Healthcare, Anecdotes and The President

Like millions of other Americans, I watched the President deliver his speeches on healthcare before Congress and America, shouting and all. As neither a Democrat nor Republican, I am unfettered by the need to promote some party line or talking points. But I do have an opinion.

So here are my impressions:

1.The President does not either accept or understand how markets work. I have seen this in pretty much all of his utterances on business and markets in general. I am not sure if he is a socialist at his core or just doesn’t accept free market principles, but regardless he doesn’t get it.

2.The President freely uses stories without foundation to support his arguments. No, I am not calling out “You lie!” However, I am calling him a pretty typical politician. For example, he cited in his now infamous speech, a couple of examples of insurance companies dropping coverage on sick people. He just conveniently left out the part about how both of his examples lied on their insurance applications about their health histories and how one of them got covered for a major treatment anyway! Oh, and he left out the part about how health insurance is not like car insurance in that it is illegal for any health insurer to drop anyone for any reason other than they lied when they filled out the application. If you tell the truth on your application, get accepted, and then get sick later, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. If you lie, you do. Which is only right and logical, no?

3.President Obama keeps talking about saving half of the cost of the new health reform with savings in Medicare by reducing “waste”. Okay, trivia question, has there ever been a successful government run program where waste has been eliminated? No, not one. Since government programs are run by bureaucracies as opposed to private companies, profit and loss are not concerns to be considered. Why would anyone expect waste to be eliminated without consequence? This is why seniors hear “savings” and think “rationing”. They are correct as the ONLY way for a bureaucracy to save real money is to ration benefits, period.

Look, the thing is that we need to discern the difference between a problem and a crisis. Health care and its cost are a problem, sure; it is not a crisis. We can do a couple of common sense things like malpractice reform and opening up insurance to interstate competition (like practically every other kind of insurance) and leave it at that for now. After all, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, we are in the middle of a deep recession and this is no time to monkey around with a sixth of the whole economy, especially in a rush.

Which leads me to my last question: Since it is a given that most, if not all of the politicians voting on this thing have not actually read the bills (there are several and each is over 1000 pages), why the rush giving everyone a chance to study? Could it be that the more you know, the less you may like it?