Wasting Time With Alex

Healthcare infomerical by ABC-WH bombs

I have to start off by admitting that I didn’t waste any of my valuable time watching that 3 hour ABC infomercial Obama put on yesterday, primarily because I figured it would be nothing but an infomercial and, as is usual with this WH and their staged events, likely to be devoid of real and important facts or much logic. So I do have to admit I was a bit surprised to find out that the thing was such an epic fail.

Call this a teachable moment, but even with ABC’s best-laid plans to kickstart the debate about health care reform and not allow the “Prescription for America” special to become an “infomercial,” as many have complained – the president spent more than twice as much time as his questioners vaguely answering or not answering the questions asked of him. But the network consistently presented the event as part of the need to fix a “broken system.” When asked, every one of the 164 hand-picked audience members said they felt that health care needed to be changed.

As predicted ABC did its best to push the agenda and this thing was nothing but an infomercial, even if they claim otherwise. Looks like they even stacked the audience with people that agreed with their agenda, intentionally or not. Maybe some agree there should be change, but I wonder how many would vehemently disagree with the current proposal. Anyway, maybe the ABC people and the WH knew this infomercial was going to backfire anyway, as the following suggests:

In addition to Obama’s longwinded responses, the ABC special left the most critical questions until the “Nightline” portion of the segment – after a 30-minute break for local news and likely fewer viewers.

One of the biggest points of contention opponents of government’s involvement in health care has been the threat that it would crowd out private health insurance providers by creating market forces they couldn’t compete with– or what Aetna Insurance president Ron Williams called it as part of the town hall: “introducing a new competitor that has rulemaking ability, the government would have.”

Of course, muddling your way through this thing while trying to, with a straight face I must add, lie about the fact that the ultimate effect, whether it is intended or not (and I say based on my experience with these collectivists that it is), is that this plan would undercut and eventually destroy the private industry plans – only stupid people believe and would argue that private insurers could compete with a plan or plans that government, which can and will subsidize their plan(s) with tax payer dollars provides while also having the luxury of being in charge of writing the rules of the game – and force us all into the government plan, was simply too difficult to do. ABC itself seems to have to accept that after Obama got asked what ABC calls “The problem Question”:

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

In short, Obama was stumped because of the very question I always say we need to ask any and all of these politicians that say they want to change healthcare: will you elites have the same plan(s) and limitations you intend to straddle us peasants with? The answer is always and indubitable “hell no!”. Also most people seem to somehow think we should be providing for the uninsured, but not if it will affect their coverage directly.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of Americans support creating a government-funded entity to offer health insurance to those who don’t get it elsewhere. But if that caused many private insurers to go out of business because they couldn’t compete, support plummets to 37 percent.

And, as I already pointed out, only fools think that the government plans would not only have an unfair advantage, but in the end, also a destructive effect on private insurers. And that was actually explained, very well I might add, by Ron Williams:

Sawyer asked Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, “Is the president right that you need to be kept honest?” Williams said he disagreed with the notion of a public plan. “It’s difficult to compete against a player who’s also the person refereeing the game,” Williams said. He proposed working to “solve the problem as opposed to introduce a new competitor who has rule-making ability.”

The left knows this. They would prefer you and I however don’t. It’s the fundamental reason government efforts keep failing to muster enough support. Another doozie of a question was about who and how coasts would be controlled. Check this out:

Another neurologist, Dr. John Corboy of the University of Colorado Health Science Center, asked the president, “What can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health care system and if there are going to be limits, who’s going to design the system and who’s going to enforce the rules for a system like that?”

Obama, however, didn’t directly answer the question.

That’s because he knows the answer would turn off even the most ardent supporters. But the apt concerns about how the cost will be managed, and more importantly what this boondoggle will cost, are a huge, and currently nebulous, issue that we must not allow the politicians pushing for these government plans to avoid answering.

“We will have some up-front costs,” the president acknowledged. “And the estimates ... have been anywhere from a trillion to $2 trillion. But what I have said is whatever it is we do, we pay for.” The president criticized the Congressional Budget Office, which recently analyzed the cost of two Democratic Senate draft bills as costing between $1 and $1.6 trillion.

The president said the CBO “doesn’t count all of the savings that may come from prevention, may come from eliminating all of the paperwork and bureaucracy because we have put forward health IT. It doesn’t come from the evidence-based care and changes in reimbursement ... they’re not willing to credit us with those savings. They say, ‘That may be nice, that may save a lot of money, but we can’t be certain.’

Those savings are all mythical as others already have pointed out. A whole new slew of taxes and some massive spending on things like IT upgrades nobody in IT thinks will actually yield any cost cuts, are not cost reductions. In fact, and if anything, we all will pay more for our care anyway:

One option being considered on Capitol Hill is taxing health care benefits, which are currently tax exempt. Today, a key Democratic senator indicated that may be inevitable. “It is hard for me to see how you have a package that is paid for that doesn’t include reducing the tax subsidy for health care,” said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who is regarded among Democrats as something of a deficit hawk.

Basically we are going to get slammed both ways. We will pay more for our own plans, well, as long as they continue to be able to compete with the government offerings which will be subsidized with even more of our tax dollars and have the benefit of belonging to the people making the rules. And we will have to pay more elsewhere too, because in the end this stuff will cost trillions more than they are predicting. That’s been a given constant of every single government social program.

Anyway, these are some real big stumbling blocks to overcome. And it shows:

With the health care debate ramping up, with Republicans assailing Democrats for the high price tag and a public option plan, Obama’s ratings on the subject slipped slightly in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Only 53 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of health care while 39 percent disapprove of it, up from 29 percent who disapproved in April, according to the poll.

I expect these numbers to plummet, and plummet fast, as more and more people realize the details and consequences of this stuff. It is obvious that most of those that believe we need to be extending healthcare to the uninsured are motivated by emotion. That emotional need vanishes fast when the consequences and costs are articulated.