November 2, 2010

You know my biggest problem with so called “Health Care Reform?”

The name.

It’s wrong.

This has nothing to do with actual health CARE. We as a nation, already have the finest health CARE on the planet. This is why even high level elected politicians from supposed health care utopias like Canada, routinely come south to America for life saving operations.

No, this is really “Health Insurance Reform.”

Or really, “Health Insurance Entitlement Reform.”

Or, let me take one last whack at it: “Health Insurance Entitlement Expansion.”

There.

You can’t refute that, even if you were for Obama and Pelosi’s hideous legislative mutant they pushed out on Sunday after 18 months of labor. If you are for it, you will say it’s morally right, it will be affordable, and that it will make the health care industry in America better over the long run.

You are also smoking crack, but I can’t help you with that.

This thing won’t save us money, it won’t work as advertised, and it won’t ever become popular. And it sure as hell won’t be a political plus for Democrats.

The numbers are simple. Some 30 million people will get “coverage.” (Two notes: A) Not until 2014, so sit tight, kids. B) Wait until they find out “coverage” doesn’t mean they’ll actually see a doctor who can help them in a timely fashion.) They are technically, the “winners” in this. The other 277 million Americans will be “losers” in this. Their taxes will go up, job creation will be given another crushing gut punch, and premiums will continue to rise.

Oh, and they’ll wait longer to see their doctor. That is, IF their doctor doesn’t take an early retirement. Which many will. Just watch.

Yet somehow, Nancy Pelosi thinks that “once we pass it, the public will like it.” Spoken like the arrogant botoxed San Francisco nitwit-granny she is. I for one, will never, ever, ever – in a trillion years – like a law that says I MUST purchase something or face tax penalties, or jail.

I am not alone.

But back to words, and what they mean. When you can actually change what words mean in the public debate, you can execute spectacular frauds on an uneducated public. If Democrats had started by stating plainly that they wanted to enact “Health Insurance Entitlement Expansion” this thing would have gotten nowhere.

So you start changing what words really mean. Health “care” is used instead of “insurance.”

And insurance is not insurance, it’s really a free basket of medical goodies at somebody else’s expense.

As a true “insurance” problem, health care is not that complicated. Fifty years ago, actual private health insurance was just that. They were policies written to hedge against catastrophic, nest-egg obliterating illnesses. Yet over the decades, health “insurance” has morphed into the Ceasar’s buffet of medicine.

In a perfect world, I would love to purchase a simple “catastrophic” policy for me and my family. I’d like to be able to opt-out of my employer insurance, pocket the cash it costs the company to provide that, pay taxes on it, and never again worry about “what happens if I lose my job?”

I’d like to be able to shop dozens of companies in any state in the country for it, and have a deductible in the $50,000 range. God forbid I run into some nasty disease, but even at that number, between savings, credit cards, friends and family, we’d be able to make it through, and pay off that deductible once I beat back my near death illness. If I die, problem solved. Life insurance.

Everything else, I pay for.

Like your homeowners insurance. That basically covers your house burning to the ground, or getting lifted off its slab and dropped 2 states away by a tornado. It doesn’t cover light bulbs, HVAC maintenance, painting, new windows, or plumber’s calls after hours on a Sunday.

Do you think homeowners “insurance” might be astronomical if it did?

Yet that is exactly what health “insurance” has become. I just saw where Virginia, my state, failed to root out Viagra as covered under state workers’ “insurance” plans. They tried, but just couldn’t do it. Those state worker drones want their boner pills, baybee, and they ain’t gonna pay for ‘em.

Good to know my taxes, will be paying for that.

All through Obama’s 50-state tour of lies, whoppers, and cherry-picked medical sob stories, you always heard about “Mrs. Jones, who has cancer, and lost her insurance, and is in danger of losing her life savings, and being kicked out of her house.”

Okay, so let’s fix THAT, then.

But no, instead the fight has been all about EXPANDING the myriad medical “conditions” that are covered by “insurance.” Like abortion, gastric bypass surgery, or psychiatric counseling for example. Whatever your opinion of the merits or morals of these kind of things are, have you ever heard Obama tell the story of “Mrs. Smith, who needs her third abortion, has lost her insurance, and is in danger of losing her house?”

No. Because these medical procedures are merely expensive. They don’t bankrupt people.

They are also procedures of choice. You can give birth and give your child up for adoption (the line in this country is around the block on that), you can eat less and exercise more (ever seen The Biggest Loser? There’s no such thing as “too fat” to exercise!), and you can take a deep look at why you are unhappy, and whether or not that Xanax prescription is really the answer.

So instead of giving most of “responsible America” reform that would be a wonderful lightening of the financial load, Obama and Pelosi are giving us the opposite.

That, and another 16,500 IRS agents in charge of enforcement.

Oh, happy day!

So they pushed the nuclear plunger. It doesn’t mean it’s over. No, it’s just beginning. Because the backlash and unintended negative consequences are about to come washing ashore.

I take solace in the fact that this will be Pelosi’s last significant act in political life. She’s back to being an obscure San Francisco trinket in the house after the November Republican tsunami, and Harry Reid will be home doing the laundry. Pyrrhic victory in pocket, they will have awoken the sleeping bear.

They say “there’s no way the Republicans will ever be able to repeal it.”

Oh, yeah? Just like “there will never be a black president in our lifetime” or “you can’t beat the Clinton Machine” or “no Republican will ever win Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat?”

Lifetime eligibility for welfare was repealed under Clinton, prohibition was repealed, the stamp act was repealed. Things get repealed all the time. This will be another.

Even Medicare and Social Security will face a de-facto repeal in the coming years: they're out of money!

Right now, nothing is impossible. Nothing. Did anyone ever think the United States would actually go bankrupt? No? Well that’s happening. It’s only a matter of picking what year it is.

And if come 2013 there’s a Republican president sitting atop thin Republican majorities in the Senate and the House, then we know now it’s perfectly okay to jam through highly partisan legislation by any means necessary.

Thanks, Nancy.

You should never give a whole bunch of really pissed off people a cause. Makes them extremely motivated, and focused.

So let's see. The approval rating of our beloved Teleprompter King has fallen below 50%. The opposition to this bill finished at 59% in the polls. Pelosi's approval rating is 11% and Harry Reid 8%. Unemployment is pegged at 10% with no signs of abating, and our national debt, even before this monstrosity, had already thrown another TRILLION on the pile.

It's like Democrats have a political death wish. And I, for one, can't wait to help make that wish a reality.

President Lincoln once said: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”

Better yet, was a sign at a recent rally: “Shove it down our throats now, we’ll shove it up your ass in November.”

See you at the ballot box.