the aisle and to make deals in the public interest. The President might even paraphrase the late Senators brother, President Kennedy, suggesting that we should never compromise out of fear, but we should never fear to compromise. In any event, for those with the stomach to watch it, the speech will surely spend lots of time talking about bridging gaps and joining hands and singing kum-ba-ya, even while the President knows theres no chance Republicans will feel swayed by his words. Thats not the point of his address, of course. The point is to make those Republicans look bad when they refuse to bridge gaps and join hands and sing kum-ba-ya.

So what should the GOP say to counteract this line of attack?

With the President reportedly prepared to lay out his non-negotiables on health care reform, the Republicans should enumerate non-negotiable positions of their ownand make it clear that everything else can be discussed and finessed. The key red-lines for conservatives should include:

1) First, and most importantly, health care reform must add nothing not one penny to the already crushing and disastrous federal deficit. With more than nine-trillion dollars in additional debt already projected over the next ten years, responsible public servants should concentrate all their efforts on ways to save money and to cut the budget. They must not under any circumstances enact reforms that would cost money and bloat the budget.

2) The GOP should reject any legislation that doesnt include malpractice insurance reform. No other change under discussion could lower medical costs as certainly and substantially as reducing the threat of junk lawsuits and thereby bringing down the devastating cost of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine. Everyone involved in the health care system is expected to sacrifice and cooperate in some way for the sake of reform: doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, even the American taxpayer. Trial lawyers shouldnt be the only participants in the medical industry exempted from these readjustments, especially when their addiction to jackpot justice and big contingency fees cripples health care providers by requiring unnecessary procedures (at tremendous and needless cost) and making malpractice insurance premiums a major expense for all medical professionals.

3) The Obama reforms must make no attempt to pay for their costs by cutting the funding of Medicare; in fact, any discussion of Medicare and its problems should be kept entirely separate from the general topic of health insurance reform. Not only would reduced Medicare funding lead inevitably to reduced availability of care for seniors, but it would kill the chance of saving Medicare later. Even if the President succeeds in shaving billions from the Medicare budget without weakening the protection of seniors (an unlikely eventuality), any effort to realize those savings now and use them to pay for Obamacare will make saving Medicare an even more nightmarish process in the future. The system is supposed to go bankrupt in 2017-18. Any available savings must be used to save that system, on which nearly all seniors rely. Those funds should not be reassigned to Obamacare, leaving Medicare with even less chance of ever putting its fiscal house in order.

4) The Obama health reforms must provide no federal funding for abortions or for the purchase of health insurance for illegal immigrants. The President says he agrees with these propositions, and repeatedly denies that he wants funding for either abortion or illegals. It should therefore be easy for him to bridge gaps, join hands, sing kum-ba-ya and so forth, regarding two of the true hot button issues in this debate, especially since conservatives fear Mr. Obama will go back on his word unless hes specific and clear on these explosive controversies. Republicans should challenge the President to make the kind of clear-cut commitment that leaves no wiggle room for equivocation or reconsideration.

The essential non-negotiables listed above represent more than a political ploy or a legislative tactic: they mostly reflect sentiments the President himself has expressed. If Obama is serious about bi-partisanship, let him embrace these reasonable demands. The chances are overwhelming that hell refuse to do so (particularly regarding malpractice reform) because he doesnt want to hand Republicans a political victory while attempting to seize one for himself. In any event, if the GOP approaches the Presidents speech in a constructive and clearly-articulated manner there will be less chance that Obama can credibly blame them for the failure of health care reform if it fails, and less chance that he can claim exclusive credit for health care reform if it passes. A Republican position that makes clear general support for the idea of reform, and specific requirements for the changes they will support, will put the President in a dilemma: either he incorporates GOP ideas and thereby shares some of the praise for passage, or rejects those notions and takes some of the blame for failure, or else simply ignores the conservative position (the most likely outcome) and blows away all pretense that he represents a bipartisan, unifying figure in our politics.

Above all, Republicans should stress the need to take time with the process of reform: if President Obama really wants to bring the country together, he cant insist on ramming health insurance reform through a partisan Democratic Congress without negotiation, discussion, perspective, or delay. If he wants to negotiate, whats the all-fired hurry? The only possible justification for his artificial sense of urgency is a fear that the American people will wake up to the consequences of his proposals (many already have) and rise in opposition. For changes that will impact this Republic forever, why shouldnt our elected representatives take a few extra months to consider the long-term impact of their decisions?

On Wednesday night, the President will ask the American people to come together and calm down. The Republicans should insist that the only way to calm down is to slow down authorizing more, not less discussion of legislation that will shape the future of every American.

Obama Hits Anti-Government Nerves
by Steve Chapman

Barack Obama came into office championing change, and he apparently assumed that if Americans voted for him, it was because they wanted the future to be different from what went before. Actually, what they wanted was a future much like the not-so-distant past — before the financial crisis, before the recession, before the Iraq war, before the most unpopular president since the invention of polling.

If voters had wanted a sharp ideological shift, they could have voted for Democratic candidates more identified with Great Society-style government — Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or even Dennis Kucinich. Obama got the early endorsement of Ted Kennedy, but like Bill Clinton before him, he won because he distanced himself from Kennedy-style liberalism. His promise of change was eloquent enough to motivate the left wing of his party but vague enough to make him acceptable to people in the middle.

Among independents, Obama beat John McCain by an 8-point margin. The reason John Kerry lost and Obama won, as Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has noted, was not liberal voters: They voted for both in the same proportion. The difference was that while Kerry had a 9-point edge over his Republican opponent among moderates, Obama carried them by 21 points. Obama also did significantly better among conservatives than Kerry.

After the election, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee Mike Duncan noted that the Democratic nominee supported offshore oil drilling, merit pay for teachers, a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, more troops in Afghanistan and an end to wasteful federal earmarks. “Put simply,” he said, “Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower.”

In the weeks after the election, amid talk of a second Great Depression, Obama was often compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt. But by the time FDR took office, the economy had been in free fall for more than three years, creating mass desperation.

The recession that began in December 2007, though scary, never remotely resembled the Great Depression. During last year’s campaign, the situation was more like 1952 than 1932, with the electorate sick of war and tired of a party that had dominated the presidency for too long. When Americans elected Eisenhower, they weren’t inviting a radical turnabout — just some modest improvements in the status quo. Likewise with Obama.

But the 44th president apparently thought he had a mandate for the expansion of federal power and responsibility, which he has used on everything from bailing out automakers to showering the economy with stimulus dollars to trying to overhaul health insurance. He and his allies have therefore been surprised to face a surge of angry opposition, including some based on wild flights of paranoia.

What they forgot is that the surest way to mobilize American political opposition, irrational as well as rational, is to enlarge the government’s role in our lives. Liberals and conservatives disagree on when to distrust the government, but they share the same basic suspicion.

George W. Bush managed to infuriate the Left in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by pushing through the Patriot Act, engaging in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and commandeering library records. Obama managed to provoke the Right by spending hundreds of billions of dollars and proposing that the government exert more control over medical care.

That conflicts with our persistent strain of anti-government feeling. Obama’s election marked no sudden ebbing of this sentiment: Last December, 52 percent of Americans felt the government was “doing too much that should be left to individuals and business” — up from 41 percent in October 2001.

In 1998, 61 percent of Americans said they had confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle domestic problems. On the eve of the 2008 election, only 48 percent felt that way.

Even amid the worst recession in decades, most have not changed their minds. Today, more than half say the president’s policies go too far in expanding the federal government, and his popularity has declined as a result.

One symbol used by the colonies in their revolt against the king of England was a coiled rattlesnake above the slogan: “Don’t tread on me.” Obama may be learning that, even for elected leaders, it’s still good advice.

Howard Dean and Jim Moran Defend Obamacare
by Jillian Bandes

The town hall held by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) on Tuesday night was a fun house.

One opponent was escorted out by aides after yelling too loudly. A flash mob started on the floor of the auditorium in which the town hall was being held. A man was kicked off the property after physically accosting an Obama supporter. Rampant interruptions and forceful questioning plagued the Congressman at every turn.

Moran played what cards he could. After promising to speak for a half hour and then take an hour and a half of questions, he spoke for over an hour, handed the microphone over to former Vermont Governor and health care activist Howard Dean — his co-host — and took approximately a dozen questions. Moran actually handed the mic to Dean for at least 10 of those questions, either chiming in on the side or deferring to the Governor entirely. Moran re-used talking points from his original material to provide most of the answers he did tackle himself.

“I asked my Congressman a question, not Howard Dean!” yelled one angry constituent during the Q&A, after Moran had deferred to Dean on yet another question.

Thousands of people snaked around the building in advance of the 6pm doors-opening at a high school in Reston, VA. Moran’s is a deep blue district, and the affinity of the protesters reflected that. Obama supporters handed out pre-printed signs, and many of the supporters seem to have come from a local hospital, in addition to consisting of many students from the school.

One worker who was registering names for the Congressman refused to speak to those who were visibly against the Democratic health care agenda, and discouraged her fellow workers from speaking to them, either.

“Don’t speak to her!” she whispered.

Moran jabbed back at attendees who talked out of turn: “Ma’am, really, sometimes people say more about themselves than they do about the issue when they yell like that.”

After he explained the process for taking questions and was met with loud jeers, he responded with a joke: “I mean, that wasn’t even a controversial statement!”

But it was clear the Congressman was frequently rattled. After one name was called from the question bin, someone posed as the individual who was called and asked their question anyway. When Moran discovered she was a poseur, he yelled “You’re not Miss Appleton! That’s totally inappropriate.”

When Moran asked if a name was pronounced a certain way, one questioner said “It is in Virginia.”

“I’ll pronounce it any way you want,” he replied.

Dean seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

“I’d like to be extremely brief,” he said in opening remarks, after the crowd had just gone wild over Moran’s opening statements, “because I’d like to hear from you, even though it’s clear I’m doing a lot of that already.”

Moran tried to address several issues during the course of the event, focusing on things he called health care “myths.” According to Moran, Obamacare wouldn’t mean “expanded government control over your health care,” specific end-of-life care would not be forced upon consumers by the government under the public option, and employers would provide more coverage, not less, under the proposed reforms. After making the claim that “there is no rationing of care under this plan,” the crowd booed, and then cheered, with the cheers taking over the boos.

Moran just shook his head.

5 Liberal Lies About Obamacare
by John Hawkins

Barrack Obama and his pals in the mainstream media are doing everything in their power to keep people from finding out the truth about the health care bills that are winding their way through Congress.

Rather than engaging in an honest debate about the pluses and minuses of socialized medicine, they’ve abandoned all significant attempts to work with the GOP, they’ve demonized American citizens who’ve dared to voice their concern at townhalls, and they have lied more than Bill Clinton probably did the first time Hillary mentioned the name “Gennifer Flowers” to him.

Liberal claim: The public option won’t kill private health insurance. When that sleazy old terrorist Yasser Arafat was alive, he was famous for telling Westerners he wanted peace in English, while telling his own people in Arabic to kill the Jews. Liberals are using the same tactic with the public option.

When they’re talking to the general public, they assure them that the public option won’t kill private insurance and if people like the plans they have, they’ll be able to keep them.

But when liberals talk to each other, they explicitly admit that the public option is designed to kill private insurance so the government can take complete control.

There are many examples of this, but this quote from Barney Frank is so crystal clear about what they’re doing that no more examples are really needed,

I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single payer and that’s the best way to reach single payer. Saying you’ll do nothing until you reach single payer is a sure way never to get it.

Liberal Claim: Illegal aliens won’t be covered If you want to know why Americans don’t believe Congress or the mainstream media, the sort of slick deception that’s being practiced here is typical of what’s driving the distrust.

There is indeed a clause in the House bill that says illegal aliens aren’t covered. The mainstream media looks at that clause and then dutifully reports, as if it were a fact, that illegal aliens won’t be getting taxpayer funded health care.

However, here’s the catch: there’s no enforcement provision. Texas Congressman Lamar Smith explains how the scam will work:

The Democrats’ bill in the House, H.R. 3200, contains gaping loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded benefits. And these loopholes are no accident.The legislation contains no verification mechanism to ensure that illegal immigrants do not apply for benefits. Republicans offered an amendment to close this loophole — it would have required verification using the existing methods that are already in place to verify eligibility for other federal benefits programs. But when they were asked to put the language of the bill where their words were, in a party-line vote, House Democrats rejected the amendment to require verification and close this loophole.

In other words, the Democrats can claim that illegal aliens won’t be covered by the bill and even point to a provision in it that says it won’t happen. Meanwhile, if the health care bill passes, millions of illegals aliens will have their health care picked up on the taxpayer’s dime — just as the Democrats planned all along.

Liberal claim: Abortion won’t be covered by the bill. This is another clever bit of sleight of hand designed to fool the American public. As Congressman Steve King explained:

…The history of abortion funding from the federal government has been this: since 1973, the federal government has funded abortions unless there was an explicit prohibition written into the law. We have prohibited that in any number of cases, but this healthcare bill that’s being rolled out by the Democrats and the House, by any information I have of what’s in it, would fund abortion because there is no explicit prohibition.In fact, there was an amendment that was brought through the Energy and Commerce Committee that passed by one vote, that would have prohibited abortions. They then turned around and wrote another amendment that struck it out again. So, the committee has voted to fund abortions with public taxpayer dollars.

So, is there a provision in the bill that says that abortion will be funded? No, but all that means is that abortion will be funded by default. This shouldn’t surprise anyone given that Barack Obama explicitly said abortion would be covered in his health care plan during the campaign:

The Obama campaign responded to a question about health care from the pro-abortion RH Reality Check web site.”Senator Obama believes that reproductive health care is basic health care,” the campaign said, using the phrase that abortion advocates employ to refer to abortion.

“His health care plan will create a new public plan, which will provide coverage of all essential medical services. Reproductive health care is an essential service,” the Obama campaign added.

The Obama camp also made it clear that any private insurance companies wanting to participate would also be required to provide abortion coverage.

“And private insurers that want to participate will have to treat reproductive care in the same way,” the Obama campaign responded.

Liberal Claim: The health care bill will lower costs: This is perhaps the single most jaw droppingly dishonest claim about the whole bill, especially given that Medicare’s unfunded liability is 34 trillion dollars. How in the world are the same people running a program that’s on track to bankrupt the entire country supposed to create a newer, larger program that’s going to actually lower the cost of health care?

Estimates of how much the bill will add to the deficit range from a few hundred billion to a trillion dollars plus, but these are likely to dramatically underestimate the costs for two reasons.

First of all, there’s the staggered way the system is supposed to be rolled out,

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the proposal now under consideration will cost over 10 years a little more than $1 trillion, depending on the final deal. House Democrats have vowed to find a way to pay for that cost despite an acknowledgement by a Congressional Budget Office official that the deficit will increase $239 billion because of Medicare payments to doctors.But fully phased-in coverage of Americans under the plan will only occur for six of the 10 years measured by the CBO. That’s because the Democratic plan in the House will start collecting revenues in 2011 but won’t start providing coverage until 2013 and won’t be fully implemented until 2015.

Why set the system up this way? In part, so that the Democrats can game the system and hide how much it’s really going to add to the deficit.

Even setting that aside, the Congressional Budget Office has traditionally underestimated how much health care programs cost by stunning margins. Here’s one all-too-typical example,

In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990. Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.”

At a time when we’re running the largest deficit in history and spending at an unsustainable level, can we afford to create yet another massive entitlement program? After creating a debt so big that our children’s children won’t be able to pay it off, what are we going for here? Are we trying to create a world where our great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will still be spending a significant amount of their income to pay for the goodies we’re getting from the government today?

Liberal Claim: There will be no rationing of health care. If you’re wondering if a “death panel” will convene and “pull the plug on Grandma,” essentially, the answer is “yes.” Of course, it won’t be called a “death panel” and Nancy Pelosi is not going to show up personally and yank Grandma’s life support out of the wall. They don’t have to be that dramatic.

Consider what happened to Barbara Wagner, who’s on Oregon’s state-run health care program. Her doctor prescribed a cancer drug that slows the spread of disease and the Oregon Health Plan refused to cover the cost of the treatment. However, they did note some other things they would cover including ”doctor-assisted suicide.” That’s what a “death panel pulling the plug on grandma” looks like in the real world and we’ll be seeing it nationwide if the Democrats get their way.

Still don’t believe it? Well, consider this: the Democrats say their plan will cover a lot more Americans. Yet, there are no provisions in it to add any new doctors or nurses. In fact, one of the ways they’re going to save money is by simply refusing to pay hospitals the full value of what their services are worth. Take any business and dramatically increase the number of customers they’re serving with the same staff while significantly decreasing the amount of money per customer they receive, and you’re going to get a drop-off in quality. How bad can it get? In Britain, 100 people a week lose their eyesight because the government run health care system is so overstretched that they can’t get them an appointment with an optometrist. That’s how it works in Britain and that’s how it will eventually work here, too, if the Democrats have their way.

The Great Escape
by Thomas Sowell

Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation– that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved. Education is usually discussed in terms of the money spent on it, the teaching methods used, class sizes or the way the whole system is organized. Students are discussed largely as passive recipients of good or bad education.

But education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something that students either acquire or fail to acquire. Personal responsibility may be ignored or downplayed in this “non-judgmental” age, but it remains a major factor nevertheless.

After many students go through a dozen years in the public schools, at a total cost of $100,000 or more per student– and emerge semi-literate and with little understanding of the society in which they live, much less the larger world and its history– most discussions of what is wrong leave out the fact that many such students may have chosen to use school as a place to fool around, act up, organize gangs or even peddle drugs.

The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior. Differences in infant mortality rates provoke pious editorials on a need for more prenatal care to be provided by the government for those unable to afford it. In other words, the explanation is automatically assumed to be external to the mothers involved and the solution is assumed to be something that “we” can do for “them.”

While it is true that black mothers get less prenatal care than white mothers and have higher infant mortality rates, it is also true that women of Mexican ancestry also get less prenatal care than white women and yet have lower infant mortality rates than white women. But, once people with the prevailing social vision see the first set of facts, they seldom look for any other facts that might go against the explanation that fits their vision of the world.

No small part of the current confusion between “health care” and medical care comes from failing to recognize that Americans can have the best medical care in the world without having the best health or longevity because so many people choose to live in ways that shorten their lives.

There can be grave practical consequences of a dogmatic insistence on external explanations that allow individuals to escape personal responsibility. Americans can end up ruining the best medical care in the world in the vain hope that a government takeover will give us better health.

Economic issues are approached in the same way. People with low incomes are seen as a problem for other people to solve. Studies which follow the same individuals over time show that the vast majority of working people who are in the bottom 20 percent of income earners at a given time end up rising out of that bracket.

Many are simply beginners who get beginners’ wages but whose pay rises as they acquire more skills and experience. Yet there is a small minority of workers who do not rise and a large number of people who seldom work and who– surprise!– have low incomes as a result.

Seldom is there any thought that people who choose to waste years of their own time (and the taxpayers’ money) in school need to change their own behavior– or to visibly suffer the consequences, so that their fate can be a warning to others coming after them, not to make that same mistake.

It is not just the “non-judgmental” ideology of the intelligentsia but also the self-interest of politicians that leads to so much downplaying of personal responsibility in favor of external explanations and external programs to “solve” the “problem.”

On these and other issues, government programs are far less likely to solve the country’s problems than to solve the politicians’ problem of getting the votes of those whose think the answer to every problem is for the government to “do something.”

Health Care Struggle is About Freedom
by Star Parker

President Obama took his case for what he now calls “health insurance reform” to the faith community. He made his pitch in a phone call, also broadcast over the Internet, to clergy who called in and logged on from around the nation.

In his remarks, the President ticked off points of contention that dissenters have with his proposals — “government takeover of healthcare…government funding of abortion…death panels” — and dismissed these concerns as “fabrications.” In one swipe, Mr. Obama reduced his opposition to liars.

And why, according to the President, are dissenters supposedly making all this stuff up? Because, he told his audience, they want to “discourage people from meeting…a core ethical and moral obligation…that we look out for one another…that I am my brother’s keeper…”

So those whose fight for individual freedom are immoral and our moral champions are those who want to extend the heavy hand of government.

Forgive me if sermons about morality are a little hard to swallow from a man who supports partial birth abortion, who just announced his intent to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

And who really wants to obstruct moral behavior?

About 100,000 Americans participate in private, voluntary Christian communities that take care of their own healthcare independently of government and insurance companies. They are called health-care sharing ministries.

These communities assess members “shares”, based on family size, which are paid monthly, in addition to annual dues.

Those in the community who need care submit their claims to a central office, which sends members monthly bulletins informing them whose care their monthly payment will be covering.

No government. No insurance companies. It’s health care with a true human face, operating in freedom, where those paying know who they are paying for and for what.

In addition to sending funds to cover costs, they send notes and pray for the sick person whose costs they are covering.

You wouldn’t think that communities that embody the very essence of personal responsibility and Christian love would need lobbyists for their protection. But they do.

If Barack Obama has his way, they’ll be out of business.

Part of the thousand page health care bill mandates that individuals buy insurance and that companies provide it, or pay a fine. These government mandates to buy and provide insurance would make health-care sharing ministries, where communities of individuals contribute their personal funds to take care of each other, unviable.

These ministries share contributed funds of around $80 million dollars annually to take care of each other, driven only by guidelines of biblical principles to “Bear one another’s burden, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.”

It’s crazy that Christian Americans have to lobby to be free in their own country.

Health-care sharing ministries is one particularly beautiful example of how faithful Americans take care of themselves when allowed to be free. But there are many others.

In thousands of homeless shelters around the country, charitable Americans provide complete health care for the homeless. There are 5000 crisis pregnancy centers, financed privately by charitable Americans that provide free care for pregnant women.

Many creative ideas have been put forth on how American health care delivery can be dramatically improved if markets are allowed to work. John Mackey, chairman of Whole Foods, listed eight in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

In another Wall Street Journal column, a University of Chicago Business School professor explained how forward purchases of insurance could deal with the problem of pre-existing conditions.

But, Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have slammed the door on all this. They only want to hear about more government. Not less.

The problem isn’t that dissenting Americans are immoral. It’s that Democrat leadership has a problem with individual freedom.

Whose Medical Decisions? Part IV
by Thomas Sowell

The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it.

What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks who to lend to or appointing “czars” to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity.

What they are trying to do is to create an America very unlike the America that has existed for centuries– the America that people have been attracted to by the millions from every part of the world, the America that many generations of Americans have fought and died for.

This is the America for which Michelle Obama expressed her resentment before it became politically expedient to keep quiet.

It is the America that Reverend Jeremiah Wright denounced in his sermons during the 20 years when Barack Obama was a parishioner, before political expediency required Obama to withdraw and distance himself.

The thing most associated with America– freedom– is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama’s vision of the country and of himself. But do not expect a savvy politician like Barack Obama to express what he is doing in terms of limiting our freedom.

He may not even think of it in those terms. He may think of it in terms of promoting “social justice” or making better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care or housing or many other things. Throughout history, egalitarians have been among the most arrogant people.

Obama has surrounded himself with people who also think it is their job to make other people’s decisions for them. Not just Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, his health care advisor who complains of Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care, but also Professor Cass Sunstein, who has written a whole book on how third parties should use government power to “nudge” people into making better decisions in general.

Then there are a whole array of Obama administration officials who take it as their job to pick winners and losers in the economy and tell companies how much they can and cannot pay their executives.

Just as magicians know that the secret of some of their tricks is to distract the audience, so politicians know that the secret of many political tricks is to distract the public with scapegoats.

No one is more of a political magician than Barack Obama. At the beginning of 2008, no one expected a shrewd and experienced politician like Hillary Clinton to be beaten for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States by someone completely new to the national political scene. But Obama worked his political magic, with the help of the media, which he still has.

Barack Obama’s escapes from his own past words, deeds and associations have been escapes worthy of Houdini.

Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success.

Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.

Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to “keep insurance companies honest”– and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.