Keith Rickert, Jr.'s Library tagged obama →  View Popular

Those who claim that President Barack Obama's speech on health care this week wasn't a glorious success are fooling themselves. A Washington takeover of health care never sounded so enticing or fun.

Just ignore the specifics, because when the president says he welcomes substantive new ideas, he means that if you have the nerve to offer any ideas -- as Whole Foods' CEO, John Mackey, did in The Wall Street Journal last month -- his allies will attempt to destroy your business and reputation.

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And when the president says he welcomes bipartisanship, what he means is that he hasn't met with a single Republican on the issue since April -- despite numerous requests and two separate House bills chock-full of ideas.

As we all know, if any organization has demonstrated an uncanny ability to control costs, drive innovation and foster competition, it's been government.

The best part? Like that exotic mortgage taxpayers are paying for you, all this wonderment can be yours, according to the president, for absolutely nothing! Better yet, it would not add a single dime to the deficit in the next 10 years. Ignore the Congressional Budget Office's $900 billion estimate (and The Lewin Group's $1 trillion estimate).

Nope, we can pay for this by extracting $1 trillion in savings from insurance companies and Medicare (start cutting down on gratuitous use of paper clips, pronto). And if you even allude to the prospect of cuts (meaning government rationing for seniors), you are trafficking in a ghastly fabrication that might hasten your being "called out" by the president. No one wants that.

You may wonder how President Obama logically can sell a public option while claiming that reform would be paid for by waste found in another "public" option. You also may be wondering how mandates, price controls, regulations and added costs would save us any money and preserve level of care. Don't. Just bask in the radiance of barren rhetoric.

Because when the president tells us that this is "the season for action" and that we no longer can waste time debating, he means that legislation won't be initiated until 2013, that this is all about politics and his very own entrenched ideology -- not yours.

Obama delivers the directive:

That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95% of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.

And we’ll tell you what type of plan is good enough. And if you don’t do what we say, we’ll fine you. This is the distillation of pure liberal statism. We know best. You are incapable of making any decision other than selecting from one of several preapproved plans.

OBAMA: "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

THE FACTS: That's correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they'd be free to change their health plans in ways that workers may not like, or drop insurance altogether. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.

In the past Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." Now he's stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan "requires" any change.

OBAMA: "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage."

THE FACTS: Obama time and again has referred to the number of uninsured as 46 million, a figure based on year-old Census data. The new number is based on an analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, which concluded that about two-thirds of Americans without insurance are poor or near poor. "These individuals are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage," the report said. By using the new figure, Obama avoids criticism that he is including individuals, particularly healthy young people, who choose not to obtain health insurance.

Obama campaigned with the affectation that it was all about us, all about the little people getting together to change the government and live up to America’s best ideals. Now that he’s the government (an ever bigger share of the federal government, with czar-mania breaking out), the little people are a mob in his eyes, an impediment to what he wants.

And what does he want? The most grandiose and ambitious scheme attainable for regulating, taxing, and controlling health care. As Bill Kristol explains, Obama has invented or reinvented a health-care “crisis” so enormous as to justify his ambitions

Back in May, President Obama went before the American Medical
Association and
declared, “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep
this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you
will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health
care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period.
No one will take it away, no matter what.” Last night, Obama
offered a more nuanced pledge that “nothing in this plan will
require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor
you have.” While his revised statement may be more accurate, it
is no less disingenuous.

Regardless of whether legislation specifically requires
that Americans give up their coverage, there are still many
changes to the system that could cause some people to lose it
anyway. For instance, one provision Obama backed last night -- to
tax expensive health plans -- is explicitly aimed at encouraging
employers to drop benefit-rich policies in hopes that it would
help rein in medical spending.

Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

There Mr. Obama accused critics of his health reforms of spreading "lies" and said opponents want "to do nothing." These false charges do not reveal a spirit of bipartisanship nor do they create a foundation for dialogue. It is more like what you'd say if you are planning to jam through a bill without compromise. Which is exactly what Mr. Obama is about to attempt.

Instead of scaling back his plan to comply with public sentiment, Obama stuck to every promise and provision on which he's dwelled in more than two dozen speeches. There was nothing new, except the size of his audience.

From this, it's clear he's decided to push a partisan bill through Congress with Democratic votes alone.