Patterico's Pontifications

8/11/2009

Obama’s Convoluted Logic on Health Care

Filed under: Government,Obama — DRJ @ 1:17 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Via Hot Air, Obama assures Americans they shouldn’t worry about nationalized health care because everyone knows government-managed businesses like the Post Office have problems competing with companies like UPS and FedEx:

Maybe we should put UPS in charge of health care.

— DRJ

48 Responses to “Obama’s Convoluted Logic on Health Care”

  1. This is supposed to be reassuring?

    JD (85cf0b)

  2. It’s easy. The government has outlawed private companies delivering first class mail. That’s how they compete.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  3. MAN I hate the post office. Just got back from mailing something certified. I made a polite joke about the crowd, and the employee took it as a personal insult.

    They are preparing to increase postage again, I hear, so load up on those forever stamps. I think we should change the way the post office works. Fire 90 percent of its employees and only deliver mail twice a week. Deliver nothing weighing more than 2 ounces. No ‘certified’ and no ‘priority’. Just send letters, bills, documents. same price for all of it.

    If you need to send a package or important document, you should us one of the private options anyway.

    Sadly, the USPS is deeply entrenched and it will likely stay a problem forever.

    Obama has a great point… his health care program is unlikely to be any better than the USPS. Except that the feds want to handicap the private options even more than they already have. It’s easy to win a race when you slash your opponent’s tires. That’s supposed to be good for America?

    Juan (bd4b30)

  4. Isn’t UPS unionized? Still, I’d rather have them or FedEx run health care instead of the gov’t.

    wherestherum (d413fd)

  5. Seriously, that was one of the worst sound bites explaining anything I have ever heard. He stepped all over himself, I am not sold Mr. President, not sold at all.

    jpenaz (c68703)

  6. It’s official: he is dumber than dirt.

    Peg C. (48175e)

  7. President Obama’s heath care promises won’t be kept. Costs will rise exponentially, NOT fall. Therefore, our taxes will be the ones to pay for it. We need to support the goal of covering all individuals through private health insurance. We are NOT prepared to turn our health system over to the government.
    http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/issues/index.cfm?ID=300 .

    Maura (899ad4)

  8. We’ve officially traveled to the very heart of Obama Bizarro world.

    Government health insurance has to be self sufficient and not supported by taxpayer subsidies so it can compete with private insurers just like Fedex and UPS compete with the money gushing taxpayer subsidized, legally protected Post Office.

    Great Crap on a Cracker, I’m dizzy. George Bush regularly fractured the English Language but he had a reasonable command of the facts. This President “intellectual” can’t even make a coherent point about policy on a consistent basis.

    Bizarro world.

    BJTexs (a2cb5a)

  9. Is Obama saying that a health care system run by the government will be as screwed up as the postal service?

    Now, THAT’S reassuring.

    Bubba Maximus (456175)

  10. My brother – in – law has worked as a mail carrier for a suburban post office in a Chicago suburb for over 25 years. He works hard at his job, but if you ask him why the PO is so screwed up he’ll be glad to tell you that it’s solely because of the entrenched idiots/slackjawed arseholes that they can’t get rid of because of the union. The management there is also entrenched for the same reason, and any prior attempts at true reform have been stonewalled by the union, at every turn.

    Obama has really been living in a bubble if he honestly thinks that this analogy was a good example. Mouth, insert foot.

    Dmac (e6d1c2)

  11. this is the height of absurdity.

    the post office is one of the most dysfunctional government programs around – that’s hard to do with all the government examples of functioning programs (tongue in cheek).

    for him to set that up as an example of how efficient the healthcare program would be, is like BJTexs, bizarre. is that what he means anyway? i’m not sure what his point is.

    ktr (e4fcbd)

  12. I’m not sure if this story has gone “national” yet, but the ofice of a Dem Congressman from metro Atlanta has been “swastika’d”:

    http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/swastika-113070.html

    Oddly enough, a couple of days before the swastika incident, this same Congressman had a “confrontation” with a constituent at a town hall meeting:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp6lUJv0w0A

    Bubba Maximus (456175)

  13. Rep Scott does not give a rat’s arse about his constituents. Whoever spray-painted that swastika on the sign is a douchenozzle of epic proportions. I cannot imagine why anyone would be PO’d at him after his contemptuous behavior towards a Doctor from his district having the temerity to ask the congresscritter a question. I read that link above, saw the pic in question, but am curious as to what is the “racism” Rep Scott claims.

    JD (7d2b58)

  14. The president is both

    (a) giving his media shills like Chris Matthews and Joe Klein a chance to stop the freefall in his poll numbers by allowing them to say, “You see? Obama knows how bad it is when the government runs things! So don’t worry.”
    (b) lying about how he understands things.

    Official Internet Data Office (4b48f5)

  15. There is a crying need for more teleprompters.

    AD - RtR/OS! (44112e)

  16. I love the Scott video. I want to ask a serious question …..

    Do you think Black Politicians like this help, or hurt, the cause of blacks in the US?

    I am neither white, nor black, and frankly when I see guys like this I only have a few words to describe them and they are all pretty ugly.

    To way too much of the Black Community, a nice suit and good diction equates to political success regardless of how convoluted and idiotic they sound.

    I can also say the same of Whites in the case of POTUS and vermin like Specter but sheesh ….. The dude just ignored the white guy and went off on a bender.

    It is as ugly to me as when the White Politician is patronizing minorities.

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  17. The sticker was likely painted by one of Scott’s supporters to create a diversion.

    Much like the noose for the Colombia Professor in NY.

    I don’t believe most of these reports since they tend to well serve those allegedly “hurt by it.”

    “El que menos interes se muestra es el que mas le interesa.”

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  18. Stoopid Sarah Palin.

    Look a Bunny ! Troll (f0ae19)

  19. Is it possible for an analogy to be a Freudian slip? UPS and FEDEX vs. USPS?

    As he says, the post office is the one having the problems. That is an argument for a “public option”?

    tim maguire (4a98f0)

  20. The U.S. Postal Service lost approximately $4.7 billion on revenues of $52.4 billion for the nine months ended June 30, 2009, so that’s a stellar self sufficient comparison that Obama is making in the video. It only lost $1.1 billion in the year earlier nine month period.

    Anyone who believes that Obama’s current proposals for reform will be self funding or that competition will be on a level playing field need to have their heads examined. The only purpose of a government option is to drive private insurers out of business (or to subsidize coverage at a loss) if the other changes Democrats are insisting on, portability, no medical underwriting, etc., can be legislated into the bill.

    The Constitutional authority for this legislation resides where?

    daleyrocks (718861)

  21. So, a government program billions in the red with seemingly bi-annual rate increases is Obama’s example???

    Well, it IS an example, just not the one he seems to think it is.

    Techie (482700)

  22. Good Lord, what is that man saying?!

    Taking his comparison, and noting that the Post Office is, by law, the only institution allowed to deliver first-class mail, I can envision a public-option plan in which the pubic option is simply a government-run insurcnace company. Fine. But, in that vein, they’d be the ones insuring the people who can’t now afford insurance, or who cannot get insurance due to pre-existing conditions.

    That means an “insurance company” which is guaranteed to be unable to charge rates which meet actuarial demands, because most people who would need it couldn’t afford the right rates, or would be people with prohibitively high risk. Is there any way in which such a system wouldn’t need taxpayer dollars, because it would almost certainly be paying out a whole lot more than it would receive in premiums.

    The economist Dana (474dfc)

  23. The only thing I have to say is if you think your plan is good enough for my family then it should be good enough for you MR. President. Mr congressman. MR representative. Ms Speaker and every in of your family. You can’t lead from the rear. When I see you accept this as your medical coverage I’ll sign up no questions asked.lets not forget the unions. One American All Americans.

    don getit (fc9acb)

  24. I’d like to ask a question for Mike K., the Dr. The one seemingly logic defying statement that I see over and over is: We are going to insure 95% of Americans. Now to me that means that we are going to immediately upon passage increase the demand on the medical profession by about a 30% increase (approximation – basically a number I have heard). Where are these new doctors going to come from?

    I read somewhere that we are producing about 16,000 new doctors per year (about enough to replace retiring medicos). So, assume that the medical schools can ramp up and start producing double that amount, the first class of those will be somewhere about 2015 out in the practice. I would think that with any product or service that has an urgent need that there would be a tendency to relax the standards and the quality of the product (doctors) would suffer.

    So much to think about in this whole screwed up mess, but this is the one that really gnaws at me.

    rls (e58293)

  25. rls, you didn’t ask me, but that’s the important point.

    Money can be fluked about with, but the fact is we don’t have enough doctors to give everyone all the goodies Obama is promising. At some point, someone is not going to be able to get what they want. If you’re not using money to ration goods, you’re using something else. Obviously, Obama’s own death panel (or less grandiose term) will be doing the rationing. It’s going to affect everyone, including people who are privately insured and delighted with the current health care system (the best system in world history).

    Juan (bd4b30)

  26. Obama’s as usual lies his ass off. He states he wants civil discourse after insuring the GOP and concerned parties have no say. He lies about the details of the bill.

    Just buy guns and ammo. He will adhere to the Constitution’s limits on his term in the same way he obeys all other aspects of the Constitution.

    Thomas Jackson (8ffd46)

  27. Obama just says whatever pops up on the telprompter. Then tries to remember the parts when he gets a question. He is like all Actors, not good at thinking.

    bill-tb (365bd9)

  28. rls – You are assuming that the uninsured are getting no health care today, which is not completely true. They may not be receiving complete health care, i.e. preventive care, but the incremental burden is not as great as you make it out to be IMHO.

    daleyrocks (718861)

  29. Daley, that’s true. I have no insurance, but I get checkups and other treatment.

    I just don’t need insurance that much. I’ve got enough saved to help me in most situations… in situations where I’d be screwed, the health insurance I’d buy would also leave me screwed.

    But a lot of people will use more health care than they do now. I think Medicare is a good example of what we could see happen. I think there’s a subset of the population, in the tens of millions, who live on foodstamps, don’t work much or at all, though they could, and abuse whatever freebies they could get. I know one guy who is on social security because he abused heroin. These people are going to abuse ‘free’ health care. Perhaps not at first, but as the bill is stretched and stretched over time. I see this bill as a foot in the door for a monster.

    How much and how fast demand will increase is anyone’s guess.

    Juan (bd4b30)

  30. daleyrocks I understand what you are saying about the uninsured getting care and I thought about that. However I come to the conclusion that they are getting minimal care at whatever emergency ward or clinic they get to, but now you are going to put them into the system with a “subsidized” demand and with every subsidized program ever to come into existence, it is going to boom and outstrip the supply tremendously.

    Look what happened to the Health Care Industry (why an Industry) when Medicare came into existence and the shortage of Doctors and facilities at that time….look at the Housing Industry with the advent of all of the Govt programs and the scurry to supply the demand….same with secondary education. Unquestionably there will be a significant increase in demand with no immediate increase in the supply….and IMHO the quality of the supply will decrease just as the quality has in the housing and education fields.

    rls (e58293)

  31. in situations where I’d be screwed, the health insurance I’d buy would also leave me screwed.

    But you won’t be screwed, due to the local county and city general hospitals in your area. The Cook County system here may be corrupt, inefficient and definitely not state – of – the – art, but they still have an excellent record of care for the indigent and others who cannot afford to pay and/or choose not to carry insurance. This is one basic tenet that’s being lost in this debate, IMHO. We already have a fail – safe option in place for most of these folkds.

    Dmac (e6d1c2)

  32. I think Barry used the Post office analogy because he’s hoping to “stamp” out disease. (Ducks and runs). Maybe he’s just trying to push the envelope?

    Gazzer (409de8)

  33. dmac, screwed financially, I should have said.

    I know that in this wonderful country, I would not be turned away dying. That’s an inconvenient fact for the left (unless they are dying!).

    American Health Care rocks.

    Juan (bd4b30)

  34. I decided the U.S. Postal Service was gay after going through the ordeal of using their gay services to ship neat stuff to our soldier people in Iraq. Those LOVE stamps should have been a clue that these ones were a little light in the postal loafers. I never pick up on these things until way later.

    happyfeet (42470c)

  35. Well done, hf. One of your best comments.

    DRJ (8d138b)

  36. I’d like to ask a question for Mike K., the Dr. The one seemingly logic defying statement that I see over and over is: We are going to insure 95% of Americans. Now to me that means that we are going to immediately upon passage increase the demand on the medical profession by about a 30% increase (approximation – basically a number I have heard). Where are these new doctors going to come from?

    One factor not being mentioned much is the fact that all those uninsured are being treated right now. They may not be getting routine physicals and some other non-emergent care but they are a population that is unlikely to do much preventive care anyway. The burden on the medical profession is not that big a concern because we are doing it now. What will happen, though, is that all that free care will suddenly be paid for. The system works on the forbearance of a lot of people who might not be willing to continue in other circumstances.

    Think about analogies like picking up trash or mowing your lawn. Lots of people do all the little things that make a society civilized and tolerable to live in. What if you had to pass rules and enforce them to get those simple things done? Why are poor neighborhoods so dirty with trash everywhere ?

    Some that applies to medicine. There is an enormous amount of free care being provided right now. Medicaid, for example, would collapse if all the care provided had to be paid, or even the bills had to be processed. A lot of people don’t believe that.

    We’ll see what happens if the government decides to run healthcare like it runs to Post Office.

    I read somewhere that we are producing about 16,000 new doctors per year (about enough to replace retiring medicos). So, assume that the medical schools can ramp up and start producing double that amount, the first class of those will be somewhere about 2015 out in the practice. I would think that with any product or service that has an urgent need that there would be a tendency to relax the standards and the quality of the product (doctors) would suffer.

    So much to think about in this whole screwed up mess, but this is the one that really gnaws at me.

    Comment by rls

    There are huge numbers of people going into “alternate provider” fields like nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Already, most industrial clinics are run by PAs and NPs. I talk to the every day. I have told students who are interested in primary care that they should think about an MBA. Several have done that and USC has a dual degree program. My niece, who has two degrees and could be accepted to most medical schools, decided to go to nursing school instead. She didn’t want the student loans. I think she made the right decision.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  37. I think Barry used the Post office analogy because he’s hoping to “stamp” out disease. (Ducks and runs). Maybe he’s just trying to push the envelope?

    He didn’t do a very good job addressing the specifics. He obviously mailed it in on this one.

    Another Chris (a3bb8f)

  38. It’s nice to see that Obama finally picked up DCSCA’s favorite analogy (which DCSCA must have lifted from some lefty blog). DCSCA would never actually explain it or defend it after dropping it in a thread so I didn’t have the pleasure of demolishing an actual argument from him. Now Obama’s analogy is being widely ridiculed and exposed for it’s stupidity across the blogosphere.

    You lose again DCSCA.

    daleyrocks (718861)

  39. Still seems like a case of life imitating art when a bozo like Barry is our nation’s CEO. I’d never have thought the circumstances that led to his election would have been likely or realistic, unless he was a fictional character portrayed in a ridiculous TV show or goofus-doofus movie.

    Mark (411533)

  40. Obama’s analogy is like Germans saying Hitler wasn’t all bad because he got the trains to run on time.

    “These are lies! Government care won’t crowd out private insurance, look at the US Postal Service! It can’t compete with Private Companies like Fedex or UPS”

    He said what???????

    Dunce Cap and Chair in Corner.

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  41. When TOTUS is out, POTUS just spouts.

    HeavenSent (01a566)

  42. I for one am encouraged by him using the analogy of the Post Office.

    He has clearly lost his mind.

    Yay for our side!

    steve miller (c5e78c)

  43. I guess this is the example of, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS”

    I debated for 4 years and heard some rather convoluted, hard to follow “logic”, but, uh … wow

    the Virginian (0635b6)

  44. What has the government touched that’s worked well? I can’t remember anything. If National Health is going to be so good, let members of Congress give up their health care to join it. Let Congress also be required to invest in Social Security – maybe then they’d find a way to make it work & quit giving SS benefits away! I’m tired of subsidizing everyone who never wanted to work & putting my kids & grandkids financial future at risk!

    Linda (d80290)

  45. Obamacide?

    Let’s see if I get the Obamacide healthcare bill rationale correct: Insurance companies are rationing healthcare. Rationing healthcare leads to people unnecessarily ill or dead. That’s evil. The oversight board set up by the healthcare legislation will have the final say on appropriate coverage for patients. That means rationing (or “triage”, if you prefer). Now the government can take over from the greedy insurance companies that are causing patients to go without healthcare. In the current budgetary crisis we must have a major cutbacks on healthcare costs. Why? Because we are spending trillions to bailout too big to fail banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs)and insurance companies’ (viz. AIG)gambling debts (AKA derivative securities.) Therefore I believe now our liberal government under Obama wants to be brought into the business of doing evil liberally in its own right. Bravo!

    Thingumbob (376dc9)

  46. Very funny: The day after POTUS cited the Postal Service approvingly as a model of the sort of public/private competition that ought to exist for health care, my local NPR station held a discussion around whether it should be scrapped.

    sierra (4be1ff)


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