In recent days Max Baucus and Howard Dean have both come out and admitted what we already knew. That the health bill is about redistribution. Dean was at least kind enough to suggest that you can’t push redistribution too far, because you risk removing the incentive for work.

Republican Operative – Dean And Redistribution

That was sweet of him. Baucus wasn’t quite as kind. He indicated that some people simply make too much money.

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind”

It’s helpful to know that while we’re all out here working for higher and higher taxes, that Mr. Baucus is working behind the scenes to figure out just how much money we should be allowed to make. I wonder where that line is exactly. Sure, it’s been painted at $250k for now, but how long can we expect it to be there. We already know that every socialist program goes over budget. We already know that no matter how many votes you purchase today with spending, you always seem to need more tomorrow. How can we be assured that the socialists won’t need to lower that threshold tomorrow?

Once the signing ceremony ended for the unconstitutional health care takeover, we were then treated to baseless (and videoless) accusations of violence, name-calling and spitting. Now we’ve finally moved on to the truth. It was all a giant ruse from day one. This was never about helping anyone. In typical Democrat fashion, the bill was only about shifting power and jobs to the Federal government while fleecing the American public for more money to find Democrat games.

Mounting pressure from protesters, other politicians, and Constitutional lawyers were bound to create some apprehension about the controversial legislative approach. However, it wasn’t this pressure that led Congress to drop the “deem and pass” technique in favor a straight vote on the two separate pieces of legislation. No, the real reason this Constitutional “slaughtering” never saw the light of day was that Democrats simply didn’t need it.

Concerned Americans learned the truth on Sunday as their stomachs tied into knots and their hearts hung low when they heard Bart Stupack (D-MI) announce he had made an unholy alliance to sell his vote. The 30 pieces of silver? Handouts to airports in Stupak’s home district and an ineffective Executive Order banning public funds for abortion. As has been widely publicized, the order isn’t worth much more than the ink used to sign it. Since courts have repeatedly ruled that abortion will be legal and eligible for funding by the Federal government, the only legal way to prevent the funding is with real, old fashioned laws. The Hyde Amendment language, in place since the 70′s, provided that. At least until yesterday it did.

Beyond the typical horse-trading and vote purchases we’ve come to expect to secure passage of unpopular legislation, the bill is flatly dangerous on its face. To make this argument acceptable to people of all political persuasions, the remainder of this article will assume the left is correct and that insurance companies are evil villians who need to be eliminated. With that assumption in mind, we’d have to examine what makes health costs so darn high. For example, let’s say you have a “bad” insurance policy so you end up paying many costs out of pocket. Would it enrage you to learn that a doctor’s office visit has a real cost of $300 or more? Or that a simple preventative blood test could cost more than $200? Putting aside the issue of whether or not insurance companies are to be trusted (as this article has promised to do), we could all agree that these prices are insane.

Obama has repeatedly submitted the idea that the current health care legislation will reduce these costs, but there is no evidence of it. In the bill we find laws requiring more people to purchase insurance. We find punishments for business with employees that don’t provide insurance, and we find laws that target insurance companies themselves. The bill is 50% insurance company give away (which is ironiuc on its face), and 25% new taxes and laws on you the taxpayer, and 25% retribution on insurance companies. Which component of the multi-thousand page bill asks hospitals to charge less than $2000 for the privledge of sleeping in their bed one night? Which part causes drug makers to make their products available in generic form or at reduced rates?

No conservative could support those measures either, but at least one could truthfully say that they would actually lower health care costs. At least they would in the short term. Instead, the bill focuses only on these evil, hateful insurance companies. Remembering that for the remainder of this article we all agree that insurance companies are dubious at best, how much of the increased premiums and higher co-pays are simply insurance companies passing along the real cost of health care? Based on the prices above, it’s starting to look like we’ll have to get angry at some new industries.

For these reasons, and for the simple incremental loss of freedom Americans suffered yesterday; Congress’ new way of passing bills is still just a little better than the old way. It certainly didn’t make the bill a good one, and it doesn’t make it any more likely to survive more than a couple years before its repeal.

Everyone from the House Speaker to lower ranking members of the House to our President have directly or indirectly likened the bill to more defensible legislation protecting the rights of black Americans. It’s a stretch to say this bill will even benefit anyone directly, except government. To compare it favorably to civil rights legislation is an outright abomination. Black Americans, and indeed, all Americans have certain human rights no one can deny them. Not included in that list is free health care. While the nation was moving in the right direction on the civil rights bill, we are most certainly moving away from freedom with this bill. It’s ironic to hear proponents of freedom restricting laws praise a bill that promised more freedoms to minorities decades ago.

So what is the bill? While no one can look you in the eye and tell you everything that 2,000 pages of legislation will do, here’s what we do know will happen between now and 2014:

• Taxes go up. Cadillac health plans pay higher taxes (if you aren’t a member of a union). You’ll also pay Medicare taxes on investment income, for the first time in our history.
• Kids will have to be accepted into insurance plans, no matter what conditions they have. That will jack premiums for children up (assuming somewhere in the thousands of pages we don’t have price controls).
• Uninsured Americans will be forced to purchase insurance or face a 2% (of salary) fine.
• Employers who don’t buy their employees insurance will pay fines. That means employers will slow down hiring or halt entirely.

In summary, we have a job killing, insurance destroying, premium hiking bill. If you support that, that’s fine. Most conservatives would think you’re wrong, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Just don’t call it civil rights, and don’t regurgitate Democrat party talking points about cost savings that no one can prove.

It’s basic stuff we’ve been taught since grade school. We know that you need 50% majority in the House to win and 60% to win the Seante. Evidently, statist corrupt politicans don’t have access to this most basic level of education. If you want the bill badly enough, apparently, you just “deem” bills into law. What is most sickening about this process isn’t even the Constitutionality of the process, it’s the intention behind it.

The intentions are something like this: Democrats have an unpopular government intervention into the private sector (not the first such intervention, but definitely the biggest), they can’t use normal means to pass the bill. Instead of reforming their bill to be able to catch votes, they simply invent new rules. It has gone beyond arm twisting, beyond cutting backroom deals, beyond a majority punishing citizens who votes for the opposition party. It’s entered an era of simply rewriting the fundamental laws governing how new bills are created.

It’s extremely difficult to stomach this. The Democrats have come up with a bill so radical and so left wing that they have essentially created two parties within the Democrat party. The left wing, and the ultra left wing. In the final hours before “deemage” of the bill, we watch the Ultra Left Party twist the arms of the Left Party. Faced with loosing their own jobs, they stand defiant. They aren’t defiant because they know it’s right for the country, they are defiant because they know they will get Americans hooked on the crack rock of socialism. Once you start to depend on the government you cannot get off the sauce. It is simply impossible.

Look at Greece. Workers on the government dole cannot tolerate any cuts in government spending. Willing to bring Greece to a halt public officials leave their posts to participate in riotous protests against the government. Even as they know the government has no choice but to cut spending because it’s own creditors are cutting it off, protesters are unsatisfied. America will become Greece. We’re already as bad as most of Europe. In some cases European leaders have even chided us for being too quick to spend on unnecessary programs. That’s a really bad sign.

We know Meidcare is a broken entitlement doomed to run up deficits and the national debt into perpetuity. We know the social security program is no different. No one can do anything about it, though, because we’re all hopelessly addicted to the drug. We can’t get off it, and no one even wants to bother to try. If they do try, they are accused of trying to take away your entitlements and demonized by the establishment.

If this bill passes it will be impossible to repeal it practically speaking until Obama’s gone in 2012. Democrats bet that by then public pressure will be to keep the program since two years of taxes will already be paid into it. We can’t take that chance. It really is time to get every boot on the ground making noise to oppose this horrible abuse of power.

If you have a friend that doesn’t watch the news or doesn’t know what is going on…educate them. If you know someone who opposes this bill but isn’t the type to speak up, now is the time for them to do it. Our final hours will mark what we were willing to do to stop this. If we fail to bring hell on our opponents in Washington, they will certainly bring hell on us.

“The Medical Loss Ratios memo is the smoking gun.  It shows that indeed, Democrats have been submitting proposals to the CBO behind closed doors and tailoring their private-sector mandates to avoid having those costs appear in the federal budget.  Proposals that would result in a complete cost estimate — such as the proposal by Sen. Rockefeller discussed in the Medical Loss Ratios memo — are dropped.  Because we can’t let the public see how much this thing really costs.”

Certainly, a number of important facts have been shrouded or hidden entirely. Smoking gun number one is the fact that 6 years of expenditures are financed by 10 years of revenues. Because the CBO calculates 10 year windows, this little gimmick makes the bill look less expensive. Perhaps the most telling bit from the memo comes last:

“A proposal to require health insurers to provide rebates to their enrollees to the extent that their medical loss ratios are less than 90 percent would effectively force insurers to achieve a high medical loss ratio. Combining this requirement with the other provisions of the PPACA would greatly restrict flexibility related to the sale and purchase of health insurance. In CBO’s view, this further expansion of the federal government’s role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program, so that all payments related to health insurance policies should be recorded as cash flows in the federal budget.”

We added the emphasis above. Democrats like to hide behind the CBO currently because they’ve been more effective at gaming it than before. It doesn’t mean the CBO is accurate. As the CBO points out in it’s non-filtered communications, the bill does exactly what most conservatives say it will: destroy private insurance. So what of Mr. Obama’s promise that if I like my plan I can keep it?

If execs at a major corporation behaved this way and it became public, they would be indicted, flogged, ridiculed, and probably publicly hung. Why does Congress get a free pass?

“The irony of the Simas presentation is that it describes phrases and selling points on a bill that doesn’t exist. For two straight days White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been negotiating behind closed doors on Capitol Hill with top House and Senate Democrats on a set of so-called fixes to the underlying Senate bill the House must pass to advance the stalled health care reform effort.”

The entire propaganda of the bill has amounted to pumping up the positives (what few there might be), and refusing to discuss the negatives. As we’ve seen over the last several months, that last part really means “denigrate anyone who dares to want to discuss a potential drawback of the plan”. The Associated Press falls right in line with this peice:

“At the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that after days of secretive talks, key Democrats were “pretty close” to accord on additional subsidies to help lower-income families purchase insurance, more aid for states under the Medicaid program for low-income Americans and additional help for seniors who face a coverage gap under current Medicare drug plans.”

No spin there. It’s good to see the AP keep the report to just the facts. While Rahm and the rest of the Democrat mafia work behind closed doors to plan the demise of private insurance, the AP is out doing the Democrats’ bidding. It should frustrate any freedom loving American that Democrats work in secrecy to find a way around the Constitution to enact their pet bill.

Let’s make sure everyone we know keeps these seedy games in mind come November.

Now there isn’t any evidence that something as sordid as the Cornhusker Kickback is at play here, but Mr. Stupak certainly didn’t come to this realization all on his own. So in typical Washington fashion, we’re left to wonder why he would be willing to hand over the keys to the abortion issue to the most radically left-wing party leaders in Washington, who clearly don’t share his viewpoint.

Another great question is not so much about Stupak but the 10 to 12 Congressmen who were with him on the abortion issue. Where are they now? If Stupak wants to go with the grain, will the others do likewise? It’s amazing to see this rush and urgency at the behest of a President whose popularity is seeing new lows almost every week. Democrat leaders are acting as if there is something the President can do for them. I’m sure some members of the House who will lose their job in November are dying to find out what that is.

In reality, there is nothing to be gained for passing this. It will only create a brand new entitlement, drive insurance companies out of business quicker than most analysts believe (because they don’t take human nature into account), and give government a whole lot more control over health care. Government control over health care is already plentiful. If they wanted to rid Medicare of waste and abuse they could have done that years ago (probably without passing any bills).

The fact is, there is not enough waste in Medicare to make it solvent by removing that waste. There isn’t enough profit in the insurance business to offer significantly lower costs by simply reigning in the “wild profits” of big insurance. There is no reason to believe you’ll get more care at lower prices with more government involvement. They’ve had years at this game already and they are losing big time. Indeed this bill will be almost impossible to repeal, like every other entitlement, but the legislators who enact it will not be considered heroes for generations to come.  It’s more likely that they’ll be the object of scorn and ridicule.

Obama is aware of the political reality that not much will pass Congress after the April recess. It’s a sad commentary that Congress doesn’t pass big bills close to elections. It’s almost an admission that they know people don’t really approve of their job performance. Surely, many of these Democrats are well aware that they don’t have to forfeit their jobs. Indeed they are aware, but the Democrat leadership has hoodwinked many of them into believing voters would be angry with them for not enacting Obamacare.

Of course, the Dems would like Representatives not to think about whether voters are angry with or without this particular bill. This is about saving face. It’s about proving that Democrats are not total failures (just partial ones). It’s also about extending the lie of Obamacare for 6 more years until it kicks in, all the while letting Uncle Sam collect those extra taxes. The bad news is that while the “benefits” of the bill won’t kick in until several years from now, the business killing taxes and rules kick in right away.

That means conservatives have one last hope: The House might not pass the Senate bill. Why would they? It’s fundamentally different from the Senate bill, anyway (from a Democrats perspective). Plus, there are really no guarantees the Senate will want to (or be able to) pass aspects of the House bill via reconciliation.

So it comes down to this: Are Congressional Democrats principled on the bill they actually want to pass or are they partisan shills? The cynics (like myself) believe the latter but only time will tell. Something about the House just passing the Senate bill just feels wrong, though. It’s clearly against the House’s wishes. They have their own bill, but due to Scott Brown they are now going to buckle under party pressure.

The President knows this is likely to costs the Dems many seats in November, but he doesn’t care. Obamacare is about Obama. He needs his monument and he wants it by Easter, no matter the cost.

The main problem with every bill proposed so far is that they focus on the insurance carrier. While insurance company executives are definitely the “bad guys” because you always get the rate hike and coverage limitations from them, they aren’t the root problem. This new version of the bill will provide a couple things that do address the root cost problem, however. Melody Barnes, a White House domestic policy advisor to Obama said:

“They (the summit participants) talked about medical malpractice reform and found possible areas of common ground there and so that’s something they (White House staff) will be looking at…They (summit participants) talked about purchasing insurance across state lines doing that, though, in a way to make sure people are treated fairly.”

It’s a good start to address issues like frivolous lawsuits, and to try to increase competition, but not nearly enough. See, allowing insurance companies to sell across State lines will indeed provide some premium reductions, but there’s only so much blood to squeeze out of a turnip. We could gain at most 2-3% even if all insurance company profits were eliminated. So where are we going to cut from next? Well, tort reform helps a little too, but again, it’s a few percent.

Unfortuanately, Ms. Barnes comments still indicate that the tired, baseless corporate hatred.

“doing that, though, in a way to make sure people are treated fairly”

These kinds of statements further the notion that Obama’s administration doesn’t really have a grasp on the problem, and that their solutions can’t possibly address them.

Worse, the bill will most likely still have Obama’s signature price controls on premiums. Again, this is suicide for private insurance. If we allow the government to tell insurers what to charge, but the market dictates higher medical costs to insurers, how will any stay in business?

To get the kind of aggressive savings Dems want, the root costs will have to be addressed. Until it is, we’re just draining out the ocean one spoonful at a time.

It’s hard not to admire that tenacity. If that sort of aggressiveness were applied to lowering taxes and cutting social spending programs, I’d be in love with Congress. Too bad it isn’t. Instead, we have someone in a safe district urging her Congress to vote for her plan (to help her) no matter what the cost. Will that vote actually cost anyone their job? If polls are an indicator, yes. In particular, the conservative leaning districts which have Democrats in office now, will certainly get slaughtered (no pun intended). In a representative republic, part of me has to admire the system working as it should. Politicians get elected to make decisions, and that’s what Pelosi is urging them to do. Of course, America’s outright hatred of the decision in question muddies that admiration a little bit.

This would ordinarily be a cut and dry case of Democrat voters get what they asked for, a socialist government. I just wish it wasn’t so darn hard to remove entitlements once they’re enacted.

Of course, that’s part of the plan. FDR’s ponzi schemes were brilliantly devised. I admire them in the same way I admire the diabolical plans of villains in the movies. The genius of the plan is this, the entire you time you work, your taxes are going to pay for someone else. But you don’t see it that way, you think you’re putting away for your retirement. But you aren’t! The joke’s on you!

When the jig is up and someone tries to end the ponzi scheme, you get furious because you think you’ve been paying into it the whole time. Democrats laugh all the way to the bank, at your expense. Ponzi schemes are so clever because there is no clean way to end one. When Madoff got busted look at all the lawsuits that happened. The lawsuits weren’t directed at him, but from various people trying to claw-back their alleged “winnings” from other ripped off investors and the IRS. It’s brilliant! And that was only $65 billion in assets. Imagine the civil war that would break out if you tried to end the $32 trillion deficit spending Medicare program!

Of course, Democrats don’t need a socialist history lesson from me, they know the deal. This is all intentional. You pass the bill on a party line vote with the other party vowing to repeal it at some point. But by the time the GOP controls the White House in 2012, it’s too late! You can’t repeal it because the citizens think they are paying into it and they want their money, dammit!

Nice work Democrats.

Yesterday’s summit did clarify one thing that sometimes gets forgotten. At the heart of this discussion is fundamental belief by the majority party that a bigger government is always a better government. If you delete all the controversial statements made yesterday, the silly sob stories that prove nothing, and the President’s ego (whose size is surpassed only by our national debt), you see that Democrats don’t see anything wrong with giant government.

To defend the big government platform, Obama simply points to statism that already exists in the country. That shouldn’t sit well with conservatives who want to see the country head toward smaller government and a healthy respect for the 10th amendment. For anyone who thought that Democrats are idiots, or these are simply goof balls who have no clue what they are trying to implement, yesterday proved those people wrong. These liberals know exactly what they are trying to do, and they make no apologies for doing it.

When Eric Cantor (R-Rep) started talking, he had the massive Senate bill in front of him. Obama displayed his arrogance at full blast by ripping Cantor for bringing “props” to the meeting. For conservatives, showing the public the massive size of a government bill is not a prop. You can’t possibly digest what’s in a 2,200 page bill. The liberals know it and that’s why they like it. There is no end to the increased regulation and silly bureaucracies contained in the bill. Eric wants people to know that. Obama chided:

“…health care is very complicated. And we can try to pretend that it’s not, but it is.”

Mr. Obama forgets he isn’t writing medical literature. Yes, health care is amazingly complicated, but a bill whose stated goal is to expand coverage doesn’t need to be.

Bottom line, we have a diabolical, egotistical man in the White House bent on the Federal government controlling almost anything they can get their hands on. You can’t win when you talk with someone like that. I have liberal friends and they are nice enough people, but they simply cannot comprehend the Constitution, and they don’t want to try.

The good news is that support is beginning to erode (albeit slowly) in the House. As we get closer to November that will likely become even more true. Republicans did the right thing to stand against this bill (one of the few things the GOP has gotten exactly right this entire time), and yesterday they did conservatives proud, I think. You cannot talk sense into this bunch of liberals though. You have to simply fight them. It sounds like yesterday’s pompous parade could fire up the GOP to continue to do that. Then in November, we fire the liberals.

Obama’s White House published their first actual health care plan on Monday. It was a ‘greatest hits’ of things wrong with the Senate and House bills. The eerie checking account monitoring business from the House bill made it in, the abortion language from the Senate made it in. It has the goofy health insurance “exchange” (lots of people call such an exchange “google” or a “telephone”). It has Jimmy Carter style wage and price controls. How did that work out in the 70′s exactly? I wasn’t alive for some of it. I hear it wasn’t good.

There is little in the way of compromise to be reached here. The Democrat plans (all 3 of them now), all focus on these areas:

• More rules for private companies who provide insurance
• Price controls for insurance companies
• Big government structures to monitor health care usage (allegedly for fraud detection)
• Widening the tax gap between rich and poor (ask California how that policy is working out)
• State Medicaid funding changing (mostly increases for the near term)
• Mandatory coverage for individuals
• Bans on catastrophic-only plans

The list goes on. Where can there be room to negotiate with a plan like that? For too long, the GOP has been the party of “yes”. They go along with bad ideas because liberal pundits and liberal pollsters tell them Americans won’t tolerate the GOP not playing ball with Democrats.

It’s complete non-sense. The plan was bad a year ago, it’s a bad plan today, and it’s going to be a bad plan Thursday. But the GOP members will tuck their tails between their legs and meet Obama, on his terms, with his allies, and his plan. They need to get this through their very thick heads: There is no victory with Obama. Republicans cannot possibly win this fight. The only winner in this game is the person who refuses to play. Your winnings come in November when you get to keep your job.

Enough already. Heck, take a page from Nancy Reagan, just say “no”.

“I think it would be incredibly arrogant of everyone to assume that we should do nothing”

(quote courtesy of Politics Daily)

Actually it wouldn’t be so much arrogant, as responsible. It is not the federal government’s job to implement things like price controls (I might argue it’s not the State’s job either). Admittedly, the language of the 10th amendment is broad. However, to not at least give consideration to it’s application on federal legislation (especially of this size), is demonstrating real arrogance.

In fairness to Ms. Granholm, she is at least rooting for the right team at the Olympics. Now if we could just persuade her root for our Constitution, we’d all be happier.

“The proposal would give the federal Health and Human Services Department — in conjunction with state authorities — the power to deny egregious premium increases, roll them back, or demand rebates for consumers, said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because details have not yet been officially released.”

This again fails to take into account the soaring cost drivers that lead to those premium increases. Since there is total detachment between the consumer of the health care goods (you) and the guy whote write the checks (the insurer) we over-consume health care. U.S. News & World Report even had to confess the truth:

“Overall, the profit margin for health insurance companies was a modest 3.4 percent over the past year, according to data provided by Morningstar. That ranks 87th out of 215 industries and slightly above the median of 2.2 percent.”

If this is truly Obama’s plan for mitigating rising insurance costs, we’re in for very rough times. You cannot simply shoot the cashier when you overeat at the restaurant and the bill’s high. This is more fake outrage from a guy who obviously knows much better. Obama knows as well as you and I, that you can’t lower insurance costs without reducing the costs insurance covers. But telling people to be healthier, stop the reckless lawsuits, and quit taking senseless risks with their lives doesn’t sound nearly as nice as the quick fix of just telling insurers to eat the costs.

Here’s an idea: Let’s use the interstate commerce clause to force states to work together on their insurance regulations so that we have a nice buffet of insurance choices to pick from, including catastrophic-only plans. Instead of fighting the Constitution every time we want to appease the populace, let’s use it instead.

I’m guessing that saying “your rates will slowly decrease over time to their market supported levels” doesn’t sound as cool as “I’m going to beat those insurance companies into submission”. Time to get real Obama, you’re going to run these guys out of business, and strand us with no coverage at all. Oh wait, was that the plan all along?

It’s difficult for anyone to know exactly what Congress is planning to do “for” us. At first blush, it seems like a scheme designed to make Obama play good cop while Congressional Democrats play bad cop. More likely, it’s a slight of hand trick wherein the confidence man (Obama) keeps us focused on him, while his shills in Congress deliver a very nasty belated Christmas present.

The latest scheme goes something like this: House Democrats vote for the senate bill as is, then the Senate can use “reconciliation” (the nuclear bomb option) to hijack the bill with all kinds of extra junk the House wanted (like the “public option”) but which would not get 60 votes in the Senate. This “reconciliation” would only require 51 votes. Also, because reconciliation is designed for budget bills only, the Senate will end up attaching health care to the back of a new budget bill. If it sounds complex and ethically questionable, that’s because it is. What else would you expect from the Pelosi/Reid Congress?

This is yet another reason why the GOP should boycott the Feb 25th meeting with Obama. He has no plans to listen to the GOP. This is a distraction designed to keep Americans focused on Obama’s talks with the GOP while Congress pushes through the most unpopular piece of legislation since TARP. Instead, the GOP ought to spend the time on television revealing the sordid details of what Congress is doing while the President is running his legislative shell game. When it comes to November, nothing could help the GOP more than demonstrating in real-time what the opposition is up to.

Who knows, maybe the GOP will get to use the nuclear option to remove this god-forsaken piece of legislation from the books after November. We can hope.

The uninitiated may think debt reduction could be accomplished by reducing redundant, duplicate, and overlapping government programs. However, that won’t work because each of those programs represents a job for some government worker, and in some cases sends pork back home to a Congressional district. Then there’s Medicare reform. Given that the program is a $32.4 trillion debt entitlement, it would seem like low hanging fruit for a debt commission. That’s a non-starter too, however. Politicians rely on scaring seniors with the specter of Medicare cuts. To actually implement such cuts would (in their minds) be political suicide.

So what are we down to? Well, some question why we need a military presence almost everywhere. Since we spend roughly 29% of the Federal budget on the military, that sure seems like a good place to look for savings. However, Republicans are the party of the military, so that’s a non-starter as well.

Then there are tax hikes.

Technically, there are lots of reasons. When supply and demand shift for various products and services the cost differences rarely pan out evenly across the sector, industry, or much less the economy as whole. One reason is wider access, and a shortage of supply. For all the talk of people dying on our streets, more people have medical access than ever before (although really everyone always has it because hospitals can’t turn patients away). The most striking reason for the increase, which isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, is the aging of baby-boomers.

As baby-boomers age, there aren’t necessarily any more doctors of nurses than there used to be. This means the same number of hospitals treating a growing numbers of patients. Actually, you’d be lucky to build a hospital now, due to Nixon’s twisted vision of cost containment.

It’s not a great time to become a doctor either. Despite numerous attempts to hammer out a health care bill, no one has managed to successfully keep the trial lawyers at bay in either of the two bills before the chambers of Congress. These trial lawyers are the asbestos, disability, mesothelioma confidence men you can catch on TV if you don’t work…surprise, surprise. These guys make sure that everything negative that happens in or near a hospital has a price tag associated with it. A price tag they will happily share 10% of with you.

Then there are overall usage trends. We simply take more drugs and are more obsessively paranoid about our health than we used to be. This results in lots of needless trips to the doctor, unnecessary tests and scans, and of course, more prescriptions. Since no one actually pays for these drugs, tests, scans and visits themselves, they get packaged into your premiums. Regence.com has documented many of these cost drivers. Clearly, Americans do not have direct control over all of them, but they do have some control. Expecting to lower basic health insurance costs without addressing usage, is folly.

Any plan presented by Congress or the President must address the cost primarily, not the coverage. Putting everyone on insurance will simply ensure that we add the most costly individuals to our rolls. People who are forced to buy something they don’t want will overuse it, out of spite. People who have been dropped, have been dropped for a reason…they are expensive to carry. Sad but true, medicine is a business like everything else. Adding these two classes of people to the insurance pool serves exactly the opposite of the President’s stated purpose of bending the cost curve.

In a purely political move, Health Care Reform became Health Insurance Reform sometime early last year after the public revolted at the idea of rationing, death panels and other necessities of socialized medicine. Changing the name doesn’t change the intent of the bill, however. Either it will be Health Insurance Reform which will drive insurance companies and their 2% profit margin out of business entirely, or it will be Health Care Reform which will necessarily seek (perhaps painful) method of reducing cost.

Of course, none of these ideas are politically very popular (only the leftist fringe believes that Government would be a good replacement for insurance companies), and so the political reality of the situation is that any reform will simply grow our deficit further, or be so watered down that it achieves virtually none of it’s objectives.

Given this situation, why are we working so hard to reform the system? When we let people pay for their own care, they will continue to grow tired of rising costs, then they’ll change their habits. Of course, that won’t solve Medicare, but nothing will. The fix for Medicare is to end Medicare. I’m not trying to be insensitive to older Americans, but the system never should have been created and it’s a liability. Nothing but massive tax increases (which are always on the table) or serious rationing will fix that. So why keep investing in a broken system? Well, it’s the Progressive Way.

Even though we were given assurances that Obama is on the jobs trail, he did an about face today, back to that old, beat up health care horse. We sat in agony and watched the expensive buy-offs, and 1+1=4 math from Congress virtually all of last year, and yet Obama’s bringing it back. When does even the most egotistical, arrogant person on earth finally realize no one wants to hear about his bill anymore?

Nothing is more pitiful than a poor loser.  Obama should follow his own marching orders for 2010, and start to get serious about creating jobs for Americans (yes, Government doesn’t make jobs, but it sure can make policies that stunt job growth).  We need them, the Government needs them, and yes, Obama needs them.  That is, unless he has abandoned hope for a re-election bid.

As the ruling class with a super majority and the White House under their control, the Dems wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and they could have. They wanted to pass the health care bill, and be able to call the GOP obstructionists. Thankfully, they weren’t even able to get their own house in order.  So much time was spent bad mouthing the GOP for not working with them (which was a lie, too), and the whole time they had a super majority.  Why didn’t they pass it?  Is it because they wanted someone to share the blame with when it all blows up?  It sure seems like it.

Now, in the Scott Brown era, the President has scheduled a number of media friendly events aimed at pretending the left wants to work with the right. Republicans beware: Obama’s premise is wrong. Most Americans do not want the health bill, they do not want cap and tax, and they don’t want virtually any of the Democrat priorities. The best thing Republicans can do is to clearly and publicly articulate that they do not want to talk to Obama, Pelosi, Reid or anyone else in the Democrat party about their left wing plans. If the “media is the message”, then even sitting down to discuss the ideas grants them certain credibility as potentially being good ideas…and they aren’t.

If Obama’s wildest dreams came true and Republicans were won over in these meetings, it would be a banner moment for “bipartisanship”, but Republicans would be dooming themselves by working with leftists on leftist policies. There is no way for the GOP to win by working with Democrats, not with their current lineup of proposals.

People elect their party’s candidates to fight the ideas from the opposing party, not to water those ideas down to where they are acceptable.  The GOP had a plan to deal with this, but it’s irrelevant, because the premise is wrong.  Health care is not broken and that’s why for all the years of Bush and the GOP in Congress nothing was done on this issue, the GOP didn’t feel it’s important.  It still doesn’t.

Republicans can win big in November but only when they learn how to say: “No, I don’t want to sit down and talk with you because my constituents do not believe that your agenda is a priority and I’m not going to play your game”.

If the GOP continues to work with the Dems and try to come to consensus they are doomed to repeat the mistakes that have cost the GOP so much already.