The Skinny on Obamacare

Here is the current situation and all the facts I can organize in a reasonable fashion for you. I found a great article to draw from so you're not just hearing my words, but I have to add that this is only one of many such sources I've seen - so I'm not just taking one person's point of view. This is a well understood argument by many, and with any luck it can be well understood by more and more every day.

President Obama originally asked Congress to draft the health care legislation that would eventually make it's way to his desk for signing. He quickly abandoned that idea because even Democrats working on it were too moderate for him. Nobody wanted to include the controversial "public option". As of late, Obama has decided to take a more hands on approach, no doubt to insure that his pet "public option" is included. Where are the checks and balances?? I heard someone say on the news the other day that there aren't any checks anymore because Washington wrote them all...sidetrack, I know! It was funny, even though it's true.

It's all so deceptive to me, really. Obama is shunning all accusations of socialized medicine, but this "public option" is at the heart of what everyone is afraid of.

Simply stated by Carol Platt Liebau:

...if Obama succeeds in imposing a “government option” on America, the privately insured will be forced to pay even more to compensate for the government-created cost/payment shortfall as the rolls of those in the government plan expand. As a result, the cost of private insurance will ultimately become untenable. And then – there will be only government-administered health care for all.

TRANSLATION: The public option puts our private option, and our choices, out of business.

and then...

Without privately insured Americans subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid, there will have to be another way to close the deficit between the cost of treatments and the below-market payments government offers for them. The answer, of course, will be health care rationing. Rather than the free market – or health care consumers’ economic and personal choices – driving the distribution of health care, the government will do it.

TRANSLATION: Government runs out of money to fund already sinking programs, so they have no other choice but to take away our choices.

Couldn't leave this part of the article out, cause it's just so true!

A government bureaucracy controlling your medical care is likely to combine the efficiency of the post office with the compassion of the IRS. Imagine a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles – but to secure lifesaving treatment for yourself, a spouse or child, rather than simply to obtain a driver’s license. What a nightmare.

TRANSLATION: Ouch! Keep the DMV image in your head when I give you a "to do" list on this later. :)

My final point for why we should all be wary of the current Obamacare campaign is simple. It's just not what it seems. He is flat out lying when he says that he has no desire to form government-run health care. He has supported a single-payer system in the past, even though he claims not to at this time. His key Democratic counterparts, including Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, have been pushing for government controlled, single-payer health care for years. This is where they want to take us and it looks like they are doing a good job of blurring the lines just enough for people to get sideswiped by it. There's a good reason our celebrityesque President of the United States is out "campaigning" to get the citizens of the country on board with this - it won't fly on it's own.