Aug 19 2009
Will Liberal Democrats Shove Government Run Health Care Down America’s Throat?
It’s a huge gamble, and could break the back of the Democrat Party for generations, but there are many liberals in DC ready to go to war with Americans over what America will look like in the future. They apparently will be making their stand on government run health care, replete with cost cutting (read death panels doling out treatment to the worthy), raiding medicare/medicaid (watch out seniors, you are the first costs to cut) and raising taxes (more job losses).
The problem for the liberal socialists in the country is you need dire economic conditions to try and force through a complete take over of the world’s most premier health system by government bureaucrats (who can’t even count dollars and budget money, let alone understand medicine). They need to act now, at the worst possible moment economically, to try and dupe enough people into thinking Nirvana is just around the next big left turn. Sadly for the dems it is not working as well as they wish – but more on that in a bit.
So Barack Obama, our young President, has made the key pivotal decision of his short administration. He could have sided with the growing sentiment of the country and jettisoned any hint of a government run option for health care – he even began to go that direction this weekend. But instead he is now siding with the shrieking minority on the left who want to try and ram this down the electorate’s throat, at a time when the electorate is starting to seriously sour on the President and the Dems. And they have serious ‘deer in the headlights’ syndrome:
President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.
…
“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”
“It’s a mystifying thing,” he added. “We’re forgetting why we are in this.”
Emphasis mine. That “don’t understand” comment may be the best at summing up what is happening to our inexperienced President, formally an inexperienced Senator. His team has no concept of the forces in DC and how to control them. If he was not willing to fight to the death for the liberal’s key stink bomb of a requirement he needed to control the process and tone long before now. Of course it is too late and now President Obama is flip flopping almost hourly – which is not emboldening him with Americans who prefer strong leaders.
The news out today is Democrats, realizing compromise will kill their silly prize of government rationed health care, will go it alone. The question is how alone. Because right now the majority of people in this country do not want the liberal take over of health care. They know better than to believe the doe-eyed fantasy crap about “free quality health care for all for not cost”. We have the UK and Canada models to see how badly and deadly governments can run health care.
For example, I posted on a true life victim of government health care death panels. The bureaucrats in the UK decided to cut some more costs, delaying cheap screening tests for a very treatable cancer – if detected. They saved maybe $50 a person and sentenced (or nearly sentenced – not clear if she finally got treatment) a young woman to death. It is the perfect example of the mindless, faceless bureaucrat acting on orders to ‘cut costs’.
In our private run health care system the thinking is completely different. Yes, insurance companies want healthy people paying premiums. Any plan to pool resources (government or private) needs the healthy paying in to cover those in need. But a private company needs to ATTRACT clientele, so they would easily cover a myriad of $50 tests to find problems long before they become critical. They want that young lady healthy and living a long life – paying premiums. And so does everyone insured with her who wants it to be affordable premiums. Â A company does not want to risk losing a single patient to expensive disease.
Companies, which need to show growth and profit, actually have more incentive to do well for their patients so they can live long and bring in new customers. The so called greed factor is actually well balanced by the doctors and their dedication to their Hippocratic oath.
Americans understand this difference. We got the analogy between FedEx/UPS and the Post Office. As a nation we are not as naive and gullible as the liberal left. And we see this in poll after poll. First from NBC. What is important to note is the answer to question 7b, where 24% say Obamacare will make things better, and a whopping 40% say it will make things worse. The President’s job approval is down to 51%, and probably still falling, as is the support for Congress and Congressional Dems.
Another interesting poll out is the latest Battleground poll (chart version – and H/T Radio Vice Online). The Dems are clearly losing the independents, as can be seen with the right track/ wrong track data (page 4), the generic Dem vs Rep congressional vote (of the likely voters GOP has a 5% lead) and the all critical ‘do you prefer divided government (page 8). All of these show independents siding with the GOP. Obama’s job approval is also down to +11% in this poll (53-42%).
Then there is the Gallup Presidential approval poll, with Obama at a new low of +10%. And of course the Rasmussen Poll, which has Obama statistically at 50-50, but when you look at the intensity of strongly approve versus strongly disapproves, then you find Obama’s support is now hovering around -9%. In fact, if they have the numbers, most polls are showing higher intensity for opposition than support.
The government run health care option is  political suicide. The liberals are going to be picking a fight with the World War II generation, the Baby Boomers and their immediate families. In that fight they will not only lose, but will destroy the Democrat Party by making it the party of wild eyed liberals.
One other interesting note about that Battleground Poll. Like the recent Gallup Poll which showed ‘conservatives’ out number liberals in all 50 states, the Battleground had similar results with 59% of the country identifying themselves as conservative to some level.
The point here is that the liberals would expand and grow the current backlash if they try to force government run health care onto the nation at this time. If they go it alone, we will be witnessing some rare and unique in America – a Congress defying the will of the people.
I hate the idea of government run health care, with a passion. I hate that I have no choice but to be on medicare, out of a deeply held belief that having choice is one of my most precious constitutional privileges.
Obama is taking a big gamble in raising taxes to pay for this plan. Many economists think that the economic fall out is not over. Many more banks will close, many more homes will foreclosed on, many more will face unemployment, and few will be reemployed. So we are raising taxes on the most productive to pay for health care, when we may very well need the very same people to help us get out of the present financial mess, and we will have dried up the well.
So I ask, Mr. President, what happens if your rosy scenario of 4th quarter growth bombs? You have been consistently wrong on the economy.
Will the President push through Cap and Trade with a 51% majority as well?
Watch this at “Gatewaypundit” President Bush under funded mandates. The dems are so happy.
Dems Cheered Blocking Social Security Reform in 2006– Now It Could Face Default Within 2 Years
If Obama would have hit health care as his very first priority in January, he could possibly have pushed it through. Instead, he wasted an incredible amount of time and political capital on letting Pelosi and Reid ram through there pork for all, stimulus for none bill. Then he wasted even more politcal capital and time allowing Henry Waxman to ram his pet Cap and Trade bill through the house. Now he is out of time and politcal capital – after this August eruption, there is no way he gets enough Dem Senators to allow this to go through on “reconciliation”, because they know just how dire the consequences of that will be. (Even though Obama doesn’t.)
Podheretz had it right this morning – this “go it alone” claim is a nice bluff, but it’s already too late for it to work. By pushing, Obama is simply going to exacerbate the civil war inside his own party that will tear his administration apart.
One reason not to trust the Government with your life, the government sanctioned the deaths of 1.2 million babies last year for reasons financial and of convenience. So how would a government treat an elderly, nonproductive member of society? I think there is reason for concern. If I were pragmatic, I might believe that government run health care fits very nicely with global warming and population reduction.
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If they get these programs in place it will only take a generation to begin to see draconian changes in health care. Just imagine, after cramming this through, in the forthcoming years they will gradually build on provisions like lego blocks and eventually, I think there will be the equivalent of a death panel. They will pat you on the head and send you home or to Hospice with a morphine pump.
Well the Republicans could always elect a “radical”, brave, gutsy politician who would throw all this garbage out. I have a name!
Don’t forget that one of the main objectives in this is to gain control of the workers—one sixth of the economy is health care related. That voting block will assure socialist majorities for decades and even the dems who lose out in the next election will probably get their beaks wet another way—local death panel czar appointment.
Right out of the Karl Marx playbook “Control the means of production”.
Score one for Sarah Palin:
There are Veterans Administration death health panels for cost reasons:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358233780260914.html#mod=article-outset-box
The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices…”
And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”)
and
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.
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I’m really worried.
OBAMA HAS LIED AND HE KNOWS IT, BUT WANTS HEALTH CARE SO HE CAN PAT HIMSELF ON THE BACK. HE IS A SICKO!
And, now Waxman is going to go after Insurance companies so he can demonize them:
Henry Waxman Goes Ballistic On Health Insurers
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2009/08/19/henry-waxman-goes-ballistic-on-health-insurers/
It is really easy to see what is going on. The Dems are losing the Government Run Health Care debate. They know it. They want to turn the American people against the Insurance Companies so they will turn to the government to fix it.
Remember when the demonized the bank CEOs? Remember when they demonized auto CEOs? Peope turned against these companies and allowed a government takeover. They are trying it with health care now.
I am really worried over what I see.
Short answer to your question AJ- yes, they will. The media and all the Smartset have convinced themselves that the townhalls are fabricated; and the irrational ranting and lack of self control of many of our proponents have played right into the “nutjob” smear. Of course, Dems are deluded about this and committing the most amazing political suicide we will have seen in our lifetimes–they’ll be writing books about it for 50 years! The American people do not want Canadian style healthcare, but they’re going to get it and toothpaste will already be out of the tube, in my opinion.
America has really done a number on itself by electing this arrogant, out-of-touch bunch. The good American people letting the media convince them that 4.5% unemployment, low taxes, and as bad as Bush’s spending was, low deficits by today’s standards was just HORRIBLE –that is the most pathetic snookering I’ve seen in my lifetime.
It is fun to watch the double flip-flop and then the nothings changed denial from the O’Bumbler gang. Keystone cops anyone?
The Blue Dogs must have given some bad news last week so they come out on Sunday and dumped the public option. But that gets them 120 angry progressive members saying they won’t vote for a bill without the public option.
Between a rock and a hard place. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
I don’t think cap and trade will get out of the Senate and I am not sure health care bill will either.
I do think that Obama might be able to come up with some face saving compromise, but who knows?
That 51 vote thing, reconciliation, is not so easy to pull off. It is very hard to do and the repercussions could lead to the Republicans virtually shutting down the Senate.
Funny how one of the Democrats said that he refuses to vote for the Obamacare in name unless it still includes the public option.
Yes, if Obama decides to agree to a watered down Obamacare, that is a bill by name only as both versions (watered down and the public option) do not address the issues at all.
Maybe the Democrats have recruited enough dead and non-existent voters to win elections no matter what.
With “mail in” and “early” voting, Acorn can register the same person under several different names. We saw many districts with more voters registered than eligible voters and the number of dead people voting in some districts was greater than the margin of victory in some cases (like Franken, for example).
Plus there is the “emergency ballot reserve” where the Democrats always seem to come up with “found” ballots in close elections that were for some reason in the trunk of someone’s car or something.
It is pretty sickening. The Democrats are simply despicable cheaters.
hmm – sorry that WSJ link to the Trader Joe’s statement no longer is working.
oh, here it is. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html#articleTabs_comments
and … what we need is a Medical Joe’s