More ObamaKennedyDeathCare Reactions

Here are a few more reactions to Obama's speech last night.

Gateway Pundit fills in some...er...omissions left by Obama:

Barack Obama last night included the story of a Waxahachie woman's breast cancer nightmare in his speech to Congress. Obama said the evil insurance company canceled

"...More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.... [A] woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America."

But, of course, Barack Obama forgot to mention a couple of things...

Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat.

First of all, the woman, Robin Beaton, had her insurance canceled not because of her acne condition. She also had a heart condition she knew about and hid this from her insurance company:

One of Barton's constituents, Robin Beaton of Waxahachie, Texas, did know that her health history included acne and a rapid heartbeat. But she didn't think they were relevant to her current health and left them off her application.

Obama forgot to mention this in his talk.

Also, President Obama forgot to mention that the breast cancer survival rate is much greater here in the United States than in countries with socialized medicine.

In fact, women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it's 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.

Obama forgot to mention this, too.

This er...omission tells us two things:
1. Obama is perfectly willing to deceive -- translation: LIE -- to win political points, thus proving Joe Wilson to be perfectly accurate.
2. Obama is ignoring the practical reality of pre-existing conditions.  Once again, I direct you to a common sense example I already posted:

...let's say your house catches fire. As you stand in the front yard watching the flames, you call your insurance company and ask to buy fire insurance. What do you think they're going to tell you? No way! Or, if they do provide it, they're going to charge you a ton because they know they'll have to pay out immediately. It's not about a lack of compassion, but of plain ol' business sense. What happens if insurance companies give this coverage to anyone and everyone? They'll go out of business. And what happens to everyone who previously had coverage with that insurance company? They're screwed. And guess who is left to fill the void? ObamaKennedyDeathCare.

It's not cruel to deny someone because of pre-existing conditions, unless you consider it cruel to destroy an entire system that's working for millions of people because of a handful who don't adequately plan ahead.  In almost every case I've seen reported, a little more forethought would prevent such 'pre-existing' conditions, wouldn't it?  And, even in the most extreme circumstances, there are programs that provide help for legitimate need.  If all else fails, I know of no hospital that will deny care to anyone who walks into the ER (at least, not until the government controls things).  I think we're missing the forest for the trees.

Moving on...

The Hill wonders where that new plan Obama promised is hiding:

President Barack Obama's address to Congress on healthcare reform was short on specifics and long on ideas he and his advisers had already floated this year.

The historic speech left some liberals wanting more details and conservatives emboldened to torpedo the president's top domestic priority. …

Still, while the speech once again illustrated the president's extraordinary oratory skills, it was not a game changer and appears to leave the president with the same quandary:  Healthcare has become the pinnacle legislative issue of his first term, but has divided his party in Congress and run into almost universal GOP opposition. Polls suggest Americans are not convinced reform will help their lives and it is unclear whether the legislation Obama seeks will reach his desk.

Obama was expected to take the wheel on healthcare reform after the Democratic-led Congress drove it into a ditch over the summer, but it did not appear he did so.

Hot Air raises another thought on the magic number that Obama keeps changing:

One of the first tasks in solving a problem is determining its scope and size. Barack Obama has spent the last several months trying to create a sense of crisis by insisting repeatedly that the nation has 47 million people without health insurance. Earlier this week, I pointed out in another OOTD that this number from the Census Bureau — which is actually 45.6 million, not 47 million — included 10 million non-citizens, almost 6 million of which are here illegally, as well as about a third of the remainder who could buy insurance from employers but choose not to do so. Perhaps Obama reads Hot Air, because as Byron York noticed, that number sounded much different last night:

In his speech tonight, the president introduced a new number in the health care debate. Remember all those statements from Democrats, including Barack Obama himself, that 47 million Americans are without health insurance? That's no longer the operative number. "There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage," the president said in tonight's speech.

But on August 10, at a town hall meeting, Obama referred to the "46, 47 million people without health insurance in our country…" And on July 23, he said, "This is not just about the 47 million Americans who don't have any health insurance at all…"

Unfortunately, Obama still didn't get it right. Twelve million of that 47 million are eligible for Medicaid and S-CHIP but haven't enrolled, so the government already has a solution in place for them.  Combined with the 10 million legal and illegal immigrants and those who make enough money to buy insurance but choose not to do so, that leaves us with no more than 14 million Americans who can't afford to buy it.  That's a far cry from 47 million or even 30 million … but 14 million doesn't make for good crisis-mongering.

I guess the White House is running short on calculators these days.

Something I've seen in a number of places is the complete debunking of one of Obama's central claims through simple common sense.  He promises to pay for ObamaKennedyDeathCare without increasing the deficit by cutting $500 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.  But don't worry, he's not going to decrease the benefits or coverage for those currently in those programs.  No, he's going to cut half a trillion dollars simply by reducing fraud, waste, and abuse.  While that sounds nice, it's laughable to think there is that much fat that could be cut out, even if Washington were inclined to do so.  Just to give you some perspective, the entire Medicare budget for FY2009 is $425 billion, with Medicaid being another $259 billion.  Aside from the questionable math involved with cutting such a huge percentage out of these programs, here's the obvious elephant in the room: if it's that easy and obvious to do...why not do it right now?  You don't need a bill to do it, and certainly not a bill that will warp and destroy 17% of the nation's economy!

And on top of that, if there really is that much fraud, waste, and abuse in those government-run programs, how is he planning to eliminate the fraud, waste, and abuse out of ObamaKennedyDeathCare, which will be a government-run program that is easily 2-3 times bigger than Medicare and Medicaid put together?

Joe Wilson looks pretty smart right about now, if you ask me.

Sometimes going simple is best.  I like this from Joseph Lawler at American Spectator:

If a president gives a major speech that includes specific policy recommendations for health care reform, and the next day different media outlets and factchecking sites have conflicting reports on whether or not he lied, doesn't that mean that he is either A) a liar or B) inarticulate?

Boo-ya!

But let's say that Obama is correct on his overall number of $900 billion as the price tag.  What will happen?  Well, based on history and Congress' track record, it'll end up being more like $5.2 trillion:

The Senate Joint Economic Committee recently released a study examining the federal government's track record of measuring the future costs of health care programs specifically. Here is what they found:

Medicare (hospital insurance). In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990.v Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early '70s and other factors, "the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate."

Medicare (entire program). In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10.

Medicaid DSH program. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid's disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments—which states use to provide relief to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured patients—would cost less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was a staggering $17 billion. Among other things, federal lawmakers had failed to detect loopholes in the legislation that enabled states to draw significantly more money from the federal treasury than they would otherwise have been entitled to claim under the program's traditional 50-50 funding scheme.

Medicare home care benefit. When Congress debated changes to Medicare's home care benefit in 1988, the projected 1993 cost of the benefit was $4 billion. The actual 1993 cost was more than twice that amount, $10 billion.

Medicare catastrophic coverage benefit. In 1988, Congress added a catastrophic coverage benefit to Medicare, to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubled its cost estimate for the program, for the four-year period 1990-1993, from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion. CBO explained that it had received newer data showing it had significantly under-estimated prescription drug cost growth, and it warned Congress that even this revised estimate might be too low. This was a principal reason Congress repealed the program before it could take effect.

SCHIP. In 1997, Congress established the State Children's Health Insurance Program as a capped grant program to states, and appropriated $40 billion to be doled out to states over 10 years at a rate of roughly $5 billion per year, once implemented. In each year, some states exceeded their allotments, requiring shifts of funds from other states that had not done so. By 2006, unspent reserves from prior years were nearly exhausted. To avert mass disenrollments, Congress decided to appropriate an additional $283 million in FY 2006 and an additional $650 million in FY 2007.

Averaging the over-factors of all of these previous programs, we have an average of 5.725 times the actual cost.  Thus, ObamaKennedyDeathCare will cost us a cool $5 tril before it's all over.

How's that for a legacy to pass onto your kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?  Of course, you won't be around to see your great-grandchildren, and maybe not even your grandchildren, because you'll be rationed out of medical care at whatever point you're deemed -- by the State, of course -- unproductive.  But I'm sure they'll think of you fondly as they look at pictures of the good ol' days when Americans were free and prosperous.

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Obama's health care speech, water cooler edition
Scattered thoughts on Joe Wilson
Conservative leaders speak out on Obama's health care speech
Reason does a good job of fact-checking the President's speech