HEALTH WIN = DISASTER
If the Democrats obey President Obama’s command and pass a health-care bill by the August recess, they’ll be committing partisan suicide.
Obama’s insistence that we completely remake our health-care system — and do it two weeks after the first bill was marked up in the first committee — is too arrogant by half. It smacks of the kind of overreaching of FDR’s second term in 1937, when, after his landslide win in 1936, he tried to pack the Supreme Court to reverse its anti-New Deal rulings.
Americans are increasingly turning against Obama’s program. A Washington Post poll has the plan’s public approval below 50 percent; Rasmussen has it trailing 46-49.
For Obama to ride roughshod over Americans’ rising concerns about a matter so intimate will be too much.
What’s the rush? they’ll ask. The bill isn’t even slated to take effect until next year. You passed the stimulus package, they’ll note, in a similar rush during the administration’s first week — only to see it fall flat. Now Obama aides are claiming the package was never intended to have much effect this year!
How, voters will ask, can we cover 50 million more people without any new doctors or nurses? The answer is to ration health care, with the government deciding who’ll get hip and knee replacements, heart-bypass surgery and other medical treatments. And what does rationing mean? It means that the elderly will be denied care that they can now get whenever they want.
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Cynapse Says:
After watching your heroes on FOX News all week, and getting a general feel for where the “locals” are at, I don’t think this healthcare bill is going to pass. Obama dropped the ball by admitting he only has a passing idea of what’s in it.
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 am
UV Says:
I would imagine that the Republicans have lost a lot of credibility with many Canadians about their lies regarding Canada’s Health Care System. They show the exceptions in their phoney advertisements but not all the good things about our Universal Health Care . I dont think any Canadian would trade what we have for what the Americans have, not much for the some 48 million without any coverage and many more with limited coverage.
Strange country that can spend trillions of their tax dollars on space exploration and fighting wars, than on their own citizen’s health.
For example, my wife recently had two major operations that would have required me to sell my little home to pay for such had we been living in the states. Waiting times were reasonable and the operation was successful thanks to our great medical staff.
God bless our universal health care.
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
nomdeblog Says:
“my wife recently had two major operations that would have required me to sell my little home to pay for such had we been living in the states. “
UV, first of all I sincerely hope those operations were successful!
But you would not have to sell your home in the US if you had insurance. And anyone with the wherewithal to own a house should have the mental dexterity to go out and buy Health insurance.
Yours is the classic CBC argument…. Canadians hear repetitive horror stories of Americans losing their $400,000. house to pay for an operation. But many of those 48 million Americans made a decision, to have a big house and a big mortgage instead of buying health insurance. Many are young and don’t think they will ever get sick. But yes, some have fallen through the cracks and that needs to be fixed … even the GOP admits that. But you don’t need to turn the USA into the USSR to fix it.
There is no such thing as free health. You are going to pay for it one way or another.
The US has some problems with Health as does every country in the world. Nobody has it right, it needs to be constantly improved, incrementally, trial and error. But it definitely should not be run from the center, by a government monopoly.. even Canada doesn’t do that. We have 10 provinces running it and soon we’ll be seeing lots of competition on which province can set up the best model.
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm