When I read today about West Virginia Governor and Senate hopeful (D) Joe Manchin's flip-flop on his support for the Obama Healthcare bill, I had that little moment when you just don't know whether to laugh or cry or throw a fit. I ended up laughing because I've had a pretty calm day, but still...
I seem to have that little moment a lot lately when I talk to people about some of the news lately, like major employers considering dumping insurance coverage or applying for compliance waivers to avoid having to cover children over 21 on their employee parents' policies, or insurers jacking up premiums like the price of bottled water after a devestating hurricane.
I end up asking, prodding them: Now think. How in the world does the government get to be the insurance carrier from this employer-based system we've had for 40-50 years? Think like Columbo. There would have to be incentives to dismantle the current system. If it costs a company less to shift their employees over to gov't care, they totally will try. And at the same time, if the insurers can price their product as high as possible to offset the reduction of group coverage customers, they totally will try. Oh, wow. Bingo. They are trying now.
In other words, this is exactly the game plan that Obama and Co. knew would happen. It's what they want to happen, because it brings them closer to the day when government care is all there is for a lot of us. And that was their original objective, wasn't it? Make us all like those 30 million estimate without healthcare?
That they did not tell us, well, what else is new... Playa in Chief, remember? Back when the premiums increase stories came out and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stood at her podium hemming and hawing, spewing baseless lame threats to the insurance companies, I knew it for sure. Lemme ask -- how many insurers have had charges filed... or even been investigated? Anyone anyone Bueller? Oooh, that lady makes me quake in my boots. Not.
My friends, Obama and Co. will stand there the entire time this *transition period* lasts and while it gets uglier, costlier and riskier for all of us, they will chant their bullshit and do absolutely nothing, because they know it brings them closer to their objective: single payer givernment healthcare.
And when asked about it point blank, they'll deny, because they think we are stoopid thought lemmings and just take what they say as word. Some of us are but most of us are not, eventually. This is one area where I'm almost shocked by how much Obama and Co. have underestimated the American people. They must be one cynical and superior bunch to assume that people don't defend against being spun and lied to. If there is one phrase among folks I know who voted for Obama, it's "never again", "won't be fooled again", etc. It's like that old saying, "Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me."
And I'm also amazed by how they just keep repeating the offenses. Remember the gaff during the campaign when Obama addressed a Leftie crowd in San Francisco and was taped describing folks in Pennsylvania as bitter about life passing them by, clinging to their guns and religion? You'd think he would know better after that, but just last week Obama blamed “tribal attitudes” for a recent rise in racial incidents among Americans who are hurting financially. And at a Boston event, he rationalized that voters who have gone anti-Dem have done so out of "fear and frustration”. Oh, Wise One, Heaven forbid that any of us are using simply our logical brains to arrive at our opinions. I tend to suspect that after it is explained to him how he has eaten his own foot, he cringes not for being so lame-brained and insulting to fellow Americans, but because he didn't ace the challenge or because he had to communicate for the benefit of so many beneath him. There is just something wrong with that.
The presidency is not a video game or a science experiment, and neither is our healthcare system. If the choice is to burn down the village in order to save it, or not, I'm voting not...on Nov. 2.
