Time to Get Some

Nearly half of the 45 million uninsured Americans could join the ranks of the insured tomorrow. No need to wait for McCain or Obama to implement a plan after taking office in January – their insurance coverage could begin now. How, you ask?

They could go get some. Watch Nick Gillespie’s simple proposal:

Most of the millions of uninsured Americans go without health insurance only because they don’t feel it’s a budgetary priority. And most of those people aren’t one-legged single Katrina victims with 12 kids (or whatever sob story Obama likes to cite at his rallies.) They’re young, healthy people who choose to take calculated risks.

The figures cited in this video don’t lessen the import of American health care reform, but they do offer some worthwhile perspective on the uninsured.

October 10, 2008 · Filed Under Health care

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Bailouts and Stimulus Packages and Nationalizations, Oh My!

The American economy’s got a fever, and the only cure is to put a lid on government intervention.

That’s the lesson economics professors Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian gleaned from their 2004 study of the Great Depression that suggested FDR’s New Deal policies actually stifled economic recovery for seven years and prolonged the economic crisis into a 15 year Depression. (Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg.)

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

…

“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”

Billions of dollars were spent on economic stimulus checks, and more than a trillion is expected to be channeled toward Paulson’s bailout extravaganza. I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure those expenditures qualify as significant government intervention and a lack of trust in capitalism.

And now, we’re looking at nationalizing banks and Pelosi has another ill-conceived stimulus package on the way? Doom and gloom may be too optimistic.

October 9, 2008 · Filed Under Economy

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Say It Ain’t So, Rove

So apparently “The Architect” Karl Rove bought into Obama’s attempted politicization of his dying mother’s experience arguing with insurance companies:

He had the night’s emotional high point when he talked about his dying mother fighting her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition.

I know the night wasn’t rife with tear-jerking sentiment, but does a guy who reveals he stood by and let his dying mother battle insurance companies really get to lay claim to the emotional high point of the debate? Should I really sympathize with Obama, a man who failed to insulate his mother from the stress and frustration of dealing with insurers during some of her final weeks on this earth?

Obama might believe that health care is a right, but playing the cancer card isn’t, and it’s time to call him on it.

Hat tip for the Rove article: Hot Air Headlines

October 9, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008, Health care

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Claire McCaskill is Like School in the Summertime

No class:

McCaskill was stepping out of her chair at the end of an MSNBC interview, and Romney was up next. She and a staffer unplugged her various wires, and she handed Romney the earpiece the guests use to hear the host.

“I spit on this before I put it in,” she said to Romney, with a sweet smile.

It’s a good thing Sarah Palin wasn’t following Claire McCaskill in the interview seat. God knows what would have been done to the earpiece.

October 8, 2008 · Filed Under Election 2008, Liberal Absurdity

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Epic Fail: Obama Tries to Play the Cancer Card

Most pundits and reporters are calling the second presidential debate in Nashville a solid win for Barack Obama, and I have to wonder if they watched the same debate I did. I’ve read tons of debate analysis, some excellent and some undeserving of linkage, and I have yet to see anyone discuss what Obama revealed about about how he treated his dying mother. In answer to Tom Brokaw’s question about whether health care in America is a privilege, right, or responsibility, Obama said:

Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

You want to know what’s really “fundamentally wrong?” Barack Obama let his dying mother spend some of her last moments arguing with insurance companies. Energy that could have been put toward fighting her monstrous disease was channeled toward navigating bureaucracy, and her son, a 34 year old “man,” couldn’t find the time or the heart to shoulder that weight for her.

This is personal for me. I was years younger than Obama when my mother lost her life to cancer, and it never occurred to me to burden her with medical bills and insurance negotiations as she lay in a hospital room receiving blood transfusions and chemotherapy treatments. I didn’t realize my mom was dying at the time, but all the same, I handled the phone calls and mail from the insurer, and I made damn sure she didn’t have to think about those things.

Why didn’t Barack Obama fight with the insurance companies on behalf of his dying mother? Was he too wrapped up in his career as a lawyer, lecturer, and author? Was it her right and not his responsibility?

Barack Obama’s callous disregard for his mother is deeply disturbing. Just as sickening is his attempt to use her suffering for political gain after he apparently did nothing to help her.

And in case you still find Obama to be a man of character, let me remind you that he saw no problem with admitting, on live television, that his mother spent her final months arguing with insurance companies. He admitted this because he doesn’t believe it reflects badly on him in any way. Blame the government, he says. Blame the system. Blame the greedy insurers. Screw that, Barack: I blame you.

Dealing with insurance companies sucks. It takes more time, effort, and mental stamina than any cancer patient should have to give. But it’s manageable by a healthy, young person working on the patient’s behalf. Tens of thousands of Americans have juggled other responsibilities to be there for their ailing loved ones, and I hope each one of those people watched the debate.

I hope they caught Obama’s revelation and found it as sickening as I did.

October 8, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008, Health care

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Bill Ayers Makes Awesome Dinner Company!

Want to know the latest reason Barack Obama’s ties to violent unrepentant terrorist William Ayers shouldn’t be held against him? Ayers and his terrorist wife make lovely dinner companions.

That’s the conclusion of retired University of Chicago professor Richard Stern after attending a handful of dinner parties with Ayers and his “attractive” wife Bernardine Dohrn.

I didn’t hold their fiery and criminally violent behavior against them. As in Chekhov’s wonderful story “Old Age,” time had planed down the sharp edges and brought one-time antagonists into each others’ arms. As far as I know, Ayers and Dohrn are loyal to the selves which led both of them to jail (though not for long), but they were busy doing other things, useful things, Ayers as educator, Dohrn as a legal counselor. They’d raised the child of a weatherman who’d been jailed, they were taking care of Bernadine’s ill mother, they were doing many things educated community activists were doing.

Yeah, and I bet Bill Ayers would make a delightful inauguration guest too.

October 7, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008

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