Pete, your focus on the fundamental corruption at the heart of the Senate bill is, I think, exactly right and that corruption rather extraordinary. In the days after the Senate cloture vote on the health-care bill, you would think the mainstream media would be touting the bill’s benefits and focusing on the huge “win” for the president. But instead the buzz in both the mainstream and conservative media has not been about the merits of the “historic” legislation but about the backroom deals necessary to achieve its passage, which its sponsors assure us will usher in a wonderful era of improved health-care access and care.
We’re going to remember for years to come the names of the deals, just as surely as did the infamous Bridge to Nowhere become part of the political vocabulary: Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, U Con, Bayh Off, Handout Montana, and Gator Aid. Vermont and Massachusetts got billions more in Medicare funding. Sen. Roland Burris managed to slip in some funding for none other than ACORN, under the guise of improving minority community health. The scope and number of the deals are breathtaking, but it goes beyond the unseemliness of the average pork-barrel bill.
After all, this is not merely a transportation appropriations bill where the whole point is to dole out federal monies and the “game” is for each lawmaker to grab as much of the pie as possible for his own constituents. That might be distasteful to legislative purists and raise doubts as to whether all the money is being wisely spent. But it’s just about spreading the largess. In a case of transportation pork, one district gets a bike path and another doesn’t get the highway off-ramp, but neither district probably needed the project anyway.
In the case of health care, however, the bill rests on the premise that we are improving access to care and working toward a healthier society, reducing the problem of haves and have-nots. For decades that is how health-care “reform” has been sold by liberals.
But instead, what we “get” for health-care sweetheart deals is a new regime of rationed care, which will primarily impact the elderly. The nauseating plethora of backroom deals and special carve-outs for this or that state in health-care “reform,” therefore, is more egregious, and thus more politically toxic.
A central feature of this bill is the $500B cuts in Medicare funding, including slashing the popular Medicare Advantage plan and the imposition of a newly beefed-up Medicare Advisory Board, which will be empowered to devise new ways of cutting payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and other health-care providers. In the absence of any real reform measures, the only feasible way to control costs is limiting care—i.e., rationing. Medicare already denies medical claims at double the rate of many large private insurers. And with $500B or so less to work with, many more Medicare claims will be denied.
This is what the Cornhusker Kickback and the rest of the bribe-a-thon are enabling. The Senate bill spared voters in a few states the harshest impact of the new care-depriving regime so that the same regime could be foisted on the entire country. Connecticut voters get $600 million in additional Medicaid benefits, Vermont voters get $10B in health-care centers, and hospitals in North Dakota and Iowa get richer Medicare reimbursement rates. Those deals made possible reduced rates of reimbursement and Medicare funding for the rest of the country, rates so paltry and unacceptable to a few key senators that they had to use all their pull to spare their own states. If it is unacceptable for them, why must the rest of the country live with it?
The colorfully named backroom deals may well induce a fiery public backlash, complicating the bill’s passage and negating any political benefit derived by its proponents. Voters will discover not only the ugly side of secret deals; they may also figure out that the moral justification for health care has been jettisoned by those who used their clout to squeeze care for millions of voters while sparing themselves the worst of that backlash.
Once again,
Another invasion on the false premise of human rights. maybe the UN should have invaded the US after hurricane katrina struck.
Mr. Chang, I bet that if this was any other place in the world with a friendly government who wanted to run the rescue operations alone, you wuold not advocate an invasion……just like in iraq, your intellectual dishonesty is staggering.
But what you are ignoring, Sam, is that “wanting to run rescue operations alone” presumes they’ll be run at all. They aren’t here. It’s not enough that the Burmese people have to suffer under a terrible, freedom-depriving government, but now they have to endure the ravages of the cyclone AND be deprived of the materials to help them by the very same government. Why is it intellectually dishonest to advocating doing something rather than letting people suffer and die because of a paranoid government?
Well, aside from the legalities and wisdom of the case, which I’ll leave to others, there are practical problems. Our forces are overstretched as it is. The last war we fought in Southeast Asia didn’t turn out too well, either. The affected area is right near the capital, too, so a temporary occupation of the affected area without involving the rest of the country is a non-starter.
If anyone was going to invade, it seems to me, it should be neighboring India, Malaysia, or Thailand. The Chinese might not be too happy about such an eventuality (especially if the invader were India).
The only reliable military force the UN might command would be those the U.S. contributed. That ain’t gonna happen, so we’re going to see if the indifference to human life going under the name of fatalism that was often commented on in the West before political correctness rendered it unsayable is still at work in Asia.
False premise,
So using your logic, you should invade every country that is inept at running its own rescue efforts or refuses to run them at all.
you want to be the world’s policeman? but at the same time, you are the biggest criminal the world has ever known.
if you want to do something to stop suffering and injustice, why don’t you overthrow all the regimes in the middle east who are your allies for obvious human rights reasons….oh wait, you c an’t because those countries are your surrogate states, and they live to serve you.
Ah, the world’s policeman argument. Too difficult to bother with all those pesky facts about oppression of the Burmese people, eh?
And, when I start reading America is the world’s biggest criminal, and other such silliness, there’s really no point to continuing to read the rest, is there?
#5 Sam
I’m not a fan of the hegemonism, democratism, and interventionism of many posters on this blog, but this statement is either hyperbole or reflects abysmal ignorance.
Not every act or policy of the US is shrouded in nobility, but even if one takes a dim view of most of our policies in the last 125 years, folks from King Leopold to Pol Pot, with Stalin, Hitler and Mao in between, have outdone even our most violent episodes by orders of magnitude.
Criticize my country if you like, but don’t lie about it.
Thank you, Grumpy. I get so ticked hearing the canned mantra of how horrible and “mean” America is when it is so patently untrue. I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I am glad you pinned Sam’s ears back…and hopefully stopped him cold in his tracks.
Grumpy, thanks for your good words in defense of America. It’s always important to keep things in perspective.
Kouchner’s idea has my support. I think the French should go for it. It would be glorious to see some leadership from the EU on this. Send in EU troops to ensure that UN aid is delivered to the suffering in Burma.
Aux armes, citizens of Europe! You have the unstinting moral support of millions of Americans.
The UN is too bust protecting Psuedostinian terrorists from ferocious Jews eating pizza and riding buses to help the burmese.
The people around the world who condone the brutality inflicted by sadistic regimes never seem to have a problem criticizing America for wanting to help the oppressed. Truly despicable people.
Oops. Too “busy,” not too bust.
People would greet the invaders with flowers – if they hadn´t already eaten all the flowers.
J.E. Dyer, you know the French navy is already overstretched with keeping La Francophonie in line. Wherever a small African nation drops French for English as a foreign language, there you will find them!
el gordo — Good gracious, you didn’t think I meant the French should send the bulk of the forces, to force aid into Burma, did you? No, no — the French should take the lead, be in charge, and exhort the Dutch, Belgians, and Danes to pony up the actual forces.
This is only, BTW, because it’s their foreign minister’s idea. The Brits have the most recent colonial ties to Burma. A British-Aussie effort would probably be more effective, if the French could only get them to do it.
Hmm, invade… Let’s see, we did two countries like that for one reason or another (Irag unjustified, Afghanistan not enough effort) and we are still there and taking human casualties and have an economy that’s in shambles folks. Just where is the US going to get these troops from and haven’t the poor Burmese have suffered enough? Asian nations need to step up and take care of their region and take this one on.
The EU and North America need to step back on this one. If my neighbor’s house burns to the ground and loses part of his family, I cannot and am not responsible to build him a new house and provide for him, even though I would love to be able to. Another thought here to those who think we have the money and resources to loan out to the world that pretty much hates us; Hurricane, wild fire and tornado season is upon us here in the US, who will help us in our hour of need when these forces hit us? Simply put, no one…
I was born in Burma , and was fortunate enough to be able to migrate .
The connections and ties to the people in Burma remain through various organisations ,
but let me tell you this ……..The people of Burma would welcome any country that would rid them of the current Generals who rule through force and fear, and thus bring true democracy to Burma.
What is this Junta like? ….The Burmese military can just simply walk into your home and throw you out into the street and use your home as an office, and you don’t get any monetary compensation ( The fact that you are allowed to live is considered a reward).
Unfortunately the UN has always been, and will continue to be viewed as a toothless tiger, and the people will continue to suffer.
lcw — the problem is that any such move by an Asian nation would evoke the longstanding security worries of the others. None of Japan, China, or India could intervene in Burma without stirring up a hornet’s nest. (China already exploits the current leadership of Burma, which justly alarms India; and China’s ideological and power-politics posture is not one that would favor regime-changing Burma anyway. But China is one of only three Asian nations in the vicinity that could actually undertake the project in question.)
Japanese intervention would immediately sound the drumbeat of the 1930s, and Japan’s imperial expansionist policies from which eastern Asia suffered so much. China would go insane if Japan stepped in to set Burma to rights.
Intervention by India would alarm China as well, and make the rest of southeast Asia very uneasy. The growth of India’s population and economic might, and India’s independent policy stances and recent improved ties to America, are viewed with concern and disfavor in Beijing, and also in Moscow.
Asia is not a very nice neighborhood, in this regard. I believe Australia could get away with some level of intervention in Burma, as a British Commonwealth project, without scaring up all of Asia’s ghosts, which today are held in check by the network of American alliances and military presence. But I don’t think another nation in the region could.
Yes its time to invade and intervene on children who cant learn to share and live together and know only dominate and control. perhaps a tast of their own medicine will straighten out the generals that rule burma.
Time for the US to take care of our own.
To hell with these countries that love to take our money in one hand and stab us in the back with the other.
lcw,
don’t try to equate America with the world or the UN. Just write: “screw those suffering Burmese,” and leave it at that. After all, you have yours, right?
It’s a large world and no one country can or should police it alone. The USA will take action internationally if it has an interest there, this much is true but I can’t understand why people slam us for doing it. We’ve stayed neutral in the recent past and look what happens, World War I & II. we got dragged into those anyways. What did we do to these countries when we were victorious? We helped the people after removing some very dangerous leaders from positions of power. No government is perfect and hindsight is always 20/20 some mistakes will be made and there’s always a risk but I believe the values we attempt to instill are very good in nature and are aimed at peace, freedom and the vision of a global civilized world where all humans have some basic rights. I doubt you’d get the same deal from a lot of other countries. Imagine for an instance Britain, USA and USSR lost WWII. We wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I doubt I’d be sitting in front of a computer right now. It scares me to think of what life on earth would be like. Or imagine for a moment if the USSR won the whole war. In my opinion The USA gets involved in matters that jeopardize freedom & human rights before they escalate to the point where we and the rest of the world combined might not be able to stop it. I’m proud to be an American and I’m proud of my government’s actions. The constitutions, bill of rights, etc. of any nation in the free world have been written in blood and in a lot of cases American blood. Let’s face it, war sucks but it’s imminent as long as evil, greedy people in positions of power use it to make the world a great place for them and suck for everybody else. The United Nations plays a very important role but they need to set realistic, effective deadlines for Military action if diplomacy fails. Desert Storm was a good example of what needs to happen on a regular basis at the UN. I’m sure America doesn’t want to “go it alone” but the longer you wait on certain issues the bigger the mess to clean up in the end. If a truly evil empire were to gain complete power due to reluctance of anyone willing to fight then what? It almost happened only 60 years ago. Nobody of reasonable mind can take that risk. If whatever rights and freedoms we have are taken from us in this modern, industrial and technological age we as human beings may never be free again. The United States had some help from others in gaining our independence. We have restored others independence. Men and women in this country have fought and died so that you and I can enjoy what every human being should be able to enjoy. “CHOICE” If the day ever comes where a foreign power wants’ to deny me of the right to choose I will fight to the death to defend that right so that others may enjoy and value it as I have. I’m a lover and not a fighter by any means. But after 33 decent years of my life on this planet I’ll be damned if some fascist, extremist, control-freak, idiot(s) will try to deny myself, my loved ones, future generations and my country basic freedoms that everybody should be able to enjoy responsibly. If you aren’t willing to push your agenda for freedom and human rights they will disappear.
-Todd C
It’s about time for us to have realized that the dichotomy between unilateralism and multilateralism is history now. We should let the likes of Ban Ki-moon keep chitchatting so much about Burma, while buttoning up their lips about Wenchuan County. Each country has already had its own headache and heartache, much more than it can handle on its own. So it’s simply absurd to automatically start talking about a massive rescue operation every time a cyclone or an earthquake hits a foreign country. In a sense, these peoples deserve the horrible consequences from the calamities. A new world order should be built on the principle of self-reliance.