Rather than submit the Senate version of ObamaCare to a vote in the House, where every vote aye or nay will be recorded and become part of the public record, they want to use the so-called Slaughter Rule to avoid actually having to show their constituents whether or not they voted in favor of the Obama Health Care Destruction bill.
They must believe we won't figure out this bit of legislative legerdemain and know who really supported this piece of legislative manure. It's not like it will save them from the rage of those of us who voted them into office. We're already pissed off enough at them that we'd like to fire them now. (This means you, Carol Shea-Porter.)
Nancy Pelosi is crowing as if she's already won, claiming ObamaCare will cure the lame, allow the blind to see, all while costing us less money, and raise Obama to the level of deity and shepherding the Democrats to permanent power. (Well, three of the five are hyperbole...maybe, but I know she believes the last two.)
But there are far too many examples to illustrate that government control of anything is fraught with corruption, fraud, and endemic institutional inefficiencies. Health care will be no different, claims by the Wicked Witch of the West notwithstanding.
There are plenty of other examples showing why government shouldn't be running anything as important as health care. Two quick examples: Medicaid and Medicare.
Before casting “yea” votes in favor of a government health care grab later this week, wavering House Democrats may want to struggle out of the left’s ideological fog for a moment and consider the sad, but instructive, tales of the U.S. Postal Service and the city of Detroit. Both are poster boys (excuse me, poster persons) for how government can get almost anything gloriously wrong.
That the U.S. Postal Service is swimming in red ink isn’t news. The important news to Americans as they follow Washington’s three-ring health care circus is that U.S. Postmaster General Joe E. Potter wants to drop Saturday mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure.
Imagine a hamburger joint announcing to its customers that it plans to stop selling hamburgers a day or two a week to cut costs. Of course, a hamburger joint wouldn’t limit the sale of hamburgers to keep its costs down. The guy who owns the hamburger joint would get creative in his marketing and pricing to sell more hamburgers. He might trim costs operationally but not at the expense of selling as many hamburgers as he and his help could flip. Why the difference? The hamburger joint can go out of business. The U.S. Postal Service, being immune to risk, cannot.
Just like the nation’s postal service, if enacted, government-run health care will eventually have to limit access to services in an attempt — however vain — to contain costs.
If we need another example, all we need to do is look at Detroit, a shining example of decades of liberal Democrat policies.
It's an economic basket case, much like Michigan, only more so. It's population is half what it was at its peak. Entire neighborhoods are abandoned, like modern day ghost towns. While some might blame the downturn in the economy, and particularly the auto industry, for its decline, plenty of other American cities have seen their primary industry or industries disappear, but they have thrived in spite of it. But Detroit's government has made sure that wouldn't happen, killing off any chance for economic revival.
Despite this and plenty of other examples, the Democrats insist only their way – the Big Government way - can possibly 'save' health care in the US. Never mind that a large majority of the American people don't want this monstrosity, though they do want some kind of health care reform. Never mind that government has a very poor track record managing anything. And the bigger the thing it manages, to poorer the job it does. Since health care is one-sixth of our economy, I expect it to do an exceptionally poor job of it. All we'll get out of this deal is poorer quality health care at many times the existing cost.
Detroit is a sump of corruption, high taxes, and tangles of red tape. Public schools are mostly warehouses for poor minority kids (provided those kids even show up for school). Crime, principally drug-fueled, is endemic. The middle classes — mostly white, but not all — have long voted with their feet, seeking safety and stability in Detroit’s suburbs or by scooting off to Sun Belt locations.
Consider the universals in government failure. The order will vary from failure to failure, but here goes: 1) corruption; 2) waste and fraud; 3) ballooning costs, higher taxes, and mountains of red tape; 4) sorry management with little or no attention to the bottom line; 5) few (if any) penalties for failure; and 6) big time union involvement, which factors adversely into any of the first five elements.
With all the manifest failure, what’s Detroit’s liberal establishment’s response? Does the establishment make a mea culpa, renouncing the policies and programs that have laid low Detroit? Is pro-growth/pro-family reform — not the cockeyed liberal variety — on the lips of Detroit leaders? Where are the big brooms to sweep corruption out from every nook and cranny of government? Why aren’t Detroit’s leaders standing up to the unions and telling them in no uncertain terms that their days of privilege are over?
And just like Detroit, when government-run health care begins to fail, how will Democrats respond? Will Democrats own up to their failure or will they concoct a bunch of government-centered fixes? When those fixes don’t work, as liberal fixes haven’t worked in Detroit, then what will remain for Democrats to do? Smartly manage government-run health care’s decline and failure?
How is it again the Democrats expect us to be happy about this? Actually, they don't. They want us to stay home, shut up, and do what they tell us to do because they're the only ones qualified to make our decisions for us.
Yeah. Right.