Obama Calls Healthcare Critics Names Rather Than Debating Them
By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Give Dr. Larry Hunter, the former chief economist for the United States Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Social Security Institute, considerable points for creativity.
Hunter is one of hundreds of Obama opponents who have taken to the Internet to make the case for opposing the Obama agenda. His latest project is an online petition where citizens can request to "opt out" of any future government-run, politicized healthcare system.
"President Obama and the Congress are racing toward government-run and government-mandated healthcare," the site says, making the case that under the Obama plan, healthcare consumers—who, in another era were called patients—will "no longer be able to keep your insurance, choose your own doctors or control your own health and well being."
The president and his closest advisers dispute these claims, but not by debating with Hunter or anyone else. Instead they make pronouncements about what the different ideas on the table would or would not do to the doctor-patient relationship as though that was all there was to it.
"I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their healthcare coverage—they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor," Obama told the American Medical Association. "That means no matter how we reform healthcare, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. My view is that healthcare reform should be guided by a simple principle: Fix what's broken and build on what works," the president promised.
Of course, as I wrote here on Thomas Jefferson Street yesterday, he also promised that people making less than $250,000 per year wouldn't see their taxes go up.
The problem Hunter and other Obamacare opponents face, well one of them anyway, is that while they are building up armies of Internet activists through tea parties and online petitions, the White House refuses to engage with them. Rather, the administration sends the president out to call them names, as he did before the AMA:
We also know that there are those who will try and scuttle this opportunity no matter what—who will use the same scare tactics and fear-mongering that's worked in the past. They'll give dire warnings about socialized medicine and government takeovers; long lines and rationed care; decisions made by bureaucrats and not doctors. We've heard it all before—and because these fear tactics have worked, things have kept getting worse.
Scare tactics? Fear-mongering? Or evidence. We know, from Europe, from Canada, and now from Massachusetts, that grand plans for government-run, government-mandated, political healthcare don't work as advertised. In some instances, in some individual cases, they don't even work at all. They do result in longer waiting times for patients to receive critical services. And they do lead to rationing because rationing becomes necessary to the allotment of scarce resources—including doctors and hospital beds. And that the government must, in the name of keeping costs down, set policies that dictate what decisions doctors and specialists will make in many instances.
Churchill once said that democracy was the worst form of government ever devised, with the exception of every other kind. It may be true, counter to what Obama says, that the current American healthcare system may be the world's worst—except for all the others.
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Tags: healthcare | Barack Obama
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Reader Comments
Selling our future
Healthcare costs what it does because we are already paying for those who do not have insurance. Is anyone ever refused healthcare at any hospital? No. The healthcare system actually works just fine as it is. With the present economic conditions it is absolutely stupid to borrow a trillion dollars against our future generation to fix something that doesn’t need fixing. Furthermore, Government Health Care would be counter productive to economic recovery. It has always been a motivation to get a fulltime job that provides benefits. Social Health Care System takes that motivation away. We can not afford to sell our children’s future. A couple of relevant quotes, “Avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen whic”, George Washington quotes (American commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775-83) and subsequently 1st US President (1789-97), 1732-1799). “Debt is the slavery of the free”,Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.). We are heading down a dangerous path if Obama’s agenda are voted in. God Bless America. Sincerely, Art
Re: What's so great about US health care
Muser of NM wrote: "We're the only industrialized country I know of where 60% of bankruptcies are tied to medical bills. The others don't have that problem with respect to health care, which everybody gets anyway."
One of the most important lessons I learned as a Boy Scout was its motto "Be Prepared". This lesson was re-taught during my military service. The acronym was "6P"--Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. I agree that bankruptcies are tied to medical bills. But I would argue the percentage. I'd be interested to get your perspective on where you think an individual's responsibility to meet their health care needs ends and the government's responsibility to that person's health care needs begins?
Where was the prior planning on the part of individuals to take ownership of their lives? Do people honestly think they can live forever? That they'll be healthy forever? That nothing bad will never, ever happen to them? News flash. People get sick and die. Guess what they also go bankrupt. Why? Because people live beyond their means. They borrowed more than they're worth. They live paycheck to paycheck and do NOTHING to squirrel away some extra discretionary income.
Secondly, what country has become the world's policeman? The United States. That means our government spends it's GDP on something other than your "Free" health care. Consequently, Those countries have committable resources. As for the care, I'd hesitate to say it's even remotely better. Sure, you can get a heart transplant, but you'll long be dead by the time your name gets to the top of the donor recipient list. You have a cough, sure you can go to the ER but you'll sit there all day until a bleary eyed doctor tells you to go home and drink a spot of tea.
Thirdly, If it's ok for Mexican illegals to enter the United States to get what they want; better paying jobs. Then people who want "free" health care should immigrate to Great Britain that offers it.
Rationing
Do you truly beleive there is no rationing now? Our present healthcare system rations care every day - HMO that limit the doctors you can see, plans that require a generalists note to get to see a specialist, millions without any insurance at all or any access to consistant care. We are buried under rationing in the present system. That does not mean that any new system will be better but please do not lie to us about rationing. We already have it.
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