THE OVAL OFFICE WATCH: FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS

Posted By on March 5th, 2010

Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Friday, March 5

Oval Office Watch

Alice in health care: Part I
Thomas Sowell, Washington Examiner.com
 
Most discussions of health care are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
 
What is the biggest complaint about the current medical care situation? “It costs too much.” Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs.
 
One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians’ answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government.
 
Back when the “single payer” was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing.
 
Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money. Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.
 
In country after country, the original estimates of government medical care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost. Read article.
 
Alice in Health Care: Part II
Thomas Sowell, PatriotPost.us
 
What is most like Alice in Wonderland is discussing medical care reform in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.
 
Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out– medically and financially– whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.
 
We are repeatedly being told that we need to have a government-controlled medical care system, because other countries have it– as if our policies on something as serious as medical care should be based on the principle of monkey see, monkey do.
 
By all means look at other countries, but not just to see what to imitate. See how it actually turns out. Yet there seems to be an amazing lack of interest in examining what government-controlled medical care produces.
 
While our so-called health care “summit” last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposés of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country’s National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.
 
Such scandals are an old story under the National Health Service in Britain, one repeatedly producing fresh scandals that their newspapers carry, but ours ignore. Read article.
 
For Obama and Pelosi, health care is ego trip
Byron York.Washington Examiner.com
 
In the entire health care debate, among all the competing lawmakers, politicians, experts and pundits, there’s just one person who has seen things from both sides of the political aisle. That is Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who was elected as a Democrat in 2008 and was part of the House Democratic caucus until last Dec. 22, when he switched sides to become a Republican. (Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter doesn’t count, because he switched parties in April 2009, before the current health care debate got underway.)
 
Given Griffith’s unique perspective — he is also a doctor, with 30 years’ experience as an oncologist — perhaps he has some insight into why the White House and his former Democratic allies in Congress continue to press forward on a national health care bill despite widespread public opposition.
 
It’s gotten personal, Griffith says. “You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It’s no longer about health care reform. It’s all about ego now. The president’s ego. Nancy Pelosi’s ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what’s good for the American people.”
 
Conflicts driven by personal feelings can lead to self-destructive outcomes. Ask Griffith whether Speaker Pelosi, his old leader, would accept losing Democratic control of the House as the price for passing the health care bill, and he answers quickly. “Oh yeah. This is a trophy for the speaker, it’s a trophy for several committee chairs, and it’s a trophy for the president.” It does not seem to matter that if Democrats lose the House, the speaker will no longer be speaker, the chairmen will no longer be chairmen, and the president will be significantly weakened. Read article.
 
Madame Speaker, Meet Reality
Jennifer Rubin, Commentary magazine.com
 
Politico’s headline blares: “Nancy Pelosi’s Brutal Reality Check.” A big chunk of that reality is the absence in the House of votes necessary to pass ObamaCare:
 
Pelosi and other top House Democrats say publicly that they have the votes to push through a comprehensive package, but privately, they know they don’t. Pelosi must balance the diverging interests of her own members while simultaneously satisfying Senate Democrats and working with President Barack Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former House colleague with whom she has an uneasy relationship.
 
Oops. And then there are the upcoming elections, the retirements, the corruption scandals, and her own unpopularity. But she assures us that the Democrats will keep their majority. Listen, what do you expect her to say? No use turning a rout into a stampede. But it does suggest that many of the pro-Obama spinners in the media are being taken for a ride. They seem to take seriously the notion that she’s got this all lined up and that reconciliation is the magic potion for passing ObamaCare.
 
It isn’t clear how much in touch with reality Pelosi is. Does she buy her own spin or is she trying to make the best out of a bad situation? Maybe she is simply trying to keep her finger in the dike, preventing the dam from bursting and the liberal base from going berserk and thereby further demoralizing her caucus. But if she has some sense of her own political peril and of the near-moribund state of ObamaCare, it would be a wonder why she is not, at least quietly, trying to come up with Plan B. She’s decried incrementalism, as Obama has. But that’s her only hope if, in fact, the votes for a grandiose health-care scheme just aren’t there.
 
Perhaps what is required here from Pelosi is not an introduction to reality but a collision — a vote that fails or a whip count that shows she is over 15 or 20 votes shy of a majority. If that moment comes, then perhaps we will see whether Pelosi has the skill and smarts to find a way to save her own speakership, the Democratic majority, and, in a meaningful way, Obama’s presidency. Read article.
 
Obamacare’s Curse
AJ Strata, Strata-Sphere.com
 
There are days when it seems even fate or God is sending a message to the liberals in DC to just give up on their wrongheaded approach of government run and rationed health care. Just as Al Gore’s global warming conferences seem to be regularly plagued by blizzards, the Obamacare major events always seem to come in tandem with horrible breaking news about England’s or Canada’s disastrous government rationed health care programs.
 
Reminds me of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financial disasters, where none of the Democrat legislators or Democrat-crony managers who legalized and then ran up the collection of bad loans in the name of liberal social engineering. They too never paid for the financial devastation they caused as they lined their pockets with the money of American home owners. These people were trusted to be responsible and protect the American People’s trust.
 
The universe is sending a message, people need to listen. We don’t want the UK Health Care disaster in place of what we have now. And don’t pretend to pick on marginal details. This crime against humanity was caused by cost cutting. Just another version of controlling insurance premiums. Read article.
 
The Republican Second Coming
Cal Thomas, Townhall.com
 
When Republicans regain a majority in the House and Senate — either this fall, as seems increasingly likely, or in the election following — they must learn from their previous mistakes when they last held power. In addition to focusing on overturning whatever health insurance “reform” proposal this Congress eventually passes (by a veto override, or a lawsuit challenging the measure’s constitutionality), a Republican congressional majority must help large numbers of the public unlearn the factual errors they have been taught to accept.
 
From “climate change,” to the notion that government is a guarantor through “entitlement” programs of a minimal outcome in life, to the forgotten idea given to us by the Founders that Liberty is the most precious gift there is, the country needs a history lesson based on truth, experience and provable facts.
 
One of the things I admire about Glenn Beck’s program on Fox is his chalkboard. Agree with him, or not, Beck’s appeal is largely due to his teaching role. Everyone has had the experience of sitting in a classroom while a teacher writes things on the board, things considered important enough to learn. So much of what passes for facts today are like what another generation called “old wives’ tales.” They were assumed by many to be true, though few sought information that would have disproved them. Worse, few asked questions that would have unraveled the falsehoods. Read article.
 
A Republican Surprise
Ross Douthat, NY Times.com
 
Set a group of plugged-in conservatives to talking presidential politics, and you’ll get the same complaints about the 2012 field.
 
Mitt Romney? He couldn’t make the voters like him last time … Sarah Palin? She’d lose 47 states … Mike Huckabee? Better as a talk-show host … Tim Pawlenty, Jim DeMint, Bobby Jindal, David Petraeus? Too blah, too extreme, too green, and stop dreaming …
 
But murmur the name Mitch Daniels, and everyone perks up a bit. Would he win? Maybe not. But he’d be the best president of any of them …
 
“I’ve never seen a president of the United States when I look in the mirror,” Daniels remarked last week, after officially inching the door ajar for 2012. You can’t blame him: At 5’7”, the Indiana governor wouldn’t be the tallest man to occupy the White House, and he’d be the baldest president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. If Romney looks like central casting’s idea of a chief executive, Daniels resembles the character actor who plays the director of the Office of Management and Budget — a title that he held, as it happens, during George W. Bush’s first term.
 
Since then, though, he’s become America’s best governor. In a just world, Daniels’s record would make him the Tea Party movement’s favorite politician. Read article.
 
We Are Doomed – Again!
John Dietrich, American Thinker.com
 
There are several problems with apocalyptic scenarios. For one, a genuine and avoidable crisis may be ignored due to crisis fatigue. Residents repeatedly told to evacuate because of oncoming hurricanes may become complacent in the face of a serious hurricane. Pathological science diminishes faith in genuine science. The world is full of swamis, faith healers, snake oil salesmen, and mountebanks. There are now thousands of professionals whose reputations are invested in maintaining the global warming hoax. Perhaps the most reprehensible characteristic of apocalypse-mongers is that they target children. According to Commentary magazine, thermonuclear education consituted “the most serious abuse of children.”
 
The threat of global warming will eventually recede. The need for an apocalyptic vision, however, will not. The next threat will contain many of the characteristics of the global warming threat. It will predict the end of the world. It will be based on “scientific facts.” It will require massive counseling for the psychological distress it will cause. It will require the creation of a massive bureaucracy. And it will require the transfer of massive amounts of money to the hypothesized victims of the future crisis. Read article.
 
The Exceptionalism Backlash
Rich Lowry, JWR.com
 
President Barack Obama learned from Bill Clinton’s mistakes in 1993-94. He ran, relative to Clinton, a buttoned-up transition. He sought to avoid Clinton’s tactical miscues on health care. And he steered clear of cultural land mines.
 
The backlash against Democrats in 1994 was famously attributed to “gays, guns and G0d.” Obama has mostly avoided stoking opposition around that hot-button triad, but faces a backlash almost indistinguishable in feel and intensity. Why?
 
Big government became a cultural issue. The level of spending, the bailouts and the intervention in the economy contemplated in health-care reform and cap-and-trade created the fear that something elemental was changing in the country — quickly, irrevocably, without notice. 
 
Obama has run up against the country’s cultural conservatism as surely as Clinton did. But Obama is encountering its fiscal expression, the sense that America has always been defined by a more stringently limited government than other advanced countries. It’s an “American exceptionalism” backlash. Read article.
Categorized under: ANTI-SEMITISM.
Tagged with: no tags.

Comments are closed.