The American Spectator : The Reformer's Folly

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The Reformer's Folly

By Ryan L. Cole on 7.31.09 @ 6:08AM

We have been down the road to national health care before.

(Page 2 of 2)

Carter countered with a plan of his own -- HealthCare, which featured a large role for insurance companies minus universal coverage. Carter and Kennedy cobbled up a compromise, but their efforts were ultimately fruitless. As 1980 approached the nation, preoccupied with a crippled economy and foreign affairs, was not interested in bloating the federal budget or increasing taxes; the appetite for a potentially budget busting national health care plan was, again, not there.

The liberal dream of a socialized health care laid dormant for the next decade until Bill Clinton guided the Democrats back to the presidency in 1992. Once in office, he delegated the task of creating a national health insurance plan to the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, an advisory board headed by the his wife, Hillary. The result, the Health Security Act was a dizzyingly complicated 1,342 page bill featuring a mandate for all U.S. citizens to purchase or acquire health insurance. The Clintons' efforts were doomed by secrecy, inept politicking and a well-orchestrated Republican opposition which yet again successfully tapped into the public's resistance to government intrusion and suspicion of the bill's feasibility.

This brings us to the current president's problems. During the 2008 campaign, Obama, aware of Americas' long-standing position on the issue, ran commercials disingenuously claiming the candidate's opposition to any plan that equaled "government run health care, higher taxes."

But now as Obama's aims become clear and the details of his plan are laid bare -- $800 billion in new taxes, rationed care, millions of citizens displaced from their current insurance plans, and an overarching "bureaucrats-know-best" approach to medicine, the country is growing increasingly uncomfortable with the president's agenda.

This is a familiar turn of events. For decades, despite the supposed aligning of the stars, majorities in Congress and the efforts of their best and brightest, proponents of government-managed care have repeatedly failed to impose their will on the country.

If Democrats are once again unable to realize their goal, the blame, as it always is, will be placed on the fear-mongering smear campaigns of the Republican Party and the medical industry.

This mythology never takes into account colossal price tags, exorbitant taxes, unintelligible proposals and the simple (and to some unfathomable) notion that Americans with their unique history of self-reliance have never desired and still do not want socialized medicine and its accompanying restrictions on personal freedom and reductions in health care quality and innovation.

As Obama is now all too well aware, government-run health care has never been easy medicine for Americans to swallow.

Page: < 12

topics:
Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare

About the Author

Ryan L. Cole writes from Indiana.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 7.31.09 @ 7:07AM

The American people are by and large impossible to move when they have made up their minds. How long has the benevolent despotry tried to cram the dollar coin and the metric system down the countrys throat, and failing? Americans individually cannot be forced to accept things they choose not to accept.

Socialist medicine is one of these things.

You cannot enforce a law that everyone has decided not to obey. There are just too many of us to catch.

America will Go Galt and you will know there is defiance going on but you will not be able to do a thing about it. The official doctors will be people you do not want within fifteen feet of you, and you will not be able to find the good doctors -- but we will. Blessed indeed will the family be who has a nurse, nurse practitioner or nurses aide in its ranks! Everyone will know who and where they are -- but you government ninnies will not. Underground medical treatment bunkers will take on the Speakeasy mantle and not only will the people be treated, there will be no tax.

The really big error everybody of the socialist persuasion makes, and that started with King George, is the assumption that they can MAKE Americans do things they do not wish to do.

Good luck with that. And watch for those Dont Tread On Me flags, t-shirts and bumperstickers.

Rocco| 7.31.09 @ 7:15AM

Appleby,

You're on a roll today. I like it, and agree wholeheartedly. Best of all, you're right!

Robert Rosencrans| 7.31.09 @ 7:30AM

During the entire time the collectivists called for nationalized health care, the non-nationalized health care system developed into one of the best health care systems in the world.

Pat Spooner| 7.31.09 @ 7:39AM

Regarding Obamacare, why should I and hundreds of millions of other hard working Amercian taxpayers have to pay for medical care for millions of individuals who smoke, drink excessivley, overeat and are obese, do not excerise or otherwise take care of themselves, use illegal drugs, all the while refusing to work to get an eductaion or just refusing to work period?

I came from a family of poverty from Northern Miane but my parents supported and encouraged my brothers and I to study in school, work hard to get a decent education and to put our noses to the grindstone wherever we worked to do right and be honest. Becasue of that they and I have been able to get ahead - I believe that everyone in this country has an equal opportunity to succeed to the best of their ability, but they must want to and they must work for it. Obamacare must be voted down; now and in the future. This county, and in particular our federal and state governments, must get back to basics, the bear minimum. Governement cannot continue to steal everything from working people or there will be no one left working.

It is time to enact term limits, we cannot contiue to allow elected representatives to become lifetime politicians - nobody is that good, nobody is that great, nobody is that important that they should be granted a lifetime politiocal position - that only gives them license to steal and the attitude that they are deserving of whatever they can take.

stephanie| 7.31.09 @ 8:15AM

Thank you Thank you Thank you Appleby.
Your post is real and correct.
And it gives me hope.

Deborah D| 7.31.09 @ 8:37AM

There's a Health Care rally getting ready to take place in NC over the next week. A bus tour of the state. Here's info and if you know anyone in NC, pass it along: http://americansforprosperity.org/073009-north-carolina-bus-tour-focus-putting-patients-first-health-care-debate

Deborah D| 7.31.09 @ 8:40AM

Oh, forgot to mention -- Appleby, I love the way you think!

And, Pat Spooner -- your story is the All-American story, I certainly can relate (coming from a family of 8 children -- husband a family of 9 children) -- what we were given was the gift of freedom. Our parents taught us to value hard work and education and independence and self-reliance. Let's hope your story and mine still resonates.

Becky| 7.31.09 @ 9:03AM

It will be just like cash for clunkers. The government owned car companies are matching the government rebate making their cars more attractive to buy (Gm and Chryler are adding up to $4,500, making the discount $9,000 for them). A govt run insurance policy will have the same advantage, that is, they won't worry about making it break even, let alone profitable. The program was underfunded, some dealers are running out of cars, worry about the long wait in being reimbursed, changing of the rules. The used market for lower income shoppers is being destroyed, the true junkers are still cluttering the landscape, so the environment has not been helped.

Like all goverment programs, national health insurance will be underfunded, heavily weighted to their favor, and unable to deliver to meet demand. Cash for Clunkers lasted less than a week before they realized they aren't sure what they are doing.

I see another auto crisis before we have a health care crisis.

Appleby| 7.31.09 @ 9:24AM

I had a fire-breathing Daddy who could quote you chapter and verse from the Constitution, which he learned in a two-room prairie schoolhouse in the 1930s when his father could spare him from the farm. Daddy died in 2008 and I have picked up the flag and the sword before it could hit the ground.

Fortunately I was educated before university became a jobs program or a place to get stinking drunk and/or pregnant; I was the first member of my family on either side to finish university and that, in those days at least, carried a lot of responsibility.

Daddy said all his life, "Comes the revolution!" and I am ready to organize the resistance in my neighbourhood when the time comes.

Remember, you are not Canadians! Our ancestors who left the Old Country would have told you that the cowards never started and the weaklings died on the way. You whose families made it here are still the creme de la creme. The time has come to show those ancestors that you get it.

The individual is still a majority. When they say "You must" say NO.

Just remember, never look King Zero in the eye. Don't be a prop or a token in his war on the USA.

Point at him and laugh, then walk on by. Nothing to see, folks, move along.

Deborah D| 7.31.09 @ 10:41AM

Appleby -- I remember my Dad in the 1960's railing against welfare. My Dad, father of 8 children, who had to quit high school as the oldest of 10 children during the depression to go to work to help his Dad put food on the table for the other nine. My father, who as a carpenter worked hard all of his life, did not understand why he had to work all that much harder to support other people who were capable of work. God rest his soul.

RM| 7.31.09 @ 12:43PM

The government can't run a cash for clunker program but they want us to put our health care into their hands. I'll retire to bedlam.

Howard| 7.31.09 @ 1:00PM

Once again, another generation of Best and Brightest Harvard men are being frustrated by the inability of us simpletons to agree to their programs; which after all are for our best.

stephanie| 7.31.09 @ 1:08PM

Pockets of resistance are popping up all over the country. "Patriot" groups are organizing via the internet. MeetUp is a site where you can find these groups. Here in Hampton Roads and Richmond we have busses rented to go to Washington on Sept. 12 for a demonstration, (Tea Party) and it looks like thousands have committed to be there to let their voices be heard. I hope you will join us there. Those who cannot come to DC, organize one in your local. Maybe the MSM will pay attention this time.

Pat Spooner| 7.31.09 @ 5:23PM

Deborah D., thank you for your kind comments and may God bless you, your family and this great country called America!

thelefthasthefacts| 7.31.09 @ 6:55PM

Americans individually cannot be forced to accept things they choose not to accept.

Socialist medicine is one of these things.

------------------

Appleby, you do realize that up to 50% of all money used to develop drugs come from taxpayers through the National Institute of Health.

Here's but one AP article from 2001 (you can find many more documenting this fact:
http://www.whale.to/m/drug.html

I know that because you despise socialized medicine you will now refuse to take any of these medicines. You will tell your doctor to prescribe only those drugs that were developed with 100% private funds through the mythical "free market" you still believe in. You'd rather die than take medicine that Castro would approve of.

Not only that, but then the drug companies make us taxpayers, who funded up to 1/2 their research pay full price to obtain the drug! I bet you like that part because they're just being clever capitalists.

In short, if you don't give up your socialized medicine, then your a pinko lib to the left of Michael Moore!

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Robert| 8.1.09 @ 8:15AM

Today it's Cash for Clunkers. Tomorrow - courtesy of Obamacare - it will be Cash for Seniors.

Cash for Clunkers - the scheme awarding taxpayer money to those who trade in older cars - is a prototype for Obamacare, where a government entity called QALY, like Great Britain's already existing NICE, will determine whether your health or age qualifies you for medical care. Sick or old? You'll get fewer points and be denied medical care.

I don't see any great chasm between Obama giving you cash for trading in your old heap and Obama paying you for turning in your old man or old lady.

Chilling...imagining what this administration is capable of!

Louis Jenkins| 8.1.09 @ 9:42AM

So Franklin created this, and LBJ created that, well, now my friends, welcome to the world of bad corporate execs, bad ole' car makers who fly their corporate jets to DC (Look at Polosi's taxpayer supported jet), and now the bad ole' insurance companies. "It's almost immoral what they are doing," Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. "Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening." Let's bad mouth this group to get our way!! As millions have said, if this plan is so great why ain't those peck-- heads in DC gettin' on board with the plan instead of keeping the one she has? Pelosi is calling insurance companies immoral?

Health Savings| 8.1.09 @ 1:09PM

Well you have to give them credit - they never give up. Ha ha!

The Socialists, that is.

Get a health savings account plan: http://www.hsahealthplans.com

Marc Jeric| 8.2.09 @ 3:46AM

One of the main complaints against private health insurance companies is that they will not accept new customers with prior conditions of serious sickness. Well, let us see:
1) A fellow works 30 years without health insurance with no trouble; thus he has "saved" about $90,000 over that time - well, much more than that if he bought tax-free municipal bonds (about $200,000, or in the stock market about $2 million) ; then, after 30 years he would have this capital, all of it "saved" by his not paying for health insurance. Whether he saves or drinks it all up in bars with his friends does not matter - that's the value of his "savings. Then suddenly he develops cancer and wants to insure himself; if the company accepts him this will increase the rates of other insured customers. Better the company does not dare to inflict the costs of that irresponsible goon on me and my family; I have been paying that insurance for years and I do not want to pay his costs now!
2) Another eaxample; in California one can take up voluntarily the option to insure the house against earthquakes - it adds about $30/month to your premium. So now another fellow will not pay that premium for 30 years, saving himself about 30x12x30=$10,800 (again, investing those moneys in tax-free municipal bonds that amount would be worth some $21,000, or in the stock market some $200.000). Then an earthquake flattens his house and he wants the insurance company to accept his earthquake insurance now - after the fact. I say to hell with him - I do not want my rates to go up because of that irresponsible creep!
3) Most of us pay the car insurance - against damage, theft, uninsured motorist. A smart guy decides to avoid that cost; there is a small chance that a cop will stop him and ask for proof of insurance. But the fellow is a careful driver - and over 30 years he will have saved some $60,000 in "unnecessary" expenditures (or, when investing those "savings" in municipal bonds he would end up with a capital of $115,000, or again in the stock market some $1,200,000). Then one day a Mexican illegal without insurance totals his car; the fellow then wants to insure his car after the fact. I say to hell with him - I do not want my rates to go up to cover his irresposible behavior that "saved" him all that money.
So how valid is that complaint about health insurance companies not accepting prior conditions?

Dr. Gregory Garamoni| 8.2.09 @ 8:05AM

For a satirical take on this topic, check out "Hey, ObamaCare, are you up for a game of chicken?" at the end of the "Healthcare Humor" page of our website (http://www.doctorsonstrike.com). Here is a sample:

These left-winged birds of a feather nested conspiratorially together, secretly brooding until The First Hen finally laid her wonderfully wobbly, pink-hued, left-leaning egg that was warmly incubated until it haplessly hatched as a half-assed hatchling that would futilely try, but never quite fly. Unwilling to foresee its foreseeable failure to fly, the collectivists collectively clucked this cheerful collectivist chorus about this half-assed hatchling they had so happily hatched:

We’re in this together,
We’re birds of a feather,
Universal health care is here,
There’s nothing to fear,
The Collective will fight,
Health care’s a right,
Health care for all,
We’re ready to brawl!

This fowl plan soon came to be known throughout the land as HillaryCare.
###
Dr. Gregory L. Garamoni
Founder & Executive Director, Doctors on Strike for Freedom in Medicine
2304 Sawgrass Village Drive
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
904-631-3939
www.doctorsonstrike.com
garamoni at gmail.com

Jim O'Brien| 8.2.09 @ 9:47AM

The legislation pending in the House is designed to kill private insurance and force all of us into socialized medicine. It is an outrageous invasion of my Constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. It will destroy the great health care we already enjoy, and it will make the national debt even more obscene than it already is. The government can't even figure out how to run the cash for clunkers (cars) program. How can it possibly plan medical care for over 300 million Americans from inside the Beltway (the American Kremlin)? I am opposed to ANY federal legislation which increases the government's role in medical care. What we need is less government involvement, and a return to the free market. Private enterprise created the thousands of innovative procedures and new drugs currently used to improve the quality of life. Government didn't do this, and it never will.

hoads| 8.2.09 @ 11:22AM

"In fact, Medicare and Medicaid were such risky political and fiscal propositions that Johnson fudged their cost and feasibility and pitched them as modest and affordable interventions to help vulnerable Americans."

This sentence should be highlighted. Read how deceitful propaganda was used to get Medicare passed: http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n3/cj16n3-3.pdf

Excerpts:

"History shows that Medicare did not and could not achieve passage without the misrepresentation, cost concealment, lying, and
incrementalism to which its supporters ultimately resorted."

page 319 "The gulf between what the public thought and what was actually in the bill was enormous. The most pressing rationale for compulsory health insurance continually put forward by government officials and echoed by the public was the specter that responsible older people could be ruined financially by catastrophic illness. Yet neither the 1963 nor the 1965 proposal provided coverage for catastrophic illness."

page 321 "Another important underpinning of the “avoiding dependency” rationale was the widely trumpeted portrait of elderly Americans as an impoverished group whose plight made them a sympathetic object of tax-supported medical insurance. Misrepresentation of the financial condition of the elderly helped to paint this portrait, as government officials advocating Medicare repeatedly cited statistics showing lower incomes received by the elderly in comparison with other age groups. Yet the income statistics by themselves were misleading because they did not include asset ownership, and the elderly as a group had more substantial assets than other segments of the populace."

page 322 "Questioned about whether the 1964 bill represented socialism, Celebrezze directly addressed the issue of control, stating: “There is nothing in this bill which tells a doctor whom to treat or when to treat him. There is nothing in this bill by which the Government would control the hospital, and as I understand socialism, it is Government control and operation of facilities. . . . It is merely a method of financing hospital care, and that is all” (U.S. House Hearings
1963—64: 50). He added,
"We are a paying agency and I don’t see where you get any control of any kind out of that. Naturally,. . . there will be minimum requirements like these which are required now under Blue Cross. I see
no evidence where this would lead to control over the doctors [U.S.
House Hearings 1963—64: 54],
The AMA had a different view of the power of the federal purse.
AMA President-Elect Dr. Norman A. Welch testified that “It is axiomatic... that control follows money when the Government steps in”
(U.S. House Hearings 1963—64: 652; emphasis added)."

The Left is up to the same old tricks.

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1.http://booksteps.com/2008/07/16/i-know/#comment-171624
2.http://booksteps.com/2008/07/01/a-disturbing-trend/#comment-171625
3.http://booksteps.com/2008/04/03/john5-25/#comment-171626
4.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/28/john5-24/#comment-171629
5.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/27/john5-21-23/#comment-171630
6.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/24/john5-19/#comment-171627
7.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/21/john5-18/#comment-171628
8.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/13/john5-14-15/#comment-171631
9.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/10/kipling-on-cats/#comment-171632
10.http://booksteps.com/2008/02/08/john3-22-26/#comment-171635
11.http://booksteps.com/2008/02/06/john3-16-18/#comment-171636
12.http://booksteps.com/2008/02/05/john3-9-15/#comment-171654
13.http://booksteps.com/2008/01/31/john3-1-2/#comment-171639
14.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/08/john4-54/#comment-171641
15.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/06/john4-48-50/#comment-171655
16.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/05/john4-46-47/#comment-171642
17.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/03/john4-39-41/#comment-171643
18.http://booksteps.com/2008/02/28/john4-34-35/#comment-171645
19.http://booksteps.com/2008/07/02/the-purpose-of-humility/#comment-171647
20.http://booksteps.com/2008/06/30/sun-and-moon/#comment-171657
21.http://booksteps.com/2008/06/26/a-sick-mind-cannot-cure-a-sick-mind/#comment-171650
22.http://booksteps.com/2008/06/24/imagination-vs-reason/#comment-171651
23.http://booksteps.com/2008/06/13/insanity-check/#comment-171652
24.http://booksteps.com/2008/03/02/john4-37-38/#comment-171644
25.http://booksteps.com/2008/06/28/worse-than-materialism/#comment-171658