I am traveling all day, but I wanted to weigh in a bit about today’s vote on Obamacare. I suspect it will pass. Otherwise, Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t hold the vote. If it does, it will demonstrate several things:
1. The Democratic Party could care less about the will of the people. Support for Obamacare is in the mid-30s in most polls. It was overwhelmingly beaten in the court of public opinion. That’s why, despite an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress, it took such cynical machinations to jam it through.
2. The Democratic Party is utterly beholden to, and controlled by, special interests, particularly the public employee unions and trial lawyers (who I don’t see as the devils that others do).
3. The good news: There will be no public option.
4. The bad news: There will be health care rationing as the bill seizes a federal control over the standards and practices of medical care. This means we will see restrictions on the availability of life-extending cancer drugs (as just one example) of the kind that has happened in Canada—covered by SHS—as well as NHS quality of life judgmentalism imposed on doctors and patients, including futile care theory imposed nationally. Sarah Palin’s “death panels”—while provocatively stated—will be real.
5. Democrats care more about abortion than anything else. Even those who call themselves “pro life” don’t put that issue first.
6. Medicare will be cut, making it more difficult for seniors to attain health care.
7. There will be waits for things such as MRIs of the kind we see in Canada and the UK.
8. We will be taxed for the next four years without receiving benefits. Those taxes will not be set aside to pay for the coming benefits but used to hide the extent of the national debt.
9. Eventually, illegal aliens will also be allowed to enter the system, probably by court order.
10. This law will further embitter Americans against their own government and each other.
11. We will see years more of bitter political in-fighting and all out legal wrangling. The wounds opened by this debate will not soon heal.
12. I think there is at least a 50/50 chance that the mandatory purchase provisions will be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (as currently constituted).
13. The bill is so huge and ponderous I am sure there are a lot of “surprises” awaiting for us to find in coming days and weeks.
14. The worst is yet to come as the 2500 pages of bill metastasize into 100,000 pages of undemocratically promulgated regulations.
President Obama will never recover the good will he had when elected. He has shown himself to be an arrogant, and in some ways lazy, leader who could have attained bipartisan reform had he opened the process in the beginning and crafted a middle ground plan utilizing ideas from both sides of the political spectrum. Instead, he left the details of this important legislation to others (Pelosi) and allowed this debacle to develop. Yes, he will go down in history as the president who gained a form of universal coverage, but I think that system will be so corrupt and unmanageable it will not redound to his benefit.
Speaker Pelosi has proved herself as ruthless and mendacious as they come. And Senator Reid continually embarrassed himself.
Well, time to go. This is a sad day. The window was open for real problem solving after Obama’s election. Instead of targeted reform, we have created a huge new power structure in the federal government that leaves no one happy. And it ain’t over yet.
Meanwhile, our comity continues to tear and one half of the country can barely stand to talk to the other half.
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