Feature
Empowering Individuals or Bureaucrats?
The choice and the contrast in health care.
James Piereson
A Time for Choosing
Stephen Moore & Peter Ferrara
The Road From Serfdom
David N. Bass
The Millennial Perspective
In March, as the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of President Obama’s partisan health care law, the American people saw an event that could mark the end of bureaucrat-controlled health care. At the same time, just across the street in the halls of Congress, they witnessed a powerful reaffirmation of the American Idea as the House of Representatives passed the Path to Prosperity—a budget for the federal government.
The interconnectedness of these two events cannot be understated. Taken together, they have refocused a long-overdue debate about the proper role and scope of the federal government. This debate will undoubtedly continue in the months ahead and build to a crescendo in November, when the American people will have the opportunity to make a defining choice about what kind of nation we will be in the 21st century.
Perhaps no single issue crystallizes the choice before the American people and the contrast between the two parties more than health care. The differences between the President’s bureaucrat-centered model and the model advanced in the Path to Prosperity, which champions choice, competition, and individual control, could not be clearer.
The bureaucrat-controlled approach to health care may have begun with the best of intentions, but it quickly ran into the same problem that it always does: bureaucrats are terrible at setting prices in a market economy. As the federal government’s control over health care grew, bureaucratic mistakes started to cause serious problems. Government subsidies drove up costs; and health care became unaffordable for those who didn’t qualify for them. As a result, rising costs now threaten to leave our children buried under a mountain of debt.
As it usually does, this approach called for more and more power to be ceded to Washington in order to solve this problem—and for the first time ever, the unlimited power to force Americans to buy something. The result was “Obamacare.”
The President’s health care overhaul is emblematic of the wrong way to address the problems in health care and Medicare. The law raids Medicare by nearly $700 billion to fund a new, unsustainable, open-ended health care entitlement. It creates a government panel of bureaucrats with the power to impose price controls on providers in ways that would result in rationed care and restricted access to treatments. It vastly expands an already unwieldy administrative state by creating 159 new boards, commissions, and government programs. It is built around the flawed assumption that bureaucrats, if given power over the marketplace, can curb rising health care costs by expertly determining prices and dictating treatment options to doctors and patients.
Ultimately, this approach transforms the relationship between citizen and state, leaving individuals increasingly passive and dependent on their government. Further, it substantially diminishes the quality of and the access to care, as future policymakers cut costs to meet budgetary bottom lines rather than patients’ medical needs. There is no way for “experts” in Washington to know more about the health care needs of individual Americans than those individuals and their doctors know, nor should bureaucrats second-guess how each individual would prioritize services against costs.
The “fatal conceit” of the health care law stands in stark contrast to America’s historic commitment to individual liberty and personal responsibility. And the Supreme Court’s deliberations showed indications that the bureaucrat-centered approach is just not possible in America.
Our Constitution restricts the federal government to certain limited powers, and reserves all other powers to the states and the people. Our Founders trusted the American people, not an all-powerful federal government, to act in their own best interests. They trusted these actions would result in the greatest good for all. Their trust paid off: America became the greatest force for good the world has ever known.
The new health care law, which asserts unlimited power for the federal government to decide how Americans should get their health care, simply is not compatible with the Constitution.
In their deliberations, the Justices of the Supreme Court also raised a very salient point: If this is the end of bureaucrat-controlled health care, what comes next?
House Republicans showed them with the passage of Path to Prosperity, which offers a new approach—one that maintains a critical role for government but ultimately puts the American people in charge, as they should be.
For the second year in a row, Republicans in the House outlined a better way forward in health care. Our budget repeals the President’s health care overhaul and keeps the protections that made Medicare a guaranteed promise for seniors throughout the years.
To the bureaucrats who have mismanaged the program into bankruptcy we say: Enough. Your approach doesn’t work. Government has never come up with a magic formula for lowering costs and improving quality. It’s time to put 50 million seniors, not 15 bureaucrats, in charge of their own health care decisions. Forcing insurance companies to compete is the only way to guarantee quality, affordable health care for seniors that will last for generations.
About the Author
Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for vice president, is a Congressman from Wisconsin and the chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (75) | Leave a comment
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David Lipton| 4.26.12 @ 3:32PM
Fatal conceit. Mr. Ryan, you have been reading Hayek. Good for you. Let us try to Americanize the phrase and "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." I can scarcely believe that the current democratic party is the party of John Kennedy.
Peter Calvet | 5.3.12 @ 6:47PM
And I cannot believe that the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 1:04PM
The republican party is the party of getting away with murder, as is the democrat party. The American People created this nightmare through neglect. Some of us are half awake. But in order for America to be viable, we would have to throw off all of this mess that we made. And work for our freedom. Hey there's a novel idea, huh?
gray man| 8.13.12 @ 10:02PM
believe it. the republican party is also the party that voted to give blacks equality all the way around. the party of Martin Luther King Jr. the dumocrats voted to keep blacks in the back of the bus. voted for the KKK, voted for segregation, voted to take guns from blacks, voted for communism every chance they could get. in your face.
Alan Obama Fan Brooks | 8.11.12 @ 1:44PM
"It is so rare in American politics to arrive at a moment in which the debate revolves around the fundamental nature of American democracy and the social contract. But that is where we are."
Of course, we are in debt for trillions-- we have no choice but to get...radical.
Zak Ames| 4.26.12 @ 3:59PM
I refuse to reinforce the status-quo this coming election. I will be supporting the genuine third-party candidate Rocky Anderson in this coming election - He's definitely worth researching! I encourage everyone who is interested in resurrecting our Constitutional liberties to do the same through registering at americanselect.org.
Todd S| 4.26.12 @ 4:08PM
The idiot former liberal Mayor of Salt Lake City? Good luck with that one
Wanetta J.| 4.26.12 @ 4:17PM
True, that Todd S, besides, third parties are rarely strong enough to win, more often than not splitting the vote and losing anyway, while the winner would be Obama. No Thanks!
Alej| 8.11.12 @ 10:14AM
Another vote for Obama. We've got to go with what we have, Zak. Jesus Christ isn't running this time.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:03PM
I wont support either democrats or republicans. These guys are as phony as they get. Ryan is the token conservative to a liberal agenda just like palin was last time. It's a sick game with both parties now.
America will see further decline with either romney or obama. But romney would be worse because of his crony capitalist and liberal agenda.
Romney supports gays in the boy scouts. Ryan is the acknowledgement that romney is liberal. America won't recover until the Tea Party, i.e. the American People come into real power.
obadiah| 4.26.12 @ 4:02PM
Throw out the bureaucrats! Only plutocrats are allowed to run things.
Stop taxing plutocrats!
Stop regulating plutocrats!
Enact laws written by plutocrats!
Don't waste money on sick and old people -- that money belongs to plutocrats!
That's the Ryan plan for prosperity for plutocrats. (The same ones who enjoy the Constitutional right to bribery. Maybe there is a connection.)
Spinward | 4.27.12 @ 4:57AM
First, decrease your dosage. You have foam coming out a little there.
Second, READ the Ryan/Wyden budget. Did you know Wyden, the co-author, is a Democrat?
Simply hating a budget you haven't read because you don't like one of the authors is a big part of what's wrong today and why Obama fails to unite Americans.
Yes, you're a part of the problem.
Wm. W| 4.26.12 @ 4:18PM
False equivalency combined with the illusion of free market choice. There are bad bureaucrats and there are bad insurance companies. Bad insurance companies can continue to make money and you may have no recourse. You at least have the right to vote and to write to your elected representative about a bad bureaucrat. You probably have even a wider avenue to sue the government than you would to sue your insurance company. And given recent SCOTUS decisions, the ins. company can force you to arbitrate and prevent you from filing a class action for a pattern of claim denials.
Spinward | 4.27.12 @ 5:05AM
You have that almost perfectly backwards.
I spent almost 20 years working for a health insurance company. You can sue, you can file complaints with insurance commissioners, you can call non-profit advocacy groups, you can call the media, etc...
Want to sue the government instead? Bad, bad choice.,,
gigi0102 | 4.28.12 @ 7:48AM
ROFL!! We have a choice of bureaucrats?? Where, exactly do you live? Write and complain about... who, exactly? My dummycrat congressman, who sends me irrelevant replies touting his latest hobby horse giveaway program? You must be joking!
In a free market economy for health insurance, you'd have a choice of what kind of coverage you could buy. Even before Obamacare, the health insurance market is so tightly government-regulated that we don't have those choices.
The way so many posters here jumped on Paul Ryan, got to believe you're trolls for the DNC. Obama hates Ryan; Obama can't stand the competition.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 1:00PM
If ever the American People rise against their governments, please sign on to the cause. I think that the American People will lye still and let tyranny kill them before they rise, but you never know perhaps some tragic event will wake them before it is too late. So join in, if ever it happens, we need people like you who can see the truth through the nightmare that the American People grew through neglect.
Wannetta J.| 4.26.12 @ 4:26PM
Obadiah, we're glad you've learned a new word today but plutocrats can't run everything in a Republic but they can in a big government Socialist state. Your friend, Obama, is a plutocrat as is Ms.Pelosi, Mr. Biden, etc. So, give us a real thoughtful argument for throwing out Ryan's ideas. Competition is the best protector of freedom, reduced costs, and greater efficiency because of the incentives it allows. Government control is the 180 degree opposite. Stop putting your hand out and get to work and compete.
Jefe| 5.2.12 @ 12:19PM
wellllll
This is a big problem with the right wing in America these days. You just don't know what words mean. I have no problem discussing policy difference with someone who disagrees with me, but I have a hard time speaking civilly with someone who is unable or unwilling to use the proper meanings of words.
A plutocracy is essentially government by the wealthy, typically the wealthiest families in a society. While Obama has become very well off, mostly due to his book earnings, he is hardly in the same class as hedge fund managers and their ilk.
I think the word you are looking for, rather than plutocrat, is oligarch. That would be rule by a narrow political elite. Typical oligarchies pass power down between the generations, they are very similar to a monarchy, but blood relations aren't needed to pass on power.
Even that is kind of a stretch, as both Obama and Biden came to power through their own efforts (and those of the political parties) rather than being 'handed' power. Pelosi is arguably a plutocrat AND an oligarch, as political power is a family thing there.
Don| 4.26.12 @ 4:45PM
Every attempt to reform the health care system so far has not been about reducing the cost, but spreading and accommodating the cost.
Until we can say WHY health care costs are so high and continuing to increase, and I mean with scientific certainty - not guesses or anecdotal observations, then any effort to reform and reduce costs will fail.
Wm. W| 4.26.12 @ 5:09PM
Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas have worked on this to no avail. It has something to do with use of services that are not being paid directly by the person using the service, and something about wanting the best service available. If your kid thinks they have a broken finger, do you just tape him up or do you take him in for x-rays? And if you pay out of pocket, do you forgo the service to your detriment, whereas the insured or more financially secure person does not have to make that choice. 40 years ago, few kids got braces and no one particularly cared. Now no one has crooked teeth or bad complexions.
Shane | 4.26.12 @ 11:40PM
Well okay. I will explain why health care is getting more expensive. It is an expanding market of more and more available surgeries and drugs. Biotechnology is advancing and with it the available treatments and drugs to go with it. We have more available today by 10 fold then we had in 1985, why would the overall amount spent on medical not increase? We have more available. You always have the choice of not using it. What liberals want is to use what they want, and then tell the people they take it from how much they feel like paying. It just doesn't work. So medical today costs more, but you get a hell of a lot more.
Leonard Gilbert| 4.27.12 @ 3:37PM
Health Care costs are high and will continue to rise until we accept the fact that we are paying the wrong guys.
I have never been to my Blue Cross guy for a colonoscopy....and never will go. And yet, I'm paying him for the procedure and he is laundering my health care dollars through multiple profit centers at his employer and ultimately, giving a fraction back to my health care guy ...who actually does the work....and only after my health care guy fills out a stack of forms and begs them for his own money. That is crazy.
We need to be paying the health care guy and he can buy the insurance if he needs or wants it.
gigi0102 | 4.28.12 @ 7:56AM
Recently spent two days in the hospital, admitted through emergency, for a severe asthma attack. The cost was $27,000.00. Yup. $27,000.00.
No surgery, but inhalation every 4 hours, an ultrasound on my heart, and a shared room. No other special tests or accommodations.
I think it's called "cost-shifting." Medicare and Medicaid don't pay enough to cover the full cost of their clients, so the expense gets dumped on private and self-insurers.
Like the writer O'Rourke said -- "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:49PM
Romney and Ryan contradict each other. Romney recently touted romneycare, while Ryan here, with his do nothing record, says the opposite. I believe than Ryan is the token conservative made to fool the easily fooled republican base. The American People haven't got a chance with romney or obama. But Romney is still worse.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:54PM
The American People are clueless as to how anything works in this nation. That is why in America, socialists, and vulture capitalists alike can get away with robbing anyone that they choose. America is failing because her people forgot to pay attention to anything in effect for the last eighty years. Nothing will get better until the American People wake up to self government again. John Locke style, our founders style. Nothing in America today is viable, not romney and not obama. We the people must change, or see America end.
usagoingbroke| 4.26.12 @ 5:02PM
Representative Ryan, thank you for bravely stepping forward with a plan and ideas to offer up to the American people. Very fiew leaders in our government have the will to offer up anything other than to be negative and critical.
What I see in your plan is a great starting point and platform to work from to help solve our pending disasters. It may not be perfect, but it's one way our nation could head if our political elite in government care to save our national safety nets.
What plan does President Obama offer in order to save our nation from calamity? Well, he doesn't have one, only scare tactics and the status quo until it all collapses into ruin.
What plan does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offer? Well, he doesn't either. He too only offers scare tactics and bright shinny promises that there is nothing to worry about.
The American people hear these scare tactics. We see with our own eyes that all is not well when Medicare and Social Security actuaries report that both programs are no longer sustainable. But does that cause the President and Majority Leader to come up with their own plan, or to even offer modifications to the House approved Ryan budget? No, they offer only scare tactics and demegougery. Tax the rich, they say. Make other people pay for the goodies we want to give you, they say.
America, do we as a people really believe that someone trying to offer a plan to save Medicare and Social Security is bad and unbelievable? And that the people telling us all is well and to just let it ride is good and believable?
I hope more people see it as I do and go to the polls in November and vote to save our nation. Leaving the current President in office for 4 more years and the current Senate Majority Leader with the gavel would be a grave mistake for our nation.
Vote ABO in November 2012. Otherwise, we will be stuck in the proverbial ditch for another 4 years.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:45PM
So Paul Ryan also bravely, fearlessly stepped up over the last two years that the house has had power, and stopped the spending agenda with Boehner, in your mind, right? People in America are so easily swayed today. Look at the record of the house refusing to stop obama. Paul Ryan was there, not working for stopping them, but working on fantasies to placate Americans who are easily fooled. Look at the record of the house. And remember, they had enough power to stop spending since 2010, and have never stopped anything. The American People are getting bent over a barrel with both parties now. For gods' sake wake up, and try to find the truth.
Rene of Mandeville| 4.26.12 @ 5:16PM
you do not include the defense department in your reduction and therefore you do not make a honest attempt(20% of the budget) and the only other thing that increases in your budget is interest. maybe some of the investors may be willing to take a haircut for the team
need to include the military industrial complex and the medical industrial complex
LeoInTheWoods| 4.27.12 @ 2:10PM
You need to read history a little. That term
military-industrial complex" first came from Eisenhaur, warning us about Democrats in bed with wartime profiteers in PEACE TIME, artificailly keeping pricing in place that was fine when faced with the exigencies of war.
Let us not forget who got the government in bed with medicine, either. Before 1964, health insurance came with part-time jobs because doctors were cheap. They'd come to your house and charge $35.00 for the visit, and let you pay them at your liesure.... today, the government owes them so much that they make more by charging you 10 times what they want and being stiffed on the bill, so they can write it off against the phony "income" from a government accounts receivable that lasts for half the year if you did everything right.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:39PM
Don't forget the nanny state Rene of Paulville. He never seems to mention that as he spreads his propaganda, and promises a new found liberation in the legalization of social degradation. Paul is more liberal than obama in policy.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:40PM
Ron Paul talking points gave you away. Propagandist all of the way Rene. Sorry you fell for it.
Bushiite| 8.12.12 @ 4:13PM
Thanks for doing your propaganda work for the prison industry. It is much more profitable to lock up people rather than rehabilitate them. Also, drug war makes good money for my friends which is the only thing I am in politics for.
WM| 4.26.12 @ 5:35PM
Every time an opportunity to make needed budget cuts comes up, Paul Ryan is there to stop it with yet another status quo plan. You would think if he were serious about stopping the spending and rolling back government, he would work with Jim Jordan or others to his right within the Party. But no, never. It's all about Paul Ryan's personal glory.
Spare us the lecture about bureaucrats, Ryan, because we know you don't mean it.
Leonard Gilbert| 4.27.12 @ 3:56PM
Rather than get your information second and third hand from a bunch of bloggers....maybe you could at least go online and read Ryan's Budget Plan so when you posted an opinion of it you would sould more informed.
I'm not a big fan but it is a plan that should have been considered and though it doesn't go far enough, it is a good and sensible first step. And, remember...government spending cuts now will reduce business revenuesfor all small businesses selling anything to the government and the result will be more recession and unemployment .
IT WAS NEVER THE SPENDING...IT WAS AND IS THE PRICE OF THE GOODS AND SERVICES THAT OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE SPENT ON.
Want things to get better? Quit taxing income...this equates to higher prices at a compounded rate.
Get the tax revenue needed at the cash register...from the final point of purchase by the final consumer of goods and services and from any revenue..individual and corporate that is not re-invested in AMERICA.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:34PM
Exactly, he was in on the Boehner "we can't stop spending" deals. Ryan is no conservative, he is only conservative when he wants to get elected. The American people gave the house enough power to stop the insanity. Boehner and Ryan did nothing. Both sides will kill us in 2012. I wonder how long before the American Peoples rear ends get sore.
Julie| 4.26.12 @ 8:44PM
Mr. Ryan's plan would be a disaster for this country. The GOP is the opposite of empowering individuals. The Ryan plan dis-empowers the American middle class family in favor of further power grabs by the plutocrats who he and the rest of his bureaucratic GOP works for. Let's face it, free markets are not free because the middle class is already paying for the deregulated free markets of Wall Street and the banking industry catastrophe the Reagan legacy and GOP have left us.
Spinward | 4.27.12 @ 5:20AM
Nonsense.
Clearly you didn't read it.
Xasteius| 4.27.12 @ 4:17PM
Do you have a better plan? The Ryan plan is a beginning, not an end. Let's set it up and then improve it.
Alej| 8.11.12 @ 10:19AM
"The Ryan plan is a beginning, not an end."
The EXACT point, which many seem to miss.
gigi0102 | 4.28.12 @ 8:06AM
So I guess the term "plutocrats" was part of the DNC talking points sent out today??
One question: How does Obamacare "empower" the individual? It takes away any choice and control whatsoever that the individual has over his or her own health care -- down to setting out detailed rules for doctors about medical therapies.
That's not "empowerment," Julie. That's more like slavery for doctors and patients. Neither patients or doctors will have any choice about it at all.
And the skyrocketing costs of all this will result in rationing. I can't think of anything further from empowerment.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:30PM
The left and the right are not going to agree Julie. I can clearly see that the people on the right are clueless, and don't care about facts anymore. They are driven by fear of obama, alone. They are so terrified of obama that they don't care how bad romney is. Obama is bad Julie, he is a devout socialist. But you are right in saying that romneys vulture capitalism will only feed off of the poor in America. Ryan is the token conservative to placate the "base" of the right. Nothing more.
Both side are horrific monsters. Sorry Julie.
Bernd| 4.26.12 @ 10:09PM
We need more Representatives, Senators and yes even Presidents who understand the basics of economics, as Rep. Ryan clearly does.
Politicians spend huge amounts of time trying to repeal the laws of economics and subvert the laws of economics and as a result subject us citizens to the unintended negative consequences of their well intentioned but mis-guided policies.
Rep. Ryan has the humility and the vision to understand the proper role of government. Hopefully we will toss out the government first liberals in November and embark upon a path to restore this country to the beacon of prosperity and opportunity that it once was.
Julie| 4.27.12 @ 2:34AM
Rep. Ryan doesn't understand a thing about economics. He understands economics as far as the amount of money put into his campaign coffers from the right wing, ALEC and the Koch brothers give him. That is the extent of his understanding of economics. As for the rest of the country and the middle class, we don't matter. We are in the way and are collateral damage as far as he and the GOP are concerned.
Todd S| 4.27.12 @ 11:55AM
Yeah, its not like he has a degree in Economics or worked as an Economist before right Julie? Keep drinking the Obama Kool Aide but your time is done November 2012 and the adults will be back in charge.
Todd S| 4.27.12 @ 3:24PM
Kool Aid I meant
Leonard Gilbert| 5.2.12 @ 4:07PM
You keep reading those leftie blogs...don't worry about thinking for yourself....just keep passing the slop.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:23PM
Exactly right Julie. Romney has an extensive record of vulture capitalism. Romneys only talent is too feed off of the lower classes suffering. Unfortunately, obama is as destructive almost by taking from the poor to create a massive government. Both Parties will kill us in 2012. And the American People are going to wait and see how it all works out for two, four, six more years. We should have risen now, while we could still save ourselves.
Truth to Power| 8.11.12 @ 2:20PM
"They are all the same" is leftist claptrap. The action will take place in the House and Senate and Romney will sign it. Obama will veto it. The choice is simple really. Unless you are not so clever troll.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 3:46PM
Both parties are collectivist tyrannies. Paul Ryan is being put up as a conservative, but his record of voting for the auto bailouts and the stimuluses, and doing nothing on anything but fantasy budgets will end his chances of being taken seriously.
The fact that you believe every word that anyone says, an entire political side is not just stupid, it is insane, A person like you can be duped into anything. Unfortunately there are billions like you who swallow every line that comes down from our oppressors. I pity you. But your kind will be going away soon one way or the other.
Either we end America, or rise again as a free nation. Either way, your kind of eat everything thrown, will be out of the picture. Wake up. The right is worse than the left with overall lies.
Peter Calvet | 5.3.12 @ 5:51PM
This is not a statement it is a slogan.
matt | 4.26.12 @ 11:11PM
Rep. Ryan's chosen example, health care, undermines his point: when individuals -- whether doctors or patients -- went up against corporate insurers, the individuals got crushed. They needed collective action (like large welfare plans or unions or government) to even the game. That was true long before government made any significant intervention in health care financing, as evidenced by Theodore Roosevelt first promoting national health care.
Rep. Ryan says the "market" can discipline the doctors and insurers - something which may have a theoretical purity to it, but emprically has never occurred (and likely could not occur due to costs of information, inability without expertise to evaluate options, the unpredicability of illnesses, and other market imperfections). Yet Rep. Ryan then derides as "bureaucrats" professionals and experts in the employ of the public, who balance the professionals and experts paid to advance the interests of industry.
Even if well intentioned, the effect of Rep. Ryan's suggested means of "empowering" individuals will strip them of their real power to bargain or protect their interests. His creation of a false dichotomy between empowering "individuals" rather than "bureaucrats" does not advance the public interest.
Leonard Gilbert| 4.27.12 @ 4:01PM
What is needed is for the health care guys to grow some berries and to take control of "THEIR/OUR MONEY". This one action would easily cut 60-65% out of health care costs.
Money trail...Patient...Health Care Guy...Insurance Guy.
Wiley| 4.27.12 @ 12:02AM
Mr. Ryan describes the choice between competing visions for the country perfectly.
One vision champions individual freedom of choice with its concomitant aspects of responsibility and accountability, which not only allow us to receive the full rewards of our good choices, but require us to bear the full effects of our poor ones.
The competing vision is of an increasingly paternalistic government that makes more and more choices for us and absolves us of responsibility by transferring the cost to someone else when, with our remaining freedom, we make poor choices – a government that will always be there to pick us up, dust us off, dry our tears, wipe our noses, and kiss our boo-boos to make them all better.
The choice in the next election is between the vision of a nation of adults or of a nation of children, with the likes of Obama, Reid and Pelosi in the role of parents.
E pluribus unum| 4.27.12 @ 6:21PM
Bravo, bravo! The adults have entered the room and they are Republicans.
Those who have been indoctrinated to believe government is God and there shall be no false gods before it will , like lemmings heading to the sea, vote again for Obama since they think he will give them stuff for free. It's sad.
Peter Calvet | 5.3.12 @ 5:48PM
Nobody is this stupid. That is a vacuous straw man.
Ozella Rinehold| 4.28.12 @ 12:39AM
I think he means "The interconnectedness of these two events cannot be OVERstated"!
PattyMor| 4.28.12 @ 3:43PM
Well Paul, you have a good start which is better than the status quo. But, we have a lot more work to be done. Oh, so many departments and programs which are all unconstitutional to get rid of. And spending your country into oblivion is not compassion; its suicide. Just look at the death thoes going on in Euroland. Coming soon to a state near you.
And tell the economic and constitutional illlerates in the church hierarchy that government is not charity, it is force. I'm forced to pay some woman welfare that has kids from 5 different men. What's compassionate about this? Seems to me more like aiding a abetting immorality and sloth. And a government run by a bunch of communists has, in the end, no room for church; only state. Its a bitter lesson they are learning.
ChuckL| 4.28.12 @ 4:29PM
I believe that the most significant thing that could be done to reduce medical costs and improve availability of practitioners would be to institute a mandatory minimum co-payment on ALL insurance plans.
This would greatly reduce the incidence of going to the doctor for an aspirin.
Wxcynic| 4.30.12 @ 12:35PM
Insurance companies are much of the problem. Until you remove all the parasites making a good living off the system, good luck with changing anything.
Jefe| 5.2.12 @ 1:51PM
Absolutely.
I saw a statistic somewhere that 30% of every health care dollar went into processing the insurance claims. Not on care. Not on facilities. Not on functional staff. On shuffling the paper. I really wish I still had that link, as it was from a nice reputable source.
Since noone with their levers on the hands of power (Mr. Ryan included) has the stones to stand up in front of The People and explain what is *really* wrong with the American health care system, I'm going to do my best here.
The potential treatments and improved outcomes created by advances in medical science in the last 50 years are amazing. We have gained the ability to treat terrible diseases, extend life, and ensure that those who would die will now live. This is all wonderful and great.
But here is the problem. These miracle cures are expensive. A single new drug costs BILLIONS to develop now that we have picked most of the low hanging fruit. New devices take most of a decade to develop and mountains of money (I know). Treatments are long-running and complex. The elderly live for far longer after having serious medical events. When it comes down to it, it would be possible to spend the entire national product on 'more healthcare', if there was noone putting a brake on spending.
Patients won't pull on that brake. They have absolutely no incentive to decline a potentially beneficial treatment, regardless of the cost.
Doctors won't pull on the brake. They have too much risk of being sued if they don't pursue every 'reasonable' option, and the ignorant public and courts are the ones who too often decide what is reasonable.
Right now the group with their hands on the brake are the insurance companies. And they have used their political influence to secure a percentage take of the entire spending pot. The insurance companies have NO reason to slow down spending on an overall level because they get to take essentially straight percentage of profit on every patient. They fight spending on the INDIVIDUAL because each procedure they manage to deny to that particular individual increases that particular profit margin. But as a whole, they WANT the cost of medicine to increase.
Here's the elephant in the room: someone has to ration healthcare. It can't be 'as much as we want, anytime we want it'. Right now the insurance companies are the ones rationing our care. And they are, for the most part, generous with high end care. But they charge an extremely high price for that generous rationing. I would bet that almost half the cost of healthcare in the US is in the insurance system. Obama and company originally proposed that the government take the role of rationer, and offered a 'reasonable' profit to everyone. What we ended up with, because the insurance companies screamed bloody murder, and bribed the crap out of certain legislators, is a case where the government forces everyone to have healthcare, but we leave the same people who have been mismanaging it for years in charge of rationing. Argh.
I would *much* rather see an end to paying for 'normal' healthcare costs out of insurance. Things like yearly checkups, shots - essentially the things that EVERYONE should be doing should be paid for out of pocket. That would bring the REAL market into play - consumers could easily vote with their pocketbooks for the best primary care. Insurance should be used for catastrophic things. The risks that you PROBABLY won't face, but if you did face them, they would be devastating. Right now we are pre-paying for basic healthcare with a huge surcharge for the privledge of having an insurance company deal with basic issues.
I would *love* a system where basic and primary care was paid for out of pocket, at the 'real' rate of healthcare; disasters were covered out of a communal pool that everyone was required to be a part of. That would drive the cost of 'basic' care down significantly while still not letting people fall through the cracks.
Leonard Gilbert| 5.2.12 @ 4:13PM
Jefe...I think you're on the right track but are underestimating the drain from the insurance industry. Remember, like all big companies, thhese guys have multiple "profit Centers" within their organizations. Cost is added and compounded at every level. 65% and up is probably more accurate.
Not bad for a group that provides absolutely no health care.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:15PM
See now you get it. Romney is the installation of capitalist parasites so all of his buddies get rich off of Americans who are powerless to stop any government anymore. Romneys' America would be a marxist nanny state that he was feeding off of to put us into further decline. This nation needs her people to rise against both parties, and tell these guys that we are not going to take it anymore.
Peter Calvet | 5.3.12 @ 5:41PM
For a hard look at Ryan and his priorities for America please read "The Paul Ryan Paradox" http://corporationsarepeople.blogspot.com/
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:11PM
Obama made promises too. I want the record, not the hot air.
Bob From District 9| 5.10.12 @ 5:00PM
"As it usually does, this approach called for more and more power to be ceded to Washington in order to solve this problem—and for the first time ever, the unlimited power to force Americans to buy something. The result was "Obamacare.""
The big lie lives! Obamacare is Romneycare. Originally Obamacare was the republican health care alternative to Hillarycare, developed by the Heritage Foundation.
Before you accuse Obama, first accuse Romney and the Heritage foundation.
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:10PM
There isn't very much truth in the whole of the right this year. I can see that you'd like to have some, but their big fat heads won't have it. America is too far gone today to have truth in any of it anymore.
Thanks for trying thought, I appreciate your effort. And look forward to seeing you if the American People ever grow a spine and reject both parties for freedom.
Bob From District 9| 5.10.12 @ 5:04PM
The greatest argument against anything the right says against Obamacare is, you had 15 years to fix it after Hillarycare failed.
YOU DID NOTHING!
Now all you can say is, do nothing. You have no credibility.
Truth to Power| 8.11.12 @ 7:29AM
Typical fascist. Forward to Greece, Detroit or California. The left has had a chance to prioritize and come up with sustainable ideas and has shown itself unable. They pay off their gay porn money bundlers and green energy bagmen and think that this won't be recognized for the blatant corruption that it is. The game is over bobbie. It is time for you to go back to West Wing reruns.
Bill| 5.12.12 @ 2:33PM
The Great Paul Ryan tosses a "perfect game" again.
Theo Prinse| 8.11.12 @ 5:43AM
Congratulations mr. Ryan with your expected nomination as running mate for Mitt Romney !
In the Netherlands mr. Geert Wilders (Freedom Party) is fighting hard towards Dutch parliamentary elections on september 12 to keep the austerity of South European countries on track until the European (fourth reich) Union and its Euro currency is dead !
It is my conviction that above the inevitable killing of Obama(care) US independence from islam oil is of number one importance ... and 2nd that an Iron Curtain must be deployed around the fundamentalist Muslim world while ending US arms trades to them ... to secure western freedom and values the Dutch started to fight for since the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris on 20.000 Protestant on august 23-24-1572 of whom I am a descendant of one of those 400.000 Hugenots that escaped ...
Until now neo-conservatists like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John McCain etc and Brennan's CIA-FBI puppet(s) Obama-Davis has been very instrumental to have Muslim Brotherhoods infiltrate US government and institutions for their New World Order
Bob K| 8.11.12 @ 10:30AM
OK!
Now, why don't the moderators get rid of the first 50 comments and start a new discussion with Theo Prinse's above?
Anybody who wants to limit the power of the Federal Bureaucracies has my vote!
TeaPartyNow| 8.11.12 @ 12:05PM
I don't believe a word of it. The right is too dishonest to trust. This nation needs to throw both parties out and begin to recover liberty through the American People, not our so called leaders.
Bob K| 8.11.12 @ 4:54PM
Don't get upset! There will be a nice room waiting for you with comfortable padded walls once the American People take over. You will have all kinds of liberty within it's confines!
nathan| 8.12.12 @ 10:27AM
Ryan? Really? His budget was a joke. Come on it was. First it proposed to balance the budget how many years into the future, 10/20? Most of the balancing would take place WAY down the road. Now he knows and everyone knows that one congress cannot bind the actions of the ones that follow. So his proposal wasn't serious to begin with.
Second, not a single defense cut. Not one. Now folks we spend 40 percent or more of the world's defense expenditures more than the next 10 countries combined and that includes Russia and China and all of Europe. And Ryan couldn't find a single item to cut? Not a single base? Not a single program?
No he wasn't serious and if he wasn't serious on the budget, he wasn't serious on anything else.
No my heart is going pitty pat pitty pat here. I'm not going yippee yahoo google over the choice. No I'm not impressed. This is another election where there aren't any really good choices, just this guy is horrible, this guy is less bad, this guy is less bad still.
Bushiite| 8.12.12 @ 4:18PM
Empowering Individuals or Bureaucrats?
Mr. TARP/No Child Left Behind/Sarbanes-Oaxley/Prescription Drugs/Debt-Ceiling Increaser, the answer is obvious - bureaucrats. Hopefully the real conservative kinds like my idol (and Lord and Savior), George W Bush.