Writing in the WSJ, John Fund says that the health care reform steamroller is being driven by job security reasons.
But not for the 10% of Americans currently out of work – for 59 senators who want to keep working:
But buried in the surveys is an explanation for the Democratic obsession to pass the bill: An overwhelming 76% of Democrats back it. “They believe the liberal base expects them to deliver and will punish them if they don’t,” says Democratic pollster Doug Schoen, who worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
That fear is backed up by a new poll taken for the Daily Kos, the left-wing Web site: 81% of self-described Republicans say they are certain or likely to vote in 2010 compared to 65% of independent voters and only 56% of Democrats. “Democrats have simply not been given enough of a reason to come out and vote yet,” writes liberal blogger David Dayen. “The left is waiting for that long-promised ‘change’ they can believe in.”
Mr. Reid’s own re-election troubles—he trails his two most likely GOP opponents by between six and 10 points—may be influencing his behavior. He needs his liberal base to turn out for him to have a chance to win.
The bill’s merits aside, it would almost be worth smothering just to have seen the last of Harry Reid.
Speaking of job security, it’s interesting to see what happens when a senator is freed from the constraints of party membership. In Joe Lieberman’s case, it has freed him to vote his conscience.
What a novel notion.
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This morning I had one of those alternate universe experiences, just after waking up. I was reading something on Andrew Bolt’s site about climate change, while running some health care reform sub-routines in the background when everything subtly slid. Governments national and international are on the brink of taking resources from those who produce it in order to pass them on to those who haven’t, all in the name of “fairness.” On the way, those resources will be subjected to the kind of pass-through taxes that support a burgeoning bureaucracy while concurrently expanding the reach and breadth of governmental power over our individual lives in often fundamental ways. When health care becomes less a private contract than a government dispensation, our relationship to government will have changed from an employer/employee basis – with us as the employers – to one of power holder/supplicant, with us in the latter role.
When US production and consumption – the engine that fires the world market – is taxed to provide resources to the unelected grandees of the United Nations, which they then turn around and dribble around in some frankly anti-democratic regimes we are in effect subsidizing a radical wealth redistribution scheme that effects a kind of infantilizing global welfare state.
Could this really be just another example in the human history’s miserable record of power arrogating unto itself more power on the backs of a dependent and servile working class?
The world slid back again from that alluringly conspiratorial alternate reality. No, I don’t think so. Not yet. I don’t really believe that this is anything more than the creeping tyranny of the well-intentioned.
But I am watching. Very carefully.
Lex,
There is a not insignificant fraction of this country for which that is the conscious goal. Most who support the policies that result in this atrocity are doing so without realizing what the end result will be.
For us, it is the Chicago Way.
The kleptocrats in the UN definitely have it as a conscious goal, and it is being codified into treaty wording in Copenhagen.
The only bright spot on the horizon is that, as I mentioned here elsewhere, looks like the Aussies have stared into the abyss, didn’t like what they saw, and stepped back from the rim–even if only temporarily. So there’s hope yet.
Further thoughts: “What we got here” (h/t Strother Martin) is a clear violation of one of Sir Winston’s maxims: “Look before you leap–and don’t leap if you can find a ladder.”
Did not remember that WC maxim, but I sure like it!
Ron, it came from a letter he wrote to his Mother in which he is explaining his political philosophy. May be found in a book that is a compilation of all Churchill’s letters to his Mother (NOT the book of letters to his wife Clementine), who doted on him and to whom he was in turn supremely devoted. (Unfortunately I don’t own it, can’t remember the title and can’t find it on Amazon–although Amazon refers to the letters to his Mother constantly in their descriptive allusions.}
Thanks Virgil. I’ve read the book of his letters to his wife, though have not seen one on letters to his mother.
Bit of an unusual relationship between WC and his Mother (and his Father come to think of it). Like you, I’ve read some letters between WC and his Mother, especially those during his school years and his initial time in India and Africa.
Lex,why should this surprise you?
I’ve maintained for fifteen years that the whole purpose of government health care was to force people to pay bribes to get treatment.
Keeping the Party in power…forever.
Its going to pass no matter how many of them know its a flawed bill that will not reduce costs of health care and will result in an overall degradation of care in this country while leading to budget deficits that will make the coming Social Security and Medicare crisis’ seem trivial in comparison.
Some legacy. One can only hope that the proper amount of shame gets heaped on their names in the future to serve as a warning to future congresses – if by then we even have one.
Just clicked on cable and “Evita” was playing with Madonna and it hit me: Obamma is our new Peron complete with his black Evita come to save us via our good health–all for “the people.” Anything, EVERYTHING for the people–even if they have to be saved from themselves. “All you rich people out for volleyball practice!”
Ship of Fools indeed…..
“There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other. The turbulent manuevers of factions could tie the hands and destroy the influence of every honest man with a desire to serve the public good. How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the properity of the parts!”
- John Adams when he is Vice President, presiding over the senate.
Our government could well use a dose of Adams’s pragmatism.
…”the creeping tyranny of the well-intentioned.” Great line!
George V.
And if this wealth redistribution scheme does get passed, it will kill the incentive for producers to produce.
“John Galt” may become even more popular as boys’ names than “Mohammed.” At least for a while.
This health care scheme, and the nefarious other schemes to socialize our country must be stopped.
Say, how did that Peronista give away program turn out anyway? Destroyed their economy for a couple of decades as I recall.
The scary thing is that I think you’re an optimist. I wish I were.
It would be great to see the last of Harry Reid but I felt the same way about Daschle. They can always come up with someone who is just as bad or worse. We must get the Dems out of power for anything good to happen.
A massive electronic run on the banks at just the right time, Cap’n Trade, Copenhagen, the massive intertwined associations with so many socialist groups, and, to a lesser degree, health care “reform”…all converging at this single point in time ?
Sorry, as a cynical 58 year old with 30 years dealing with airplane gremlins, I am hard pressed to believe in coincidences.
The entire picture is developing into the “Perfect Storm”: Obamacare, Copenhagen (UN World Redistribution) and Cap & Tax (Trade)!
It’s hard to imagine that all of this came up at the same time by coincidence… hmmmm. It truly is scary to think about the worst of all possible ramifications. Could it happen to us? Can we stop it?
We can put the brakes on in 2010 with the mid-term elections!
Joe Lieberman, right… Just so happens he found his conscience was headquarted in Hartford, along with most of the big insurance companies, many of whom appear to contribute handily to his re-election campaign, coincidentally.
I find it somewhat confusing when someone who has been on government health care and will continue to be on government health care, pretty much forever (it is called Tri-Care for life), criticizes government health care for everyone else. Is it really that bad?
My health care while on active duty and while retired was a benefit of service, a part of my compensation package. It seemed to get better the more senior I was, but we lost a child along the way in a way that was probably preventable while I was a lieutenant. I was healthy for most of my 26 years, and was more or less well-cared for the one time I broke a knee in a motorcycle accident, although the hearniated fascia scar I maintain on my left shin does not meet civilian quality of service standards.
So I’d call it a bit of a mixed bag.
The public option policy has been explicitly endorsed as a way to single-payer health care by the likes of Barney Frank, among others. The federal government’s bottomless pockets – spending your money – will compete market providers out of business. They claim that by doing so they will be able to provide health care to some 20 or 30 million people who don’t currently have it and reduce costs without rationing.
So, adding to demand to a fixed supply will cost less for the first. Time. Ever. Without a diminished quality of care, choice or innovation.
If you believe all that, I’ve got a lovely bridge you could buy.
Thank You Lex.
I had some things done for me, at no cost!, during boot camp, that a civilian dentist would not have done. I was better for it, though the treatment was suboptimal. When I got out and went to my civilian dentist, he shook his head.
Spent about three months at Fitzsimmons near Denver (auto accident, not extremely serious), and now have integrated weather change indicators. That was during the winding down of our SEA adventure, and I had the honor of meeting a lot of guys that made serious sacrifices over there. I still think about some of those guys( I think of them as boys, though they were the same age as me then), in grateful memory, and I know that sharing a ward with them made me a better person, for all of my faults.
I rode today in the annual Marine Corp “Toys for Tots” motorcycle benefit, and attended the monthly (since 1987) POW/MIA remberance in Raleigh, so please pardon my slight melancholy.
Lieberman doesn’t have gov’t health care, he has taxpayer PAYED FOR health care.
Many people clamored for congress to poney up and take the health care that they want us to have.
What I want is for us to have the same health care options as CONGRESS!
How our gov’t can dictate what health care we have, regardless of what it is, is beyond me….
Paul,
- The government does not pay for service members’ health care, the taxpayers do — to the tune of more than $20,000 per year per per service member. I’m waiting for somebody to acknowledge that there will be a monumental net increase in costs if we pursue taxpayer-funded healthcare.
- This evening when I go to dinner I will be given a choice of two entrees. The portions will be established by the government, for my health. The menu composition is established by the government, for my health. If I ask for a larger portion (or seconds) I will be refused, for my health. If I fail to exercise at least three times a week (regardless of my ability to perform my job) I can be fired and lose my free health care. If my weight-to-height ratio exceeds certain limits or my body mass index climbs too high (regardless of my ability to perform my job) I can be fired and lose my free health care. If this is the vision of health care that the advocates of a public option entertain, I’d like them to be intellectually honest about it.
I’m quite happy to live with these restrictions on my liberty in exchange for free health care because I freely choose to serve. Are the rest of the American people prepared to accept those restrictions on their liberty as a cost of being a citizen? We live in the first civilization in history (to my knowledge) where the “impoverished” suffer from an epideic of obesity. Will those impoverished rent-seekers accept the responsibilities that come with my benefit of taxpayer funded health care? Will we tell recipients of taxpayer funded health care that they are prohibited from supersizing (as we do for military members)? Will we prevent recipients of taxpayer funded health care from suing for medical malpractice (as we prevent military members)? Will we mandate that all recipients of taxpayer funded healthcare exercise regularly and pass a physical fitness test a couple times a year? I doubt we will. But either way, I don’t want to live in a state where such impositions on liberty are accepted by the masses in exchange for the healthcare equivalent of government cheese. Nor do I want to live in a state where the costs of failing to impose those restrictions on the rent-seekers are borne by my children or their children. That is not the country that I choose to defend, and these are a few of the reasons why I, as a recipient of government healthcare, so not advocate its universality.
Paul,
Have you put your life on the line for this country?
I doubt it.
We had over ten years of military medicine for this family. We almost lost the first boy at birth. When we depended on pure gov’t medicine- it was qualitatively sketchy- we were fortunate that the last two sons were born at Cape Fear Valley in Fayetteville, NC as we obtained non-availablity at Womack for OB_GYN for Lipstick 6 and since the boys were born off post we also got non-availablity for Pediatric care. BIG difference in the quality of care. I was lucky that I never suffered significant injury, especially during 5 years on airborne status although FT Bragg had excellent orthopedic surgeons there for obvious reasons. Since leaving active duty I have been using health care thru the employer. Don’t miss the gov’t provided. Lowest common denominator quality in my opinion. I have had to have a bit of othopedic work from the wear and tear of the first 10 years of my Army career recently and I got to pick my surgeons from the practices in the area. Go back to the lowest common denominator. NFW.
One of Obama’s own Party members, Senator Jim Webb (D), Virginia, is now counselling TheOneder against making any bodacious commitments while in Copenhagen. As Senator Webb points out, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/skeptics-press-obama-on-climate-summit/?feat=home_headlines , all treaties must be ratified by the Senate and as a matter of fact, it may be better if the Oneder not go to Copenhagen at all. You know, for the seasonal gift giving that we cannot afford this year.
Thought y’all may be interested in this reaction as a result of Climategate. (Still waiting to hear of it on the Main Stream Media.)
Paul- One of the inducements to recruit people into the military was the PROMISE of FREE healthcare for life for them and their family, if they remained until retirement.
The government has failed to keep that promise by instituting all sorts of cost saving measures- deductibles, co-pays and advice to get CHAMPUS supplemental insurance (which sure ain’t free!) At age 65 you are FORCED to sign up for MEDICARE, which has (for now anyway) a monthly charge of about $100 per retiree plus more for their spouse. Only recently did Tricare for Life (TFL) become secondary payer to Medicare, at least eliminating the need to continue supplemental insurance. SO it is costing me at least $2400 per year for my “free healthcare” plus all I have paid (and continue to pay) in Medicare taxes.
Just remember the promises to military members made AND BROKEN when you eagerly anticipate all that “free” medical care Obama will give you. There will be fewer doctors, fewer hospitals, less innovation in medicines and devices as it is implemented. We have already seen the closing of many urban hospitals which could no longer afford to provide charity care or live on the paltry reimbursement from Medicaid (freebies for the poor, not the same as Medicare which working people have paid into). Many doctors are starting to refuse to take new Medicare patients.
So, instead of begrudging military retirees their rationed healthcare, you better look closely at how YOUR healthcare will be handled. Quality and availability will go down, and your actual payment via taxes, wage cuts or fees will go up, and your present plans will be eliminated. No matter what lies President Obama tells you. He lies! Pelosi lies! Reid Lies! and most of Congress lies!
As Machiavelli once noted “Those who seek to deceive shall always find those willing to be deceived.” Looks Obama, Reid and Pelosi they found you.
I have always suspected that the ’60’s generation, who is now running things, were not listening when thier college instructors told them something. They were told, ” You are the best educated generation this world has ever seen “, but they heard, ‘ Yoau are the smartest generation this world has ever seen “. Only in this way can I make sense of thier arrogance.
Lex, this bridge you have for sale, would it be big enough that I could put a palm tree on each bridge wing?
Alright Lex, fair enough. I only spent eight years in the service, but my experience was similar, a few trips to sick call, two trips to the ER for stitches, no experience with dependent health care.
My problem is this, I am self employed and pay for my own health insurance. Family coverage is now $1,192.00 per month and every year it goes up double, sometimes triple the inflation rate. That is for a PPO, there are other “high deductible” plans which shift the costs around and look better, but cost the same. And I am lucky, I can afford it, there are many who cannot and they are SOL.
I am not that naive, the thing that is floating around congress right now is a travesty and does nothing to address the real issues; rising administrative costs (everything not directly paid to buy new equipment or compensate a doctor or nurse).
Sometimes something has to be really broken before it can be fixed.
About that bridge, no thanks, I heard it is old, decrepit and has been passed around quite a bit.
YABIT, Paul, there are still all those lots in the Fla Everglades and Louisiana Bayous for sale! I’m holding options on several just for YOU! You’ll LOVE ‘em–and make a mint on the resale! Trust me.
Gators and Cottonmouths optional?
The central supply/demand argument as to why this monstrosity will not reduce costs even as it seeks to serve millions more is one I’m still waiting for the loyal opposition to make. Seeing how I’ve yet to hear it I must conclude that they are, in fact, collectively as stupid as they look, act, and feel to be. Not than anyone is actually interested in a rational debate of the facts nor to actually work together to address the fundamental problems.
We’ve got the best government money can buy suffering from the dangers the Founding Fathers warned about in their mistrust of political parties as pointed out above.
Will the system self-correct this time or will the accumulated damage have reached a tipping point leading to our demise? Just to make sure we’ve got Cap “N Trade and UN Climate Treaties all queued up as if enough coffin nails weren’t being pounded already.
Paul,
I understand that most people agree with you that “something is broken” (or at least far from optimal) but in any effort at health-care reform, it seems “first do no harm” should be our mantra. And the big problem of course, is that when it comes to health-care reform we want contradictory things – “affordability” (which seems to mean we pay little to nothing for health-care), universal access, little to no bureaucracy (which only increased government oversight will bring?), high quality of personnel, technology and facilities, innovation, the ability to apply crippling financial sanctions when efforts at innovation fail (and apparently a cap on profits for those innovations, no matter how incredible), etc. We have seen tremendous qualitative increases in medical care technology (higher survival rates for cancer, AIDS, etc.), and yet a decline in some of the most fundamental (and ridiculously low-tech) aspects of health care such as hygiene (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/archive/2007/October/page_2/ and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231197/70-deaths-Basildon-University-Hospital–Patients-neglected-nurses-filthy-blood-spattered-casualty-unit-says-report.html shows that this is a long-standing problem). Part of the problem of developing any solution, is to first decide on what we want/what most urgently needs reform.
Furthermore, the conversation has to be remotely honest. In the site Lex linked to on Spitfires in another post a test-pilot commented
“The essence of aircraft design is compromise, and an improvement at one end of the performance envelope is rarely achieved without a deterioration somewhere else.”
What everyone is concerned about is that our politicians are promising us lots and lots of free lunches – my favorite is Sen. Reid saying …
Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation – indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGEwMTU0OTM2ODdjMTJhOGU3ZTE4NjMzNTk2ZTE4NmM= )
While your comments were not as deeply surreal as those of Sen. Reid, it is worth noting just how quickly you (very much to your credit) needed to revise and extend your remarks when your fellow-service members pointed out all the complexities in evaluating the difficulties of providing “free health care” to a peculiarly healthy demographic. It seems to me that a great deal of the rightful distrust for reform is precisely how unreal our “conversation” on this has been so far. We can identify injustices, but not consider what are the real, this-worldly costs of correcting such injustices. Unless we can go beyond “something is broken”/a general sense of malaise to concrete remedies, I would argue that reform is going to resemble the approach of “ready, fire, aim!” Better the brokenness we know (and which has been created in a system where free people have largely made free choices) than that we create by playing utopian politics.
Certainly the quality (and cost) of healthcare varies significantly in private practice relative to various locations, doctors and their staff’s qualifications and expertise, medical facilities, hospital staffing insurance practices… just as public healthcare including military healthcare varies, (but to a far lesser degree, I do believe.)
After my personal experience with many different public and private healthcare plans during my life, including unsettling periods of no healthcare coverage, my current combination of Medicare with TriCare For Life beats everything else, hands down no contest! It is the best! (I also qualify for priority VA healthcare, but I do not use it.)
My worst healthcare was with a civilian doctor and an employee health plan that was marginal at best yet expensive, and led to a severe, life-threatening illness. (Of course public healthcare beats no healthcare any day; and for those who think private healthcare is so perfect, consider the multitude of malpractice litigation. Finally, anyone who complains about Medicare’s meager cost (which is based on income, BTW) should try a Cobra or private plan for over 10-times the cost and perhaps less coverage.
VX: I already own some beach property in AZ, I bought it when I was younger. Want to trade?
David,
In the broadest of terms, one way or another, we all pay for health care. I happen to pay for mine with private insurance. Others pay for theirs with taxes or receive it as compensation. On the whole, the system is fraught with waste, fraud, inefficiency and abuse. It is overly complicated and leaves a lot of people exposed.
Is health care in this country a constitutional right? No, I don’t think it is. However, the low form of extortion and black mail practiced by the health insurance companies ought to be illegal. The practice of billing uninsured five and six times the cost for a procedure is predatory.
Most people in this country belong to the private sector, we are on our own and have very little choice or options, especially those with kids. What parent is going to deny their sick children medicine, no matter what the cost.
I would say the the current brokenness is very expensive. I can not grow my business because I can’t afford to pay decent wages and provide health insurance (I can do one or the other, not both). Most personal bankruptcies in this country are due to medical expenses. Hospitals absorb the losses by billing everyone else extra. The sick get sicker and become a burden on the system, their communities, and their families. If an uninsured person has a major illness, it can wipe out a families means for a generation or more.
What is needed is insurance reform, but no congressman is going to touch that because the insurance industry owns congress.
You have pointed out the obvious flaws in the system that need to be addressed including why the current proposed solutions before Congress, to the extent anyone knows that the hell they are, will only add to the problem unless of course, you subscribe to the belief that, “if the government pays for it” you, or more correctly your heirs, aren’t footing the bill.
Of course their always is the option the country default on its obligations or inflates the currency to eliminate the bill but not even the most starry eyed Congress scoundrel will admit that is their intent.
You get to the heart of the matter, Paul: Costs are greatly outpacing both inflation and our ability to pay. Sadly, for all the talk of “bending the cost curve,” the only option theoretically in congressional language to do so is the public option. About which we’ve said quite enough here.
And it’s not just the insurance companies that Congress is kow-towing to, at least not in this Congress. The major unions still have a vested interest in maintaining their current health care plans, and tort reform is nowhere to be seen. Until there is courage enough to tackle the unions and the trial lobby, medical costs will continue to be driven by non-market forces, and the broader economy – like your contribution, and that of those workers you otherwise could employ – will suffer.
We’re rewarding bad behavior at every level.
Paul,
Thanks for a well-written and thoughtful post. I’m a public employee with a very sweet deal, but my mother, who had a heart attack a few weeks ago and got some substandard care that kept her in the ICU a few extra days has a sub-optimal plan and so is facing some very difficult times financially. I’m not trying to play polyanna and deny there are problems and I really do admire your work in business and desire to create jobs. Part of what alarms me however is the all but infantile discussion of reform that is taking place at the highest levels of government and the unseemly rush to get this done quick in order to serve one party’s political interest. Also, being in Poland and seeing what state-funded health care looks like, and having utterly liberal, dyed in the pink hair-shirt America-haters colleague whose husband’s illness led her to flee a much wealthier England’s health care because they are convinced that it will kill him, all makes me quite concerned about the recklessness of a public option that likely will undermine private health care without producing better care.
As to the essence of why this is quite simply wrong I suggest reading Professor Williams. No proponent will refute his points as ignoring them seem so much more effective. That the bill will come due and liberty lost is seldom regained the lessons of history all to soundly affirm.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=09