Working for the People

President Obama stood up today and proclaimed that the passage of the health care bill proved that the government, “of the people, by the people, still works for the people.”

Except 76% of the American people don’t want this monstrosity.  Last fall, a Gallup poll showed that about 75% of insured Americans, both private and Medicare/Medicaid insurees, rated their health care coverage as excellent or good (they rated their actual health care even better).  Which means, unless the “76% opposed” poll was only talking to insured voters, that there are a lot of people in that opposition who either don’t have health care or don’t like their health care all that much.

Rasmussen Reports just released a report showing that voters are currently registered as 35% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 33% unaffiliated… which means that if every single Republican and unaffiliated voter out there was against the health care bill, then that last 10% of disapproval came out of the Democratic ranks.  (And that “unaffiliated” category continues to grow rapidly.)

Last night, Speaker Pelosi arrived back in the House chambers at the end of the Minority Whip’s excellent speech.  She received a standing ovation from the Democratic side of the House and proceeded promptly to her specially set-up podium… set on the Democratic side, facing away from the Republican side.

Remember the purple suit at her swearing in, because she said she’d be a uniting Speaker, not a partisan one?  No more red states vs. blue states?  So much for that.

Well, at least, the opposition to the health care bill has been a great uniter.

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Can anyone out there draw?

If I could draw editorial cartoons (which I can’t), I would draw Nancy Pelosi with a giant bottle of “snake oil health care” giving off noxious fumes, screaming for the children to, “Get your butts in here and take this!  It’s good for you!” while two scared-looking children (labelled as American tax payers and patients) hide around the corner.

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Blood Money and Health Care

My parents love the musical Jesus Christ: Superstar.  I hate it, for many reasons.  I could start with its denial of Jesus’ divinity, the hippie-like apostles complete with fawning feminine companions, the apparent sleeping arrangements of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, etc.  But, for all that, there are brief flashes of interesting bits.

One, in particular, came to mind tonight.  Judas has gone to the High Priest to negotiate handing over Jesus.  He starts out not quite sure he’ll do this.  The High Priest offers a bribe, which Judas angrily refuses with, “I don’t want your blood money!”  He persists, and Judas answers again, “I don’t need your blood money!”

Seeing an opening, the High Priest finds Judas’ pressure point: “Think of the things you could do with this money, think of the things you could do for the poor… It isn’t blood money, it’s (the High Priest gropes for a “nicer” word and another member of the council hisses, “A fee!”)… it’s a fee, nothing more.”

And Judas takes it.

It’s just the betrayal of innocent blood, right?  I mean, when you could do something for lots of poor people, what’s one innocent man?

(Now, I have issues with this interpretation.  Although Judas protested at a woman’s use of expensive perfume to annoint Jesus’ feet, insisting that the money would be better spent on the poor, some commentators think that that was because Judas held the charitable purse, and so would have been able to help himself to the money if it had been given to him.  Also, commentators point out that, as a zealot, Judas was seeking the military liberation of Israel.  There is some speculation that Judas was trying to force Jesus’ hand by turning him over, expecting that he would then finally manifest himself as the all-powerful Messiah and kick the hated pagan Romans out.)

Still, purely as drama and commentary on human behavior, it’s interesting.

Especially tonight.

Tomorrow morning, the health care bill goes to vote in the Senate.  Early on the morning of Christmas Eve, after debates and preliminary votes scheduled over weekends and into the wee hours of the morning.  After closed-door discussions and amendments.  And blood money.

So much for transparency, no more government as usual, etc.  Same stories, different day.

Playing Judas is Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, with whom Lindy is none-too-pleased.  Apparently, she’s not the only one in Nebraska who’s upset over his shift.  You see, Nelson insisted that he’s a pro-life Democrat.  I’ve always had my doubts about that label; it often seems the “pro-life” Democrats are trotted out as cover for the increasingly radical pro-abortion positions of the Democratic Party.  Yes, maybe they can do some good.

And maybe they’re just window dressing until the Democrats get enough power to pass whatever pro-abortion legislation they want and can dump them.  In which case, the pro-life Democrats were accomplices in the evil.

Anyways, Senator Nelson had held out against the health care bill, insisting that pro-life language prohibiting taxpayer money from paying for abortions and ensuring conscience protection for pro-life medical professionals be included.  Then, suddenly, he announced he’s voting for the bill, since, after all-day negotiations, he had won language in the bill that will allow states to opt out of covering abortions.  All this, after Nelson had repeatedly insisted that he would help filibuster the bill if his pro-life amendment wasn’t included, which would’ve prohibited taxpayer money from paying for abortions anywhere.

Why the shift ?  Did he really get what he wanted?  Yes and no.  There are still no real pro-life protections in the bill; pro-life people’s tax dollars will pay for abortions in many states, even if abortion coverage is rejected in your state.

Senator Nelson, however, did manage to get Nebraska a sweetheart deal whereby Nebraska will not have to foot as much as other states for health care.  There are rumors that he was threatened with the loss of an Air Force Base, also, which is always a dramatic economic blow to an area.

Nelson joins the previous sell-out, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.  Apparently, consciences are up for sale in the Senate; too bad the rest of the states’ senators didn’t play coy and get taxpayer hand-outs for their constituents, too, huh?  Landrieu accepted a promise of $300 million for her state, claiming that it was for helping those still recovering from Hurricane Katrina by helping the state cover Medicaid costs.

Initial reports said the bribe… ahem… *fee, nothing more*… was $100 million.  Landrieu was quick to correct her record: “It’s not $100 million, it’s $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it,” she told reporters, when asked.

Unlike Nelson, Landrieu is pro-abortion, but had voted against taxpayer funding for abortion previously.  This time, however, dissent was not going to be allowed, and we’re all going to pay for it, since that $300 million isn’t just going to appear out of thin air.  Through federal taxes or devaluation of the dollar from printing too much money, we’ll all get to pay for Sen. Landrieu’s Christmas present.

Rep. Bart Stupak in the House of Representatives actually held onto his morals, forcing the inclusion of pro-life language in the House version of the bill.  After Nelson caved, you’ll have to forgive me if I have my doubts if Stupak and the other pro-life Democrats in the House will maintain their position, or if more fat checks written on our bank accounts are being prepared for their states as we speak.

So, Nelson and Landrieu smile, reassure their constituents that they’ll “get theirs”, and rest comfortably in the knowledge that the Democratic Party won’t be disowning them for a vote against the health care bill.

It’s only innocent blood.  A few doctors forced out of business for refusing to do abortions.  A 30% increase in abortions over the more than one million done each year (from Planned Parenthood’s estimate on how many more women would get abortions if they could afford them or if they were covered by insurance).  Wait, that’s 300,000 more dead children and wounded mothers a year…

But, hey, that’s nothing against the voting poor, who will only remember their Medicaid got funded, right?

“It isn’t blood money, it’s… a *fee*, nothing more…”

Keep telling yourselves that.  It’s a catchy tune.

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Not buying Obamacare

Ok, I said I was going to be gone, but the crisis is on hold, so I got to watch President Obama’s speech tonight.

Oh, joy.

Now, I’ll say this for him: President Obama is a great speaker, especially if you like traditional “black” pulpit-pounding preaching.  (I was a little disappointed at the lack of, “Can I get an ‘Amen’!?!”  Done right, I actually like that style once in a while.)  The problem is, I don’t believe a lot of what he says.

One of our strengths as a nation is a “healthy skepticism for big government…”  The man who presided over the $787 billion stimulus package (estimated by the CBO to have a true price tag of $3.27 billion in ten years)?  The president who took over car companies on the flimsy excuse they were “too big to fail”?  He’s skeptical of big government?  Maybe he thinks “skeptical of” is a synonym for “addicted to”.  (I did have an otherwise reasonable boss once who adamantly insisted that in lieu of meant because…)

“I won’t pass a bill that will add a dime to the deficit…”  Ok, this is technically true: if this passes, it will add millions and millions of dimes to the deficit.

“We’re going to pay for this out of savings from the inefficiencies in the system…” and I’ve got some lovely oceanfront property in Arizona to sell off to pay for my health care plan, too!

“… the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little…”  Actually, “too much government” got us the Revolutionary War.  Too little government gave us the Constitutional Convention.  I happen to be of the opinion that the Constitution is a whole lot better than a war, but that’s just me.

“There are still details to be worked out in this plan…” (loud guffaw from at least one Congressman)  Now that’s restraint; I would’ve considered booing.  Pelosi looked like she was going to jump out of her seat to strangle someone.

But that’s ok; President Obama insisted that he has an “open door” to discuss issues and suggestions with Republicans.  (General unhappy murmuring could be heard after this claim, too.)  Funny, but the Congressman who tried to take him up on going line-by-line through the bill doesn’t seem to have gotten an appointment yet.

Yes, the almost-nod to tort reform (although Obama carefully avoided that exact phrase) was good.  Frankly, if the bills were going to cover tort reform, legislate pre-existing conditions be covered, allow people and companies to band together to negotiate rates, allow everyone to buy insurance across state lines, and allow people to buy drugs from Canada… well, I’d be thrilled to see it passed fairly quickly (especially since DH’s company just passed on the news that the blasted health insurance company is cancelling our plan, forcing us into one with a higher deductible).

Of course, if all Congress was doing was removing restrictions, the bill would be ten pages or less and easy to read quickly.  Unlike the current bills.

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Wiggle Room in the Health Care Bill

The problem with DVR’s is that you wind up watching live shows from Friday night on Sunday night.  Oh, well.

The World Over, EWTN’s weekly news program, had several people discussing the health care bill.  Thankfully, several Catholic groups that had seemed to support the bill currently being discussed have come out, clearly stating that they support the goal of universal access, but not necessarily of universal health care as now written.

Even more interestingly, one of the guests pointed out that there are 179 uses of the phrase “by the secretary.”  As in:

• “… deemed appropriate by the secretary…”
• “… defined by the secretary…”
• “… prescribed by the secretary…”
• “… enacted by the secretary…”

Ok, I understand some usage of that phrase, since the HHS secretary will presumably have something to do with implementing this bill.  But allowing the HHS secretary to define, prescribe, and deem appropriate?  Isn’t that why they’re writing such a ridiculously long bill in the first place, to define, deem what’s appropriate, and prescribe actions?

Now, remember, this would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, who had ties to late-term abortionist George Tiller.  Tiller contributed almost $40k to Sebelius’ campaign funds, and Sebelius stonewalled attempts to prosecute Tiller for alleged breeches of Kansas law on late-term abortions.

Is this the person you want “defining” and “prescribing” what the new government health care system will and will not do?  Would you trust most politicians with that much leeway?

I wouldn’t.

Given that, sooner or later, power will shift in Washington, bills are usually written to be pretty explicit in what they are doing, covering, mandating, etc.  In a bill this long, covering so much territory, why is anything being left to the whims of the HHS secretary?

What is being slipped in within the wiggle room that nobody would vote for if it were spelled out?

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Will “prevention” save health care?

The news has been swamped with Obamacare for weeks.  Will it work?  Will it take care of the uninsured?  Will it bankrupt us?  Will there be health care rationing?  What about the British and Canadian systems; they aren’t exactly great?

The friend who quoted a number of CNN talking points to justify her revulsion towards the Tea Parties (and everyone in them… only partially slowed by the discovery that I attended two) finished her claims with, “Well, this isn’t British health care, so it isn’t at all valid to compare the two plans.  Obama’s plan is going to emphasize prevention.”

Like the British don’t?

That difference, she claimed, would’ve helped my friend who would’ve died from her cancer before she got to the front of the queue for the first diagnostic test.  Under the new plans being discussed, we would’ve paid for the test.  Hmm.  Sounds nice, but the British would’ve paid for the test, too… too late.

The problem with the argument is two-fold:

1.  Preventive tests cost money.  If the incidence of the disease is low, it doesn’t make economic sense to do screenings.  Good for you if you’re lucky enough not to get sick.  Not so good otherwise.  Apparently, even the Congressional Budget Office has (again) had to pop a budgetary fantasy balloon, saying that, no, “prevention” is not going to shave billions off our health care spending.  CBO director Doug Elmendorf, quoted in an article by Charles Krauthammer, said, “Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.”

2.  Preventive tests take time.  If fewer people are becoming doctors, as has happened in Britain, you wind up with shortages of people to do the tests.  Sure, once you’ve been identified as possibly having a problem, you can have the cancer screening… in ten months or so.  Of course, as we keep hearing, early detection is key to beating cancer, which may account for the fact that Great Britain’s cancer suvival rates are significantly lower than those in the U.S.

 Of course, this doesn’t even touch the discussion of whether or not you will want the government running your health care.

I’ve been in government-run health care: the Navy’s.  Some of the doctors were really great, caring, talented people who you got the impression would be doing medicine no matter what.  Some others were people who gave you the impression they were in the Navy because they would’ve been sued for malpractice too often in the civilian world and had their medical licenses yanked.  In government medicine, suing is not allowed, no matter how egregious the problem.  Being a heavily military area, our local paper ran an article on the lack of protection from malpractice in the military.

As a midshipman, we all laughed at the sign in Medical insisting to the doctors (and trumpeting to the patients) that, “Our patients are not an interruption in our day, they are the reason for our day.”  The joke was that, really, the driving principle down there was more of, “There are going to be another 1,300 or so midshipmen arriving again next July, so why worry if we lose a few from the current classes?”

I had several tests denied not because my concerns were illogical or easily explained, but because, “That test is too expensive.”  My acne medicine that I had been taking in high school (which worked) was changed to a different medication with no explanation at all.  It didn’t work, but I was told that was what the Navy had decided it was doing for acne.  A friend of mine was denied a biopsy on a lump she’d found in her breast; they didn’t want to check it because, if it wasn’t just a cyst, they’d have to operate, and, “That would be a pain.”  She couldn’t get anything done about it until we graduated (three years later) and went to a different duty station (and different medical department).

The Navy was very good at delivering babies (or so I hear), and very bad at dealing with infertility.  Their basic operating procedure was to sort of dither around doing next to nothing (except badger me about my *roll eyes* antiquated religious beliefs that wanted my fertility fixed, not medically forced) until they’d convinced you to cough up your own money and go get IVF out in town.

I hear the Navy is also very good at repairing sports injuries in knees (often of the knee-meets-metal-deck kind, because all the floors on the ships are metal, so that’s your only option for basketball).  When my own knees ached and swelled constantly and made odd crackling noises, the chief in charge of Medical on the destroyer shrugged and said, “Everyone gets that.  Take some pain killers.”  Without his referral, I couldn’t go get a second opinion from an actual doctor, much less specialized help.  (On the aircraft carrier, we had a specialist who x-rayed my knees and discovered major cartilage deterioration.)  A painful skin condition on my hands was similarly dismissed several times (“Use more handcream,” they said), until I changed duty stations again and got a doctor who actually pulled out the skin disorders book and figured out what was wrong.

Of course, on a lighter note, there is also the issue of BCD’s, popularly called “birth control devices” (no, I don’t remember what it really stood for).  These were the awful, chunky, date-repelling, plastic glasses that the Navy issued.  (The Catholic Midshipmen Club had a running joke about how we ought to get better looking glasses, since we were religiously opposed to artificial birth control.)  My eyes are so bad that my lenses could not be made that small properly; straight lines appeared bent, and I never wore my issued glasses.  I had to pay out of pocket for years, in spite of allegedly being covered.  On a positive note, about thirty years after the BCD’s went out of style, the Navy finally decided to offer a few new frames that actually looked good.  (Some cynically claimed that was only because the chunky, retro glasses were coming back into style.)

Our daughter was sent to a civilian pediatrician who accepted the government’s low payments for services; many doctors limit how many Tricare patients they will accept, because they can’t afford to take too many.  As soon as we were out of Tricare, we found a new pediatrician.  Many Navy families put the spouse and children on the non-Navy spouse’s medical coverage if they can, in spite of having to pay for it.

 

Although some of the doctors were good and cared about their patients, although preventive care was covered (and mandated- your command was notified if you’d missed a required check-up or screening), many people still considered Navy medicine to be much less than ideal.

The final impression you left with, nine times out of ten, was of long lines, uncomfortable waiting rooms, hurried doctors, and more concern over cost than the patient’s health.  Yes, civilian doctors have that, too, but not to the extent I saw it in the Navy.

Is that what we really want?  Do we really believe that, somehow, the national government’s health care for everyone will look all that much better or different than what it already provides for the people who volunteer to serve our country in the military?

When the government is the payer, the government is the customer.  The patient becomes only a secondary, costly consideration.

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Feel safer yet?

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

John Holdren, U.S. Science Czar (quoted on Glenn Beck tonight)

Pro-lifers have been saying it until they’re blue in the face: if you can kill the unborn, then nobody is safe, and there is no logical cut-off to when you can kill the baby.  Child abuse and murder have skyrocketed: pro-lifers have pointed out that, if you can kill the baby in the womb right up to birth, then what really changed five minutes, or five months, after birth?  Are any of us safe?

The Science Czar doesn’t seem to think that the scientific evidence argues for humanity until, well… at some point.

Apparently, we have gotten so blase about the abortion murders in our midst, it is now ok to be completely out in the open about the lack of humanity for some time after birth.  Some of the more radical thinkers in this direction argue for “human” criteria including independence, ability to be self-sustaining, etc.  Well, good grief, I said (yelling at the tv, as usual), my brother didn’t fulfill those criteria until about 23 years old!

Others say that the infant doesn’t *count* because they don’t understand tomorrow, long-term plans, etc.  Does that mean that people with mental disabilities are the next on the list?  What about the elderly who develop dementia or Alzheimer’s?  Combine that with the graph from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, where infants and those over 55 are drastically less likely to receive health care “intervention” if there is any kind of shortage.

Oh, no, no, we aren’t going to kill your grandma, President Obama told us.

Now, if she needs too much medicine, we might just let her die.  But that’s totally different, right?

Several public pundits scoffed that, oh, that ditzy Sarah Palin is totally out to lunch when she warns about “death panels” deciding whether or not her elderly parents or child with Downs will get health care.

But a child with a major disability can’t really expect that we’ll waste money on him when we could be curing more useful teenagers, now can he?  So we won’t euthenize him, but we won’t do anything to avoid his death or improve his life, either.

When Queen Elizabeth was persecuting the Catholics in England through punitive taxes, prohibitions on education and certain employments, etc., she insisted she was just doing it for the sake of England’s stability.  (Never mind that most English were still Catholic until the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, after Elizabeth’s death.)  Of course, people resisted.  Many were arrested and sent to prison.  Not executed, of course: we don’t want to make martyrs… just left in putrid water in the prisons up to their waists until they rotted alive and eventually died.  The Queen didn’t actually execute them… technically…

Anybody feel safer yet?

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Calculating Value

There are a number of very concerning parts of the health care bill and of the people President Obama has put into positions of power.  Apparently, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, has written several articles for The Lancet on how to determine who should get health care, including calculations of saving the most people, saving the most life-years, and social worth.  Thus, an infant is not worth as much as a teenager, because the infant has not received as much of an investment in time, schooling, etc.

Even better, he gave us a graph to calculate the value of a person.

As Glenn Beck pointed out tonight on his show, we understand that when it comes to truly restricted items, like kidneys for transplant.  Of course, you’d understand why the 75-year-old is near the bottom of the list and the 25-year-old is much closer to the top: the odds of the 75-year-old living much longer is pretty low, whereas the 25-year-old has most of their life ahead of them.

But do you want similar calculus applied to heart medication?  Bypass surgery?  Allergy medications?  All of those cost money, too, so if the money gets short (and it will), what then?  When the doctors quit medicine or leave the country like they have in other countries with nationalized medicine, what then?

Also, it might make AARP think twice about its support of the health care bill if someone over there noticed that the likelihood of receiving a health care “intervention” drops off dramatically at 55.  Apparently, my parents and in-laws, although not even retirement age, are worth only slightly more than that nearly *worthless* 3-month-old infant.

What of the unborn?  The graph doesn’t go quite to zero at age zero, but if the infant is hardly worth anything, the unborn child will be calculated to be worth even less.  Will prenatal and delivery coverage be denied for children diagnosed in utero with disabilities or disease?  “Sure, you don’t have to abort your baby with Downs… but we won’t pay for the delivery, or well-baby checkups, or vaccinations, or anything else, so good luck with that…”

Now, a number of Dr. Emanuel’s articles are apparently well-balanced discussions of end-of-life issues.  One article, “Death and Dignity: Dogma Disputed” (Lancet, 21Dec2002), actually discussed a study that found that, contrary to popular thought on the subject, 93% of the patients in the study did not feel a distinct loss of dignity in their end-of-life care.  In other words, the oft-cited reasoning that only euthenasia provides “death with dignity” fails to meet the reality test.  Emanuel points out, “the available data show that depression rather than pain is associated with a desire for euthenasia or physician assisted suicide.”

Still, that graph bugs me.

The CBO keeps pointing out that the health care plan currently being debated is financially untenable.  Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are all likely to be out of money within years; we pay the taxes, but my husband and I seriously don’t expect to ever see a penny of it.

The money will run out, fairly quickly.  Then all medical care will fall under the same rationing we see in organ transplants: the government won’t have the money, so, hopefully, those 55-year-olds will hurry up and die as their health care is restricted, before they retire and become *socially useless*.

Canada has town lotteries to determine who’s going to get a primary care physician that month.

A friend of ours came down with a particularly fast-moving type of cancer.  Looking on the bright side as she came out of surgery (within a week or so of discovering she had cancer), she commented that if she’d still been in Great Britain, she would have been dead before she even got the diagnostic test that discovered the cancer.

If we extend health care coverage to everybody, including people who broke the law to enter this country, but we simultaneously make everyone miserable and scared of getting really sick (because the medical care may or may not be there for them), have we really made any progress?

Furthermore, who is going to make these decisions?  What all-powerful board will decide who lives and who gets some pain-killers and a condolence letter?

Do you trust that the government’s motives will always be pure and good?

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Health Care and Homeschoolers

There are so many things wrong with the health care bill, I hardly know where to start.  Fortunately, some bloggers have started doing analysis of the gigantic bill that your Congressman probably didn’t read.  Jatticus posted a great synopsis of many of the problematic sections of the bill in “The Devil in the Details.”  It’s a great summary, but I want to get into a few paragraphs in particular, because they reminded me of another system I am intimately connected to that was nationalized, attempting to kill off private options and opting out.

Education.

When the public school system began in the United States, it was presented as a solution to the problem of limited access to education.  Prior to the 1830′s, education was mostly available to the rich.  Some areas and religious groups provided educational opportunities, but this was not widespread.  In the 1830′s, the Common School Movement began, with the goal of providing unifying education to an increasingly diverse nation.  By 1900, elementary school education was available to almost all children.  The first compulsory attendance law was passed in 1852 in Massachusettes, the home of education reformer Horace Mann; by 1918, all states had compulsory attendance laws for elementary schools.

By then, the cracks had started to show.  Namely, Catholics were less than thrilled to be told that they had to both fund and send their children to schools whose purpose was often to disabuse religious superstition and sectarianism… which usually meant “trying to make Catholic kids quit being papists.”  In 1925, the Supreme Court had to get involved in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, ruling that the state (Oregon, particularly, fueled by KKK anti-Catholic sentiment) could not compel children to attend public schools, but had to allow for the option of private schools.  (Funny, but there doesn’t seem to have been any huge movement to crack down on WASP institutions.  Private school bans made it on the ballot in Michigan, Washington, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Wyoming, Arkansa, and Nebraska, but failed to pass popular referendums.  All seem to have been aimed squarely at Catholic schools.)

The public schools began as a voluntary, we’re-here-if-you-need-us institution.  Horace Mann, however, always had the intention of making them universal, mandatory, and strictly controlled.  Everyone would have an identical education, to promote national unity.

Now, we have the federal Department of Education to enforce those goals.  Dissent from the “allowed” options is not treated well, although homeschoolers have fought for years for respect and legal protections of parental rights to raise their children as they think best.  Sure you can use your options… but don’t expect us to make it easy for you.

Some school districts have conducted surprise inspections on homeschoolers under the argument that every homeschool has to meet the guidelines imposed on private schools.  California’s state supreme court declared homeschooling unconstitutional, until the ruling was overturned on appeal.  Children have been placed in foster care, parents accused of criminal negligence and forced to go to court to get their children back.  Homeschooling has been cited as justification for taking children away from the pro-homeschooling parent in divorces.  (We consider ourselves very blessed to have a friendly school district… but we’re not assuming that that is a permanent state of affairs.)

There are those who acquiese quietly to the preferred government option… and there is everyone else, who really need to be smacked into line as quickly as possible.

 

Now we read the new health care bill, and find much of the same thing.

• Public health visits to homes to instruct parents on proper child rearing and child spacing (allegedly voluntary… for now).
• Health clinics in public schools, where children will likely obtain whatever they want without parental interference (condoms are already fairly common hand outs in public schools.  Some girls have even been taken for abortions during school hours, by the school nurse, to avoid parental involvement.  This provision would only make those scenarios more widespread.).
• Like public schools, public health care will cover everyone in the country, including illegal immigrants (so much for the rule of law… this is the era of empathetic justice!).
• Doctors’ education, residencies, and pay will all be controlled by the new Health Care administration.
• Like students who need more services (either in the gifted or special education direction), health care rationing for anyone who needs more than check-ups will be in effect.  The list goes on.

Like health care, education in the early 1800′s was not universally available.  Of course, the poor, and especially poor children, suffer for that.

Public education gave my mother and her brothers opportunities that were never available to her parents, first generation immigrants who never even finished grade school… oh, wait, that’s right: my grandparents scraped up the money to send my mom and three uncles to Catholic schools.  Ok, scratch that example…

Anyways, public education can be a great leg up, a route out of poverty, like it is for the kids in the D.C. schools…  oh, that’s right, they cancelled the school voucher program, so all the D.C. kids are stuck in one of the worst and most expensive school districts in the country.  (Not the Obama girls, of course; they’re going to a private school, as have all of the previous presidents’ children.  Yes, I know Amy Carter went to a D.C. public school… briefly.  And then reality overcame ideology and the Carters decided what everyone else with the money to do it decides: my child’s future is not going to wait for the public schools to get their act together in a year or two… or twenty.)

Ok, seriously, public education can be a good thing.

But private school students and homeschoolers routinely outperform them at less cost.

Why didn’t we improve the private options by encouraging investment in private schools?  Create locally-driven town schools where they were needed and wanted?  No, instead we created a lesser system that was more widespread, made it mandatory, persecuted the private options or opting out, paid the specialists involved less, and invented a massive, centralized bureaucracy to control the whole thing.  Now, the papers regularly lament the lack of quality in our education system, offering one solution: more money.

Do we seriously believe that doing the exact same thing to health care is going to yield anything but the exact same results?

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Curing the Health Care Strawman

It is easy and amusing to demolish strawmen.  They don’t fight back.  They’re blatantly ridiculous.  It doesn’t take a great deal of thought, so you can concentrate on quippy put downs.

As a conservative who has been through a government-run health care system (the military’s), I am dead against the government getting any more involved in health care.  However, I don’t assume that Democrats are going to institute mandatory euthenasia at 67.  I assume they don’t believe that their program is going to kill people the way the national health care systems in Britain and Canada do, by denying medicines because of cost, delaying treatment, and outright denying treatment.  Although the assertion is laughable, I’ll even assume that President Obama is serious when he says he’s going to fund this thing largely by finding inefficiencies in the system.  ($500 hammer, anyone?  That wasn’t a private company’s supply department that bought that one.)

“Republicans just want the poor to die!  The party of ‘NO!’ and nothing else!  They’re just fear-mongering!”

1.  Republicans don’t want to exterminate poor people, unless it’s by improving the economy, encouraging jobs here instead of forcing jobs overseas, and promoting programs that encourage people to work rather than stay on welfare.  The number one way to eliminate poor people is to create good jobs.

As for heath care, I would love to see everyone cared for.  However, medical care is not a right: it is a commodity, and nobody has a right to it any more than they have a right to any other commodity with a price tag on it.  “But fifty million people are uninsured!  We must do something!” we keep hearing.  How many could pay for insurance, but would rather buy a tv?  How many are young, healthy, and betting they won’t need medical care?  How many are illegal immigrants?  Dick Morris, a former Clinton advisor, has asserted on Fox News that the 50 million uninsured includes ten million illegal immigrants, another ten million or so who qualify for Medicaid but haven’t bothered to apply, 12 million who are young and healthy and betting they don’t need insurance, and thousands who figure they’re rich enough to not bother with insurance paperwork… which leaves maybe 18 million.  Still bad, but not such an insurmountable problem as fifty million.

Can we have some useful numbers before we start discussing anything?  I could also say that 80% of Americans can’t carry a baby to term, while leaving out some useful information like how much of that 80% is male, too young, or too old to even start a pregnancy.

I’ve seen other numbers that say many more people have an insurance disruption during the year, often due to a job change.  Could we start by de-coupling health care from your job?  How many people are stuck with lousy employers because they can’t risk disrupting their health care?  Couldn’t we start there, before we put the government in charge of everything?

2.  The Obama administration has made a name for itself spending money faster than it can be printed.  Yes, President Bush signed the first stimulus package, for a whopping $150 billion.  That’s peanuts compared to the initial price tag of the second stimulus: $787 billion.  Of course, the CBO put the estimated costs for President Obama’s second stimulus package at $3.27 trillion.  Somebody needs to stand up and say, “NO, you CAN’T!”  As the Democrats loved to tell us as they publicly savaged President Bush, dissent is patriotic, right?

3.  As for fear-mongering, do you really want all of your health records sent to Washington, DC, so that someone can pull up the insurance tables and calculate whether or not your high blood pressure and asthma make your knee replacement a poor investment?  Or if you’re worth the good cancer drug of just the cheaper, less effective one?  We’ve already seen state health care systems offering euthenasia instead of expensive cancer treatments; we are stupid if we are telling ourselves the national bureaucracy will be any different than the state bureaucracies.  I don’t want my government to have that kind of power.  (Especially after finding out that I’ll also be on the list of suspicious right-wing radicals as a vocally pro-life veteran.)

 

Enter President Obama, ready to cure the strawman.

Personally, I do not trust a president who just patted himself on the back, claiming his actions “brought our economy back from the brink”, even though unemployment is significantly worse after the stimulus than he warned it would get if we did nothing.  Who carefully spent his first few minutes of his fourth primetime press conference in six months in office (Bush had four in eight years in office, including 9/11) pointing out how he had inherited this gosh-awful economy and touting his “successes”.  After a few generalities, the president was back to, “Those Republicans want me to fail,” and, “This is about the people whose stories I hear in town hall meetings…”

Two-thirds of the financing for nationalized health insurance will be paid for by tightening up Medicare?  If it was that easy, we would have done it years ago.

An independent board of doctors and administrators to eliminate waste?  Many hospitals have that already.  One of the ways they cut costs is by eliminating care that has been determined to be futile, like deciding they don’t want to care for the comatose person anymore and the family can either let them die or move them to another facility, even though the move may kill them.  Like the bureaucracy in Britain that denied drugs to late stage breast cancer patients, saying that the low survival rate for those patients didn’t justify the cost of trying to save a few more lives.

But don’t worry, we won’t tax you to pay for this debacle, just the rich, because, as President Obama pointed out in the opening sentences, the rich have been profiting *unfairly* while average Americans don’t get their fair share of the economy.  Yeah, stick it to the man!  They should be happy we don’t show up on their lawns with picket signs and death threats like we did to those AIG people who got their contractural bonuses!

Unfortunately, real people are harder to cure.  Which is why Canadians come to the U.S. to get emergency surgery they’d have to wait years for in Canada.  And Canada’s cancer survival rate is 16% lower than the U.S. survival rate.  And foreign dignitaries facing complicated heart surgery come to the U.S. rather than trust the experts in their own country.

Congratulations, you’ll all be covered… now hope you don’t get sick!

Maybe all those people who write the president to tell him sob stories about their health coverage think President Obama, by sheer charisma and eloquence, can actually fix everything that all those other countries botched when they tried the exact same thing.  (I just don’t get that whole mindset.  I wrote a get well card (in crayon) for President Reagan when he was shot.  It has never even crossed my mind to write the President as some great, overfunded, extra-Constitutional Santa Claus to get what I want.)

Before we create another bloated government program destined for failure, we need to learn from other countries what the real problems and pitfalls are, not just torch the strawman, call him “cured”, and declare the debate finished.

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