Obama Pitches To Doctors...And Whiffs Badly

Barack Obama gave a speech to the American Medical Association in an attempt to garner support for his government takeover of health care. Speaking before doctors, he had a tough sell to make. One of his assertions, in particular, was an outright lie:

President Barack Obama, today, in front of the American Medical Association:

What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. … So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this - they are not telling the truth.

Oh, really? A reminder that was posted here yesterday:

All this lying is making things pretty tricky for the Obamessiah. That was easily seen when the audience of doctors booed the President for taking the side of trial lawyers rather than backing malpractice reform. In general, the speech was met with cold pricklies:

...the AMA has come out against Obama’s proposal to create a government-run health insurance provider that would compete against private insurers, saying it would “threaten patient choice” by putting private insurance companies out of business.

Members of the association said after the speech that while they appreciated Obama’s appearance, he did not deliver the specifics they need to decide whether to back it.

“It would have had more meaning to the physicians if he had talked about alternative ways to get rid of junk lawsuits, for instance,” said former American Medical Association President Donald J. Palmisano, who attended the speech.

Apparently, these doctors know the reality of the situation very well:

...the evidence simply [contradicts] his claim. Countless economists and other experts have shown that there is no way the government can be a fair player if a public plan were created. The Lewin Group showed that nearly 120 million Americans would lose their private health insurance if the public plan were made available and paid doctors at Medicare rates.

I heard an interview today in which a doctor stated that what Obama wants to do with all health care is already being done with Medicare right now. The result? Patients are being denied insurance coverage for procedures based on the smallest little blip, patients are being denied procedures and medicines for reasons of cost, and medical providers are being shafted, often getting reimbursed through Medicare only 10-15% of the cost of the services they provide.

To top it all off, the costs of Obama's government takeover of health care are staggering:

The CBO has just released its initial cost estimates on the Democratic health care proposal coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chaired by Ted Kennedy, and found that it would increase deficits by at least $1 trillion. I say "at least," because there are major provisions of the bill that have not been finalized and which were not included in the cost, such as a massive expansion of Medicaid eligibility:

These new figures do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation, for several reasons. The estimates provided do not address the entire bill—only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage. Some details have not been estimated yet, and the draft legislation has not been fully reviewed. Also, because expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program may be added at a later date, those figures are not likely to represent the impact that more comprehensive proposals—which might include a significant expansion of Medicaid or other options for subsidizing coverage for those with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—would have both on the federal budget and on the extent of insurance coverage.

In addition, the CBO report undercuts President Obama's insistence that those who like the coverage they have can keep it, as it projects millions of Americans would lose their current coverage:

When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.

That's reality. Ignoring that -- and hoping he can sucker the American people at the same time -- Obama keeps promising that he's going to do all this without raising your taxes, that everyone will have 'free' health care coverage, and that he has no intention of taking over or getting rid of the private health care sector.

The BS meter is way, way, WAY off the charts.

I'll have much more on this in the near future.

There's my two cents.