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HERE'S THE THREAT: OBAMACARE VS. PRIVATE INSURANCE
NY Post ^ | June 27, 2009 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 06/27/2009 3:33:57 AM PDT by Scanian

PRESIDENT Obama knows health-care policy. Give him an hour and a half to hold forth, as ABC News obligingly did this week, and he will invariably impress with his fluidity.

This makes it all the more remarkable that he often appears unable to understand how his health-care program threatens private insurance.

At a recent press conference, Obama argued that the very notion of it doesn't compute: "If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best-quality health care, if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."

This is exceptionally brazen sophistry. Private insurers are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the federal government because they don't have the power of the government to dictate prices to doctors and hospitals. That's what Medicare does, and why it pays less for health services than private insurers.

Surely Obama understands the competitive advantage that this confers on the government. If the public option in ObamaCare underpays providers in a similar fashion, it will charge cheaper premiums than private insurance. Employers will dump their employees into the public plan, and a massive "crowding out" will occur.

The respected health-care research firm The Lewin Group estimates as many as 119 million people could migrate from private insurance to the government plan, whether Obama considers it logical or not.

Since Medicare doesn't pay hospitals enough to cover costs, they have to make up the expense by charging more to private insurers. According to Lewin, as Medicare hospital payments declined from 95 percent of costs in 2003 to 91 percent of costs in 2007, private payer rates steadily increased.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 06/27/2009 3:33:57 AM PDT by Scanian
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To: Scanian

Bookmark


2 posted on 06/27/2009 3:35:29 AM PDT by BunnySlippers (I LOVE BULL MARKETS . . .)
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To: Scanian

The only thing really logical to 0bama is “I won - get used to it.”


3 posted on 06/27/2009 3:43:46 AM PDT by Ken522
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To: Scanian

Do not be taken in by Obama’s rhetoric.

He fully understands that his insurance will be the end of privat insurance.

He is lying again. Don’t be taken in.


4 posted on 06/27/2009 3:44:48 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: Scanian
"remarkable that he often appears unable to understand how his health-care program threatens private insurance"

Obama has learned, over the years, to carefully disguise any emotion in this voice. He sometimes even drifts into a Garrison Keeler style mumble when he wants to really sound mellow. He then parrots the party dogma unimpeded by facts or intellect. In reality, I believe his intellect is quite shallow, though this speaking style is quite impressive to some who only listen to style.

5 posted on 06/27/2009 3:59:11 AM PDT by norwaypinesavage (Global Warming Theory is extremely robust with respect to data. All observations confirm it)
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To: Scanian

And Hitler couldn’t understand why some people got msd because he killed jews.


6 posted on 06/27/2009 4:05:14 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: Venturer

It’s stunning how often Democrats appear to be either liars or incompetents.

Years ago, we had a governor who campaigned saying that the absolute ‘last thing’ that he would do was to raise the state income tax.

Upon election, it took him a week to jack it up nearly 25%. Last resort, eh? Claimed that he ‘didn’t know how bad the situation was’ until he took over.

My thought was that he was either incompetent or lying. In either case, it’s not a favorable trait for a governor.

On a side note, guess who was on the airplane with Bill Clinton when he moved from Arkansas into the White House? And how long before Clinton’s ‘tax cut for the middle class’ vaporized and he was raising everybody’s taxes?


7 posted on 06/27/2009 4:07:56 AM PDT by DJ Frisat (How's that change workin' out for ya, Obama voters?)
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To: Scanian
why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business?

Is he really that stupid or is he really that devious ?
8 posted on 06/27/2009 4:34:11 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen (Barack the Messiah: Never in the field of US politics have so many waited so long for so little.)
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To: Scanian
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

......Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

They called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy."

Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike.

Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.

This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

9 posted on 06/27/2009 4:36:10 AM PDT by BigLittle
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To: Scanian

If the Republicans have two brain cells to rub together, they will pick Bobby Jindal to give the rebuttal to “Obamacare”. Jindal has forgotten more about health care policy than the totality of Democrats will ever learn. He is truly a world-class expert on the topic.


10 posted on 06/27/2009 4:53:55 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog ( The Hog of Steel)
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11 posted on 06/27/2009 5:33:44 AM PDT by Blado (''crush the bourgeoisie...grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation'' - V.I. Lenin)
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To: BigLittle

Sounds more and more like reality than a theory.


12 posted on 06/27/2009 6:29:06 AM PDT by Dr. Ursus
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To: BunnySlippers

So Mr. Obama, is this government plan that competes against the private sector going to be run by private accounting rules? If that were the case then Medicare, with $36T in unfunded liabilities, would be the most bankrupt company in history and would be dissolved in court.


13 posted on 06/27/2009 6:29:11 AM PDT by blue state conservative
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To: Wonder Warthog

He may know his stuff but how can we forget his nerdish response to Hussein’s SOTU speech?


14 posted on 06/27/2009 10:10:52 AM PDT by Scanian (i)
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To: Kid Shelleen

He really isn’t all that bright and as far as deviousness he is right up at the top of the dungpile. Fortunately, he is very easy to see through for anyone who really takes the time to look, which is why his poll numbers are starting to slip.


15 posted on 06/27/2009 10:14:03 AM PDT by Scanian (i)
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To: Scanian
"He may know his stuff but how can we forget his nerdish response to Hussein’s SOTU speech?"

I don't know if his performance in the SOTU was him or Republican committee attempts at "managing" (at which they are exceedingly incompetent). And one would hope that an individual of his brilliance would learn from said experience and do better. OTOH, if he can't perform in what is very much an area where he is in-depth knowledgeable, then we should know THAT, too.

16 posted on 06/27/2009 3:24:27 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog ( The Hog of Steel)
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