Herman

Cain

Read Herman's bio and previous columns

August 10, 2009

They Think We’re Stupid, But We Can Count

They think we’re stupid! Let us count the ways.

First, the president and the Democrats wanted 256 million of us to feel guilty that 50 million Americans did not have health insurance in this country. That didn’t work because a closer look at the numbers revealed that the real number is around 10 million, who could be insured with less expensive and less disruptive solutions.

Second, we were told that they had to rush the legislation through Congress in order to get the escalating costs of health care and the growing deficits under control. That argument was blown up by three analyses by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Their findings showed that instead of the cost curve “bending downward” in the out years, it would in fact bend upward.

Third, they tried to get us to drink the health care reform Kool-Aid with an overdose of presidential speeches and orchestrated press conferences. But someone had the audacity to actually read the legislation and we discovered that there are two versions of the Kool-Aid, namely, Obama-care and Democrat-care.

The president said that Obama-care is not a Trojan horse. But in the legislation written by the Democrats, we find that it is a Trojan horse filled with traps that would eventually lead to total government control of our health care.

The president and the Democrats have denied that their “plans” will lead to rationing. No other government-controlled system on the planet has been able to hold down health care costs without health care rationing. We are to believe that this president, this Congress and these Washington bureaucrats will be able to hold down costs without rationing. Yeah right! 

The president has been describing a health care beauty queen, while the Democrats in Congress have drafted Medicare’s ugly twin sister.

The president said that nobody is talking about getting to a single payer system. Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) said, “Oh yes we are (video proof)!” The president also said if you like what you have you can keep it. That’s true until the government option eventually drives private health insurance out of business.

The president and the Democrats have not been able to convince us with guilt and inflated numbers of the uninsured, faulty cost savings estimates or two-sided rhetoric, so they are now changing the terminology from “health care reform” to “health insurance reform”. And we are not supposed to notice.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even prepared talking points for Democratic members of Congress as they left for the August recess. They now want to portray the insurance industry as the new enemy of attack. The president and the Democrats are just looking for a strategy to sucker the American people into government-controlled socialized medicine.

Noticeably, there has been no mention by the Democrats that maybe their approach to health care reform may be dead wrong as to what the voters want to see. Obama-care and Democrat-care are absent of any tort reform provisions, looser pay laws to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, association health insurance plans, tax deductibility of insurance costs by employees and individuals or expansion of health savings accounts (HSAs).

Obviously, we are all too stupid to even dare suggest such patient-focused and free-market improvements to the already best health care in the world.

Fifteen years ago, “Hillary-care” as proposed by President Bill Clinton, got derailed for the same reasons that have Obama-care and Democrat-care on life support.

Namely, people are not as stupid as they think we are, and we can count. 

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.