George Rebane

ObamaCare’s progress through Congress illustrates the utter contempt Democrats have for the intelligence of the folks who voted them into office.  Their straight-faced ‘explanations’ of how health (or any other kind of) insurance works strains the credulity of anyone with more than two brain cells to bang together.

As I listened yet again to another left-wing politician explain that the health insurance component of ObamaCare will provide the same coverage, at lower premiums, to people signing on at will with pre-existing conditions, and at the same time reducing deficits, it was time to reach for the barf bucket.  And this prevarication is always done with all sincerity.  What do they know about their voters that the rest of us don’t?  From a distance Obama supporters look and act nice enough, and things go well when we talk to them about other topics.  Yet something doesn’t tie when it comes to basic economics.

The Senate Finance Committee today approved their version, and lying with a straight face told the nation that last week’s CBO analysis of the former “conceptual language” version resulted in temporary deficit reductions of about $87 billion a year.  The CBO was hesitant to issue its analysis as I reported here, and now that ‘conceptual’ $87 billion number is trumpeted as the CBO’s considered verdict on a bill with language that the CBO has yet to study.  A sleazy shell game indeed to start the momentum on ObamaCare, momentum that will become a bum’s rush to the White House as the various Senate and House versions are merged. 

In the meanwhile, the Dems response to the recent PricewaterhouseCooper’s report, that corroborated previous CBO and ITC reports of large deficits and more expensive health insurance, was to excoriate the messenger instead of addressing the presented facts.  This seems to be the perennial common denominator of the Right-Left debate.  And every time they do that, they implicitly continue holding their supporters in contempt, treating them as double dummies or worse.

One supposes we all know that insurance is a betting game wherein risk to the insured is reduced by the odds of a game set up so that the total premiums collected will pay for the expected claims, with money left over for a cushion, operating costs, and profit.  If the expected claims are too high, then the premiums charged will cost more.  To lower premiums you have to have enough policyholders who pay in and don’t file claims – for health insurance that requires having more, younger, and healthier policyholders.  It winds up being a probability problem, but you don’t have to know how to solve it in order to understand the basic concept.

Reputable commentators like Charles Krauthammer correctly call the above argument “obvious and intuitive”, but the Dems and their MSM mouthpieces behave as if they are talking to functional idiots, and continue repeating the same malicious mantras about how under ObamaCare everyone will pay less and get more.  We all know the redistributionist and deficit impact of ObamaCare, and that includes the brighter liberal elites, yet they raise no cry nor point out to their dimmer counterparts the clear contradictions of the Democratic message.

And if you really need proof, look at what the Brits are doing today in trying to pull back from the disasters of socialism.  They’ve been there and seen the glories of government taking over this and that.  Now with rocketing costs they are seriously looking at privatizing functions that government has in common with private industry.  Their approach is to start for-profit service corporations that will be part government, part private sector owned (more here).  RR readers will recall my recent columns (here and in The Union) recommending a similar tack that introduces non-profit service corporations.  Who will ask, ‘Today the Europeans are driven back from unsustainable socialist policies that don’t work – why are we now heading down that same road?’