Government takeover of health care is in the ICU

“If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait till it is free.”

-- P.J. O’Rourke

 It turns out that President Obama can no longer have everything he wants.  Still, he is not giving up on government-controlled health care. Maybe he is going to take the suppository route with this bill.

Obama gave another prime time speech on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” and he continues to demand airtime from the government-created oligarchy formerly known as “network TV” to make campaign speeches.  I think next week he will demand two hours on national TV to review a slide show of his Martha’s Vineyard family vacation.

Seven months into his term, he has already overstayed his TV welcome; now he runs the risk of overexposure. He is even doing a promo for the George Lopez show. Will he take Billy Mays’ place selling OxyClean? Should he have anything really important to say in the future, will people listen? His ratings slip so much with each speech that Fox is considering canceling his show.

Obama’s ego is invested now.  In his case, that’s a big investment.  He seems determined that this bill will pass at any cost, and costs he does not have to pay don’t seem to worry him.

Somehow, he can say we will pay the estimated $900 billion cost of overhauling the nation’s health care system by properly inflating our tires or -- and this is audacity -- “by wringing inefficiencies out of our current Medicare system.” 

What’s funny is that the mainstream media never question his naïve rhetoric. Maybe they will help him blame it on Bush.

If he keeps beating this dead horse, Obama runs the risk that PETA and the Humane Society might intervene to make him do a Michael Vick-type penance.

Dr. Charles Boustany (R-LA) delivered the Republican rebuttal to Obama’s speech to the nation.  Dr. Boustany is a heart surgeon, and from what I have seen of the fried food-eating folks of Louisiana, he must be making a lot of money. I think his campaign slogan when he ran in New Orleans was “Are you better off than you were four heart attacks ago?”

His point and mine is a simple one: How can we add an estimated 35 million people to the health care rolls without adding doctors?  How is that not going to ration care to the rest of us who work hard to pay for our health care? 

Moreover, how can Obama ignore tort reform in this bill?  According to doctors and to common sense, more than $800 billion in unnecessary, defensive tests are performed each year to avoid doctors being second guessed and then sued by plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Obama is consciously part and parcel of the radical left in his party. Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats will not tell him he is way off base and to be careful. That would be like an Irish bartender telling you that you have had too much to drink.

What has happened is that his Socialist plan for our medical care has appeared before a “death panel” comprised of Americans with common sense who are weary, and wary, of both parties in Washington.  Government, which cannot run the “Cash for Clunkers” program or even a high school football game concession stand, wants to get more of its lobbyist-greased hands on our health care.

What politicians fail to realize is that these Tea Parties and the pushback they are getting from us are not only about health care.  They are about our dwindling freedoms the politicians seem so bent on wantonly taking.  They are worried that, if they do not take control of one-sixth of the economy while they can, they risk America becoming once more a free country that does not need them.

We make our best decisions as a country when the outcome is blindingly simple and deeply rooted in basic truths. No one understands this bill, not even the best salesman in the Free World, Barack Obama. When he tries to sell us on it, he sounds like a single’s profile on Match.com.

Ron Hart is a libertarian columnist who can be reached at www.RonaldHart.com