Health Care Deform

The train wreck of Massachusetts health care provides a daunting vision of how Obamacare will play out across the nation over the next few years:

• Millions of people will get nearly free medical coverage. The Feds will mandate employer benefits.
• Insurers will be forced to raise rates, the government will impose price controls and the current, mostly private system will steadily deteriorate. As many as 160 million employees who now enjoy private insurance will get Medicare-like coverage.
• An entire industry of insurance professionals (brokers, insurers) will be replaced by government bureaucrats.
• Instead of becoming public employees, doctors will retire early, kick back or look elsewhere for income.
• More demand and less supply will lead to long delays and rationing for medical treatment. ER rooms will get more crowded.
• Boutique medical services will sprout up for those who can afford the expense. More Americans will travel to Asia for medical procedures. The U.S. will no longer be the health safety net for Canada and the rest of the world.
• States will cut other essential services, or go bankrupt, under the mounting Medicaid burdens. Federal debt and unfunded promises will soar even higher.
• Research and development for drugs and prescriptions will decline dramatically.

The American people have been hoodwinked into thinking that Obamacare would cover the uninsured without increasing costs or disrupting the services we enjoy today. Those who voted for the legislation could not have understood the details because they are still being written. Some Congressmen made side deals, others were okay with letting future generations deal with the consequences.
Obamacare is another back-door redistribution of wealth, another setback to the American standard of living. The system needed repairs, not a lobotomy. Democrats have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
We must elect a new Congress in November and reverse this nonsense.

Government buildup –waves lapping at our sandcastle

I think of government as a kind of necessary inconvenience, like referees on a ball field or trips to the dentist. Governance and checkups are required, but only at a minimum.
Democrats in DC keep expanding government with hopes to eliminate what they consider to be unfairness. Nice thought, but trillions of dollars and 50 years of social engineering has led to more people demanding fish than folks willing to learn to fish. And years ago the bureaucrats ran out of other people’s money to redistribute.
The heaping pile of recent financial, health care, tax, education, welfare, environmental and other regulations is suffocating the tax base. Worse, the anti-business climate in DC creates dark clouds of uncertainty for those who would create jobs.
Government is inherently inefficient because it operates outside the natural rules of economics – living within your means, survival of the fittest, measure and reward results, colorblind. Government workers have no edge on virtue, as can be seen by the recent news of porn at the Pentagon, record low ratings of Congress and partying while oil gushed into the Gulf.
Maybe the big-brother nanny state is an unavoidable step in our evolution from bondage to liberty, to abundance, to apathy, and back to bondage. If only the Dems would quit stomping on the accelerator.
The American economy is as messy as it is exceptional. If you can’t embrace it, at least do no harm to those who do.
Don’t let the surging tide of government destroy our kids’ opportunity to build sandcastles of their own.

The thin man with the flat tire

Late to join his daughters and wife on vacation in Maine, the tall, handsome man was about to leave when he noticed that the rear tire was nearly flat. No past experience had prepared him to deal with this, so he summonsed his car czar in the next Suburban.

“Probably a nail,” said the czar - a lucky guess for someone who had also never fixed a flat.

“I see it right there,” exclaimed the tall, articulate man. “Nail clippers!” he hollered, and the nearby suitcase czar immediately slapped trimmers in his hand. The man, the one who we have been waiting for, reached down and popped the nail out of the tread. Air swooshed out and the tire went flat.

The crowd of czars stood there, their mouths and eyes wide open.

“That nail was here before me and it wasn’t fair to the tire,” scoffed the tall, thin man. “Let’s go,” he yelled, and the entourage drove off. No one, especially the fawning media, questioned his decisions.

The tire spewed thick smoke until they finally stopped at a repair shop. What could have been a $20 plug turned into a $900 tire and wheel replacement.

The tall, confident man didn’t give it a second thought. In his mind, he was creating or saving some tire maker’s job. And besides, someone else would pick up the tab.