Health Wars (Labor Day Edition)

Ensign Ed wonders if the subject of Red Barry's latest weekly radio address - not BarryCare - is a tacit indication that his health care putsch-push has run out of gas:

Obama appears to want a way to ride out the end of summer without taking any more of a bruising. Why else would Obama suddenly shift gears to a proposal that hardly needs a weekly address to sail through Congress? He certainly doesn’t need grass-roots support for such a proposal. Obama offered it in order to rebuild, in some small way, his credibility as a moderate who isn’t interested in government takeovers — just a few days before he faces the nation on the government overhaul of the private health-care industry.

I dunno. Seems to me the latter clause belies the 'graph that precedes it. I'm figuring perhaps he doesn't want to tip off the details of his address ahead of time for the mainstream media to hack to bits, which suggests that he may finally have come up with new talking points, or at least a semi-original repackaging of the same ones. Given that the "Blue Dogs" are most likely a lot more firmly set against a "public option" and the neoBolsheviks are equally as insistent on its inclusion, the expression, "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em" comes to mind. And by addressing Congress as opposed to addressing the nation from the Oval Office, it's clear, at least to me, that it's his party's congressional majorities, and not the American public at large whose trust and support he's irretrievably lost, that is his target audience.

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Another day, another Donk ensconsed in a safe seat succumbs to loose lips syndrome:

Keith Ellison calling himself a "compromiser" is like if Ted Kennedy had taken the opportunity of his final letter to Benedict XVI to declare himself the new Pope.

Just remember, folks, these are the whiz kids who are so much brighter and smarter and morally superior than we are, and thus mystically entitled to tower and lord over and otherwise rule the rest of us. Don't you feel so much better now?

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The congressional confusion grows as Max Baucus gets ready to go it alone all by himself:

A proposed health-care bill by the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee does not include a government-run insurance plan, a source close to the discussions said Monday.

Although the proposal from Senator Max Baucus excludes a “public option,” it would allow for the creation of nonprofit health care cooperatives, an idea that some moderate Democrats and Republicans have expressed possible interest in supporting. …

Baucus’ bill would cost less than $900 billion over ten years, according to the source. The price tag is at least $100 billion less than any other health-care reform bill currently under consideration by Congress, the source said.

It would be paid for, in part, by a new tax on health insurance companies that provide high-end “Cadillac” insurance plans, the source added.

Supporters of such a tax, initially proposed by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and other Democrats several weeks ago, say will it help curb the cost of health care by discouraging employers from offering such plans.

I'd like to personally extend my gratitude to Senator Baucus for doing the Right the service of reminding the American people that the "public option" isn't the only fart in this bag of nails. Why the idea of a new tax that will strip owners of "cadillac" medical plans of their coverage and increase the intrusion of the IRS into all of our lives is supposed to rally the public to BaucusCare over ObamaCare is anybody's guess. Ditto its "huge deficits, but not quite as huge as ObamaCare" selling point or the "government co-ops are not a public option" dodge.

The Democrats of 2009 are as incapable of understanding how thoroughly the public opinion dynamic has changed as their predecessors of fifteen years ago. The majority of Americans are not interested in which version of BarryCare does the least damage to their health coverage and bank account - THEY DON'T WANT ANY OF THEM. What they DO want is precisely the market-based reforms no Democrat majority will ever enact:

[T]he better way to proceed in curtailing the overuse of resources is to eliminate third-party payers from most medical care. When consumers have to pay for services and goods directly, pricing mechanisms keep the market from overuse as demand escalates price before it increases supply. For that reason, any reform should involve the end of tax breaks for comprehensive insurance policies and the encouragement of health-savings accounts (HSAs) along with the creation of catastrophic health insurance coverage that would be readily available to all for a much lower price.

The only way to pass such genuine reform is to restore the GOP to control of the federal government. The first step begins fourteen months from now.

Just ask this woman: