Now that the Iraq & Afghan wars are Obama's wars, the press (and the anti-war left in general) seem to have completely lost interest. Funny how that works, isn't it.
Cindy Sheehan wants to protest at Martha's Vineyard ... Charlie Gibson of ABC news, who gave her mucho coverage protesting Bush in Texas, says "Enough Already".
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/ABCs-Charles-Gibson-to-Cindy-Sheehan-Thanks-for-your-sacrifice-Now-get-lost-53803917.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Sheehan-Pro-Obama-media-want-the-anti-war-movement-to-go-away-53933442.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/What-happened-to-the-antiwar-movement--Cindy-Sheehan-responds-53628177.html
I don't agree much with what Cindy Sheehan has to say, but I DO agree with her saying this in a note to columnist Byron York:
The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement.
While I agree with you about the hypocrisy of such sites as the DailyKos, I have known for a long time that the Democrats are equally responsible with the Republicans. That's why I left the party in May 2007 and that's why I ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi in 2008.
The rest of the movement apparently didn't get the memo -- you are only useful idiots to the Democrats.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Death Panels, cont'd
Would You Like Some Hemlock with Your Jello? — Government-run ‘End-of-Life’ Counseling at the VA [Jack Fowler]
A must-read essay in today’s Wall Street Journal by Jim Towey (he ran the Bush White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives). Here’s the essence:
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
A must-read essay in today’s Wall Street Journal by Jim Towey (he ran the Bush White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives). Here’s the essence:
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Why the discussion about "Death Panels" matters
Mark Steyn's posting summarizes very well why having the government involved in telling the patient what treatment, test, surgery, drug, etc. one may or may not get is an important concept to oppose:
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Panels [Mark Steyn]
. . . but you can't have both. On the matter of McCarthy vs the Editors, I'm with Andy. I think Sarah Palin's "death panel" coinage clarified the stakes and resonated in a way that "rationing" and other lingo never quite did. She launched it, and she made it stick. So it was politically effective.
But I'm also with Mrs. Palin on the substance. NR's editorial defines "death panel" too narrowly. What matters is the concept of a government "panel." Right now, if I want a hip replacement, it's between me and my doctor; the government does not have a seat at the table. The minute it does, my hip's needs are subordinate to national hip policy, which in turn is subordinate to macro budgetary considerations.
For example:
Health trusts in Suffolk were among the first to announce that obese people would be denied hip and knee replacements on the NHS.
The ruling was part of an attempt to save money locally.
The operative word here is "ruling." You know, like judges. You're accepting that the state has jurisdiction over your hip, and your knee, and your prostate and everything else. And once you accept that proposition the fellows who get to make the "ruling" are, ultimately, a death panel. Usually, they call it something nicer — literally, like Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).
And finally I don't think this is any time for NR to be joining the Frumsters and deploring the halfwit vulgarity of déclassé immoderates like Palin. This is a big-stakes battle: If we cross this bridge, there's no going back. Being "moderate" is not a good strategy. It risks delivering the nation to the usual reach-across-the-aisle compromise that will get Democrats far enough across the bridge that the Big Government ratchet effect will do the rest.
After my weekend column recounted the experience of a recent British visitor of mine, I received an e-mail from a gentleman in Glasgow who cannot get an x-ray for his back — because he has no sovereignty over his back. His back is merely part of the overall mass of Scottish backs, to which a government budget has been allocated, but alas one which does not run to x-rays.
Government "panels" making "rulings" over your body: Acceptance of that concept is what counts.
'Obamacare is Gitmo for all Americans' [Andy McCarthy]
That's what I argued in yesterday's column, which explored the anomaly that, while terrorists like KSM get the red-carpet treatment of federal courts with all the trimmings, American citizens are to be stuck with the diktat of Kathleen Sebelius because Obamacare cuts off their access to judicial review of key HHS decisions. Optoons review has some fun with the idea in a bit called "Obama Transfers Terrorists Out of 'Legal Black Hole' at Guantanamo Bay; Replaces Them with American Health Care Patients." Great stuff.
Does a 'Death Panel' Already Exist? [Andy McCarthy]
At the American Thinker, Joseph Ashby says yes:
H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.
Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."
What ought to frighten the daylights out of everyone is how Obamacare lays the groundwork for what Mark Steyn calls the "Big Government ratchet." As Ashby elaborates:
What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.
How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.
Not to rehash our discussion here about the proper definition of a death panel, but, again, I think saying the government will be "deciding whether a person's life is worth living" is about more than "cut[ting] off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure" — the narrow definition of death panels used by the New York Times (as Ashby recounts). It's about foreclosing care to the treatable — based on some government formula — such that they wither and die before their time. For all these years, the Left has told us we must butt out of end-of-life decisions because they are so intensely personal; turns out they're only intensely personal if you're decision is to die — if you want to live, that's up to the bureaucrats.
Health-Care Rationing and Minorities — A Curious Silence [Peter Kirsanow]
If, under Obamacare, the federal government allocates health-care expenditures on a utilitarian basis — i.e., on a cost/benefit analysis driven in part by the life expectancy of the patient — then certain groups could be affected more than others. Obviously, the elderly who've shown up at town-hall meetings have concluded that they will suffer the biggest impact.
But studies also show that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans often have lower projected survival rates than whites and Asians for various diseases. Accordingly, it's possible that under Obamacare patients from the former three groups would be denied the more expensive (but only marginally more effective) treatments granted patients in the latter two groups.
This wouldn't be [intentional] disparate treatment; rather, there may be a disparate impact on blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans based on survivability rates. Since, e.g., blacks (for numerous reasons, including finances, diet/lifestyle, seeking initial treatment much later than whites, etc.) are more likely to die within five years of certain cancer diagnoses than are whites, there may be a greater probability that the more expensive interventions will be withheld from blacks in the aggregate.
Typically, the Left is alert to any possibility, however remote, that a governmental policy or piece of legislation may have a disparate impact on protected classes ("Administration Fails to Act on Asteroid Threat: Minorities and Women Hardest Hit"). Yet thus far there's been absolutely no discussion of whether rationing may have a disparate impact on certain minority groups. Does anyone doubt that such discussion would be loud and vigorous if, say, Newt Gingrich were the primary sponsor of the health-care bill?
Krauthammer sez:
On the Obama administration backing off the public option:
It's a full retreat. Look, Obama had wanted the public option a lot because it is the road to a government-run system, which is what, in his heart, he wants.
And he wanted to have planted it [the public option] in his presidency so —[even though] it wouldn't become government-run until the very end, [even though] it wouldn't have had its major effect until perhaps after his presidency — ...he would have been known as the father of national health care. But he's not going to get it and he knows it.
And he knew it early, but he hung on because it would be a bargaining chip when he goes for the minimal plan, which would be health insurance reform, where he slaps a lot of restrictions on the insurance companies where there are no preconditions, et cetera. And in return, he would offer to drop the public option. That's why he wanted to hang on until the end.
The reason he had to drop it now is because of the town halls and the public rebellion. It's because of the reaction, the angry, agitated, educated reaction of people against the public option — understanding that it's a way to national health care — that it became a distraction and a liability.
And if you're going to drop it anyway, he had to drop it now. But it takes away his leverage with negotiations in the end with insurance companies…
Look, as long as it [the health-care debate] was in Congress and behind closed doors and in negotiations, he could have hung on until the end. It's when it became — when Congress adjourned and all of this exploded in the public and it became a national issue and a huge liability and a drag on his own popularity — that's when he understood it had to go.
And yet he hung on for a couple of weeks longer than he should have, until he understood he had to cut his losses, because it was destroying the rest of the plan.
In the Matter of Editors v. McCarthy & Steyn [Jonah Goldberg]
Since a bunch of readers want to know where I come down on the great debate of the day, let me start by saying that Rich Lowry is not only a handsome man, but a wise and powerful one. As are all of the editors and others who make my work so enjoyable around here (of course, the womenfolk are lovely, as opposed to handsome). But I guess I'm more in the McCarthy & Steyn camp. As a matter of the finer points of policy discussion, I think the death-panel label is awfully blunt and inexact.
But in the arena of a vital political contest, I think M&S are right that it distilled some important issues down to an important truth: if Obama, Pelosi, Waxman et al get their way, the relationship between the citizen and the state is profoundly, and perhaps permanently, altered and down that path lurks death panels. Oh, they won't be called death panels, but that function will lurk like the ghost in the machine of the federal bureaucracy.
Back when the health-care debate was abstract and liberals were sure they would win the day, they were far more comfortable talking about this sort of thing. Barack Obama talked about rationing care for people like his grandmother and seeking guidance from a super-smart panel of experts in this regard. Just a month ago, the New York Times magazine saw nothing wrong with running this unabashed love-letter to a health-care system, in effect, ruled by death panels (See my post on this last Friday, or Tom Maguire's Sunday item for more). Now, suddenly, to even suggest such a possibility is McCarthyism — now called Palinism — according to Richard Cohen.
What drives me crazy about liberal complaints about conservative tactics these days is how selective they are. Obama, Barney Frank, Jacob Hacker, and others have said that they want these reforms — specifically the public option — to lead to single payer. But when conservatives take them at their word, suddenly it's outrageous misinformation and "fishy" stuff.
When the wind is at their backs, liberals look way off to the horizon, like Obama at a podium, dreaming of a future of European-style statism. But when conservatives use this to their advantage, suddenly it is outrageous to even consider the possibility of a road to hell being paved with good intentions. Suddenly liberals bleat that it is scare-mongering to look beyond what they are proposing in this exact moment, outrageous to ask "Where will this lead?" I agree entirely with Andy that conservatives are under no obligation to unilaterally agree to liberal terms or definitions but rather, as he puts it, "Our function is to call the opposition on such hair-splitting nonsense, not to make the fog harder to pierce."
And this raises what I think is part of the problem. As Mark says, this is a massive political fight — one that conservatives are winning, by the way — and there's a natural tension between wanting to argue the finer points of policy and win the battle over the politics. I don't begrudge NR's attempt to get this balance right by erring on the side of describing the policy correctly and in good faith. But, also in good faith, I don't see it quite the same way, and I don't think Palin's contributions are part of the problem with the health-care debate.
100 or So Days Later... [Jonah Goldberg]
While working on a column yesterday, I went back and found what I wrote on the occasion of Obama's first 100 days, when for the editors of Newsweek (henceforth my shorthand for sycophantic Obama disciples) birds were chirping, the sun was shining, all was looking wonderful in the world. It was the greatest first 100 days ever. Looking at the news that conservatives now outnumber liberals in every state, tens of thousands are quitting AARP, James Carville is floating the idea of scrapping the healthcare bill entirely, Obama is (maybe) abandoning the public option — just as he has the death panels supervisory commissions on when to cease continuing life —- and all the rest, it seems that what I wrote was a bit prescient and also a bit understated:
...Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
Update: From a reader:
Jonah,Don’t forget this part of your prediction—“For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.”
And here’s what our President has to say about freedom of speech and political dissent:"I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Panels [Mark Steyn]
. . . but you can't have both. On the matter of McCarthy vs the Editors, I'm with Andy. I think Sarah Palin's "death panel" coinage clarified the stakes and resonated in a way that "rationing" and other lingo never quite did. She launched it, and she made it stick. So it was politically effective.
But I'm also with Mrs. Palin on the substance. NR's editorial defines "death panel" too narrowly. What matters is the concept of a government "panel." Right now, if I want a hip replacement, it's between me and my doctor; the government does not have a seat at the table. The minute it does, my hip's needs are subordinate to national hip policy, which in turn is subordinate to macro budgetary considerations.
For example:
Health trusts in Suffolk were among the first to announce that obese people would be denied hip and knee replacements on the NHS.
The ruling was part of an attempt to save money locally.
The operative word here is "ruling." You know, like judges. You're accepting that the state has jurisdiction over your hip, and your knee, and your prostate and everything else. And once you accept that proposition the fellows who get to make the "ruling" are, ultimately, a death panel. Usually, they call it something nicer — literally, like Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).
And finally I don't think this is any time for NR to be joining the Frumsters and deploring the halfwit vulgarity of déclassé immoderates like Palin. This is a big-stakes battle: If we cross this bridge, there's no going back. Being "moderate" is not a good strategy. It risks delivering the nation to the usual reach-across-the-aisle compromise that will get Democrats far enough across the bridge that the Big Government ratchet effect will do the rest.
After my weekend column recounted the experience of a recent British visitor of mine, I received an e-mail from a gentleman in Glasgow who cannot get an x-ray for his back — because he has no sovereignty over his back. His back is merely part of the overall mass of Scottish backs, to which a government budget has been allocated, but alas one which does not run to x-rays.
Government "panels" making "rulings" over your body: Acceptance of that concept is what counts.
'Obamacare is Gitmo for all Americans' [Andy McCarthy]
That's what I argued in yesterday's column, which explored the anomaly that, while terrorists like KSM get the red-carpet treatment of federal courts with all the trimmings, American citizens are to be stuck with the diktat of Kathleen Sebelius because Obamacare cuts off their access to judicial review of key HHS decisions. Optoons review has some fun with the idea in a bit called "Obama Transfers Terrorists Out of 'Legal Black Hole' at Guantanamo Bay; Replaces Them with American Health Care Patients." Great stuff.
Does a 'Death Panel' Already Exist? [Andy McCarthy]
At the American Thinker, Joseph Ashby says yes:
H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.
Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."
What ought to frighten the daylights out of everyone is how Obamacare lays the groundwork for what Mark Steyn calls the "Big Government ratchet." As Ashby elaborates:
What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.
How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.
Not to rehash our discussion here about the proper definition of a death panel, but, again, I think saying the government will be "deciding whether a person's life is worth living" is about more than "cut[ting] off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure" — the narrow definition of death panels used by the New York Times (as Ashby recounts). It's about foreclosing care to the treatable — based on some government formula — such that they wither and die before their time. For all these years, the Left has told us we must butt out of end-of-life decisions because they are so intensely personal; turns out they're only intensely personal if you're decision is to die — if you want to live, that's up to the bureaucrats.
Health-Care Rationing and Minorities — A Curious Silence [Peter Kirsanow]
If, under Obamacare, the federal government allocates health-care expenditures on a utilitarian basis — i.e., on a cost/benefit analysis driven in part by the life expectancy of the patient — then certain groups could be affected more than others. Obviously, the elderly who've shown up at town-hall meetings have concluded that they will suffer the biggest impact.
But studies also show that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans often have lower projected survival rates than whites and Asians for various diseases. Accordingly, it's possible that under Obamacare patients from the former three groups would be denied the more expensive (but only marginally more effective) treatments granted patients in the latter two groups.
This wouldn't be [intentional] disparate treatment; rather, there may be a disparate impact on blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans based on survivability rates. Since, e.g., blacks (for numerous reasons, including finances, diet/lifestyle, seeking initial treatment much later than whites, etc.) are more likely to die within five years of certain cancer diagnoses than are whites, there may be a greater probability that the more expensive interventions will be withheld from blacks in the aggregate.
Typically, the Left is alert to any possibility, however remote, that a governmental policy or piece of legislation may have a disparate impact on protected classes ("Administration Fails to Act on Asteroid Threat: Minorities and Women Hardest Hit"). Yet thus far there's been absolutely no discussion of whether rationing may have a disparate impact on certain minority groups. Does anyone doubt that such discussion would be loud and vigorous if, say, Newt Gingrich were the primary sponsor of the health-care bill?
Krauthammer sez:
On the Obama administration backing off the public option:
It's a full retreat. Look, Obama had wanted the public option a lot because it is the road to a government-run system, which is what, in his heart, he wants.
And he wanted to have planted it [the public option] in his presidency so —[even though] it wouldn't become government-run until the very end, [even though] it wouldn't have had its major effect until perhaps after his presidency — ...he would have been known as the father of national health care. But he's not going to get it and he knows it.
And he knew it early, but he hung on because it would be a bargaining chip when he goes for the minimal plan, which would be health insurance reform, where he slaps a lot of restrictions on the insurance companies where there are no preconditions, et cetera. And in return, he would offer to drop the public option. That's why he wanted to hang on until the end.
The reason he had to drop it now is because of the town halls and the public rebellion. It's because of the reaction, the angry, agitated, educated reaction of people against the public option — understanding that it's a way to national health care — that it became a distraction and a liability.
And if you're going to drop it anyway, he had to drop it now. But it takes away his leverage with negotiations in the end with insurance companies…
Look, as long as it [the health-care debate] was in Congress and behind closed doors and in negotiations, he could have hung on until the end. It's when it became — when Congress adjourned and all of this exploded in the public and it became a national issue and a huge liability and a drag on his own popularity — that's when he understood it had to go.
And yet he hung on for a couple of weeks longer than he should have, until he understood he had to cut his losses, because it was destroying the rest of the plan.
In the Matter of Editors v. McCarthy & Steyn [Jonah Goldberg]
Since a bunch of readers want to know where I come down on the great debate of the day, let me start by saying that Rich Lowry is not only a handsome man, but a wise and powerful one. As are all of the editors and others who make my work so enjoyable around here (of course, the womenfolk are lovely, as opposed to handsome). But I guess I'm more in the McCarthy & Steyn camp. As a matter of the finer points of policy discussion, I think the death-panel label is awfully blunt and inexact.
But in the arena of a vital political contest, I think M&S are right that it distilled some important issues down to an important truth: if Obama, Pelosi, Waxman et al get their way, the relationship between the citizen and the state is profoundly, and perhaps permanently, altered and down that path lurks death panels. Oh, they won't be called death panels, but that function will lurk like the ghost in the machine of the federal bureaucracy.
Back when the health-care debate was abstract and liberals were sure they would win the day, they were far more comfortable talking about this sort of thing. Barack Obama talked about rationing care for people like his grandmother and seeking guidance from a super-smart panel of experts in this regard. Just a month ago, the New York Times magazine saw nothing wrong with running this unabashed love-letter to a health-care system, in effect, ruled by death panels (See my post on this last Friday, or Tom Maguire's Sunday item for more). Now, suddenly, to even suggest such a possibility is McCarthyism — now called Palinism — according to Richard Cohen.
What drives me crazy about liberal complaints about conservative tactics these days is how selective they are. Obama, Barney Frank, Jacob Hacker, and others have said that they want these reforms — specifically the public option — to lead to single payer. But when conservatives take them at their word, suddenly it's outrageous misinformation and "fishy" stuff.
When the wind is at their backs, liberals look way off to the horizon, like Obama at a podium, dreaming of a future of European-style statism. But when conservatives use this to their advantage, suddenly it is outrageous to even consider the possibility of a road to hell being paved with good intentions. Suddenly liberals bleat that it is scare-mongering to look beyond what they are proposing in this exact moment, outrageous to ask "Where will this lead?" I agree entirely with Andy that conservatives are under no obligation to unilaterally agree to liberal terms or definitions but rather, as he puts it, "Our function is to call the opposition on such hair-splitting nonsense, not to make the fog harder to pierce."
And this raises what I think is part of the problem. As Mark says, this is a massive political fight — one that conservatives are winning, by the way — and there's a natural tension between wanting to argue the finer points of policy and win the battle over the politics. I don't begrudge NR's attempt to get this balance right by erring on the side of describing the policy correctly and in good faith. But, also in good faith, I don't see it quite the same way, and I don't think Palin's contributions are part of the problem with the health-care debate.
100 or So Days Later... [Jonah Goldberg]
While working on a column yesterday, I went back and found what I wrote on the occasion of Obama's first 100 days, when for the editors of Newsweek (henceforth my shorthand for sycophantic Obama disciples) birds were chirping, the sun was shining, all was looking wonderful in the world. It was the greatest first 100 days ever. Looking at the news that conservatives now outnumber liberals in every state, tens of thousands are quitting AARP, James Carville is floating the idea of scrapping the healthcare bill entirely, Obama is (maybe) abandoning the public option — just as he has the death panels supervisory commissions on when to cease continuing life —- and all the rest, it seems that what I wrote was a bit prescient and also a bit understated:
...Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
Update: From a reader:
Jonah,Don’t forget this part of your prediction—“For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.”
And here’s what our President has to say about freedom of speech and political dissent:"I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."
Monday, August 17, 2009
Obama's Model for Gov't Run Healthcare ? The Post Office !
This is what happens when Axelrod lets Obama speak off the cuff; away from the teleprompter.
Asked, "who can compete with the government? " take note of Mr. Obama's answer:
"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?" the president said. "It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Just what we need, a new government bureacracy, deficit busting, tax raising, sinkhole that will lose oodles of money, while delivering increasingly substandard services, that will "always have problems". Good plan, Mr. President.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08162009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/health_care_goes_postal_184853.htm
As for that model of government run inefficiency, aka The United States Postal Service ...
http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2009/08/post-office-going-way-of-dodo.html
But don't worry, don't expect the Post Office to be restructured, sold or in any way made efficient or profitable, after all protected, Democratic voting UNION JOBS are at stake.
But let's cut O some slack - he could have said "Amtrak".
Here's Kyle Smith's article (but you should read both above)
HEALTH CARE GOES POSTAL
OBAMACARE WILL BE RUN AS WELL AS THE POST OFFICE. FEAR FOR YOUR LIVES! by Kyle Smith
August 16, 2009
After he was asked, "Who can compete with the government? The answer is nobody," Mr. Obama's answer evoked the public-private competition in the mail business. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?" the president said. "It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Now we're getting somewhere. People who fear ObamaCare compare it to the US Postal Service. And so does the president! Allow me to walk the president through my post office, on West 83rd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam.
What you'll notice first, Mr. President is: long lines, always. Doesn't matter if it's rush hour or the quietest part of the afternoon, there is always a lengthy wait to get to one of the windows.
The lines have gotten even longer lately because a couple of years ago the two machines selling stamps and other items were removed. I was stunned. When was the last time you saw something de-automated? Ever heard of anyone trading in their washing machine for a new washboard? Are you thinking about buying a car with a hand-cranked ignition system? An employee told me, "It wasn't cost effective."
USPS logic: It's more cost-effective to make people wait in line to ask a unionized employee for something than to use a machine.
As you wait in line, Mr. President, amid dingy, trash-strewn surroundings and people sighing heavily and checking their watches, observe the time-warp effect. It's like you have left fast-moving Manhattan and zapped yourself into the Deep South in 1934. Picture a drowsy moment in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
A clerk who has finished with one customer takes a good long pause to settle herself, exchange pleasantries with friends, arrange her workspace and so forth before she lights up the little box and asks for the next customer. If you arrive at her window before she has turned on this light, she will curtly send you away. Don't crowd her! You're just the customer.
There are always one or two supervisors lurking in the background, but unlike, say, the fast-thinking action man who is a whirl of authority at the Wendy's I go to in the Rockefeller Center concourse, these supervisors never encourage their employees to keep it moving, never take a turn at the till themselves, never parachute in to fix snafus. I've never seen any of them do anything except . . . supervise. They're as useless as mall cops.
If you should have to pick up a package, go to the window in the corner. Usually there is no clerk here. There is a doorbell-like buzzer. For a year or so it was labeled "Broken." So if you need a package, just stand there for a while. Someone will come by . . . eventually.
The Post Office frequently boasts that it is self-supporting. It is required to be. But it isn't.
Despite enjoying a legal monopoly on first-class mail -- private carriers are required to charge more than twice as much as USPS to deliver a letter -- and another monopoly on access to mailboxes, despite paying no taxes and being allowed to borrow $3 billion a year from the government at discounted rates, it still loses mountains of money. Projected losses are $7 billion this year, says a think-tank analyst, Don Soifer of the Lexington Institute.
The USPS answer to these problems? Cut services. It is lobbying to curtail mail delivery from six days a week to five. The Lexington Institute estimates that 60,000 mailboxes have already been removed from the streets.
Keep in mind that all the Post Office does is deliver mail, not babies, and that under ObamaCare you will be cooling your heels as you await surgery, not stamps. William Henderson, the US postmaster general from 1998 to 2001, wrote upon leaving that "what the Postal Service needs now is nothing short of privatization."
Leave aside the shocking off-handedness with which the president promised to put tens of millions of Americans in a system that he himself compared to the one that "is always having problems." The US Postal Service is characterized by monopoly, long waits, indifferent treatment of customers, dwindling services, billions in losses and expert opinion that it would work better as a private firm -- exactly the list of flaws critics cite about ObamaCare.
Thanks for drawing our attention to all this, Mr. President.
Asked, "who can compete with the government? " take note of Mr. Obama's answer:
"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?" the president said. "It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Just what we need, a new government bureacracy, deficit busting, tax raising, sinkhole that will lose oodles of money, while delivering increasingly substandard services, that will "always have problems". Good plan, Mr. President.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08162009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/health_care_goes_postal_184853.htm
As for that model of government run inefficiency, aka The United States Postal Service ...
http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2009/08/post-office-going-way-of-dodo.html
But don't worry, don't expect the Post Office to be restructured, sold or in any way made efficient or profitable, after all protected, Democratic voting UNION JOBS are at stake.
But let's cut O some slack - he could have said "Amtrak".
Here's Kyle Smith's article (but you should read both above)
HEALTH CARE GOES POSTAL
OBAMACARE WILL BE RUN AS WELL AS THE POST OFFICE. FEAR FOR YOUR LIVES! by Kyle Smith
August 16, 2009
After he was asked, "Who can compete with the government? The answer is nobody," Mr. Obama's answer evoked the public-private competition in the mail business. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?" the president said. "It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Now we're getting somewhere. People who fear ObamaCare compare it to the US Postal Service. And so does the president! Allow me to walk the president through my post office, on West 83rd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam.
What you'll notice first, Mr. President is: long lines, always. Doesn't matter if it's rush hour or the quietest part of the afternoon, there is always a lengthy wait to get to one of the windows.
The lines have gotten even longer lately because a couple of years ago the two machines selling stamps and other items were removed. I was stunned. When was the last time you saw something de-automated? Ever heard of anyone trading in their washing machine for a new washboard? Are you thinking about buying a car with a hand-cranked ignition system? An employee told me, "It wasn't cost effective."
USPS logic: It's more cost-effective to make people wait in line to ask a unionized employee for something than to use a machine.
As you wait in line, Mr. President, amid dingy, trash-strewn surroundings and people sighing heavily and checking their watches, observe the time-warp effect. It's like you have left fast-moving Manhattan and zapped yourself into the Deep South in 1934. Picture a drowsy moment in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
A clerk who has finished with one customer takes a good long pause to settle herself, exchange pleasantries with friends, arrange her workspace and so forth before she lights up the little box and asks for the next customer. If you arrive at her window before she has turned on this light, she will curtly send you away. Don't crowd her! You're just the customer.
There are always one or two supervisors lurking in the background, but unlike, say, the fast-thinking action man who is a whirl of authority at the Wendy's I go to in the Rockefeller Center concourse, these supervisors never encourage their employees to keep it moving, never take a turn at the till themselves, never parachute in to fix snafus. I've never seen any of them do anything except . . . supervise. They're as useless as mall cops.
If you should have to pick up a package, go to the window in the corner. Usually there is no clerk here. There is a doorbell-like buzzer. For a year or so it was labeled "Broken." So if you need a package, just stand there for a while. Someone will come by . . . eventually.
The Post Office frequently boasts that it is self-supporting. It is required to be. But it isn't.
Despite enjoying a legal monopoly on first-class mail -- private carriers are required to charge more than twice as much as USPS to deliver a letter -- and another monopoly on access to mailboxes, despite paying no taxes and being allowed to borrow $3 billion a year from the government at discounted rates, it still loses mountains of money. Projected losses are $7 billion this year, says a think-tank analyst, Don Soifer of the Lexington Institute.
The USPS answer to these problems? Cut services. It is lobbying to curtail mail delivery from six days a week to five. The Lexington Institute estimates that 60,000 mailboxes have already been removed from the streets.
Keep in mind that all the Post Office does is deliver mail, not babies, and that under ObamaCare you will be cooling your heels as you await surgery, not stamps. William Henderson, the US postmaster general from 1998 to 2001, wrote upon leaving that "what the Postal Service needs now is nothing short of privatization."
Leave aside the shocking off-handedness with which the president promised to put tens of millions of Americans in a system that he himself compared to the one that "is always having problems." The US Postal Service is characterized by monopoly, long waits, indifferent treatment of customers, dwindling services, billions in losses and expert opinion that it would work better as a private firm -- exactly the list of flaws critics cite about ObamaCare.
Thanks for drawing our attention to all this, Mr. President.
Who is the Mob ? Who is Un-American ? or, How the Left fights Dirty ...
Great piece here by Andrew Breitbart that delves into BDS and other mis-deeds of the Left:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2009/08/16/george-w-bush-by-proxy-syndrome/
George W. Bush-by-Proxy Syndrome by Andrew Breitbart
This week’s Washington Times column:
There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.
His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn’t do enough.
But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don’t do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.
Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.
The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.
Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.
Next were the Mormons.
Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.
Next, tax-day “tea party” attendees were “tea bagged.”
Then there was a beauty contestant.
And a Cambridge cop, too.
And now we have town-hall “mobs.”
Smile … you’ve been “community organized.”
When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.
This is their time, we’ve been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.
The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”
Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.
“Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”
You can read the column in full here.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2009/08/16/george-w-bush-by-proxy-syndrome/
George W. Bush-by-Proxy Syndrome by Andrew Breitbart
This week’s Washington Times column:
There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.
His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn’t do enough.
But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don’t do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.
Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.
The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.
Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.
Next were the Mormons.
Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.
Next, tax-day “tea party” attendees were “tea bagged.”
Then there was a beauty contestant.
And a Cambridge cop, too.
And now we have town-hall “mobs.”
Smile … you’ve been “community organized.”
When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.
This is their time, we’ve been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.
The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”
Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.
“Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”
You can read the column in full here.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
more ObamaCare updates ...
Obama’s Health Care Mess [Victor Davis Hanson]
Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either.
Health care is stalled and insidiously undermining the presidency of Obama precisely because the public senses he has not leveled with the American people. Of the uninsured, how many millions are young people who feel no need right now to buy insurance, how many million are illegal aliens, how many millions chose to use their optional income for things other than a low-cost catastrophic health plan, how many millions still find care outside the insurance system?
Nor do most Americans feel their system is broken. They worry about redundant care, frivolous procedures, and lawsuits, but sense that all in all it can be improved rather than scrapped. They know that Americans with cancer and heart disease survive longer than anywhere else due to superior American care. And they know that longevity is influenced by factors well beyond medical care. The president just as easily could tackle the epidemic of homicides and youth violence, as well as automobile accidents, if his concern really were to ensure that Americans on average lived longer than any others.
Bottom line: too many Americans, whether rightly or wrongly, believe that Obama has other agendas that transcend simply ensuring American live longer, healthier, and better — such as growing government, enforcing an equality of result, and creating permanent constituencies that administer and receive expanding federal entitlements.
And what looms over the entire debate? Debt, debt, debt — both the recognition that one cannot expand those covered and save money at the same time without rationing or higher taxes; and the notion that all Obama’s new entitlements essentially involve borrowing money, much of it from Asia, as our indebtedness soars.
Whole Foods:
For writing a very sensible op-ed on health care reform, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has been rewarded with an attempted boycott of his stores. Ann Althouse is not amused. Progressive folks who are offended at the idea of a private firm opposing expanded government intervention in the economy are certaily free to boycott Whole Foods — but they're not entitled to be free from criticism for it. Others of us are also free to shop there more often.
Why cut off the foot... [Mark Steyn]
...when you can cut off the services?
Further to my weekend column on how a government health system inevitably means restricted access to treatment, a word from British Columbia:
The Fraser Health Authority confirmed Thursday it intends to cut surgeries, seniors' programs and services for the mentally ill to help deal with a budget shortfall of up to $160 million.
However, it said the emergency department at Mission Memorial Hospital will stay open.
That's awfully sporting of them, all things considered.
The board said 10 to 15 per cent of elective surgeries will be cut in the latter part of the 2009-10 fiscal year, with slowdowns already scheduled for the Olympic period.
That's how it works. You can elect to have the surgery but they won't elect to give it to you. And don't ask me why hosting the Winter Olympics should necessitate cuts in health care. Unless they're expecting an epidemic of two-man luge teams with buttocks frozen to the sled or men's ice-dancing teams felled by attempting a double-axle in a too tight bolero jacket, it would seem to be just one of those things that happens when governments of advanced wealthy nations decide they can run every aspect of life more "efficiently" than the citizenry.
Big Pharma Swallows Obama's Pill [Robert Costa]
When Big Pharma cut an $80 billion deal with the White House last week to help fund Obamacare via prescription-drug discounts, both the Left and the Right called foul. “Rancid,” moaned The Nation. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal blasted Billy Tauzin, PhRMA’s chief lobbyist, declaring the former congressman to be looking “less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.” NR’s Rich Lowry observed that “even if the deal holds, PhRMA will be at the mercy of a government system that will tend to squeeze out even those private players who have obligingly assisted in creating the predicate for their own destruction.”
Ken Johnson, a Tauzin adviser and PhRMA’s senior vice-president, acknowledged to NRO on Friday that he’s feeling the heat, though more from pharmaceutical-company leaders than from politicos. “There’s some angst right now, but we made it clear that this was never going to be easy. It’s a torturous process, with peaks and valleys,” he said. “We knew from the beginning that this was going to be a rollercoaster ride, with ups and downs and times where you close your eyes and hold on for dear life. At the end of the ride, are you smiling or sick to your stomach?”
Dyspepsia may already be here. On Thursday, Fox News reported that Big Pharma, though nodding along with the president on health-care reform, now finds itself fighting with the White House on “follow-on biologicals,” the industry’s innovative drugs that drive much of its business:
Congress has backed drugmakers who want to hold on to their data exclusivity for 12 years before letting other companies develop similar versions of their products. On Tuesday, the president called for drug companies to reduce that span to seven years. He has an ally in the AARP, the nation's largest seniors group.
The drug manufacturers, however, say companies should have a longer time to keep their product exclusive since they spent so much money on bringing the drug to market in the first place.
"On average it's about $1.2 billion a company spends to get a biologic on the market. And that's well before the cost of actually building a facility, to manufacture the biologic, which often times run anywhere from a quarter billion to half a billion dollars to get on the market," said Lori Reilly, vice president of policy for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.
Nonetheless, PhRMA, said Johnson, still believes its deal with Obama was a necessary compromise. “What we’re trying to do is move the debate closer to the center. That said, we need health-care reform but should not sacrifice medical progress or set us on a path towards a single-payer health-care system.”
And don’t try to tell PhRMA that the sky is falling on its industry. “We remain convinced that a commonsense, bipartisan bill will emerge in Congress that we can embrace wholeheartedly,” said Johnson. Still, “if the wheels come off the train, on issues like price controls, we’ll have serious concerns.” Johnson declined to get into specifics about what would trigger a derailment.
He was, however, more than ready to deflect media criticism. “People from both sides of the issue are going to say nasty things at times,” said Johnson, with regards to the Journal editorial. “The Wall Street Journal has long advocated free-market principles [and argued] that we have started down that slippery slope towards a single-payer system. Our argument is that we’re heading that way anyway, if we don’t work to rein in health-care costs.”
“The $80 billion in cost-saving we pledged is not loose change found in the sofa. It will force companies to make very tough decisions about which medicines to pursue. At the same time, it provides us with certainty that will help companies make long-term R&D decisions. We told the White House and Congress that we know our business model better than anyone else. One of the reasons that we want to be a participant is to avoid catastrophic job losses. By being at the table, we were able to have input in that we could offer $80 billion, without continuing down that road.”
Whether or not the $80 billion pill PhRMA is peddling to its CEOs is any good for its health will be determined over the coming months. One diagnosis, however, is already clear. As Ron Smith noted in the Baltimore Sun on Friday: “At least the health reform bill is good for somebody: lobbyists.”
Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either.
Health care is stalled and insidiously undermining the presidency of Obama precisely because the public senses he has not leveled with the American people. Of the uninsured, how many millions are young people who feel no need right now to buy insurance, how many million are illegal aliens, how many millions chose to use their optional income for things other than a low-cost catastrophic health plan, how many millions still find care outside the insurance system?
Nor do most Americans feel their system is broken. They worry about redundant care, frivolous procedures, and lawsuits, but sense that all in all it can be improved rather than scrapped. They know that Americans with cancer and heart disease survive longer than anywhere else due to superior American care. And they know that longevity is influenced by factors well beyond medical care. The president just as easily could tackle the epidemic of homicides and youth violence, as well as automobile accidents, if his concern really were to ensure that Americans on average lived longer than any others.
Bottom line: too many Americans, whether rightly or wrongly, believe that Obama has other agendas that transcend simply ensuring American live longer, healthier, and better — such as growing government, enforcing an equality of result, and creating permanent constituencies that administer and receive expanding federal entitlements.
And what looms over the entire debate? Debt, debt, debt — both the recognition that one cannot expand those covered and save money at the same time without rationing or higher taxes; and the notion that all Obama’s new entitlements essentially involve borrowing money, much of it from Asia, as our indebtedness soars.
Whole Foods:
For writing a very sensible op-ed on health care reform, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has been rewarded with an attempted boycott of his stores. Ann Althouse is not amused. Progressive folks who are offended at the idea of a private firm opposing expanded government intervention in the economy are certaily free to boycott Whole Foods — but they're not entitled to be free from criticism for it. Others of us are also free to shop there more often.
Why cut off the foot... [Mark Steyn]
...when you can cut off the services?
Further to my weekend column on how a government health system inevitably means restricted access to treatment, a word from British Columbia:
The Fraser Health Authority confirmed Thursday it intends to cut surgeries, seniors' programs and services for the mentally ill to help deal with a budget shortfall of up to $160 million.
However, it said the emergency department at Mission Memorial Hospital will stay open.
That's awfully sporting of them, all things considered.
The board said 10 to 15 per cent of elective surgeries will be cut in the latter part of the 2009-10 fiscal year, with slowdowns already scheduled for the Olympic period.
That's how it works. You can elect to have the surgery but they won't elect to give it to you. And don't ask me why hosting the Winter Olympics should necessitate cuts in health care. Unless they're expecting an epidemic of two-man luge teams with buttocks frozen to the sled or men's ice-dancing teams felled by attempting a double-axle in a too tight bolero jacket, it would seem to be just one of those things that happens when governments of advanced wealthy nations decide they can run every aspect of life more "efficiently" than the citizenry.
Big Pharma Swallows Obama's Pill [Robert Costa]
When Big Pharma cut an $80 billion deal with the White House last week to help fund Obamacare via prescription-drug discounts, both the Left and the Right called foul. “Rancid,” moaned The Nation. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal blasted Billy Tauzin, PhRMA’s chief lobbyist, declaring the former congressman to be looking “less like Dr. Faustus and more like Jack, trading away his industry for magic beans.” NR’s Rich Lowry observed that “even if the deal holds, PhRMA will be at the mercy of a government system that will tend to squeeze out even those private players who have obligingly assisted in creating the predicate for their own destruction.”
Ken Johnson, a Tauzin adviser and PhRMA’s senior vice-president, acknowledged to NRO on Friday that he’s feeling the heat, though more from pharmaceutical-company leaders than from politicos. “There’s some angst right now, but we made it clear that this was never going to be easy. It’s a torturous process, with peaks and valleys,” he said. “We knew from the beginning that this was going to be a rollercoaster ride, with ups and downs and times where you close your eyes and hold on for dear life. At the end of the ride, are you smiling or sick to your stomach?”
Dyspepsia may already be here. On Thursday, Fox News reported that Big Pharma, though nodding along with the president on health-care reform, now finds itself fighting with the White House on “follow-on biologicals,” the industry’s innovative drugs that drive much of its business:
Congress has backed drugmakers who want to hold on to their data exclusivity for 12 years before letting other companies develop similar versions of their products. On Tuesday, the president called for drug companies to reduce that span to seven years. He has an ally in the AARP, the nation's largest seniors group.
The drug manufacturers, however, say companies should have a longer time to keep their product exclusive since they spent so much money on bringing the drug to market in the first place.
"On average it's about $1.2 billion a company spends to get a biologic on the market. And that's well before the cost of actually building a facility, to manufacture the biologic, which often times run anywhere from a quarter billion to half a billion dollars to get on the market," said Lori Reilly, vice president of policy for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.
Nonetheless, PhRMA, said Johnson, still believes its deal with Obama was a necessary compromise. “What we’re trying to do is move the debate closer to the center. That said, we need health-care reform but should not sacrifice medical progress or set us on a path towards a single-payer health-care system.”
And don’t try to tell PhRMA that the sky is falling on its industry. “We remain convinced that a commonsense, bipartisan bill will emerge in Congress that we can embrace wholeheartedly,” said Johnson. Still, “if the wheels come off the train, on issues like price controls, we’ll have serious concerns.” Johnson declined to get into specifics about what would trigger a derailment.
He was, however, more than ready to deflect media criticism. “People from both sides of the issue are going to say nasty things at times,” said Johnson, with regards to the Journal editorial. “The Wall Street Journal has long advocated free-market principles [and argued] that we have started down that slippery slope towards a single-payer system. Our argument is that we’re heading that way anyway, if we don’t work to rein in health-care costs.”
“The $80 billion in cost-saving we pledged is not loose change found in the sofa. It will force companies to make very tough decisions about which medicines to pursue. At the same time, it provides us with certainty that will help companies make long-term R&D decisions. We told the White House and Congress that we know our business model better than anyone else. One of the reasons that we want to be a participant is to avoid catastrophic job losses. By being at the table, we were able to have input in that we could offer $80 billion, without continuing down that road.”
Whether or not the $80 billion pill PhRMA is peddling to its CEOs is any good for its health will be determined over the coming months. One diagnosis, however, is already clear. As Ron Smith noted in the Baltimore Sun on Friday: “At least the health reform bill is good for somebody: lobbyists.”
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