Finally, The President's Own Health Care Plan

Up until now, the President has let his filibuster-proof Democratic Congress take the lead, and the heat, in meeting his goals for reforming health care financing and provision. I can't think of anyone who is happy about the current controversy over health care reform, though I know a lot of people who are glad that the previous Democratic plans did not pass. Roger Kimball picks up excerpts from several pieces concerning the President's own health care plan. I've highlighted some phrases and added a some links below:

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried a blistering editorial [1] about President Obama’s 11-page effort to combine elements of the House and Senate bills to “reform” — read, reduce to a government-run satrapy — American health care. Entitled “ObamaCare at Ramming Speed,” the editorial cites chapter and verse to show how the “the President’s plan” “manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.”

Not for the first time since January 20, 2009, I found myself thinking of Governor Mitch Daniels’s characterization of the Obama administration’s “shock-and-awe statism.” . . .

Even as the Obama administration shows itself racing to revolutionize one aspect of American society after the next, so it demonstrates once again that socialism is only another name for paternalism, which, with Tocqueville, we may file under the heading of “Democratic Despotism.” Remember Obama’s promise in October of 2008 that he was on the threshold of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”? Here we go. You don’t “fundamentally transform” a capitalist country that puts a premium on entrepreneurship and individual liberty without undermining capitalism, innovation, and freedom.

Hence no one should be surprised at the aroma of coercion that is such a prominent feature of Obama’s various proposals to remake this country. . . .

Tomorrow, we can all watch the little circus Obama has crafted for the credulous: the “bipartisan” “debate” over health care in which Obama, as master of ceremonies, will invite his Republican colleagues to demonstrate their “bi-partisanship” by acquiescing to the Democratic plan. The show is guaranteed to be a travesty, though not, I think, in the entertaining, theatrical sense. . . . .

Read the whole thing. Follow his links (and mine, if you like).

From the comments, "Valerie Jarrett is offput that her brilliant President could be obstructed by other branches of gov’t (not to mention we the ignoramuses) in attempting to get his brilliant plans for America enacted." "Val should stand your hair on end." Watch the benevolently slanderous anti-Tea Party video clip at the link, with Ms. Jarrett's response to a man who thinks that people are rejecting the Democratic plans for health care reform because these plans sort of like some new technology that people fear (listen clear to the end of this uncomfortable piece) because they just don't understand. Ha!. Ms. Jarrett agrees that he has come up with a good analogy, noting that "Hope and Change" was successful during the presidential campaign because it was a phrase everyone could understand (though it apparently meant very different things to different people, leading to big disappointments now on both the Left and Right).

If only President Obama could find a simple phrase like that which would capture the complexities of the Democrats' massive health care bills, and reassure those extremist totally anti-government Tea Party protesters that they shouldn't worry their little heads about differences between the promises made concerning the bills and what is actually in the bills! The administration needs a "hope and change" type phrase which would put the peoples' minds at ease and make them realize that it wasn't really necessary for legislators to read the legislation before voting in it, and that the "reconciliation" process will fix anything that is wrong with any bill which gets passed.

Concerning "delivering health care reform, Ms. Jarrett says:"

. . . if the President could do it unilaterally, he would have done it a long time ago, I can assure you of that.

I was also impressed by Ms. Jarrett's comment concerning the special "burden" which President Obama carries "because he is so bright." Whew. The members of this administration REALLY DO think they know what's best for the 300 million or so people in the United States. They also seem to be far more impressed by intelligence than by experience, perceptiveness, consistency, responsiveness or any number of other qualities we generally look for in a leader. Which may be one reason why their approval numbers are tanking.

But you can't say they don't understand the power of the bully pulpit. President Obama is a highly political person. Acquaintances note that he is very competitive.

By the way, hasn't the President been touting a "pay as you go" theme for government in the past few weeks?:

"Obama's plan in two words: Balloon Mortgage."

And 2014 will be here before you know it.