Dr. Obama Writes A Prescription

The President stretched forth his healer's hands, and has diagnosed America's health care system to be in desperate need of major surgery. He has temporarily written a prescription for a new wonder drug. It's a red pill, and it costs about a trillion dollars. But the good news is that everybody will get to take the pill, whether they want to or not.

Speaking before the American Medical Association on Monday, Mr. Obama turned a crowd that had previously been openly hostile to socialized medicine into a crowd of merely semi-hostile questioners. Introducing an amorphous speechified version of the Ted Kennedy plan to turn medical care over to the government, Mr. Obama danced and parried around the details of what a huge and expensive program this would be.

Despite the Congressional Budget Office estimate of the cost of the plan at $1 trillion dollars over ten years, the plan would still leave 36 million Americans uninsured. So it doesn't really solve the "crisis in health coverage" and what it does cover will cost an estimated $62,500 for each new person covered. The Financial Times reported that the CBO had played the role of "the skunk at the party" in 1993, when the administration grossly underplayed the cost of Hillarycare. Although the new CBO report doesn't smell quite so bad to the Obama administration, it didn't need another "trillion dollar program" being announced by supposedly friendly accountants.

Most of the criticism and questioning at the meeting related to the cost of the program and the fact that the plan claims that individuals can keep their private and employer plans. The problem with that second part is that is assumes something that is very unlikely. Private plans won't be able to compete with government giveaways or maintain their current level of medical choices and approved medications, while many employers, facing taxes on "excess benefits" and loss of tax deductions for certain coverage will simply opt out of employer provided health benefits. The moment millions of previously covered Americans cancel their private plans or cease to have plans through their employers, they all become "uninsureds" who will join the crowd getting their care from the government (or rather, from the taxpayers).

Although the plan presented by Obama and Kennedy appears to fill a major gap, in fact it leaves much of the gap unfilled and in addition will create another huge class of uninsured Americans who will have no choice but to join the government plan or go without insurance. Specifics on how the government bureaucrats will determine level of care and availablity of care were left to the imagination. Most doctors, indeed most Americans, recognize that there is a health care delivery problem of major proportions that needs to be solved, but most also realize that nationalized health care and its ugly stepsister "single payer" health care are cures that are worse than the disease.

In addition, the number of "uninsureds" includes those who are temporarily uninsured (largely because of the increase in unemployment), and all illegal immigrants. The number of genuine, legitimate, longterm "uninsureds" is far lower than the government wishes the American people to know about. That real number is what most doctors, laymen, and charities wish to see the government working on. Only liberal politicians want to see the exploitation of another "crisis" which grants government more power over people's lives. Most of the President's advisers are getting their concepts from the national health care systems in England, Canada and socialized Europe. None of them have apparently noticed the huge dissatisfaction with those systems among the "beneficiaries," nor that all of those systems are being carefully re-evaluated to provide for more and better private care.

So how did the MSM treat the reaction to Obama's AMA speech? More evenly than we've come to expect. The AP felt the necessity to gush before reporting the actual news: "For all the young President's popularity, the response he got Monday from doctors at an AMA meeting was a sign his road is only going to get rockier as he tries to sell his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system." CNN was consistent with its all-Obama all the time reporting: "The AMA was expected to be a tough crowd but they quickly melted. This is the beginning of an essential courtship for Obama, who desperately needs this group to pass his health care reform."

NBC's Nightly News was a little more realistic in saying "there were doctors at today's American Medical Association gathering who booed the President." ABC World News actually got to the heart of the matter by noting that doctors "fear that a not-for-profit public plan will drive private insurers out of business, swamping enrollments for the public plan and forcing the government to slash doctors' rates." CBS Evening News said that Obama "made his case for change in front of a tough audience" but was honest enough to add "and he found himself on the defensive."

Obama got a "standing ovation when he said he might be open to some kind of relief for doctors from malpractice lawsuits," said CBS. But Obama giveth, and Obama taketh away. "But he then got a smattering of boos when he says he still opposes caps on jury awards." AP surprisingly reported that "former Senator Tom Daschle says controlling the cost of malpractice insurance will have to be a part of the Obama administration's overhaul of the health care system."

Even Fox News was fairly generous in reporting that the President "could be winning some support by focusing on medical malpractice suits." Well, you can't lose kicking the lawyers. Yet AP, AFP, and McClatchy all quoted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as saying "Americans don't want a government-run system that puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors." But AP then backed down a bit as it found some Republican disingenuousness: "Republicans are honing an attack line against Obama in an attempt to play on Americans' fears of government overreach and economic uncertainties, suggesting he is nationalizing American industry and socializing medicine." Oh, those rotten Republicans. What's the big deal about government overreach and financial disaster when you can have a health care system as good as Cuba's?