The Fatal Flaw of Obamacare, Democrats claim their plans will save money, but they have too many conflicting goals

I had a link to this article, but the link was removed, however I found that if you still have the original link path, you can get to it by searching the article identifier at the end. "0,9171,1914973,00"

I decided to quote the entire article, as it might not be available on Time Magazine's website much longer.

There are two basic points about health care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, "the status quo is untenable." Our health care system is rife with "skewed incentives." It gives us "a whole bunch of care" that "may not be making us healthier." It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is "bankrupting families," "bankrupting businesses" and "bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change."

Obama's second major point is that — to quote from the same broadcast — "if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don't want you to have to change ... So what we're saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."

So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health care reform to the public has been so hard?

Again and again, their effort has brought us into a land of paradoxes. Public skepticism is warranted when the President promises to cut costs while simultaneously providing coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured people. It is even more warranted when his congressional allies seek to raise taxes to pay for all the new spending that this cost-cutting entails. We aren't talking about short-term spending either; this isn't a trillion-dollar investment in a new system that will ultimately save money. The Congressional Budget Office says the leading health care reform proposals will increase health care spending and make the budget harder to balance in the long run. Yet saving money is the President's principal stated rationale for reform.

Health care reformers send out mixed messages on the uninsured as well. The moral imperative of improving their health care is what drives the passion of most liberal activists for reform. But when you read the liberal policy analysts, it quickly becomes clear that getting young and healthy people to pay more in premiums than they will spend on medical expenses is the point of forcing them to buy insurance. Which is it? In aggregate, are we trying to rescue the uninsured or bilk them? Is reform something we are doing for them or to them?

The reformers' speed belies their words as well. If health care reform is so critically important, as they keep insisting, why not take the time to get it right? Hard as it is to believe, at one point Obama was urging the House and Senate to pass legislation by three weeks after they began debating it.

One final contradiction may lie beneath all the others. Democrats, particularly those involved in health policy, were scarred by President Clinton's failure to achieve reform in 1994. They are determined to avoid a similar debacle. So on every procedural question, they have done the reverse of what he did.

Everything is different this time — everything, that is, except the plan. The Democrats are seeking mostly the same policies they sought 15 years ago: mandates, regulations on insurance companies, new government-managed markets. The major difference is that this time they also want a "public option," an insurance program open to everyone and run by the government. Obamacare is Clintoncare with a little more liberalism.

The Democrats have apparently concluded that it was tactical blunders that sank Clinton. It wasn't. It was his plan. Like today's plans, it had too many conflicting goals.

Stanley Greenberg, who was polling for Clinton back then, recently reminded Democrats that the insured public in the early '90s just could not be persuaded that the President was going to cut its costs by expanding coverage for others. No amount of clever strategizing is going to make the sales job easier this time. Instead, the President is in a series of double binds. The more he emphasizes how much has to change, for example, the more people are going to doubt his pledge that they can keep their doctor.

Congress may yet pass the health legislation Obama wants. If it does, that success will reflect the Democrats' numbers in Congress and their determination, not public enthusiasm. This time there is no barrage of Harry and Louise ads to blame. It is health care reform's own contradictions that are causing it to sink.

I contend that the mere fact that Obamacare needs to be "sold to the American people" is proof that it's unneeded. Remember, Obama keeps going on about a public outcry for healthcare reform. If there is a public outcry for healthcare reform, there would be little need to "sell" their plan to the American people.

What "sell" means in this context is -- convince the American public to believe a lie. They can't do the things they are claiming to do, and the more they try to convince people that they can, the more irrational they seem.

It's simple. Healthcare is not the goal of Obamacare, government control of the healthcare system is the goal of Obamacare. And every argument they make otherwise only serves to illustrate this point.

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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/01/running-clunkers-program-highlights-government-incompetence-critics-say/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r2:c0.098387:b26893280:z0

The program was designed to encourage owners of pollution-spewing gas guzzlers to trade them in for NEW, more-efficient cars, helping the hard-pressed auto industry and the environment, too. Enticed by rebates of $3,500 to $4,500, car owners are jumping at the offer. It worked, almost too well.

Far more drivers signed up for the program, leaving dealers panicked over when or if the government would make good on the hefty rebates.

The House was first in what's expected to be a fast pit stop, voting to pour in another $2 billion. The Senate has yet to act -- it is expected to take up the measure next week -- but the White House said weekend deals would count, no matter what.

President Obama said the program has "succeeded well beyond our expectations" and is pushing the Senate to pass the measure next week.

But Republicans are questioning the government's readiness for wading deep into other private-sector strongholds, such as health care.

The government can't reasonably calculate the response for an automobile trade in program, how can they calculate the response to a much more complicated program?

The government is now going to spend another 2 billion dollars on the CARS program. The government underestimated the cost of the program by two thirds! The idea behind the program is fairly simple. There are only two possible CARS benefits, $3,500, or $4,500 dollars. Compared to health care the CARS program is a walk in the park; there are only two figures to deal with. I wonder how much health care "reform" is really going to cost?

The stated purpose is to get people out of their inefficient vehicle, and into a NEW fuel efficient vehicle, while at the same time spurring auto sales. Here are the requirements to trade in:

http://www.cars.gov/faq#category-06

* have been manufactured less than 25 years before the date you trade it in
* have a "new" combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less
* be in drivable condition
* be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year preceding the trade-in
* The trade-in vehicle must have been manufactured not earlier than 25 years before the date of trade in and, in the case of a category 3 vehicle, must also have been manufactured not later than model year 2001

The program introduces a number of unintended side effects. For instance, many of the people trading in older cars and trucks most likely have no car payments. There are not many vehicles manufactured within the past 5 or 6 years that have a combined EPA fuel efficiency rating of under 18 MPG. Sure, the owners of new more fuel efficient vehicles will save on fuel, but what about payments on a new car? People are going to be spending a lot more money with a new vehicle than they would with an older, paid for vehicle, regardless of the fuel efficiency. Insurance premium rates are higher on newer vehicles.

With the government making the down payment, new vehicle prices will remain artificially high. This current increase in auto sales does not reflect actual market forces.

Banks will have a much harder time selling repossessed cars. The CARS benefit DOES NOT apply to used cars.

There will be huge vacuum when the program expires. New car sales will drop.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/01/popularity-web-snafus-nearly-broke-clunkers/

The backlog had been building for weeks. Auto dealers could begin offering the rebate at the beginning of the month, and many began doing so over the July 4 weekend. But it was not until a week ago that dealers could begin filing for reimbursement, leaving them on the hook for as much as $4,500 per car until they get the federal money.

That's when they ran into difficulties with a federal Web site ill equipped to handle the volume of claims and the multiple documents each submission requires. Some dealers said the process took upward of an hour for each transaction, caused repeated rejections and consumed many hours submitting and resubmitting data.

At Walser Toyota in Bloomington, customers began lining up on Monday before doors opened at 7:30 a.m.. Swenson said. By that afternoon, his dealership had done 150 trade-ins under the program. His salesmen worked overnight to scan and submit forms.

But of the 150, he said, only 30 received responses and all of those were rejections.

Dealers are now on the hook for more than 1 billion dollars, and there is literally no clear plan to reimburse them. It's not sure when and if the government will make good on the reimbursements; how long can the dealers hold out?

Government controlled health care doesn't sound so nice now, does it?

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is arrested, it must be racially motivated right?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/23/officer.gates.arrest/index.html

Before making your conclusion, you should probably read the police report.

PDF file of police report, downloaded from Foxnews.com Gates_Arrest

Let's imagine that the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - instead of breaking into his own home - hired a locksmith. He would still be required to show the locksmith some form of ID, proving that the property was indeed his residency. Would Gates have reacted the same way if a locksmith asked him to show some ID?

Gates did NOT own the house he was staying in, he was renting it. Is it possible that Gates didn't call a locksmith, because the ID did not show the address to be his residence. After all the locksmith won't let you in if you have no proof that you belong in the residence.

Obama when asked about the incident with Gates, one of Obama's friends, gave this reply. Note that Obama's reply was at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care reform.

"I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact."

Obama's quote shows that he was not well informed as to what had taken place, but had already prejudged the situation.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534615,00.html

NATICK, Mass. — The white police sergeant criticized by President Barack Obama for arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Massachusetts home is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling.

Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class about racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

"I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy," Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The course, called "Racial Profiling," teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community "and how you don't want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from," Fleming said. The academy trains cadets for cities across the region.

Fellow officers, black and white, say Crowley is well-liked and respected on the force. Crowley was a campus police officer at Brandeis University in July 1993 when he administered CPR trying to save the life of former Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis. Lewis, who was black, collapsed and died during an off-season workout.

- Tell me what you think...

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Thoughts on health care; as a right…

If health care was a right, how would the government protect it? Remember it is the government’s job to PROTECT our rights, NOT provide them.

Our rights are endowed by our creator, NOT government.

It is the government's job to protect our rights.

If health care is a right, wouldn't the government protect the ability of individuals to pursue the health care of their choice? This would involve the government DEREGULATING, and allowing individuals to determine what is best.

If health care is a right, should the government be allowed to DENY health care to anyone? Health care rationing is happening in the U.K. right now. It is also happening in Canada. There is simply NOT enough wealth to secure the health of every citizen.

In order for the government to secure your health, there would need to be guidelines set. There would be limits placed on what sorts of foods you can eat, and when you can eat them. The government would have to take complete control of your diet, and your freedom as a result. After all you don’t want to hurt yourself, do you?

Many people look at health care as a right. Perhaps they can look a little past the hype, and see what is at stake here.

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There are many key features that people MUST pay attention to when it comes to the most resent round of “Health Care Reform.” It seems that with any government program people need to be careful for what they wish for, they might just get exactly that.

If you go to page 16 of the Health Care Reform bill H.R. 3200 you will find this:

SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.
(a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED.—
Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term “grandfathered health insurance coverage” means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.

This means that you can keep the coverage you already have “grandfathered health insurance coverage”, so long as the policy was started before the year the bill becomes law. In and of itself, this doesn’t sound so bad. Then you read the next part.

Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.

This means that the insurance issuer (your insurance company) CAN NOT add any individual to the plan after the first day of the year the bill becomes law. There is a provision that will allow you to add dependents, but that’s it.

To sum this up, it means that your current private health insurance plan will become illegal. The existing insurance companies would be able to keep running, but only with the people that they already have in their current plans. Future plans would have to be based on government guidelines.

Once the bill becomes law if you switch employers or start your own business, you WILL NOT be able to purchase the same health insurance, as it will be illegal for insurers to issue new policies with the same attributes. The insurance policies with mandated government specified premiums and deductibles will be the only insurance options available.

This is like telling a grocery store chain that they cannot purchase any new inventory (it will be illegal), they just have to sell what they have currently in stock. Then claim that it is not illegal to own and operate a grocery store, you just can't purchase any new stock. How is the grocery store supposed to stay in business? When later allowed to purchase new inventory, that stock will be determined by the government. This is exactly how the H.R. 3200 proposes private health care insurance is supposed to function.

Up until now, I figured congress would regulate the private industry into failure. But here in this bill they make private insurance illegal. To make it all the more insulting this provision is under the section “PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.” All of this is right on page 16, take a look…

PDF file: H.R. 3200 downloaded from the Thomas.gov website

This is just the beginning though. Remember how Obama said that we have to reform health care because it's killing our economy? You should take a look at the report from the non partisan Congressional Budget Office report.

■ Currently, a significant share of the population moves in and out of insurance
coverage during a year, which complicates efforts to provide effective
prevention and wellness services. As discussed later, though, those services
are less broadly effective at reducing health care spending than might be
expected, and in any event, expansion proposals would not eliminate all of the
churning that makes it harder to maintain continuity of care.

■ Most expansions of insurance coverage that are under consideration would
leave a moderate number of people uninsured, in part because some people
would be ineligible for subsidies or would choose not to buy insurance even
with large subsidies. Therefore, any current problems arising from the lack of
insurance could be reduced but not eliminated.

It also bears emphasizing that if a reform package achieved “budget neutrality”
during its first 10 years, budgetary savings in the long run would not be
guaranteed—even if the package included initial steps toward transforming the
delivery and financing of health care that would gain momentum over time.
Different reform plans would have different effects, of course, but two general
phenomena could make the long-run budgetary impact less favorable than the
short-run impact:

■ First, an expansion of insurance coverage would be phased in over time to
allow for the creation of new administrative structures such as insurance
exchanges. As a result, the cost of an expansion during the 2010–2019 period
could be a poor indicator of its ultimate cost.

■ Second, savings generated by policy actions outside of the health care system
would probably not grow as fast as health care spending. Such would be the
case for revenues stemming from the Administration’s proposal to limit the
tax rate applied to itemized deductions and from proposals to tax sugar-sweetened
soda or alcohol, for example.

Some policy options under consideration would yield savings that grew in tandem
with health care spending—reducing the level of federal spending on health care
but not affecting the measured rate of spending growth after the first few years.
For example, the largest savings proposed in the President’s budget would arise
from a decrease in payments to private health insurance plans operating under the
Medicare Advantage program. If enacted, that change would permanently lower
the level of Medicare spending, but it would probably not offset a noticeably
larger share of the cost of an expansion of insurance coverage in the second
10 years than in the first.

Here is a copy of the CBO report:

PDF file: 06-16-HealthReformAndFederalBudget from the CBO website

There is nothing in the proposed bill that would significantly decrease the number of uninsured, or save money in the long run. What, then, is the purpose of this bill?

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