The House bill, being put online--all 1,990 pages of it--will not, Speaker Nancy tells us, "add a dime to the deficit." Indeed, it will, our Lady Legislator says, reduce the deficit. Sure, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will convert to Judaism today and begin observing strict Shabbat at sunset Tehran time. As for keeping the bill under 2,000 pages, a monumental feat the nation's foresters, forests and overworked inkjet & laser printers will appreciate....
Pundit Robert Samuelson calls ObamaCare's "public option" fakery. He notes that Medicare's alleged efficiency advantage--3 cents versus 13 cents on the dollar--over private insurance ignores cost-shifting & accounting legerdemain:
As for administrative expenses, any advantage for the public plan is exaggerated, say critics. Part of the gap between private insurers and Medicare is statistical illusion: Because Medicare recipients have higher average health expenses ($10,003 in 2007) than the under-65 population ($3,946), its administrative costs are a smaller share of total spending. The public plan, with younger members, wouldn't enjoy this advantage.
Likewise, Medicare has low marketing costs because it's a monopoly. But a non-monopoly public plan would have to sell itself and would incur higher marketing costs. Private insurers' profits (included in administrative costs) also explain some of Medicare's cost advantage. But profits represent only 3 percent of the insurance industry's revenue. Moreover, accounting comparisons are misleading when they don't include the cost of Medicare's government-supplied investment capital. A public plan would also need investment capital. And suppose the public plan suffers losses. Congress would assuredly bail it out.
RS adds that such fakery is stifling the real debate: government versus market as supplier of health care. American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks sees ObamaCare attacking three core American values:
Regardless of how President Barack Obama's health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year.
According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the cost of health care for their families will "get worse" under the proposed reforms rose to 49% from 42% in just the past month. The percentage saying it would "get better" stayed at 22%.
Many are searching for explanations. One popular notion is that demagogues in the media are stirring up falsehoods against what they say is a long-overdue solution to the country's health-care crisis.
Americans deserve more credit. They haven't been brainwashed, and they aren't upset merely over the budget-busting details. Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America's free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.
Read in full his op-ed.
Wall Street Journal pundit Kim Strassel sees the public option as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's recipe for diverting attention from the real bad stuff in the health care legislation, that just might pass:
Better yet, by turning the public option into the big, bad bogeyman, he makes it more likely he'll snag those swing-state votes in the end. Nebraska's Mr. Nelson, Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, Indiana's Evan Bayh—they can all claim victory for stripping the bill of a national insurance plan, then feel comfortable voting for all the tax hikes and Medicare cuts that remain.
Speaking of tax hikes, premium jumps and Medicare cuts, notice how nobody is today talking about them? Mr. Reid surely has. The public option might be controversial in D.C., but the majority leader knows most of the country doesn't understand it, or assumes it doesn't apply to them. Most Americans already have health care that they like, and polls show their real fear is that this experiment will leave them paying more for less. This, not the public option, is ObamaCare's exposed jugular.
The insurers get this, which is why (as they now try to bottle the genie they helped loose) they are issuing reports on how "reform" will double or triple premium prices. It is why America's Health Insurance Plans, the lobby group, has run ads in swing states warning about huge cuts to Medicare Advantage. Some of the grass roots get it, too, which is why Americans for Tax Reform is now live on TV in Nebraska noting Sen. Nelson has signed its taxpayer pledge and that he'd violate it by voting for the bill's nearly $500 billion in tax increases.
If Mr. Reid had pulled the plug on the public option, these highly unpopular policy issues would be front and center. As it is, the public-option sideshow is sucking up all the air, and will continue to. It even overshadowed liberal divisions, such as union pushback on Cadillac-plans taxes. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Reid likes it that way.
Bottom Line. Beware of entrance into ObamaCare....
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