By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on September 16, 2009
As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That’s how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans – maybe only Maine’s Olympia Snowe – to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.
But it’s a fraud and a trick.
Here’s why:
(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill – that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.
(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer’s co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the “co-op option” would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.
(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a “trigger” mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?
But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.
The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.
In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on July 23, 2009
President Obama’s rhetoric last night summoned the memory of “1984,” George Orwell’s novel of a nightmarish future — where the slogan of the rulers is “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.”
The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending. . .by adding $1 trillion to health-care spending.
He says that “health-care decisions will not be made by government”. . .while he sets up a new Federal Health Board to tell doctors what treatments they can offer and to whom and under what circumstances.
Obama told the media, “I will free doctors to make good health-care decisions”. . .by telling the physicians what to do.
When the president says he guarantees the “same coverage” to people who like their current health-insurance policies, he means that their current HMOs, insurers and doctors will be the ones to implement the protocols and instructions the government hands down to them — not that we’ll have our current freedom of decision-making.
When he blandly assures us that we will “stop paying for things that don’t make us healthier,” he really means that his Federal Health Board will overrule your doctor and stop him from using his own best judgment in your treatment.
The president will “get the politics out of health care” by putting it under government control.
Obama says that he will not “add to the deficit” to fund health care. But the bill reported out by Rep. Charlie Rangel’s Ways and Means Committee leaves $550 billion unfunded.
The president says that he’ll identify savings that will reduce the need for more taxes — even though the Congressional Budget Office refuses to say that his “savings” will actually work and warns that the bill will really be added to the deficit.
He repeatedly tells us that he’ll cut health-care spending. What he means is that he will cut doctors’ incomes and will turn down patients — particularly the elderly — when they seek medical care that his bureaucrats disapprove of.
And he ignores that cutting incomes in the medical field will reduce the number of doctors and force further rationing of care.
The president opines that he will replace the most “expensive care” with the “best care” by empowering government officials who have never met you to substitute their judgment for that of your doctor, who has examined you thoroughly.
When Obama laments that “14,000 people lose their insurance every day,” he is referring to the job losses that his own failed efforts to end the recession have permitted.
He warns that health-care costs are gobbling up money that employers should use to raise wages and worker pay — yet the plans he backs would require employers to pay 8 percent of their payroll as a tax or provide insurance to their workers.
The Obama plan highlights greater preventive care — but, at the same time, cuts medical incomes and so will cut the number of doctors who might provide it.
The stimulus package, in the Gospel According to Barack, was “designed” to work over the next two years. But at the time, he demanded immediate passage to “jump-start the economy” — something that clearly did not happen.
Medicare and Medicaid are “driving the deficit” even as he increased the amount of red ink by at least $800 billion in six months with little, if any, increase in the cost of either program.
He says he “expects” banks to repay their TARP money. In fact, they’re lining up around the block to do so — but the Treasury will only permit a handful of them to do so.
In summary, Obama’s health program will promote “lower cost and more choice” by increasing spending by $1 trillion, telling patients what care they’re permitted to have, and limiting their access to quality care.
Orwell’s heirs should sue for violation of copyright.
As I was discussing with my cousin yesterday there is so much crap going on in not our own government but being linked to the world government. The G20 is a good example.
At the G20 meeting in London, President Obama agreed to the creation of an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions according to Jerome Corsi in his Red Alert reports.
Political consultant Dick Morris said that by agreeing to create the Financial Stability Board, Obama is a “willing accomplice” to a decision that effectively repealed the U.S. Declaration of Independence and abrogated the sovereignty of the United States.
By the way last August I ordered the Dick Morris book Fleeced.
It was interesting because what came to pass of late in the economic sell out of our nation (by both parties) was pretty much outlined in that book.
Personally before the government became almost totally corrupt they were hard pressed at running much of anything in a satisfactory manner. Now they want to poke their fingers in your business pie? Most of these people who have less experience than a 4 year old running anything but our economic system into the ground?
If you are a business owner or thinking of becoming one (you know the American dream stuff) … you better unite and scream ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
If you want to read the “Declaration on Strengthening the Financial System” for yourself it is provided in PDF format.