Tag Archives: Control

Videos

Understanding Obama’s health care reform bill… with video clips!

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Sen. Tom Coburn
Sen. Tom Coburn

Tom Coburn

These video clips feature one of the conservatives I like, Senator Tom Coburn! (H/T Club for Growth)

Tom Coburn is a medical doctor, and ran a medical business. He gives you the inside view of why American health care needs changing, and why big government socialism is not the answer. This is not just a lesson in health care. Listen closely – this is a lesson in economics, and it shows the vision of free-market capitalism, liberty and personal responsibility that drives the policies of the right-wing.

Part 1:

Part 2:

And here is Ronald Reagan talking about the loss of liberty that follows when a country adopts socialized medicine. (H/T Club for Growth)

This is the easiest way to learn about health care policy.

Note: If you prefer to learn about socialized vs consumer-driven health care with podcasts, click here.

More details from a think tank

Here is a comprehensive treatment of the problems of health care today, and the right way to reform it. This article by the founder of the Heritage Foundation, Edwin Feulner, Ph.D., is so long that it is exactly the kind of thing that lefties like commenter Jerry won’t have the patience to read! This is the best thing to read in this post if you can only read one thing.

Here is are some of the myths he corrects:

If you like your health care package you can keep it

“…a public plan will lead many employers to drop private health coverage for their workers and dump them into the public plan… According to independent analyses, as many as 119 million Americans could end up in a public plan….”

The end goal is not a single payer system

“…The “single payer” here is Uncle Sam, using taxpayers’ money, and not just paying the bills but calling the shots and deciding what care every American will get—or not get….”

The end goal is not a single payer system

“…Congress’s own watchdog–have issued preliminary estimates that the cost could be high as $2 trillion over 10 years, with most of that borrowed money…”

The quality of your health care will get better

“…Medicare has huge gaps in coverage. Medicaid’s quality is notoriously bad. They both offer substandard care compared to most private insurance plans…”

And of course his letter also gives conservative solutions to the problem of rising health care costs. The Heritage Foundation is my favorite think tank. Conservative across the board – not just on fiscal issues.

James Demint

And conservatives like James Demint are getting this message out to the public, too.

Sen. James Demint
Sen. James Demint

Here is Senator Demint’s article in Forbes magazine. He answers the question: “What is the cause of our current health care problems? Is it the free market? Or is it government intervention into the free market?”

Excerpt:

…Washington politicians make it hard for individuals to own their own health insurance policies. Government gives tax benefits to businesses to provide group health plans to employees, but offers no such tax benefit to individuals who try to buy their own plan for themselves or their family. Government prevents consumers from shopping for better plans across state lines, which limits competition and drives up prices. Government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid pay doctors and hospitals less than the full value of their services, and the difference gets priced into the higher premiums paid by people who do have insurance.

In other words, politicians deliberately restrict consumer choice, drive up prices, underpay doctors and hinder both access and portability. Then they turn around, blame the free market for the health care crisis and say the only way to save the system is a government takeover of health insurance in the form of a so-called “public option.”

And he’s goes on to explain conservative solutions to the problem of rising health care costs. A great article from one of my favorite conservatives.

The real costs of Obama’s plan

Keith Hennessey has an analysis of the costs of Obama’s new government-controlled, rationed health care plan. You may have heard that the CBO has issued an estimate about the costs of Obama’s plan: 1 Trilliion over 10 years. Keith says that the number is actually closer to 1.3 trillion.

Health care subsidies over 6 years
Health care subsidies over 6 years

Keith took at closer look at the CBO’s 1 Trillion estimate, which includes only ONE area where money will need to be spent (subsidies for the poor). He found that many items in the Democrats’ health care bill were not included in the CBO estimate!

Excerpt:

  1. The budgetary effects of neither the individual mandate nor the employer mandate are included in this score.  I think CBO will find these provisions would raise revenues for the government and reduce the deficit.  While the leaked draft of Kennedy-Dodd was specific about the employer mandate, the official version has just the placeholder language, “Policy under discussion.”  Both mandates leave wide discretion for the Secretaries of Treasury and HHS to create a level and structure of taxation “to accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage.”  It is extremely difficult for CBO and their tax counterparts, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) staff, to estimate something like this.
  2. The estimate does not include the budgetary cost of expanding Medicaid to childless adults with income below 150% of the poverty line.  I expect that this will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the cost over the next decade.
  3. It does not include the requirement that health plans define “children” as dependents up to age 27.  I expect this will raise costs.
  4. It does not include the effects of the Medical Advisory Council’s ability to define benefits, or the requirements that plans rebate premiums to the insured.  I think this too will raise costs.
  5. It does not include the budget effect of having a “public plan option.”
  6. There are a bunch of other programs in the bill, including a new disability program and lots of new public health programs.

Keith will be posting more articles on his blog as he calculates the real costs of Obama’s plan.

The bottom line

Obama’s health care plan is simply “Obama knows best”. You will pay money to Obama, based on your income, (not on your health risks). And then Obama will decide whether government will give you any health care. He’ll probably make these decisions the same way he makes other decisions: based on whether you are one of his unionized supporters, whether you donated to Democrats, or whether you investigate his corrupt dealings.

Obama thinks that you are more satisfied with the service at your local DMV than you are with Amazon.com. And he plans to make sure that you are dealing with government bureaucrats, not with private businesses, when you need health care. Who gives you better service? The government, that isn’t trying to compete with anyone to meet your needs? Or private businesses, which do need to compete to earn your business?

Further study

You can watch some videos containing horror stories from countries that have adopted single-payer health care, too.

My previous post on socialized medicine linked to even more horror stories from other countries with socialized medicine.

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FAe2XEl5952A%2Fhqdefault.jpg&fexp=903902%2C902800&title=McCain%3A+%27This+is+a+joke%27+on+health+care&length_seconds=172&avg_rating=5.0&video_id=Ae2XEl5952A&showinfo=0&allow_embed=1&swf=http%3A%2F%2Fs.ytimg.com%2Fyt%2Fswf%2Fcps-vfl103922.swf&sk=_0zSL5HkbumJPmD211uCey-iMAHfrOKbC&fs=0&allow_ratings=1&rel=1&amp=&cr=US&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.verumserum.com%2F%3Fp%3D6405&showsearch=0
Commentary

Mark Steyn argues that big government means less liberty

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ECM sent this New Criterion article by Mark Steyn, Canada’s National Treasure, along with Ezra Levant, and Stephen Harper.

Have you heard about Paul A. Rahe’s new book entitled “Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift”? I heard an interview with the author on Milt Rosenberg’s radio show, and the podcast is here. But I also found this book review by Mark Steyn, which seems to be popular in the blogosphere. It’s a long read, but you will find it stimulating – especially the citations of Alexis de Toqueville. Prescient.

Excerpt:

…the consequence of funding the metastasization of government through the confiscation of the fruits of the citizen’s labor is the remorseless shriveling of liberty.Is it, as Mark Levin’s caller said, “inevitable”? No, not quite. But it seems like the way to bet. When President Bush used to promote the notion of democracy in the Muslim world, there was a line he liked to fall back on: “Freedom is the desire of every human heart.” Are you quite sure? It’s doubtful whether that’s actually the case in Gaza and Waziristan, but we know for absolute certain that it’s not in Paris and Stockholm, London and Toronto, Buffalo and New Orleans. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government “security,” large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make their own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and eventually (as we already see in Europe, Canada, American campuses, and the disgusting U.N. Human Rights Council) what you’re permitted to say and think.

If you think you can run a Christian life in a welfare state run by secular socialists, think again. Their goals and values are not your goals and values, and they will force their goals and values on you, and on your children.

And ECM also send me this article by Mark Steyn in the National Review, regarding single-payer health care.

Excerpt:

When President Obama tells you he’s “reforming” health care to “control costs,” the point to remember is that the only way to “control costs” in health care is to have less of it. In a government system, the doctor, the nurse, the janitor, and the Assistant Deputy Associate Director of Cost-Control System Management all have to be paid every Friday, so the sole means of “controlling costs” is to restrict the patient’s access to treatment. In the Province of Quebec, patients with severe incontinence — i.e., they’re in the bathroom twelve times a night — wait three years for a simple 30-minute procedure. True, Quebeckers have a year or two on Americans in the life-expectancy hit parade, but, if you’re making twelve trips a night to the john 365 times a year for three years, in terms of life-spent-outside-the-bathroom expectancy, an uninsured Vermonter may actually come out ahead.

In Canada, you can deliver babies yourself while you wait. (H/T ECM)

And the same thing happens in the UK.

Videos

MUST SEE! Michele Bachmann goes nuclear against gangster government!

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Representative Michele Bachmann
Representative Michele Bachmann

UPDATE: For all the people that are searching for Michele Bachmann, this blog is FILLED with stories on Michele Bachmann!!! Here is a good summary of some of her best material. Here’s her latest video.

More recent posts

Here are my recent posts on Michele Bachmann:

Michele Bachmann’s amazing speech

This video is a MUST SEE. (H/T Doug Groothuis)

Here is the article by Michael Barone that she cited.

What is gangster government?

To start with the obvious, even though Obama denies that he will manage the companies, we have all learned by now that he has no problem doing the very thing he is denying. (In ordinary life this political artfulness is called lying). He fired one CEO, forced Chrysler to accept Fiat (WSJ.com 6/5/09), told GM that it cannot move its headquarters out of Detroit (WSJ.com 6/3/09), and may have ordered that whoever buys GM’s European auto maker Opel must agree not to export cars to the U.S.. (WSJ.com 6/1/09) These decisions were made in secret with no Congressional oversight, by a man with no training or experience of any kind in business, never mind the auto business. The companies will be run by politicians, who will make decisions for the benefit of political agendas rather than on sound business principles. The result will be that the auto companies and the union will not make the deep changes required to make the companies profitable, so we can anticipate many more cash infusions.

Gary Jason writes about how Obama is intervening in the free market to screw creditors and take care of his union supporters with taxpayer bailouts.

I will argue that the unprecedented action by the current administration in manipulating the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and in effect nationalizing the companies, is egregiously unethical by every one of these major ethical perspectives. For this reason, I believe that this action makes it morally imperative for Americans to boycott these socialized companies.

… the Obama administration spent tens of billions in taxpayers’ dollars to take control of the companies and force the outcome it wanted. Obama, who received millions in contributions from the United Auto Workers union, has forced a settlement that will give UAW far more equity in the companies when they come out of bankruptcy than it was due compared to the secured debt holders.[i] Obama’s agents used threats and intimidation (calling holdout bondholders speculators and hedge funds at one point) to get the creditors to accept being shafted. (WSJ.com 5/11/09)The result is that the vast majority of the two companies will be almost clearly owned by the federal government and the UAW, and the UAW arguably controls the federal government.

The result is drenched in irony. The UAW was a major reason why the companies hit the wall, and now the UAW will be rewarded with major control and ownership. It is as if a rape victim were forced to marry her rapist. The result makes the crony capitalism we saw in Russia look clean by comparison; it, at least, was a kind of capitalism.

And what are the long-term consequences?

…To start with the obvious, even though Obama denies that he will manage the companies, we have all learned by now that he has no problem doing the very thing he is denying. (In ordinary life this political artfulness is called lying). He fired one CEO, forced Chrysler to accept Fiat (WSJ.com 6/5/09), told GM that it cannot move its headquarters out of Detroit (WSJ.com 6/3/09), and may have ordered that whoever buys GM’s European auto maker Opel must agree not to export cars to the U.S.. (WSJ.com 6/1/09) These decisions were made in secret with no Congressional oversight, by a man with no training or experience of any kind in business, never mind the auto business.

The companies will be run by politicians, who will make decisions for the benefit of political agendas rather than on sound business principles. The result will be that the auto companies and the union will not make the deep changes required to make the companies profitable, so we can anticipate many more cash infusions.

Worse yet, we can foresee that now that the UAW and feds have control of Chrysler and GM, they won’t stop there. Their natural instinct will be to achieve monopolistic control. The UAW has helped drive Chrysler and GM to the wall and is now co-owner with the government of most of the equity. They will likely next target Ford, to get equity ownership of it. Then look for the UAW and the administration it controls to attempt to force the employees of foreign auto makers in this country to join the UAW, or use environmental and other regulatory laws to put those companies out of business.

Obama and the Democrats are willing to use threats and intimidation to ram through their socialist policies. Here is a long list of unconstitutional interventions. (H/T 4Simpsons) He does not care about laws and rights – he wants power over your liberty. He wants to control your life.

The Road to Serfdom

For those of you who did not know before, the greatest economics book of the 20th century was Nobel-prize winning economic F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom“, which is analyzes the history of socialism and fascism in Nazi Germany and Russia. This book is #1 on Human Events’ Top 10 books every Republican should read.

Human Events writes:

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) was an Austrian economist awarded the Nobel Prize in 1974. He defended capitalism and individual liberty against collectivism. In “The Road to Serfdom,” he describes how government planning of the economy leads to tyranny. President Reagan cited Hayek as one of his favorite economists. “To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man,” wrote Hayek. “Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?”

When Michele Bachmann stands up on the floor of the House and advocates against government intervention in the free market, she is literally standing between the American people and mass-murdering, rights-trampling, faith-destroying communism.

And by the way, Obama means to do the exact same thing with the health care and energy sectors.

BONUS

Don’t forget my recent post which has even more amazing and encouraging videos of Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn defending the American way. Or click here to see all of my Michele Bachmann posts. You can read more about her strong Christian faith in this article from World Magazine.