Health Wars (10/11/09)

It's against my principles and personal honor to give redundant public airing to the blitherings of a malevolent, mendacious megalomaniac.  So I'll just link to it instead, and leave the loyal denizens of Hard Starboard Nation to ponder how a 47%-34% deficit against BarryCare in a poll skewed leftward by the survey population ("adults," not "likely voters") and the sample (11% more Democrats than Republicans, versus a 7% gap last November that has largely disappeared since) constitutes "new momentum for health reform," and how "bipartisan consensus" can be alchemized out of "the much-despised governor of the fiscal catastrophe known as California, the RINO-turned-independent mayor of New York, 85-year-old Bob Dole, and Bill Frist, whose most recent comment on ObamaCare is that he wouldn’t vote for the Baucus plan," three of whom are either running for cover or whose support was oversold to begin with:

But as Republican aides in the Senate point out, the devil — as always — is in the details.

On Fox News Channel’s Your World With Neil Cavuto on October 9, Dole said Republicans are “not going to buy on to all the excise taxes that Senator Baucus put on the bill. It’s going to drive insurance companies out of business. We believe in the private sector.”…

And Schwarzenegger has said, “The House originally proposed fully funding the expansion with federal dollars, but due to cost concerns, members decided to shift a portion of these expansion costs to states. I will be clear on this particular proposal: If Congress thinks the Medicaid expansion is too expensive for the federal government, it is absolutely unaffordable for states. Proposals in the Senate envision passing on more than $8 billion in new costs to California annually – crowding out other priority or constitutionally required state spending and presenting a false choice for all of us. I cannot and will not support federal health care reform proposals that impose billions of dollars in new costs on California each year.”

This followed Fristy's walkback from last Monday:

In an interview with ABC News Radio this morning, Frist offered significant caveats, and said he actually doesn’t support the Senate Finance Committee’s latest draft of health care reform — considered the most conservative of five bills now circulating on Capitol Hill.

“There are five bills on the floor now — none of them are perfect. People try to put words in my mouth saying ‘You support the Baucus bill.’ I don’t support the Baucus bill as written today,” said Frist, a former heart surgeon who left the Senate in 2007. He has a new book out about health care.

Frist added: “We will see a health care bill. There are five bills out there. I’m pushing the process; it’s not where I want it to be. It’s going to cost way too much and we’re not going to get all the uninsured into the marketplace.”

“The Republicans right now feel like they’ve been left out of the table,” Frist said. “There’s some egregious things in there that will cost all the taxpayers too much money and not give them anything.”

You know what they say about declining leaders who gradually lose touch with reality.  The amazing part is that B.O. has reached this terminal stage not even nine months into his reign.

Deliciously ironic, given that the incorporation of Republican ideas would actually have bent the proverbial cost curve:

CBO now estimates that implementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5% (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2% from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3% from slightly less utilization of health care services. (Those estimates take into account the fact that because many states have already implemented some of the changes in the package, a significant fraction of the potential cost savings has already been realized.)

Enacting a typical set of proposals would reduce federal budget deficits by roughly $54 billion over the next ten years, according to estimates by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee of Taxation. That figure includes savings of roughly $41 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, as well as an increase in tax revenues of roughly $13 billion from a reduction in private health care costs that would lead to higher taxable wages.

Think any of the Donk gargantuas couldn't use $110 billion in savings for the next decade that would actually materialize?  Of course they could.  But that just doesn't fit the Democrat definition of "bipartisanship".  No, it is not Godbama who must bow to reality; it is reality that must bow down to Godbama.

No matter what it takes.