By David Gratzer
Before a tense and packed House the President told Congress:
Millions of Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their health insurance and one serious illness away from losing all their savings... And in spite of all this our medical bills are growing at over twice the rate of inflation ... Thats President Clinton sixteen years ago almost to the day.Last week a President -- who was only 32 when the-President Clinton spoke about a health-care plan built on government expansion with billions in hidden costs -- is now in the White House and out to prove that nothing has changed in the minds of the Democratic leadership since the Clinton debacle.
President Clintons health-care legislation didnt fail in 1994 because people didnt want better health care. The White House plan failed because it was too bureaucratic too complicated and too expensive.
Last week President Obamas response to sixteen years (and one angry August recess) worth of bi-partisan doubt was to double down and bet even more political capital on the same approach.
Its as if he expected Americans to tune in and suddenly realize their mistake.
This was supposed to be the Administration of the post-partisan rational center.
Arguments were supposed to work with this White House. While many critics of President Obamas health-care plan have been too extreme some rational
criticism should have broken through. The speech was brilliant -- unless youve actually read the legislation behind it which contradicts many of the Presidents restated commitments.
Last weekthe President said that Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Countless observers have already show that this is not true as proposed new regulations mandating a whole range of benefits setting community rating schemes and banning individual incentives will radically change many existing plans.
Last weekthe President said his reforms would fight rising costs not add to the deficit and reduce government waste. Countless observers have already shown that the President is wrong among them the Congressional Budget Office which calculates that the plan will increase costs and explode the deficit.
And as I observed in the Washington Examiner government waste will grow under ObamaCare since the House bill creates a sea of new Washington-based programs offices and bureaucracies (53 by one count) to micro-manage your health insurance your hospital and even your family doctor.
Last weekthe President said competition from a government-run insurance plan was needed to give Americans a choice. And the President has been shown to be wrong there too. Federal employees have over 230 private alternatives to choose from in their existing health exchange (the model for the
new national market); a public plan would just add one new option (a government financed and price controlled one at that).
Its not that President Obama wants to turn the health-care policy clock backwards sixteen years. Its worse than that. Its as though the last sixteen years never even happened.
Its like a health-care Groundhog Day where Americans wake up to the same tired arguments for government-run care every morning simply because Democratic Presidents cant resist testing the same pick-up lines on an unwilling America.
And the lines are wearing thin.
The President (yes Obama this time) told Congress that our collective failure to meet this challenge--year after year decade after decade--has led us to a breaking point.
Has it really?
When President Clinton conjured similar fears about pink slips and millions losing coverage to Congress in 1993 15.3 of Americans were uninsured. In 2007 the percentage of Americans without insurance was...15.3. A solution to this problem is needed but the fact that it hasnt grown worse is a sign that Congress has time to think and little reason to panic.
Since President Clinton spoke of health inflation in 1993 health costs continued to rise faster than wages but President Obama refuses to acknowledge years later that the U.S. health inflation rate is almost identical to rates in government-run systems. Rising costs must be attacked yes but if rationed health management cant stop health inflation in Britain or Ireland will a rush to President Obamas version of HillaryCare do any better?
President Obamas address to Congress made it clear that hes barely listened to the national debate on health care that he himself set in motion.
Yesterdays teachable moment: the more America learns about government-run health care the more Barack Obama wants to talk and the less he wants to hear.
Dr. David Gratzer a physician is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
