George Will’s Newsweek column on “Why No One Believes Obama” is the best ever.
He writes, “[Obama's] incessant talking cannot combat what it has caused: An increasing number of Americans do not believe that he believes what he says.” Does he back this up? No, but he writes it, and he’s a MSM journalist who blindly pledged allegiance to the Bush administration for eight years and thus has the most credibility.
Will doesn’t need facts because he has the brainpower and the venue to present his own facts which resemble the rosiest of conservative talking points.
He writes of the President: “He deplores ’scare tactics’ but says that unless he gets his way, people will die.” Of course, if we don’t reform the health care system, people will die. In the past year, 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance. But why would Will care about that? He’s got a column to write.
Next, Will states, “He praises temperate discourse but says many of his opponents are liars.” Obama’s opponents are liars.
Will continues: “He says the nation’s economic health depends on controlling health-care costs.”
Conservatives sometimes like the CBO’s findings, so let’s look at their projections if we preserve the system we have:
Total spending on health care would rise from 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 to 25 percent in 2025, 37 percent in 2050, and 49 percent in 2082. Federal spending on Medicare (net of beneficiaries’ premiums) and Medicaid would rise from 4 percent of GDP in 2007 to 7 percent in 2025, 12 percent in 2050, and 19 percent in 2082.
Those facts are swell, but Will would rather focus on tort reform. He writes, “Yet so important is the trial bar in financing the Democratic Party, he says not a syllable in significant and specific support of tort reforms that could save hundreds of billions of dollars by reducing ‘defensive medicine’ intended to protect not patients from illnesses but doctors from lawyers.”
More CBO:
Evidence from the states indicates that premiums for malpractice insurance are lower when tort liability is restricted than they would be otherwise. But even large savings in premiums can have only a small direct impact on health care spending–private or governmental–because malpractice costs account for less than 2 percent of that spending.
Give this man a raise.
1 Comments until now.
People ARE dying… I don’t know the exact numbers but I’m sure it is tragic how many people die because they don’t get proper medical treatment… every day!
Regarding malpractice insurance… it’s interesting just how many medical practices have found their own way around it. Many have no insurance and simply have a bond (I believe often as low as 100k) to deal with lawsuits. They operate a corporation with the protection afforded a corporate entity, therefore shielding the practice.
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