1200 Obama - Red Pill Blue Pill

Washington Examiner, July 23, 2009
Take the red pill, Mr. President
By: David Freddoso
Commentary Staff Writer
07/23/09 6:56 AM EDT

President Barack Obama responds to questions during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

"If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" -- President Obama

In last night's press conference, President Obama seemed to be reliving that famous scene from The Matrix. The main character is offered a choice between a red pill that makes him see reality for what it is, and a blue pill that allows him to continue living in a pleasant world of illusions.

Last night, President Obama appeared to have taken the blue pill before his press conference. How else could he convince himself, the Congressional Budget Office's numbers notwithstanding, that his health care reform bill will not increase both health care costs and the federal deficit? How else can he continue to make the argument that a massive expansion of government spending on health care will solve rather than exacerbate the current problems? How can he repeatedly express such absolute certainty that such a measure will easily pay for itself several times over in the long run? Why can he not at least acknowledge the possibility that it will become a costly and useless trillion-dollar boondoggle that follows in the footsteps of his stimulus package?

With his example of the red and blue pills, and another about whether a child's hypothetical tonsils should be removed, President Obama unwittingly presents the real problem with his plan for reform. Here is a well-meaning government official who so fails to grasp the problem in health care that he can present such absurd oversimplifications and suggest that this sort of thing is the real problem -- doctors simply lack the common sense to make obvious medical decisions. President Obama wants us to solve this problem by putting himself and other government officials in charge of rescuing medicine from the medical profession. If medical doctors with a decade of schooling cannot distinguish between good cures and ineffective ones that must be discontinued, then by gosh, we're lucky that the good folks from the government can.

President Obama thus frames the issue as a false choice between doing nothing at all and handing over to Washington complicated, case-by-case medical decisions that cannot possibly be legislated or dictated by government.

This transfer of medical authority to the bureaucracy is intended to curb costs. Unfortunately, there is exactly one thing that government can do to control costs in health care: it can insist on paying below cost. This shifts the cost burden to private insurance companies, which in turn pass along higher premiums to their patients. This is what government-run Medicare does today for many treatments, including cancer. Government will do more of this kind of "saving" when it assumes greater responsibility for funding citizens' health care, particularly if a government-option health care plan is established.

The Mayo Clinic which President Obama praised in his speech last night is the same Mayo Clinic whose president signed onto a letter to Congress yesterday, expressing fears that a government-option health care plan Obama wants to establish will do more of this cost-shifting. The letter states:

• Under the current Medicare system, a majority of doctors and hospitals that care for Medicare patients are paid substantially less than it costs to treat them. Many providers are therefore already approaching a point where they can not afford to see Medicare patients. Expansion of a Medicare-type plan without a method to define, measure, and pay for healthy outcomes for patients will move many doctors and hospitals across this threshold, and ultimately hurt the patients who seek our care. We should not put more Americans into the current unsustainable system.

President Obama brushed off this concern last night near the end of his press conference, citing a hopeful but very vague blog post on Mayo's website that went up a day before the letter was sent. In addition to ignoring budgetary and medical concerns, he repeated his dubious promise that his plan will not force millions of Americans out of health insurance plans they already have and like. He had no comforting words to convince anyone of the wisdom of creating two new taxes on employers -- one of them a tax that punishes small businesses with a higher tax rate if they create more jobs -- in the middle of a recession.

The one thing President Obama did not do last night was address directly any of the concerns that Americans have about his pending reform proposals. With this sort of rhetorical detachment from reality, it is not surprising that public support for his vision of health care reform is gradually eroding.

President Obama needs to take the red pill, even if it does cost twice as much.

1202 Obama - Health Care hype

New York Times July 22, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama showed great fluency in the intricate details of health policy at his news conference on Wednesday night, but experts said some of his points were debatable.

Steve: doctors, nurses support overhaul of health care

• a half-dozen state medical societies have sharply criticized provisions that would establish a new government-run health insurance plan

Steve: Medicare could save large amounts of money

• Far from supporting this proposal, the American Hospital Association is urging hospital executives to lobby against it.

Steve: It’s not going to reduce Medicare benefits

• Hospitals say the cuts could indeed cut services in some rural areas and from teaching hospitals, which receive extra payments because of higher costs.

Steve: said that 160 Republican amendments were adopted

• Republicans said many of the amendments involved technical provisions and did not alter the fundamental features of the bill.

Steve: said that health insurance companies were making “record profits.”

• America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for insurers, contends that “for every $1 spent on health care in America, approximately one penny goes to health plans’ profits.”

Steve: wants to eliminate repetitious tests ordered by different doctors for the same patient.

• But, under his plan, it is not clear who would take responsibility for patients and coordinate care in traditional fee-for-service medicine.

Steve: The president continued to take credit for deficit reduction by making a claim that has been challenged by many experts.

• In fact, $1.5 trillion of those “savings” are mainly based on an assumption that the United States would have had as many troops in Iraq in 10 years as it did when Mr. Obama took office. But before leaving office, President George W. Bush signed an agreement with Baghdad mandating the withdrawal of all American forces within three years.
• So Mr. Obama is claiming credit for not spending money that, under the policy he inherited from Mr. Bush, would never have been spent in the first place.