Ten Things Obama Will Say Wednesday Night – and a couple of things he won’t say

1. Debate is healthy but debate is only valid when both sides listen.
2. People are being frightened and manipulated by those who want to maintain the status quo.
3. Many are spreading fear and misinformation – he may mention the “death panels” specifically.
4. Though we must debate the issues, the time for debate is over. Action is needed now.
5. We must move quickly or risk losing this historic opportunity.
6. At some point, he will cite one or more health care horror stories – anecdotal images that impinge on the feelings of his hearers. He will end with the phrase “we can do better” – he may add “we must do better”.
7. He will speak of the great success of Medicare – a program that would be bankrupt if it hadn’t already gone broke. It is kept afloat only by the extraction of a significant portion of the paychecks of every working American. This is a Ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff look like an amateur and is dwarfed only by the madness that is Social Security.
8. He will assure listeners that they can keep their doctor and their current coverage “if they choose to do so” -- which really means “until this monstrosity really kicks in during the second term to which I am entitled”.
9. He will say that changing the system is costly but the cost of doing nothing is greater, both in terms of dollars and lives.
10. He will say that adding a government option will increase competition and reduce costs. He will even claim that health care reform will save money and reduce the deficit. Unfortunately, there will be no one in the live audience to laugh him down except Mike Pence.

What Obama will not do is discuss details or actual legislation. This will not be a policy speech in any technical sense. He will just tell us that all we think is in the bill is not a problem, and we should simply shut up and let him do what’s best. He is trying to strengthen the hand of Congress against the American people. I strongly suspect that he will be able to do this since, once the legislation is passed, it does not go into effect immediately. The consequences are on down the road, and the Democrats are counting on the short memory of the citizenry to keep them in power.

Obama is intellectually incapable of discussing the real issues with health care and health insurance costs. He doesn’t understand regular business operations let alone the singular economics of health care. Health care cannot operate on a typical business model. Hospitals have traditionally been nonprofit units of religious and charitable institutions or operated by counties for good reason. There must always be some excess supply of available health care, and this overage must be paid for or carried by someone. One reason we end up paying five bucks for a hospital Tylenol is because we want the hospital to have plenty of Tylenol on hand. The reason American health care is not only more expensive but better than any other system is that we have been willing to foot the bill for facilities, personnel, machines, medications, and treatments to be available whenever they are needed. We are willing to pay for empty beds and extra nurses and doctors because we want treatment now. We are also willing to pay for research and innovation. (Remind me of the last time some ground-breaking medical advancement came out of France, Britain, or Canada.)

No government plan has been able to adequately address the health care model because the only way to control costs in a non-competitive environment is to reduce the overhead by eliminating unused capacity. If government gets involved in “controlling costs” this “excess” capacity will go away, and we will be forced to wait months for things we can have immediately under the current system.

Further, costs will not be reduced to the taxpayer because layers of bureaucracy will be added. Career bureaucrats are the same in all nations and all ages. They accumulate managerial levels as part of building their fiefdoms with their departments. Efficiency declines even as budgets increase.

Sadly, despite the townhalls and protests, we will likely lose the health care battle. Congress must pass something to give Obama a victory. A victory of any kind – no matter how detrimental to our freedom – will boost the President’s approval numbers which have declined, in part, because a portion of the radical left thinks things are not moving toward socialism fast enough. This lame, predictable speech will give Congress the rallying point and cover they need to ignore the voice of the people, the Constitution, and the best interests of the Republic.

(Since I have to re-primer the Jeep that night, someone will have to tell me how well I did at the prediction game.)