Obama’s Health Care Speech in Plain English

Translation: I, Barack Obama, ignoring thousands of years of failed price-control schemes, will impose price controls on health insurance. I will force insurers to sell a $50k policies for $10k. What could go wrong?

True. And your employer mandate would kill hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs that would never come back.

Translation: I will never let seniors control their own health care dollars. I will never give up Washington’s control over your health care decisions. Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha!

Translation: There are too many lobbyists counting on me to succeed: drug-industry lobbyists, health-insurance lobbyists, physician-cartel lobbyists, large-employer lobbyists, hospital lobbyists….

Translation: I’m going to tax the hell out of you, but I don’t want you to notice how much I’m going to tax you. So I’m going to tax employers and insurance companies, and they’re going to pass the taxes on to you. Most of the taxes won’t even show up in the government’s budget. It’s all very clever. No, seriously – just ask my economic advisor Larry Summers.

Translation: I may have savaged your ideas in the past, called them irresponsible…risky…dangerous…whatever. But that wasn’t about principle; I just wanted to become president. Now that I’m president, I need a win. So you’ll help me, won’t you? Hey, where’s Hillary

One thing the hate-evil-insurance people don't understand is that insurance is based on individual risk. A young, healthy person is much less likely to need expensive care than an old, sick person. If we mandate that everyone must be charged the same, regardless of health or preexisting conditions, then all of us who are relatively healthy will pay a lot more. It's as simple as that.

I like the humanitarian principle of universal coverage without regard to risk, but let's be straight about the consequences. It's going to be horribly expensive, it's going to ration care, and it's not going to be efficient. It's the gub'mint.

Having It All [Sally Pipes]

Last night, President Obama gave a passionate 48-minute address to Congress and the nation laying out his views on health-care reform. It was his 29th speech on the topic. He made the case for a government takeover of health care — even while promising that nothing will change for the 85 percent of Americans who have health insurance and like it. He emphasized that the reforms he is suggesting will not increase the deficit.

President Obama’s outline is indeed attractive: care for all, lower costs for most, and no limits or exclusions from either health-insurance companies or government bureaucrats. His proposals may have impressed TV viewers and members of Congress, and it should be noted that his delivery was excellent. But when you consider the facts, Obama’s proposals seem much less impressive.

Many of his “factual” claims are highly dubious. Some of these dubious assertions — for example, that preventive care will save money, that our health-care system hurts our international competitiveness, and that the uninsured shift significant costs to the insured — have been debunked by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Others are simply absurd — for example, Obama’s insistence that government is more efficient at administration than the private sector. If that is the case, why does the president say that the savings to help cover the cost of his plan ($900 billion over ten years) would come from eliminating fraud and abuse in two government programs, Medicare and Medicaid? If government is so efficient, why are fraud and abuse still rampant in these programs?

Then there is the conflation of health insurance and health care. Obama ignores the fact that the United States has a law, EMTALA, that offers a real safety net and provides universal health care, as opposed to universal insurance, for everyone. The real problem is that to put the president’s plan in place will require major coercion and tax increases on all Americans (not just the wealthy). This is not what Obama promised during the 2008 campaign.

The real issue is that the president believes government is more efficient than the private sector in managing all aspects of our lives — including offering efficient, inexpensive universal health coverage. If his program becomes law, we will all end up receiving our health care through government. The late Ted Kennedy’s vision of “Medicare for All” will be realized. (In his speech last night, Obama quoted from a letter he had received from the late senator prior to his death, in which Kennedy talked about the moral imperative of health-care reform.) In practice, that will mean rationed care and long waiting lists.

http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/

— Sally C. Pipes is president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. She is the author of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide.

it’s not going to be efficient. It’s the gub’mint”

I did some math on the Cash for Clunkers deals.

IF the cars that were traded in got 15 MPG average and the cars that were bought got 22 mpg average, here is my calc:

12,000 miles a year average per car.

12,000 miles at 15 mpg= 800 gallons of gas.
12,000 miles at 22 mpg= 546 gallons of gas.

Difference == c54 gallons of gas saved per year per car.

700,000 cars were sold (altho not all the paperworks is processed yet).

700,000 cars x 254 gallons==177,800,000 gallons saved per year. (That is about 1/4 of a day’s usage in the USA per another poster).

177,800,000 gallons at a price of $3 per gallon= $533,400,000 saved by the new car owners in a year.

This program cost $3 billion —$3,000,000,000 — of taxpayer money, and I don’t think that includes the salaries and costs of processing the very complicated forms at the government end. The dealers already went nuts trying to process the forms.

If I divide $3,000,000,000 by $533,400,000, the program COST 5.63 TIMES the savings of fuel.

Even if all these cars are driven 5.63 years to even out the money, NObama will be long out of office by then, and I haven’t included the interest the taxpayers will pay on the $3 billion.

NOW they want to control health care?

LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS, folks. !!!

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