What Was That?

Barack Obama’s speech last night accomplished nothing, except perhaps outrage opponents of his health care package even more.  What exactly is different about what he proposed last night?  Did he really think that soaring rhetoric (along with multiples nasty shots at his opponents) would reframe the debate?  It’s too late for that.  The health care proposals that he has been selling (or not selling) for months now cannot now be sold simply by rephrasing the issue to sound different.  You cannot a) insure millions more Americans who are currently without insurance, b) improve medical coverage for those who already have insurance, and c) do it all for less money.  The American people know that.  As someone on the blogs said last night, Obama apparently still thinks he’s talking to a bunch of third-graders.

So Obama is going to pay for this 900 billion dollar monstrosity by getting rid of waste and abuse in Medicare.  Who believes that?  Medicare is government-run health care.  Obama himself keeps talking about all the inefficiencies Medicare, but he believes that a new government-run option will not be subject to the same waste and abuse?  Good luck with that.   

Also, Obama’s disdain for profits came out once more last night.  He claimed part of the problem with our current system is the health insurers ‘relentless pursuit of profits.’ Well, I don’t know about you but if I’m a shareholder of a company, relentlessly pursuing profits is exactly what I want the company to be doing.  Profits are good.  There’s no substitute for them.  Without profits you have no progress, no expansion.  Go for long enough without profits and you have no jobs. 

He then went on to talk about how his private option could provide a good option for consumers by avoiding the ‘overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits.’  The phrase ‘eaten up’ is telling.  Profits, like some vulture, gobble up all the good parts, according to Obama.  Lets set up a company without a profit-motive!  Like, like….let me think…..like Medicare!  Or the post office!  Or the DMV!   

One more thing.  Preventive care is not less expensive.  It’s more expensive.  For the person who eventually ends up not getting a disease, or catches a disease early-on so that it’s more treatable, preventive care is wonderful.  But you’ve got to test everyone, including the vast majority of those who are never going to get the disease.  Those test cost money and it trumps whatever savings you get from the few who do end up benefitting.  I’m not saying preventive care is not a good thing.  It is.  But it doesn’t save money, as Obama and the left continue saying.

The entire speech was a study in disingenuousness.  It will be picked apart today and in the coming days.  And this was his last shot.  He can’t make another nation-wide televised speech on the issue again.  It may be that everyone finally realizes that nothing on the scale of what Obama and the left have proposed will ever get through Congress.  They’ll come together for some minor health insurance reform, i.e. you can’t be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, you don’t lose you coverage if you lose your job, you can buy coverage across state-lines, etc..  A bunch of the congressional clowns will gather around Obama at the signing ceremony and call it a victory.  But no one will be fooled.  Sweeping health care reform is dead.