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	<title>A Voice in the Wilderness &#187; Health Care</title>
	<atom:link href="http://rjmoeller.com/tag/health-care/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
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	<description>In Defense of &#34;Mere Conservatism&#34;</description>
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		<title>Obamacare Is A Loser</title>
		<link>http://rjmoeller.com/2010/03/obamacare-is-a-loser/</link>
		<comments>http://rjmoeller.com/2010/03/obamacare-is-a-loser/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:13:00 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://rjmoeller.com/?p=1820</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You simply cannot explain the scope and breadth of the Obamacare debacle in one column...unless your last name is Krauthammer.
As an aspiring writer and commentator, I spend a great deal of time reading the books and articles and speeches of the people I feel effectively communicate the ideas I believe in better than anyone else.
Charles [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1821" title="imgdebateskrauthammerprofile" src="http://rjmoeller.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/imgdebateskrauthammerprofile.jpg" alt="imgdebateskrauthammerprofile" width="236" height="308" />You simply cannot <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html">explain the scope and breadth</a> of the Obamacare debacle in one column...unless your last name is Krauthammer.</p>
<p>As an aspiring writer and commentator, I spend a great deal of time reading the books and articles and speeches of the people I feel effectively communicate the ideas I believe in better than anyone else.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer">Charles Krauthammer</a> of the <em>Washington Post</em> and Fox News Channel is one of those people.</p>
<p>Every night of the week, at roughly 6:40 p.m. (Eastern Time), Dr. Krauthammer is a member of the "All-Star Panel" on <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report/index.html"><em>Special Report With Brett Baier</em></a>.  (You should be watching or DVR-ing this every day).  And each Friday, his nationally syndicated column is read in newspapers all across the country.</p>
<p>Today he treated his reading audience to <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html">this gem</a> on the current state of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama health care plan:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><em>After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House "summit" with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans' way.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama's health care bill.</em></strong></p></blockquote>
<p>The Health Care Summit last week was a dog-and-pony show, meant to portray the Republicans as obstructionists and big old meanies.  But the president was confronted by the likes of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and the fact-based disagreements conservatives have with Obama's brand of "reform."  Republicans <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2010/03/01/hoosiers_amp_health_savings_accounts_230214.html">DO have ideas</a>, and many key members of the GOP on the state and national level have been promoting them all year.</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><em>Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?</em></strong></p></blockquote>
<p>And now, in what can only be described as <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html">the most brilliant summation</a> of the American peoples' opposition to Obamacare, please enjoy the wit and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer in its rarest of forms:</p>
<blockquote><p><em><strong>Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.</strong></em></p></blockquote>
<p>That's it, folks.  Everything the Left promises sounds nice on an individual level, which is how they present their collectivist policies.  The problem is, of course, that all of their policies are implemented on a national level and cannot possibly succeed.  This is the heart of the debate between Right and Left: can the few rule, and provide for, the many?  Can "experts" in Washington "control" the expenses and costs of 300 million-plus liberty-loving Americans?</p>
<p>The good intentions of liberals are heart-warming and bone-chilling, all at the same time.</p>
<p>Chuck closes out his <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/05/the_health_care_bill_is_a_failure.html">devastatingly informative column</a> with the following:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><em>The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote. </em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.</em></strong></p></blockquote>
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		<title>Health Care Summit = Joke</title>
		<link>http://rjmoeller.com/2010/02/health-care-summit-joke/</link>
		<comments>http://rjmoeller.com/2010/02/health-care-summit-joke/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:04:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://rjmoeller.com/?p=1774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Obama and the Democrats have been trying for a year to get their brand of health care "reform" passed.  They had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, yet nothing happened.  The American people have shown up at town hall meetings, called and emailed their representatives, and the people of the most liberal state [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1775" title="health care reform logo 001" src="http://rjmoeller.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/health-care-reform-logo-001.jpg" alt="health care reform logo 001" width="282" height="243" />President Obama and the Democrats have been trying for a year to get their brand of <a href="http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGFjNWZiMDBjY2RkY2QyZjc0MDhlMGQ5NmMyNTUwZWM=">health care "reform"</a> passed.  They had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, yet nothing happened.  The American people have shown up at town hall meetings, called and emailed their representatives, and the people of the most liberal state in the Union (Massachusetts) turned out in droves <a href="http://rjmoeller.com/2010/01/scott-brown-obamacare-and-progress/">to vote for a Republican</a> whose sole campaign promise was to vote against the president's health care package.</p>
<p>Today he is holding what seems to be his 54th "<a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmJlYWQ0MGNjZmMwMGU5NmE5MDIyNGJlZDgwMzhiOGM=">summit</a>", this time on health care.  Liberals love talking about things when they could have just been doing them.  But why pass up a chance to try and make the Republicans look like the overly-used cliche "<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2010/02/24/what_part_of_party_of_no_dont_you_understand">Party of No</a>"?  Why pass up an opportunity for a photo-op that makes un-informed Americans think you are really trying to reach across the aisle?</p>
<p>This is all you need to know about the White House's true intentions:</p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33510.html"><em>Politico.com</em></a></p>
<blockquote><p><em><strong>After a brief period of consultation following the <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33478.html" target="_blank">White House health reform summit</a>, congressional Democrats plan to begin making the case next week for a massive, Democrats-only <a href="http://www.politico.com/livepulse/" target="_blank">health care</a> plan, party strategists told POLITICO.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>A Democratic official said the <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33251.html" target="_blank">six-hour summit</a> was expected to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>Democrats plan to begin rhetorical, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33398.html" target="_blank">reconciliation</a>, process early next week, the strategists said.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32709.html" target="_blank">After the summit</a>, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to take the temperature of their caucuses.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>“The point [of the summit] is to alter the political atmospherics, and it will take a day or two to sense if it succeeded,” the official said.</strong></em></p></blockquote>
<div id="TixyyLink" style="border: medium none; overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Translation:</div>
<blockquote><p><em><strong><span id=":2d3" dir="ltr">"We're going to have a health care summit to look like we're listening to the people, but you can go jump off a bridge for all we care America 'cause we're not really listening anyway. </span></strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong><span id=":2ex" dir="ltr">You republicans never listen...and oh, btw, we're not listening to what you say in this meeting we called to show how much more we listen to our political enemies than you.  Meanies!"</span></strong></em></p></blockquote>
<p><span dir="ltr">Wait until you get home tonight and watch how ill-tempered President Obama was with Republicans like John McCain (AZ) and Eric Cantor (WI).</span></p>
<p><span dir="ltr"> I smell another <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmJlYWQ0MGNjZmMwMGU5NmE5MDIyNGJlZDgwMzhiOGM=">Beer Summit</a> to mend some fences!</span></p>
<p><span dir="ltr">This is the Left's attempt to give the federal government control over health care permanently, and create a new and eternal entitlement.  The president has said so himself, <a href="http://rjmoeller.com/2009/08/public-option-socialized-medicine/">in his own words.</a> It is about ideology (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States">progressivism</a>) and it is about politics (buying voters).  It <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelBarone/2010/02/25/obamas_nanny_care_insults_the_american_spirit">stands against</a> everything the Founders envisioned.<br />
</span></p>
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