Thursday, September 10, 2009

Last one....

...I think. You must read this great post from Yuval Levin over at The Corner. It summarizes what was wrong with Obama's entire speech. Great stuff. An excerpt, but read it all:
"I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to
be the last." The last?

Permanent perfection, in this kind of technocratic vision, would surely
require getting every fine detail just right. Yet Obama did not seem to be
advancing a very detailed plan, but rather championing some vague generalities.
And when you line these generalities up, they form a very peculiar and
implausible picture. It will cost $900 billion, involve no tax increases for the
middle class and no Medicare benefit cuts for the elderly, but not add a dime to
the deficit. The basic prerequisites for risk-based insurance will be rendered
illegal, but the public is assured that insurance arrangements need not
change-or rather that they will only improve.

To try to sneak these glaring contradictions past his listeners, the
president engaged in some familiar misdirection. He said the government would
not force people to lose their existing insurance. But the question of
displacement is not about force: employers currently provide insurance not
because they are forced to do so (they are not) but because a combination of
policy and labor market pressures lead them to choose to do so. Change those
pressures and coverage arrangements will change for millions.

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