The Follow-Up:

Readers with with serious wonkish interest in the health care debate, as well as the economic chaos, will find extremely valuable discussions in the posts of dakinikat — start here and track your way backwards.

An astonishing and eye opening post is  this page-by-page analysis of the proposal at Governor Palin 4 President

And here too, hot off the presses, the biggest lie amongst all lies in the health care debate, from The American Spectator, Illusions an Delusions about theUninsured.

And now, a PUMA lament:

When you consider the origin and history of the problem, namely the well-known but diverse experiences of the American public over the years; given that some degree of ‘conflict’ over this issue has already occurred over a decade ago; all Americans have some sort of personal stake, divergent and conflicting at times; issues of national character and pride are involved; economic interests pull in diverse directions; changes proposed are radical and inertia against change nearly insurmountable.

Given all these bitter realities:

The unpleasant PUMA truth is this: the Obama administration is selling Health Care Reform exactly the same way the Bush administration sold the Iraq War Two.

Here can be seen use of everything. Appeal to emotion, push from bully pulpit, hidden strategy, layers of canard, sleight of hand, obfuscation, suborned media, the golden lie, and a whole assortment of tricks, some more opaque than others. It’s all about selling the idea to the middle, to force the wavering, and to intimidate the willing. It all sounds so familiar to a PUMA.

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ORIGINAL POST BEGINS HERE:

Debate on obamacare is in full swing, with a great deal of sideshow to boot. Politics, rhetoric and diatribes are everywhere, and it is very difficult to follow the discussion. I feel for the dumb congresscritters who got barely  a week to get up to speed on a thousand page bill they had to act on.

All that can be said is this: too bad Hillary Clinton is not in charge of it. The poor woman was demolished some fifteen years ago, when she came out with a well thought out plan. I bet that half the people who hate obamacare would have loved to have the Hillary plan to vote on again.

That said, this post is all about forward looking ideation.

The first thing we should all pay close attention to, on the heels of Sarah’s recent admonition, is this clip from Rep. Bachmann. (Disclaimer: I have never been a fan of her, was highly partisan and critical of her in earlier years, thought she was nutty sometimes, but on this obamacare isssue, she is right on the money!)

Deadly Doctors, New York Post.  This is the article that Bachmanntalked about in the above clip.

Many points in the article not touched by Bachmann will come as surprise to folks who read papers, for the media itself is hell bent on ’selling’ this plan to us.  Why? Simple, it comes from the Man himself, right down from the mountain top.

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors’ lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too “enamored with technology” and is determined to reduce access to it.

Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: “Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms” (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: “Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration’s health-reform effort.”

How Obamacare will affect your doctor, Wall Street Journal.

Physician income declines will be accompanied by regulations that will make practicing medicine more costly, creating a double whammy of lower revenue and higher practice costs, especially for primary-care doctors who generally operate busy practices and work on thinner margins

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin.

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in — as in Canada, for example — to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

There are plenty of alternatives to Mr. Obama’s plan that expand coverage to the uninsured, give them the chance to buy private coverage like Congress enjoys, and limit government management over what are inherently personal transactions between doctors and patients.

Obamacare’s Fatal Flaw, TIME Magazine

People spreading ‘disinformation’ about obamacare. The Heritage Foundation. A sardonic title but very clear-cut, biting and edgy expose of the “debate about the debate”. Lots of commentary.

Media revive Clinton-era smear, dub White House health care plan obamacare. Media Matters. Extensive, and excruciating, catalog of all references to HillaryCare and obamacare. After trashing poor Hillary and sucking up to candidate Obama for a whole year, MM suddenly found a lot to be nostalgic about the Big Dawg era. The PUMA in me threw up!  This post by Media Matters has not one single argument for or against obamacare. A real mcguffin.

What now for obamacare? The Economist. A slightly dated essay, July 30th, but still chock full of information and solid arguments. Cuts through the rhetoric, and presents the clear political argument.

Why obamacare can’t work: the calculation argument.
and, The Health Czar can’t Calculate.
Both essays are by Gabriel E. Vidal or the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

This analysis argues vigorously for the  libertarian, capitalist, market place model to poke punches in the conceptual basis of obamacare mathematics. With some effort, it is easy enough for a casual reader to follow the argument being laid out. Make up your own mind.

A dangerous cure: seven obamacare health myths. Stephen L. Bloom at Cross-Walk.

Obamacare: Kiss your access goodbye. Scott Atlas of Hoover Institute details six specific ways in which your access to health care will be reduced in a major way under obamacare.

1) Fewer trained specialists;

2) Fewer state-of-the-art drugs;

3) Less advanced technologies for diagnosis, therapy;

4) Reduced choice of doctors and treatments;

5) Loss of choice of insurance coverages;

6) Fewer innovations in future health care.

— Above all, do no harm!

Many of the articles linked above make, remake the same important points in different ways, but I will put it bluntly: ObamaCare is a TrojanHorse.

It’s an introduction of communism into the United States in the guise of health care reform. It will reform nothing, benefit nobody but only sate the ideological thirst of the extremists on the left who are ashamed of America, and wish to drag us down to the levels of bad British teeth, and terminal Cuban waiting lines. We are a blessed nation, we don’t need an overhaul, just a few tweaks here and there.

Obamacare will do little good, but much bad. And mostly it will be a disaster far worse than what it intends to rectify. It will change the character of America, for worse, without improving our health.

But this is what happens when a runaway ideology takes control of policy.  When one band of Americans will decide what is good for all of us. When a government exceeds it’s authority, when a leader misunderstands his mandate. A better way would be to shelve the current bill, and let a blue-ribbon panel of bipartisan, multi-stakeholder representatives come up with a plan, discuss it openly and debate it over a few months. Time is on our side.

This video page has a number of clips of coverage by the Wall Street Journal. Good information.

Happy Reading!