The state of health care reform today
Here’s an excellent summary article of where we stand on health care today. It’s not a pleasant prospect, although well worth reading.
And here’s another, which includes this thought:
In true Jacksonian fashion, the country fired the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 because they bungled the war in Iraq and allowed the economy to sink into recession. They might soon have another Jacksonian moment, and fire these equally useless Democrats for hampering the recovery, exploding the deficit, and playing politics with health care.
I have thought something somewhat similar. There’s a possible symmetry between 2008 and the prospects for 2010. The mentality that got us here as a result of the election of 2008 might begin to get us out in 2010.
The backlash to the Bush administration (or at least, to the way the MSM portrayed it, which is somewhat the same thing but not exactly) was to throw the bums out. But as a result we got a whole pack of new and worse bums.
And unfortunately, we can’t throw them out fast enough to do much good. In the House maybe, because that entire august body goes up for re-election in 2010. But not in the Senate, which is on a system of staggered six-year terms; only a third of Senate seats will be contested in 2010, and then another third in 2012, and the last third in 2014. Not the presidency either until 2012, which seems a long way off.
Pity. As they say, elections have consequences.
Will we now experience a fast cycling of angry reactions, in which voters vote for a predominance of members of one party and then get angry at what they’ve done (or failed to do) and swing the pendulum very far in the other direction, in an alternating series of extreme oscillations?
I sure hope the pendulum swings very far in the opposite direction, and it can’t happen soon enough. We are on the road to socialism and a debased currency. Take a good look at California, Illinois, Michigan, and New York. That is our future if we can not derail this express train Obama and the MSM are driving.
Yes Mr. Frank. I’m in CA.
And, I’m stuck here.
I do not wish this on the other states. California can’t print its own currency though.
The U.S. can do it until the dollar is worth nothing.
I’m reading Debate on the Constitution. (I’m a little ways into the second volume.)
http://www.loa.org/debate/
I was not surprised to find there were objections to six-year terms for senators; I was a little surprised to find there were objections to a four-year term for president; but I was quite surprised to find there were objections to two-year terms for representatives: some thought that was way too long a time and that Congressional elections should be annual. (The appointment of delegates in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation was for one year at a time.) I am finding myself starting to agree with them; we can’t get rid of this bunch of liars and looters fast enough.
You’re all just a bunch of haters!
Well these guys think they sink or swim based on whether or not they do something. My thought has always been that the less they do, the safer I feel. I don’t want them doing much of anything. And I want them to be proud of exactly that: doing pretty much nothing. I’ve always wished Lamar Alexander had stuck with one of his very earliest campaign slogans about Congress: Cut their pay and send them home!
People get all bent out-of-shape about “special interests” and lobbyists. This reaction ignores the essential things: (1) We’re all part of some special interest or another, and (2) lobbyists wouldn’t have much to do and would dry up and blow away if the Congress didn’t have way too much power over the way things go. Railing against special interests and lobbyists fails to pick the essential thread up where it starts.
The Democrats are really patriotic. They are giving us the ‘Spirit of 76’ health care plan: Boomers will die at 76 from presently treatable conditions; post-boomers will have to work until 76 before they can think about retiring; and children born today will be 76 before they can afford to start a family.
“Congress didn’t have way too much power over the way things go.”
Your premise betsy is that Congress has too much power. Au contraire! Inventing out of thin air, powers not delegated to Congress is the ‘first layer’ of the problem.
The core of the problem is the many Americans, stuck in the victimhood mind-set who demand representatives who will ‘do something’ about whatever pet issue motivates them.
Since the first and second rule of politics is to get reelected, naturally the Congress-‘person’ is especially sensitive to that circumstance.
Congress has but two functions; legislating the making of laws and setting budgetary allocations and limits. ALL else is malfeasance.
People demand Congress ‘do something’ out of the same infantile expectation that the child holds that Daddy or Mommy will correct whatever the problem might be.
A representative democracy is only as strong as the maturity of its citizens. Thus, we have the Congress, we must. As the human race is arguably in its ‘juvenile’ phase, perhaps the situation is understandable, if no less frustrating.
Geoffrey Britain,
You make my point.
And here is what we should have learned: we have a two party system in which neither party can govern. One reason is that both parties are basically the same: socialism and socialism lite. The second reason is that the electorate needs to get smart and start asking tough questions before the elections and make their elected officials accountable right away instead of waiting for colossal failure. And finally, the elites need to put their own childish dreams of easy money aside and support the country.
Until that happens, we’ll continue sliding into the toilet. Eventually, we’ll run out of Chinese money, the lazy elites will run away from the country, and the politicians of both parties will run and hide. With all the vermin gone, we might even get to re-build.
“…unfortunately, we can’t throw them out fast enough to do much good.
Also unfortunate is the fact that the replacements, when they get elected, often aren’t much (if any!) better… 🙁
excerpt, Richard Hofstaer’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”:
“The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913…The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman–sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction…”
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
According to an article today in the Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/12/reid_bill_declares_future_cong_1.asp) the Senate bill contains language buried in it changing the Senates rules and making it virtually impossible to repeal parts of Obamacare, particularly the “Death Panel” that has already been set up, been funded and is operating, courtesy of other language that was buried in the prior Stimulus bill.
Just another way point on our way to becoming Venezuela if not worse.
Wolla Dalbo,
You paraphrased from a linked article that,“the Senate bill contains language buried in it changing the Senates rules and making it virtually impossible to repeal parts of Obamacare…”
I would like to see exactly what that language is. I do not believe that there is any way a law can be written that makes it unable to be repealed. Rules written and re-written, can be yet again re-written. Perhaps it might require a super-majority, but given the way that the democrats are going, there is a distinct possibility that we may have that in the near future.
I can’t believe that given the extraordinary financial emergency that we are setting ourselves up for, that this law will be repealed faster than Obama can throw his grandmother under a bus when crunch time comes. And it’s coming.
Again, if the republicans are smart (a long shot, I know), they should make repealing this bill a major campaign issue. They under no circumstances should let this issue be put on the back burner once it’s passed. IF its passed. Unfortunately, these days I despair that the republicans are anything other than democrat lite.
Oops. That’s that “…this law won’t be repealed faster than Obama… “
Tim P–Here is a more datailed analysis that contains the actual language in the bill (http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/12/21/we-are-no-longer-a-nation-of-laws-senate-sets-up-requirement-for-super-majority-to-ever-repeal-obamacare/)
The democrats are bombarding the airways with pro-ObamaCare advertisements.
The sheeple will soon believe.
2700 pages and two talking points. Never mind the tax-payer funded part…
Whoa. Obama’s Rasmussen approval rating hit -21 today. The number of voters who Strongly Disapprove hit 46%.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Rickl may be right because I hate what Obama and his Loons are doing to our country. I believe Obama can elicit as much or more rage than Bush. The fear that what Obama and Congress have done, can’t be undone is unfounded. Anything can be undone-anything.
I may be an eternal optimist here, but I think both of these statements are very true. I hope that the helath care deform can be derailed before the 2010 elections. But if not, I urge all who oppose this bill to remember the 1989 Catastrphic Health Care Act which was passed with much fanfare. But then it produced such a backlash that a shaken Congress immediately repealed it.
Here’s a good comparison of the situation in 1989 as opposed to today.
Thalpy–yes, anything can be undone, if you have the votes, and the Senate Parliamentarian rules in your favor–as he did this time by allowing Harry Read to illegally change fundamental Senate rules using language in this legislation. Yes, most anything can be undone, if you can get the Supreme Court to take your case, and, then, rule in your favor.
But, what happens if you can’t get the votes, or the Parliamentarian’s ruling, or a Supreme Court decision for several years and, by the time you win, businesses have been disbanded or moved on, and ways of doing things have been abandoned or changed, many disgusted, angry doctors have left medicine and retired, hospitals shut down, health care insurers abandoned the market, billions of dollars in taxes have already been collected, and–let us not forget–thousands of people are dead before their time due to this bill?
Dead is dead but, how to reanimate and reconstitute businesses, organizations, ways of doing things, to put things back as they were?
I am sure that those in far Left think tanks who really wrote these bills made every effort to insure that, by the time any or all of these bills are repealed, or ruled unconstitutional, it will be too late to go back to the “status quo ante,” and parts, the most important parts of their objectives, will have been achieved.
So, for instance, what about the provisions of these bills that give the Federal government access to all of your medical and financial records, and your bank account, all under the guise of providing you with better medical care, and a convenient way to pay your health care premiums electronically?
Say, that by the time the bill or major aspects of it are repealed, these mechanisms are already in place and working, and have replaced the former systems and methods. Are they going to be discarded if the old mechanisms are gone, and a case can be made that they do provide convenience and efficiency?
If not, then the government has just gotten a tremendous grip– that it did not have up until this bill–on key aspects of your life and history, and more power and control over you–a field for endless mischief.
Oh, Lord.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/12/21/we-are-no-longer-a-nation-of-laws-senate-sets-up-requirement-for-super-majority-to-ever-repeal-obamacare/
WTF is going on???
Huxley? Jimmy J.? About that Constitution. . . .
This will most surely be challenged as unconstitutional.
A Congress today cannot have more power than the Congresses that follow. Reid’s crafting of such language does precisely that.
Why imagine if this congress passed a law that made it impossible for any future Congress to ammend or repeal say healthcare legislation! That is what happens in third world dictatorships and banana republics. Oh wait!!