Obama says government will provide “competition” in health care.

In a town hall meeting in Green Bay, WI, on Thursday, the president claimed that the government had no interest in taking over health care.  Presumably, this is the same lack of interest Obama has had in taking over General Motors, Chrysler, and the financial industry.

by Michael Naragon

“We have reached a point where doing nothing about the cost of health care is no longer an option. The status quo is unsustainable,” Obama told the crowd at the meeting, maintaining the theme that he and Congress pushed during the stimulus debate.  We have to do something.

One of the president’s excuses for a virtual takeover of the health care industry is the high costs of health care.  The current economic recession has been almost solely caused by medical costs, to hear the president pontificate.  As a result, again like the stimulus bill, Obama swore to the crowd that he would not tolerate Congress dragging its feet.

“As Congress moves forward on healthcare legislation in the coming weeks, I understand there will be different ideas and disagreements,” Obama said.  “I welcome those ideas.  But what I will not welcome is endless delay.”  If the liberal attitude toward alternate plans thus far is what Obama calls “welcoming,” then I’d hate to see if they become close-minded or belligerent.

Amazingly, the president actually addressed the issue of the cost of nationalized health care on Thursday, although his explanation, as always, was tempered by double-talk and conservative rhetoric with a little class envy thrown in for good measure.

“I have already promised that reform will not add to our deficit over the next 10 years,” Obama told the crowd.  “To make that happen, we have already identified hundreds of billions worth of savings in our budget — savings that will come from steps like reducing Medicare overpayments to insurance companies and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in both Medicare and Medicaid.  I will be outlining hundreds of billions more in savings in the days to come.”  Obama apparently forgot that just Tuesday he ensured that the salvation of health care would be one of the programs allowed to run a deficit.

Hundreds of billions cut from the budget?  Why couldn’t all of this waste have been cut before we started talking about a new multi-trillion dollar addition to government?  And if we could have cut all this out before, why didn’t we do it to make room for, say, the hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus dollars that the government borrowed?  Apparently, the waste was acceptable until the president came under fire for the costs of his new monster.  Realistically, the waste won’t, in actuality, be cut.  To do so would hurt Obama voters.

Obama admitted that hundreds of billions would not be enough to pay for health care.  Liberals in Congress are currently debating, as a matter of fact, to use the White House Office of Management and Budget’s figures on the cost of the health care takeover, instead of the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office that has traditionally been used to analyze such programs.  This would be the same OMB, by the way, that was forced to admit recently that the Obama budget would cause much larger deficits than they had reported originally.

Expect, therefore, that the cost of health care, as reported by the president, to be reasonable.  The socialized plan adopted by Massachusetts under then-Governor Mitt Romney was reasonable, too.  At first.  Originally, the plan which Romney touted cost only $150 million annually.  The cost today, just three years later?  Over $1 trillion.  And that’s just Massachusetts.  Imagine what the cost of federal health care will be when California, New York, Florida, and other states are added to the rolls.

So how to pay for health care?  Obama went to the first page of the Democrat playbook.

“That’s why I’ve proposed that we scale back how much the highest-income Americans can deduct on their taxes back to the rate that existed under the Reagan years and we can use that money to help finance health care,” he said.  In a time of a seriously weakened economy, the president will target the wealthiest Americans to pay for the nation’s health care.

He failed to mention what he meant by the “highest-income” Americans.  If he means those making $250,000 and over, he might be a genius.  When hyperinflation strikes over the course of the next year or two, most Americans will likely make over $250,000.

Finally, Obama addressed the national insurance option that will be made available to those who cannot afford to purchase private health insurance, a mandate under the Kennedy-Dodd plan.  Conservatives have charged that this is the Democrat opening to a full annexation of the medical industry.

“The reason is not because we want a government takeover of health care,” the president reiterated, chanting the party line.  “But we want some competition. If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down.”  AETNA, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Humana, Unicare, Anthem, Kaiser Permanente, CIGNA, PacifiCare, SelectHealth… there are literally hundreds of insurance companies available.  Competition currently exists.

When the federal government, and particularly a Marxist like Obama, starts talking about competition, it should raise a red flag the size of Gorbachev’s birthmark.  Any “competition” between government and private insurance will eventually lead to the dominance of the government plan.  Why?  Because the federal government doesn’t have to, and sees no need to, turn a profit.  Or balance a budget.  Or control its spending.

Or uphold the Constitution.