Obamination: Obama Don't Care !

"Walk Through the President's Proposal":

[Unless otherwise noted, all emphasis in quotes is mine.]

The proposal aims to give the American people and small business owners more control over their health care choices by building on the progress Congress has already made, and including new ideas from both parties and the President himself.

With the exception of that one idiotic statement, the walk through page lacks substance. It has only a few links:

• the President’s proposal in a new section of WhiteHouse.gov.
• what the President’s proposal means to you in plain English
• Read specifically about the President’s proposal,
• the Republican ideas included the President’s proposal.
• more background on the meeting itself

The White House press release begins with this exemplar of demagoguery:

President Barack Obama used his weekly address to call on Democratic and Republican leaders to attend next week’s health care meeting in good faith to find reforms that work for American families and small businesses.

At no point in this process has the President or the congressional leaders of his party spoken or acted in good faith. Does anyone remember the promise to broadcast the deliberations on CSpan? The promise was made but not kept. Republicans were excluded from the committee markup process. They were not allowed to offer substantial amendments. Parliamentary rules and procedures were stretched and violated with abandon. A provision was inserted to prevent future congresses from repealing or amending critical parts of the legislation. The whole process has been an exercise in tyrannical arrogance and deception.

Planning to circumvent the Senate's deliberative process is not a sign of good faith. Releasing the President's proposal four days prior to his so called bipartisan meeting so that the CBO will not have time to analyze its costs is not a sign of good faith. These are signs of the arrogance of absolute power gone mad.

Consumers can neither retain nor increase their control over their health care options by allowing bureaucrats to decide what tests, procedures and drugs will be available. Nor can consumer options be increased by allowing bureaucrats to set prices or allocate resources. Consumer options can only be increased by removing artificial barriers to the free market.

Costs can not be reduced or limited by price controls and restricting entry into medical professions, those policies can only lead to rationing; reduced and delayed access to care.

Costs can not be reduced or limited by increasing inflation. Irresponsible fiscal policies can only result in increased inflation and stagflation, such as we experienced under the Carter regime.

Costs can not be reduced or limited by increasing demand for medical services. By moving new demand into the market, from uninsured and indigent consumers, seeking care for increasingly minor conditions, can only increase over time costs and require construction of new infrastructure and increased staffing, resulting in increased, not decreased costs.

There is no free lunch, there is no magic wand. The fixed and variable costs of clinics and hospitals must be met or they won't be able to remain open in the long term. If average premiums do not exceed average benefits in the long term, insurance companies will not be able to stay in business.

Cost controls requires increased supply & competition and tort reform. The high cost of malpractice insurance can not be reduced without curbing excessive and unreasonable malpractice litigation & settlements. That is not going to happen because the majority party is firmly ensconced in the tort lawyer's pockets.

Costs can not be reduced or limited by doubling energy costs. Hospitals and clinics need lights and HVAC. Cap & Tax will double those costs, which can only be passed on to consumers.

With several health insurance companies announcing steep hikes in their rates – from 10 to over 30 percent – it is clear that the status quo, while good for the insurance industry, is bad for the American people. After a year of exhaustive debate, it is time to move forward on reform.

Insurance premiums must exceed payouts for benefits, otherwise the insurers will go out of business. We live in the real world, not fantasy land. To the extend that insurers are profitable, premium reduction can only result from increased competition. That means making the insurance market national instead of limiting it to the 50 states.

Now, after their announcement stirred public outcry, Anthem agreed to delay their rate hike until May 1st while the situation is reviewed by the state of California. But it’s not just Californians who are being hit by rate hikes. In Kansas, one insurance company raised premiums by 10 to 20 percent only after asking to raise them by 20 to 30 percent. Last year, Michigan Blue Cross Blue Shield raised rates by 22 percent after asking to raise them by up to 56 percent. And in Maine, Anthem is asking to raise rates for some folks by about 23 percent.

What do you expect, Moron? Insurers make money by charging more than they pay out, investing their reserve funds in stocks and bonds for income and growth of principal. Your party facilitated the creation of a real estate inflation bubble. When the bubble burst, the stock and bond markets plummeted, drastically reducing the income of the insurers. They must make up the difference through premiums or go out of business.

The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.

President Obama is setting up a straw man to be burnt. The name of this game is anti-corporatism; a form of class warfare. It is an old Communist tactic.
Visit the Aug. 5 '09 Wall Street Journal for a reality check.

"For every premium dollar that they take in, about 83 cents goes out in medical costs -- doctors, hospitals, and drugs," says Carl McDonald, health insurance analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. The rest is spent on overhead. Net income comes to just a few cents per dollar of premiums.

Consider WellPoint, the biggest private health insurer on Wall Street, which has about 35 million customers nationwide. Last year, it paid out 83.6% of revenues in expenses. Net, after-tax income as a percentage of total revenue came to a princely 4.1%.

According to analysis by FactSet, WellPoint's ROA has averaged 5.8% over the past five years, Aetna's, 4.2%.

Brett Arends compares that modest ROA to 9.2% for Wal-Mart and 12.4% for Dell.

Some Republicans want to allow Americans to purchase insurance from a company in another state to give people more choices and bring down costs. Some Republicans have also suggested giving small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care at lower prices, just as big companies and labor unions do. I think both of these are good ideas – so long as we pursue them in a way that protects benefits, protects patients, and protects the American people.

It would be better to substitute those Republican suggestions for the whole damn package rather than adding them to the worst legislation ever. When you add a pint of ice cream to a gallon of manure, its still going to taste like manure.

To members of Congress, I would simply say this. We know the American people want us to reform our health insurance system.

Last month, the electorate of Massachusetts sent a different message, but the President was not listening. They elected a Republican to a Senate seat that has been in Liberal Democrat possession for nearly 50 years. Opposition to Health Care Destruction was the main issue in that election.

It’s our chance to finally give Americans the peace of mind of knowing that they’ll be able to have affordable coverage when they need it most.

The promise is false, because it is impossible to fulfill, and anyone who passed Econ. 101 should be able to figure out why. In Britain & Canada, there are long waiting periods to get care and the systems are starved for money. That should tell us something.

What’s being tested here is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem. Right now, Americans are understandably despairing about whether partisanship and the undue influence of special interests in Washington will make it impossible for us to deal with the big challenges that face our country. They want to see us focus not on scoring points, but on solving problems; not on the next election but on the next generation. That is what we can do, and that is what we must do when we come together for this bipartisan health care meeting next week. Thank you, and have a great weekend.

President Obama is demanding that the Republicans abandon their principles and allow the LeftTard majority to ruin our health care system, bankrupt the treasury, enslave the population in a state of permanent dependency on government and abandon the Constitution all to give him the privilege of saying that he "solved" a problem. In reality, his solution is no solution, but will make matters far worse. His 'cure' will kill the patient. It must be stopped!

Throughout the debate, President Obama has spewed a litany of lies which have been frequently refuted. He has tried to rush legislation through so fast that the opposition can not read and comprehend what they are voting on. Those behaviors should be red flags in the eyes of a skeptical electorate. The time has come to make a final push to resist tyranny.

We must impress the depth and intensity of our revulsion and outrage upon our elected representatives. We must tell the Democrat Congressmen that they will be replaced in the next election if they continue to push their flawed packages. We must tell the Republican Congressmen that they will have well financed primary opponents in their election cycle. The spineless, neutered Republican 'leaders' who were reluctant to use every possible parliamentary tactic to stop the demagoguery must be told that they can and will be replaced.

http://www.congress.org/ makes it easy to send a single email to President Obama, your Representative & Senators. You don't need to know their names or district numbers, you only need to know your Zip Code. You enter your Zip Code, and the web site looks up your elected officials. You click the Federal Officials link, and it presents a simple form

Tell them that you see through their lies. Tell them that you want to keep your own insurance and care providers. Tell them that you do not want any bureaucrats between you and your doctor. Tell them that you do not want artificial restrictions on medical services, you don't want price controls, you don't want to be put on a waiting list and you don't want to be told to go home and die quietly. If you don't want escalating costs coupled with delays and denials of care, then act now, before they jam their irrational, counterproductive and unconstitutional plans down our throats.

As soon as I get this posted, I will go to congress.org, and I will insert the following link into my email:

Gd'd HELL NO!!!

If the recipient or a staffer clicks on that link, they will see a brief explanation of my objections to their plans, followed by the biggest, brightest, boldest flaming execration the blog format will bear.

Our lives, liberty and prosperity are on the line. We must spare no effort in their defense. Please join me in cursing our Congressmen!!! We have no other recourse.