Clueless In Washington
President Obama has been going around attempting to sell his healthcare plan that is facing bipartisan opposition. In a conference call with some bloggers today, President Obama showed that even he doesn't know what is in the bill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSg1oFLfa4Y
While the claim that this Bill would make private insurance illegal is false, the truth of the matter was broken down by Heritage here.
In order to qualify as an “Exchange-participating health benefits plan,” all health insurance plans must confirm to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and guaranteed issue. These will all drive up the cost of health insurance. Furthermore, all these new regs would not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans. So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer coverage. Until, of course, it becomes too expensive and they just dump you into the government plan.
So IBD is wrong: individual health insurance will not be outlawed. But it will be effectively regulated out of existence… which is effectively the same thing.
So the Obvious question for President Obama is "Is this your promise to veto the Bill as it exists"? Unfortunately, even if the answer is yes, the promise would be worthless. If you don't believe me, ask the "Transparency" crowd who has seen Obama mirror the Bush arguments to keep documents sealed. Ask the Senior Citizens making under $50,000 who didn't get their income taxes ended as promised.Of course, the lobbyists in his Administration that he swore to keep out probably won't want to discuss the matter, but I'll bet the gay community would be willing to discuss his support of the Defense of Marriage Act that he promised to repeal. Ask the unemployed how they feel about Obama's promise never delivered to create a $3,000 tax credit for jobs created, or how they still have to pay penalties for using their retirement accounts early just to get by despite his promise to the contrary. And while we're on the subject, if you had tuned in to C-SPAN to see the healthcare debate negotiated there as Obama had promised, don't adjust your television set. It was another lie. And if you're expecting to see 5 days of public comment before the bill is signed, feel free to hold your breathe. The Bills often don't receive enough comment time for the lack of oxygen to do any significant long term damage.Yes, it would seem like absolute insanity for us to assume he would keep any promise. After all, even his promise to his kids to adopt a shelter dog went broken, resulting in Senator Kennedy having to purchase one for them from his breeder.
Far more believable is the scenario that President Obama has little idea what is in this Bill. Why? Because Obama seems to have only one question to ask when it comes to supporting legislation. Does it massively grow the Government and usurp individual rights? If so, he supports it. If not, good luck. President Obama doesn't need to know the specifics here. He doesn't meddle with the technicalities of whether the bill outlaws private insurance, or just promises to kill it. Either way, it grows his soft tyranny and he will be there to dance on the grave of yet another segment of the private economy he will soon be in control of.
Yet the underlying problem for many Americans is not his either willful ignorance or broken promises, it is story after story that exposes the basic problem with the Government running anything. Here is the latest example of how well your Government is handling the segment of the healthcare industry that they currently control.
Debbie Brown used to process medical and dental forms for a living before a debilitating illness forced her into early disability retirement and left her in a simple, no-frills wheelchair -- a rented wheelchair that has cost taxpayers about $1,200.Brown says the public should be outraged about her wheelchair.
Why? She says she could buy a comparable wheelchair on the Internet for $440 if she had the money. It sounded hard to believe that her rented, $1,200 taxpayer-funded wheelchair could be bought for $440, so CNN decided to check -- and instead found an even better deal.
CNN went to the same company that charges Medicare for Brown's chair, Apria Healthcare, and bought it for $349 -- about a fourth of what taxpayers' have paid for Brown's rented wheelchair.
Why in the world would we trust this grossly incompetent system that can turn a $349 machine into a $1,200 payment plan? Multiply that times a thousand and you start to get a fraction of a clue about how disastrous this would be. And before you liberals comment, I know what you are thinking. Health Insurance companies over charge too. You are right. But if we are going to fix a problem, why not really fix it instead of making out the inflated check to Uncle Sam as opposed to Blue Cross?
