The Best Health Care Myth Debunked by Kate Ryan
I was waiting in a long line in the post office yesterday. One poor clerk was working the desk and was being besieged by patrons with multiple packages, a mass mailing, and a pick-up of a certified letter that didn’t seem to be anywhere. The wait seemed endless. An elderly gentleman in front of me – obviously old enough to be enjoying his Medicare benefits – huffed and said, “And NOW they want to take over our health care!”
I stopped myself before publicly arguing with this old fool, but I wanted to tell him that while he’s enjoying his government-run health insurance, many other people would give their eye teeth to have whatever he had – even if it was inefficient. It’s a damn sight better than nothing. I just figured he was a Republican, and left it at that. And If you only know one thing about politics, know this – if there is one thing that the Republicans are really good at, it is the “sound bite”, the succinct summing-up of any debate in three words or less.
Rationing! Death Panels! Illegal Immigrants! Government Takeover! The lies and disinformation campaign have controlled this debate for almost a month now. Liberals, Progressives, and just plain Democrats that want health care reform have been stunned silent by the sheer numbers of people the other side has gotten to believe this. They’ve even got elderly Americans believing that the Medicare that they love and revere so much, is NOT a government-run healthcare program. I am losing faith in the intelligence of the American voter.
What’s worse than the lies from the other side is the amount of time we are spending to tell the American people what health care reform is NOT, rather than what it is. Is it any wonder that support for an Obama health care plan seems to be dwindling? Nobody knows just what it is. The administration MUST do a better job at letting Americans know what they are buying and what they can expect. Any of these explanations must include the debunking of the more insidious health care myths – the ones that all of us seem to accept without question. First and foremost of these is “The U.S. has the best health care in the world.”
According to every agency that keeps statistics on health care about the only areas where the United States is tops are in financial indicators. We are ranked #1 in how much money per capita we spend on health care (over $7,000 per year in 2008 – twice that of ANY other country), number one in the percentage of personal bankruptcies caused by health costs (50% in 2006), we have more medical equipment per capita than any other industrialized country in the world (MRI machines, CAT scanners, x-ray machines, etc.), and the highest rate of health management support workers (business managers, administrative workers, etc.) to providers (doctors, nurses, and pharmacists).
What we do not have are outcomes. Of 48 surveyed nations, the U.S. ranks 47th in life expectancy in the world (just below Costa Rica), 43rd in infant mortality (lower than Cuba), and 24th in the probability that you will die before the age of 60.
The fact is, our “best” and wonderful system of medical care is only available to those who can afford to pay. From 2000 to 2006, overall inflation has increased 3.5%, middle-class wages have increased 3.8%, and health care premiums have increased 87%. The family share of premiums plus cost sharing have been rising faster than inflation, causing access problems for some. Current estimates are that about 47 million Americans – about 17% of the population – is uninsured. Four out of five of the uninsured are families, and about two-thirds are low-income workers. The most often cited reason for lack of health insurance is cost (over 50%), followed by lack of a job (24%). Less than 10% of the uninsured are those that just don’t purchase it. These chronically uninsured do not count those people that will face insurance gaps – temporary loss of coverage, usually due to unemployment. Looking over the last two years, about 82 million Americans younger than 65 experienced a significant gap in insurance coverage.
This does not include the underinsured population – the Americans with insurance who find that the coverage is not adequate. Several organizations estimate that about 16 million of the insured do not have sufficient coverage to protect them from crushing out-of-pocket expenses. Of all the personal bankruptcies that were filed due to medical expenses, 75% of those were by individuals that had health insurance. Finally, more than 40 million adults stated that they needed but did not receive one or more of these health services (medical care, prescription medicines, mental health care, dental care, or eyeglasses) in 2005 because they could not afford it.
The most important feature of any health care reform legislation must be to provide universal coverage and health care access to all Americans. Many proposals that the Republicans and “blue-dog” Democrats say that they can affirm are health INSURANCE reforms, not reforms to health care. Eliminating denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and prohibiting dropping an insured individual from coverage because they are sick are great ideas – but they do not improve access. They are also a red herring. No, they won’t deny you coverage with a pre-existing condition, they’ll just charge you three or more times what anyone else pays. Insurance co-ops again will not improve access because they must compete within an industry model that only makes money by denying coverage. A non-profit entity still has to cover its expenses and insurance reform does nothing to lower cost.
The only thing that is guaranteed to provide universal coverage, adequate access, and lower costs to consumers is a public plan option. Immediately, consumers would see savings over 20% due to less overhead costs. More enrolled would mean lower costs as the risk would be spread through a larger population. It would be Medicare for everyone – but younger working people would pay additional premiums.
It is time that we realize that it isn’t good enough to have the most expensive best health care in the world – that more and more citizens do not have access to.
(sources: World Health Organization, Center for American Progress, U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Health Statistics
http://kateskitchentable.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/the-best-health-care-myth-debunked/
Monday, September 14, 2009
What Obama Meant To Say.....
Here's what Obama meant to say -
according to Rush Limbaugh
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/5818
Submitted by twas_was on September 11, 2009 - 7:52am.
We spend too much on health care but we need to spend more. We need to add more people to the system by force if necessary. We need to expand health care as a matter of law, no exceptions. We need to compel insurance companies to provide more benefits to anybody and everybody who seeks them," but we spend too much on health care! One of the reasons is, it works. We all know that it's like buying a lawyer. The more money you spend on a lawyer, the better lawyering you get.
"By cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare -- which of course is a government-run entitlement program -- we'll be able to fund expanded health care without waste, fraud, and abuse. And of course we support Medicare. It's the Republicans who hate Medicare. We're only cutting over $500 billion from the already bankrupt program because there are other people, apart from our seniors, who need health care, too. Everyone has to sacrifice, particularly mom and dad, granddad, grandmom. But they won't mind. That doesn't mean, of course, we're going to ration care. We would never do that. We love our seniors.
"These are scare tactics by the special interests who always oppose reform. No, we're going to cut Medicare because we support Medicare, and we're going to cut benefits to seniors because we love our seniors. And what's all this talk about the government taking over health care? More fearmongering by the special interests! No, what's going to happen is that we will oversee the insurance companies to make sure they don't cheat and rip you off. That's right. The same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions from the Social Security trust fund to pay for ever more spending -- and the same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund -- will use their carefully honed skills and experience to ensure that the private insurance companies treat you fairly.
"And what we will do is tell these companies who must be covered -- which is anyone who asks to be covered-- we're going to tell 'em what they have to charge and we're going to tell 'em that they have to cover preexisting conditions. We're going to tell 'em what they can't charge. We're going to tell 'em what benefits they have to offer -- and if they fail to do exactly what we say, we're going to have to close 'em down to protect you. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to change your insurance company. We would never tell you to drop your insurance if you like it! No. What we're going to do is put your insurer out of business. See the difference? And as you know, we are here to change Washington. We want to use free market language to massively grow government.
"We want to increase competition by destroying it. We want to grow jobs by killing employment. Our stimulus recovery is going just as planned. Real unemployment is now at 16.8% and rising. This is how we save the economy from the brink: By killing jobs, killing home ownership, and killing private property; by creating trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in new debt. This is how we will create a stable dollar, a prosperous economy. This is how we will grow businesses, increase home ownership and so forth. And if we don't it's Bush's fault anyway because I inherited all this! So don't you understand?
I'm in the process of destroying your country. I don't like it at all. I don't like this Constitution. It wasn't written for me. I never had a chance to vote for it. I've been saddled with it and my people, saddled with it and my party's been saddled with it and we hate this Constitution!
"This Constitution doesn't tell us what we can do to you. All this Constitution tells us is what we can't do to you, and we want the Constitution to tell us what we can do. Not only to you but for you. I don't like this at all. And I haven't liked it and my college professors haven't liked it and my parents didn't like it and none of my friends liked it. Bill Ayers didn't like the Constitution. Jeremiah Wright doesn't like the Constitution.
My gang at ACORN doesn't like the Constitution, and I'm gonna fix it -- and I'm doing it right in front of your eyes while I'm telling you the opposite of what I'm doing. I'm destroying your economy. I am foreclosing on your house. I have taken over two of the three big automobile companies. I'm going to make sure you can't eventually drive the car you want. And I'm doing all this to restore the economy so that we never have a down cycle like this. I'm doing all this to save the planet from climate change.
"I'm doing all it is so that you will have good jobs and good health care. You won't have any money unless you turn to me for it. It's essential that despite talking like a capitalist that we leave no industry free to actually make profits, because profits are the tool of the special interests -- who, after all, don't care about you as much as we do in this administration. We know what you need better than you do. We know how to manage your affairs and your finances better than you do. This is why we've nationalized the banks, the mortgage industry, the student loan industry, and soon the energy companies and the health care industry. We, after all, aren't driven by the profit motive. We're driven by the public interest, and we know what's in the public interest better than you do.
"That's why it's time to stop all this talk, stop all this bickering, stop the games and just shut up when I'm speaking and instituting my hope-and-change agenda. My agenda is your agenda whether you know it or not whether you accept it or not -- and it's going to be forced down your throat whether you want it or not. Now, I've tried very hard to work with Republicans. My door is always open to them. But they refuse to accept my agenda. They seek to sabotage real reform and real change and hope. They keep talking about empowering individuals to make their own health care decisions. The Republicans keep talking about cutting taxes for middle-class families so they can buy their own insurance.
"The Republicans keep talking about expanding health savings accounts much like IRAs and 401(k)s so that families can save some of their own money tax-free to prepare for catastrophic illnesses and increasing competition by enabling insurance companies to compete for business across state lines. Do you believe that idiocy from the Republicans? Do you believe that stuff? Individuals can't be trusted to do the right thing. We all know that. People are foolish. The only thing they should be free to do is make enough money so that we can confiscate 50, 60, 70% of it via taxes. In fact this whole nation filled with the notion of individual rights and limited government is nothing more than a racist invention of white slaveholders.
"And let me repeat this again: The whole notion of individual rights and limited government is nothing more than a racist invention of white slaveholders known as the Founding Fathers. We know that our Founding Fathers were racists. We never agreed to their Constitution. Did you vote for it? No. It was imposed on us from one generation to the next. So forget about it or else our agenda of redistribution of wealth and big centralized government will be obstructed by something as inconsequential as the highest law in the land which we don't respect; which we didn't vote for; which we think is a sham; which we think is racist, sexist, bigoted, and homophobic. The first thing I could do if I had a chance is rip the Constitution to shreds. Now, I know we're not to the point where I can do that yet in front of you.
"So I'm going to do it while you can't see me doing it all the while telling you, 'I support what you support." Now, we need to nationalize the health care system as fast as possible, and the reason is that we have so much more hope and change to get to in our agenda before the next election. We need to get back to cap and trade so we can manage virtually every business and household in the country, so we can begin the long neglected effort to limit and then shrink how much wealth is produced in this nation. We are 5% of the world's population; we use 25% of the world's resources. We are stealing from the poor of the world, and we have done this since our interception. We are immoral and unjust and we are imperialists. As global citizens, we must change our ways.
"We must do our fair share to participate in the world's poverty. We are too rich, and I'm in the process of making sure that will not be said about this country in the future. The standard of living, when I get through here, will plummet dramatically. That's only fair! We need to pay a penalty for usurping so much of the world's resources. Poverty exists in the rest of the world because of us and our Constitution -- which I didn't vote for and I didn't get a chance to vote for, and if I have my say about it, I'm going to rip it to shreds before I leave this White House. We must make ourselves poorer! We must learn to suffer through the misery that other societies impose on themselves. We're going to call this 'going green' so that you think that we're 'saving the planet,' but what we're actually doing is making you poorer.
"We are going to rob you of your wealth and the opportunity to earn wealth, because when we say 'going green' it conjures images of polar bears and flowing creeks and fields and flowers. It's time to return to simpler times anyway, agrarian times. The Industrial Revolution wasn't all that great anyway. There was more racism and slavery in the Industrial Revolution and more pollution and disgusting destruction of the planet. This is just part of our progressive agenda, an agenda for the modern era. It's time we moved forward into the past. It is time to make tomorrow our yesterdays. It is time to surrender yourself to the greater good. You must make sacrifices! We are, after all, a community of one -- and I am The One who will lead you to the Promised Land."
Rush Limbaugh 9/10/09
according to Rush Limbaugh
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/5818
Submitted by twas_was on September 11, 2009 - 7:52am.
We spend too much on health care but we need to spend more. We need to add more people to the system by force if necessary. We need to expand health care as a matter of law, no exceptions. We need to compel insurance companies to provide more benefits to anybody and everybody who seeks them," but we spend too much on health care! One of the reasons is, it works. We all know that it's like buying a lawyer. The more money you spend on a lawyer, the better lawyering you get.
"By cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare -- which of course is a government-run entitlement program -- we'll be able to fund expanded health care without waste, fraud, and abuse. And of course we support Medicare. It's the Republicans who hate Medicare. We're only cutting over $500 billion from the already bankrupt program because there are other people, apart from our seniors, who need health care, too. Everyone has to sacrifice, particularly mom and dad, granddad, grandmom. But they won't mind. That doesn't mean, of course, we're going to ration care. We would never do that. We love our seniors.
"These are scare tactics by the special interests who always oppose reform. No, we're going to cut Medicare because we support Medicare, and we're going to cut benefits to seniors because we love our seniors. And what's all this talk about the government taking over health care? More fearmongering by the special interests! No, what's going to happen is that we will oversee the insurance companies to make sure they don't cheat and rip you off. That's right. The same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions from the Social Security trust fund to pay for ever more spending -- and the same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund -- will use their carefully honed skills and experience to ensure that the private insurance companies treat you fairly.
"And what we will do is tell these companies who must be covered -- which is anyone who asks to be covered-- we're going to tell 'em what they have to charge and we're going to tell 'em that they have to cover preexisting conditions. We're going to tell 'em what they can't charge. We're going to tell 'em what benefits they have to offer -- and if they fail to do exactly what we say, we're going to have to close 'em down to protect you. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to change your insurance company. We would never tell you to drop your insurance if you like it! No. What we're going to do is put your insurer out of business. See the difference? And as you know, we are here to change Washington. We want to use free market language to massively grow government.
"We want to increase competition by destroying it. We want to grow jobs by killing employment. Our stimulus recovery is going just as planned. Real unemployment is now at 16.8% and rising. This is how we save the economy from the brink: By killing jobs, killing home ownership, and killing private property; by creating trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in new debt. This is how we will create a stable dollar, a prosperous economy. This is how we will grow businesses, increase home ownership and so forth. And if we don't it's Bush's fault anyway because I inherited all this! So don't you understand?
I'm in the process of destroying your country. I don't like it at all. I don't like this Constitution. It wasn't written for me. I never had a chance to vote for it. I've been saddled with it and my people, saddled with it and my party's been saddled with it and we hate this Constitution!
"This Constitution doesn't tell us what we can do to you. All this Constitution tells us is what we can't do to you, and we want the Constitution to tell us what we can do. Not only to you but for you. I don't like this at all. And I haven't liked it and my college professors haven't liked it and my parents didn't like it and none of my friends liked it. Bill Ayers didn't like the Constitution. Jeremiah Wright doesn't like the Constitution.
My gang at ACORN doesn't like the Constitution, and I'm gonna fix it -- and I'm doing it right in front of your eyes while I'm telling you the opposite of what I'm doing. I'm destroying your economy. I am foreclosing on your house. I have taken over two of the three big automobile companies. I'm going to make sure you can't eventually drive the car you want. And I'm doing all this to restore the economy so that we never have a down cycle like this. I'm doing all this to save the planet from climate change.
"I'm doing all it is so that you will have good jobs and good health care. You won't have any money unless you turn to me for it. It's essential that despite talking like a capitalist that we leave no industry free to actually make profits, because profits are the tool of the special interests -- who, after all, don't care about you as much as we do in this administration. We know what you need better than you do. We know how to manage your affairs and your finances better than you do. This is why we've nationalized the banks, the mortgage industry, the student loan industry, and soon the energy companies and the health care industry. We, after all, aren't driven by the profit motive. We're driven by the public interest, and we know what's in the public interest better than you do.
"That's why it's time to stop all this talk, stop all this bickering, stop the games and just shut up when I'm speaking and instituting my hope-and-change agenda. My agenda is your agenda whether you know it or not whether you accept it or not -- and it's going to be forced down your throat whether you want it or not. Now, I've tried very hard to work with Republicans. My door is always open to them. But they refuse to accept my agenda. They seek to sabotage real reform and real change and hope. They keep talking about empowering individuals to make their own health care decisions. The Republicans keep talking about cutting taxes for middle-class families so they can buy their own insurance.
"The Republicans keep talking about expanding health savings accounts much like IRAs and 401(k)s so that families can save some of their own money tax-free to prepare for catastrophic illnesses and increasing competition by enabling insurance companies to compete for business across state lines. Do you believe that idiocy from the Republicans? Do you believe that stuff? Individuals can't be trusted to do the right thing. We all know that. People are foolish. The only thing they should be free to do is make enough money so that we can confiscate 50, 60, 70% of it via taxes. In fact this whole nation filled with the notion of individual rights and limited government is nothing more than a racist invention of white slaveholders.
"And let me repeat this again: The whole notion of individual rights and limited government is nothing more than a racist invention of white slaveholders known as the Founding Fathers. We know that our Founding Fathers were racists. We never agreed to their Constitution. Did you vote for it? No. It was imposed on us from one generation to the next. So forget about it or else our agenda of redistribution of wealth and big centralized government will be obstructed by something as inconsequential as the highest law in the land which we don't respect; which we didn't vote for; which we think is a sham; which we think is racist, sexist, bigoted, and homophobic. The first thing I could do if I had a chance is rip the Constitution to shreds. Now, I know we're not to the point where I can do that yet in front of you.
"So I'm going to do it while you can't see me doing it all the while telling you, 'I support what you support." Now, we need to nationalize the health care system as fast as possible, and the reason is that we have so much more hope and change to get to in our agenda before the next election. We need to get back to cap and trade so we can manage virtually every business and household in the country, so we can begin the long neglected effort to limit and then shrink how much wealth is produced in this nation. We are 5% of the world's population; we use 25% of the world's resources. We are stealing from the poor of the world, and we have done this since our interception. We are immoral and unjust and we are imperialists. As global citizens, we must change our ways.
"We must do our fair share to participate in the world's poverty. We are too rich, and I'm in the process of making sure that will not be said about this country in the future. The standard of living, when I get through here, will plummet dramatically. That's only fair! We need to pay a penalty for usurping so much of the world's resources. Poverty exists in the rest of the world because of us and our Constitution -- which I didn't vote for and I didn't get a chance to vote for, and if I have my say about it, I'm going to rip it to shreds before I leave this White House. We must make ourselves poorer! We must learn to suffer through the misery that other societies impose on themselves. We're going to call this 'going green' so that you think that we're 'saving the planet,' but what we're actually doing is making you poorer.
"We are going to rob you of your wealth and the opportunity to earn wealth, because when we say 'going green' it conjures images of polar bears and flowing creeks and fields and flowers. It's time to return to simpler times anyway, agrarian times. The Industrial Revolution wasn't all that great anyway. There was more racism and slavery in the Industrial Revolution and more pollution and disgusting destruction of the planet. This is just part of our progressive agenda, an agenda for the modern era. It's time we moved forward into the past. It is time to make tomorrow our yesterdays. It is time to surrender yourself to the greater good. You must make sacrifices! We are, after all, a community of one -- and I am The One who will lead you to the Promised Land."
Rush Limbaugh 9/10/09
Obama's Plans
Just 2 articles and a web address to keep for reading about this whole thing going on now...
I follow Thomas Sowell's commentaries..they make a lot of sense. I trust him for themost part so far.
Listening to a Liar
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.
The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.
No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?
If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?
If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?
If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.
Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.
Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.
Consider the "stimulus" legislation. Here the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days-- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. But, like the medical care legislation, the "stimulus" legislation takes effect slowly.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be September 2010 before even three-quarters of the money will be spent. Some economists expect that it will not all be spent by the end of 2010.
What was the rush to pass it, then? It was not to get that money out into the economy as fast as possible. It was to get that money-- and the power that goes with it-- into the hands of the government. Power is what politics is all about.
The worst thing that could happen, from the standpoint of those seeking more government power over the economy, would be for the economy to begin recovering on its own while months were being spent debating the need for a "stimulus" bill. As the President's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, you can't let a crisis "go to waste" when "it's an opportunity to do things you could not do before."
There are lots of people in the Obama administration who want to do things that have not been done before-- and to do them before the public realizes what is happening.
The proliferation of White House "czars" in charge of everything from financial issues to media issues is more of the same circumvention of the public and of the Constitution. Czars don't have to be confirmed by the Senate, the way Cabinet members must be, even though czars may wield more power, so you may never know what these people are like, until it is too late.
What Barack Obama says Wednesday night is not nearly as important as what he has been doing-- and how he has been doing it.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=f22f19d3-b93f-4dc7-9f34-b61b09a9ab39&t=c
``````````````
Thomas Sowell: Obama's health care promises are shameless fraud
06:24 PM CDT on Friday, September 11, 2009
"Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.
To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world-class chutzpa 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.
Even those who can believe that Obama can conjure up the money through eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.
If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run medical care in Canada, Britain and other countries has produced – delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.
One of the secrets of being a glib talker is not getting hung up over whether what you are saying is true, and instead giving your full attention to what is required by the audience and the circumstances of the moment, without letting facts get in your way and cramp your style. Obama has mastered that art.
Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince skeptics but to use words to help the gullible to believe what they want to believe. No message has been more welcomed by the gullible, in countries around the world, than the promise of something for nothing. That is the core of Barack Obama's medical care plan.
Obama tells us that he will impose various mandates on insurance companies but will not interfere with our free choice between being insured by these companies or by the government. But if he can drive up the cost of private insurance with mandates and subsidize government insurance with the taxpayers' money, how long do you think it will be before we have the "single payer" system he has advocated in the past?
Mandates by politicians are what have driven up the cost of insurance already. Politicians love to play Santa Claus and leave it to others to raise prices to cover the inevitable costs.
Politicians have driven privately owned municipal transit systems out of business in many cities, by simply imposing costs and restricting the fare increases needed to cover those costs. The federal government can drive out private insurance the same way that local politicians have driven out private municipal transit and replaced it with government-run transit systems.
Barack Obama's insistence that various dangerous policies are not in the legislation he proposes sounds good but means nothing. Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may be.
Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell, who may be contacted through www.tsowell.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~
See this site also...very good...
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/5818
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