Obamacare will not Add a Dime to our Budget Deficit?

Does anyone besides the President believe this? In my previous post, I addressed Obama’s outrageous claim that he would not sign a bill that added one dime to the budget deficit. Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell echo’s this same thought with the same incredulity:

To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit is world-class chutzpah and an insult to anyone’s intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.

Did we really need CBO experts to tell us that there is no free lunch? Some people probably did, and the true believers in the Obama cult may still believe the president, instead of believing either common sense or budget experts.

Again, either Obama is approaching a state of being delusional about what he believes or he thinks we are too dense not to see the falsehood and shout ‘Lie!’.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, President Obama

Obama on Health Care: Pusher of Contradictions or Lies?

Building on my post the other night that Obama’s ‘high stakes’ health care speech was a broken record of collectivism and contradictions, I will high light again that he stated he would NOT sign any bill that would “…add a dime to the federal deficit.”

Amazingly, as far back as July of this year, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the (one of many) house bill on health care would add billions to our deficit:

WASHINGTON — House Democratic legislation overhauling the nation’s health care system would add more than $230 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper of legislation on Capitol Hill.

That assessment means the legislation violates one of main principles that President Barack Obama has set for any health-care legislation: that it do nothing to increase the deficit. The report is likely to increase doubts that centrist Democrats have expressed about the $1 trillion package, and could stall action in the House.

The $239 billion gap is identified in a report sent late Friday by CBO to House Democrats. CBO analyzed the House bill as it was brought before the Ways and Means Committee.

The article even states Obama’s same ‘promise’ back then in July on no new deficit spending (sounds like Bush41, doesn’t it? “read my lips: no. new. taxes.”)

If Obama knew this going into his speech last night, why does we keep saying it? Does he think he can say that because hebelieves in his own mind that the CBO’s report is false and he only lives in the subjective reality of his head? Or is it arrogance that he thinks we are all as uneducated and gullible as the inner city Chicago-ians that he spent years ‘organizing’?

As President of the United States, we expect that he would be aware and briefed on all major aspects of ‘his’ health care agenda and not be telling us what amounts to lies with some bogus concept of plausible deniability (The Democrats did it- not me!).

Maybe that congressman that called him a liar during his speech was channeling the American public and was more accurate than the President, pundits, and media want to admit.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Barack Obama, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, President Obama

Obama Speech: Same Old Tune

Obama’s speech to Congress changed nothing in the health care debate. I am constantly amazed at the untruths and disconnects that he clings to.

-He says he will not sign a bill that adds one dime to the deficit. Great! If he was serious, that would mean his approach is dead.

-He says that if you want to keep your current insurance or doctor, you can. Once they give a business a ‘free’ option to dump one of their fastest growing costs, they will in a heartbeat! Does he think we are stupid and don’t see the indirect outcome here?

-He says the ‘worst’ mis-information is around death panels. I have lived in Canada and my wife’s grandmother WAS DENIED TREATMENT DUE TO HER AGE. It’s an objective fact. When bureaucrats decide if you are ‘productive’ or worthwhile-enough to warrant government treatment or not, they have the power of life or DEATH over you.

Obama continues to be an ‘idea’ guy whose lack of real world experience and wisdom constantly shows his dis-jointed, collectivist and theoretical worldview and rookie mistakes. Then he leaves the heavy lifting of the policy to a highly leftist Democrat party and seems baffled when its socialism is rejected by the American public and contains horrific or anti-American provisions.

Here’s an informed citizen’s solution for workable health care reform: http://pracphilosblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/a-radical-solution-for-health-care-the-free-market-not-socialism/

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Barack Obama, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Obama, Politics, President Obama

The Stimulus is a failure, not a Success, Biden

Vice president Biden has come out recently touting that the ‘Stimulus’ spending bill has somehow worked to ’stimulate’ our economy, and worked faster than expected!

Does anyone really believe this? Or him?

In a series of articles I researched across the spectrum, the amount of stimulus ‘cure-all spending’ that has been spent thus far is less 15% of the total and will not exceed 25% by year end. Yet, here is Biden, master politician that he is, saying that it’s working- and working faster than expected. But how could this be if next to none of this monstrous amount has ACTUALLY been spent?!

If it’s the BILL that worked, then they GROSSLY overshot or exaggerated the amount of our tax dollars that needed to be wasted and/or given away. This would also show again how horribly inefficient and slow the government is to react to crises. 

If it’s the ECONOMY that has made significant recovery this quick, then he shows that hey are clueless again because that means it happened/was driven by other forces like the private sector, not their beloved Soviet-style, central government planning.

Another indications of Biden’s/The White House’s economic ‘brilliance’ :

Biden: “…the [stimulus] plan has created or saved 500,000 to 750,000 jobs so far.”

The jobless rate has gone way beyond what they said the ’stimulus’ plan would stop (8%) and was continuing to increase at the time of his speech! That’s incredibly bright and nuanced of him! Multiple millions of jobs lost and he touts a micro amount of jobs with a unverifiable ’saved’ clause to even get to that small of a number ( like 10 green ‘jobs’ created and 740,000 ’saved’).

No matter how you slice it, an American of average wisdom would call his ’stimulus’ speech an insult to their intelligence or just plain dishonest.

The ‘Stimulus Plan’ should be immediately repealed and the rest of the $787 billion should be immediately sent back to the tax payers to spend as they see fit. Why won’t that happen? It does nothing to grow government power or control the individual.

Filed under: Economy, Politics , Biden, Economy, Obama, Politics, Stimulus Plan

Obama Gets Schooled

President Obama has run smack into the checks and balances that protect a democracy from tyrannical behavior by the government. The frightening thing is that the White House seems baffled by the ‘resistance’ that their actions have provoked.

The Political Myth: The President was going to merely exhort the youth of America to well in school. Those parents that don’t want their children to hear this speech are hyper-partisans and fringe lunatics.

The Facts: The President was not just doing a speech. The White House was originally going to send out ‘lesson plans’ through the US Education Department to our children. The Washington Times  actually covers what the government was trying to do before the Main Stream Media white-washed the coverage into the political myth-statement above:

Among the activities the government initially suggested for prekindergarten to sixth-grade students: that they “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” Another task recommended for students immediately after listening to the speech: to engage in a discussion about what “the president wants us to do.”

Why in the heck would President of the United States be trying to give out lesson plans to our schools?! This is something you’d expect in a third world dictatorship. My children DO NOT need to thinking about what they can do for a far left socialist like Obama. They need to thinking about what they can do for THEMSELVES as far as reading, writing, and math. Other presidents have addressed school kids, but did not send them propaganda packets to fill out like Obama.

Besides the appearance of propagandizing America’s youth and disrupting the first day of school, the White House throws gas on this fire by trying to bypass our elected school boards and go straight to school principals! Unbelieveable. If you have nothing to hide, way the end-run around the elected education boards and processes in place for this sort of material? And they are baffled as to why parents are upset about this approach! Here’s a summary of this issue by the American Daughter Blog:

 Ignoring school superintendents, Obama wrote to school principals announcing his forthcoming speech to school children. This is a serious breach of protocol. All communications should be routed through the Superintendent of Schools for each district. 

Not only was this bad manners bigtime, it has implications for states’ rights and local rights that go far beyond the one event. School districts are overseen by a School Board, usually elected by the citizens of the district. Voters expect that board to ensure an education that reflects their values and goals for their children.

If you don’t believe the blog, go and Google the Dept of Education’s statement on this fiasco. Note that it is listed as going directly to principals:

 

Filed under: Education, Politics , Culture, Education, Family, Life, News, Obama, Parenting, President Obama, School

A Must See Primer on Our Future with Obama-Care

Check out this short video, filmed guerilla-style, on the real state of ‘Health Care’ in Canada, our good neighbor to the North. It is a must-see for a glimpse at our inglorious future of health care in this country if we lurch left toward a govt-run program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2jijuj1ysw

This is exactly the same experience I had with my family when we lived in Canada from 2004-2006 (it’s worse now- see below).

IBD Article: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299282509335931

If that’s too right-wing, try CBS or NYTimes going back as far as 2005-2006: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/20/health/main681801.shtml?cmp=EM8705

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/international/americas/28canada.html

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Canadian Health Care, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Obama, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Universal Health Care

A Radical Solution for Health Care: The Free Market! (Not Socialism)

So much debate is going on pointing out how bad the collectivist approach of the Obama/Democrats will be for our health care, but where is the advocacy of a workable solution?

Here is a brief outline of where we need to go with US health care:

The Modern Health Care Solution

We need to reset our health care system back to a free-market, patient-driven system. Every other successful part of our society runs this way- why not our health care for goodness sake?! We need:

1. Market-based pricing of health care. We need medical Care/Service/Procedures priced up front like everything else in our society- not the price/cost black-boxes of today’s employer and government-subsidized health care.

2. Minute-clinics and similar no-appointment, transparently-priced clinics are going in the right direction of delivering this concept:
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2006/01/23_zdechlikm_coninfo/

3. Just like with the fair, portability of pre-tax 401k’s, we need fair, portable pre-tax health savings accounts for everyone to save their own money over time, make their own decisions on health care, and pay it with their own money.

4. Make health care ‘insurance’ back into actual insurance. Couple health savings accounts with high-deductible catastrophic health insurance policies that people buy like they do for life insurance or car insurance.

5. Reform the medical malpractice system and the laws driving it. In some cases, up to 25% of the cost of individual health care is extra tests and procedures run by doctors to ‘bullet proof’ themselves from malpractice lawsuits.

The above approach gives everyone the access, proper control, and choice over their health- not the opposite helplessness dictated by some far away, faceless bureaucrat.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Democrats, Free-Market, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Socialized Health Care

Obamanomics for Michigan

The States have been called ‘laboratories’of Democracy as different political/governmental ideas and theories are tried out and the objective outcomes observed by all of America.  President Obama recently praised Governor Granholm of Michigan as one of our ‘best’ governors in the country. Excellent statement! Let’s analyze it.

Granholm is a Canadian-born leftist that has been pushing more Liberal/Democrat ideas of Socialism and environmentalism than almost any other governor than, say, California. So clearly, Obama is praising her as someone who is most closely aligned and implementing the type of collectivist and environmental ideas he thinks will ‘work’ for our country.

Has this worked? Well, outside of the labor union-destroyed auto industry and an unemployment rate of 15%+, the verdict on this new initiative is still out. But what Granholm has done is a classic collectivist blunder that will devastate the economy further by 2020 or sooner. She has mandated that 45% of Michigan’s power come from expensive and unreliable renewable resources by 2020 to replace cheap and reliable energy sources like coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Then, with her blessing, the Democrat party chair has put a proposal on the 2010 ballot to require utilities to lower their prices by 20%!!

Incredible! Since the laws of economics and human nature run contrary to Leftist political fantasy, they will mandate/dictate it to happen. Apparently, the only thing stopping the Green Revolution from happening was someone with the courage to SAY it needs to happen. Now, there will be no issue with the fact that highly expensive and unreliable ‘green’ sources of energy cost the utility 2x, 3x, 10x or more to produce the same amount of energy. Then, they will be FORCED to charge 20% less than today’s cheaper ‘earth raping’ energy rates. And somehow, the utilities won’t go bankrupt, cause rolling black outs via rationing , and the business economy will leap ahead with energy that costs 2x to 10x more than before!

Poor Michigan. How much of their economy has to be destroyed before they throw out these collectivist/socialist loons and their objectively unworkable ideas? Being smaller, States get to the objective negative outcomes of flawed ideas sooner and act as an example for the rest of us. First it was California collapsing under Democrat collectivism. Now we see the same outcome shaping up in Michigan.

Stayed tuned America, this is more morbidly fascinating than reality TV and much more instructive!

Filed under: Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics , California, Collectivism, Economics, Economy, Energy, Environment, Environmentalism, Granholm, Michigan, Obama, Politics, Renewable Energy, Socialism

Obama and Democrats Push False Choice on Health Care Reform

The DNC is launching an ad campaign to blast critics of Obama’s health care plan.

The Democrat/Obama/Leftist formula is that there are only two choices: Inaction/status quo or the Obama-Democrat ‘plan’ of action for health care.

This is a completely false-choice argument. It’s built on a series of Leftist myths:

Obama-Dem Myth1: There is only one possible solution for Health Care. The one solution is Obama’s government run health care ‘plan’.

Objective Fact1: There are MULTIPLE solutions for reform. Only one has a proven, historical success story- The Free Market. One ‘solution’ has a proven, historical failure outcome- collectivized health care.

Obama-Dem Myth2: This ‘crisis/catastrophe/disaster’ is so imminent and dangerous for America that we need to pass a 1000+ page piece of legislation right now and worry about what it says and how it impacts our society later.

Objective Fact2: It borders on criminal neglect on the part of the President and Congress to try to ram through legislation of radical and major change that no normal human has had enough time to read, let alone digest the content of. The only possible reason for this approach is the reality that if people get enough time to understand the content of the collectivized ‘plan’, they will not support it. This is also an approach of tyranny and disrespect for the democratic political process.

Obama-Dem Myth3: Republicans only want to stop the President’s ‘compassionate plan’ because they want to personally ‘break’ the President and don’t care about creating reform.

Objective Fact3: What Obama and the Democrats want to suppress is the discussion of, or exposure to, any of the Republican free market solutions  that have worked in every other part of our economy in the past and will work again if implemented.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Collectivised Health Care, Free-Market, Government, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Society, Universal Health Care

Government Run Health Care is Always a Failure and more Expensive

The biggest lie of this whole Obama lurch toward Socialism/deconstructing America is that government run health care would be cheaper. A Democrat was recently heckled off the stage for trying to say this with a straight face in a public townhall meeting. Americans were not, and are not, buying it.

It doesn’t take anything but common sense to understand why a government run health care plan or any collectivist solution won’t work and won’t be cheaper. Take any good or service and make it a ‘right’. If your barrier to consuming a valuable good/service is taken away, demand will overwhelm the supply/system every time.

With other key goods and services like food, housing, and transportation, everyone has to decide how much they have to spend and then how much of that they want to spend.

If, for example, food were suddenly a make-believe government ‘right’, then we would all want steak and lobster and the best gourmet food all the time. The government would quickly run out of money and would start rationing expensive, good tasting food and give you what it decided it could afford for you, like Spam or hot dogs, etc.

In the past (even before employer health subsidies distorted the market), you weighed the cost of going to the doctor with how bad your medical issue was. Charge too much for health care and no one would buy it. Charge too little and demand overwhelmed supply. But this doesn’t happen because millons of individual health transactions created a natural market balance of quality to cost. This is how all the rest of our society works or used to work in a free market economy.

In the unsustainable pipe dream of government health care, the same supply will have to suffice for a doubling or up to a ten-fold increase in demand because someone else (the government) thinks they can pay for it. They can’t. Every country and US state that has tried this approach either goes bankrupt or else has to ration/restrict the care provided to meet the exploding demand. A government option has an objective history of creating long health service waiting lines where people die waiting for the care their tax dollars have paid for. Artificial, politically driven pricing will also drive talented people from the expense of becoming doctors or investing in developing new medical devices, pharmaceuticals, or other services. This further accelerates a mis-match of demand with supply.

It’s as if this government pretends the laws of economics don’t apply or they don’t understand them or the underlying human nature that drives them.

This week Obama will be on TV this week and attempt to mislead you again (post-failed auto market, mortgage market, and ‘stimulus’ schemes) that the laws of economics/human nature again don’t apply to health care. I urge you to reject his anti-health plan and his anti-American, collectivist world view.

The free market works! All of our prosperity has come from individuals working and producing what we need in this framework. Why in the world do we not AGAIN apply the free market to health care? It is the model and solution we need to tell our leaders to go back to for affordable, quality US health care!

Filed under: Health Care, Politics , Collectivised Health Care, Culture, Government, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Society, Universal Health Care