Thursday, September 10, 2009

 

Transparent Untruths

Amid the massive text of what I believe was a failed 'hail Mary pass' last night by President Obama are these two gems:
Second, we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system - a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.
[...]
The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care....Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.
If you know that there is waste and abuse in part of the federally run health care system, reveal it, stop it-- do it now, reduce the billions of fraud and waste in Medicare.

I'm reminded of the pledge he repeated on February 23, 2009, saying: "I've committed to going through our budget line by line to root out waste and inefficiency..."

And what was the result of this effort to cut the budget deficit Obama expanded to nearly $2 Trillion? parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus

The Obama administration announced months ago, with some fanfare, that after combing for savings by all the cabinet members, it was going to save $102 Million. And what part is that savings compared to the just the deficit spending component of the whole bloated-to-bursting federal budget Obama presented? Why it's a whopping .006%

Is that the sort of savings we can expect from the Obama administration's 'line by line' analysis of Medicare and Medicaid fraud and waste? Of course. Is that enough to fund the plan for more than a few seconds? Of course not.

Does he really think we are so dumb as to swallow whole the transparent lies quoted above?

UPDATE: This was good by Arnold Kling at the Atlantic:

He said,


Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

And if we don't pass this plan, does he intend to keep the waste and inefficiency, out of spite?

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Comments:
Rog,

You're right. We should adopt the GOP do nothing policy or better yet, call the president a liar while he is giving a nationally televised speech b/f the Congress a la Joe Wlison (Rep. S.C.)

T
 
I'm calling him a liar when he lies. It's a strawman, however, to say the GOP has no plan. The larger information media has ignored it, but it exists; indeed, many of the House Republicans were carrying copies of it with them. Wilson has apologized for shouting at the President, which I think was due. What happened to the guys who shouted at Bush at the 2005 State of the Union speech? I forget. Thanks for the comment.
 
"Does he really think we are so dumb as to swallow whole the transparent lies quoted above?"

He doesn't just believe it. He's counting on it.
 
Well, on the video I saw, when President Bush was speaking about the eventual collapse of Social Security, it sounded as if some people were saying "No" not "Boo" although either was a breach of decorum although neither to the degree of "You lie."

Meanwhile, I would like to chime in on 2 points. The first is that although some doctors may order unecessary tests in an attempt to practice "defensive medicine," I think that the whole med mal reform hoopla is a canard. You and I know how difficult these cases are in CO; how non economic damages are limited; and we both know that insurance companies are the Devil. I do not believe that med mal suits are a major factor in driving up the cost of health care in this state. I do believe that exorbitant premiums for malpractice insurance might be a factor but I do not think that in CO a case may be made that these premiums are large b/c of a plethora of med mal law suits or large verdicts.

Secondly, I have heard mention of a GOP plan for interstate insurance. In MS, Blue Cross Blue Shield insures 95% of the market so why can't Mississippians go to AL or LA or TN to buy insurance? Insurance is regulated at the state level. If you live in CO and buy a policy in NM, where do you go when you have a problem? Can NM force any action or enjoin any action in CO?

Do you want to form another federal bureaucracy to handle these policies? If you have ever done any work when the policies are controlled by ERISA, you know just how miserable insurance companies are and how little protection is offered by that federal statute.

T
 
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