The Healthcare Bill That Just Won’t Die

As the disastrous health-care bill winds its way through a morally and ethically bankrupt Congress, the process has come more and more to resemble Mr. Obama’s campaign itself.  Who would have thought that a rookie Senator with the left-most voting record in Congress and the middle name “Hussein” would eventually triumph over Hillary’s well-oiled, seemingly invincible political machine?  Well, he did, and in the end, most voters seemed not to have cared that Barack Obama’s Rolodex was filled with the names of campus radicals (including that of Bill Ayers, the unapologetic bomber) ; that his spiritual mentor for 20 years was the fire-breathing, America-hating pastor Jeremiah Wright; and that his only political experience prior to the campaign had been carrying water for Chicago’s most corrupt power brokers.  

Sweden

In similar fashion, a trillion-dollar health care bill that no one in Congress has read and which perhaps half the voters revile is, against all odds, about to become law.  It was barely a week ago that Sen. Joe Lieberman reportedly stood ready to oppose the health bill’s crucial “public option” with every supposedly principled fiber in his body.  Now we read that compromises are being made, that objections are being dealt with, and that even the sticky issue of abortion coverage will somehow be smoothed over so that the camel of socialized medicine can get its nose into the tent. 

Medicare ‘Kicker’ 

This is “The Worst Bill Ever,” according to a lengthy and passionate editorial in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. “Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all,”  the Journal’s editors declaimed. It may “well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.”  And that was before the compromisers began to work their magic – most recently, with a proposal that would lower the eligibility age for Medicare to 55. Now there’s a money-saving idea that will help balance the books, pronto!

And yet, the bill plods on, impelled by the wanton recklessness of a president who accepts no limit on the power of government, and whose chief aspiration is to remake America, as quickly as possibly, in the image of Sweden. The health care bill threatens, all by itself, to get us halfway to that dubious goal. How ironic it would be if the U.S. and Europe, steaming toward the finish line of progressivism from two entirely different directions, were to go bankrupt at the same time. 

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  • Henry December 11, 2009, 2:09 pm

    The beginning of the end. I wish I were younger. I’d leave everything right now and immigrate to New Zealand and NEVER come back here. Frankly, if I had the cash, I stick my neck out and leave NOW. The storm clouds are gathering. The American people have LOST the will (and are spoiled sheep, intellectually lazy, and are completely indifferent) and the USA is in BIG trouble. Every single night Fox’s Hannity, O’Reilly, Greta, and so on, and is all “sound and fury signifying nothing.” I am completely disgusted and am just waiting for the inevitable. How a bunch of immoral, unethical, self-serving, and greedy politicians and the mephistophelian President can actually shove this “crap” down 160 million people’s throats is a bigger accomplishment than Hitler’s “putsch” and Hitler’s forced institution of National Socialism (NAZI.) All I can say is: “Seig Heil.” Yes, . . . it’s coming.

  • tiburon December 11, 2009, 9:42 am

    sdavid
    please do tell me where you live in Canada, which province and city, (I should be able to work that out when you refer to the $35/month thing, which we don’t pay here in Ontario, but…), because it’ll be good to know, y’know, in case…

    Here in Ottawa…well, albeit it’s the Nation’s Capital, it’s well known that if you’re ‘ambulatory’ and need to get in to a hospital for a problem, better to call an ambulance nonetheless. You’ll be seen faster if you’re on a stretcher, with the ambulance attendants unable to leave till you’re handed off to Triage. There are quiet periods, yes – (have you just been incredibly lucky?) – but let’s just say out of 20 visits to ER’s (w/family, friends) in the last few years, 18 of them were +2 hours to actually talk to an intern or resident. Majority much longer. Outside of town, depends what direction, a bit, with some of the satellite town hospitals quite reasonable waits, worth the drive – but out there basically home health care is in critical collapse, despite mandates – the main community care folk have basically locked down Intake due lack of nurses, and lack of funds – meaning if you’re old and alone and lower-middle or lower ‘class’, you’ll be lucky if you’re getting a couple of hours a week for a bath, dressing, or even dressing-change – and otherwise it’s on to the waiting lists for a bed in LongTerm Care…2-3 years unless you’re on the way out.
    There are many heroic efforts being made though, here. A new program to ‘rethink’ palliative care at home (no beds available in institutions, till the very end) launched a couple months ago here under a great (US) doctor come home, smart immigration programs allowing minimum wage ‘live-in caregivers’ under provisional work permits, and the opening of ‘quasi-private’ walk-in clinics with extended hours (hamstrung by doctor shortage though), which can usually see most folk in an hour or two. But only two of these, in a City of some 700,000.

    I got a lot of nurse friends, from various Provinces, and they see the action: – I hear it’s ‘better’ out in Alberta, and even private surgical clinics in BC appearing, but here in Ottawa, if someone wanted an MRI inside of a week or two (and weren’t in a hospital), it’s south to the US (same day, basically) or over the border to Quebec, (which has allowed private MRI Clinics, and will see you inside of a week – helpful here as it’s just across the River, of course – not so much if you’re farther away)

    But the ‘Problems’ run even deeper – and have to do with access to procedures and medicines and diagnostics that are state-of-art. Here, these are ‘decided by committee’, indeed. No, not ‘death panels’, but bureaucrats working with ‘evidence-based medicine’, meaning, unless it makes sense economically (statistically), don’t expect it to be covered anytime soon. Sort of important when dealing with the Big Killers, n’est ce pas?

    And just one more thing? Is the $35 Loonies you pay the extent of it? Or is it, like I’ve heard anyway, that by the time all the Federal/Provincial transfer and equalization payments are done, we’re all paying about 45% of our taxes into our Medicare? Not, seemingly, yet enough.

  • ben December 11, 2009, 9:14 am

    For maybe the first time, I wholeheartedly support every word of Rick. I’m curious to know what happened recently that made you let loose like this. I was just wondering earlier today what I would do if I heard my minister ranting “God damn America”?…I’d probably never step near him again. Yet our President continued attending Jeremiah Wright’s church for years after this incident. And who knows how much worse was said over the years that never was forutitously caught on tape? Any person with an ounce of grey matter and a shred of integrity would have to concede that our president was aware that Wright was an anti-American bigot.

    May God save America from BHO and his commie possie.

  • sdavid December 11, 2009, 4:28 am

    As a Canadian, it has always amazed me what private health care cost Americans.

    It defies belief.

    Yes, we Canadians pay more for our gas, booze and a pack of smokes …..

    But I pay $35 a month for public health care and I have never spent more than an hour in emergency waiting for someone to attend to me.

    I would pay triple for what I receive here …..

    But don’t tell my government that.

  • Chris T. December 11, 2009, 3:24 am

    Tiburon:

    It is interesting the points you raise. Compare that to my post above about Europe. You mention the same things:
    shortages of doctors, horrible waiting lines in the centralized care places, and the inability to devote extra resources to your own healthcare,

    These are just endemic issues in all socialized sytems.

    As to “any joe”

    that’s a hot button comment.
    About 15 years ago, an American soldier of fortune, who spent many years in various African locales and elsewhere, plying his trade, made an interesting observatio:

    Countries with multi-ethnic populations tend to be stable, so long as there is one dominant majority (not just the largest plurality).

    He put the observed breaking point to stability at 70%, where he noted that once that percentage is no longer there, trouble starts, and eventually leads to decay, breakdown, etc.

    Well depending on whose stats you look at, the dominant majority in the US is either just at , or already below that breaking point.
    It is not a bright-line number of course, but it is an interesting observation. And for sure, that 70% will sooner than later be just 60% and within our lifetime (prob. most of us reading this) , just the largest plurality. I hope then it turns out that this fellow was wrong, or that we are exceptional…

    And that is why the PISA study ranking Finland at #1 year in year out is of so little value, talk about a small and most homogeneous country.

  • Keyser Soze December 11, 2009, 3:11 am

    I did as Rick suggested and checked the suicide stats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate). Sweden ranks 30th of the 109 countries listed, with a rate of 13.3 per 100,000. The USA comes 49th, with 11.1, not an enormous difference. Britain comes 72th, with 6.8. The countries with the highest rates are the neo-liberal leaning Baltic states and Russia.

  • CommieBlaster December 11, 2009, 12:41 am

    Obama is a Communist. See the proof here: http://www.commieblaster.com/obama/index.html

    And so are 80+ Members of Congress: http://www.commieblaster.com/progressives/index.html

    And here’s why they’re pushing Socialist Healthcare: http://www.commieblaster.com/healthcare/index.html

  • tiburon December 10, 2009, 11:13 pm

    Being in Canada, I can’t speak authoritatively as to the nuances within this…Humungous Bill. But I’ve been following the debate closely as if, G-d Forbid, serious illness was to ensue in the future, the option to drive South for translational medicine (largely forbidden here) would likely be greatly curtailed should the US choose the disastrous direction we took, decades ago. (When Tommy Douglas brought in nationalized (provincial) care it was a revolution, and a good thing, IMHO. But time and economy has collapsed the system, the nightmare stories abound (some of which I’ve experienced in caregiving for loved ones)).

    The “good doctors” headed south out of Ontario back in the early 80’s, they gotta live too, and 10 years of student loans is a big investment…by ‘good doctors’ I don’t mean to malign the many who for love or family or direct opportunity South, stayed, just that many of the young, ambitious and ‘creative’ docs fled.

    Put it this way – here, you get ‘one issue’ per visit from your GP, in 7-8 min, 13-min, (serious) increments…once a year maybe 38-min. You’ll wait in most cities several weeks for this appointment. This is fine of course, when appropriate, but point being You Cannot Buy More Time from your doctor, nor can he charge. Frightening shortage of physicians, with perhaps a million across the country unable to find a primary care doctor, for love or money. (read: – go wait in lines at the local hospital – here in Ottawa average waits 4 hours for, lets’ say, a fracture, or a cut hand requiring stitches. On a good day.) Specialists have months long waiting cues.

    And as to ‘cutting-edge medicine’? (Translational Medicine)…Forget it, highly illegal, though the occasional doc will stick his neck out, if a friend.

    I got off on to ‘our Canuck system’, my original point/question was regards the State Budgets in the US and Medicaid. As I understand it from Clinton’s former “architect”, Dick Morris, it appears that you’ll be talking about billions of dollars of additional state taxes in a significant number of poorly funded States, under this plan.

    http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/11/20/obamacare-big-state-tax-hikes/

    And as said above, doctor availability IS an issue, here as well – how do you guys intend to procure additional doctors for 30 million newly insured, Federally mandated to be served? Especially when maybe 40% of US Doctors are already threatening to quit if they get dragooned into this Plan, without address to their Compensation Issues?
    I don’t understand it, really (well, I do – my Eldest Brother is a Commie): – Why not just fix ‘what’s obvious’, tort reform, the employer tax thing, portability and cross-State-Border policy competition, allowing pooling of small enterprize plans, etc….and see what happens, first.

    For Heck’s Sake, this Plan doesn’t even kick in till 2013! Isn’t Nibiru supposed to be here and gone by then?

  • any joe December 10, 2009, 10:27 pm

    Rick
    Just want to say I like your political slant and so do most posters here it seems
    And with economics your pro-gold and hard asset orientation

    Sweden has a chance to have a decent socialist health care system due to its mono-ethnic population. People take better care of those who are their own kind. This will not work here with our multiKulti stew and it doesn’t work in the UK either due to so much immigration and foreign born doctors

  • Dusty December 10, 2009, 10:14 pm

    If congress and the American public do not want socialized medicine then the government should stop funding Medicare and Medicaid. This will save billions of dollars a year. Let them vote on that!

  • Jono December 10, 2009, 10:11 pm

    Sorry Rick but I have lived in the USA and in Sweden -and guess which one wins hands down! Sweden is full of gun owners too but I supect that even if it is doomed to bancruptcy (like all westernized economies apparently), its populace are better educated and better equipped (morally and socially) to deal with it. I am much more fearful of the backlash in the USA when folks realise that everything ahs gone off the rails.

  • Steve December 10, 2009, 8:37 pm

    I should also add a further question – is your former country one of the many that would need America to defend her if another Hitler (especially an Islamic version) decided to take over the continent?

    When a nation pays little for her own defense…well, America does not have that luxury

  • Chris T. December 10, 2009, 8:33 pm

    George makes a very simplified correlation argument, which isn’t one.
    Even if he were right, better health/average lifespan does not demonstrate that the health care system is better, neither is a worse system shown by worse stats.
    While this COULD be the cause, or a contributing factor, too many other variables obtain.

    As to the other poster who rapsodizes about having lived in a socialized care country, so have I, and I woudl not call them an unequivocal success.

    One thing is certain though, virtually all those countries are overburdened by their systems as well, with the typically ever increasing costs to the system, increasing taxes (that’s what the “insureds” premiums are in these systems) and steadily reduced areas of coverage, or procedures covered.

    In addition, these systems breed a mentailty of “what we offer sufficient, just because you have money and wish to pay for more, tough luck, why should the wealthy get better care?” Never mind that the person may not be wealthy, but just prudent, having foregone the yearly trips to Mallorca/Ibiza (for the Brits, Dutch, Germans), the new car everycouple of years, etc, etc.

    Britain is the worst. They are so back-logged that they periodically have to contract with hospitals across the channel for nec. procedures (guess what that adds in costs), and for just about anything requring care beyond the local surgery (GPs) you have to go to hospital (where the specialists are all housed), and wait in interminable waiting rooms (like our emergency room waits, but here for anything non-emergency).
    Great way to pick up the MRSA, which is epidemic in Britain.

    Still great for the bottom 5-10%, but what about the rest of us 90%?
    That’s socialization, 90% must suffer for the sake of the bottom 10%.

    In the US the problem is cost ever increasing. If we took the corporate fascist model out that would help, but we are simply going to approach it from the other direction. No wonder big pharma is not really opposed.

    Medicin is the only are in the world, where even normally right thinking people say such things as: too many doctors drive up costs, too many insurance companies drive up costs, too many hospitals drive up costs, etc.

    Yeah right: increasing supply while demand is relatively steady INCREASES price.

  • Steve December 10, 2009, 8:02 pm

    Two questions for Tom Paine.

    What country did you live in with socialized medicine (what might ‘work’ for a nation of 30 million can hardly compare to our nation of 300 million)

    Did you or a close family member ever have a serious illness?

    &&&&&&

    And if the country is England, let me raise the argument that England’s okay health care system is the wasted remnant of a once-great healthcare system that has been deliberately and systematically milked through underinvestment. RA

  • George December 10, 2009, 6:39 pm

    When were you last in Sweden? I can’t recall the exact figures, but isn’t a 60-year-old Swede healthier than a 30-year-old American? Of course exercise is a reason, but a better and cheaper healthcare system has a big effect.

    &&&&

    Sorry, George, but Sweden is in a terminal phase of tax-induced, post-Modern lassitude. Check the suicide stats if you don’t believe me. RA

  • Laurel December 10, 2009, 5:59 pm

    When you start waxing political, your credibility goes right out the window.

    &&&&

    My credibility with the likes of you, perhaps. I’m guessing that Michael Moore is your final arbiter in all such matters. RA

  • fallingman December 10, 2009, 5:03 pm

    Small clarification:

    Medicare, the disastrous Ponzified Federal program shouldn’t be confused with Medicaid, the disastrous disease-care welfare program, mandated by the feds but administered by the states and funded jointly by the states and the feds.

    State budgets wouldn’t be the ones hit by an expansion of Medicare eligibility. The cost would be tacked onto the ever expanding Federal deficit.

  • Rick Ackerman December 10, 2009, 4:29 pm

    From Atlantic Monthly online
    Dec 9 2009, 6:54 pm by Megan McArdle

    Do Americans Want Health Care Reform, or Not?
    Polled support for the health care plan wending its way through Congress continues to crash downward in the polls. And before you say it, it’s not just Rasmussen, which has actually been pretty much in the middle of the other polls. Here’s where we stand as of today:

    [A chart shows that the percentage of those who disapprove of the health care ‘reform’ package has climbed from the high teens to 51.7% since January, while the percentage of those who approve has fallen from 48% to 38.8%. RA]

    For reform advocates, this is not good news. At 40% approval, it probably passes. At 30% approval–what Social Security reform enjoyed by the time it imploded–it’s not going to no matter how the Senate massages their plan. Democrats cannot pass a bill this large on a straight party line vote if the only people in the country who want it are Democrats. Where is the line crossed between “probably will” and “probably won’t”? In September, a seasoned political reporter told me that the numbers could not go “much lower” before Democrats were forced to abandon the bill. Well, it’s lower–and the disapproval is spiking.

    The silver lining in this for reform advocates over the last few days has been Nate Silver’s argument that a significant portion of the opposition to the plan was coming from the left:

    [A chart show this]

    Ipsos also asked a parallel question of people who supported the plan: did any of them support the plan because they oppose health care reform and thought that the plan was sufficiently watered-down so as to “keep health care reform from happening”? A small number of people picked this response: about 10 percent of those in favor of the plan, or 3 percent of the entire sample.

    Combining these numbers together, we get the following:

    [For a look at all of the charts, paste this URL into your browser: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/12/do_americans_want_health_care_reform_or_not.php%5D

    One way to look at this: 43 percent of people favor health care reform, whereas 38 percent oppose it (20 percent are undecided). But the actual plan under consideration gets numbers that are more or less the reverse of that — 34 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed — because a significant number of people think the plan doesn’t go far enough.

    I thought about blogging it, but ultimately, I wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. For one thing, even if Nate’s right, that poll still seems to be telling you that you’ve lost the 12%–whatever the reason they don’t like the plan, they aren’t coming out for you next November whichever way you vote. The people who oppose the plan might, if you don’t vote for it. Since that number is bigger than the number who favor it in Nate’s chart, the political calculus is still fraught.

    But the bigger problem is that Nate classified everyone opposing reform because it doesn’t go far enough as opposing it from the left. Undoubtedly, that’s true of many, even most, of those respondents. But I could go down to Cato right now and poll 65% support for the proposition that the health care reform doesn’t go far enough–in the direction of taking away the employer health care tax exemption, means testing Medicare, and other ideas that no one would call “left”. Republicans who want liability caps and bigger HSAs might have similar complaints.

    A new poll out from PPP may shed some light on the issue. They’re a Democratic-affiliated outfit, so they can hardly be accused of stacking the polls. Their poll, like everyone else’s, shows support in a continued, slow collapse. In September, they polled it at 45% for and 46% against, while the latest poll says 39% for, 52% against. More interestingly, they asked a variant of the question Nate examined, and got very different results:

    Are you opposed because it gets government too involved in health care or because it would not involve government enough?

    Too much government involvement: 90%
    Not enough government involvement: 6%
    Not sure: 4%

    All the polls I’ve seen show that the independents are already heavily in the “against” camp, and steadily moving further in that direction. I don’t see this rallying many troops to the Congressional front lines.

  • Rich December 10, 2009, 3:29 pm

    Hussein and Tiger brands do seem to be lurching.
    Similar with D and R – what’s the difference?
    Intrade has 0Care with 2.2% chance of passage.
    Either a good buy or market knows something…
    http://www.intrade.com/

  • Tom Paine December 10, 2009, 3:08 pm

    Having lived in country with a national health insurance, I can’t say I am against the idea. Also, just about the best way we could save money would be to have a single payer and eliminate a lot of the excess bureaucracy necessary to deal with multiple payers. Also, we would get rid of the cost of the uninsured which are passed on to the rest of us and the cost of so many people who wait until they are seriously ill before getting any health services.

    That said, there are no panaceas, and it doesn’t look like this bill solves all of those issues, and how could we trust the bunch of mostly sleazy reptiles now inhabiting our legislature to come up with anything that serves the public interest over the corporate?

    I with the throw the bums out approach, but don’t just put a bunch of sleazy Republicans back in. We need independents and third party people in there.

  • Senor Cuidado December 10, 2009, 6:35 am

    Yeah, but it’s not “highway to hell” in the AC/DC style. They had fun on their trip. But this trip of ours is not fun.

    Anyway, Rick, thanks for a great excoriation of Our So-Called Leaders. I don’t think they understand that we citizens are all out here with the right to vote, and we can’t wait to go all Celente on their legislative careers next November.

    2010 could be the biggest off-year congressional wipeout in history. Throw the Bums Out (Again).

  • Other Paul December 10, 2009, 5:51 am

    The only time that our current politicians will learn anything about over-spending other people’s money is when their government retirement checks bounce and their doctors won’t accept the Congressional Healthcare Plan Card.

    Of course when that happens they’ll just: open up the freezer and pull out the cold cash donated by “friends” who need favors; tap unused campaign contributions; profit from proceeds from sweetheart real estate deals; collect awesome bucks or Ameros from speaking engagements fees, multi-million dollar book deals, lobbying and consulting employment, etc.

    Darn it. Guess we commoners won’t be meeting them at bedtime under the crumpling interstate bridges after the Great Depression II really kicks in.

    Any chance that Ron Paul will get to sub for St. Peter at judgment time whenever a Rep or Senator shows up?

  • Edward0 December 10, 2009, 4:53 am

    I don’t think Obama had the most left leaning record in Congress. If he did, you can be sure that Marxist columnist Alexander Cockburn wouldn’t have nicknamed him Senator Slither. As for Joe Lieberman, well, he’s probably one of the sleaziest pols in the D.C. cesspool; so
    it’s no wonder that he’s backtracking. After all, it’s doubtful the insurance industry’s great friend has any principles he wouldn’t quickly discard for the sake of expediency.

  • Occdude December 10, 2009, 4:13 am

    Love the “Ricks rant” you should do more of them. It does appear that we are on the highway to hell which is always the path of good intentions. When credit and money are easy, thinking is hard. Thats why the best thing the world could do for us is cut up our credit cards and use shock therapy to remind us of our flimsy hold on prosperity which will be fleeting if not treated with respect