MORALLY REVOLTING
“For those of us who believe that the absence of universal health care is America’s burning shame, the spectacle of opposition to Obama’s health care plan is ’Alice in Wonderland’ bewildering and also enraging - but on one point the plan’s critics are absolutely correct. One of the key ideas under consideration - which can be read as expressing sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care - is morally revolting. And it’s helping to kill the plan itself,” Lee Siegel writes at www.thedailybeast.com.
“Make no mistake about it. Determining which treatments are ’cost effective’ at the end of a person’s life and which are not is one of Obama’s priorities. It’s one of the principal ways he counts on saving money and making universal health care affordable,” Mr. Siegel said.
“Obama told Diane Sawyer in June that government should ’study and figure out what works and what doesn’t. And let’s encourage doctors and patients to get what works. Let’s discourage what doesn’t.’
“Sawyer then asked him: ’Will it just be encouragement? Or will there be a board making Solomonic decisions?’
“Obama replied, ’What I’ve suggested is - is that we have a - a commission that helps - made up of doctors, made up of experts, that helps set best - best practices.’
“When Sawyer pressed him to say whether those practices would be enforced by law, he evaded the question.
“This reeks of the Big Brother nightmare of oppressive government that the shrewd propagandists on the right are always blathering on about. Except that this time, they could not be more right.”
SACRED DOCTRINE
“In his Saturday radio address, the president characterized [health care reform] opponents as ’defenders of the status quo’ trafficking in ’misleading information’ and ’outlandish rumors,’ ” Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes.
“His communications officer for health care, Linda Douglass, tells CNN that those who show video clips of Mr. Obama speaking are spreading ’disinformation.’ And far from scaling back the attacks, the same Obama aide who asked people to forward ’fishy’ e-mails critical of the president’s proposals [Monday] unveiled a new White House Web site accusing critics of scaring Americans ’with half-truths and outright lies.’
“Now, at one level the intimation that anyone who questions the president must be a liar probably reflects frustration with the legislative outlook for health care reform. Nevertheless, it is highly unpresidential. And it suggests that the president and his allies see disagreement over health care as less a political dispute than the trampling of sacred doctrine.
“That doctrine begins with the notion that health care is a human right, and that government is the only honest player. Accordingly, any health care plan must be both universal and guaranteed (read: paid for) by the government. And as long as we’re guaranteeing fundamental rights, let’s throw in abortion - no matter how much it complicates getting the bill through.”
THOSE DUPES
President Obama’s town hall meeting Tuesday was “a civil exchange, at least. But not a very effective performance,” Clive Crook writes in a blog at www.theatlantic.com.
“He treated it as an election campaign event. The opening was thoroughly partisan: His first substantive remarks were an attack on the venality of the insurance companies, a theme to which he returned repeatedly. He banged the populist drum in other ways too. If this effort fails, he said, it will be because of the resistance of special interests. (Actually, it won’t.) They have blocked reform before, he said, and must not be allowed to do it again. To me, this is foolishly condescending to the voters who disagree with the proposed reforms on their merits: it says they are dupes.
“Still, he successfully reset the message, as trailed earlier. He played down cost control, except when pressed by questioners to discuss the future of Medicare. (We will spend a lot less, he said, and get better results at the same time.) Moving the focus elsewhere is wise, since the bills have rather little to say on cost control, and this point is now well understood.
“Instead, his main themes were the need to widen coverage and, especially, the benefits of reform for people who already have insurance - principally, that there will be new limits on out-of-pocket expenses (getting sick should not make you bankrupt) and that your coverage will not be denied in future because of pre-existing conditions. As I’ve mentioned before, this last point should have been front and center from the start, but better late than never.
“Unfortunately he’s still trying to argue that if you are happy with what you’ve got, nothing will change. This is neither true nor even plausible. For instance, services under Medicare would be affected by the new reimbursement regime. The public option would destabilize some private plans - and is intended to. People won’t just migrate at their own initiative to new plans because they find them preferable. Many will be migrated by their employers, whether they like it or not. This claim that nothing will change if you’re content has to go.”
HOLDER’S CHOICE
“Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly will appoint a special prosecutor to bring cases against low-level CIA officers and contractors who questioned post-9/11 terrorist suspects,” the New York Post notes in an editorial.
“It’s a move he’ll likely regret,” the newspaper said.
“Not least because such cases may lead agents to be overly soft on future suspects, out of fear of prosecution. That could lead to missed chances to get potentially life-saving information.
“Anyway, aggressive interrogation was wisely OK’d for limited use in the most pressing cases against key suspects.
“Holder is said to want a narrow probe, focusing on alleged instances where officials ’went beyond the techniques that were authorized.’ But that’s a fine line - involving difficult moral judgments. …
“As 9/11 fades from memory, the urgency of those days is increasingly pooh-poohed. But President Obama, upon taking office, said he wanted to put the issue of interrogations behind him. Now Holder seems ready to resurrect it.
“Let’s hope he comes to his senses.”
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@ washingtontimes.com.
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