Doris Has a Point, and Obama doesn't get it

When President Obama gets something right, I’ll be the first to admit it.

The problem is he’s got such a lousy track record for ever getting anything right.

Most politicians have a hard time answering a question directly, especially if the question doesn’t exactly fit in with the talking points that they have chosen to cover at the time.

But Obama set a new standard for exhibiting the symptoms of diarrhea-of-the-mouth with his answer to Doris’ question last week.

You can read the entire exchange here, and you can see the first part of it here.

At a recent event in Charlotte, North Carolina, a lady who identified herself as Doris asked a very simple question: Is it wise to add more taxes with the health care reforms that have recently been passed, since we are over-taxed as it is?

A simple question. It deserved a simple answer. If I had been asked that question, I would have no problem coming up with a concise response: No, it is not, and that is the primary reason I was against health care reform as it was passed by Congress.

The President never sees things as simple as that. Maintaining his campaign mode in spite of his recent victory, he rambled incoherently for 17 minutes and 2500 words.

He talked about cobra. He referred to people with insurance as being “lucky”. He said that lifetime limits are “fine print”. He made a “final point” at the four-minute mark and kept talking for 13 more.

He talked about federal health care systems already being out of control and suggested that they be replaced by — wait for it — another federal health care system.

He talked about the deficit — which Doris never asked about — and then cited programs that will by their very existence, blow the deficit out of the water.

He talked about the “quality” of medical tests and suggested that doctors send emails to each other, even thought the health care bill doesn’t address those issues and Doris never asked about them.

Somebody must have told him that an analogy of fixing the roof on a house resonates well, because he told some sort of awkward story that claimed if I fix the leaky roof in my house, the people who are shivering outside in the cold are somehow going to benefit.

He complained about President Bush’s war in Iraq — supported by virtually every Democrat in Congress. He complained about the Medicare prescription plan — passed by Democrats in Congress. He complained about Medicare Advantage — passed by Democrats in Congress.

He threw one of his biggest supporters — Warren Buffet — under the bus, calling him out by name and bragging that he was going to raise Mr. Buffet’s taxes on dividends and capital gains, not to raise more revenue, but because it was an issue of “fairness”.

Finally, he interrupted himself as he was explaining the Congressional Budget Office’s accounting gymnastics to make sure he was answering the question — which he never did.

If the President had been philosophically honest, he could have given Doris a very succinct answer: “Frankly, Doris, I don’t believe you are taxed enough already”. It could have been that simple.

If he had answered the question honestly, he would have to reveal the fundamental difference that he has with the Tea Party movement, which received its name by blending the name of the famous 1773 Boston tax revolution with the acronym “Taxed Enough Already”.

Unwittingly, perhaps, Doris expressed her sympathy with the primary purpose of the revolutionary movement.

I’m not sure what a “fair” amount would be for a federal government to involuntarily extract from its citizens to promote the common welfare. Five percent? Ten percent? Ninty percent (as suggested by some members in Congress)?

I just know that we passed that threshold a long time ago. Enough is enough.

Britain’s Health Care Began With Propaganda

As America debates the merits and follies of nationalized health care, many people hold up “the rest of the world” as an example of a system that should be emulated.

After all, the argument goes, America is the only industrialized country on the planet that does not provide “free” (or at least, heavily subsidized) health care for its citizens.

It’s true. We’re the last hold-out. For a very good reason. Our health care system mirrors the principles that our founding fathers laid, which in turn created the greatest civilization on earth. There’s no reason to mess up a good thing.

The rest of the world believes that government exists for the benefit of the people. Taken to an extreme, they believe that the role of government is to “take care” of the people. That’s what Annie Leonard declares in “The Story Of Stuff”. She pooh-poohs the government’s true role of national defense, the foundations of capitalism, and the free market. Then she declares that the government should intervene to make sure that we, the consumers, don’t consume too much.

This notion that the government should have an active role in defining our quality of life has deep roots in European culture. We’re reminded of this by watching a charming piece of British propaganda: “Charlie’s March Of Time”. Created by the British government to introduce socialized health care to the Brits, the film traces British government back hundreds of years. In feudal times, the king took care of the people. In more modern times, the House of Commons took care of the common people.

The theme is consistent. People are not able to deal with the standard trials of life — unemployment, hunger, illness, retirement — without the government’s interference.

In a classic case of socialistic incrementalism, the film chronicles one act of Parliament after another, each removing one more area of personal responsibility from the citizenry while claiming to cure all social ills. The culmination of all this effort was 1946’s Health Service Act. The film reminds us that the utopian state costs only a few pounds and tuppence each week.

That’s fine for “the rest of the world”. But there is a very good reason why it won’t work in America. That’s because our country was founded on the principle of freedom FROM government. Americans believe the responsibility for care of the population rests in the population itself, not in the government. The constitution is concerned with what the government CANNOT do, rather than what it MUST do.

America is a collection of individuals. We were founded by a group of men who believed that the rights of the individual superseded the responsibility of the government to care for their needs. Most of our wars have been fought for the purpose of freeing citizens from a repressive government.

That’s what makes America unique from the rest of the world. We realize that rugged individualism and free-market capitalism always succeeds in the long run. And we have seen that socialism always eventually collapse under its own weight.

Let the rest of the world keep their nationalized health care. If it suits them well, so be it. But America has produced the greatest society in the history of the world by believing in the individual’s responsibility to take care of himself. There’s no reason to abandon a system that works.

Health Care is not a Right

The presidential candidates were tossed a simple and fair question in their second debate by moderator Tom Brokaw.

Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

John McCain answered that it is a responsibility, and then went on to trash Obama’s health care plan

Barack Obama said that it should be a right, and justified his answer by noting how wealthy we are as a country.

McCain was close with his answer. Obama was dead wrong. Here’s why:

A “right” is bestowed from a higher authority. It cannot be revoked, it cannot be transferred. The Declaration of Independence refers to “inalienable rights” — those which cannot be taken away. Wikipedia defines them as that “which are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs or a particular society”.

If health care is a right, then why not define other necessities of life as a “right”? How about food? I could go a week without health care, but going a week without food could be fatal. Should I have a “right” to have my food given to me by my federal government?

How about “transportation”? I need a ride to get to work. Perhaps door-to-door public transportation should be a right that is given to me by my government.

Or my job itself. Many countries guarantee employment. Shouldn’t mine? Should my employer be forced to keep me hired in all circumstances because I have a right to have a job? And if I cannot find one, should my government grant me a job as a right?

If health care is defined as a right, a slippery slope of new “rights” is sure to follow. There will be no stopping people who demand more and more rights bestowed upon them by government.

As the states of Massachusetts and Hawaii have already proven, government cannot afford to grant that right to its citizens without going bankrupt.

Don’t be fooled by Obama’s claim that his health care plan merely supplements whatever existing insurance the population already has. As soon as federal health care is made available, large numbers of people will drop their personal insurance (or their employers will do it on their behalf). The government will have to pick up the tab for just about everybody anyway.

And that’s just fine with the Obama/Hillary socialists, because universal single-payer health care is exactly what they had in mind for everybody in the first place. The plan in Obama’s presidential campaign is merely a placation for the control-minded HillaryCare advocates that have been around since FDR.

My health care is my responsibility. Your health care is your responsibility. The health care (as well as the well-being) of innocent children and those who cannot fend for themselves is society’s responsibility, which may or may not involve the federal government.

But the federal government is the last person I want in charge of my health care. You will never believe how expensive health care can be until it’s free.

Health Care as a Comodity

Atroubling trend in presidential debates that I have noticed is the tendency not to answer the question that was asked.

Candidates seem to have a template of talking points to cover and they just drop those points whenever they some key word in the question that matches the template.

Since the candidates won’t answer the questions, I’ll answer them here — the way they should have answered them in the first place.

I’ll start with the definition of health care, as asked last week in the “town hall” debate in Nashville between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Question: Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?

Senator Obama ignored the question, whined about how health care costs are “breaking family budgets,” and how McCain was going to tax health care benefits.

Senator McCain talked about his health care plan — which includes government giving everybody $5,000 to buy insurance — and how Obama is going to fine small businesses that don’t insure their employees.

Neither answered the question. So here’s my answer.

For the economically uninformed, a “commodity” is defined as a good or service for which there is a demand and abundant supply and for which that supply is essentially undifferentiated except for the price.

Using that definition, yes, there are many aspects of health care that are commodities. In fact, most trips to doctor’s offices are very routine. A prescription for an antibiotic; a bandage on a wound; relief from the symptoms of the flu or a sore back or a headache.

This is not to diminish the work of the medical profession — it just illustrates that a large portion of their work can easily be undifferentiated in the marketplace.

That type of treatment is rightly a commodity. In fact, health clinics to handle routine health care are already cropping up in pharmacies all across the nation, handled quickly and efficiently by medical paraprofessionals.

Do you know what happens when a product becomes a commodity? The price goes down!

I’ve seen it happen in the telecommunications industry. The telecom companies fought for years to guarantee that long distance and wireless voice communications were not commoditized. As soon as they were, competition and the invisible hand of the economy drove the price down — even while the quality of service went up!

It happened in telecom; it can happen in health care.

Let the marketplace determine the cost and availability of routine health care. I guarantee that if the government would get out of the way, everybody who needs health care would be able to afford it. The companies that provide the service would finally have the incentive to provide a quality service at a price that everybody could afford.

There are already government programs in place to act as a safety net in catastrophic and extreme circumstances — as there should be. But if the socialist policies of Obama and Hillary and the DNC were ever enacted as they would like, every antibiotic, every BandAid, and every tongue depressor would be dispensed by a Washington bureaucrat with the compassion of the DMV and the efficiency of the IRS.

That’s a scenario that should inspire Republicans and cure Democrats.

Yep, except in extreme cases, health care should be a commodity.

Maybe next time I can explain to Senator Obama the difference between a right and a responsibility.