Harry’s Imaginary Friends & His Dangerously Flawed Health Care Plan
By Bronwyn's Harbor on December 10, 2009 at 2:45 PM in Current Affairs
Have you ever seen a group of politicians as frenzied as majority leader Harry Reid and his minions in the U.S. Senate? Why, Harry Reid is so desperate that he is touting imagined unanimity among his brethren despite the actual serious reservations held by many wary Democrats.
Have you ever witnessed a cadre of Democrats so frantic to blow life into the embers of the once-stoked presidency of Barack Obama, who chose health care as his centerpiece? It is entirely Obama’s fault. He rolled the dice, sticking his neck out by guaranteeing this incautious bill’s passage. He requires that legislative win so much that he doesn’t care what is in the bill. That’s because his ego, and his very own precious vision of his presidency, are on the line.
Have you ever before observed the obsessive efforts expended on legislation whose passage, the president fantasizes, will make him rank as high as FDR in the history books?
And, bottom-line, have you ever seen a worse piece of legislation than the whatever-it-takes health care bill frantically being tossed together? This bill now expands Medicare to people over 55, “tens of millions more people,” while cutting Medicare’s budget by $500 billion. And (!) while Medicare currently has over $38 trillion in unfunded liabilities? Yes. I know, I know. Harry’s latest “spaghetti against the wall” is illogical financially, and to work it will require severe rationing of care for the elderly and disabled as well as dumping costs on every state. But there it is. As Charles Krauthammer said on Fox’s Special Report yesterday, “It is an IED” that can blow up our nation’s current health care system.
All of this reminds me of an assembled baked hash that tastes awful because of its core ingredients. The cook can try desperately to correct the flavor by tossing in spices and additional ingredients. But the real problems are that the meat is rotten, the potatoes moldy, and the sauce made on the cheap. And nothing can disguise those disgusting tastes and odors.
Obviously, no good cook would ever begin to make hash with bad ingredients. Instead, the cook would find the best ingredients, carefully preparing each to enhance the whole of the hash which, if each ingredient has received proper attention and preparation, will be as delicious as the most haute cuisine there is.
Of note, and it’s no small thing: The consumers of the hash will be pleased, and feel satiated and cared for by the cook.
Would that the American people would feel similarly cared for under Obama’s health care plan.
Then there’s that any recipe, if made with the best ingredients, always turns out well unless the cook really messes up. Medicare is one such good ingredient that works well for those who use it. The addition of tens of millions of new customers will put an impossible burden on Medicare if it has to slash costs by $500 billion at the same time.
Dick Morris explains the dangerous flaws of the current “hash” of a health care bill. And so what if it’s Dick Morris as long as he explains the bill’s economically illogical, slapdash provisions the most cogently?
I have selected a section of DickMorris.com’s blog column, “NEW HEALTH CARE DEAL: THEY’RE ON THE RUN!,” and I have bold-faced a couple points that are critical for you to share with your friends and family:
[...]
[T]he current proposal Reid is loudly trumpeting is horribly flawed. …
It has all of the old flaws (minus the public option) in that the government, through the Secretary of Health, will decide who gets what treatment at what cost and will force rationing through an artificial scarcity on all people, particularly the elderly. And it still has such high premiums for young uninsured people that it will compete with student loans for the honor of being their number one headache.
But the compromise itself is flawed. Here’s why:
1. By breeching the historic dividing line between private and public plans now at 65, it opens the door for an expansion of Medicare to become just the single payer we are trying to stop.
2. How can you expand Medicare, potentially to tens of millions more people while cutting it by $500 billion?
3. The cuts in doctor and hospital reimbursement rates written into this bill will force hundreds of thousands of medical providers to refuse to treat Medicare patients. By applying these low reimbursements to patients 55-64, now, you are driving doctors out of the profession and discouraging others from entering it. A permanent scarcity of doctors will be the inevitable result.
4. The expansion of Medicaid to 150% of the poverty level imposes huge new financial burdens on states. It will cost Texas $3 billion, Pennsylvania $2 billion, California $2 billion, and Florida $1.3 billion. It will cost Arkansas and Louisiana $500 million each. This is net of federal aid and only counts the 10% share of expanded Medicaid costs the states must pay.
It is simple. This bill is financially nonsensical, and therefore dangerous.
It must be stopped lest it destroy the quality of care that this country is famous for worldwide.
It is, as Krauthammer said, an “IED” that will blow up our current system that, despite its flaws, must stay “as is” until such time as we have a president and a Congress who are rational and deliberative in the health reforms that all of us acknowledge we need.
For a sobering look at the monstrous problems facing Medicare, check out the Google results for “Medicare unfunded liabilities.”
Yes. $38 trillion. And that’s just what Medicare owes already, as of May 2009.
Then, as Dick Morris does above, we must factor in the budget crises facing every state and the new demands on every state’s budget that will come via this incautious federal legislation.
Last night, I watched the local news with my neighbors. We saw a report on the massive budget cuts being ordered by the state’s governor.
I looked over at my permanently disabled neighbor who depends on the state’s services to get dental care for her badly infected teeth and gums, and for all of her medical care.
She knew what those budget cuts will mean for her life. It was written all over her face.
She asked that we turn the news off, and talk about something fun. We did. How could we not? Her life of poverty and her painful disabilities are quite enough without now also learning that the services she counts on will likely go away.
That the federal government will add to the state rolls will mean too that my neighbor will have to stand in lines that are two- to three-times as long as she already does. Not to mention that the state, with its budget crisis, will have had to lay off many of the clerks who need to handle the new complex legislation.
Congress is, in truth, passing the financial buck to each state, with few or none of the states able to handle the burdens they already face.
It’s nuts.
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