Posted on 07/31/2009 7:22:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Yesterday, Barack Obama was God. Today, he’s fallen from grace, the magic gone, his health-care reform dead. If you believed the first idiocy — and half the mainstream media did — you’ll believe the second. Don’t believe either.
Conventional wisdom always makes straight-line projections. They are always wrong. Yes, Obama’s aura has diminished, in part because of overweening overexposure. But by year’s end he will emerge with something he can call health-care reform. The Democrats in Congress will pass it because they must. Otherwise, they’ll have slain their own savior in his first year in office.
But that bill will look nothing like the massive reform Obama originally intended. The beginning of the retreat was signaled by Obama’s curious reference — made five times — to “health-insurance reform” in his July 22 news conference.
Reforming the health-care system is dead. Cause of death? Blunt trauma administered not by Republicans, not even by Blue Dog Democrats, but by the green eyeshades at the Congressional Budget Office.
Three blows:
(1) On June 16, the CBO determined that the Senate Finance Committee bill would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years, delivering a sticker shock that was near fatal.
(2) Five weeks later, the CBO gave its verdict on the Independent Medicare Advisory Council, Dr. Obama’s latest miracle cure, conjured up at the last minute to save Obamacare from fiscal ruin, and consisting of a committee of medical experts highly empowered to make Medicare cuts.
The CBO said that IMAC would do nothing, trimming costs by perhaps 0.2 percent. A 0.2 percent cut is not a solution; it’s a punch line.
The final blow came last Sunday when the CBO euthanized the Obama “out years” myth. The administration’s argument had been: Sure, Obamacare will initially increase costs and deficits. But it pays for itself in the long run because it bends the curve downward in coming decades.
The CBO put in writing the obvious: In its second decade, Obamacare significantly bends the curve upward — increasing deficits even more than in the first decade.
This is obvious because Obama’s own first-decade numbers were built on arithmetic trickery. New taxes to support the health-care plan begin in 2011, but the benefits part of the program doesn’t fully kick in until 2015. That excess revenue is, of course, one time only. It makes the first-decade numbers look artificially low, but once you pass 2015, the yearly deficits become larger and eternal.
Three CBO strikes and you’re out cold. Though it must be admitted that the White House itself added to the farcical nature of its frantic and futile cost-cutting when budget director Peter Orszag held a three-hour brainstorming session with Senate Finance Committee aides trying to find ways to save. “At one point,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “they flipped through the tax code, looking for ideas.” Looking for ideas? Months into the president’s health-care drive and just days before his deadline for Congress to pass real legislation? You gonna give this gang the power to remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy?
Not likely. Whatever structural reforms dribble out of Congress before the August recess will likely not survive the year. In the end, Obama will have to settle for something very modest. And indeed it will be health-insurance reform.
To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable, and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no pre-existing condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
Nirvana. But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.
Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the U.S.; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory, and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
It is not reform.
It is not even American.
It is STEALTH MEDICAL DECISION MAKING being taken from DOCTORS and placed into the hands of a board.
“But by year’s end he will emerge with something he can call health-care reform”
INCORRECT:
It will be called “Insurance Reform”, and it will be exactly this same bill.
Two weeks ago a KOS article noted that “Insurance Reform” focus-grouped better than “Universal Healthcare”, or “Healthcare Reform”. And this was almost immediately picked up by the Democrat TV wonks.
Notice how the debate is changing. It’s being astro-turfed hard by the Democrats through the K street orgs, as well.
Anything with Obama or this Congress is not a healthcare bill. Also be warned of Hillary. It’s her bill.
Exactly. How many of us want some board to tell us we can or cannot have treatment? When will they decide I no longer need my heart doctor or dialysis??
When lawsuit reform is seriously addressed, be it alone or within some sort of reformation movement by the O-Cult, I will be proud to be an American....
1/2 /s
CBO needs to watch out. Obama is going to come after them (Chicago style).
I still say that that price tag is too low over a ten year period.
But even if it plays out Krauthammer’s scenario, Obama still wins. After all, when the insurance companies go broke, who is there to pick up the pieces? The government...
hh
This age group heavily supporte Obama, so I assume they’ll be happy to pay...
hh
Yep, it's the new mantra from Pelousy.
"It's almost immoral what they are doing,"
"They are the villains."
Just incredible that the U.S. Speaker of the House gets away with such slander.
Also notice the pressure attacks on my Blue-Dog Democrat Senator, Evan Bayh.
Articles are hitting local papers across the state today that quote almost VERBATIM from a KOS article earlier this week about Bayh’s money connections to those “Evil” insurance Companies.
He’s against this monstrosity as it currently stands, so he is now an object of HATE.
Doesnt Chris Countrywide Dodd get most of his contributions from insurance companies?
But Obama isn't smart and he isn't flexible enough to pull off the maneuver's Krauthammer foresees. Obama and the leftoid Dems won't settle for anything they can't plausibly call “Universal Coverage.” Modest insurance reform won't do the trick. Since they can't get universal coverage and they won't settle for less, they will probably come up empty handed. Even if they pass something it will be a terribly damaging disappointment according to the standards Obama himself set, and the political impact will be more or less the same as if nothing had passed.
That impact will be similar to what W suffered in his second term when Social Security reform went down in flames. Obama’s friends and foes alike will no longer take him seriously and his opportunity to do anything significant domestically will have passed.
Obama is nowhere near as good as Krauthammer thinks. The doctor has diagnosed a political cold when the patient has severe pneumonia.
This assumes younger workers won’t revolt. They may.
It's always amazed me that people understand whey they must have car insurance, but don't understand the necessity for health insurance. Nobody bats an eye when they have to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a tune up for their car, but get bent out of shape whent hey have to pay for a blood test for $50.
Everything is out of whack.
Krauthammer is a recovering shrink. His medical experience has applied pretty well to the analysis of public figures, whom he often finds to be crazier than any of his patients were.
The trouble in getting a proper assessment of Baraq al-Husseini is penetrating the media shieldwall that surrounds him. Your conclusions can be worse, but never better than your information sources.
Any bill with Mandates needs to be totally opposed.
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