I am outraged and I think you should be, too!!!
If you like this post I hope you will read my blog from time to time:http://www.kylesisk.typepad.com/
Thanks!
As many of you know, I am so hugely against the health care reform in its current form I can hardly see straight.
When I try to get into a substantive discussion with anyone who is for it I am met with sound bites and cliches...cliches...cliches (i.e. I find out very quickly that I'm talking with someone who has formed an opinion about this reform who does not have the slightest clue about any of the details, but just figures it is coming from Obama, Pelosi & Reid so it must be good...hence the reliance on sound bites and cliches).
Too many sound bites and cliches and no substance: "Anything is better than what we currently have...", "How can insuring the uninsured be bad?", "The American people want change. They want an overhauled health care system." blah blah blah
That basically sums up our current situation with this health care reform.
I figured it was high time I hit you kool-aid drinking sheep of "hope" and "change" who would follow Obama, Pelosi & Reid off a cliff if that is where they led you with some FACTS I have pieced together between Friedman, Harsanyi, Levey, Forbes, Sowell & Brooks:
*The cost of this overhaul is expected to top $1.3 trillion over the next decade. Many people who are way smarter than me rightly worry that Obama's proclivity to print money to solve problems instead of actually coming up with solutions that will work to solve said problems is going to put us and our offspring into a position down the road we will not be able to recover from (i.e. stimulus, bailouts and now healthcare reform). If Obama gets this passed our national debt will reach $17 trillion by 2019 (equals 82% of GDP which is double 2008 figures).
*The cost of developing a new pharmaceutical drug is just over a billion dollars. No matter what happens with this reform bill that cost will be unaffected (i.e. it won't change either way...the cost is the cost). That said, the lion's share of new drugs that are discovered each year which end up benefiting the entire world have come from the USA because there has been an incentive to do so. If this bill passes there will be less incentive for the market to continue to spend resources on such innovations. This will mark the beginning of the end of serious, continued innovations with drugs, procedures and devices out of the US.
*This reform will impact 17% of our economy...gives me shivers
*There are not 46 out of 300 million (figure dems tout) people uninsured in the US. That is patently false. That figure counts all Americans (even illegals) who have been without insurance for even a DAY even if they just so happen to be switching jobs or insurance plans (i.e. if in 2008 you were insured for 364 days & uninsured for 1 day then you are part of the 46 million...you are amazing! Great job! Wow, you are such a survivor. Watch out Bear Grylls! You went a day without health care and lived to talk about it).
45% of the uninsured are uninsured for 4 mos or less and nearly 25% qualify for already existing gov't health insurance programs that they are not taking advantage of right now.
Over 18% of the uninsured make $50,000-74,999 a year and another almost 20% of the uninsured make over $75,000 a year and choose to spend money on things like Wii, iPods, flat screen tvs, etc. rather than to spend money on health insurance. They have a choice and they choose to not be insured!
*In Canada, 27% of the people who have surgery wait 4 months or more. In Great Britain, 38% wait that long. Currently, only 5% of Americans wait that long.
*Canadians wait an average of 10 weeks to get an MRI so they can find out what is wrong with them. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a lot of bad things can happen in 10 weeks ranging from pain & suffering, terrible quality of life and even death.
Those are a few of the facts...and they are irrefutable. Yes, reform needs to happen, but not this reform. This reform bill is an abomination.
Today Brooks said the following: "There is legislative pragmatism-- writing bills that can pass. Then there is policy pragmatism--creating programs that work. These two pragmatisms are in tension, and in their current frame of mind, Democrats often put the former before the latter."
Add to that Sowell's comments and you start to see what I'm leading up to here: "The great haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that the politicians don't want us to stop and think. That makes sense from their point of view, but not from ours."
In closing, I leave my dem friends with a cliche of my own:
"Watch what you wish for..."
