ObamaKennedycare Gets Really Vicious

As Congress is preparing to come back into session, the Left is really ramping up the vitriol. Hang on, because this post is going to get more than a little bit offensive.

For starters, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is quite plainly saying that Kennedy's death is going to help the Democrats pass the bill. It's about as classy as a pack of jackals.

Jason Mattera goes undercover at some pro-ObamaKennedycare rallies. Check it out if you want to see what people on the other side of the debate really think...and if you want to laugh yourself silly.

But back to the substance. Once again, to understand the potential effects of ObamaKennedycare, we should look to examples of where the single-payer system is already in place: Native Americans.

The IHS attempts to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives in one of two ways. It runs 48 hospitals and 230 clinics for which it hires doctors, nurses, and staff and decides what services will be provided. Or it contracts with tribes under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act passed in 1975. In this case, the IHS provides funding for the tribe, which delivers health care to tribal members and makes its own decisions about what services to provide.

The IHS spends about $2,100 per Native American each year, which is considerably below the $6,000 spent per capita on health care across the U.S. But IHS spending per capita is about on par with Finland, Japan, Spain and other top 20 industrialized countries—countries that the Obama administration has said demonstrate that we can spend far less on health care and get better outcomes. In addition, IHS spending will go up by about $1 billion over the next year to reach a total of $4.5 billion by 2010. That includes a $454 million increase in its budget and another $500 million earmarked for the agency in the stimulus package.

Unfortunately, Indians are not getting healthier under the federal system. In 2007, rates of infant mortality among Native Americans across the country were 1.4 times higher than non-Hispanic whites and rates of heart disease were 1.2 times higher. HIV/AIDS rates were 30% higher, and rates of liver cancer and inflammatory bowel disease were two times higher. Diabetes-related death rates were four times higher. On average, life expectancy is four years shorter for Native Americans than the population as a whole.

Rural Indians fare even worse, as data from Sen. Baucus’s home state show. According to IHS statistics, in Montana and Wyoming, Indians suffer diabetes at rates 20% higher, heart disease 12% higher, and lung cancer rates 67% higher than the average across all IHS regions in the country. A recent Harvard University study found that life expectancy on a reservation in neighboring South Dakota was 58 years. The national average is 77.

What a ringing endorsement.

And here's something I've heard over and over from anti-ObamaKennedycare folks: just do the math. If Obama gets his government controlled health care plan passed, and if he gets every American the sort of coverage he wants, then it'll supposedly add another 47 million people, right? [Let's forget for the moment that it's not really 47 million] Who's going to treat all those people? Ask the nearest doctor or nurse how swamped they are right now, and then, just for fun, ask them what would happen if another 47 million people got dumped onto their offices.

It's the best possible recipe for long wait times, don't you think?

The ranking Republican Senator on the committee working on the Senate version of ObamaKennedycare, Charles Grassley, has stated that there will be no public option. Color me underwhelmed, because there are several possible gigantic loopholes here:
1. he could be lying
2. he could be wrong
3. it could be added back in committee
4. it could remain intact but simply under a new name

Don't get too excited about this supposed revelation.

Still, it's interesting to see Obama's strategy playing out. Mary Katharine Ham explains:

If Barack Obama needs a diagnosis for his agenda's decline, it's in this lede, improbably dated "Sept. 1, 2009:"

Next week, President Obama is going to give Democrats a health care plan they can begin to sell.

The Obama plan, which Democrats can "begin to sell" after six months of selling the health care Pinto they created without his strong guidance, will include such things as Obama's preferred method of payment for the program and "goals" health care reform must meet, including anti-discrimination rules for insurance companies and the levels of insurance subsidies. In a little sop to liberals, he'll say he kinda digs the public option, but won't insist upon it. Up to this point, the plan sounds much like every vague speech he's given on health care since Day One, but one must read a bit further to what the plan's actually meant to do:

Though officials would not provide the numbers Obama plans to use, they say that the goal is to give his side -- Democrats -- a true presidential plan that they can sell. That includes the rebranding of several consensus initiatives, like the insurance reforms, as his own. The effect of this sales job, if it works, will be to associate the president with parts of the reform bills that are almost certainly likely to pass -- assuming the Senate doesn't bog down.

So, Obama sat back while most of the substantive legislative wrangling happened, spouted platitudes from the bully pulpit while a skeptical public imposed its will on his massive majorities, lost his chance at an abbreviated debate and an August vote, and went on vacation when things really got rough only to descend from the Martha's Vineyard Mountain with tablets inscribed with the more reasonable consensus ideas Congress has been forced to consider since his own ambitious vision tanked so spectacularly.

Stand back, look cool, don't get too involved, wait for things to shake out, adopt eventual consensus as his own idea, claim victory. Yeah, nobody saw this coming, unless of course they had paid attention to his entire career.

Amen to that!

But let's get to the red meat from the oh-so-tolerant left. In response to a question about why Obama can't seem to push bills through quickly, Obama's 'green czar', the dedicated Communist, Van Jones, says that the problem is...well, just watch (minor language warning):

Hey, moron: Democrats hold super-majorities in both houses of Congress. Essentially all of the major destroy-America legislation they've passed so far has been done without any GOP support, so you've got no one to blame but yourselves.

But they're not stopping there. At an official Obama website we were treated with this:

...they were called names, labeled as ‘too organized’ or “un-American”, and likened to mobs, Nazis and Fascists. And now President Obama’s team has designated September 11 as the day to liken conservatives to Al Qaeda terrorists.

Today, President Obama’s campaign organization “Organizing for America” sent out a notice to its “grassroots” supporters. It asked them to wage a coordinated phone campaign for health care by calling their U.S. Senators on September 11 – also known as Patriot Day in honor of the thousands of Americans killed by Al Qaeda terrorists eight years ago. It goes on: “All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.” Please read that again.

That's quite a list of vicious insults, the last one being the newest addition: domestic terrorists. Not only is that incredibly insulting to Americans who are participating in the Constitutionally guaranteed democratic process, but it should also ring a bell...do you remember? How about this:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

That's right, it's from that DHS report back in April that essentially painted anyone not drinking the Obamessiah Kool-Aid as a domestic terrorist.

My friends, this is not an accident. This administration -- top to bottom -- views you, the God-fearing, freedom-loving, hard-working, personally responsible, gun-owning, right-leaning legal American citizen as a danger to be silenced and dealt with. I'm beginning to think I need a new mantra because I've said it so often: the greatest danger to America is Barack Obama.

ObamaKennedycare is his holy grail. If he gets that kind of control over you and I and everyone else, America as we know it is finished.

There's my two cents.