President Obama's Fear Mongering
Missed Obama's press conference tonight, but reading through the transcript I've got a few comments, or one comment really. From the press conference:
This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.
So let me be clear: if we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. These are the stakes of the debate we're having right now.
Soooooo ..... 14,000 Americans loosing their health insurance daily, while costs skyrocket, all unless the government does something now. Just being completely logical and honest, how can anyone say that statement makes any sense whatsoever. I mean really ... is health care really just going to become unaffordable for the middle class? No one but the wealthy will be able to afford to go to a doctor? It makes no sense because that's not how markets work. If enough people really couldn't afford any health care, the basic laws of supply and demand would bring prices back down. It's nonsensical, but we're asked to believe this nonsense and have the government take immediate and complicated action that no one fully understand the consequences of.
This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.
So let me be clear: if we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. These are the stakes of the debate we're having right now.
Soooooo ..... 14,000 Americans loosing their health insurance daily, while costs skyrocket, all unless the government does something now. Just being completely logical and honest, how can anyone say that statement makes any sense whatsoever. I mean really ... is health care really just going to become unaffordable for the middle class? No one but the wealthy will be able to afford to go to a doctor? It makes no sense because that's not how markets work. If enough people really couldn't afford any health care, the basic laws of supply and demand would bring prices back down. It's nonsensical, but we're asked to believe this nonsense and have the government take immediate and complicated action that no one fully understand the consequences of.
posted by lonely libertarian at 8:56 PM
5 Comments:
Anyone else sense an eerie parallel here with the war in Iraq? Basically, two different men stating that the "problem" at hand is a lot worse and scarier than it actually is and no one seems that intent on stopping them because in Bush's case, he was able to link it to the war on terror and in Obama's case, he is linking health care to the economy. Two men trying to push their agendas and using the more pressing matter as the reason.
That was precisely the other point I wanted to make, relating Obama's words last night back to the Matt Welch-Nick Gillespie article from the Washington Post I linked to this weekend.
This is what politics has become, where our political leaders try to push through legislation by claiming that time is of the essence and we must act now.
The dishonesty should be too obvious to be effective. Medicare is bankrupting our country...let's expand it to include people of all ages.
We seem to have decided that medicade is inadequate and that tax payers need to pay for real insurance for more poor people. That appears agreed upon.
At that point, the question is whether we want competing companies to provide coverage, or whether we want a monopoly providing coverage. It really is that simple.
Cato constantly has great stats about the productivity plunge in public schools since 1970. 3X the cost, zero improvement. That's what we should expect in health care.
Health care costs have risen...so have the survival rates of every type of disease imaginable.
The country is being run by crazies.
Liberals love to tout the food stamp program as a working example of government success. And although I've got my fair share of issues with food stamps (which I believe is now called SNAP), there are many more ineffectual programs out there.
So why can't Medicare, Medicaid, and all government provided health care work like food stamps? Rather than a government run insurance program, let people decide for themselves how they want to spend health care dollars. It's certainly not cheap, but ti sounds loads better than the alternative.
Absolutely.
Is anyone talking about the long-run effects on drug development?
If your a pharma company making a drug development decision, how does the prospect of having only one potential buyer sound?
What if that buyer is the same entity that controls whether your drug is even legal (FDA)?
How as a drug company do you ensure that you will be paid a fair price for your druge, should you choose to develop it? You have less than no leverage. And you're dealing with politicians who have a long track record of trying to win votes by attacking drug prices.
Is this even be talked about?
How many drugs will never be developed because this alters the cost/benefit analysis for the pharma company? How many people would've been saved by those drugs?
It seems as if the entire conversation completely ignores the anti-innovation effects this will have.
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