Cowboy Confessional

I’m worried. The leader of the free world apparently flunked economics 101.

In a show of political desperation before a rare joint session of an even more desperate Congress, Obama glued together several months of rhetoric and even less meaningful details into a façade of a plan for rearranging American health insurance. Despite recurring failures to pass legislation, the Pol from Palatine insisted that within the body he addressed there was “agreement on 80% of what needs to be done” (while half of the assembled legislators sat on their hands throughout).

That 80% in agreement are all Democrats. The missing 20% are the Blue Dogs Democrats.

Obama deftly demonstrated that economics was not in his Harvard law school curriculum. Be he did show that he knows how to read political tea. Polls show that the economy is the top concern of Americans. Barack broached his bombast yammering about the same, then artfully parlayed his opening gambit into health insurance reform, noting that “we have to curb health care costs to save the Federal budget.”

There’s a two-fer for you; a transient moment of honesty that proceeds flagrant deceit. Obama would make a fortune in the used car biz.

Yes, Medicare is slatted to go fiscally belly-up in a few years, which speaks poorly about government’s ability to supervise health insurance. It surprises only Barack that the public is increasing doubting him when he proposes that the same body that created and is sending Medicare into the seventh ring of financial Hell should intervene further into the health insurance business. Obama admitted his ‘plan’ would collectively set us back about a trillion clams, claiming it would not cost “a single dime” while also boasting that his design would be deficit neutral.

In simpler language, he promised the impossible. In the medical trade this is called ‘snake oil’.

Here is an example of Obama’s lack of understanding of microeconomics or other reality. Barack backs burdening insurance companies with a myriad of new restrictions while telling us that we will not have to change our coverage. It is a given that your coverage will change when your rates rise to utter non-affordability. To wit (a commodity Obama lacks) he wants your insurance company to:

* Insure you even if you have pre-existing conditions (rates to rise as insurance companies costs rise)

* Eliminate caps on coverage (rates will balloon)

* Limit your out-of-pocket expenses (rates will skyrocket)

* Require coverage for routine procedures (more services means higher premiums)

* Offset Medicare shortages by charging insurance companies a fee for certain policies (rates will rise to cover all new fees+)

In other words, he will remove controls on expenses and knows that insurance companies will not raise premiums to cover the extra expenses. After all, he heard it directly from the Easter Bunny.

Ill content with intimidating only insurers, he threatened young people. Saying that the bankrupt Medicare system was a legacy “passed down from one generation to the next,” he put on notice current college graduates – who can’t yet find a shovel-ready job – announcing that they would pay for $32 trillion of projected red Medicare ink.

Right after they pay off their student loans.

Most interesting in all of Obama’s oration was that he never once addressed the causes of higher health insurance costs, not did he propose anything that cured premium pumping. For example, he mentioned tort reform – halting lottery litigation – but evaded the issue by proffering non-specific government experiments. In other words “we’ll work on finding another scheme right after you buy this one!”

There are approximately 800,000 doctors in the U.S. and their malpractice insurance starts at about $80,000 a year (premiums get much higher depending on the quack’s specialty). Assuming half of current premiums are litigation inflation, there is $32 billion in waste that could be instantly recovered if the trail lawyer’s didn’t have a lien on the Democrat party and Obama’s soul, which is actually quite handy since trial lawyers don’t have souls of their own. That is about $121 per currently insured person in America, or about what I pay a month for coverage. Not a lot of dough but a good place to start.

But let’s make a conservative assumption that unnecessary CYA medical tests double that, and would largely be eliminated by eliminating ambulance chasing (and by proxy eliminate John Edwards). We are now up to $242 per person, or nearly a grand per household, and it didn’t take one nickel of tax money, require a single government or force anybody to do anything against their will. You know, that whole American freedom thing.

Obama’s lack of understanding about economics is eclipsed by his ignorance in civics. He supports forcing you to buy insurance even it you do not want it (and patently fibbing that taxpayers are obligated to pick-up the cost of uninsured medical care) comparing that obligation to getting auto insurance. But you don’t need auto insurance if you don’t drive or if you pilot your ride on your own property. It is only when you as an individual venture onto publicly owned roads that you are required to be covered. Obama demands that you buy health insurance even if you are not indigent. His analogy lacks an analog.

There is much more of his canards to pick apart, but the game is too easy. His assertions are apocryphal, his schemes shaky and his governmental arrogance audacious. He is rapidly burying himself and his party …

Made I should stop. Wouldn’t want him to see his mistakes too soon.

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