Diagnosis Burueacrat

Take Obama's hypothetical situation:

RealClearPolitics: In trying to rally support for health care overhaul, Obama described a patient who sees a physician for a sore throat, or a parent who brings in a child with a sore throat.

"Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. ... The doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out,'" Obama told a prime-time news conference.

The president added: "Now, that may be the right thing to do, but I'd rather have that doctor making those decisions just based on whether you really need your kid's tonsils out or whether it might make more sense just to change; maybe they have allergies. Maybe they have something else that would make a difference."

Perhaps some doctors overprescribe based on fees and I can't doubt that this happens.

However, what is the alternative? A bureaucrat making a decision? That's what Obama wants.

How is a bureaucrat to decide whether the person really needs his tonsils out? He'll look at the chart? What about the bureaucrat's women's studies degree qualifies him to make better decisions?

Obama's Health Care Cancer

When Hillary's 1993 nationalized healthcare proposal fell flat, liberals did not accept that the American people rejected nationalized healthcare. Instead, they try again in stealth. Obama's healthcare plan is a cancer to the existing private system. Eventually it will get destroyed.

Here's how it will play out: After the government creates the public option, they can attract enrollees with low costs and high coverage. At first, reports in the media will be honestly positive. The government will be able to do this by running deficits. Then some companies may drop employer based coverage since there is a seemingly efficient government plan. A

t the same time, the government will increase regulation on existing insurers to make it impossible to do business. They will limit what insures can charge, while forcing them to add costs such as covering pre-existing conditions or elective proceedures. No one expects someone to be able to sign up for car insurance after you've gotten into an accident. (Nobody thinks that insurance should cover installing fancy rims on your car either. Apparently though, the left have convinced a substantial number of people that healthcare should do just that.)

Once the private system is destroyed the government will be in full control. However, now that they have the entire nation's healthcare to pay for, running enormous deficits indefinitely is impossible. So they will face the reality of trying to manage the budget. This is when quality of care will start decreasing, when old people are left to die, and cancer patients become expendable.

There will be additional incentive to cut care. Every extra dollar spent on healthcare is one less dollar the government can spend on pork projects.



Obama has said nothing regarding the pros and cons of other govermnment provided healthcare systems such as Massachussetts, Canada, or Britian. A honest person would talk about the deficits of such systems and how his system would be better.
His cost projects are dillusionally low
He keeps repeating this statistics that 47 million are uninsured. This statistic is really the number of people who at some point in the year did not have health insurance. This includes illegal immigrants, young people who don't need it, or people swtiching jobs. (If you quit a job on a Friday and start on the following Monday, you don't have insurance for a weekend.)
Obama claims that the government will be able to reduce costs? How?

T

Priceless....

Washington Examiner

"If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" -- President Obama

In last night's press conference, President Obama seemed to be reliving that famous scene from The Matrix. The main character is offered a choice between a red pill that makes him see reality for what it is, and a blue pill that allows him to continue living in a pleasant world of illusions.

Last night, President Obama appeared to have taken the blue pill before his press conference. How else could he convince himself, the Congressional Budget Office's numbers notwithstanding, that his health care reform bill will not increase both health care costs and the federal deficit? How else can he continue to make the argument that a massive expansion of government spending on health care will solve rather than exacerbate the current problems? How can he repeatedly express such absolute certainty that such a measure will easily pay for itself several times over in the long run? Why can he not at least acknowledge the possibility that it will become a costly and useless trillion-dollar boondoggle that follows in the footsteps of his stimulus package?

"If she was a Conservative" Part Deux

Continuing with the "If she was a Conservative" series.....

She's is cool and collected, while a conservative would have "struggled to defend."




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090714/ap_on_go_su_co/us_deconstructing_sotomayor

More troubling than the "wise Latina" comment is the "ooops, I'm on video" quote:

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t make law. I know. OK, I know. I know. I’m not, I’m not promoting it and I’m not advocating it. I’m, you know. OK. Um. [Laughs]"

The video clearly shows her being smug and her letting out the secret that everyone knows. The AP brushes this off as: Her suggestion that appeals court judges don't just interpret the law, they help make it? Taken out of context.

If She Were a Conservative....

Can you image how the headline would read instead?

"How Sotomayor plans to gloss over past statements"

"Sotomayor critics gain popular support"

"Sotomayor statements anger minority groups"

"Sotomayor qualifications to be scrutinized"

Left-wingers Self Dellusion

One word: delusional

Left wing "Catholics" try to assuage their guilty by convincing themselves and others that their way is really better for paper thin reasons a, b, & c.

Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does: Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama meet for the first time, an affair much anticipated and in some circles frowned upon by American Catholics in the wake of Obama's controversial Notre Dame commencement speech in May. Conservatives in the church denounced Obama's appearance as a nod by the premier Catholic university to a conciliatory politics that heralds the start of a slippery moral slope.

In truth, though, Obama's pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists. When Obama meets the pope tomorrow, they'll politely disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality, but Catholics back home won't care, because they know Obama's on their side. In fact, Obama's agenda is closer to their views than even the pope's.

It's fitting that Obama's visit comes just days after the publication of "Charity in Truth," a Vatican encyclical that declares unions, regulation of capitalism's excesses, and environmentalism to be ethical imperatives. The document gives moral credence to Obama's message and to progressive politics writ large.
Quantcast

Even more intriguing is the pope's support for political activism, which he refers to in the encyclical as "the institutional path … of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly." As a member of a family that preached that politics is an honorable profession, I see that he is opening the church to roles that for too long have been neglected. Here Obama (the community organizer from Chicago) could teach the pope a lot about politics—and what a Catholic approach to politics could entail. They agree, too, on poverty and Middle East peace. So far so good on papal-presidential concordance.

But there they part ways. Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others' shoes. Obama might call it empathy. While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women's equality and gays' cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong. Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation: "If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches."....

California's Budget Woes

California have a $26 billion budget gap and are out of loans. Now they want to issue IOUs as they predict running out of cash at the end of July.

So one of the most liberal states is having the worst problem. Surprised? California has everything going for it: It's got a nice coast, waterways, farmland, tourist attractions. There's

How they got there should be a warning to the rest of the country. They increased spending to meet politicans fancy and raised taxes to pay for it. A smaller percentage of the population were financing all that largesse. The business and people that paid the taxes left, while spending continued to increase.

California could get out of the budget mess by cutting spending, but none of the politicans want to do that. So they dream about raising revenue, through MORE taxes, yet the people of California are tired of it.