Whose medical decisions?

Thomas Sowell - Syndicated Columnist - 8/18/2009 9:20:00 AM

The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it.

What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks who to lend to, or appointing "czars" to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity.


What they are trying to do is to create an America very unlike the America that has existed for centuries -- the America that people have been attracted to by the millions from every part of the world, the America that many generations of Americans have fought and died for.

This is the America for which Michelle Obama expressed her resentment before it became politically expedient to keep quiet.

It is the America that Reverend Jeremiah Wright denounced in his sermons during the 20 years when Barack Obama was a parishioner, before political expediency required Obama to withdraw and distance himself.

The thing most associated with America -- freedom -- is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama's vision of the country and of himself. But do not expect a savvy politician like Barack Obama to express what he is doing in terms of limiting our freedom.

He may not even think of it in those terms. He may think of it in terms of promoting "social justice" or making better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care or housing or many other things. Throughout history, egalitarians have been among the most arrogant people.

Obama has surrounded himself with people who also think it is their job to make other people's decisions for them. Not just Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, his healthcare advisor who complains of Americans' "over-utilization" of medical care, but also Professor Cass Sunstein, who has written a whole book on how third parties should use government power to "nudge" people into making better decisions in general.

Then there is a whole array of Obama administration officials who take it as their job to pick winners and losers in the economy and tell companies how much they can and cannot pay their executives.

Just as magicians know that the secret of some of their tricks is to distract the audience, so politicians know that the secret of many political tricks is to distract the public with scapegoats.

No one is more of a political magician than Barack Obama. At the beginning of 2008, no one expected a shrewd and experienced politician like Hillary Clinton to be beaten for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States by someone completely new to the national political scene. But Obama worked his political magic, with the help of the media, which he still has.

Barack Obama's escapes from his own past words, deeds, and associations have been escapes worthy of Houdini.

Like other magicians, Obama has chosen his distractions well. The insurance industry is currently his favorite distraction as scapegoats, after he has tried to demonize doctors without much success.

Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.

Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to "keep insurance companies honest" -- and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.

Democrats' 'bait-and-switch'

Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - 8/17/2009 10:10:00 AM

Barack Obama won the presidency under the persona of healer. He promised to unify a divided nation and said how he would do this.

He'd put ideology aside and solve problems. And he'd bring new open, bipartisan governing to Washington, devoid of special interests.

Now, six months into this presidency we have exactly the opposite.

Rather than temperatures dropping, they have steadily risen to their current fever pitch.

Rather than becoming more unified, we've never been more divided.

According to the Pew Research Center, the gap between approval rates for the president from Democrats (85 percent) and Republicans (19 percent) is now 66 points. For George W. Bush at about the same time in his presidency, this gap was 51 points. For Bill Clinton it was 45, George H.W. Bush 38, Reagan 46, Carter 25, and Nixon 29.

It's not just Republicans. The gap between the president's approval from Democrats and from independents has expanded from 25 points last February to 37 points today.

And the new open, bipartisan approach to governing?

Listen to remarks (posted on You Tube) by Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Georgia, to Democratic committee chairman George Miller, during mark-up several weeks ago of the healthcare bill.

Here's an excerpt: "...we would have loved to have worked with you on this...but you know there was no opportunity to do that...Speaker Pelosi told a member of your conference that if you talk with Republicans about this, you'll be shut out of the room...you know that this hasn't been a bi-partisan effort."

Price, a soft-spoken physician who practiced medicine for over 25 years, brandished the thousand-page bill and went on about what the government takeover of medicine will do to healthcare in this country.

The sheer arrogance of trying to re-write the rules for almost one-fifth of the American economy, more than $2.5 trillion dollars in annual expenditures, with a few weeks of deliberation is without precedent. How can such an effort be done openly or responsibly?

Now we learn that the pharmaceutical industry's support for this initiative has been bought by the administration with promises that, in exchange, there will be no government meddling in the pricing of drugs.

Soon we'll see glowing TV ads extolling the virtues of the Democrats' healthcare plan, probably talking about the special interests trying to stop it, being paid for by those special interests. Report is that PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade association, is kicking in $150 million.

The head of PhRMA, Billy Tauzin, who negotiated with the administration on behalf of his member drug companies, is a Washington insider poster child. He was a congressman from Louisiana for 25 years who then parlayed his accumulated contacts and influence to get hired to head PhRMA for a reported $2.5 million in compensation.

This is the new way we do business in Washington? How we reform healthcare? How Washington operators tirelessly protect the interests of citizens and work to preserve a great country?

Six months into this Democratic administration, we find that Americans have been duped by a great bait-and-switch.

We were sold promises of a sparkling new era, stripped down of ideology and influence peddling.

What we have gotten is a hyper-ambitious government takeover of our economy, driven by left-wing ideology, carried out using the most cynical business-as-usual inside Washington influence peddling.

And to lend irony to it all, when outraged citizens grasp what is happening and protest, they are accused of disrupting democracy and racism.

To recall the words of economist Herbert Stein, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

Hopefully this will stop before we'll need history books to recall the once American dream of freedom and prosperity.