I don't watch enough television to have seen the ad more than twice, but I have been struck by the fact that it is possible to find all of Sen. Barack Obama's television ads on YouTube except for one. It's the one in which he casts his health plan as a common sense compromise between Right and Left.
It's a ridiculous claim, but you may not know that if you don't know your Kentucky history circa 1994, when we enacted his plan. Or you could listen to Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. He was on the Cato Daily Podcast this morning after seeing the ad. He testified:
"The Obama campaign has cast John McCain's health plan as extreme and their own health plan as moderate. There is even an ad the Obama campaign has put on the air that shows two different extremes and the Obama plan in the middle. On one extreme is government run healthcare; the other extreme is insurance companies denying people coverage but Obama is going to avoid both of those extremes. The Obama ad is misleading in every particular. It's misleading because he does support a government run health care system with higher taxes for everybody. He would have health insurance companies denying coverage to people. The fact that he has proposed to require health insurance companies to charge the same premiums to everyone means that those insurance companies are going to avoid sick people. If you can only charge a sick person the average premium then you know they are a liabilty for you and you are going to try to get rid of them any you can and only sign up healthy people. So Barack Obama proposes to have health insurance companies deny care to people and skimp on care for those who need it. It's a pretty misleading ad and, unfortunately, the media have really given him pass on this."
In essence, once all the health insurance companies in America are offering the same plans at the same premiums, the only way to get coverage for the people who can't get coverage is to expand government coverage. Then the private premiums will be so high, more people will clamor for government coverage. It's no stretch to imagine some kind of public-private GSE monster emerging from the wreckage to lead polticians around by the nose like the once-powerful mortgage giants did not so long ago.
3 comments:
I hope the McCain campaign is reading this!
Maybe Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute should read Obamanomics by John R. Talbott. Talbott explains:
"Obama's plan is to create a health insurance system that will cover all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses. Under his plan, nobody will be turned down from insurance because of pre-existing conditions. All essential medical services will be covered, including mental healthcare. (p. 148)
OBAMA'S PLAN TO COVER UNINSURED AMERICANS: Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress… Obama will require that all children have healthcare coverage." (p. 148)
If Cannon were so concerned about taxes, why isn't he following Alexander Hamilton's advice on proportional taxation?
In Federalist Paper 12, Hamilton wrote:
"The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxes easier, and facilitate the requisite supplies to the treasury."
A proportional tax system would basically be a toll on all transactions, and would result in lower taxes for everybody.
I suppose however, that Cannon thinks that it would be terribly unjust for banks to have to pay a transaction fee on the $1.5 trillion a year they launder in drug money.
The point is that Obama is no longer selling the approach spelled out in Obamanomics.
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