Could it be that the dire and desperate need for health care reform is overblown? Maybe the epic number of people suffering with no health care thanks to our badly broken system is exaggerated? Is it possible that health care doesn’t need to be wrested from private sector operation and made over top to bottom at cost of trillions by The Amazing Ozbama and his Czars?
It’s pretty daring to question the very premise required to stampede-sell the destruction of the private insurance industry and takeover of health care. I’ve heard Limbaugh do it. Fred Thompson, a little. A few in the media. For the most part, though, it seems that urgent need for “health care reform” – whatever that actually means – is a fact unquestioned by the media, like the article of faith anointing the president as “The Greatest Communicator Ever” (despite the evidence to the contrary: his total dependence on scripted words on teleprompters; his ever increasing disasters when off-prompter).Or the ‘fact’ that Sarah Palin is stupid and crazy, despite evidence of considerable courage, competence and achievement as Governor.
Well, please, let’s question this premise.
The number of uninsured used by the Dems is definitely false . The number that will be left uninsured post-Obamacare is open to question. It may be as many as 2/3rds, meaning the wildly expensive, radical reformation of American health care may still fail to solve the supposed greatest crisis or benefit the population most deprived.
Obama’s latest pitch is that his health care takeover will rescue small business from the skyrocketing costs of providing health insurance to employees and resolve the unjust cost differential between big corporations (which get better rates because of the larger numbers of people they must cover) and small businesses. He doesn’t mention the new mandates and costs and punitive taxes aimed directly at those same small businesses.
There is consensus that aspects of both our health insurance industry and our health care industry need improvement. I know this first-hand; some years back, moving from Arizona to Ohio, I was shocked to discover that Blue Cross isn’t Blue Cross, and my years of paying fat premiums to Blue Cross of Arizona counted for zip with Blue Cross of Ohio. Now, having diabetes, I was refused coverage.
It seems like your policy ought to move seamlessly across state lines. It should be owned by you – employers shouldn’t be involved at all. And once covered, you shouldn’t be dropped for finally needing the thing you’ve been paying for. People who genuinely cannot get or afford coverage need a reliable safety net. It can probably be re-woven from federal and state programs already in existence.
But this and a few other significant problems do not warrant complete destruction of the entire system and its replacement with a hastily and poorly conceived trillion-dollar experiment in socialism. A flat tire and a full ashtray doesn’t warrant shoving an otherwise perfectly functional auto off a cliff, to be replaced with an $80,000 eight-wheeled, one-door model that runs on experimental chicken dung and orange peel fuel and has its ignition switch remotely controlled by a government bureaucrat.
There’s no legitimate, fact-based consensus on the dire, desperate, and urgent need for monstrous change. It’s been made up. Just like Ozbama’s contention we need not drill for any more oil if people would just properly inflate their tires. This administration is very, very big on facts not in evidence.
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