Editors, NRO.com

 

During the Democratic presidential primaries, Barack Obama argued against forcing people to buy health insurance. But on Wednesday night, he flip-flopped and endorsed the idea.

 

President Obama argued that people who do not have insurance raise the premiums of those who do. But careful analyses of this effect — notably that of the Democrat-controlled Congressional Budget Office — suggest that it is minuscule. (Some of the uninsured, by paying out of pocket for medical expenses, actually subsidize the rest of us.) Obama’s solution to this modest cost shifting would increase premiums far more than ignoring it, for requiring everyone to purchase health insurance would lead to a lobbying free-for-all. The experience of state regulation strongly suggests that producer interests would overwhelm consumer interests: People would pay high premiums for coverage they may not need or want, such as coverage for drug abuse.

 

The effect would be a tax increase for millions of people. People who have turned down their employer’s offer of health coverage in favor of higher wages would be forced to take a pay cut. Because of the predictable effects of lobbying, even those who already have insurance would be forced to part with more and more money to pay for more expensive insurance.

 

The president has another reason for favoring compulsion. He seeks regulations on the insurance industry that will not work unless people are forced to buy its products. If insurers have to charge the same price to all comers regardless of their health status, healthy people will have no reason to sign up. They will instead wait until they get sick and get charged the same rate. But if only sick people buy insurance, premiums will skyrocket. Insurance markets will collapse. Read article.

David Warren, RCP.com

 

The Second World War was the unfinished business of the First World War; just as in our own time the second Iraq War was the unfinished business of the first.

 

Again: I know that most of my readers will flinch from such an assessment. This is the flinch that has made it impossible to pursue the unfinished business of 9/11. We have dawdled bloodily and painfully in Afghanistan and Iraq, to no foreseeable conclusion. The forces of Islamist chauvinism have not been defeated. They have instead revived, in Iran, Syria, Libya, and many other Middle Eastern nations, cowed at first by the sight of American arms. Even the Taliban have revived, to threaten Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, in the end thanks to our own pulled punches.

 

It is much worse than that. We have the spectacle of open co-operation between enemies of the West across ideological boundaries. We see this in the alliance between Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Ahmadinejad's Iran; in constant significant diplomatic exchanges between all the enemies of the U.S.; in renewed Russian and Chinese malice.

 

And when we turn to the United States itself, we have the spectacle of the Obama administration, now seeking to prosecute the very people -- very decent people so far as I have met them myself -- who had the unwelcome job of protecting Americans from fresh domestic terror strikes. We have innumerable signals of apology and weakness from the same administration on almost every international front. And this further compounded by many naïve acts of economic self-immolation, from the extravagant bailout schemes to massively bureaucratic "health-care reform."

 

The U.S. is once again shrinking its military, and piling up debt -- the latter on an unprecedented scale. America's allies have meanwhile shirked their own responsibilities, leaving the U.S. to carry all bags, first in Iraq and soon in Afghanistan.

 

We are courting catastrophe on a scale vastly larger than 9/11. Read article.

Don Surber, Daily Mail.com

 

Sherman Frederick, publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal on last Wednesday night’s speech: “After nine months, Americans have begun to make up their minds about this president, and the growing conclusion is this: On the menu of competency, this leader of the free world is one taco short of a full combination plate. He’s undisciplined, snooty and less gifted than initially thought, making him ill-prepared to grasp greatness, even when history offers it.”

 

Willie Brown of the San Francisco Chronicle: “President Obama’s big speech on health care was just like the town hall meetings on the issue: too long, and filled with crazies.”

 

I skipped Saturday’s Obaman speech in Minnesota, which was aimed at blunting coverage of the 9/12 Tea Party. Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor reported: “Obama takes on Glenn Beck and ‘tea party’ critics over healthcare.”

 

What the heck?

 

Why is the leader of the free world messing with Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity before that, or Rush Limbaugh before that, or Joe the Plumber before that, or some guy in grade school who looked at him cross-eyed.

 

In fact, why is he even messing around with health insurance? He should fix Medicaid and Medicare, which will go broke in the next 10 years. Read article.

Review & Outlook, WSJ.com

 

The thing about the bully pulpit is that Presidents can make the most fantastic claims and it takes days to sort the reality from the myths. So as a public service, let's try to navigate the – er - remarkable Medicare discussion that President Obama delivered last Wednesday. It isn't easy.

 

Mr. Obama began by depicting a crisis in the entitlement state, noting that "our health-care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers," especially Medicare. Unless we find a way to cauterize this fiscal hemorrhage, "we will eventually be spending more on Medicare than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health-care program is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close."

 

On this score he's right. Medicare's unfunded liability—the gap between revenues and promised benefits—is currently some $37 trillion over the next 75 years. Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under age 65. It's like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: "The soup is terrible and the portions are too small."

 

As astonishing, Mr. Obama claimed he can finance universal health care without adding "one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period," in large part by pumping money out of Medicare. The $880 billion Senate plan he all but blessed this week would cut Medicare by as much as $500 billion, mainly by cutting what Mr. Obama called "waste and abuse." Perhaps this is related to the "waste and abuse" that Congresses of both parties have targeted dozens of times without ever cutting it. Read article.

Robert Robb, JWR.com

 

If the American people want government to have a larger and stronger role in health care, so be it. I've long thought it was probably inevitable.

 

But the leap shouldn't be made based upon the reassurances President Barack Obama sought to convey in his speech to Congress. There's substantial reason to doubt each and every one of them.

 

Let's begin with the most important reassurance: If you like the health insurance you have, you'll be able to keep it.

 

In the bills congressional Democrats have produced to date, this reassurance comes with a condition and an expiration date. Existing plans are grandfathered in, but no new enrollees are permitted. And after five years, all plans have to conform to new federal requirements yet to be determined.

 

Employers are not going to maintain plans for long that new employees cannot participate in.

 

More fundamentally, Obama's other proposals completely scramble the health care market. The federal government will determine policies and benefits packages that can be offered. Medical underwriting will be prohibited and pricing differentials for other factors sharply limited. New taxes will be imposed on insurers and employers.

 

At the end of the process, no one can say what insurance products will be available at what cost. Or what health insurance, if any, employers will offer. Read article.

 

IBD Editorials.com

 

Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats' pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.

 

For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high.

 

We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government's share will grow even without "reform."

 

Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation's economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.

 

That's why the president's speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.

 

Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government's stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can't let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.

 

So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech: Read article.

 

Robert Pear, NY Times.com

 

It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would “establish a new public insurance program” alongside private health care plans.

 

That proposal took on a life of its own, but it now appears to be dying, a victim of an ineffectual White House strategy, the president’s failure to argue passionately for the “public option” and all-out opposition by the insurance industry and much of the health care industry.

 

In the campaign, Mr. Obama said the public plan would compete with private insurers on the price and quality of care, thus benefiting consumers. What Mr. Obama did not foresee is that, to some people on the right and the left, it would become the most important issue in the debate over health care, touching off a battle over the role of government in one of the nation’s biggest, fastest-growing industries.

 

Once in office Mr. Obama and his advisers have sent conflicting signals about how critical a government-run health plan would be. He prefers a public plan but is open to other ideas.

 

Dancing around the issue for eight months, Mr. Obama has seemed, at various times, pragmatic, flexible or indecisive.

 

“I just want to figure out what works,” Mr. Obama said in March at a White House forum. If he could drive down health costs and expand coverage “entirely through the market,” he said, “I’d be happy to do it that way.” And “if there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I’m happy to do it that way, as well,” he added. Read article.

Don Cooper, C2.api.ning.com

 

"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."

 

Some of the latest town hall meetings show that our representatives have absolutely no fear of their constituency. In the irresponsible and unprofessional case of the old and crotchety Arlen Specter, he makes it clear that he has no patience for any of his constituents that disagree with him, ask a question that he doesn’t feel is appropriate or can’t bullshit his way through. He makes comments to the affect that a question is "too vague" to have his support and moves on to the next question. In one video he is seen and heard shouting at one man to leave for passionately expressing his disgust with business as usual on Capitol Hill. A comment in which the man received resounding applause from Specter’s other constituents. But that’s how our government deals with dissent: you simply have it forcibly removed.

 

Barney Frank is another example of a congressman who doesn’t hesitate to label, criticize and insult his constituency, among many, many others.

 

I wonder just how long you or I would last at our current jobs if we spoke to our employers in such a manner.

 

Truth is we could fire them all today and it would have absolutely no long-term ill effects on the country or the economy. Except for probably national defense and a body to coin and regulate a sound currency – this would be only to decrease the transaction costs of doing business amongst the states and with foreign countries – I believe that we really have no need for a federal government at all. The framers of the constitution had a similar point of view and hence wrote that document in such a way as to purposefully limit the government’s power to a small subset of economic responsibilities. Even they were too optimistic though as the federal government has proven that it can’t even provide simple postal services without fraud, waste and abuse.

 

An idea like this always sounds odd and radical to people since our entire lives all we’ve ever known is a behemoth bureaucracy that invades our personal and professional lives at all levels.

 

My wife grew up in communist Romania. She was 14 in 1989 when Nicolaie and Elena Ceausescu were taken out back of the federal building in Bucharest, Romania and summarily executed by a firing squad for decades of abuse of Romania’s people and resources.

 

My wife and others have told me on many occasions of how the Romanian government literally disappeared overnight. How the day after the communist party was driven out that everyone looked at each other as if to say: what do we do now? Read article.

 

Bob Unruh, WND.com

 

A commentator at Canada Free Press says he has obtained copies of two documents apparently prepared by Democrats to certify Barack Obama as their nominee for president in 2008 that suggest House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew there was an unresolved issue with his eligibility under the U.S. Constitution.

 

Writer JB Williams describes himself as a "no nonsense commentator on American politics, American history, and American philosophy." And he say's he's gotten possession of copies of the documents in question.

 

The first includes a verification that Obama and Joe Biden, then-candidate for vice president, "are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution."

 

The second form obtained by Williams appears identical, although the signatures are different, including the same strategic typographical error. But in this one, the verification of eligibility under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution is gone. Read article.

 

Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.org

 

After publishing an op-ed by a radical Israeli professor urging a boycott of Israel, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor, Jim Newton, said, “Had Hitler submitted an excerpt from Mein Kampf in the late 1930's [I would have published it] because the world would have benefitted from exposure to evil ideas."

 

This is an interesting subject for discussion but first it should be noted that Newton misworded his answer, a rather serious mistake for a professional journalist and editor. Perhaps it is even a Freudian slip.

 

Presumably the world would have benefited from the exposure of Hitler’s arguments as evil and dishonest. But does the world, to take Newton’s own phrase, benefit “from exposure to evil ideas,” that is, just giving them a bigger audience?

 

No. After all, those who spread evil ideas do so precisely to win over those who hear them. The world did get exposed to the evil ideas of fascism. One of the main results was a lot of support for it by millions of people in many countries.

 

And that’s certainly happening a lot nowadays for the contemporary equivalent evil ideas.

 

The media not only publicizes, but reinforces evil ideas on many occasions. Newton’s error shows the problem: the media does not expose evil ideas as evil. It often portrays them as correct and accurate or good or at least just another credible opinion. Read article.

 

Dick McDonald, LornaKismet.Wordpress.com

 

 

Dr. Jory Goodman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, has made it clear – Barack Obama is a communist, not a socialist. Barack insists on his way or the highway whereas socialists will debate you. Barack not only believes in the Marxian “any means to an end” tactic he is forming a civilian defense force as powerful as the US Armed Forces to intimidate and force the American people to adopt his “equal outcome” redistribution “transformation of America.” This should remind Jews of another “preacher” and his “brown shirts” that imposed National Socialism on Germany.

 

Americans spent the 20th Century destroying communism only have its roots resurface and grow into a new tree right here in White House. As is a radical’s usual approach, the kids –incapable of distrusting their teacher – are being asked this Tuesday not about their need to be educated but how to believe in all things Obama. It is all a part of Obama’s plan to deify himself to hide his true agenda. Read article.

 

Harvey Morris, Financial Times.com

 

Barack Obama will cement the new co-operative relationship between the US and the United Nations this month when he becomes the first American president to chair its 15-member Security Council.

 

The topic for the summit-level session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament – one of several global challenges that the US now wants to see addressed at a multinational level.

 

“The council has a very important role to play in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons, and it’s the world’s principal body for dealing with global security cooperation,” Susan Rice, US envoy to the UN, said last week.

 

Her remarks were the latest by the Obama administration to emphasise a shift from the strategy of the previous Bush administration, sometimes criticised by its UN partners for seeking to use the world body principally to endorse its own unilateral policies. The US currently holds the month-long rotating presidency of the Security Council.

 

Mr Obama will join other heads of government in New York during the week of the nuclear summit for the opening of the 64th session of the UN General Assembly. The annual meeting of world leaders is this year raising expectations on a number of fronts.

 

UN officials hope a climate change debate on September 22 will give fresh impetus to the search for a global climate deal at Copenhagen in December. Read article.

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