Whew! What a day so far. I'm actually sorry for Governor Sanford. He seems so contrite. Doubt he would be so affected by this all if he didn't truly believe in marital fidelity and all that.
And here's hoping Comrade Osama's socialized medicine snake oil pitch is buried under these more sensational events.
Just saw Catherine Sibelius, Welfare Czarina (?), in a brief interview on Fox. Like several others from the regime who've spoken on the issue lately, she's talking about how the "government option" in health care (that's the government-run socialist medicine program) will "level the playing field."
Oh, these people are so geniunely and unintentionally funny. They just make my day!
How does a government-funded, government-run option "level the playing field"?
1.) The government has the US Treasury -- what's left of it, after TARP, the GM bail-out, the Stimulus Package, and declining revenues -- to fund its socialist program. By contrast, the private insurance companies have investors and customers to pay for theirs. By the way, this also explains why private insurance and any other industry is way more cost-effective, efficient and devoid of graft and fraud than government-run anything.
2.) The government can and probably will set arbitrary charges for doctors' services and hospital care. Private insurance doesn't have this kind of control over the expenses they cover.
3.) Ultimately, the government can hold a gun to your head, my head, the heads of doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators to compel them to do what the government directs -- like take serious pay cuts, implement rationed care, perform what the doctor himself may believe is inappropriate and even possibly harmful but less expensive procedures. Private insurers certainly don't have this kind of authority.
4.) Due to all of the above, the socialist option can and will completely undermine private insurers and crowd them all out of the marketplace. I believe this is why Comrade Osama is pushing so hard for the socialized medicine option. He wants another US industry to just fall into his lap, the way the financial industry and auto industry has. Then he can stand there and say, "Hey, I didn't ask for this." No, he's just assumes we're all stupid.
Any way you look at it, the "level playing field" is complete crap. And it's a line so often repeated, I just picture all these bureaucrats assembled in a large auditorium. Comrade Osama or one of his minions is at the podium, reading from a teleprompter:
"Repeat after me," he says. "The government option will provide a level playing field." All those assembled recite the Osama-approved mantra over and over until they get it right. And there was a quiz.
It doesn't have to make sense. Osama assumes the American people are so monumentally stupid we'll believe anything to be true if we hear it repeated often enough. But no, Comrade, that's your mistake, not mine.
And what is the demonstrated ultimate outcome of socialized medicine? I refer you to the Healthcare.Cato.org once again, "The Grass Is Greener," or my blogs from recent days ago about how socialized medicine operates in other countries.
Or closer to home, look at Medicare. How many competing insurance programs for seniors are there in the marketplace? Did Medicare create a "level playing field"? Has Medicare -- with $60 billion per year going to fraud -- made the insurance industry "more honest"? (By the way, I checked that $60 billion figure. It comes from stories that ran in the New York Times and the Washington Post, both extremely left-leaning rags, so we can probably assume that the fraud is even more rampant.)
Really. What a load of dung Comrade Osama and Sibelius are peddling. How can anyone trust these people anymore? I mean, when they lie so often and so well, how can you determine if and when they're ever telling the truth?
More realistically, the predictable outcome of socialized medicine is the closure of hospitals, and the mass exodus of highly-trained doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals from the health care industry. They just won't be able to make a decent living in health care anymore. They may end up making considerably less than an assembly line worker at GM -- and with lesser benefits.
For patients, this means long, long waits for exams and treatment, substandard and rationed care, and steadily rising co-pays to support a system that simply won't be worth it.
"Isn't this what you voted for?" Comrade Osama wants to know.
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