Once Upon A Time, There Was A Health Care "Reform" Experiment...
Turns out hoping for change is they best they've got in the health care "reform" department of the Obama administration, starting with the fairy tale they're telling about better quality care for everyone at lower costs. (That's so unbelievable, it's insulting.) From the WSJ:
As Obama budget director Peter Orszag put it at a revealing media breakfast earlier this month, the Senate bill does everything the experts recommend to "get at the underlying drivers of health-care costs." While he admitted that "we don't know enough" to produce results right away, the key is to encourage "continuous improvement" through pilot programs and demonstration projects. Cost containment will actually take "years to decades," Mr. Orszag conceded.The torch was then passed to Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic Monthly, David Leonhardt of the New York Times and editorial writers for the New England Journal of Medicine, among others. Last week the New Yorker ran a 5,000-word apologia from Atul Gawande, who likewise owned up to the fact that there is "no master plan for dealing with the problem of soaring medical costs," only "a battery of small scale experiments." Keep in mind, this is an argument in favor of ObamaCare.
They might have piped up earlier: What they're finally admitting is that all the grandiose talk about "bending the curve" used for months to sell ObamaCare really comes down to their hope that bureaucratic improvisation will make a difference over the long term. Yet the liabilities of the greatest social spending program in American history will be added to the budget almost immediately, and what happens if Mr. Orszag's technocratic revolution doesn't work as promised? Or rather, when it doesn't?
In short, we're all screwed, bigtime. And probably irretrievably, once the rush-rush health care "reform" is enacted, surely setting in motion all sorts of unforseen and ugly stuff. Oops!
A comment from Jonathan Murray at the WSJ:
Look, I know this is hard for leftists to understand, but supply and demand is factual. You cannot expand supply for something through taxpayer subsidy--housing, college, or healthcare--and lower prices, unless supply expands accordingly. Also required to lower costs is the freedom for companies to innovate to deliver products and services in different ways, at different costs. That's because in free markets, increasing demand usually leads to increases in productivity and lower prices.Alternatively, when the Feds use taxpayer money to strongarm their way into a market, they destroy market forces, whether they think so or not. The market structure in place becomes ossified, innovation falls by the wayside in the quest for government largess (economists call it "rent") and taxpayers end up holding the bill. This is exactly what happened in housing, is in the process of happening in higher education, and happens already in heathcare but will happen much more if the Obamination of Obamacare becomes law.
Obamazoids sincerely believe money comes from the government: After all, the government not only prints it, but nobody has more of it than the government. They just don't believe in wealth creation. They think the amount of money in the world is fixed, and the only way someone gets more than someone else is by cleverly taking it when people aren't looking.
I hate my President. I don't care that in person he's probably a very nice man, with cute daughters and a wife who has great arms. I don't care that he's a fairly bright guy who's read a few good books. He's doing just about everything he can to cripple the growth and dynamism of the United States, the greatest nation the world has ever known.
Everybody have a great week, OK?
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at December 14, 2009 12:51 AM
In an unrelated matter, I want to see Tiger, Spitzer, and Jon Edwards booked on a single episode of Letterman.
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at December 14, 2009 2:27 AM
Just wait until they put us all on it and then put a cap on the # of people per family who can receive it. They already have a provision to tax/fine whoever does not subscribe. People like me will be fined ever year for not having our kids insured but we will be unable to get insurance because of the cap. I wonder how long it would be before they declare me as unfit for their refusal to allow me to insure my child and try to take my kids from me.. Mark my words on it insane crap like that is going to happen..
josephineMO6 at December 14, 2009 3:20 AM
Crid:
You say that like it's not his plan.
In Obama's worldview, America is NOT the greatest nation, and he intends to make every American understand that by destroying everything.
We truly have the first anti-American president.
brian at December 14, 2009 5:43 AM
The arguments of the government and bureaucracy are so standard, that there are standard memos and speeches that capture their current and future arguments.
This fake memo has surfaced:
We Must Spend or We Are Going to DIE!
Excerpt:
===============
From: Ruling Class
To : Public
Re : We must tax and spend now, or we are all going to DIE!
We don't want to tax and spend (cough), but we must react to the crisis that we have identified. We are going to borrow, spend, and (reluctantly) tax to support our actions. The alternative is DEATH. No one wants that.
So what if you are poor in the future? At least you will be alive, and we will be in power to continue wise and supportive government to help you out of your poverty. Your children will pay most of the taxes, and we are training our children in the public spirit that will allow them to rule wisely.
==========
Excerpts from A Political Speech - Troubling Times:
easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/05/political-speech-troubling-times.html
==========
My staff has compiled a list of 463 of life's difficulties.
The good news is that I am ready to roll up my sleeves, sit down with the very best people who will work with the government, and deliver to you a better life. If we organize things in a different way, and all come together in support of this common good, we can finally get a grip on the situation and prosper in ways that are not even imaginable today.
Honestly, this will cost some money, and there will be higher taxes, but isn't it worth it?
Even after I leave office, after serving for as long as humanly and legally possible, the fruit of these efforts may not be realized. I will then work tirelessly to publish books, give lectures, and attend tedious but necessary events and dinners to continue the work of helping you all.
==========
Andrew_M_Garland at December 14, 2009 7:39 AM
He's doing just about everything he can to cripple the growth and dynamism of the United States, the greatest nation the world has ever known.
What would you write if he were pushing for truly universal health care? That he eats babies for breakfast? The insane polarization of the Obama haters is as amusing as the starry-eyed optimism of those who thought he was JFK, MLK, and Gandhi in one tidy biracial package, here to absolve the nation of our original sin.
Whatever at December 14, 2009 10:25 AM
You mean he isn't?
Universal Health Care is none of the above. No place in the world has instituted a single-payer system that has better outcomes than the system we have in the US. No place in the world has imposed a socialized health care system that has better access than we have in the US.
Why would we want to take what we have and change it to any system that is demonstrably worse? The only obvious answer is that Obama wants people to suffer and die.
brian at December 14, 2009 11:25 AM
"The insane polarization of the Obama haters..."
You are simply, patently, ridiculous. Take this simple test: apply the money being talked about - pick your own sum - as being "put into" health care by current Congressional plans, and simply hand it it over to citizens.
What do you get, in dollars?
Why, you get enough money in private hands to establish any risk-sharing pool you like.
Why do I mention this? Because the current plans are nothing more than a POWER STRUGGLE.
Use that simple question - What would the money amount to if it was just handed out? - as a "giggle test".
Now, of course Joe and Suzie Blow aren't going to turn a fistful of money into health care for the family - they're going down to WalMart and Outback and cram as much of it into their living room and faces as they can.
Which is why you need a different plan that won't immediately hand your paycheck over to pay people who have no relationship to a doctor.
Radwaste at December 14, 2009 3:24 PM
> The insane polarization of the Obama haters
Turtledove, ten trillion dollars buys you POLARITY.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 15, 2009 3:00 AM
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