Herman
Cain
Read Herman's bio and previous columns
July 27, 2009
Health Care Questions Obama Can’t Answer
During President
Obama’s primetime press conference last Wednesday, he made the usual
promises about Obamacare, which have no resemblance to what Congress is
working on. The president continues to promise more choices, better
health care, fewer costs and less government intervention. The “Health
Care De-form” legislation working its way through Congress is just the
opposite.
Rather than the lapdog
mainstream media doing its job and challenging the president on his
assumptions and assertions, they play “run and fetch” with whatever the
president says. Since they didn’t do their jobs, here are a few real
questions for starters.
Mr. President, since government mandates have never produced
the desired results in the history of this country, why do you believe
they will work this time?
When the government
mandated a salary and wage freeze during World War II, businesses still
had to compete for the best people in the workforce. As a result,
businesses started offering health insurance benefits as an employment
incentive and the practice has intensified over time. So much so, many
politicians now proclaim that health care is a “right”.
Mr. President, is food a similar “right”?
(No response)
Mr. President, since persistent problems have been reported
about Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health care, why do you believe
that this time the government bureaucracy will perform much better than
ever before?
I can’t imagine that he
really believes that, but he has to keep saying it because that’s what
the “sheeple” want to hear, and it provides cover for what the Democrats
in Congress are working on to get us on the road to health care
rationing.
Mr. President, if the real objective is to provide health
insurance for the “uninsured” in this country, then why not allow people
the opportunity to pay a small fee to participate in Medicare? In fact,
why not offer free Medicare to those that are really, really poor?
According to my
calculations the costs would be only a fraction of $1.5 trillion if you
use the real number of 8 million chronically uninsured people instead of
the misleading 46 million. Alternatively, why not provide a “health
insurance voucher” for those who are chronically uninsured?
Mr. President, have you considered changing the law to allow
association health plans, along with allowing health insurance premiums
to be tax deductible regardless of who paid for them?
History has shown that
free market forces are better than government mandates to curb the rapid
rise in costs.
At that point,
President Obama would pull a “Clinton”. In 1994, when I asked President
Bill Clinton a question during a televised town hall meeting he did not
want to answer, he said, “Send me your information and I will get back
to you, next question.”
I’m still waiting.
Mr. President, since no country with government-controlled
health care has been able to avoid health care rationing to control
costs, what evidence do you have that suggests we will be able to do
what no other country has been able to do?
Oops! The president’s
staff might call security on that one.
If the last question of
the night about a “racial” incident in Boston involving a friend of the
president was not a plant, then it was a brilliant accidental
distraction to throw to the media. “Run and fetch” worked again, because
that was the main story by many news outlets the next day.
Here’s my last
question: Mr. President, do you really know what’s in the “Health
Care De-form” legislation?
Sorry, we are out of
time.
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